Phantoms and Monsters

Recent 'Knobby' Sighting Rekindles North Carolina Legend
Guardian Angel Keeps Watch Over 'The Gap'
Sheedi Mela Devotees Make Offerings to Crocodiles
Strange Sounds Baffle Residents in Sunchild Reserve, Alberta

Recent 'Knobby' Sighting Rekindles North Carolina Legend

Posted: 14 Jun 2010 09:41 AM PDT

shelbystar - Legend speaks of an ape-like creature who called Upper Cleveland County home in the late 1970s.

Robert Williams, then covering the news for Charlotte media outlets, named him "Knobby," a towering beast many considered as the resident Bigfoot.

Williams never saw Knobby — "I only wrote what I was told."

Knobby stories flew overseas, Williams said, drawing interest from New Zealand and beyond. Newspaper articles from 1979 detail more than a dozen Knobby sightings and investigations by the North American Research Association and researchers from a university in Massachusetts. But the rumors and sightings near Carpenter's Knob — hence the creature's name — mysteriously stopped decades ago.

Then, Timothy Peeler called 911.

Peeler, of Vanada Drive in Casar, is a self-proclaimed "South Mountain man." He's surrounded by woods and a ridge worthy of postcards.

It was June 5 when Peeler supposedly spotted a man-beast, upwards of 10 feet tall, that screeched like "a night bird" and grunted in the warm night air.

The creature sported dark hair, Peeler said, with a grey beard stretching to its navel.

Authorities were dispatched that morning around 3 a.m., according to a report from Cleveland County Communications.

Deputies filed a suspicious person report after investigating the incident.

Williams was surprised to hear of the recent sighting. It had been years, he said, since Knobby's supposed existence made headlines.

The sasquatch was reportedly sighted in the 70s by numerous people, including highschoolers, a banker and an elderly woman. One man said Knobby might have broken his goat's neck.

"People came in from everywhere," Williams said. "People contacting me from around the world."

What if you spot a Knobby-esque creature fiddling through your trash? Spotters say the walking legend isn't aggressive, but police say to take caution anyway.

Cleveland County Sheriff's Capt. Alan Norman said local Bigfoot sightings are few and far between, but "if there is a call, there's standard protocol to be dispatched to the area."

"Deputies basically check the area for any unusual sightings," he said. "A suspicious person would be treated in the same category."
______________________

Knobby- The Bigfoot of Cleveland County

(Above) Capenters Knob Dr. and Carpenters Knob Mountain. This road is one area where 'Knobby' was seen by locals. The locals also believed 'Knobby' resided on Carpenters Knob Mountain

The following is an article that was written in 1979 - Gastonia Gazette:

From the back roads that wind through the Smokey Mountain foothills and from the cities that lie below, the masses are converging on this usually quiet Cleveland County community that it's fair week. And they're all searching for "Knobby", the mysterious ape-like creature folks around here have reported seeing for almost a month now. Stop at any one of the country stores and many of the homes that dot the hillsides and you'll hear the latest "Knobby" tale. If your face is strange, no one will ask why you've come. Instead, they'll offer to direct you to Minnie Cook's house or Sally White's for a first-hand account of the sightings.

Minnie, an 88-year-old woman who became the first to let her story be known, is so terrified of what may be lurking outside her front door that she won't talk to a visitor unless she's been forewarned of his arrival by her son, Elbert, or daughter-in-law, Ruby. Each time Minnie goes outside the house, Ruby said, she carries a rifle. "People aren't just saying they saw it," Ruby said Thursday afternoon as she sat inside the store she runs with her husband. "They have seen it." The Cooks' store lies in the afternoon shadow of Carpenter's Knob, the foothills hill point just west of Toluca and the landmark from which the creature draws its name. The store and nearby Mountain View Grocery are where area folks gather to swap their "Knobby" stories and where outsiders stop to track down leads to its whereabouts. "Everybody that comes in here talks about it," Ruby said. "A lot of them are scared to death. Me? Well, I'll just tell you I'm not about to go out looking for it." But others are. Throughout the day Thursday a Shelby radio station crew broadcast live from a campground near the base of the knob.

