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When Cryptids Attack

GNC

King-Sized Canary
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Have there ever been any reports in, say, the last one or two hundred years of someone being eaten by a cryptozoological specimen? I understand people sometimes get injured by komodo dragons which were at one time believed a myth, but won't some of these creatures be dangerous if you tried to interact with them, or even share the same space? Assuming they exist.
 
Biggest individual killer is I think the nunda or mngwa, which visited a coastal town in Tanzania in the early 20thC. The mngwa is supposedly a huge brindle cat, 'the shape of leopard, but larger than the largest lion'. It's got an African tradition. Western crypto reports though, come from Captain William Hitchens, a colonial version of Fox Mulder, who fought just about every mystery beast on the continent. Well, that's what he said anyway.

It killed about three native constables who were guarding the town's market place, also it turned the tables on a hunter out to get it, and gave him a good hiding. Can't remember if he died, he probably did, but not before describing his ordeal to the brave Captain Hitchens.

Another mass killer is the Nandi Bear, again African tradition under it's indigenous names, of which there are few, as well as umpteen different descriptions. Popular in the 19th and early 20thC. Most comprehensive source is Bernard Heuvelmans' 'On the Track of Unknown Animals' (best cryptozoology book ever written, nicely written, very evocative and romantic, and totally bonkers) Although Amyasleigh and I once ran down some actual descriptions of the creatures under the names Heuvelmans used in his book, and they were not what Bernard said they were. Described (in Western tradition) as anything from a giant baboon/aardvark type thing/bear/giant hyena to the extinct chalicothere.

Body count for the Nandi Bear is countless, it's ripped the brains out (literally) of any number of native extras in the old colonial tales. Probably the biggest killer type of cryptid. Again Captain Hitchens was on the case. Incidentally, although Heuvelmans cites Hitchens in the accounts of pretty much all of his African cryptids, he never smells a rat.

I'll never find the link now, but there's a brilliant diary entry(?) or similar describing the killing of an animal, which has been proposed as being one of these. It reads something like 'was at the club, had a call from my wife to deal with a unruly houseboy, gone mad with machete. On the way home, shot a remarkable beast'. I think the skull of this was sent to one or more of the Leakeys. There was, apparently, at one time a bit of debate whether they represented an usually huge brown hyena. Who's Pleistocene relative was at one time put forward as candidate.

Leaving Africa, we have the 'waheela' of Northern Canada. That rips it's victim's heads off. But unlike the Nandi Bear and especially the mngwa, the victims seem to be quite anonymous.

In South America, there are all manner of aquatic cat type nasties, who've apparently killed. Not to mention the mapinguary, the ground sloth/hominid of the southern Amazon. And of course the giant anacondas. Patagonia, has the hide, a weird but deadly blob of something which apparently, is greatly feared by fishermen. Although as I recall, none of them had any idea what the hell it was when asked.

Asia, has plenty of killer cats, and of course, the Mongolian death worm.

Australia, has dangerous cryptids, which have attacked such as the yarri, aka the Queensland Tiger, but to my knowledge not killed. Although you need to give the bunyip a bit of a wide berth.

There will be many, many more.
 
I just want to say this thread has my favourite title on the whole forum. :D
 
I'm sure various sea monsters have been said to eat the crews of ships they sunk. The already mentioned nandi bear is also known for killing people and eating their brains, in fact brains are its preferred food I think.
 
Oldrover, your post was all I hoped for and more! Seems even in these times of conservation there are still good reasons to be afeared of wild animals of the officially unidentified kind (I'm aware rare tigers and elephants, etc, still kill humans every so often).
 
It's nice to be reminded of the days of real cryptozoology, it's mostly bald coyotes now and bigfoot. Even though none of them actually exist, it's good to know they're out there.
 
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An unpublished article I wrote on lake monster attacks in Russia. I'd really like to get over there and investigate.
I will have to post it in sections.

RED WATER: THE MAN EATING LAKE MONSTESS OF RUSSIA
Richard Freeman
Most people who have studied the history of the Loch Ness Monster will be aware of the story of Saint Columba Confronting a man eating monster in the River Ness and driving it away with the sign of the cross. The story is almost certainly apocryphal, spun to give the missionary more clout in converting Picts.
There is a story from Wales of a man eating lake monster. Llyn-y-Gadair is a small round lake near to Snowdon. In the 18th century a man decided to swim across it. His friends, who were waiting for him on the bank, were horrified to see a serpentine creature coiling after him as he swam. As he approached the shore the thing reared up and wound about him like a python. He was dragged back into the lake never to be seen again.
These tales are like a vicarage tea party compared to some of the stories coming out of lakes in Siberia.
Lake Chany is virtually unknown in the west but it is a vast expanse of water covering 770 square miles. Its is 57 miles long by 55 miles wide but is fairly shallow at only 23 feet deep with an average depth of only 6 feet. Lake Chany is in the southern part of the province of Novosibirsk Oblast close to the borders of Kazakhstan in southern Siberia. It is frozen from October to April, but reaches 20 C in July.
A story has unfolded in the lakes waters in recent years that sound like the plot of a horror movie. A powerful, snake-like monster some 30 feet long has said to have killed and eaten 19 people. The story broke in the west in 2010. The attacks apparently began around 2007.

