Phantoms and Monsters

Growing Up With Sasquatch - Marysville, Ohio
Searching for the Ghost Riders at the Chisholm Trail Museum
Fortean / Oddball News - 7/5/2010
Fijian Villagers Fear Unknown Sea Creature

Growing Up With Sasquatch - Marysville, Ohio

Posted: 05 Jul 2010 12:37 PM PDT

I received the following fascinating email from Scott Harper. He gave me permission to post his entire account:

Hello,
　
I just found your blog via a newslink to your piece on Autumn Williams' new book, Enoch: A Bigfoot Story. I saw the e-mail link at the bottom of your page and wanted to sent these accounts to you. Though I've lived in Florida for just over 12 years now, I grew up in Ohio. I'm convinced that we had a Sasquatch that would pass through the area on a regular basis. This conviction is due to both sightings of it ( them? ) and other evidence. I had actually e-mailed Autumn Williams with these accounts several years ago after watching a few episodes of Mysterious Encounters when it was in production. She never bothered to write back in response, so I don't even know if she received the message. Since then, I contacted a researcher in Ohio with these events. Sorry to say, I don't recall the man's name. He was excited about it when he replied back to me with questions, but I've heard nothing since.
　
My parents and I moved into a house that was only a couple hundred yards from an abandoned railroad bed in Marysville, Ohio when I was 5-years-old. It wasn't long after that we, my friends and I, started our forays to the railroad bed. During the Summer months, the weeds there would grow far taller than we were. For us, it was akin to being in a forest. Each Summer, we'd carve a path through, using sticks to hack and slash at the weeds, cutting out a narrow, curving path and a larger open area where we'd gather to talk and whatnot.
　
When the Sasquatch first turned up, or, I should say, when we first noticed it, we were still young. We had no idea what was there. We felt that something was there on occasion, watching us. But for a long time we saw nothing. Then one of my friends reported having seen something large and hairy there one night. He saw it from a distance and only briefly. The rest of us didn't take him too seriously at first. He kept hounding us with it, though. Then another friend, a girl who's grandparents lived in the lot adjoining the railroad bed, saw something one night. She mostly lived with her grandparents due to family issues and her bedroom window looked right out at the old railroad bed. Having a second report of something large and hairy up there at night made us all take it more seriously. Still, we were young and stupid. And the railroad bed was our place to go to get away from our parents. It was our place. We weren't going to give it up easily. Being so young still, we had no idea what we had. We started calling it a Troll. As we never had the impression that it was there full-time. So, we learned to live with it.
　
It's been suggested to me before, upon sharing these events, that the Sasquatch may have been young itself. I don't know.
　
Several years went by. We were easing into our early teens. That's when things started to pick up. Maybe there was a juvenile. Maybe it was just watching us grow and decided that, while it was willing to allow young children to play there, it wasn't going to be so tolerant of older children. But the girl who lived right next to the railroad bed had several more night-time sightings. She was actually so afraid of what she saw that she convinced herself that she dreamed these, rather than truly admit that there was something there. I had three sightings of it/them over the years. She was with me for the first. We were in her grandparents' yard, walking up the short, gentle hill to the railroad bed. She froze and put her arm across my chest, stopping me. I looked at her. She was staring, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, pointing straight ahead. Through a narrow gap in the weeds, I saw what looked like the head and shoulders of a large humanoid figure with dark black hair. It was either sitting or crouched, holding perfectly still. We were seeing its profile. We backed slowly down the hill until it was out of sight, then turned and ran.
　
After that, she refused to ever go back up there. Not even as part of a group. The following day, we told another friend. He wanted to see the spot where the creature had been seen. It was broad daylight, so I took him up there, albeit reluctantly. The only sign we saw of it was a large patch of flattened grasses where it had been.
　
Somewhere in there, he and I also found what we referred to as the "vine cave", which I now believe to have been a nest. From our point of view, it simply popped into existence literally overnight in the large, open area we'd carved. He and I actually crawled into it a few times, but always felt very uncomfortable in it and always left quickly. Not long after the discovery of the "vine cave", a couple of rival kids destroyed it, thinking we'd built it. I think that may have well caused the increase in encounters with the Sasquatch and it's attempts to chase us away.
　
My second and third sightings were spaced out over the next few years. Each time I saw it was in broad daylight. I was in our driveway, pulling weeds that were growing up through the gravel. Movement from up at the railroad bed caught my attention. I looked up there to see a tall, humanoid being with long arms walking along the hill, moving to my right. It was covered in dark black hair. I've always suspected it was the same creature I saw on my first sighting, but don't know for sure. I watched it walk for a few seconds until it was blocked from view by a neighbor's storage shed. Then I turned and ran into the house. I didn't go back up to the railroad bed for weeks.
　
My third sighting was from a far greater distance. On the other side of the railroad bed was a fenced-in area of cow pasture and the local water tower. Beyond that was a trailer court. I was in our upstairs back bedroom one afternoon, again, during broad daylight. I saw what I first took to be a rolled-up rug by a trash can back in the trailer court. I could just barely see it, due to the distance. I looked away, then looked back. What I was seeing seemed shorter, as if it had sagged, or crouched. I kept looking away, then looking back, wanting to see if it moved. I couldn't tell if it was moving or not. Finally, I looked away for about ten minutes. When I looked back, whatever it had been was gone.
