The incident took place on July 20, 1994. A ranch worker was heading home for a meal around 11:00 a.m., taking his usual route that passed near the cemetery, unaware of what fate had in store for him further along the path. He was walking calmly when, at first paying it little mind, he glimpsed a figure emerging from a converging trail about 50 meters away. Initially, he thought it was another person, but as he drew closer, he was astonished to see a half-human, half-bird being; the creature showed neither surprise nor agitation at the worker’s presence. The strange being continued walking along the same path, and upon reaching an intersection, it seemed to puff itself up, spread its enormous wings, and turn. By the time the worker reached the intersection, the being was already about a kilometer away, walking on until it disappeared from sight around the bends of the desolate landscape.
On July 25, 1994, the being was spotted again, this time by a woman wandering through the cemetery. We received a report of this new sighting and decided to take immediate action, organizing an expedition to investigate the strange winged beingโฆ.
W. Tschernezky from the Zoology Department of Queen Mary College, published an article for Nature in 1960, based on Shiptonโs snowman print. He created a model from the picture of the print and was then able to use the model to recreate the same print in the snow. After his study of the print he determined the โSnowman was a very huge, heavily built bipedal primate, most probably of a similar type to the fossil of Gigantopithecus.โ
The Loch Ness Horror, or as I like to call it, what the f*** am I watchingโฆwas my movie choice on this rainy day today. I stumbled on to it through YouTube as it rolled into this while watching some different cryptid documentaries.
This movie was another gem from Larry Buchanan, (who also brought us Mars Needs Women and the Curse of the Swamp Creature) and starring Sandy Kenyon, Miki MacKenzie, Barry Buchanan and Eric Scott. The plot of the film, which Iโll let Wikipedia describe because itโs to insane is:
โThe Loch Ness Monster is feeding on unsuspecting swimmers and eventually goes on a killing spree. There are three subplots: the monster’s egg that is ready to hatch, a scientist who wants to capture the beast, and a mysterious sunken Nazi bomber plane which the military is trying to cover up.โ
The movie which was filmed in Lake Tahoe California, and not in fact on Loch Ness, starts with two men out on the lake looking for Nessie and finding her egg, Nessie of course didnโt really approve of this idea so she pops up and attacks like Godzilla with a vengeance. Letโs just say only one man makes it to shore, and he has escaped with her egg. Which maybe wasnโt the best idea as you can imagine. And this film does just happens to mention in the beginning that Nessie can also move around on dry land, that should have alerted me to what was to come.
The script was something special in itself, the young couple that is the โyankeeโ that came over to look for Nessie and a Scottish local girl was just crazy. The lead man kept saying over and over that heโd like to see the girl in a skirt. I have no idea why this had to be said over and over but if this is Buchananโs attempt at flirting, it just comes off creepy. It would have been creepy in 1981 too!
The Loch Ness Monster is a puppet with the large head usually on a pole, and when she attacks the actors have to stand there patiently and not move while she slowly attacks. I just had to take a little recording so you could get the full idea of what Iโm saying. And also because if I had to sit through this someone else should too!
But despite all this insanity I just laid out for you, Iโm still going to recommend this movie to you if you love cryptid movies and/or cheesy B-movies. It was still a ridiculous amusement just begging for Riff Tracks to take it on. So pop some popcorn, grab a friend and just enjoy.
And now for something completely differentโฆ this weird creature called the Shunka Warakโin. Often dubbed the โRocky Mountain Hyenaโ or simply โthe Beast,โ this wolf-like creature has slinked through Native American folklore and settler tales,and maybe even the Ice Age.
Roots in Native American Lore: The Dog-Snatcher of the Plains
Long before European settlers arrived, the Shunka Warakโin was a figure in Native American traditions, particularly among the Ioway (Iowa) tribe and neighboring groups like the Lakota and Shoshone in the Great Plains and Midwest regions. The name itself, โShunka Warakโin,โ translates roughly to โcarries off dogsโ in the Ioway language, fitting for a beast notorious for sneaking into villages under the cover of night to snatch canines right from under their ownersโ noses.