The creature involved in the attacks is described as serpentine and huge. One witness, 60 year old Vladimir Golishev was in the boat then the creature overturned it and dragged his friend away. He told the Daily Mail...

“I was with my friend some 300 yards from the shore. He hooked something huge on his bait and stood up to reel it in. But it pulled with such force it overturned the boat. I was in shock-I had never seen anything like it in my life. I pulled off my clothes and swam for the shore, not daring hope I would make it. He didn’t make it and thy have found no remains. It’s time to find out the truth.”

In 2007 a 23 year old special services soldier, Mikhail Doronin was lost when something capsized his boat. His 80 year old grandmother Nina was watching from the shore and said that the lake was calm. Her husband 81 year old husband Vladimir said “Something on an awesome scale lives in the lake, but I have never seen it.”
Official figures say that 19 people have vanished in the lake in the past three years. Locals say the figure is actually much higher and that remains have washed ashore with bite marks showing large teeth.

Fishermen are demanded an official probe but the authorities passed off the deaths as ‘drownings’.
A blurry photograph purporting to show part of the monster was released at the same time as the main story. Like most cryptid pictures it is far from clear but may show a fin protruding above the water.

Needless to say Lake Chany is too far north and far too cold for crocodiles. The serpentine description makes the Chany creatures sound like huge eels. Lake Chany is landlocked. It has melt water rivers running into it but none running out. Apparently eels are unknown in the lake but perch, zander, roach and pike are present. It should be noted however that eels often turn up in landlocked lakes and ponds and are quite capable of travelling miles overland. However Lake Chany lies beyond its known distribution.
The community held in terror and demanding an investigation. One wonders if an official investigation will ever take place and if it does, what it will find?
 
Other, more remote lakes in Siberia are also said to have man eating monsters in residence.Lake Labynkyr lies on Sorongnakh Plateau in Eastern Siberia. It is a big lake nine miles long and 800 feet deep. Despite being in one of the coldest regions on earth, the lake never freezes, maintaining a temperature of 2 degrees Celsius. Labynykr also has an evil reputation. Locals are convinced that The Devil inhabits the lake. Gun dogs that have leapt into the water to retrieve shot ducks have been eaten by the monster. One man told of how the brute pursued his raft. He described a dark grey beast with an enormous mouth. Some reindeer hunters observed the monster coil up out of the water to snatch a passing bird.
Author Gennady Borodulin also recounts a tale from Labynkyr in the 1920s in his book In a Trip to the Cold Pole.
An Evenk family of nomads followed their reindeer and reached the shore of Lake Labynkyr. They decided to stay overnight on the shore. A five year old child went to the bank of a stream which led into the lake while adults were busy. Suddenly the adults heard the boy screaming.

"The father and grandfather rushed to the bank. They stopped on the edge of water and saw the child being carried away by an unknown animal to the centre of the lake. It was a dark creature, with a mouth looking like bird's beak. It held the child and moved away with quick rushes, then it dived leaving huge waves and dragged the child under the water.

The granddad swore to revenge the 'devil’. He took a sack made of animal skin, stuffed it with reindeer fur, rags, dry grass and pine trees needles, put a smouldering piece of wood inside. He attached the sack to a huge stone on shore with a rope and then threw the sack far into the waters of the lake.
At night there was noise and splashes and terrible screams of the 'devil'. In the morning the waves brought the huge dead animal, about seven meters long with a huge jaw, almost one third size of the body, and relatively small legs and fins.

The old man cut the animal's stomach, took out the body of his grandson, and buried him on the bank of the stream. Since then this stream is called 'The Stream of a Child'.
 
