CRYPTOLINK: Reader Obtains Photo of "Demon Dog" Confiscated By Mexican Authority

A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me. 

Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Bigfoot Evidence reader, The Bigfoot Patriot.

Well my fellow footers, knowers and believers and even you skeptics, there are just some things out their that we cant be sure of. We all chase this illusive critter known as Bigfoot, and if your doing a good job and taking the heat, you will ask a lot of people, ever seen anything weird you cant explain. I always drive my co-workers nuts with Bigfoot stories and a few have come around. And a couple of them that I have convinced to give up a Friday night for a trip to the mountains have even heard the long howls for themselves. You have to hear a lot of crap if you want to learn new secrets, and I do.

So about two weeks ago this young guy gets moved over to the store I work at from a different local. And one day were sitting in the lunchroom and the subject of Bigfoot comes up. He is actually quite interested. So I ask him if he knows anyone with a good story. He responds, "Not about Bigfoot, but my cousin was on a hunting trip in Mexico and shot something weird." Oh really, I have to hear this, I tell him. He says ya, I even have a picture of it on my phone. The following is all that he could remember. So now you no what I know.

Read on...

MAX BLAKE: The Gurt Dog returns

Phenomena seem to be of a certain time and place. Despite claims to the contrary, crop circles, for example, are almost exclusively a phenomenon of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Even the classic Loch Ness monster sightings are mostly a post 1933 phenomenon, and `flying triangles` are a very recent affair. But some phenomena that were once relatively common seem to have vanished by the wayside; entombed toads, for example, have hardly been heard of during the last century, and Celtic black dogs - whilst they inhabit the pages of fortean literature, the most recent reliable English sources in the CFZ files are from the 1950s. This has now changed, as Max reports....

Yes indeed, I am back from scampering around the South West hunting for more beer. My quest has taken me to the increasingly eco-conscious Glastonbury Festival, where the mighty cider bus and its cider brandy helped fuel me on dark, err, summer nights; Shangri-la, home of a particularly attractive bipedal panda and more strong beer; and finally, Cornwall, where whisky and lager were the order of the day.

My tale begins a few months ago, in a dark gloomy biology lab. I am pouring over a rat dissection, whilst my partner in the study plays the “famous game” with my name. For those not in the know, this is an odd game whereby you google someone’s name and count how many references there are to them on the first 5 pages of Google. The more famous you are, the higher your score and then you win a prize, usually a small cake.

After we found that my name produces a lot of hits to this very website (try it, get us more hits!), most of which were to do with big cats, a friend shouted across the table that:

“Maybe that was what I saw the other night!”

Hold on! What? This is now the third of my close friends to have seen a big black “something” out on the roads in north Somerset. I asked her to describe what she saw and to draw a quick sketch of it. The description is as follows:

“I was driving home at about 22:30 after taking my boyfriend back to his house. I decided to take the more fun route home via the country lanes that link our houses. Halfway home, a huge black animal walked out of the bushes on my right hand side. I did an emergency stop to prevent myself from hitting it. It’s eyes glowed in the dark, and when it walked over into the front of the car it looked at me straight in the eye. It looked like a huge dog; like an Alsatian but much bigger; bigger than any dog I have ever seen. It had a long tail which curled at the end with shaggy fur. The eyes were huge and crazy, fierce red in colour but in such a way that the animal looked mad. It continued looking at me before it walked off in an odd manner to the left of the car where it melted and merged into the bushes without disturbing anything, something which seemed a hard feat for such a huge animal. I could not see it after it went into the side of the road, the eyes were probably blocked by branches.

“If pushed to give measurements for it, I would say that it weighed over 100kgs, its head was long like a wolves’, whilst it’s total length must have been over 7’. It did not seem threatening, despite the eyes. I did not want to get out of the car to follow it, but it never seemed hostile to me being in it’s area, just dismissive.”

The sheer size of the beast, the red “crazy” eyes and the odd way that it walked and moved into the bushes make me think that this was a phantom black dog. Now, I am hardly an authority on this particular zooform, but does anyone have any idea what it could be? A big cat is right out, the long muzzle and long coat drop this one pretty quickly. If it was a large domestic or feral dog, the eyes would have possibly gone a red colour in the blaze of the car’s lights, but this is a colour that seems liquid, and would be quite different to the crazy eyes described. Surely everyone has seen a dog’s eyes at night when a torch is shone on them; they glow, but not a fiery red. But the odd walk, the way it merged with the bushes on the left of the car and the strange eyes are a bit of a thorn in this theory’s side.