　
Another friend of mine lived in a house just beyond the far side of the trailer court. A wooden privacy fence divided his back yard from the trailer court. He once told me that he and his family would sometimes smell a heavy, musky scent at night. They would sometimes hear what sounded like heavy footfalls outside their house at night. He said his mother even claimed to have heard a loud heartbeat on occasion.
　
All in all, we were lucky. We gave it plenty of incentive to lash out at us. Luckily, it never did anything to hurt us. Just scare us, employing fear tactics. We were just too dumb and stubborn to pay close enough attention. Even after we'd all seen it.
　
Aside from the direct sightings of the creature(s), we had other evidence that it was there as well. Once, when I was in my teens and at the railroad bed alone, something that sounded very large was in the weeds and brush ahead of me, thrashing at the weeds, causing them to move and make a lot of noise. I thought at first it was the same friend who's wanted to go check out the site of my first direct sighting of the Sasquatch. About the same moment I realized that whatever was ahead of me was too large to be him a rock about the size of my fist was thrown at me, just narrowly missing hitting me in the head. I ran and refused to go back to the railroad bed for weeks after. Next time I was there alone I was in the same place and the same weed-thrashing occurred again. Luckily, no rock was thrown that time. Another time that same friend who wanted to see the spot of my first sighting and I were at the railroad bed by ourselves. There had to have been at the very least two of the creatures with us, one on either side of us. Nothing was thrown at us, but the same weed-thrashing noises started up to each side of us. Oddly, this time, nothing was moving that we could see. Both of us clearly heard the sounds, but couldn't see a thing moving. Still, after holding our ground for only a few moments, we both ran.
　
This same friend also decided to step up our own claims on the railroad bed after he and found a rock cairn built on our path one day. The cairn was small. My friend spouted his usual line of, "No f^*&ing monkey is going to chase me away!" and promptly kicked the cairn, scattered the stones. We gathered up new stones and built a new, larger, cairn in place of the one we'd found. We left and went back the next day to find our own cairn scattered and new, larger, one in its place. My friend immediately kicked it apart and we built a new one, larger still, in place of the one we'd found. This went on for days; each day we'd find that the cairn we'd built the day before had been wrecked and new, larger, one would be in its place. Each day my friend would scatter the new one and we'd build our own, larger yet, in place of the most recent one we'd found. Secretly, I thought he was going back up to the railroad bed later an d building the new ones we'd "find" the next day and he thought the same of me. Finally, after this had gone on long enough that the cairns were getting to be a bit larger than shoebox size, my friend decided to go one better and scent mark the cairn we'd just built. He told me what he was going to do and promptly unzipped his pants and urinated on the rock cairn we had just built. Afterward, we left and went to his house. We hung out on his front porch for two or three hours, talking, then decided to go check on the new, scent marked, cairn. The smell hit us when we were still a good hundred yards, maybe more, from the cairn. We knew what we'd find and it scared both of us. As we'd been together for the entire intervening time, each knew that the other had not gone back to the railroad bed to do anything. The scent was an overpowering musk that was so strong it made us sick. Think skunk concentrate. We held our breath, ran in, saw what we knew we'd find - a new cairn that was noticeably larger than the one we'd built a few hours prior - and ran back out into clear air to breath. That stench lingered for days, but that ended the rock cairn war.
　
There were other times, before and after that, when my friends and I would be at the railroad bed and smell what smelled like a skunk. We also once found what looked to be shallow, crude pit toilets. We saw what looked to be finger marks in the mud and suspected they'd been dug out with very large bare hands. Several of the toilets contained what looked to be human fecal matter, only far larger.
　
The next door neighbors we had while I was growing up were very wasteful people. They didn't believe in leftovers from meals. If something wasn't eaten, it went into the trash, not the refrigerator. Their trash was torn open many, many, many times. They went to the expense of having a brick wall that was maybe 5-foot-tall built around the area they kept their trash cans in. There was a green picket gate on the front for the garbage collectors to open to get access to the trash. They also bought trash cans with locking lids. None of it did any good. Whatever kept tearing into the trash would sometimes open the gate, leaving it open, and knew how to unlock the locked trashcan lids. I've often wondered if their trash wasn't why the Sasquatch liked that area and if it wasn't using the railroad bed as a convenient staging place to raid both their trash and trash from the aforementioned trailer court.
　
I have no evidence to support these claims. We were young and never thought to gather any evidence - something I kick myself for to this day. Having a Sasquatch passing though so closely so often didn't seem special to us because we were growing up with it.
　
The address for the house my parents and I lived in while all this went on is 623 East 6th Street, Marysville, Ohio 43040. We moved in when I was 5-years-old and moved out in 1998 when I was 22, only days before my 23rd birthday. Last I was told, the railroad bed area has become even more abandoned and overgrown. But I've no idea if the Sasquatch is still there, or not.

