Around the first of every year (or the end of the one preceding it), Mothman usually turns up on many of the various Fortean “Top Ten” lists, ranking hither and yon as people’s favorite monstrosity of one category or another. For me, Mothman is most likely representative of various cryptozoological phenomenon, though many proponents of the legends also state belief that the dark-winged-one could have been any number of other things: an alien being, perhaps, or even some interdimensional presence.

The beginnings of the legend are well known, centering around Point Pleasant, West Virginia in November of 1966 when a group of frightened youths came barging into the local police station telling about a terrifying encounter they’d had earlier in the evening on November 15. Thus a blue-blooded American legend was born… but was the creature in question really what so many others have described over the years: a winged man-thing?

Indeed, there are a number of reports of strange creatures that were being seen in Point Pleasant around the time of the so-called “Mothman flap.” The majority of the accounts seem to indicate the presence of a large, winged entity that’s generally described as being close to six or seven feet tall, with large red eyes oriented near the chest area of an average human form. Curiously, the size of the wings themselves are often described as being too small to be capable of providing lift for a creature so large… but perhaps even more strange are the aspects of the Mothman mythos that may involve a creature with no wings at all!

I’m sure many folks just did a double-take, but bear with me here, because delving into the heart of the Mothman mystery should also be afforded an honest cross-examination of many of the claims made by those who encountered the creature throughout the late 1960s. Going back to those initial accounts around November of 1966, specifically the first one involving the two couples Roger and Linda Scarberry, and Steve and Mary Mallette, what is remembered of the encounter versus what was initially recorded does present a few discrepancies. For instance, when the story of the foursome’s startling encounter appeared the following morning in the Pacific Stars and Stripes newspaper, a particularly odd statement was made about the creature’s locomotion: that it “was an awkward runner.”

Indeed, many familiar with the legend will recall that as the group sped along in their escape from the old World War II munitions area outside of town, the creature was said to have pursued them, flying along at incredible speeds matching that of the witnesses in their car. However, it is curious that this initial statement that appeared in print mentioned terrestrial locomotion of the bipedal variety, and in the absence of references to there being wings observed. The story would change greatly in subsequent recollections by witnesses, with famous statements such as, “That bird kept right up with us,” furthering the creature’s legendary abilities.

Later encounters, such as that of Marcella Bennett a few nights after the Scarberry/Mallette encounter, involved seeing the creature moving about on the ground, although again, no mention of wings or the creature taking flight was recorded. Even John Keel, who authored the first authoritative text on what might have been occurring in Point Pleasant around the time (having been there throughout much of the Mothman flap himself), would eventually begin to surmise that “Mothman” was more likely to have been the result a combination of different factors. While many of the encounters detailed what was obviously some kind of large bird, others seemed more indicative of a large, red-eyed humanoid, or what Keel referred to as an “Abominable Swamp Slob” (i.e. a Bigfoot-like creature).

While a majority of the misinterpretation regarding Mothman stemmed from the years surrounding its presence in Point Pleasant between 1966 and ’67, certain aspects of the mystery have carried over into subsequent decades just as well. One popular myth that arose from the more metaphysical aspects of the Mothman story suggested that similar creatures were seen at the times of (or directly preceding) major disasters. Even stories regarding the terrible accident at the Chernobyl nuclear facility in 1986, as well as stories surrounding the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, began to incorporate tales of a “winged creature” that ominously appeared prior to each disaster. However, commenting at The Gralien Report in 2010, cryptozoologist and Fortean scholar Loren Coleman touched on the folkloric aspects of these stories as well:

John Keel and I openly discussed with the media, and did our best to straighten out the record regarding the mythos that became the Chernobyl “Mothman” accounts.

The Chernobyl story, the Galveston Hurricane-Mothman tie-in, and other examples given in the 2002 movie were pure fiction. As you note, right after the movie was released, various websites posted the Chernobyl/Mothman sightings as factual. But there is not one thread of evidence that any winged weirdies were witnessed before the Chernobyl accident.

It is a bit of movie fiction that has, unfortunately, moved into pseudo-factoid cryptozoology.

Indeed, to share Coleman’s wisely-stated sentiments, what might be called “pseudo-factoid cryptozoology” could comprise far more of the Mothman mystery than many are willing to accept. A careful cross-examination of available data suggests that rather than one singular phenomenon having occurred in West Virginia between 1966-67, there were perhaps a multitude of strange happenings, which became compounded over the years courtesy of speculation and hearsay. These resulted in all-encompassing legends of a mystery beast we know today as “Mothman” (which, as most will admit, didn’t even resemble a moth in the very best witness descriptions).

Whatever was really going on may be lost to time… but the mystery continues to captivate us; despite how some of the facts may have been changed with time.

The very idea that the green and pleasant British countryside may well be playing host to hidden populations of wild baboon sounds manifestly bizarre and unlikely in the extreme, which, for the most part anyway, it surely is! And, yet, sightings of baboon-like animals certainly do surface from time to time, and from across much of the entire nation. That these same sightings, of what are actually African and Arabian Old World monkeys, are comprised of encounters with both flesh-and-blood entities and beasts of a distinctly spectral and paranormal nature, only adds to the mystifying strangeness, as you will now come to firmly appreciate.

In 1913, Elliott O’Donnell penned the classic title Animal Ghosts, which included in its pages the decades-old story of a ghostly baboon seen in a large, old, imposing country-house-style abode near the English town of Basingstoke, Hampshire. In O’Donnell’s own words:

“A sister of a well-known author tells me there used to be a house called The Swallows, standing in two acres of land, close to a village near Basingstoke. In 1840 a Mr. Bishop of Tring bought the house, which had long stood empty, and we went to live there in 1841. After being there a fortnight two servants gave notice to leave, stating that the place was haunted by a large cat and a big baboon, which they constantly saw stealing down the staircases and passages.