The crew, a smattering of newsmen and a host of curious searchers spent the night hopping from spot to spot in hopes of sighting the creature that's causing the stir. Robert Shoup and Butch Craig cut their high school classes to sit all day by a campfire near the top of the knob. "We're just waiting and looking for it," Butch said. And Russell Cook took a day off work to go "Knobby" hunting with Rondal Huffman. "We've been all over these woods looking for signs of it but we haven't seen a thing," Rondal said. Their last trek of the day was through a deep gully that runs behind Sally White's house, the site of one of the most recent "Knobby" reports. Mrs. White claims to have seen the animal three times, the last on Tuesday about 8:30 p.m. "I heard the dog barking and I looked out," she said. "he was barking and jumping up. When he did that I knew there was something outside that was more than another dog." "I looked down the path and I saw it - something long and black coming up through the woods. Its the same thing I've seen twice before, once before Christmas and once right after." That's the best description, Mrs. white says, she can give of "knobby."

But others who claim to have seen it wandering along the roadsides, snatching food from a trash dump and making his way through the woods say "Knobby" is about six feet tall, weighs about 200 pounds, has a small head, flat face and dark, hairy body. Speculation about the creature's identity ranges from wandering mountain panther to escaped carnival baboon to misplaced bear to Big Foot, the supposed missing link between man and ape. A state park developer drove from eastern North Carolina to Toluca to check the Big Foot possibility. Two other researchers, working on a project for a Massachusetts university, spent at least one night on Carpenter's Knob checking out their own theories about "Knobby." Area residents say they do not know whether the men have left the area.

At least 16 "Knobby" sightings have been reported since late December in the vicinity of Carpenter's Knob. Earlier this week Forest Price of Casar, a community located about 10 miles west of Toluca, reported finding his goat dead of a broken neck and speculated that "Knobby" may have been the killer. His brother said he saw the creature roaming the woods near their homes. An animal den and tracks were found about two miles from the Price houses. Searchers said the tracks were at least as large as a man's hand and similarly shaped with a thumb-like protrusion. But most people, both hunters and wildlife protectors, are turning up no trace of the mysterious creature as they comb spots where sightings have been reported. "Most of this talk is just plain old hearsay," said Clyde Price, whose relatives own a large tract of land near the top of Carpenter's Knob. "When something like this gets started it gets bigger and bigger."

Recent 'Knobby' Sighting Rekindles North Carolina Legend

Guardian Angel Keeps Watch Over 'The Gap'

Posted: 14 Jun 2010 08:36 AM PDT

nzherald - In those bleak moments when the lost souls stood atop the cliff, wondering whether to jump, the sound of the wind and the waves was broken by a soft voice. "Why don't you come and have a cup of tea?" the stranger would ask. And when they turned to him, his smile was often their salvation.

For almost 50 years, Don Ritchie has lived across the street from Australia's most notorious suicide spot, a rocky cliff at the entrance to Sydney Harbour called The Gap. And in that time, the man widely regarded as a guardian angel has shepherded countless people away from the edge.

What some consider grim, Ritchie considers a gift. How wonderful, the former life insurance salesman says, to save so many. How wonderful to sell them life.

"You can't just sit there and watch them," says Ritchie, now 84, perched on his beloved green leather chair, from which he keeps a watchful eye on the cliff outside. "You gotta try and save them. It's pretty simple."

Since the 1800s, Australians have flocked to The Gap to end their lives, with little more than a 3-foot (1 metre) fence separating them from the edge.

Local officials say around one person a week commits suicide there, and in January, the Woollahra Council applied for 2.1 million Australian dollars ($1.7 million) in federal funding to build a higher fence and overhaul security.

In the meantime, Ritchie keeps up his voluntary watch. The council recently named Ritchie and Moya, his wife of 58 years, 2010's Citizens of the Year.

He's saved 160 people, according to the official tally, but that's only an estimate. Ritchie doesn't keep count. He just knows he's watched far more walk away from the edge than go over it.

Dianne Gaddin likes to believe Ritchie was at her daughter's side before she jumped in 2005. Though he can't remember now, she is comforted by the idea that Tracy felt his warmth in her final moments.

"He's an angel," she says. "Most people would be too afraid to do anything and would probably sooner turn away and run away. But he had the courage and the charisma and the care and the magnetism to reach people who were coming to the end of their tether."

Something about Ritchie exudes a feeling of calm. His voice has a soothing raspiness to it, and his pale blue eyes are gentle. Though he stands tall at just over 6"2 (an inch shorter, he notes with a grin, than he used to be), he hardly seems imposing.

Each morning, he climbs out of bed, pads over to the bedroom window of his modest, two-story home, and scans the cliff. If he spots anyone standing alone too close to the precipice, he hurries to their side.