Descriptions from oral histories paint it as larger than a wolf, with dark, shaggy fur, high shoulders, and a sloping back that gives it a hyena-like silhouette. It wasnโt just a scavenger; this cryptid was bold, aggressive, and eerily unintimidated by humans or campfires. Tribes like the Ioway distinguished it clearly from ordinary wolves, they knew their local wildlife intimately, and this was something else to them.
One tale, shared by Ioway historic preservationist Lance Foster, recounts a fierce battle where warriors slew a Shunka Warakโin. Victorious, they fashioned pieces of its hide into sacred war bundles or medicine pouches, believing the creatureโs resilience would make them โas hard to killโ as the beast itself. In these cultures, the Shunka Warakโin wasnโt merely a monster; it symbolized the perils of the untamed frontier.
Pioneer Encounters: Excerpts from a Naturalistโs Memoir
Fast-forward to the late 1800s, when white settlers in Montanaโs Madison River Valley began reporting encounters that eerily mirrored the Native tales. The most famous account comes from rancher Israel Ammon Hutchins, whose story was immortalized by his grandson, zoologist Ross E. Hutchins, in the 1977 book Trails to Natureโs Mysteries: The Life of a Working Naturalist (with a 1997 reprint).
Hutchins recounts his grandfatherโs chilling brushes with the creature in vivid detail. One excerpt describes an early sighting:
โOne winter morning my grandfather was aroused by the barking of dogs. He discovered that a wolf-like beast of dark color was chasing my grandmotherโs geese. He fired at it but missed and ran off towards the river.โ
The beast returned repeatedly, prompting more confrontations. Eventually, Israel succeeded: โThen one morning in late January, my grandfather was alerted by the dogs, and this time he was able to kill it.โ Witnesses described it as โnearly black and having high shoulders and a back that sloped downward like a hyena.โ
The carcass was traded to taxidermist Joseph Sherwood, who mounted it and displayed it as the โringdocusโ or โguyasticutusโ, quirky names for what became a local curiosity. It vanished for decades, known only from a grainy photo in Hutchinsโ book, until its rediscovery in 2007 at the Idaho Museum of Natural History (now on display at the Madison Valley History Association Museum in Ennis, Montana).
Ross Hutchins, with his scientific background, couldnโt classify it definitively, speculating it might be an escaped hyena but noting the improbability.
Echoes from the Ice Age: The Running Hyena Connection
What if the Shunka Warakโin isnโt just myth or legend, but a remnant of prehistoric North America? Cryptozoologists often compare it to Chasmaporthetes ossifragus, the โrunning hyenaโ or โAmerican hyenaโ, an extinct species that roamed the continent during the Pliocene to Pleistocene epochs (about 4.9 million to 780,000 years ago).
Unlike the bone-crushing hyenas of today, Chasmaporthetes was built for speed with long legs for chasing prey across the grasslands, with a hyena-like build but more wolfish agility. Originating in the Old World (possibly Africa, Europe, or Asia), it crossed the Bering Land Bridge into North America around 5-3 million years ago, spreading south to areas like Arizona, Texas, Florida, and Mexico. Fossils are rare and fragmentary, but recent finds extend its range northward, even into Beringia and above the Arctic Circle.
This was a top predator on the Pleistocene plains, hunting pronghorns and other fast game. Its sloping back and powerful shoulders match Shunka descriptions, fueling theories of a relict population surviving into modern times perhaps even explaining those pioneer sightings.
Wrapping Up the Mystery: Fact, Fiction, or Fossil Survivor?
The Shunka Warakโin has sightings reported from Ioway warriors, Montana ranches and possibly Ice Age fossils. Is it a misidentified wolf? An escaped exotic pet? Or maybe did this creature survive, evolve and adapt from its ice age ancestors?
Have you heard of or had an encounter with this cryptid of legend, let me knowโฆ
This video was posted on the Reddit platform with the following caption..