“They also testified to hearing sounds as of somebody being strangled, proceeding from an empty attic near where they slept, and of the screams and groans of a number of of people being horribly tortured in the cellars just underneath the dairy. On going to see what was the cause of the disturbances, nothing was ever visible. By and by other members of the household began to be harassed by similar manifestations. The news spread through the village, and crowds of people came to the house with lights and sticks, to see if they could witness anything.

“One night, at about twelve o’clock, when several of the watchers were stationed on guard in the empty courtyard, they all saw the forms of a huge cat and a baboon rise from the closed grating of the large cellar under the old dairy, rush past them, and disappear in a dark angle of the walls. The same figures were repeatedly seen afterwards by many other persons. Early in December 1841, Mr. Bishop, hearing fearful screams, accompanied by deep and hoarse jabberings, apparently coming from the top of the house, rushed upstairs, whereupon all was instantly silent, and he could discover nothing.

“After that, Mr. Bishop set to work to get rid of the house, and was fortunate enough to find as a purchaser a retired colonel, who was soon, however, scared out of it. This was in 1842; it was soon after pulled down. The ground was used for the erection of cottages; but the hauntings being transferred to them, they were speedily vacated, and no one ever daring to inhabit them, they were eventually demolished, the site on which they stood being converted into allotments.

“There were many theories as to the history of ‘The Swallows’; one being that a highwayman, known as Steeplechase Jock, the son of a Scottish chieftain, had once plied his trade there and murdered many people, whose bodies were supposed to be buried somewhere on or near the premises. He was said to have had a terrible though decidedly unorthodox ending – falling into a vat of boiling tar, a raving madman. But what were the phantasms of the ape and cat? Were they the earth-bound spirits of the highwayman and his horse, or simply the spirits of two animals? Though either theory is possible, I am inclined to favour the former.”

Moving on, in September 1979, wild rumors that a terrifying monster was haunting the dark woods of Brassknocker Hill, near the old British city of Bath began to surface. Described variously, and in both excited and hysterical tones, as resembling a baboon, chimpanzee, spider monkey, gibbon or lemur, the creature was of far more concern to some than it was to others. Eighty-one-year-old Brassknocker Hill resident Frank Green, clearly hyped up and living out his Dirty Harry fantasies, took up nothing less than a shotgun vigil and said loudly: “I am very fond of some animals, but I reckon this creature could be dangerous and I am taking no chances.”

By the following summer the mystery seemed to have been solved when a policeman caught sight of a chimpanzee in the woods. “We were sure this mystery creature would turn out to be a monkey of some sort,’ said Inspector Mike Price, adding with humor: “After all, men from Mars aren’t hairy, are they?” Quite! But rumors of baboons on the loose in Britain don’t end there.

On January 17, 1999, a very curious story surfaced in the pages of Scotland’s Ayrshire Post newspaper. Titled Baboon sighted near Prestwick Airport, it read as follows: “A motorist spotted what he believed was a ‘Baboon-like creature’ on the Shaw Farm Road in Prestwick, not far from the airport. Police rushed to the scene, and as the officers got to within 30 yards of the animal it disappeared into the undergrowth.”

A police spokeswoman told the newspaper: “We received a call from a local man who said he’d narrowly avoided hitting a baboon-like creature on Shaw Farm Road, Prestwick. A patrol car was sent out and after a search of the area the officers reported seeing an animal of some sort, although they couldn’t be sure what it was.”

Given that the eye-witnesses to the beast included members of the police, the matter was taken seriously, and newspaper staff noted that careful-but-futile checks were made at the airport, which, rather interestingly, had received a cargo of livestock only days earlier. A baboon, said an airport spokesperson, was most certainly not part of that same cargo. As the mystery grew, and with no answer in sight, checks were also made with numerous zoos across Scotland, but none had lost a baboon – or, more correctly, none admitted to having lost one.

The final word on the matter came from a senior policeman, who – in light-hearted tones – told the press, always eager for an entertainingly weird story, and one that ultimately, albeit briefly, threatened to eclipse Scotland’s most famous mystery beast – the Loch Ness Monster – that: “The officers were very careful how they phrased the sighting over the radio…They didn’t want to make monkeys of themselves.”

So, what can we say for certain about these very odd cases, which span more than 170-years? Well, the answer has to be: not a great deal! But, if you should ever find yourself in the wilds of Britain and you come face-to-face with a baboon – spectral or physical – of one thing you can be sure: you won’t have been the first to have had such an encounter, and based upon what we have seen, you probably won’t be the last!

In anticipation of the coming New Year (and perhaps more specifically, what the New Year will bring so far as new films), I’ve been brushing up on old episodes of Dark Shadows, the famous gothic horror soap from the 1960s that featured the likes of Katherine Leigh Scott, Alexandra Moltke, Joan Bennett, and of course, Canadian actor Jonathan Frid in his portrayal of the nefarious blood-sucker of Colinwood, Barnabas Collins.

2012 could very well be bringing with it the end of the world, as many doomsday theorists have suggested already. But hopefully before that happens we’ll have a little time to enjoy the all new film rendition of Dark Shadows, which will star Johnny Depp in the role of Barnabas Collins (and hence part of my reason for brushing up on this unique series of sixties soaps). But in addition to a renewed enjoyment of the old television series and its cast, my anticipation for this film has also spurred in me a sense of… well, could we call it “monsterphilia”? Hey, if you’re like me, and you enjoy watching old horror movies, you probably aren’t just watching them for the set designs or the music; no, you too must be a monsterphile!