Scott Harper
ScottHarper.com

Growing Up With Sasquatch - Marysville, Ohio

Searching for the Ghost Riders at the Chisholm Trail Museum

Posted: 05 Jul 2010 12:13 PM PDT

DodgeCity - A second group of ghost hunters is taking a closer look at Wellington's Chisholm Trail Museum after they claim to have found evidence of paranormal activity.

Wichita League of Paranormal Investigators Jan Cohee of Wellington and Brendan Brannan converged on the museum, Friday night, setting up night vision cameras, voice recorders and electronic field radiation testers to see if their ghostly lightning might strike twice.

About a year ago, the group was in the museum and says they captured voices, thumps, heaving breathing and responses to questions.

"We had a lot of personal experiences," said Cohee. "When I was down in the basement, I had my camera in my lap and my legs crossed and it was picked up and put on the other side of my leg," said Cohee.

"We heard footsteps," said Brannan. "but it was kind of a cat and mouse game. You'd go in one room and hear it on the other end,"

The two investigators aren't the only ones who have felt something odd in the museum.

Patty Hatcher, a regular volunteer at the museum claims she saw a man appear in a doorway and then suddenly he was gone.

"I started to say hello and then he was gone - he was just like a tall gentleman," said Hatcher. "I can hear little footsteps upstairs,"

The two were hoping not only for sounds, but for more visual evidence of spirits in the museum.

As Cohee started her journey into the depths of the basement, she told of her first time in the museum's lowest level. Traveling to the right of the staircase, Cohee said she not only heard a ghost, but saw one.

