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Rabbit Monster

oweny29

oweny29

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Jul 16, 2004
Messages
94
This happened to me when I was between 4 and 9 years old. I've seen and read a few things lately, both on this message board and elsewhere, which made me think that perhaps it's time to share it with you.

The first time it happened, I was laying in bed asleep, or trying to sleep. All was quiet. I was awoken suddenly, by a "tapping" on my shoulder. I brushed it off, as you do, and dismissed it. But a moment later, there it was again: the tapping. On my shoulder. At this point I started to worry, and hid myself deeper under my sheets.

Tap, tap tap. There it was again.

Tap. And again.

I began to "freeze" with terror. Perhaps if I stayed perfectly still, it would stop. But it didn't. The worse part is that it didn't feel like a "finger" or a "hand" tapping my shoulder -- no, it was more like a "paw". The tapping became more vigorous, as if who or whatever was doing it, was becoming annoyed at my lack of response. As it became more agressive, and I became more and more frightened, the tapping started to be accompanied by something which struck fear into my very soul: The breathing sound.

It was an abrupt, animal-like breathing. "Hrrrr! Hrrrrrr!", it got louder, louder, louder, until finally I gave in and peeked over my sheets...

And there it was. The Rabbit Monster!!!

It "leapt" up onto my bed, sitting directly on top of me, and started "thumping" me in the chest, staring down at me, looking right in my face, thumping, breathing, thumping.... Oh God, stop it, go away, please go away, don't hurt me, no, nooo, nooooo!!!

The monster was no more than 4 feet tall, it's face was black and leathery. The rest of it's body was covered in brown, wirey fur. It had two pointy ears (like a rabbit) and it had two elongated rabbit-like teath. And dark, staring eyes.

If you want a good example, look no further than Frank the rabbit in the movie "Donnie Darko". Go look at the cover image of that DVD and you'll see the kind of face I'm talking about.

I lay there in my petrified state until eventually I found the courage to scream out. At which point I think my mum entered the room, switched the light on, and tried her hardest to convince me it was only a dream. And sure enough the creature had gone away.... for now.

I was convinced this monster hid under my bed, and came out to frighten me whenever it felt like it.

And it did.... Many, many times.

This went on for several years. I would be awoken by a "tapping on my shoulder", followed by that hoarse, evil breathing sound, and then the terrifying climax of thumping and scaring me.

It felt too real to be a dream. Even at that age, I had dreams and knew the difference between them and reality. In fact this experience would usually start off with being "woken" from a dream by the "tapping" on my shoulder.

Eventually I managed to "conquer" it by trying to communicate with it telepathically, before I went to sleep. I would say to it (in my head), "please stop it now, I am fed up with you, please dont visit me tonight". I convinced myself that somehow the monster got the message. This worked to some extent, but the real winning move was to simply forget about it. The less attention I paid this thing, the less it bothered me. So eventually it was gone.

Some say that children have over-active imaginations. Some say children are simply prone to nightmares and cannot distingush them from reality. Some say that children are able to see real strange things that adults cannot see. I'm still not sure which category I fell into. All I know is that something happened, real or not, that I still think about today as a 30 year old man.

I know that many people had "monster under the bed" experiences in childhood, but I wonder if any of you had similar one to mine?

Is there any folklore or myth describing a Rabbit-esque creature that scares people at night?

I await your replies with morbid anticipation....
 
Concious dreams and the associated paralysis/breathing problems are terrifying. I had one once involving a very large fly with no eyes and a knobbly black body. It was trying to land on my face and I couldn't move, though luckily I knew it was just a dream phenomena and stopped it. The rabbit sounds like a variation on the night hag, a leathery being that jumps on peoples chests at night and hampers their breathing, what with the chest thumping/squashing.
Why does our brain inflict these horrors on us in this way, and why are there so many similarities in the look of the things we see, always dark, wrinkled and mishappen?
 
