“An 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. “
“It 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.”
William T. Cox was the first State Forester and Commissioner of Conservation for Minnesota. He worked as a forester for the United States Forest Service. In 1929 Cox even traveled to Brazil to organize the Brazilian Forest Service. But what William T. Cox is most remembered for now is a brilliant field guide he wrote back in 1910 about imaginary creatures, or cryptids as we now know them today.
Some of the amazing creatures featured in this book were the hodag, and the brilliant creature, the hugag. The Hugag is described as being similar to a moose with an extensive upper-lip, preventing it from grazing, and jointless legs preventing it from lying down.
The hugag
But not all were completely fictional some were just embellished from strange creatures actually reported such as the Hyampom Hog Bear and the Snoligoster. Whether you’re reading about the fictional or the embellished critters here, it makes for a great read. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it again this weekend and definitely recommend it for the lovers of cryptozoology.
The Sea Lion as originally described in the 1500s from The John Carter Brown Library
For the second in a series of curious creatures once the cryptids of their time, we talk about the sea lion.
I can imagine a sea lion must have been quite a site if you had no knowledge or experience with one, I’d probably still want to pat one even then. But let’s take a look at one of it’s first sightings in Brazil in the 1500s…
In 1564, when the Portuguese had just arrived here, they found a monster on the beach? That’s right. It was where the city of São Vicente is today, on the coast of São Paulo. The story goes back to Pero de Magalhães Gândavo, one of our first historians. He says that, one night, the Indians pulled out of the sea a creature that measured more than 3 meters in length, full of fins and hair all over its body, “and on its snout it had very large silks like whiskers”. They named it ipupiara, or water demon in ancient Tupi.”
A text from that time tells a tale that goes a little like this;
Explorer Baltasar Ferreira killed this marine monster off the coast of São Vicente (present-day Santos in the state of São Paulo) in 1564. The monster is described as being 15 palms long, covered with hair, and with silky bristles like a mustache on its muzzle.
Today they say they still aren’t sure what the creature really was, but it is thought to be a lost sea lion that swam into their waters. A statue of the creature, which is thought to be what inspired the Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Shape of Water, still stands today…
Sasquatch men, remnants of a lost race of “wild men” who inhabited the rocky regions of British Columbia centuries ago, are reported roaming the province again.
After an absence of several months from the district of Harrison Mills, 50 miles east of Vancouver, the long, weird wolf- like howls are being heard again and two of the hairy monsters were reported seen in the Morris Valley on the Harrison river.
Residents in the district tell of seeing the two giants leaping and bounding out of the forest and striding across the duck-feeding ground, wallowing now and again in the bog and mire and long waving swamp grasses.
The strange men, it was reported, after emerging from the woods, came leaping down the jagged rocky hillside with the agility and lightness of mountain goats.
Snatches of their weird language floated on the breeze across the lake to the pioneer settlement at the foot of the hills.
The giants walked with an easy gait across the swamp flats and at the Morris Creek, in the shadow of Little Mystery Mountain, straddled a floating log, which they propelled with their long, hairy hands and huge feet across the sluggish glacial stream to the opposite side.
There they abandoned the log and climbed hand over hand up the almost perpendicular cliff at a point known as Gibraltar and disappeared into the wooded wilderness at the top of the ridge. They carried two large clubs and walked around a herd of cattle directly in their path.
The return of the giants to the legendary stronghold of the Sasquatch monsters recalls the narrow escape of an Indian at the same spot last March, a huge boulder narrowly missed his canoe while he was fishing and looking up he said he saw a huge and hairy monster stamping his feet and gesticulating wildly, The Indian escaped by cutting his fishing tackle and paddling away. The same Indian declared the Sasquatch twice have stolen salmon which he tied in a tree outside his house out of reach of the dogs The latest appearance of the monsters was peaceful. They avoided the trails usually used by the people of the valley and molested neither cattle nor human beings.
People who have reported seeing the giants on their rare appearances described them as “ferociou looking wild men, nine feet tall and covered from head to toe with thick black hair.”
The Waterbury Democrat (Waterbury, Conn.), October 31, 1935
I really enjoy these early sightings, they seem more sincere however fanciful. The rate bigfoot is currently reported being seen feels somehow less believable to me. So I almost feel more comfortable going into the past encounters than I do some present ones. And of course you also have the legendary cryptozoologists of the time as well. History has always been more my speed…
Sasysquatchgirl 