"I turned to the right and I had seen something peek around this wall at me and then when I was walking up to it, I heard two taps and I was telling one of the other investigators to come here, that I had seen something around the corner at me and when I went back to listen to the recording, there was a 'help me'," said Cohee. "The tapping was a 'look here' and you can clearly hear the 'help me' - it was a white-looking mass - but you could see the facial features. You could see the eyes and nose, the mouth."

Feelings of electricity or soft touches are common, Cohee says, and she says she's experienced some before in the museum, but mostly the spirits come through audio capture.

Brannan related his story from last years hunt as he traveled to the third floor - the former surgical area of the former hospital - in search of ghosts. Near a room filled with old toys, the Wichita man said he got responses to a question asked in the dark.

"I said, is the fire truck your favorite toy, if it is could you please knock loudly twice and then there were two loud bangs in here," said Brannan. "I was just talking with the people downstairs and they said the guy that owned the santa suit (which is on display in the toy room) was a firefighter, so it's all coming together now,"

The two ghost hunters traveled in the darkened rooms, asking questions and waiting for responses, all as voice recorders and camera equipment rolled. The two still have to go over footage to make sure they didn't miss anything, but say more than likely that they will be back.

Museum volunteer Richard Gilfillan of Wellington has seen groups of ghost hunters come to the museum before, but says he wants solid answers.

"People are curious and so am I," said Gilfillan. "I want to see something, seriously. I want to see something concrete. I want solid evidence that they are here."

**********
originally posted on 5/6/2009

Night at the Chisholm Trail Museum

As the sky darkened and Wellington residents were settling in for the night Saturday, members of the Wichita Paranormal Research Society started work at the Chisholm Trail Museum readying themselves for a night of spirit searching.

The group was drawn to the museum for it's nearly 100 years of history – not only the building itself, but also for the articles inside it.

"It's got such interesting history that we decided to investigate and see if we find something paranormal there," said Investigator and Public Relations Manager Sherry Curry. The group investigates every Saturday and focuses on authenticating evidence and documenting the existence of any paranormal activity via audio, video and other electronic means of equipment.

President of the Chisholm Trail Museum Board of Directors Richard Gilfillan says the building is one of Wellington's treasures and he's not surprised the group took interest.

The building was erected in 1916 by Dr. A.R. Hatcher to house the Hatcher Hospital and Clinic. His son, Dr. A.C. Hatcher, also a doctor, joined the staff in 1949 and later took charge of the clinic after his father's retirement. Dr. A.R. Hatcher died at age 75 in 1960. Then four years later, Dr. A.C. Hatcher, only 46, walked into the hospital with chest pains and died. With no one to run the hospital, it eventually closed and became a museum, Gilfillan said.

The former hospital is now home to everything from military mementos and uniforms, to old hospital equipment, farming tools and even some prehistoric fossils and mammoth bones.

Having spent many hours in the museum taking groups through the history of the County, Gilfillan says he's had children say the place is haunted, though he doesn't quite believe it himself.

"I think it's just the mannequins...they are a little creepy," the former teacher said. Automatic lights also seem to frighten younger visitors as they blame the change on ghosts.

This isn't the first time the society has been to Sumner County, however.

A trip to the Oxford Mill resulted in some spooky results.

"All of a sudden they heard glasses clanging. They had slid and had clanged into each other," said Curry. A male voice was recorded saying, "Have a seat" when Curry and another investigator walked outside, while she and another were touched on the elbow, Curry said.

The group has even visited the old Oxford High School in an attempt to make contact with spirits that have been left behind.

"The old high school probably more so than any of them. Nothing happened while we were there but we got a ton of audio back," she said.

Elliott says there is a story of a student who died in a bus accident and on the audio, he says the society picked up a young girl's voice.

"We picked up the voice of a little girl and there was nobody in the building with us, not even the employees," Elliott said.

After infrared cameras were placed on every floor of the museum and the members got their personal equipment ready - the hunt was on as the group split into teams.