Some he speaks with are fighting medical problems, others suffering mental illness. Sometimes, the ones who jump leave behind reminders of themselves on the edge - notes, wallets, shoes. Ritchie once rushed over to help a man on crutches. By the time he arrived, the crutches were all that remained.

In his younger years, he would occasionally climb the fence to hold people back while Moya called the police. He would help rescue crews haul up the bodies of those who couldn't be saved. And he would invite the rescuers back to his house afterward for a comforting drink.

It all nearly cost him his life once. A chilling picture captured decades ago by a local news photographer shows Ritchie struggling with a woman, inches from the edge. The woman is seen trying to launch herself over the side - with Ritchie the only thing between her and the abyss. Had she been successful, he would have gone over, too.

These days, he keeps a safer distance. The council installed security cameras this year and the invention of mobile phones means someone often calls for help before he crosses the street.

But he remains available to lend an ear, though he never tries to counsel, advise or pry. He just gives them a warm smile, asks if they'd like to talk and invites them back to his house for tea. Sometimes, they join him.

"I'm offering them an alternative, really," Ritchie says. "I always act in a friendly manner. I smile."

A smile cannot, of course, save everyone; the motivations behind suicide are too varied. But simple kindness can be surprisingly effective. Mental health professionals tell the story of a note left behind by a man who jumped off San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way to the bridge, the man wrote, I will not jump.

By offering compassion, Ritchie helps those who are suicidal think beyond the terrible present moment, says psychiatrist Gordon Parker, executive director of the Black Dog Institute, a mood disorder research center that has supported the council's efforts to improve safety at The Gap.

"They often don't want to die, it's more that they want the pain to go away," Parker says. "So anyone that offers kindness or hope has the capacity to help a number of people."

Kevin Hines wishes someone like Ritchie was there the day he jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge in 2000. For 40 agonising minutes, the then-19-year-old paced the bridge, weeping, and hoping someone would ask him what was wrong. One tourist finally approached - but simply asked him to take her picture. Moments later, he jumped.

Hines, who suffers from bipolar disorder, was severely injured, but eventually recovered. Today he says if one person had shown they were not blind to his pain, he probably would never have jumped.

"A smile can go a long way - caring can go even further. And the fact that he offers them tea and he just listens, he's really all they wanted," Hines says. "He's all a lot of suicidal people want."

In 2006, the government recognised Ritchie's efforts with a Medal of the Order of Australia, among the nation's highest civilian honours. It hangs on his living room wall above a painting of a sunshine someone left in his mailbox. On it is a message calling Ritchie "an angel that walks amongst us."

He smiles bashfully. "It makes you - oh, I don't know," he says, looking away. "I feel happy about it."

But he speaks readily and fondly of one woman he saved, who came back to thank him. He spotted her sitting alone one day, her purse already beyond the fence. He invited her to his house to meet Moya and have tea. The couple listened to her problems and shared breakfast with her. Eventually, her mood improved and she drove home.

A couple of months later, she returned with a bottle of champagne. And about once a year, she visits or writes, assuring them she is happy and well.

There have been a few, though, that he could not save. One teenager ignored his coaxings and suddenly jumped. A wind blew the boy's hat into Ritchie's outstretched hand.

He later found out the teen had lived next door, years earlier. His mother brought Ritchie flowers and thanked him for trying. If you couldn't have talked him out of it, she told him, no one could.

Despite all he has seen, he says he is not haunted by the ones who were lost. He cannot remember the first suicide he witnessed, and none have plagued his nightmares. He says he does his best with each person, and if he loses one, he accepts that there was nothing more he could have done.

Nor have he and Moya ever felt burdened by the location of their home.

"I think, 'Isn't it wonderful that we live here and we can help people?"' Moya says, her husband nodding in agreement.

Their life has been a good one, they say. They raised three beautiful daughters and now have three grandchildren to adore. They have travelled the world, and their home is decorated with statues and masks from their journeys. Ritchie proudly points out a dried, shellacked piranha - a souvenir from their vacation to the Amazon, where he insisted on swimming with the creatures (to Moya's dismay).

Until about a year ago, the former Navy seaman enjoyed a busy social life, regularly lunching with friends. But battles with cancer and his advancing years have taken their toll, and now he spends most days at home with Moya, buried in a good book. His current read: the Dalai Lama's The Art of Happiness.

Every now and then, he looks up from his books to scan the horizon for anyone who might need him. He'll keep doing so, he says, for as long as he's here.

And when he's not?

He chuckles softly.