In 1963 a small expedition visited both of these lakes. Four members observed an object 800 metres out on Lake Labynkyr. It emerged and submerged several times. They could not take photographs as the sun was setting. The following year three teams, each replacing the other in shifts visited the lakes. The third and final group saw the Labynkyr monster in the latter half of August.
Two expedition members saw a row of three humps 100 metres from shore. They ran after the humps trying (unsuccessfully) to photograph them. The humps dived and rose together. It was not clear if they were separate animals or parts of one creature.
In 1964 two journalists from the Italian magazine Epoca visited Lake Labynkyr whilst travelling to Oymyakon. They were told that some time before a party of men saw a reindeer swim into the lake. The deer vanished and did not resurface. Then a dog swam on and vanished as well. Suddenly, and shrouded in a mist, a vast black monster rose snorting from the lake. One of the observers, apparently a scholar, was convinced the beast was a dinosaur. The locals flatly refused to take the journalists out onto the lake.
Another story concerns a hunter’s dog who swam out into the lake and was eaten by the monster. The grieving hunter constructed a raft out of reindeer skin and filled it with hot coals. He floated the smouldering raft out onto the lake. The monster snatched it and dived. It reappeared shortly making terrible sounds.
In the 1970s a lame horse belonging to some geologists was attacked in the night by some unknown predator. Alerted by the horses screams the geologists got up out of their sleeping bags to investigate. They were too late. Something large and powerful had already dragged the horse down into the lake. Locals said that they often found holes in the ice with strange tracks around them.
In a letter published in Komosomol’skaya Pravad on January 21st 2000 Vladimir Osadchy from Moscow stated that he and a group of tourists had visited the lake in November 1979. The tourists made their way out onto the frozen lake heading for a reservoir a mile from the shore. Halfway there they stopped for a rest. An object like a black pillar was seen to rise up in the distance. A number of the tourists ran to investigate.
They reached the spot fifteen minutes later and ascended a bank two metres high. They discovered a patch of unfrozen water a metre across. The edges looked like they had been licked. It looked as if some aquatic animal had created a breathing hole. Upon returning they were told, by those who stayed behind, that they had observed the “pillar” rise several times again whilst they were gone. In the morning they search the area and found another breathing hole with licked edges.
In August 2000 a group of journalists from Komosomol’skaya Pravad travelled to the lake. Using sonar they detected two large moving objects at the bottom of the lake. The bigger of the two was eighteen metres (sixty feet) long.
In 2012 Associate Professor of Biogeography Lyudmila Emeliyanova led an expedition to Lake Labynkyr. She and her team recorded big objects in the lake on sonar. She told the Siberian Times the following...
"It was our fourth or fifth day at the lake when our echo sounding device registered a huge object in the water under our boat. The object was very dense, of homogeneous structure, surely not a fish nor a shoal of fish, and it was above the bottom. I was very surprised but not scared and not shocked, after all we did not see this animal, we only registered a strange object in the water. But I can clearly say - at the moment, as a scientist, I cannot offer you any explanation of what this object might be.

"I can't say we literally found and touched something unusual there but we did register with our echo sounding device several seriously big underwater objects, bigger than a fish, bigger than even a group of fish.Personally, I really believe that something is going on. As local residents for so many years talk about the same strange creature, it just cannot be simply invented. It means that there really is something. Moreover, I know the people who live around the lake pretty good and they are not liars. As icing on the cake, the ancient stories of our Nesski are much older than that of Nessie, so they can’t be influenced by the Scottish sightings
There are many lakes in Yakutia and around the Indigirka River, hundreds of them, big and small, their shores are more or less populated, but all the talk is about Labynkyr and Vorota lakes, and it has gone on for many dozens of years. It makes us think about it. And these stories about the local monster are older than those about the Loch Ness monster.
As a scientist I know this is not enough to locate and study some unknown creature. I can put it like this, however. I believe there is a mystery in this lake because there is no smoke without fire.
'I am sure that numerous legends which exist and circulate for many years just can't be groundless. I read many different legends but the account below is what I heard with my own ears.
'Several fishermen who visit this lake from time to time say they experienced the following when fishing from a boat in this lake: during quiet, and not windy, weather when there were no disturbances in the lake, some strange waves coming from under the water suddenly heavily shook their boats.
'It was as if a big body was moving under the water and producing waves which reached the surface and shook the vessel.
These stories shook me up, for instance, about a boat which was lifted by something or somebody. Two fishermen were fishing in the middle of the lake in late Autumn, they were in a 10 metre long boat when suddenly the bow began to rise as if somebody was pushing it from under the water.
'It was a heavy boat, only a huge and strong animal can do such a thing. The fishermen were stuck by fear. They did not see anything, no head, no jaws. Soon the boat went down.
This mysterious and very deep lake still has some secret to tell us.”
 
In 2006 researchers using a Humminbird Piranha MAX 215 Portable fish-finder also claimed to have found something lurking in the lake. One researcher, who did not want to be named told the Siberian Times of his findings.