Another favorite in my mental stockade of classic monsters featured in films is King Kong, the giant ape that was eventually brought to New York, where he subsequently escaped and wreaked havoc in the name of love. Kong is a particularly interesting character, in my opinion, because classic descriptions of the beast recount Kong as bearing a strong resemblance to a gorilla. In truth, I might go so far as to say that many fellow monsterphiles take for granted that King Kong was, in fact, just a very large gorilla, and nothing more; but let’s not forget how the monster, during many of his on screen appearances, was actually a bipedal creature, walking about on two legs. Kong also exhibited uncanny intelligence, for an ape, and of course, an attraction for a particularly lovely human lady interest. Wait… is this beginning to sound familiar to anyone else, or is it just me?

Even more evocative what appears to be a growing association with cryptozoological lore is the fact that, in 2005, a mockumentary featured on 2005 King Kong remake DVD release even gave the hairy brute a scientific name, Megaprimatus kong. Furthermore, it was suggested that Kong’s species may have evolved from an earlier creature known to exist, called Gigantopithecus. Those who have immersed themselves in the serious study of cryptozoology will know that, much the same, Gigantopithecus has been linked to a lineage of giant apes in a very different (and real) way, in terms of being a possible precursor to the creature known as Bigfoot in the modern day. The fact that a monstrously-gigantic ape would be wandering around on two legs must indeed seem far too perfect for exclusion from the entire Bigfoot mythos… no matter how vague the reference may have ended up being.

In all likelihood, the slow anthropomorphizing of King Kong had less to do with trying to make him resemble humans–or a Bigfoot, for that matter–but instead stemmed from the necessity for featuring a human actor in a costume, rather than a wire model (like in the original 1930s interpretations of the character on-screen). Nonetheless, this kind of trend toward making monsters more human-like is something we often begin to see in horror films: with time, King Kong and his gigantic reptilian nemesis in the East, Godzilla, would both begin to trend toward being more human-like in their behavior and appearance. Even Freddy Krueger, as the Nightmare on Elm Street series progressed over the years, began to become goofier and goofier with each installment (sparing only the last few film renditions of the character). And, as many fans of Dark Shadows are well aware, Barnabas, who begins the series as a blood-sucking bastard, eventually grows to become something of a hero in the series, protecting his family and associates time and time again from various perils.

Indeed, it seems that our psychological necessity for having monsters is something that allows an extension of our inner fears to manifest, so that we can cope with them in a more tangible way. Naturally, diminishing the fear factor by “humanizing” our fictitious brutes in certain ways could be interpreted as a further coping mechanism, of sorts, where we seek to diminish the monster’s terrifying aspects, and thus reducing our own inner fears and insecurities.

So in reality, despite how our mothers told us watching monster movies would rot our brains, an interest in monsters might actually be healthy for some of us, in a sense. They allow us to deal with things that trouble us, which we have difficulty expressing outwardly in any other way; hence, we create devils of the night, and then we slowly befriend them and turn them into rubber dog crap from Hong Kong, so we can laugh at them. In retrospect, this all sounds about as logical as anything else our minds might engage in… and by comparison, it still seems far more logical than the perils inherent to those hopeless romantics among us. Hey, no wonder horror movies make such a great excuse for first dates!

The deep, shadow shrouded jungles of South America are rife with carnivorous predators rarely seen by the human eye, but as intimidating as the creatures lurking in the dense rain forests of this mysterious continent may be, the arid plains of northern Chile are said to harbor a colony of chillingly bizarre beasts, which are quite unlike anything supposed to be living on the Earth.

Situated in the northernmost portion of Chile, less than 12-miles away from the port city of Arica, is a sprawling swathe of red sand desert known as Pampa Acha. The only real nod to the existence of humanity in this desolate region is the Pan-American Highway, which twists through this barren wasteland like an asphalt serpent.

It was on this lonesome stretch of road that in July of 2004, an army sub-officer with the “Cazadores” regiment named Carlos Abett de la Torre, his wife Teresa, their three children and a nephew would have a harrowing encounter with a group of fantastic creatures, which seemed to jump straight out of the pages of an ancient bestiary.

THE TORRE FAMILY AND THE GARGOYLES:

At approximately 7:00 pm. on the day in question, the Torre family packed into Carlos’ pick-up truck and departed from their quarters in Fuerte Baquedano, which is located in the military community of Pozo Almonte, heading toward Arica to visit some relatives.

Knowing full well that he was in for long and monotonous drive with a car full of children, Carlos gamely threw the truck into gear and began motoring down the same highway he had been traveling for the better part of 25 years.

About two hours into their journey, Carlos was cruising at about 65-miles per hour through the Pampa Acha approximately 20-miles south of Arica. The road ahead was illuminated not only by the pick-up’s headlamps, but the bright moon that hovered above them in the cloudless sky. That was when Carlos’ eldest daughter, Carmen, noticed a pair of extraordinary entities through the back window of the vehicle. According to Carmen she was astounded to see two creatures leisurely “floating” in the skies above. In her own words:

“I was traveling in the backseat with my brothers, talking, and suddenly everything went dark. Then I told my brother what I was seeing and he told me to keep quiet, because Mom gets nervous. Later I looked through the window and saw some things that looked like birds, with dogs’ heads and back swept wings. My father said they were like gargoyles.”

Carmen later estimated that the strange airborne critters that flew over her father’s pick-up truck were at least 6-feet in length and she admitted that at first she wasn’t sure if the creatures had wings or legs, but that the appendages were angled toward the rear of the creatures.

Carmen and her brother watched as the outlandish animals paced the truck, afraid to speak, lest they panic their anxiety prone mother. But their efforts were wasted as Teresa, who sat next to Carlos in the front seat, would catch sight of the peculiar avian duo through the windshield just moments later.

From her vantage point Teresa was afforded the best view of these anomalous animals, which the press would quote her as saying resembled “dog-faced kangaroos.” She claimed that the “gargoyles” seemed to match the speed of the truck, occasionally slipping ahead, then falling back, never traveling more than 60-feet from the vehicle.

