Phantoms and Monsters |  |
- Kongamato: African Dragon
- Fortean / Oddball News: Dr. Who UFO, Poached Egg Jellyfish and Missing Unicorn
- Local People Believe Unidentified Hair Belongs To Chinese Wild Man
| Posted: 24 Nov 2010 11:36 AM PST  During the Jurassic and Cretaceous Ages, about 65 million years ago, there were flying reptiles, pterosaurs. Nearly all of their fossils found have been in marine deposits, so it's most likely that they were fish eaters who lived near coastal waters. Most pterosaurs ranged from size of a sparrow to that of an eagle, but the pteranodon had a wingspan of 27 feet and the quetzalcoatlus had one of up to 60 feet. Africans reported seeing flying animals that match the description of pterosaurs for ages and reported that some people have been killed by them. Those who were shown pictures of the pterodactyl agreed that it was Kongamato. Africans don't see it as a supernatural being, like a mulombe, demon. They regard it as a horrible beast, worse than a rogue lion. The Zambian Kaonde tribe used to carry charms, muchi wa Kongamato, for protection from the beast. Some believe that seeing Kongamato is a death omen. Kenyan Steve Romandi-Menya, said Kongamato, which they call Batamzinga, is said to eat decomposing human flesh and dig up corpses if they're not buried deep enough. The Kitui Wakamba natives believe it flies to the ground from Mount Kenya nightly. In 1925, a native explored a Zambian swamp that was known as demons' territory and was wounded by a strange huge bird. When he was shown a pterosaur's picture, he screamed and fled in horror. In 1956, engineer J.P.F. Brown saw two prehistoric-looking creatures flying over Fort Rosebery, Zambia around 6 PM. They had long tails, narrow heads, pointed teeth and a wingspan of approximately 3 to 3 1/2 feet. Local Awembas aver they live in caves near the Zambezi River. In 1957, a man went to a Fort Rosebery hospital ER with a severe chest wound and told the doctor that a huge bird attacked him in the Bangweulu swamps. When asked to draw a picture of the creature the sketch resembled a pterosaur. In 1988, biologist Roy Mackal PhD led an expedition to Namibia where reports of a creature with a wingspan of up to 30 feet were gathered. He's a vice-president of the International Society of Cryptozoology and was the Scientific Director of the Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau between 1965 and 1975. There was no hard evidence to prove the existence of Kongamato; however team member James Kosi, reportedly saw the cryptid from about 1000 feet away. He described it as a giant glider shaped creature that was black with white markings.  Two species of birds live in Zambia's swampy regions that might be mistaken for the cryptid. The shoebill stork is a dark feathered bird, has an 8 feet wingspan and a prehistoric appearance. There's no evidence of the bird acting aggressively toward humans, which they try to avoid. The saddle-billed stork has a wingspan up to 8 feet long, a bright red bill with a stripe and black and yellow feathers that run from the eyes down into the stripe and orange stripes on the sides of their head. Kongamato is featherless and has teeth; these birds don't. It's possible that the birds could account for some sightings. Many natives believe that monsters lurk in swamps waiting to attack interlopers. A person might see these birds and believe it's Kongamato. Some have proposed that the creature that attacked Sanderson and George was the mate of the bat Sanderson shot. Fruit bats don't attack humans and they're not black. Sanderson was an extremely knowledgeable and internationally respected zoologist and didn't recognize the creature. Skeptics suggest sightings of Kongamato came from the natives' imaginations who worked at archeological digs where fossilized pterosaurs were discovered in Tendagaru, Tanzania, before World War I. The digs were over 900 miles from Zambia. There have been no reports from Tanzania. The Popobawa is another flying African cryptid. The alien creatures have also been sighted in America, such as the Thunderbird and Texas' Big Bird. Is it possible that these avians survived since prehistoric times? The coelacanth, a fish believed to be extinct, was caught in the 1930s. Since then, schools of these fish have been discovered. The tuatara, an iguana-like reptile, is a survivor from prehistoric times. They're called living fossils. Maybe, some day, there will be scientific proof that the Kongamato exists and it will join their ranks. - Cryptozoology A to Z, Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark,(Fireside, 1999) **********  "The Kaonde people of the North-Western Province [of Zambia] used to carry charms called "muchi wa Kongamato" to protect them at certain river crossings from the Kongamato"...The creature was described by the Kaonde of old as a huge red lizard with membranous wings like a bat spreading five or more feet, and with teeth in its huge beak. In the 1920's, Headman Kanyinga from the Jiwundu Swamp area near the Zairean border instantly identified as Kongamato a picture of a pterodactyl...Nevertheless, as recently as 1958, the science journalist Maurice Burton wrote in the Illustrated London News in 1958 that there had been several reports form Africa of a pterodactyl-like creature, with speculation that the Bangweulu Swamps might be one of its habitats. He pointed out that off the coast of Africa, the coelacanth, a deep sea contemporary of the pterodactyl, had been caught by fisherman..." (Hobson, Dick, Tales of Zambia, 1996, p. 149.) "Though dragons have completely dropped out of all modern works on natural history, they were still retained and regarded as quite orthodox until a little before the time of Cuvier;...For instance, Pigafetta, in a report of the kingdom of Congo (The Harleian Collections of Travels, vol. ii, 1745, p. 457.) 