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Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Monday, January 18, 2010

NEIL ARNOLD: The Monster of Runcorn

When I compiled my Monster! The A-Z Of Zooform Phenomena, little did I realise just what an exhaustive task it would be. By the time it had gone to press in 2007 I’d received and unearthed hundreds, if not thousands more cases of ethereal monsters, paranormal manimals and winged humanoids. One of my latest favourites is the pig-slaughtering entity that prowled Runcorn in Cheshire in 1953.

The festive season was disturbed by a black, seven-foot tall apparition that killed fifty-three pigs at a farm owned by a Harold Crowther. The Sunday Graphic of 27th December reported that the fifteenth-century farmhouse had been plagued by unusual events since the 10th August, when a ghostly figure, resembling the deceased father of Mr Crowther’s wife appeared. But it was clear that the monster that killed the pigs was an altogether more malevolent spectre.

Mr Crowther reported that, “Two days after the loss of the last pig, I saw a large black cloud about seven feet in height, shapeless except for two prongs sticking out at the back moving about in the yard. The shapeless mass approached me, stopping about four or five-feet away. Then it turned in the direction of the pig sties, passed into an outhouse and disappeared.”

Meanwhile, the entity Mrs Crowther observed was smaller and sprawled out but moved like black smoke.

The vampyric predator stalked the farm until its grisly work had been done. Its grim activities bringing to mind the Highgate ‘vampire’ seen two decades later in London, and a similar figure in Argentinean folklore known as El Petizo; a tall, black apparition that attacked a young boy in 2002 as he was cycling nine miles east of Rosario de la Frontera. The spectre appeared in broad daylight, accosted the boy and attempted to drag him by his hair to the edge of the lane.

In 1935 a vampire-like spectre haunted a village near Gnjilane, southern Serbia. The monster was said to be immune to gunfire, prowled an area inhabited by peasants and spooked the cattle. The Serbian vampire was said to have been cornered by several bold peasants one afternoon (this particular vampire was not affected by the light) but as they fired at the monster, it vanished through a door, filling the air with three loud knocks.

2 comments:

lonewolfnocub said...

Wow--fifty-three pigs? I thought I was pretty much familiar with all stories like this, but this one is new to me. Thanks for posting it.

Andrew D. Gable said...

Weird! Maybe the monster from Lost made a foray to England... or not.

I imagine it's probably something along the lines of the animate mists like Oxford's Boneless and such.