"I switched off the 'Fish ID' and we watched just pure scanning. Soon we registered a shadow some 15-17 meters under our boat, it was about 6.5 meters long. It was pretty clear, it was not a fish and not a tree. There cannot be fish that big, and a log would have been registered in a different way. How can it swim under the water?”
In Febuary 2013 Russian divers, led by Dmitry Shiller reached the bottom of the lake for the first time. In the same report it was stated that the team, using an underwater scanner had ucovered the jaws and skeleton of a huge animal.
Lake Vorota, mentioned above lies twelve miles from Labynkyr. It too has a monster tradition. In July 1953 a prospecting party led by Geologist VA Tverdokhelbov travelled to the Sorongnakh Plateau. His diary of the trip was published by a Soviet magazine eight years later. They visited both lakes. In Tverdokhelbov’s own word’s…
“30 May.We left Tomtor village, went 70 kilometres up the Kuidusun Valley, turned left and got to the large Sordonnokhskoe plateau. Ahead of us there is Lake Labynkyr where there is storage with food and equipment.
'There are many legends about this Lake Labynkyr. In the evenings sitting by the fire our old guide told us that a 'devil' lived in this lake. He is so big that the distance between his eyes, as Varfolomey said, 'is wider than a fisherman's raft made of ten logs'.
'I heard about this 'devil' before and many times. In Ust-Ner, I heard that the devil ate a dog. The dog swam to bring the shot duck to the hunter, then huge jaws raised from the water and the dog just disappeared in a moment.
'One of the Tomtor villagers told me that one day he found a huge bone on the shore of Lake Labynkyr. It was like the devil's jaw - if you put it vertically, you could ride on a horse through it like under an arch. He said this jaw bone remained near the fishermen house on the shore.
'I heard legends how a whole caravan perished going under the ice of Labynkyr. It was spoken that people saw a big horn stuck out of the ice. People gathered around it on ice and tried to take it out but suddenly the ice broke and many people and reindeer died'.

'5 June:Early in the morning we got to the shore of Lake Labynkyr and reached the storage. Comfortable tents with wooden beds and floor and table awaited us.
'7 June:We are having a rest. Lake Labynkyr is a square, 15 km long and 3 km wide. I found the ruined fisherman's house on the shore, carefully explored the house and all around it but did not find any 'jaw bone'.
He did not witness anything untoward in Labynkyr but went on with his expedition.

28 July:Now we stopped at the shore of Lake Vorota. Mikhail made a raft and went to measure the depth. It is 60 meters as in Labynkyr. But the lake itself is much smaller.
30 July:This is what happened today. It was sunny friendly morning, Boris Bashkatov and I went on a walking trip around Lake Vorota. We had to climb rocks on the way - about 11 am the way became dangerous and we decided to go down a bit, closer to the water. Looking at the water from the rock, I clearly saw a terrace under the water with a huge white spot on it. But when I looked at the terrace again a minute later there was no white spot there. 'Maybe sunshine is joking with me', I thought. But suddenly Boris shouted 'Look! What is there, in the middle?' We stopped. Some 300-400 meters away on the water there was clearly seen some white object, shining under the sunlight. 'A barrel', said Boris, 'made of tin.' 'Maybe a horse got into the lake,' I said.
Truly, the object was swimming, and fast enough. It was something alive, some animal. It was making an arch - first along the lake, then right towards us. As it was getting closer, a strange coldness like a stupor was growing inside me. Above the water there was big dark grey body, the white colour has gone. On this dark grey background there were clearly visible two symmetrical light spots looking like eyes and there was just stick in the body - maybe a fin? Or a harpoon of an unlucky fisherman?
'We saw just a part of the animal but we could guess its much bigger, massive body was under the water. We could guess this looking how the monster was moving - raising from the water, it threw its body forward then fully went under the water. At this time the waves were going away from its head, waves originating under the water. 'Flapping its mouth, catching fish', I guessed.
The animal was obviously swimming towards us and the waves made by the animal reached our legs. We looked at each other and immediately began to climb up the rock. What if 'it' goes out of the water? We witnessed a predator, no doubt, one of the strongest predators in this world: such indomitable, merciless and some sensible fierceness was in every his movement, in all its looks.
'The animal stopped some 100 meters away from the shore. Suddenly it began to beat against the water, waves went all ways, we could not understand what was going on. Maybe it lasted just a minute and then the animal was gone, dived. It was only then when I thought about a camera.
'We stood for another 10-20 minutes, it was quiet. We went further.
'There was no doubt, we saw the 'devil' - the legendary monster of this area. The Yakut fisherman was right, the animal had dark grey skin and the distance between its eyes was surely not less than a raft of 10 logs. But he saw it in Labynkyr and we saw it in Vorota lake. They are 20 km away from each other - and they are not connected.
'I recalled that white spot under the water. Obviously, the animal was hunting at that underwater terrace and we scared it when shouted going down the rocks.”

