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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, October 10, 2011

ANDREW MAY: Words from the Wild Frontier

News and stories from the remoter fringes of the CFZ blogosphere...

From Nick Redfern's "There's Something in the Woods...":
From CFZ Australia:
From CFZ New Zealand:
  • Big Feet Musing — Can the lack of physical traces be taken as evidence that Sasquatch acts communally?
From CFZ Canada:
  • Manitoba Monsters — Lake serpents, Sasquatch, Wendigo, Thunderbirds and other cryptids...

NEIL ARNOLD: SLEEP WITH ONE EYE OPEN

As a teenager some of the best films were those fantastic adventures such as Clash Of The Titans, Jason & The Argonauts, and those Sinbad epics. Whether in search of lost treasure, or hidden lands, warriors would fall at the feet of great, mythical beasts that had risen from oceans or deep caverns. One of the most popular mythical beasts was of course the dreaded Cyclops. This formidable horror exists in the crusty pages of centuries old tomes which also cage more unbidden beasts such as the Minotaur, the Centaur, the Satyr, the Unicorn, the Harpy – these were from the original menagerie of mystery.

However, time and time again, the monsters which appear relegated to folklore do, at certain times and to certain people, seem to escape from the pen of myth and step into what we deem reality, albeit a very strange and as yet understood one. The Cyclops is no exception.

This monster belonged to a race of primordial giants raised in Greek, then later Roman mythology. Of course, this hideous creature was all the more terrifying due to its single, beady eye perched in the centre of its wrinkled forehead. The name Cyclops is said to derive from ‘circle-eyed’. In the film The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad, made in 1958, and animated by Ray Harryhausen, Sinbad the sailor and his crew stumble up the lost land of Colossa. Whilst trudging across land they meet a magician called Sokurah who is fleeing from a Cyclops. Sinbad and his men escape but their boat is destroyed when the monster throws a giant boulder at it. However, author R.S. Lambert, in his 1966 book Exploring The Supernatural, records two bizarre encounters with a Cyclopean form. In 1888 a young man was visiting a friend in the area of Mule River, Inverness County, Nova Scotia, in Canada when, up on the road ahead he saw a terrifying creature. The monster, which was described as large and black, had its back turned to the witness but rather disturbingly it had a huge red eye in the centre of its back which leered at him. Suddenly, from its two frontal eyes a stream of light beamed ahead, lighting up the path on which the man was set to travel. The monster then moved slowly towards the house of his friend, mooched around the outside but then suddenly came back down to the road and ran quickly towards the petrified witness. The man was very alert and flung himself aside as the Cyclops rushed by. The beast didn’t turn on the man, instead it made its way off into the darkness, the glowing red eye on its back the only sign that it was moving away slowly into the night.

A quarter of a century later two elderly women were taking a stroll along the main highway of Port Hawkesbury, C.B. As Lambert states, ‘In those days the rail tracks of the Canadian National Railway, that now run alongside of the road, had not been built, nor did any ferry ply across the straits to Cape Porcupine.’

Whilst on their journey the two ladies were suddenly startled by a rushing noise behind them followed by a metallic clatter. Looking round they were horrified to see, coming toward them, a huge black monster with one terrible eye positioned in the centre of its face. Strangely, the monster ran straight by the women, rattling their ears with a tremendous roar which escaped its lips. The beast ran in the direction of the fish house. The women were so scared they ran off to another house and hid there until they believed the coast was clear. Even stranger still, according to Lambert, ‘Many years later, one of them heard for the first time in her life a railway train on the mainland of Nova Scotia, and recognised the sound as the one she had heard that night. She died, however, before the Inverness railway was built. When it was, the track, as surveyed, passed right through the fish house that the women had seen.’

An incredibly bizarre story indeed.

In 1981 at Parson Drove in Cambridge (England) a woman and her son, one night, claimed that they had seen a strange, calf-sized monster with one eye. The monster watched the witnesses and ran off. Around the same time in Kent, also in England, a man claimed to have seen a one-eyed tiger in local woodlands – died a few days later of a heart attack! In Scottish-Irish folklore a creature known as the Fachen is said to have one eye. The beast has a mane of black feathers, and has one tremendously strong arm which it uses to destroy orchards.