"I imagine somebody else will come along and do what I've been doing."

He gazes through the glass door to the cliff outside. And his face is lit with a smile.

**********

WHEN PAIN IS MASKED WITH A SMILE

news.com - Questions always flow in the wake of a suicide. When someone who apparently had everything to live for takes their own life, answers are especially hard to find.

Channel 10 newsreader Charmaine Dragun was successful, intelligent, talented and popular.

The 29-year-old seemed to have it all - a loving family, a long-term relationship and a stellar career as a prime-time news anchor.

Yet, the "beautiful and bubbly" Dragun jumped to her death at The Gap - a notorious suicide spot in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs.

Family, friends and colleagues are stunned, struggling to understand what could have prompted such a tragic decision.

Dragun took her life just hours before she was due to read the 5pm Perth news bulletin from the network's Sydney studios alongside co-anchor Tim Webster.

A shocked Webster said: "She was going great, we thought", while fellow Ten newsreader Deborah Knight described Dragun's death as "completely unexpected".

"No one had any idea how sad she must have been," she said at the weekend. "People are now wondering if we should have taken more interest in what was going on in her life."

The fact that suicide often comes out of the blue is a reminder that profound private suffering can lurk behind even the brightest personality.

Unlike many physical illnesses, depression is often easy to conceal.

And if someone is determined enough to keep up a positive front, even those closest to them may not realise the extent of their despair.

"It can be surprising why someone who seemingly has so many things ahead of them would do such a thing," says Associate Professor Michael Baigent, clinical adviser to national organisation aimed at addressing depression beyondblue.

"They can often put on a brave front until it's too late, which is the tragedy of it all."

Those who are the most successful often put the greatest pressure on themselves to achieve - but, worryingly, also believe they can't afford to let their problems show.

"People who have high expectations of themselves, you might call them perfectionists, will often be very hard on themselves," Baigent says.

"They don't let on (that they need help); it makes them feel weaker."

Still shy of her 30th birthday, Dragun had risen through the ranks of a highly competitive industry, to secure one of the most sought-after positions in television news.

She was a rising star with opportunities stretching out before her.

But success brings its own pressures and the fear of failure can be hard to shake.

In a society driven by competition, where the young are especially impatient to prove themselves and forge ahead professionally, that kind of constant pressure can have devastating consequences.

Those who have lost someone to suicide are often left with feelings of guilt overlying their grief and a need to know why it happened.

The search for explanations can be particularly difficult when someone has chosen to end a life which, to all outward appearances, had so much promise and was going so well.

However, as Baigent points out: "It's not necessarily just your achievements and successes in life that make you happy."

2GB radio presenter Jason Morrison, Ten's former news editor, told the LiveNews website that Dragun moved from Perth to Sydney after the "promotion of a lifetime", but noted that it came at a price.

"It also meant turning her life around and starting from scratch in a new town," he said.

In an interview last year Dragun spoke of difficulties in relocating from Western Australia - where she was born and raised.

"I have a real love-hate relationship with Sydney," she said.

"It would be hard to imagine being away from my family and bringing up a family over there, but we'll have to see what it all brings."

Kelly Nestor, who was formerly based in Melbourne as a Ten newsreader for Adelaide, recalled feeling cut off from family and community.

"I feel very strongly about this," Nestor said. "It's a bad management decision to dislocate someone from their audience.

'You have no contact with your audience or connection with your community. You watch your colleagues in the office getting invites and you feel like a second-class citizen because no one in that city knows who you are."

A friend who worked with Dragun in Perth said she had recently talked about "issues" she was having in Sydney, and discussed returning to her hometown one day.

Colleagues paid tribute over the weekend to the "bubbly and beautiful" Dragun, saying she was "genuinely loved and admired by everyone".

But it's possible the newsreader did not see herself that way.

Depression tends to warp people's perceptions, so that all sufferers can see is the tunnel without the light at the end.

"It's an illness that clouds the way you see yourself and people around you, the way you see your future," Baigent explains.

"External indicators of success, or apparent success to other people, doesn't always stack up with how that person feels about themselves.

"Someone can be the most successful person in your view . . . but in their own perspective they don't see it that way - there's doom and gloom on the horizon."

Dragun's grieving family said they were going through a challenging time but wanted her remembered "as an angel that brought joy and light to everyone she met".

The tragedy is, she may have been unable to hold onto that light and joy for herself.