By this point Carlos and the rest of his frightened brood were all stealing skyward glances and catching glimpses of these soaring evolutionary nightmares. He accelerated the truck, praying under his breath, terrified of the fate that might befall him and his family if these creatures decided to swoop down and attack their vehicle. The Torre family was in such a state of shock that none of them spoke. Carmen described the scene:

“We were speechless for some ten minutes [then] my Mom told us to react, and then we started discussing what we’d seen.”

Just when the Torre family was growing accustomed to the flying fiends above, another pair of the same species leapt in front of the truck on strong hind legs, which were shorter than their upper legs.  Carlos managed to avert a collision with these land bound “gargoyles” and increased the pick-up’s speed, eventually leaving all four of the beasts behind.

When Torre family safely arrived in Arica they told their relatives about their bizarre sightings, but swore them to secrecy, concerned that the public ridicule which might follow the unveiling of their tale would somehow damage the military career of the family’s patriarch.

Although their sojourn with their extended family was enjoyable, it goes without saying that the entire Torre clan was anxious about the trip home.

Teresa even conceded: “We were terrified to go back,” but, much like every other journey Carlos had taken through Pampa Acha, the expedition proved to be mercifully uneventful.

Once back on base in Pozo Almonte, the Torre family honored their oath of silence, but when another sub-officer, Diego Riquelme, claimed to have encountered a dinosaur-like creature on the same stretch of road a few weeks later they decided to come clean.

Needless to say it wasn’t long before the press got wind of these bizarre stories and began churning out articles about the monsters seen on the Pan-American Highway. Soon after the story broke Scott Corrales of the Institute of Hispanic Ufology translated the story for the English speaking world.

The usually open minded Chilean press was quick to claim that the eyewitnesses were likely seeing nothing more than ostriches, which must have escaped from a local breeder. The fact ostriches are flightless and that none of the birds were reported missing in the area was ignored by the media.

It also seems unlikely that seven individual eyewitnesses would confuse ostriches for either on the wing gargoyles or prehistoric reptiles, regardless of how unbelievable the alternative may be. So if these observers were not bearing witness to bird refuge escapees, then the question remains…

WHAT ARE THESE THINGS?

It’s a fair question considering that the list of dog headed, bat winged, kangaroo legged and potentially reptilian creatures that stand over 6-feet tall is not a large one… In fact, nothing like that should exist, nevertheless let’s keep an open mind and look at few of our options here. I have to admit that when I first stumbled across this report my initial thought was that the eyewitness descriptions were akin to reports of the infamous…

CHUPACABRA

For reasons difficult to discern the description of the notorious blood sucking chupacabra — it’s name is Spanish for “goat sucker,” which was initially said to be its favorite prey — has varied wildly since the first reports of these beasts emerged from Puerto Rico in the mid-1990s.

Nowadays many people believe that the mangy coy dogs so often videotaped near the Texas/Mexico border represent chupacabra, but these sickly canine creatures are nothing like the classic depictions of these ferocious fiends.

Initially chupacabra were described as being semi- reptilian beasts with Kangaroo legs, upon which it could leap astounding distances. These creatures were also said to have canine (and occasionally feline) features, large fangs and, very often, bat-like wings. A forked tongue and porcupine-like spines were also commonly seen attributes. All versions of this creature were said to live on the blood of animals.

The above description sounds a lot like the “dog faced gargoyles” described by the Torres and Riquelme. In support of this hypothesis is the fact that since 2004 there have been sporadic reports hailing from South America regarding similar varmints, some of which have been allegedly spotted near scores of bird carcasses that were discovered to be devoid of blood.

While many people are of the mind that the late blooming, so to speak, of the chupacabra phenomenon is the result of it being either of alien extraction or the product of an American genetic experiment gone terribly awry, the thought that these gargoyles might be the origin for tales of the enigmatic chupacabra is an intriguing one. It’s also worth considering the fact that these critters seem to look a helluva’ lot like the…

NEW  JERSEY DEVIL

Although it is said to have hooves rather than coiled marsupial legs, the bat winged dog-like description of these gargoyles also seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to eyewitness accounts of the New Jersey Devil.

Nevertheless, the fact that the Jersey Devil is an ostensibly supernatural rather than traditionally cryptozoological entity, combined with the lack of any significant eyewitness accounts from outside the Pine Barrens, leads me to believe that this is just a farfetched shot in the dark.

Okay, so removing both the cryptozoological, paranormal and potentially ufological elements and look at some of South America’s indigenous fauna to see if we can come up with a culprit. There are a handful of options, but the character that seems to most fit the bill is…

VAMPYRUM SPECTRUM

Vampyrum Spectrum — also known as the Spectral or false vampire bat — is native to both South and Central America. This nocturnal predator ranges from Mexico to central Brazil and Peru. It is not only the largest bat found in the “New World,” but it is also the biggest carnivorous bat on the planet.

With its elongated nose and 3-foot wingspan it’s not entirely unreasonable to deduce that the Torre family spied a small group of these animals and assumed the worst. Granted the arid deserts of northern Chili are nothing like the prototypical habitat of deciduous forests and swampy areas where bunches of five Vampyrum Spectrum nest in hollow trees near bodies of water, but it is not that unusual for small colonies of creatures to occasionally stray from their usual environment for a variety of reasons.

One could also argue that a pair of gargantuan non-indigenous bats that are seen at night by young and inexperienced eyewitnesses may well appear to be larger than they are. Still, as convenient as a rogue population of bats might be in explaining away these events, they cannot account for the leaping, winged, kangaroo-like creatures that temporarily blocked the Torre’s path in full view of their truck’s headlights.

CONCLUSION:

So what is it that we are dealing with here? It seems fairly evident that if we are not contending with a mistaken identification or outright hoax, then these gargoyles must be either a variety of unknown flying mammal or perhaps a colossal species of heretofore undiscovered bat.