Some researchers believe that this seemingly impossible creature may have originated from some type of ancient bird which once inhabited the Emerald isle. Monster folklore speaks of many hairy humanoids, spectral dogs, dragons and demons said to sport one single glaring eye. Strangely, in Cyclopean lore, there is no mention of a female Cyclops.

Masinaigan’s UFO Roundup of 19th January and 2nd February 1997, reported that during the December of 1996 a Daoud Ahmad, who resided on Israel’s West Bank at the Nur-a-Shamat camp, had awoke during a restless night when two bizarre humanoids attacked him. Ahmad described the beings as having a single eye, large heads, a Mohawk-style haircut, and the intruders stood around two-feet in height. Ahmad added, “They wore black leather clothes…After they beat me I lost consciousness.’

The terrified witness was taken to hospital and treated for facial bruising. Although neighbours heard a commotion coming from the home of Ahmad, they saw no-one enter or leave the premises.

HAUNTED SKIES: Some disparate cuttings from November 1968


http://hauntedskies.blogspot.com/2011/10/cuttings-november-1968.html

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today

Yesterday’s News Today
http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

On this day in 1982 the Tudor warship the Mary Rose was salvaged from the seabed.
And now the news:

Injured cat 'does a Lassie' to lead RSPCA to her n...
Sponge new to science revealed
Keystone XL firm moved endangered beetles before p...
Natural born killers stalk Kiwi birdlife
Trust turns to eels in war against US crayfish
Gorilla and tiny duckling become unexpected friend...
Killer Sharks Invade Golf Course In Oz

Some of the finds from the Mary Rose put into context:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYaLEuFAdN4

CFZ CANADA: Manitoba Monsters

The Canadian province of Manitoba is home to many different kinds of cryptids. In fact, the very term “cryptid” was coined by a Manitoban name John Wall in a letter he wrote to the International Cryptozoology Society in 1993. This province is a wonderland for cryptids; there are vast areas of woodland (264,000 km2), many lakes (110,000 of them, many deep glacial lakes) and a population that is sparse and widely scattered. There are hills and prairies, swamps and rivers, and flora and fauna of all sorts.

http://cfz-canada.blogspot.com/2011/10/manitoba-monsters.html

KARL SHUKER: The Uncommonness of Unicorns

http://karlshuker.blogspot.com/2011/10/uncommonness-of-unicorns.html

MANY CONGRATULATIONS TO NEIL AND JEMMA ARNOLD WHO GOT MARRIES ON FRIDAY

With love and best wishes from all at the CFZ

ANDREW GABLE: The Beast of Bowman's Hill

A few days ago, I received a message from Johnathan Lackey describing a sighting, which took place in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, of something that seems similar to many of the descriptions of the famous Jersey Devil. It's interesting that several reports of the Jersey Devil made during the infamously active week of January 16-23, 1909 were made in Bucks County (in Bristol, Wycombe and Morrisville).

The actual sighting took place in 1977, when Lackey was a resident of Levittown. While driving south of Bowman's Tower (a landmark on the border of Upper Makefield and Solebury Townships) a creature leapt from the right side of the road. The creature was about the color of a deer and roughly the size of a medium-sized dog. It had a body similar in build to a greyhound, a monkey-like face (which seemed to have a sheen to it), a long tail with a black tip, and rather long legs. It seemed to have a pair of owl-like wings, which were kept motionless as it moved across the road, leapt, and glided down the hillside opposite where it had emerged.

The area where this was seen has its own share of weirdness. Although the derivation of the Bowman name is unclear, one of the theories is that it is named for a Dr. John Bowman, a crewman of the notorious Captain Kidd who was believed to have settled in eastern Pennsylvania and supposed in legend to have buried a treasure on the hill the tower is on (there is a longstanding folkloric correspondence between buried treasure and phantom doglike creatures). There was also a copper mine of unknown provenance, but believed to be of German construction, found on the hill by accident in 1854.