NOTE: I know that this post has little to do with alternative news, per say....but this is, IMO, a very good example of how small acts of compassion may make enormous differences...Lon

Guardian Angel Keeps Watch Over 'The Gap'

Sheedi Mela Devotees Make Offerings to Crocodiles

Posted: 14 Jun 2010 08:37 AM PDT

dailymail - As he dangles his writhing baby over the open jaws of a hungry-looking crocodile, you would be forgiven for thinking this man had lost his mind.

But there is method in his madness, for he is a Sheedi devotee seeking blessings for his five-month-old son.

The terrifying event is part of an annual spiritual festival in Karachi, which sees a community of African-descended Pakistanis appease the crocodile – which is regarded as sacred.

During the Sheedi Mela, devotees make pledges to a shrine for the reptiles and then head for the water to offer them fresh goat meat.

Acceptance of the meat is regarded as a sign of luck and property and the faithful believe the beasts won't attack because they are the disciples of the saint, Khwaja Hasan.

The festival begins with a procession of girls who carry dishes of meats and sweets to the crocodile shrine, while Sheedi elders offer prayers and devotees dance in bare feet.

Crocodiles are so revered in the community that they are buried with the same respect as human beings.

The animals are bathed and wrapped in burial shrouds before being buried in a specially-designated graveyard.

Sheedi Mela Devotees Make Offerings to Crocodiles

Strange Sounds Baffle Residents in Sunchild Reserve, Alberta

Posted: 14 Jun 2010 07:54 AM PDT

Click for video

ALN - Strange sounds this spring in the forest at Sunchild Reserve have some local residents baffled and a bit afraid.

So far, the legendary Big Foot has been ruled out — this time.

A recording of howls, whoops and screeching from the woods near Baptiste River, allegedly from Sunchild, has been making the rounds on the via cellphone and Facebook.

Carol Kelly, executive director at Medicine River Wildlife Centre, said there are some weird springtime noises made by owls.

"Owls make the most amazing noises and there's so many different species of owls out there," Kelly said.

"The babies are talking back and forth to one another. There are breeding calls. There's communication as they are raising the babies. There's all kinds of stuff."

Sunchild resident Paul Bigchild Sr., 58, said he has definitely heard strange sounds, about three times this spring late at night from the woods across the river near his home.

He just wants to know if it's animal, bird, human or other.

Bigchild has heard the recording and doesn't know what to make of the three distinct sounds, which are accompanied by dogs barking.

"I've never heard anything like that before. It sounded like a man and someone said it sounded like a wolf," Bigchild said about long, mournful howls in the recording.

The chilling squawks may be some sort of bird, but why would there be such a fuss in the dark of night, said Bigchild before walking along the river. Mist obscured the depth of the forest as rain fell from gloomy, grey skies.

Bigchild wants to keep an open mind.

He's heard elders speak of the spirits in the forest. He recalled the glimpse of a strange figure running along the river. People in the area claim to have found footprints from Big Foot.

"If you see something out there, people won't believe it. They'll never believe you," said Bigchild, who has lived on the reserve all his life, except when he left for school.

According to the Canadian Sasquatch Research Organization, the audio recording doesn't help their cause.

Shaun Johnson, director of operations, said CSRO members say the recording is suspicious and considered a fake.

"I don't lend credibility to this tape," said Johnson, of Calgary.

It could easily be constructed from previous reported recordings readily available on the Internet, some dating back to the 1970s.

He said 95 per cent of reported recordings are a hoax.

"It's just the wingnut factor that comes with this kind of stuff. However, there is a very small percentage that are absolutely credible and unexplainable from very credible people."

Johnson said the wilderness area at Sunchild is a likely location for Sasquatch to travel with minimal human activity and the long history of mysterious occurrences along the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains.

"I personally think it's more absurd to believe that all this anecdotal evidence is being made by humans than by an actual endangered species, especially some of the footprint evidence that is quite detailed," Johnson said.

For more information about the research organization, which is dedicated to prove the existence of Sasquatch or Big Foot, go to www.csro.ca

Former Sunchild resident Wilford Butterfly, 56, has been curious for years.

As a teenager, Butterfly said he saw footprints along the Baptiste River that were easily twice the size of a man's.

"When you're out in the bush you hear all kinds of noises and you don't think anything of it," said Butterfly.

"I'm absolutely a believer in old Big Foot or whatever he is."

Thanks to Billy Green for the heads up!

NOTE: well, I've that howl before...and I'm positive it wasn't an owl. What do you think? Lon

Strange Sounds Baffle Residents in Sunchild Reserve, Alberta

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