Strangely enough, according to both Carlos and the Carabineros — the uniformed Chilean national police force — there were no reports of strange creatures on the well traveled highway until 2004. Does this suggest a migratory pattern for these beasts or might we surmise that jungle deforestation or some other manner of likely human encroachment has forced these critters out of hiding and into the public eye?

Until one of the Chilean gargoyles is shot, captured or convincingly caught on film this mystery will no doubt endure… and if you ever find yourself traipsing around northern Chili at night, look to the skies… you never know what you’re going to see.

In the areas of cryptozoological interest to readers of this website, most accept that creatures like Bigfoot–supposing such an animal exists–is a biological, half human, half ape monstrosity said to exist in the remote wilds of the United States. In truth, reports of such creatures occur all over the world, with regional varieties existing in the folklore among cultures and traditions on nearly every continent, with the exception of Antarctica.

But one who examines closely the similarities between various cultural interpretations of the wild man myth will begin to notice a number of interesting trends, especially those stemming from more ancient interpretations of the alleged beasts. To be specific, one aspect that is often associated with reports of strange and enigmatic Fortean entities is the fact that their presence traditionally is concurrent with bad luck and misfortune, with such entities themselves acting as harbingers of unpleasant things to come.

I came across another instance of this sort of interpretation just last night, while I met with a journalist who, years ago, described having joined the Bigfoot Field Researcher’s Organization (BFRO) in the field on one of their investigations. During this outing, he described having a number of experiences where he was accosted by some unseen entity: large stones were being hurled at him from the forest nearby, which occurred in the middle of the night, along with an uncanny fear that overtook him. (My associate noted that, despite being an experienced outdoorsman who has escaped bear that stalked him while fly fishing and other perils of the wilderness, this was the most intense fear to which he had ever nearly succumbed). The experience ended up being transformational; while he doesn’t commit himself entirely to belief following the experiences (he never actually saw the alleged beast), he nonetheless feels that study of the creature–and perhaps more importantly, those who study it–now present an area of inescapable intrigue.

Following the events that lured him into the serious study of cryptozoology, my associate was able to pursue a number of stories shared by Cherokee natives on a reservation in Western North Carolina, who largely believed that while the creature was not a supernatural being (preferring instead the idea that these beasts are a sort of “lost tribe”), their presence does also seem to be associated with bad luck and misfortune. This reminds me of similar stories associated with certain Midwestern Native American tribes, who discuss a being called “Walking Sam” whose appearance seems to spark a higher incidence of teenage suicide.

A while back, I received the following email from Federal worker who first learned about “Walking Sam” from concerned locals at a tribal council meeting in South Dakota:

I work for the Federal Government and was at a tribal council meeting in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, a couple of years ago at which an elderly woman complained about Walking Sam, bad “spirit” that was causing teenagers to commit suicide. She wanted the Federal Government to do something about him! The physical description of what she described sounded like a Bigfoot-type of entity. I discussed it by email with Loren Coleman, who posted it on his blog. I’ve also described what I heard that day here. In any case, it is fascinating to speculate about what Walking Sam might be.  I’m just curious what you might know.

Indeed, I found this to be very interesting, and while the “Walking Sam” character is considered widely by many to be a cultural interpretation of a Bigfoot-type creature, there are a number of curious aspects to this character that should also be taken into consideration. For one, in addition to being very tall, Walking Sam is often said to appear wearing a “stovepipe hat” (honestly, this sort of description might fit Abraham Lincoln as easily as any Sasquatch). The fiend often makes his presence known by peering in people’s windows at them by cover of night, though the apparent reason for an increase in teenage suicide following his appearances is not clear. But one thing that is very apparent: the cultural motif that represents these entities as “bad luck beings” remains clear. Also, what is the significance of the top hat? Fellow Mysterious Universe author Jason Offut even devoted a portion of his book Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us to reports of such shadowy entities seen sporting similar headgear. Is this a similar cultural archetype that has become associated with popular conventions of nefarious villainry (i.e. Snidely Whiplash)?

Such parallels fall under the loose categorization of a concept I call “Fortean Folk Devils,” which I’ve described many times in the past in various mediums. For more on this, try looking at these articles detailing Beowulf’s Folk Devil, a thirteenth century wildman, a nineteenth century Folk Devil encounter, the infamous Grease Devils of Maylay culture, and even some of the more obvious links between creatures like Mothman and misfortune. Indeed, it seems that an entire host of cryptozoological and supernatural being appear to often represent doom and misfortune… it could even be argued that many reports of such creatures in the nearby vicinities of various disasters might provide a convenient sort of scapegoat for those affected. But this begs an entirely new question: do the beasts themselves cause disasters by virtue of their appearances alone, or are cultural perceptions of their presence built up steadily along with people’s internal need to find a “culprit” to point fingers at when they are struck with misfortune?

It was a truly horrific and nightmarish beast that provoked both overwhelming fear and intense alarm within the minds and hearts of the fine folk that lived in the small, and somewhat isolated, Texan town of Sublime throughout the 1830s. It roamed the dense and mysterious thickets and fields of an area whose people became terrified of the unknown entity in their midst. And it rapidly became known to those that were forced to live in its dark shadow by the memorable moniker of the Wild Man of the Navidad.

So the notable legend goes, at the turn of the 1830s, strange and hard-to-identify barefoot tracks of two so-called “wild people” were often found both in and around the varied settlements of Texas’s lower Navidad, and specifically in the area of Sublime, which can be found roughly halfway between the cities of San Antonio and Houston.

Generally speaking, the tracks were relatively small, and consideration was given to the possibility that there was both a male and a female on the loose. Keen and alert guard-dogs on local ranches and properties would on occasion react both violently and furiously when the strange and unidentified visitors were believed to be quietly and carefully prowling throughout the area late after nightfall had enveloped the entire area. And there were even reports of the mysterious pair breaking into people’s homes and stealing food.

