LINK: Dead East River ‘monster’ confounds New Yorkers, animal experts Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/dead-east-river-monster-confo

Denise Ginley

Photographer Denise Ginley shot pics of the rotting, sand-covered corpse on Sunday while strolling with her boyfriend along the Manhattan side of the East River.

What the hell IS that thing?
A bloated, pig-like carcass spotted beneath the Brooklyn Bridge over the weekend has spooked New Yorkers buzzing about mutant river “monsters.”
Photographer Denise Ginley shot pics of the rotting, sand-covered corpse on Sunday. “My boyfriend and I were walking along the East River on our way to a farmer's market when we spotted it among some driftwood on a small stretch of sand below the Brooklyn Bridge that you can barely call a beach,” she emailed the Daily News.
PHOTOS: AMAZING ANIMAL ODDITIES

Denise Ginley

Photographer Denise Ginley says, "We were horrified by it and we took some camera phone pictures and then finally we decided to come back with my camera and I got up the courage to climb over the fence and get closer to it."

"We were horrified by it and we took some camera phone pictures and then finally we decided to come back with my camera and I got up the courage to climb over the fence and get closer to it," she told the blog ANIMAL New York.

Denise Ginley

In the post, titled “We’re Supposed to Believe the New East River Monster Is Just a Pig?” Daily Intel writer Joe Coscarelli tagged the rotting hulk photographed by Denise Ginley, "Wilbur."

Ginley sent the photos to Gothamist, which published them on Monday and sparked furious speculation -- and a few conspiracy theories -- on local blogs and social media.

Denise Ginley

Photographer Denise Ginley thinks it is odd that the Parks Department so quickly said the creature was a “discarded cooked pig” and that the department “threw it out.”

Vickie Karp, a spokeswoman for the Parks Department, said the creature was a “discarded cooked pig” and that the department “threw it out.”

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/dead-east-river-monster-confounds-new-yorkers-animal-experts-article-1.1121889#ixzz21mSy3nv5

LINDSAY SELBY: Who are the monsters?

Cryptids are often referred to as monsters, as in The Loch Ness Monster, The Fouke Monster and so on. I for one would love to see that Nessie has been found. But then, would I? What would happen if Nessie or any other creature were found?

Well, it could be kept secret I suppose (conspiracy theorists in the past have claimed that governments know the creatures exist but it has been covered up. More likely, though, a media circus would ensue. The poor creature would be placed on display in some special zoo or facility. Any of its fellows would no doubt similarly be hunted, captured and displayed. It would make a great deal of money for the owner of the facility.

(My first thought would be 'Has no one seen King Kong?' Large creatures are notoriously difficult to keep contained.) This to me would make us the monsters. To degrade a creature in this manner; make it a show or a display; takes away its freedom and its rights. The answer would be to see it is protected by law and its habitat is kept from development. A camera feed could be set up so people could catch glimpses of it as it went about its daily life but visitors would be banned.

A cryptid is a wonder, not a monster, and it deserves to be treated with respect. Should any be found I hope it is remembered that it is a living thing not an exhibit.

If someone does manage to clone a mammoth or any other extinct species, it should also be entitled to the same. A woolly mammoth does not belong in this era of time and should be placed in a habitat as near to its original as possible and allowed to live out its allotted span in peace.

The so-called monsters created by scientists recently such as goats crossed with spider DNA and huge ants, are not monsters either. The monsters are those that made them. They did not ask to be made freaks of nature but no one treated them with the respect they deserved, and said do not to tamper with them.

I truly hope that if such irrefutable evidence be found of a cryptid, that we have the sense to leave it alone and maybe just set up cameras for those who insist on seeing for themselves. Humans will always be the monsters until they treat creatures with respect.

LINK: Urban Monsters

If you want to catch a cryptid doing its thing in America, common sense would deem you drive far out into the woods where humankind rarely ventures. After all, it's typically hunters and hikers who wind up having awkward run-ins with Bigfoot or the Flatwoods monster.

But city dwellers who want a taste of the supernatural ought not to despair. A deep riffling through the musty archives of American folklore reveal several beasties who have given up their woodsy pad for the fast-paced life of the big city. See what monsters could be dealing with condo fees and long lines at Starbucks in the gallery....