Somerset’s Gurt Dog is the best candidate for the explanation. Usually appearing as a huge dog with shaggy black fur and glowing red eyes, the zooform perfectly matched the description. The Gurt Dog is usually seen by roads and footpaths (check!), at night, and walks either in front of the viewer, or it follows them. It is supposedly benevolent, unlike the malevolent dogs which haunt the rest of the country. It is supposed to keep children safe out on the moors and can guide lost travellers home again. However, in the 60s a black dog appeared to two people, and they both died shortly afterward. Seeing as my friend has not died yet, nor suffered any ill (touch wood), one hopes that the same fate will not befall her.

If we want to make a bit of a jump, this sighting can be explained by the domestic dog theory. The size has been exaggerated due to shock, the odd walk due to a wound or a characteristic of its ‘breed’, and the red eyes exaggerated, again from shock. Then we have a normal dog (feral or not). I, however, feel that this is a bit of a leap too far to explain the sighting. I say that the Gurt Dog of Somerset has risen once more.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: An unjustifiably obscure black dog encounter

In the Transactions of the Devonshire Association Vol 12, 1880 is the following story:

"The Black Dog that Hunts the Moor” - A few years ago two ladies from the North of England made a tour of pleasure into the county of Devon. In their journeyings they rode on the outside of the coach from Okehampton to Tavistock, in order that they might see some portion of the far-famed Dartmoor. Twilight came on whilst they were crossing the moor. Suddenly their attention was aroused by the agitation and excitement of the coachman, who in terror exclaimed, "There, there do you see that?" On being questioned as to what he meant, he pointed with his whip to some creature that was running along by the side of his horses, saying, "There is the black dog that hunts the moor."

Terrified at the sight, he lashed his horses in». a gallop in order to escape from the weird "black dog that hunts the moor," which suddenly vanished.I congratulated my lady friends on their good fortune in having been thus made acquainted with a bit of the "Folk-Lore" of Devon. J. F.WILKEY.

FROM THE ARCHIVES...

A very young (and quite thin) looking Jon Downes from 1995, talking about the black dogs of Buckfastleigh to Ruth Langsford...

GUEST BLOGGER NEIL ARNOLD: REMEMBER THE DEVIL DOG?

It is with great pleasure that we welcome Neil Arnold to the CFZ bloggo with this first guest blog. I have known Neil for fifteen years now since he was a schoolboy with ambitions for adventure and I was an earnest young hippie who merely wanted to start a club for people interested in unknown animals. Nothing much has changed over the years. We are just both a tad older...

1963 – the year of the beast. A time when the Surrey ‘puma’ was making its name across the Home Counties, its legend however, obscuring another, more frightful mystery. That of the Hampshire Devil Dog.

Miriam Carroll recalled in ’63 how, whilst driving to Alton, she saw a terrifying black dog clasp a lamb through a barbed-wire fence. The monstrous hound tore at the victim, ripping its head off through the fence, leaving the witness shaken, as she drove to the nearby farm to report the incident. A year later a policeman, whilst chatting to two Irish tourists at 1:15 pm, saw a massive black dog heading their way. Without warning the beast leapt at them, pinning all three of them up against a bus shelter. One of the Irishmen could only react by swiping at the hideous form with his bag, which passed through the creature. The monster dog then vanished, leaving all three men stunned with disbelief.

In 1965, a few stories reached the local papers about the dog and when major building work was carried out at the Crown Hotel, situated in the local high street at Alton, there was some surprise when the bones of a large dog were found.

In 1987, Mr Duggan was driving through Basingstoke with his fiancée Yvonne looking for a place to set up a picnic. They found a clearing in the woods and began to set up their meal, and Mr Duggan decided to urinate in a thicket. Suddenly, whilst beginning to relieve himself he was confronted by a frightening snarling noise and the huge head of a dog, which protruded from the bushes. The couple fled the area, followed by the hellhound.