According to the legends and tales that inevitably surfaced in the wake of the initial wave of mysterious reports and encounters, a human skeleton was later discovered in the area – something that led a number of commentators to conclude that the wild woman’s larger, male companion had possibly died. Precisely what happened to the skeleton – if indeed it ever really existed, of course – remains unknown, and is lost to the inevitable fog of time, unfortunately. An initial attempt, organized by a group of men in the area, to hunt down the other mystery hominid utterly failed. On the second occasion, however, there was an intriguing development in this early, somewhat Bigfoot-like affair.

As inevitably is the case in camp-fire-style tales such as this one, it was a distinctly dark and stormy night, and a shadowy, monstrous and mighty form loomed perilously into view. Whatever he, she or it was, the unidentified visitor was relatively slim and unclothed, but was curiously and notably described as having a body that was covered – head-to-toe – in short brown hair. The brave band of men valiantly tried to seize the beast; however, it skillfully bounded out of the area with what was later described as truly astonishing speed.

The odd event remained utterly unresolved until a group of locals allegedly cornered a runaway male slave in the same area. This latest development in the strange saga seemingly satisfied local newspaper editors, who unanimously concluded that the wild man and woman of the Navidad were actually nothing of the sort at all. In reality, the media asserted, the tales were merely based upon nothing stranger than misidentifications of the aforementioned unfortunate slave – who had presumably escaped from his “masters” and who had been living in the harsh wilds of the Navidad for years.

Taking into careful consideration the fact that certainly not everyone was in agreement with that particularly down-to-earth conclusion, however, yet another valiant attempt was initiated to try and resolve the mystery of the unknown entities and their identities, and this time once and for all. A team of experienced hunters from Sublime decided that a complete check of the nearby thick, atmospheric woods was the only real, viable option left available to them, if matters were ever to be firmly laid to rest.

After several fruitless searches, the group well and truly hit the absolute jackpot when one of them reported seeing what looked to be a wild-looking human racing along an adjacent prairie. Men with lassos urgently pursued their quarry; while others with dogs ensured that there was no chance of it escaping into the heart of the dense woodland. Nevertheless, and initially at least, the hunters were wholly outwitted by the hairy man-thing. It was destined not to remain missing for too long, however.

Under a bright, moonlit sky of a type that would be welcome in any self-respecting horror movie, the heart-thumping excitement of the previous several hours was finally beginning to subside, when the hounds suddenly became agitated and nervous. Not only that: something, or someone, was loudly crashing through the thick bushes – and in the specific direction of the hunters, no less. The creature suddenly appeared again, bounded across the prairie, and raced for the protection and cover of the dense forest.

Whatever it was, this was most certainly no normal human being. Indeed, the nearest hunter reported that his horse was so afraid that it refused to go anywhere near the hairy monstrosity.

By this time, the wild thing was coming perilously close to the forest, and the lead hunter realized that it was quite literally a case of now or never. He excitedly spurred his horse on and threw his lasso. Unfortunately, it missed its target; the beast made good its escape, deep into the heart of the darkened forest.

Although the attempted capture of the beast of the Navidad had ended in complete failure, one important point should not go without observation or comment. The hunter in question had an excellent opportunity to note the physical appearance of the creature as both he and it charged wildly across the open prairie. Precisely like others who had come before him, the hunter described the man-thing as being naked, with bright staring eyes and a body covered in short, brown hair.

It was also said to be carrying something in its hand. Interestingly, nothing less than a five-foot-long, carefully-fashioned wooden club was reportedly later found in the same area where the furious and famous pursuit had taken place.

And thus was born the dark and unforgettable legend of the Wild Man of the Navidad…

People often ask me what I enjoy investigating most of all: UFOs, Conspiracy-theories, Cryptozoological creatures, or something else? Well, I’d have to say that Cryptozoology is probably my main passion, and particularly so werewolves, which seem to pop up just about here, there, and everywhere. But, without doubt, one of the strangest of all werewolf-themed accounts to cross my path is that of the Alrewas Werewolf…

Alrewas is a village situated approximately five miles north of the English city of Lichfield and has a population of approximately 3,000. It lies adjacent to the A38 road, which follows the line of Ryknild Street, an old Roman road; and according to the English Place-Name Society the village’s old name translates as: “Alluvial land growing with alder-trees.”

Certainly, Alrewas is steeped in the world of the past: it is home to an All Saints Anglican church, which can be found just off Church Lane, and which dates from the 12th century. Some of the original Norman work on the church can still be seen; however, a great deal of Gothic enlargement is also in evidence, while the church font dates from the 15th century and the pulpit from the 17th century.

And it was within the confines of this pleasant little village that, in the 1950s, a fully-fledged werewolf was said to lurk.

The story comes from a name named Sid Lavender, who, in 1953, was working in the nearby locale of Barton-under-Needwood. At the time, Lavender was twenty-two, and had recently completed a stint of National Service in the Royal Air Force. Lavender was new to the area, and at the time of the incident in question, had only made one friend: another young man who had also then recently completed his national service and who lived in Alrewas.

Unfortunately, beyond identifying his friend as being named Terry, Lavender is highly reluctant to reveal his full name, “on account of that I lost touch with him years ago and don’t want to put words in his mouth.” Nevertheless, Lavender is willing to relate the basic details of the strange story told to him by Terry one winter’s night in a local tavern that has long-stood in Alrewas: the 17th century Crown Inn.

So the tale goes, Terry was cycling to work on a freezing December morning around 7.00 a.m. when, from a distance of a couple of hundred feet he saw on the fringes of Alrewas what he initially thought was a “tall man in a big, long coat, stood dead still” at the side of the road “where there were trees all around.”

As Terry cycled past, however, his curiosity turned to overwhelming fear: the “tall man” was actually nothing of the sort. Rather, the being was a “furry, black animal stood upright with a big, long snout – like a dog, and with dog-ears: pointed,” says Lavender.