โI have a friend who lives up in Pennsylvania, and he insists that he saw a “bigfoot”. He sent me this video in a group chat, and I’m not sure what to think of it. I don’t know if he actually did see a Bigfoot or if he’s pranking me, or what. He’s very insistent and doesn’t sound like he’s lying so I’m leaning towards believing him. I just wanna consult people who actually know something about Bigfoot and whether this looks legit or not?โ
Iโve watched this video a few times now, and yes the person/bigfoot moves fast, the person filming the video has erratic breathing as if truly scared and confused with what theyโre looking it. And maybe they are. Itโs not hard to psyche yourself out, out there even if youโre actually out there looking for a bigfoot.
But the movement is very quick, and not typically the movement most witnesses have described. The overall consensus of the people commenting was that it was a cross country skier, possibly a trail runner. Or just a fast walker.
If the person filming heads back to look for tracks and/or recreates the moment on video and gives more information, the distance away, etc. it may add more credibility. For now me personally Iโm going with human.
Let me know what you think, and if you want to follow along with the post here is the link.
โWhile Miss Ella Burdick and some friends were out fishing on Lake St. Clair, one evening last week at sundown, a dark peculiar looking object was seen coming up the lake. They rowed very close to the object and were able to get a good look at it. It appeared to have a head somewhat like a dog, with huge eyes protruding and tusk-like projections on each side of the head. Its body appeared to lie some seven or eight feet under water. Some fishermen also saw it and claimed it was some sort of sea serpent. It was certainly a very dangerous and horrible-looking object and was swimming at a very rapid rate.โ Excerpt from cryptozoo-oscity about the 1800s sighting of the Lake St. Clair sea serpentโฆ
โAn underwater camera set up 55 years ago to try and photograph the Loch Ness Monster has been found by accident by a robot submarine.
The ocean-going yellow sub – called Boaty McBoatface – was being put through trials when its propeller snagged the mooring for the 1970s camera system.
It is believed it was lowered 180m (591ft) below the loch’s surface by the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, a group set up in the 1960s to uncover the existence of Nessie in the waters.
No footage of Nessie has been found on the camera, but one of the submarine’s engineers was able to develop a few images of the loch’s murky waters. โ
โIt was 1972 in a sleepy little Cincinnati suburb when a police officer noticed what appeared to be a four-to-five-foot tall FROG standing on its hind legs near the Little Miami River.
He reported the sighting in Loveland, which quickly took off across the small town of 13,000, garnering surprise and mysticism as residents asked themselves if the story of a human-sized frog could possibly be real.
Days later, a second officer spotted the creature and shot it. After retrieving the carcass, he discovered it was an iguana and brought it to the second cop to see if that the creature he saw.โ
The Bergman Bear , is supposedly a giant bear native to Russiaโs Kamchatka Peninsula.
This giant bear ended up intriguing Swedish zoologist Sten Bergman.
Bergman first brought attention to this elusive bear in the 1920s after examining a hide that was far larger than any known bear species. He described it as having short black fur and weighing between 450 and 2,500 pounds!
Bergman believed in the existence of this giant bear due to the physical evidence he encountered such as a massive paw prints measuring nearly 15 inches long and 10 inches wide. While no firsthand sightings have been recorded since the 1920s, local legends and rumors suggest that a few might still roam the remote regions of Siberia.
But could it be possible that this bear is still roaming Siberia? I believe it is.
There are other unbelievably large bears roaming in that area, letโs look at the Kamchatka brown bear for instance. The Kamchatka brown bear is the biggest brown bear in Eurasia with a body length of 7.9 to 9.8 ft tall on its hind legs, and it weights up 1,430 lbs.
Kamchatka brown bears are generally not dangerous to humans. During a study on the animal, one researcher found only 1% of his 270 encounters ended in a human attack.
Then there is the Irkuiem bear otherwise known as the โgod bearโ.
The Irkuiem bear is considered a cryptid bear, also from Russiaโs Kamchatka Peninsula. According to Fandomโs Encyclopedia of Cryptids, the descriptions of its enormous size and odd limb proportions led to the theory that it could be a short-faced bear, that would mean believing they werenโt actually extinct. Now it is believed to be a unique form of brown bear.
With one large known bear strolling around, would it be so impossible to believe that these currently labeled, โcryptid bearsโ could be out there as well?
Let me know what you think, have a great Sundayโฆ
Sasysquatchgirl 