In reply to the rabbit monster experience, I had a similar thing happen when I was around 3 years old.Thankfully this only appeared outside my bedroom window rather than from under the bed. I would be awake and avoiding looking at the curtains, which I insisted were fully shut on going to bed. My sister was older than me and followed upstairs a bit later on and would purposely open them just enough for my 'visitor' to see in. The visitor in question had a human face but with long raddit or hare ears and would make faces at me as if trying to wind me up, but in a playful way. It did scare me a bit, but not as much as it would now that I'm in my thirties. I kind of accepted it .I can't remember how long this went on for, but I don't think it was all that long.In later life my mum told me that it was'nt just me that saw it, in fact it seemed to be working it's way through the street as many other kids were complaining about it one after another.My mum did'nt tell me at the time, so as not to freak me out and blame it on vivid imagination,dreams etc. Around the same time I started to experience out of body stuff and have ever since- I did'nt bother telling any of my family at the time, I felt quite special having these strange experiences and kept them to myself.
 
with the evil presence and the thumping on the chest it sounds like a classic sleep paralysis experience, possibly aided by a kid's active imagination, though i've never heard of a rabbit being the object of fear!

erm, if you haven't already seen it, i would recommend not seeing the movie watership down. ;)
 
The title of this thread reminded me of an experience I had about two years ago. Mine wasn't a sleep-threshold encounter, though. But the "rabbit monster" theme might interest some of you.

I was driving home at about two in the morning. I should mention that I live in rural Australia, on a property that can only be accessed by an unsealed road that passes through forest. Needless to say, the nearest street light would be at least ten miles away, so it was quite dark.

I slowed down when I saw what I thought was a kangaroo sitting in the middle of the road. Now a roo isn't at all unusual where I live: we see them all the time. In fact they're a menace on the road. My 17 year old son is taking driving lessons and he's already managed to hit two of them ! So my only thought in slowing down was "get out of the way, critter."

Then it turned and looked at me. It started to lollop off, slowly. So slowly that I had a good look at it - like a lot of animals caught in headlights at night, it moved down the road ahead of me rather than off to one side.

That's when I realised it wasn't a roo. The gait was wrong. It wasn't moving like a roo. The head was the wrong shape. The body wasn't proportioned right.

The final straw was the tail. Kangaroos have long thick tails. This thing had a little white fluffy stub. In fact - a rabbit's tail. That's when it hit me. The gait, the head, the body shape...

I would swear to this day that the d**n thing was a rabbit - a rabbit the size of a small calf. And I didn't care for the glare in its eyes as it disappeared into the bushes, either.

So what was it ? A giant rabbit ? A mutant kangaroo ? Something else altogether ? I haven't seen it since, but there's plenty of forest around here to hide in.
 
Thanks for the bunyip link - though I'd always believed (being a bit of a cynic and a parent) that the Aborigines invented bunyips to keep the kids from falling into ponds and drowning.

You can imagine it- "stay away from the water or the horrid Bunyip will eat you up!" It's more impressive than a vague threat of "danger".

Basically a pre-technological society's equivalent of a pool fence.
 
Interesting theory. Personally, I like the way cryptids just pop up all around the world, wherever there are people - even in places with as much wild and amazing 'real' fauna as australasia!

Oh, and your animal sounds a bit like th esouth american capybara to me... but I'm sure they don't grow that big. Of course, scientists have recently discovered fossilised remains of cow-sized rodents, so who knows?
 
Interesting thought. I've just looked up the capybara on Wikipaedia. The size could fit (they come as large as 1.3 meters long) , though the head is too blocky for the creature I saw.

BUT... there was one comment on the capybara article I had to copy for you...regarding catching and eating capybara before Lent....