Tverdokhelbov had visited Lake Vorota before in 1945 hand had seen a strange animal whilst swimming.
“We turned around and some 30 metres away in the water we saw a huge dark grey body with two light spots and a fin above them. The animal was looking at us as if it was choosing who to start with.”
There have been suggestions that the Labynkyr and Vorota creatures are huge huso sturgeon. These giant fish can reach 24 feet long and weigh 3640lbs.But these are bottom feeding fish and are not known to be aggressive towards humans. Their diet consists mainly of small fish and invertebrates. Moreover the lakes in question are outside of the know distribution of the huso sturgeon.
The wels catfish can reach 16 feet and has been known to swallow whole dogs but once again these lakes are far beyond its known range.
Others suggested killer whales but the lakes are many miles inland and these air breathing, marine mammals would be seen breeching by anyone who spent any amount of time at the lakes.
Anatoly Sidorenkot, a Ukranian archeologist who was a member of our team on the 2008 CFZ almasty expedition in the Caucasus told us some interesting cryptozoological snippets. Some years ago a friend of his was on a boat in the Lena River in Siberia when he encountered a strange creature. It had a black humped back and a 2 metre tall fin. It reminded him of a killer whale, but they were thousands of miles inland at the time. A man on the boat took two shots at the beast with a rifle. It turned and swam at speed towards the boat. The man pumped three more bullets into the creature and it dived under the boat and swam away. The description recalls creatures described from Lake Vorota. The beasts here are up to ten metres long, have a dorsal fin and a wide head. Could they be some form of colossal fish?
The lake monsters of Siberia are one of the cyptozoological mysteries that I would most like to investigate. Given the resources, time and bait I think his is a riddle we could solve.
 
Then there is the controversial case of the boy eating sea serpent of Florida...
One sunny morning, on the 25th of March 1962, a group of children were waling along a beach several miles from Pensacola, Florida. They came upon what they thought was the drowned body of a teenaged boy. To there amazement the youth was still alive, barely. He was rushed to Pensacola Naval Base Hospital suffering from shock, exposure and exhaustion. He was identified as Edward Brian McCleary who had been missing since the previous morning along with fur friends. When he was strong enough he spoke to the Director of Search and Rescue Units E.E McGoven. His story was truly amazing, like something from a horror novel. McCleary claimed his companions had been killed by a sea serpent.
It began on the morning of 24th March 1962 when Edward along with Eric Rule, Warren Sulley, Brad Rice and Larry Bill set out to go diving at the wreck of the Massachusetts, several miles off the coast of Pensacola. As they rowed out on their 7-foot Air-Force life raft, they found that the tide was stronger than they had anticipated. Strom clouds began to gather and the boys decided to turn back. Several of them swam behind the raft and pushed it. As the waves grew higher, swamping the raft, they swam to a 20 foot buoy and clambered onto its metal scaffolding.
In the violent storm that followed the raft was sucked under and the buoy rocked by lashing winds and icy rain. Finally the maelstrom passed and a fog rolled in as the sea became mill-pool calm. A foul smell, akin to dead fish filled the air. A strange wining cry echoed through the dark. Then something as long as a telegraph pole reared up out of the water and plunged back in.
They boys panicked and jumped off the raft. Behind them they heard hissing and splashing. Suddenly Warren yelled out “Help me! It’s got Brad, its got Brad.”
Warren’s cries were abruptly cut short. The three remaining boys huddled together and tried to swim for shore. Then something grabbed Larry from below and dragged him under. Eric was becoming exhausted and Edward tried to help him stay afloat but the sea, now turning choppy again pulled them apart.
Then a monstrous, reptilian beast reared up from the deep. It had a snake like neck, gleaning green eyes and a gaping maw that fell down on Eric and dragged him under.
Swimming for his life and expecting to feel the sea dragons teeth in his flesh at any moment Edward became exhausted and felt the tranquillity of death take over him. He recalled nothing further until he was in hospital. Unsurprisingly he suffered a breakdown afterwards. The police decided it would be better for them all if they kept the sea dragon out of their official report but E.E.McGoven said to Edward “The sea has allot of secrets. There are a lot of things we don’t know about. People don’t believe in these things because they are afraid to. Yes I believe you. But there’s not much else I can do.”
Subsequently Edward suffered from a breakdown. Apparently he still lives in the area today but refused to talk about the awful events that befell him and his friends on that fateful day.
 