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/03/imaginary-monsters-us-cities/1621/

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.

MIKE HALLOWELL: More Geordie Monsters

Animals born with an excessive number of limbs or organs are not uncommon; if you doubt, a perusal through a few back issues of the Fortean Times will prove the point. Calves with four eyes, goats with six legs…nature has a way of throwing up genetic mutations every now and then. Personally I feel uncomfortable about parading such animals in public. We wouldn’t dream of displaying a human being with cerebral palsy or elephantitis in a circus cage, so why do the same with other species? Nevertheless, such mutations are interesting and studying them may lead to a better understanding of genetics and even cures for certain disabling conditions.

Ah, but it was all different a century ago. No one understood genetics back then, and although respect for wildlife in general, other species specifically and our fellow human beings had advanced tremendously since the early 19^th century, things were far from perfect. There was still an attitude prevalent in some parts that “freaks” were really only good for exploitation. If your child can’t work in the mines or the mills, hey. don’t worry! Stick ‘em in the circus and make a few bucks!

Not everyone was so callous, however. There was a genuine naiveté on the part of many, who saw both humans and animals with genetic disorders not as “freaks” but as “wonders”. To some, it was almost as if such aberrations were God-given; something that wasn’t quite right, but nevertheless helped us focus on the mysteries of creation.

In September 1905, Sunderland was an economically struggling location. Large areas were impoverished, and gruelling, blue-collar work such as mining and shipbuilding was the staple means of eking a borderline existence. Precious little happened to bring light and laughter into the lives of the working class, and so no opportunity for personal enrichment was missed. Some sought solace in the church, whilst others imbibed excessive amounts of gin and porter. Yet others just waited for that “something special” to come along. Most times it never did.

But there were exceptions, as a Mr. W. Hall discovered when he found himself in possession of the legendary Double Duck of Pallion.

Pallion is a relatively unremarkable area of the City of Sunderland, but it has played a rich part in the area’s history. At the turn of the 20^th century, many residents had taken to keeping livestock in their back yards and gardens as a means of supplementing their meagre incomes. Rabbits, hens, chickens and ducks were bred with enthusiastic abandon to ensure a ready supply of meat and eggs. Mr. Hall was no different, and he was no doubt delighted when one duck in his possession laid a clutch of seven eggs. He waited patiently, and, one by one, they hatched. Eventually six young ducklings nestled under the wing of their mother, whilst the seventh egg, slightly larger and thicker than the rest, remained intact.

Some days passed, and Mr. Hall decided that it might be necessary to lend Mother Nature a hand. He took the seventh egg and ever-so-gently cracked it, hoping that if there was a live duckling inside it would now be able to brake free. It did, and what Mr. Hall saw would baffle him for the rest of his days. Inside the shell was no ordinary duckling. As the chick struggled free he saw to his horror that it actually possessed two heads. More than that, it also had four wings and four feet. Truly, this was a duck like no other.

Mr. Hall, after recovering from the shock, showed the strange creature to his next-door neighbour. Before long, the entire populace of Pallion was talking about the strange arrival in Mr. Hall’s backyard. The local press got to hear about it, and reporters began to turn up on the doorstep, along with a priest and other local personages of some distinction.

The fate of the duck, at least in the detail, is unknown. We do not know how long it survived, but it was reported that Mr. Hall was determined not to let its demise rob him of his new-found fame. He placed the body of the duckling in a large bottle filled with “spirits of wine” and preserved it for posterity.

Bizarre quirks of nature like the Double Duck of Pallion are not unknown. In 2007, Nick Janaway, of the Warrawee Duck Farm in the New Forest, picked up a young duckling to determine its sex. She was stunned to discover that it had not two, but four legs. These extra appendages seemed to pose Stumpy (as the duck was later named) no problems. It could swim, walk and feed just fine. There was a minor setback when it caught one of its additional legs in some barbed wire and had to have it amputated. This left it three legs, which was still one more than those possessed by its more common-or-garden siblings.

I have tried to track down the remains of Mr. Hall’s Double Duck, hoping perhaps that it may have been given to the Sunderland Museum. A curator connected with the establishment kindly promised to see if he could locate the specimen, but to date I’ve heard nothing. Who knows, one day it may turn up.