Curry and Bob Gilmer took the third floor, an add-on to the building that was used for operations. Climbing the stairs by the light of their flashlights, the two entered the pitch-black third floor and started work. The pair introduced themselves to any spirits in the room and then started to ask questions and make requests.

"We aren't here to hurt you, we just want to communicate," Curry said. "If you can see me, move towards my green light." The light on the electro-magnet meter picks up spikes in electro-magnetic currents, which some believe are caused by the paranormal.

Lori Dewinkler and Conway Springs native Donna Chaffin first took the basement and then moved to the first floor military room, calmly repeating questions and requests.

Board member Brian Ferguson and Gilfillan even got in on the act, with Ferguson going down in the basement with the society members and Gilfillan keeping a watchful eye on the infrared camera feeds.

Though the night seemed quiet, the investigators say there was more going on than meets the eye.

"It stayed quiet with the exception of three different incidents on the second and third floor. We had one person at the end of the hall and you would hear footsteps at the other end of the hall and there was nobody down there," Elliott said. "I was there one time and heard it myself. It definitely sounded like somebody was walking around at the end of the hallway and there was nobody around."

That's not the only thing the investigators found. While discussions were taking place in the basement, digital audio recorders were able to pick up sounds the society members couldn't hear.

"They were just talking and weren't really asking questions and you hear a voice in the background say, 'It's all right,'" Elliott said. Another incident occurred under similar circumstances, the investigator said, this time with whispers holding a conversation in the background.

Elliott says it's more common to pick up voices on the recorders than to pick up visuals on still or video camera.

"It happens all the time," he said.

The museum seems to be one of the more active spirit centers in the County.

"It looks like it's pretty on par with the Oxford Mill," Elliott said. "Regardless, it doesn't seem to care what anyone's doing, it just does it's own thing," he said of the spirit caught on the recorder.

More results may come in later as more members of the team go over their audio findings, Elliott said.

Though not a believer himself, Gilfillan says he hopes more people will visit as a result of the ghost hunt.

"Maybe this will bring some attention to the museum. A handful of us work down there for nothing and it's strictly to help and promote the town so anything that brings attention to it is welcome," he said.

Searching for the Ghost Riders at the Chisholm Trail Museum

Fortean / Oddball News - 7/5/2010

Posted: 05 Jul 2010 11:55 AM PDT

2 Two-Headed Calves Born During the Weekend

AP - A farmer in northern Egypt says his cow has given birth to a two-headed calf that he calls a "divine miracle."

Sobhy el-Ganzoury said Saturday it took two hours and much pulling to deliver the rare calf. He said the difficult birth has weakened the calf's legs.

El-Ganzoury said the veterinarian informed him that the calf, which was born this week, is now in stable condition and is expected to survive. He said he intends to keep the animal as a reminder that "God is able to do anything."

The calf still can't stand up because of its heavy heads and weak legs, and is being fed her mother's milk with a baby bottle.

UPDATE - CAIRO (AP) — A farmer in northern Egypt says his cow has given birth to a two-headed calf that he calls a "divine miracle."

Sobhy el-Ganzoury said Saturday it took two hours and much pulling to deliver the rare calf. He said the difficult birth has weakened the calf's legs.

El-Ganzoury said the veterinarian informed him that the calf, which was born this week, is now in stable condition and is expected to survive. He said he intends to keep the animal as a reminder that "God is able to do anything."

The calf still can't stand up because of its heavy heads and weak legs, and is being fed her mother's milk with a baby bottle.

----------

FIJI - fijitimes - A cow which gave birth to a calf with two heads in Sigatoka yesterday drew crowds of curious onlookers.

Prem Narayan, the owner, said he came to the aid of his cow at 5.30am when it became obvious that she was having difficulties with labour.

"I called out to two of my neighbours to come and help me because the baby appeared to be stuck. They came and together we started pulling the calf out," he said.