More supposed water monster attacks...
Llyn-y-Gadair is a small round lake near to Snowdon. In the 18th century a man decided to swim across it. His friends, who were waiting for him on the bank, were horrified to see a serpentine creature coiling after him as he swam. As he approached the shore the thing reared up and wound about him like a python. He was dragged back into the lake never to be seen again.
One of the most dramatic lake monster stories was that of a dragon-like creature inhabiting Lake Wembo (sometimes referred to as Membu or Lake Wembu) in Tibet. In June of 1980 people living around the lake reported a house-sized creature with a long, scaly neck and large head. It was reputed to have destroyed boats and rafts and was supposed to have eaten a fisherman. It also devoured a yak tethered close to the lake that belonged to a communist party official. The link to Asian dragons, intimately associated with water, is obvious.
The Canadian lake monster known as Ogopogo to westerners was called N’ha-a-itk by the Indians and was much feared. A serpentine beast of great size t was said to have a horse like head and a spiny crest running along the side. The local tribes would carry some animal with them as a sacrifice to appease the lake dragon. The animals were tossed overboard so that the monster would eat them rather attack the Indians canoes. One visiting chief called Timbasket, ignored the rite. Apparently he and his canoes were never seen again. In 1860 a trader called John McDougall was crossing the lake by canoe with his horses swimming in tow. He was horrified to see them being pulled underwater one by one and had to cut his ropes to avoid being dragged under himself.
Early white settlers carried guns to protect themselves against the beast when they were close to the shores of Lake Okanagan. In recorded cases of the creature being shot at the bullets seemed to have no effect whatsoever.
One early of the thousands of witness to the monster was Edythe March. She saw the serpentine animal three times during her life. She was also convinced that it had eaten her schoolteacher’s father.
“I had been told of Ogopogo by my father, Henry J Blurton, who worked as a game warden when I was a child. The Indians advised him never to go canoeing on the lake without first tying up a grouse or piece of venison behind the canoe as a precaution against Ogopogo upsetting it, for they believed that if an upset should occur the elusive monster would go after the bait rather than the man.
Our teacher’s father, who often went fishing at the northern end of the lake, failed to return one day. They found his boat o the lake right side up and all the fishing gear intact, but no Mr Homuth. I truly believed Ogopogo had gotten him.”

Ogopogo has been liked with other disappearances as well. In 1932 Henry Murdoch was practicing a marathon swim for the Okanagan regatta. He was swimming from the Maud Roxby bird sanctuary point to the Eldorado Hotel. He was accompanied by his friend John Ackland who was rowing a boat about 20 feet ahead of him.
When Ackland reached the shore at Boyces Field Murdoch was nowhere to be seen despite being a strong swimmer and a lifeguard. There were no undercurrents in the area. A search failed to find his body.
A similar event happened in 1988 when Allan Skarbo and his fiends were swimming from his houseboat. A breeze blew off a hat belonging to Dan Ker and another friend swam out to retrieve it. Despite being strong swimmer he was never seen again. A protracted search with underwater cameras failed to find his body. The vent scared Skarbo so much that he sold his houseboat and never went back to the lake.
 
Anacondas...
Around 1988 farmer come hunter Joao Menezes was fishing with his three year old son Daniel near Sao Paulo Brazil. He turned his back on the boy to store some fish in a wooden shack. Suddenly screams rent the air and Joao turned to see the horrific sight of a 45 foot anaconda biting into his son’s neck. He tried in vane to prise the jaws apart but it was imposable. By the time he had run home for his rifle the creature had constricted and swallowed Daniel.
Recently herpetologist Mark O’Shea travelled to a remote area of Peru and learned of a monster anaconda 40 feet long. He interviewed a woman whose husband had been devoured by the creature. The monster snake had overturned his boat and proceeded to constrict and swallow him. It had also eaten a fisherman that it had snatched from the riverbank.
 
Land based monsters have supposedly taken their fair share of humans as well. The natives in the remote costal villages of Tanzania go in dread of a bloodthirsty beast know as the mngwa or nunda. This legendary beast is said to be a grey, brindle coloured cat that resembles a leopard but is the size of a lion. Its markings recall a domestic tabby. Englishman Captain William Hichens, Native Magistrate at the village of Lidi, dismissed the stories as nothing but folklore until one fateful night in 1922.
Goods were stored overnight in the village market and an askari or village constable set to watch over them. Each askari took a four hour watch. One man going to take his watch at midnight found his colleague missing. After a search his body turned up under a stall. He had been ripped to shreds and in his dead fist he clutched a handful of tabby coloured hair.
Hichins though the culprit was a lion but an old native district governor told him it was a mngwa and that he had know the beast to have visited the village several times in his youth. Two eyewitnesses came forward to say they had seen a huge tabby coloured cat attack the man. A few nights later another askari was killed at the market, he too had a handful of the monster’s hair. The area was in a panic and no one dared go out at night. The askari refused to guard the market even with extra men. Over the next month more killings occurred up and down the coast until they abruptly stopped.
Then in 1930s a new wave of killings began. One man, an experienced hunter survived despite being badly mauled. He was brought to Hichins on a litter in the village of Mchinga. He had hunted leopard and lion all his life and insisted that his attacker was neither.
In another case, western hunter Patrick Bowen investigated a case were a mngwa had pushed its way through a krall, a barrier of thorny branches erected to protect people and livestock. It had carried off a young native boy. He found its brindled fur on thorns in the krall and later saw its spoor in wet sand. He described it as shaped like a leopard’s paw print but as large as that of the biggest lion.
 