NEIL ON THE RADIO

Neil Arnold has been a busy little fellow recently. As well as putting the final touches to his monumental book on the mystery animals of Kent. The bloody book is getting bigger and bigger every day, and will soon make Lord of the Rings seem like a Ladybird book. But it will be worth it. However, I mean no disrespect to Neil when I say that I will be very glad to get the bloody thing off my plate. In the meantime, however, he sent us the following email last night...


New England's WCIN Radio may be well known for its jazz and folk music, but listen to what DJ Mark Lynch uncovered when he interviewed author Neil Arnold about his book, MONSTER! THE A-Z OF ZOOFORM PHENOMENA. A surreal safari indeed...winged men, varying hellhounds, Asian vampires, Noodleman, urban monster legends, the goatsucker, the Yorkshire maggot, Mothman...


http://wicn.org/audio/inquiry-neil-arnold

MIKE HALLOWELL: Geordie Monsters IV

There's an old maxim in Geordieland, that says it's always darkest just before it goes completely black; or, if you like, as one door shuts, another one slams in your face. As you'll have gathered, we Tynesiders are an optimistic lot, and we have to be when it comes to cryptozoology. Our kingdom is veritably teeming with cryptids and zooforms, but hardly any of them ever get identified. Its not for the want of trying; its just that we have other things on our mind, such as paying the rent and getting the kids back from the pawn shop.

One of the advantages the Geordie nation possesses when it comes to cryptozoology is our environment. We have mountains (although they're not very big ones), hills, moors, forests, lakes, rivers, a sea and a profusion of urban-cum-industrial sprawls. All of these provide a perfectly natural environment for just about any kind of cryptid you care to mention, and then some.

It never fails to amaze me what a spectacular collection of unidentified fauna we've accrued over the centuries - and how terrible we are at singing their praises.

We have hairy hominids (the Beast of Bolam Lake), dragons (The Laidley Worm of Spindleston Heugh), sea monsters (the Shony), alien big cats (the Cleadon Panther), black dogs (the Boldon Black Dog), cylathines (probably, such as the Boojum of Jesmond Vale), wolves (the Hexham Wolf) and dozens of others too many to mention.

To be honest, despite our incredible cryptozoological menagerie, I still end up feeling frustrated. To date, I haven't found any evidence of swamp monsters, for example Mind you, this could just be due to the fact that we haven't any swamps, although we do have some swamp-like bogs in Northumberland where, I have recently been told, a creature of unknown provenance dwells.

I don't want to say too much about it at the moment, as I'd like to get another book out of the story if it proves to have some substance to it, but the tale goes something like this:

Last summer, a rambler was out walking in Northumberland when he saw something run across his field of vision and dive into a bog. He described the creature as five ft. in height, brown/green in colour and scaled. The beast was essentially anthropomorphic, but also possessed a tail, had no discernible ears and sported a reddish, serrated crest upon its head and spine. Its face was, he said, "snout-like" and resembled that of a German Shepherd in shape.

The chap who related the story to me was himself the eye-witness, but was very cautious about getting his name splashed all over the press. He didn't mind me telling the world about his encounter with "the thing", providing that his name was not released as he felt that it wouldn't do his career prospects much good. Trust me, if you knew what he did for a living, you'd understand why. I have given him my solemn word not to divulge his personal details to anyone until he feels its appropriate to do so.

The witness who saw the creature strikes me as perfectly reliable and I got no indication that he was fibbing. What threw me completely was being contacted by a second witness less than two weeks later who claimed to have seen the very same beast - or at least, something very close to it. This time, the witness managed to keep the creature in view for around two minutes.

Normally I'm a trusting soul, but I couldn't help but be suspicious. It wasn't so much that two people claimed to have seen the same creature that bothered me, but the location of the second sighting. It was literally miles away from the first location, and by no stretch of the imagination could I conceive that the same animal could have moved from one to the other without being spotted many times. It had to be a different beast of the same species, or I was being set up to look like an idiot. Another problem was the nature of the second location; it just seemed the most unlikely place for some sort of lizardy dude to be living. Still, in the weird and wonderful world of cryptozoology, you never can tell. After all, the woods at Bolam Lake aren't much bigger than my front lawn, but there was a hairy hominid dodging about in their for bloody months.

