Night Crawlers

Someone, or more usually something, living secretly in your house is one of those horror movie tropes ...

Monsters Coming Out Of The Attic Are A Horror Staple

... that usually leads to semi naked females being chased about, in rooms where the lights are always broken.

Wyrdness Everywhere

The origin for the word English word 'Weird' is the Old English (Saxon) word Wyrd - which originally meant "fate, destiny,"

The Norns - Men's Wyrd Determined By Their Threads

in fact literally "that which comes."

Yeti Nother One Bites The Dust

It was with a tinge of sadness that I read the story about the death of the 'Yeti' – or rather the death of the dream of there being a Yeti.

Apparently, it’s just an unusual and probably large brown bear, closely related to the polar bear. Its habitat in the forests on the slope of the Himalayas etc probably account for its occasionally unusual behaviour (for a bear) of walking upright, and that has caused it to be attributed as a Yeti / Abominable Snowman, rather then being recognised as a bear …. Or at least that’s the hypothesis of the scientist who has performed the latest DNA tests on ‘Yeti’ hairs brought down from the high forests.

Big Foot or Bear or a_Bush

Still this is better than the last lot of DNA tests, which said it was a 'Himalayas Goat' …. So we are heading in the right direction with a bear.

Still I can’t help being disappointed that the only major cryptological animal (Sea Monsters, Thunderbirds, Giant snakes etc) that I actually thought might be real, has apparently finally been found to be something rather more mundane.  On the other hand ... 'Jurassic Park' could be back on the drawing board. It seems that they've finally found a fossilized mosquito full of prehistoric blood!

I am not holding my breath, but hey after the death of the Yeti, at least this is a bit of good news.

Monsters Inc

The web is full of the marvellous, the stupid, the bizarre and the informative ..... in fact just about every folly that the human mind can think of, now holds its own little space on the web.

Today, instead of the conspiracy theorists, for whom I hold a little soft spot, I decided to illustrate another aspect of this world of the strange, which is best described by the cartographers of old nautical maps, who inscribed uncharted regions with the legend “Here Be Monsters.” Sometimes they would draw pictures of these fanciful beasts rising from the waters, and occasionally would even show them devouring wayward ships.

Well on the far side of the increasingly respectable world of cryptozoology, lurk the believers in monsters. These can range from Big Foot, Yetis, Big Cats in the UK, to devils skulls, faked giants bodies, insect men in Argentina, and finally through to 100 ft giant snakes in Borneo.

I make no apologies for posting a few photos which are openly posted on the web (but if any copy right infringed let me know and I will take that picture down) because although they are most certainly all fully explainable as 'natural', or fakes, they can be interesting in their own right!

The Strand Irish Giant 1895

This 'giant', from County Antrim, Ireland, was said to be 12ft 2in high. Its girth of chest was 6ft 6in, and length of arms 4ft 6in. There are six toes on the right foot. This fossilised body was on display in exhibitions in Dublin, Liverpool and Manchester. What later happened to the giant and its owner is unknown. (Photo from the British Strand magazine. Dec 1895).