This popular custom is attributed to a curious theological decision by the Catholic Church. When European missionaries first met capybaras in South America during the 16th century, they wrote to Rome for guidance, saying "there is an animal here that is scaly but also hairy, and spends time in the water but occasionally comes on land; can we classify it as a fish?" The question was significant, as the Catholic faith then forbade eating meat (other than fish) during Lent, the period of abstinence lasting 40 days before Easter. Having a second-hand description of the animal, and not wanting the petitioners to turn away from Catholicism, the Church agreed and declared the capybara a fish — a decision that was never reversed.
 
:D That's amazing, and very nearly Fortean as far as I'm concerned, thanks to its sheer weirdness!
 
The St. Lawrence River is the boundary between Canada and the United States. In the St. Lawrence River are over a thousand islands varying in size. Local legend has it that one of the islands was called Rabbit Island because of a rabbit-like monster that inhabited it.

I haven't done much research on it, but it was well known in the Thousand Islands region of New York.
 
Oo-er, that's my neck of the woods! I'll see if I can come up with anything.
 
I just came across this thread and was reminded that around 15 years ago there were stories of a giant rabbit in Kielder Forest (in rural Northumberland).

It's such an odd story for anyone to make up that even at the time I thought there must be something in it. And now I see a whole thread about monster bunnies!

Has anyone else seen anything like this?
 
Always thought rabbits were a bit creepy.

Anyone read Roald Dahl's story Georgy Porgy?
 
I came across this recently:

Saw the Easter Bunny
by Jeff Laban

I've known Mrs. Sohler, my best friend's mom, since I was in 6th grade (now a senior). I always looked up to her, yet something she said a few days ago surprised me. It was a few days after Easter, and she jokingly asked me if the Easter Bunny had been grateful.

"Yes, haha, my parents got me a chocolate rabbit," I replied.

"The real Easter Bunny Jeff. You do believe in the Easter Bunny, don't you?"

"Umm...no, that went away with Santa."

She then told me about how she saw the Easter Bunny when she was four, a child living on her farm. "I was four, and the Easter Bunny hopped through my window and dropped an Easter Basket in my room. He was pink and walked on two legs."

Her farm was about 12 miles from the nearest, and her parents wouldn't have done anything like that. "Besides," she said. "Even a kid can tell the difference between the real thing and a costume."

That was a shocking thing to hear, and it's opened my mind a bit. Is it possible there is, or was, an Easter Bunny?

source
Click to expand...
 
Very interesting.......my brother who is in his 40's, will swear on a stack of bibles that he also saw the Easter Bunny when he was a boy. Very interesting indeed, unless a lot of people just have VERY active imaginations. ( as fluffle already suggested)
 
Just came across this thread.

In one of his books Heuvelmans mentions Australian prospectors who staggered out of the desert claiming to have seen 10 ft. rabbits. He suggests that they may have seen a living example of an animal called a Diprodoton which is supposed to have died out 10,000 years ago.
 
Easter Bunny

Unpopular as some may find this, this Easter Bunny is another example of Christianity stomping on other religions.

Easter, or Ostara was the feast of the Saxon Goddess Eastre, goddess of fertility, new life etc.

Her feast was celebrated on the first full moon of Spring (hence Easter is still calculated to be at a full moon).

Her totem animal was the hare, into which she could transform herself. The hare was also sacred to the Goddesses of the Celtic religion.

The eggs collected in the fields (Easter Egg hunt, sound familiar?) were the eggs of ground nesting birds like lapwings, stone curlews etc...

Such pagan beliefs were anathema to the early Christians who supplanted Eastre's feast with the celebration of Christ's Ressurrection.

The hare, such a powerful totem animal was viewed with suspicion, associated with witchcraft, and turned into a clown so it would not have the power in the minds of the ordinary folk.

Hence the Easter Bunny.
 
Quake42 said:
And now I see a whole thread about monster bunnies!
Click to expand...

Oh good God, as if there weren't ENOUGH scary things in the world! Now I have to be on the lookout for giant bunny rabbits!

(With them sharp, pointy teeth...)
 