Ominously, as Terry flew past the beast as quickly as his legs could turn the wheels of his trusty old bicycle, he heard it offer a low, guttural growl, as if it was saying to him: “just keep pedaling and keep away”. Perhaps wisely, that is precisely what Terry did, only looking back several times to see that the creature had not moved an inch, aside from turning its head to keep a close and watchful eye on him until he was lost from sight.

That night, which was a Friday night, Sid and Terry met in the Crown, and Terry revealed the shocking details of the strange story to Sid – who, at first at least, considered it “a good chuckle and nothing else, really.” It was only after Terry ‘”kept on and on” that Sid realized his friend was being deadly serious with him.

Of course, being young lads, and looking for a bit of adventure on a Friday night, they decided to stake-out the area for a couple of hours – “despite that it was bloody freezing and we could have stayed longer [in the pub] and had a few more pints” – in the hope that the animal might put in a reappearance. It did not. And tactful questions posed to people in Alrewas did not reveal any more data, either. It seems that whatever the beast was, Terry had been the sole witness to its brief and unearthly presence.

A study of the available evidence – or, rather, the unfortunate lack of it – does not provide any further data on sightings of werewolves in and around Alrewas, either before or after 1953; however, if you ever decide to pay a visit to the picturesque little village, take care as you walk its winding lanes, and particularly so if the sun has set and the moon is full…

Taos, New Mexico is a place I like a lot, and which I like to visit a lot, too. It has a cool vibe to it, there always seems to be so much going on, and the architecture – some of which dates back centuries – is amazing. And it’s a place with more than a few tales of the high-strangeness variety attached to it. In fact, very, very high-strangeness…

Salvador was an intriguing guy who I met almost a decade ago. Having inherited a considerable sum of money in his early thirties, he was retired by the age of forty-three, and  lived, as he worded it, “on a permanent vacation” in northern New Mexico. As I sat in the living-room of his spacious, Pueblo-style house in 2002, and ate a fine lunch of chicken and rice, Salvador related to me a remarkable story of truly bizarre proportions. It all began, he explained, on an August evening in 1997.

A keen astronomer, he had taken his truck out to a particularly remote spot north of Taos that was free of light pollution, and where he could set up his telescope and scan the night sky. It was around 1.00 a.m., Salvador recalled, when he heard at an uncomfortably close distance a strange sound that “was like a high-pitched whistle, but that had a human feel to it. But, it was way too high frequency for a man.”

Salvador’s curiosity turned to concern, and then to outright fear, he added, as the whistle was replaced by “an aggressive growl, and heavy footsteps, like something was warning me and marking its territory.” Salvador estimated that the source of the ominous growling was within thirty feet of him. Disturbingly, he got the distinct impression that a hostile entity of some form was actively “circling” him and “getting ready to attack.” That attack never came, however.

Salvador then painted an incredible picture: he sat tight in the back of his truck for about ten minutes as the growling and heavy footsteps continued to torture his terrified mind, when suddenly, in the distance, he could hear the unmistakable sound of helicopter rotor-blades.

The sound got louder and louder; however, he could see nothing in the dark skies – that is, until a large spotlight bathed the entire area, and the dark form of a black helicopter, adorned with a large white star on its right side, could be seen hovering at a perilously low level. Concerned by the unknown life-form apparently circling his truck, he stood up in the back of his truck and waved frantically in the direction of the helicopter.

Salvador told me: “I think that the pilot of the helicopter must have had night-vision, because as soon as I waved he headed in my direction.” The pilot of the helicopter closed in on Salvador, who recalled that “dust was flying everywhere, and the noise was deafening.”

Suddenly, the helicopter rose into the air and its spotlight was focused upon an area no more than fifty feet from Salvador’s truck. He could now see what had been causing all of the commotion: a seven-to-eight-foot-tall, hair covered creature that “looked just like what people say Bigfoot is.”

The beast, Salvador said, suddenly took off “at a real speed,” with the helicopter in hot pursuit. Both disappeared from sight as the helicopter’s light grew fainter and utter darkness returned. A shocked Salvador jumped into his truck and quickly headed for the safety of his home.

As Salvador asked me: what was the helicopter doing flying with its lights off in the skies of Northern New Mexico in the dead of night? What was the nature of the strange beast that had apparently set its sights upon him? And what on earth was the connection between the two?

This was without doubt one of the strangest stories I had ever heard. Salvador and I speculated: Was there a clandestine U.S. military group that was trying to resolve the Bigfoot mystery by attempting to capture one of the elusive beasts? If so, had Salvador inadvertently stumbled upon their covert activities?

I had to admit to Salvador that I had no answers; however, as I drove around the Taos landscape later that night, I kept a careful and watchful eye on both the skies and the landscape for both man-beast and helicopter. If either were out there in force on that night they failed to put in an appearance for me. The mystery remained – and, nearly ten years on, still remains precisely that: A mystery.

The larger members of our planet’s feline population, including lions, tigers, panthers, and the like, aren’t quite what most would call cryptozoological wonders. However, the propensity for these animals to turn up in the least likely places has garnered a lot of attention over the years, leading to the classification of an entirely different cryptozoological sub-category within the realm of “out of place animals”: these are known as Alien Big Cats.

As a researcher of a variety of different kinds of strange phenomenon, I’ve come across my fair share of these sorts of stories over the years. Additionally, Dakota Waddell, one of our Field Correspondents with The Gralien Report, has made the study of such out-of-place-animal reports his primary focus as a researcher of strange phenomenon, occasionally joining us on the program with details of such encounters. Indeed, there are a number of strange stories involving these beasts that Waddell has managed to collect over the years, and at least one of these fell a bit closer to home than the others; his own father had been the witness to a strange encounter with what could only be called a “black panther” a number of years ago.