Over the coming weeks I'll try to put together some more detail and, if possible, release more of the story via this blog. Are the accounts true? At this stage I honestly don't know, but I've seen nothing which makes me intrinsically suspicious - yet. Naturally, if anyone in or around Tyneside or Northumberland has seen this creature - or knows someone else who has - I'd like to hear about it.

Like I say, watch this space...

RICHARD FREEMAN: The Global Monster Template

Back in the year of the dragon, 2000, I was in Thailand on the track of the giant crested serpent known as the naga. In Thai legend there is also a birdman known as a guruda and the singa, a golden lion. It struck my how much these seemed like legends from Cornwall with Morgaw the sea serpent, the Owlman and the phantom big cats.

In 2003 and 2004 I was in Sumatra searching for the orang-pendek, a short, hairy, man-like ape. In the same jungles were stories of giant horned snakes and the cigau, a possible scimitar toothed cat.

In 2007 on the grasslands of Guyana we heard of monster snakes and a race of red-faced pygmies as well as a disease spreading, child-killing goblin.

All around the world it seems very specific kinds of monster archetype are seen again and again in every culture. Each civilization will have combinations of these monsters in its culture. I call this the Global Monster Template. The categories are as follows.

1. Dragons: The most ancient, powerful and widespread monster archetype. These giant reptiles, or analogues of them, occur in every culture on earth. They are reptilian, elongate and associated with the element of water.
2. Hairy giants: Yeti, Yowie, Yeren, Sasquatch, Di-Di, Troll, Almasty, the list goes on. Big, man-like, powerful and hair covered.
3. Little people: Goblins, Pixies, Bush Men, Junjudee, Ebu-Gogo the list is nigh on endless. Small, sometimes hairy often considered dangerous.
4. Monster cats: Out of place panthers, American ‘lions’, cigau, singa ect. Uncatchable felines.
5. Monster dogs: Werewolves, Black Dogs, Waheela, Mirrii dogs ect Usually huge, spectral hounds.
6. Monster Birds: Thunderbird, Roc, Tengu, Guruda, Owlman ect. Giant, often aggressive, birds.

Now lets take a closer look at these categories. They all have one thing in common. They each have an analogue on the plains of East Africa several million years ago.

Our Australopithecine ancestors on the plains of East Africa had a struggle to survive. Our ancestors were being preyed upon by, and were in competition with, various formidable creatures. Crocodiles and pythons ate them as did big cats, hunting dogs, and large birds of prey such as eagles. They competed against other primates such as giant baboons and other races of hominids, some larger than them and some smaller.

All of these creatures can be slotted nicely into the universal monster template. There seems to be groups of monsters reported all around the world in every culture. These archetypes include dragons, giants, little people, monster birds, mystery big cats, and monstrous dogs. All of them have a direct link back to our ancestral horrors.

Coincidence? I think not.

Perhaps some of these monsters are escapees from the psychic zoo, a massive, collective, sub-conscious, thought form. The thought form or tulpa is said to be a 3-D semi solid image created by the power of the mind. Buddhist lamas in Tibet are said to be able to summon up tulpas during intense meditation. Western explorer Dame Alexandra David Kneel was said to have created a tulpa of a monk whilst studying in Tibet. Polish medium Franek Klusk was said to have summoned up huge cats, birds, and even ape-men during séances. Perhaps, considering the types of beast he called up, he was creating tulpas from the global monster template.
If individuals can create tulpas, imagine what the collective, gestalt mind of humanity as a species could do. Perhaps some are a giant worldwide thought forms emanating from our innermost fears.

How might this work? Perhaps in certain "window areas" something affects the minds of those who enter. The mind is an electro-chemical computer, perhaps when "scrambled" it must "reboot" like any other computer. When in this primeval state perhaps the mind raises the prehistoric terrors of our past, and raises monsters. This is not to deny that there are flesh and blood counterparts for each of the monster categories, there almost certainly are. But when these things manifest in places that could not support a "real" creature maybe we should look to thought forms for answers.