These incidents may sound like few and far between encounters with a local dog on the loose, but things become far weirder when we trace the origins of the Devil Dog back to the 1780s. Mr Thomas Newton, was a Hampshire socialite against slavery, and funded much to cease the awful treatment dished out against black workers in the West Indies at the time. One such slave was an Ottobah Cugoano who as a child, was captured in Africa. This man was said to own a monstrous dog, the size of a bear. Mr Newton offered £300 for the brute, the money aiding Cugoano’s cause.

It was said that the dog was a cross between a Doberman and a rottweiller, but it was the size of a small pony and didn’t take to any human being except Newton. In 1795 Newton died, but it took local authorities many days to get to his bed-ridden body, for it was guarded by the dog. Eventually, the dog was detained and tied to a tree but escaped when Newton was being buried. The beast was last seen heading off towards the woods.

The Morton family inhabited the Newton house. They were plagued by the beast. Six expensive Arab horses were found so severely injured that they were destroyed, strange howls emanated from the local woods, many animals were found in the shadows ripped to pieces, and large rewards were offered to anyone who could shackle the monster. The Morton family could no longer live in the house. Their farm was a non-existent business for fear of the demon, hen houses were damaged, chickens mutilated, and of 1023 sheep on the land, 887 were killed. The family moved on and the house remained uninhabited and the legend remained dormant, until 1834. A child was attacked and crippled by an enormous dog on the outskirts of Alton. The boy had to have a leg amputated, whilst his other limb was badly chewed. Despite a huge hunt there was no sign of the beast, and despite the dread of local legend, surely the same monster had no been to blame? Evidence mounted, however, that the Hampshire Devil Dog somehow had a life-span of 150 years. Cattle and sheep were often found in appalling state after severe attacks in the early 1900s, local fox hunts were often cancelled in fear of the dog, and the legend was revived in 1963.

Who knows when or where the Devil Dog will strike again.

GUEST BLOGGER GLEN VAUDREY: Seeing is believing

Glen is a very new recruit to Planet CFZ. Indeed, we had never heard from him until a few months ago when he wrote - slightly diffidently - to us, asking whether he could write a volume in our ongoing series The Mystery Animals of The British Isles. We asked him for a proposed synopsis and a sample of his writing, and were overawed by what we received. Here was a man who loved both words and the countryside, and could use one to describe the other in poetic but always down to earth terms. We were beginning to come to the conclusion that here was someone that Bob Marley would have described as a `Natural Mystic`, when the final manuscript arrived, and we knew that we were right. So we asked him to be a guest blogger..

When looking for mystery creatures does our current knowledge affect our perception of what we are going to see? For example whenever I catch the briefest glimpse of a great northern diver as it swims past in the distance, would it ever even cross my mind that I might have seen a Great Auk if I didn’t already know what one looked like.

It was a little over a year ago on a particularly foggy day when I saw what I at first suspected to be a long necked sea serpent popping up its head in the most unusual of places, Stornoway harbour! After both the initial excitement of the sighting and the obligatory cursing at not having a camera upon me I soon realised that what I had been privileged to observe was not an unidentified sea serpent but rather a grey seal as it was periscoping, it raised what appeared to be getting on for nearly half its body clean out of the water as it struggled to see around.

The reason all this came to mind was that as I set about researching mystery animal sighting in the Hebrides I became aware that not all the things reported over the years were necessarily mystery animals, for instance there is one sighting of a long necked sea serpent the description of which sounds remarkably like a submarine.

But not all reports come out so negatively, on the Isle of Mull in the years leading up to the First World War there were reported sightings of a large mystery black dog. Fast forward a few decades to the late ’70s and reports start to appear of sightings of a large mystery black cat.

Maybe those two sighting are not connected in any way other than my mind running ahead of itself, but perhaps we should consider that if today you see a large black animal in the distance it is almost certainly chalked up as a cat because that’s what people see, even if the sighting might be couched with ‘I thought it was a dog till it moved’.

What then are the chances that those earlier mystery dog sighting had more to do with the viewer being secure in the knowledge that it had to be a dog because such a thing as a large black cat on the Isle of Mull just couldn’t possibly exist.