"First one head appeared and then we got a shock when another head suddenly appeared," the 33-year-old sugar cane farmer said.

Word spread throughout the rural community of Ciri on the outskirts of Sigatoka as hundreds of people gathered to witness the curious phenomenon.

"This is the first time anything like this has ever happened here, so everybody came to have a look," Mr Narayan said.

Unfortunately, the calf lived for almost an hour before it collapsed on to its side and passed away.

"I buried the calf but the main thing is - the mother's okay," he said.

**********

2-Billion-Year-Old Fossils May Be Earliest Known Multicellular Life

A newly discovered group of 2.1-billion-year-old fossil organisms may be the earliest known example of complex life on Earth. They could help scientists understand not just when higher life forms evolved, but why.

The fossils — flat discs almost 5 inches across, with scalloped edges and radial slits — were either complex colonies of single-celled organisms, or early animals.

Either way, they represent an early crossing of a critical evolutionary threshold, and suggest that the crossing was made necessary by radical changes in Earth's atmosphere.

"There is clearly a relationship between the concentration of oxygen and multicellularity," said Abderrazak El Albani, a paleobiologist at France's University of Poitiers. The fossils are described in the July 1 issue of Nature.

Single-celled organisms emerged from the primordial soup about 3.4 billion years ago. Almost immediately, some gathered in mats. But it was another 1.4 billion years before the first truly multicellular organism, called Grypania spiralis, appears in the fossil record.

Grypania may have been either a bacterial colony or a eukaryote — an organism with specialized cells, enclosed in a membrane. Whatever Grypania was, it was one of the few known examples of complex life until about 550 million years ago, when the fossil record explodes in diversity.

The newly described fossils, which have yet to be given a species name, make Grypania less solitary. They lived at roughly the same time — Grypania in what is now the northern United States, the new fossils in Gabon. By raising the possiblity that multicellularity was a trend rather than an aberration, they also hint at an answer to the question of why complex life evolved, not just when. Continue reading at wired.com

**********

Extraordinary Map Reveals Earth's Gravity Field For The First Time

(click image to enlarge) - dailymail - It is one of the most fundamental and mysterious forces in the Universe.

But this is the first glimpse of what the gravity field which surrounds the Earth looks like in a unique map created be a sophisticated European satellite.

The map is known as a geoid - an imaginary global ocean dictated by gravity in the absence of tides and currents.

It was first described almost 200 years ago but this is the first time it has been mapped in real-time.

Gravity does not exert an equal force everywhere on Earth. Factors such as the rotation of the planet, the effects of mountains and density variations in Earth's interior mean that this fundamental force is not quite the same all over.

The extraordinary map will be used to measure ocean circulation, sea-level change and ice dynamics.

'GOCE is delivering where it promised: in the fine spatial scales,' GOCE Mission Manager Rune Floberghagen said.

'We have already been able to identify significant improvements in the high-resolution 'geoid', and the gravity model will improve as more data become available.'

ESA launched GOCE in March 2009 to map Earth's gravity with unprecedented accuracy and resolution.

The model, based on only two months of data, from November and December 2009, shows the excellent capability of the satellite to map tiny variations in Earth's gravity.

GOCE's final gravity map and geoid will be used in geophysics and surveying to oceanography and sea-level research.

Dr Floberghagen added.' Over continents, and in particular in regions poorly mapped with terrestrial or airborne techniques, we can already conclude that GOCE is changing our understanding of the gravity field.'

'Over major parts of the oceans, the situation is even clearer, as the marine gravity field at high spatial resolution is for the first time independently determined by an instrument of such quality.'

Chairman of the GOCE Mission Advisory Group, Prof. Reiner Rumme said: 'With each two-month cycle of data, the gravity model will become more detailed and accurate. I am convinced that the data will be of great interest to various disciplines of Earth sciences.'

The satellite was designed to orbit at a very low altitude because gravitational variations are stronger closer to Earth.