Monster apes have supposedly killed humans on four different continents. Whilst searching for giant anaconda in Guyana back in 2006 I was told a remarkable tail by Damon Corrie an Arawak chief. Just three years earlier two native children, a brother and sister, were walking home from school some miles from the village of Pakuri (they lived in the next village). A huge hairy ‘man’ emerged from a stand of trees and seized the girl, she was never seen again. The police did not bother to investigate the victim was ‘only ‘a native. These yeti like beasts are called di-di in South America.
Italian archaeologist Pino Turolla was told a bloody story by an Indian guide in Venezuela. Antonio, the man in question had gone with his two sons to the Pacaraima Range. As they approached the savannah three lumbering, ape like beasts with smallish heads and long arms attacked them with clubs killing his younger son. Some six months later Turolla persuaded Antonio and some other Indians to show him the area in question. They heard shrill roars and the natives would go no further. Turolla himself claimed to have glimpsed an 8-foot, ape-like, lumbering form.
North of the border sasquatch is rarely thought of as being a treat to humans. In his book Wilderness Hunter former US President Theodor Roosevelt recounted a story told to him in 1892 by a grizzled old trapper called Bauman. Fifty years before Bauman and a friend had been trapping in the Bitterroot Mountains between the Salmon and Wisdom rivers in Idaho. The area had an unpleasant reputation as a year before a trapper called Cluey had been killed and half eaten by an unknown predator.
The men found their camp in disarray on returning from their first day of trapping. They assumed it was the work of a bear. However that night an upright walking, foul smelling attacked their stand to shelter. Bauman shot at the monster but it slipped into the shadows. All night it circled the camp making harsh, grating long-drawn out cries.
In the morning the scared men decided to head back to civilization. Bauman went to collect the traps whilst his friend packed up the camp. On returning Bauman found the camp strangely quiet. He found his friend’s body by a spruce long. His neck had been broken and fang narks in his throat. The corpse was not eaten but Bauman had the feeling that the creature had thrown the body around like a toy then rolled over and over in it in delight. He fled on horseback, riding through the night. He never returned to the Bitteroot Mountains.
In 1920 one Albert Petka of Nulato, Alaska was supposedly attacked by a ‘bushman’. Petka lived alone on his boat with his dogs. The dogs drove the hairy monster away but the man died of internal bleeding.
An almost identical story occurred 23 years later when John Mire, known as ‘The Dutchman ‘staggered into Ruby Alaska and told of how he was attacked by a bushman at his remote cabin. His dogs had driven the beast away but like Petka before him he died of internal bleeding.
The most famous man-beast, the yeti is thought by some to be a shy, unaggressive beast but others fear it as a savage mountain daemon In 1949 a Sherpa called Lakmpa Tenzing was said to have been torn to shreds by a yeti at a remote pass in Nanga parbat but there were no witnesses and his attacker may well have been a bear.
In Australia the yeti-like yowie was portrayed as a monstrous foe of the early Aborigines in their early legends. The stories recall the trolls and ogres of European law. The brutish beast are defeated by the humans employing their wits over the yowies brawn. They speak of many human deaths in the old battles. Occasionally there are hair raising modern accounts of aggressive yowies that have perused terrified witnesses, but physical harm is rare.
In 1910 two men were walking in the Victoria Falls area of the Blue Mountains when a ten foot gorilla-like creature emerged from the bush and attacked them. It hurled a large rock smashing the skull of one man as his friend fled. When the survivor returned with a party of armed men and dogs the body was gone, only bloodstains remaining.
Tony Healy and Paul Cropper recount a disturbingly suggestive tale in their excellent book The Yowie; In Search of Australia’s Bigfoot. They heard it from fellow yowie investigator Neil Frost. In the 1990s Neil interviewed a Blue Mountains based lawyer who in the 1970s had discovered a decapitated body in the bush behind the Warrimoo Bush Fire Station. The police said the man’s head had not been cut off but had been literally torn from his body and was found fifty feet away! Was it a yowie? We shall probably never know but such a creature would certainly be capable of ripping of a man’s head.
 
Finally we have the beasts of the air. The thunderbird of North American Indian lore was a bird said to be so big its wing beats sounded like thunder. In Indian legend there are many stories of them preying on humans.
In 1886 in Tippah County Missouri an eight year old boy called Jemmie Kenny was snatched by a huge ‘eagle’ and carried off in plain sight of his friends and a schoolteacher. The bird dropped him but the fall was fatal. The ‘eagles’ were said to have been preying on lambs and pigs from local farms for some weeks. I should point out here that no known species of eagle or indeed any other bird of prey is capable of lifting an eight year old boy off the ground let alone a pig!
In a letter to Fate magazine in March 1966 Hiram M Cranmer of Kettle Creek, Pennsylvania wrote...
“I personally have known seven people the thunderbird has carried off. Its victims range in age from 75-year old Barney Pluff who was devoured in 1941 to a four year old girl in McKean County, Pa who was snatched in 1937 while her family were picking berries.”
 