The story in question takes place during the early 1980s, while Dakota’s father Ken was driving a late-night trucking route between Western North Carolina and Kentucky. On the evening in question, the Senior Waddell had brought his rig along quiet stretch of highway between the towns of Corbin and Lexington in the great Blue Grass State, when he saw what he described as a “black panther” dart across the road in front of him in the truck’s headlights. “I don’t know what he was doing there,” Mr. Waddell recalled of the event, “but I saw him as clear as day.” He slowed down as the animal moved across the road, and although he was able to discern clearly that the animal’s fur was black or dark brown, he was unable to make out any further details.

“Black panthers do have a spot pattern,” Dakota told me recently, as we spoke about his father’s encounter by phone. “Given the details of the situation, he wasn’t able to see clearly enough to discern those kinds of details, but he was certain it was some sort of large, black cat.” His father’s peculiar late-night encounter remains of great interest, and eventually spurred Waddell into collecting information about the potential for mountain lions and other large cats to exist throughout the Southeast.

In addition to the curious reports of what appear to be physical animals in the remote wilds of America, there are occasionally reports of similar creatures that, while maintaining their feline characteristics, also seem to bear strange, spectral qualities. Such reports of “phantom” cats are particularly prevalent in the United Kingdom, where large black panthers have been described for decades.

Arguably, one of the most popular stories pertaining to these creatures involved what became known as “The Beast of Exmoor.” Beginning in the 1970s, reports of a large, black cat were told throughout the region, culminating in a series of livestock killings in 1983. South Molton farmer Eric Ley reported that more than one hundred sheep on his farm became casualties to “violent throat injuries” spanning a short three-month period. Such stories prompted an area newspaper, The Daily Express, to offer rewards for the beast’s capture.

Another recent event involving a large, out-of-place cat captured the minds of commuters in West Yorkshire, England, when passengers on a train at Shepley Station were made to wait two hours, due to the appearance of a “lion” in the area. According to a report that appeared at the UK’s Guardian website:

West Yorkshire police received a call at 3.30pm from a woman saying she had spotted a lion as she was driving through Shepley, near Huddersfield. Officers say they believe the woman was a genuine caller but, after a two hour search involving a police helicopter and 12 officers, the inquiry was brought to a close with no lions found, and no further sightings.

The National Rail Enquiries featured a statement on their Twitter account addressing the alleged sighting, but no animal was ever discovered. Could the famous Exmoor Beast have a Northern cousin that made a surprise appearance, or are there more plausible explanations behind the appearances of lions along the British countryside?

It has long been speculated by linguists, historians and anthropologists alike what circumstances might have led to the use of language by early humans. In fact, considering the subtleties interwoven into our culture through the use of symbolism, it might be argued that the manifestation of abstract thought itself, and the eventual human intelligence that would form around it, could be directly attributed to the use of vocalizations; the same could be argued for the later implementation of written language as well. 

Regardless of what effects language may have had on us as a species over time, it is less easy to discern exactly how the use of language came about to begin with. The theories for this are as wide and varied as the many dialects and varieties spoken throughout the nations of the world… and some of them get into the territory of the downright weird, too.

My earliest interest in this subject stemmed from a book written by journalist John McCrone called The Ape That Spoke: Language and the Evolution of the Human Mind, in which he posed the theory that spoken forms of communication were a sort of “trick” stemming from the need to communicate in order to survive. Namely, this sort of communication had to do with primitive warning cries used to denote the presence of any number of predators, which over time may have begun to become distinct relative to the danger presented. Eventually, early humans would not only use audible mimicry to sound cries that were indicative of certain predators or other dangers, but the use of vocalizations for representation of other things such as food, home, friends, etc would likely have become habitual.

This notion has a rather interesting Fortean tie-in, too: Smoky Crabtree, one of the characters at the center of the so-called “Fouke Monster” scare of the 1960s and 70s, also described that the creature–alleged to be a Bigfoot-type animal living in the remote swamps around Southern Arkansas and nearby Texarkana–would use mimicry to sound at times like various other animals. If this is true, it might stand to reason that the serious study of primate vocalizations, or even those of alleged relic hominids like Sasquatch, could point to a better understanding of the rudiments of human language, also.

But I digress… despite the popularity of theories like those proposed by McCrone, there are indeed stranger ideas pertaining to how humans may have first developed the ability to communicate with arbitrary vocalizations. This would involve a sort of regiment within the branches of linguistics known as discontinuity theory, whose poster child (and damn-near lone supporter in academia) is linguist and political critic Noam Chomsky. “There is a long history of study of origin of language, asking how it arose from calls of apes and so forth,” Chomsky wrote in his Language and Problems of Knowledge in 1988. “That investigation in my view is a complete waste of time, because language is based on an entirely different principle than any animal communication system.”

Chomsky’ views are even more strange when it comes to actual theories regarding how early man may have began using language, and more importantly, why. In 2000, Chomsky tackled the situation yet again in his The Architecture of Language:

‘To tell a fairy story about it, it is almost as if there was some higher primate wandering around a long time ago and some random mutation took place, maybe after some strange cosmic ray shower, and it reorganized the brain, implanting a language organ in an otherwise primate brain… [this] may be closer to reality than many other fairy tales that are told about evolutionary processes, including language.”

Then again in 2004, Chomsky’s essay Language and Mind: Current thoughts on ancient problems further argued his feelings that some “instantaneous” emergence of language might have actually occurred (apparently taking the “cosmic ray shower” more seriously… or something similar to it, at very least), resulting in a near-perfect early spoken language that literally may have erupted into use overnight.

Chomsky’s theories regarding language are as radical as anything the man has ever written politically or otherwise, and he has drawn an equal number of critics in both areas, despite his innovative approaches to understanding such complex issues. Could it indeed be the case that early humans were somehow exposed to a kind of external influence that resulted in sudden, drastic changes in their operation? And if so, what kinds of factors could have lead to such an aberration forming what is, arguably, the very basis of human society and culture as we know it today?