Since mid-September 2009, GOCE has been in its gravity-mapping orbit at a mean altitude of just 254.9 km – the lowest orbit sustained over a long period by any Earth observation satellite

Air at this low altitude causes the orbit of a standard satellite to decay very rapidly. But GOCE nullifies the drag by firing an ion thruster using xenon gas to boost its orbit.

It ensures the gravity sensors are flying as though they are in pure freefall, so they pick up only gravity readings and not the disturbing effects from other forces.

To obtain clean gravity readings, there can be no disturbances from moving parts, so the entire satellite is a single extremely sensitive measuring device.

**********

UFOs at Nuclear Bases?

Click link for the Binnall of America interview

Teaser: UFO/Nuke researcher Robert Hastings returns to the program, alongside notable UFO/Nuke witness Bob Salas. In this conversation, we'll find out about Bob's UFO encounter in March of 1967 at Malmstrom Air Force Base, the latest on Robert's investigation into the UFO-Nuke connection, the duo's appearance on Larry King Live back in 2008, tangential aspects of the UFO-Nuke connection such as nuclear submarines and nuclear power plants, what the pair thinks is really going on with UFOs hovering over nuclear facilities, and their impending press conference at the National Press Club in Washington D.C., scheduled for September 27th.

Altogether, it's a fast-paced conversation that covers a hugely important, but all-too-often overlooked area of the UFO phenomenon, with both the researcher who has studiously investigated the story as well as a primary witness to the phenomenon.

Fortean / Oddball News - 7/5/2010

Fijian Villagers Fear Unknown Sea Creature

Posted: 05 Jul 2010 11:12 AM PDT

Above: Was the Fiji sighting a Frilled Shark?

fijitimes - A strange looking marine creature reportedly spotted in lagoon waters of three villages in Cakaudrove are keeping fishermen and divers away from sea.

Naiqaqi Village headman Jepeca Nakuvu said villagers from the neighbouring village of Laucala and Valeni were scared of going out to sea because of the creature.

Ateca Disukavanua, 50, said she was fishing near a copse of mangrove called Dogodogo on Monday when she saw a black creature swimming towards her.

"At first I thought it was a log but then it moved closer and I was so scared because the water was up to my waist I jumped on top of a mangrove stump," she said. "I hung on to that mangrove tree for about an hour and the creature, which was about three foot long, and had flippers like that of a turtle and had a strange long mouth.

"I had never seen such a thing before in my life. I was shaking because it kept hanging around as if it smelt the place where I was standing.

"I only got down when the tide went out and the water was only ankle high."

Mr Nakuvu said men from the three villages armed themselves with cane knives, digging forks and spears and looked for the creature hoping to kill it.

"When we know it is dead we will go out to sea because we are scared because this is something that we are not familiar with," he said.

The village headman said they had lodged a complaint at the Savusavu Police Station.

Above: One of many 'Fiji Mermaid' (Ningyo) hoaxes

NOTE: The speculation and ridicule I have read on other sites in reference to this sighting have led to suggest that this was a frilled shark, eel, yada, yada, yada. But, these accounts fail to mention that the villagers have been fishing these waters for hundreds, if not thousands, of years and are most likely familiar with the odd wildlife living in their waters. Frilled sharks are deep dwellers that are distributed worldwide but in sporadic locations. In the past, a few cryptozoologists have suggested the existence of a giant relative of the frilled shark that is known from the fossil record. Simply, there are many species of fish and other water dwelling animals that we know nothing about. Our oceans are truly the last wilderness on our planet. Look, I'm not saying it wasn't a frilled shark...there have been surface sightings in the past. In fact, there was a sighting of one of these creatures in January 2010 off the coast of Japan. IMO, the physical and behavioral description in this sighting is not that of a frilled shark...or at least the known species of the creature. BTW, I'm fairly certain it wasn't a 'Fiji Mermaid'...Lon

Fijian Villagers Fear Unknown Sea Creature

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