This is up for debate but the Missing 411 books detail cases of people going missing in National Parks and other areas of remote wilderness. In many of the cases the victims are found dismembered or partial remains. The author David Paulides is a Sasquatch researcher while the 411 books aren't bigfoot focused. But you could argue he may have the largest data pool of cases of Bigfoot Aggression in cryptid history.
 
... In a letter to Fate magazine in March 1966 Hiram M Cranmer of Kettle Creek, Pennsylvania wrote...

“I personally have known seven people the thunderbird has carried off. Its victims range in age from 75-year old Barney Pluff who was devoured in 1941 to a four year old girl in McKean County, Pa who was snatched in 1937 while her family were picking berries.”

I've got a strong suspicion Cranmer was mistaken in reporting 'Barney' Pluff, because:

- There is no 1940 US census record for a Barney Pluff in Pennsylvania.
- Cranmer's location (Kettle Creek) is situated in Leidy Township, Clinton County PA.
- 1940 US census records show a Millard M. Pluff, aged 76 (b. 1864), in Leidy Township PA.
- Multiple archived Pennsylvania news articles from 1946 note the discovery of a human skeleton in the Susquehanna River, believed to be that of Millard Pluff, who'd disappeared circa two years earlier.
- There's only one Millard Pluff recorded in the 1940 US census.

Just for the record ... The 1940 census records show a single Hiram Cranmer in Leidy Township PA. His birth year is listed as 1891. He would have been in his early 50's when Pluff went missing (under either alleged timeframe) and in his mid-70's when he wrote the letter to Fate.
 
... In a letter to Fate magazine in March 1966 Hiram M Cranmer of Kettle Creek, Pennsylvania wrote...

“I personally have known seven people the thunderbird has carried off. Its victims range in age from 75-year old Barney Pluff who was devoured in 1941 to a four year old girl in McKean County, Pa who was snatched in 1937 while her family were picking berries.”

I also strongly suspect the missing 4-year-old girl from McKean County Cranmer mentions was Marjory West, who disappeared in a forest area while on a family outing in May 1938 (not 1937).

Marjory's disappearance triggered massive newspaper coverage and a wide-ranging search, but nothing was ever found beyond the possible clues (a galosh, a bunch of violets) discovered at the site where she was last seen.

No animal involvement of any kind (much less a thunderbird ... ) is mentioned or suggested in any of the news articles I've seen. On the other hand, it was noted there were many abandoned mines and oil well pits in the vicinity.

Extensive descriptions of the Marjory West case (including photos and news articles) can be reviewed at:

http://mckeancountycoldcases.weebly.com/marjorie-west.html

http://www.pa-roots.org/data/read.php?542,441849,441849
 
I've got a strong suspicion Cranmer was mistaken in reporting 'Barney' Pluff, because:

- There is no 1940 US census record for a Barney Pluff in Pennsylvania.
- Cranmer's location (Kettle Creek) is situated in Leidy Township, Clinton County PA.
- 1940 US census records show a Millard M. Pluff, aged 76 (b. 1864), in Leidy Township PA.
- Multiple archived Pennsylvania news articles from 1946 note the discovery of a human skeleton in the Susquehanna River, believed to be that of Millard Pluff, who'd disappeared circa two years earlier.
- There's only one Millard Pluff recorded in the 1940 US census.

Just for the record ... The 1940 census records show a single Hiram Cranmer in Leidy Township PA. His birth year is listed as 1891. He would have been in his early 50's when Pluff went missing (under either alleged timeframe) and in his mid-70's when he wrote the letter to Fate.
Nice bit of sleuthing. For the record thunderbirds are not high on my list of likely cryptids!
 
Alright then! So when making one's list of supplies for cryptid-hunting we've got:
1. Flashlight
2. Bug Spray
3. Video Camera
4. Red shirt recruit to be used as pack horse/bait/sacrifice
5. Stiff drink for courage
What else do we need?
 
I dont have to outrun the cryptid. I only have to outrun you.

exactly! and I'll be slower than usual becuase of all the bags!
Alright then! So when making one's list of supplies for cryptid-hunting we've got:

* harmonica for playing mournful songs of home when it has us cornered.

* gaffer tape

* WD40

* superglue

:D
 
Alright then! So when making one's list of supplies for cryptid-hunting we've got:
1. Flashlight
2. Bug Spray
3. Video Camera
4. Red shirt recruit to be used as pack horse/bait/sacrifice
5. Stiff drink for courage
What else do we need?
Spare underwear.
In case of 'brown' moments.
 
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