Re: Easter Bunny

Pearl_Knight said:
Unpopular as some may find this, this Easter Bunny is another example of Christianity stomping on other religions.

Easter, or Ostara was the feast of the Saxon Goddess Eastre, goddess of fertility, new life etc.

Her feast was celebrated on the first full moon of Spring (hence Easter is still calculated to be at a full moon).

Her totem animal was the hare, into which she could transform herself. The hare was also sacred to the Goddesses of the Celtic religion.

The eggs collected in the fields (Easter Egg hunt, sound familiar?) were the eggs of ground nesting birds like lapwings, stone curlews etc...

Such pagan beliefs were anathema to the early Christians who supplanted Eastre's feast with the celebration of Christ's Ressurrection.

The hare, such a powerful totem animal was viewed with suspicion, associated with witchcraft, and turned into a clown so it would not have the power in the minds of the ordinary folk.

Hence the Easter Bunny.
Click to expand...

Well, that's the Xtians for ya - God forbid someone, somewhere, may be enjoying themselves without somehow shoehorning Jesus into the whole thing. Don't even get me started on Christmas... :evil:
 
A bit off topic.
Hate to tell you folks this, but the Christians didn't invent the concept of infusing old religions with new religions and mixing it all up. That's been going on since centuries before Christ. What's more, Christianity wasn't always 'forced' on the people. It was often embraced by them, and as often as not it was the 'pagans' themselves who combined the new religion with their old traditions and customs. Not everything is as simple.
Religion is a constantly evolving thing, no matter what religion you're talking about. Christianity was far from the first 'corrupting force' of change. Religions have been evolving and accepting new elements for thousands of years. It's just in vogue to pretend Christianity ruined culture everywhere.

back on topic. The idea of a giant rabbit seems to have some kind of resonance with me, but I can't say why. It's familiar in a weird way. I think I saw a movie about giant killer rabbits once.
 
Easter bunny and Christ

Yes, you are quite correct in that for a time Christianity and the Old Faith existed in harmony for many years in Britain, I did not mean to imply any cultural or religious tyrrany across the board, merely stating in a simplistic way what happened with the Easter Bunny.

Certainly the Culdee Church flourished in the Western Isles and Scotland where the Old Faith and Christianity were practised together and it all worked really well.

However, this joyous union was edged out to the fringes by the established church. The problem is not with Christianity or Christians but with people in authority who mistake their own narrowness for Christ's.

After all, St Columba once said: 'Christ is my Druid'. Hardly the thing to say if he thought either deserved censure.

You are also correct in saying that religions throughout history amalgamate and evolve (the Egyptians did it all the time, as did the Romans) - it's one way in which cultures learn to understand each other.[/quote]
 
Oh, THIS'LL give you nightmares!
Artists erect giant pink bunny on mountain

An enormous pink bunny has been erected on an Italian mountainside where it will stay for the next 20 years.

The 200-foot-long toy rabbit lies on the side of the 5,000 foot high Colletto Fava mountain in northern Italy's Piedmont region.

Viennese art group Gelatin designed the giant soft toy and say it was "knitted by dozens of grannies out of pink wool".

Group member Wolfgang Gantner said: "It's supposed to make you feel small, like Gulliver. You walk around it and you can't help but smile."

And Gelatin members say the bunny is not just for walking around - they are expecting hikers to climb its 20 foot sides and relax on its belly.

The giant rabbit is expected to remain on the mountain side until 2025.
Click to expand...

There's a picture at this site: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1541732.html

It's Ananova - am I being jerked? Or are they legit?
 
It's for real:
link to Google News

mountainviewblog.jpg


Great sprawling pink Gumby of a thing, isn't it?
 
Surely that thing is going to look pretty tatty in a couple of months? Or are they planning to send some kind of giant cleaning lady up the mountain every week to give it a polish?
 
& apparently 214 rabbit burrows were destroyed in the knitting of this giant pink 'dead' rabbit!
 
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