'gathered out of the discourses of Mr. E. Lopes, a Portuguese,' speaking of the province of Bemba, which he defines as 'on the sea coast from the river Ambrize, until the river Coanza towards the south,' says of serpents, 'There are also certain other creatures which, being as big as rams, have wings like dragons, with long tails, and long chaps, and divers rows of teeth, and feed upon raw flesh. Their colour is blue and green, their skin painted like scales, and they have two feet but no more. The Pagan negroes used to worship them as gods, and to this day you may see divers of them that are kept for a marvel. And because they are very rare, the chief lords there curiously preserve them, and suffer the people to worship them, which tendeth greatly to their profits by reason of the gifts and oblations which the people offer unto them.' And John Barbot, Agent-General of the Royal Company of Africa, in his description of the coasts of South Guinea, (Churchill, Collections of Voyages, 1746, p. 213.) says: 'Some blacks assuring me that...there are winged serpents or dragons having a forked tail and a prodigious wide mouth, full of sharp teeth, extremely mischievous to mankind, and more particularly to small children.'" (Gould, Charles, Mythical Monsters, W.H. Allen & Co., London, 1886, pages 201-202) Dr. J.L.B. Smith (famous for his investigation into the living fossil, the coelacanth) wrote in his 1956 book Old Fourlegs about flying dragons that lived near Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. "...one man had actually seen such a creature in flight close by at night. I did not and do not dispute at least the possibility that some such creature may still exist." (Smith, J.L.B., Old Fourlegs, 1956, pp. 108-109.) Indeed a game warden named A. Blaney Percival stationed in Kenya noted that a huge creature whose tracks only revealed two feet and a heavy tail was believed by the Kitui Wakamba natives to fly down to the ground from Mount Kenya every night (Shuker, Karl, In Search of Prehistoric Survivors, 1995, p. 49.). In Kenya the creature is called "Batamzinga."  To the west in Cameroon, the natives describe a nocturnal, bat-like creature called Olitau. Likely the same as the Kongamato, this creature was observed by an exploration team under Ivan Sanderson in 1932. Modern reports of the Kongomato continue to surface. In 1998 Steve Romandi-Menya, a Kenyan exchange student living in Louisiana, declared that the Kongomato is still known to the bush-dwelling people in his country. The creatures are said to feed on decomposing human flesh, digging up bodies if they are not buried to sufficient depth. In 1942 Captain Charles R.S. Pitman wrote a nearly 300 page volume describe the fauna of Uganda and the surrounding regions in great detail. He records the natives superstitious fear of looking upon the wailing tree hyrax at night lest they die (even though they were not afraid to capture the animal in daylight). He then discusses another animal that the natives described. "When in Northern Rhodesia I heard of a mythical beast, alleged to have a similar death-dealing attribute, which intrigued me considerably. It was said to haunt formerly, and perhaps still to haunt, a dense, swampy forest region in the neighbourhood of the Angola and Congo borders. To look upon it too is death. But the most amazing feature of this mystery beast is its suggested identity with a creature bat- and bird-like in form on a gigantic scale strangely reminiscent of the prehistoric pterodactyl. From where does the primitive African derive such a fanciful idea?" (Pitman, C.R.S, A Game Warden Takes Stock, 1942, pp. 202-203.) - www.genesispark.org  |
| Fortean / Oddball News: Dr. Who UFO, Poached Egg Jellyfish and Missing Unicorn Posted: 24 Nov 2010 09:35 AM PST  Claim: UFO Incident Result of Poison Berries...and Dr. Who STV - There are claims in a new edition of a UFO magazine that one of Scotland's most famous UFO sightings could have been the result of the man who reported the incident having eaten poisonous berries that resulted in him hallucinating. This, combined with a memory of a recent edition of TV series Dr Who could have triggered the report. In November 1979, forestry worker Bob Taylor parked his truck at Livingston's Dechmont Law and left to walk his dog. He claimed that he then came across saw a large, spherical object, around 20 feet wide in a clearing. Two smaller spheres, each about three feet in diameter, then dropped from the craft, rolled towards him and attached themselves to his trousers. He was dragged towards the larger vehicle, and passed out. The next thing Mr Taylor said he remembered was waking up with a pounding head, a sore throat and a bitter taste in his mouth. He said he calculated later that he had been unconscious for 20 minutes. UFO Matrix magazine reports that the experience that Mr Taylor reported could have been the result of accidentally eating the berries of the deadly nightshade plant, also known as belladonna. While it is one of the most poisonous plants that grows in the UK and can kill, symptoms of deadly nightshade poisoning include loss of balance, dry mouth, hallucinations and confusion. The magazine adds that the description of a spherical object corresponds to that of a spacecraft that had been featured in an episode of Dr Who a few weeks earlier. The opening sequence of the episode City of Death featured a spherical ship with a rim around the centre. It did, however, differ from Mr Taylor's description by having three distinctive legs and did not feature propellor-type protrusions above the ring. At the time the series was broadcast, ITV was on strike and the four episodes of City of Death were amongst the most widely seen episodes of Dr Who ever. Some fans of the long-running series also regard it as one of the best ever, featuring Tom Baker as the Doctor and having been mainly written by Douglas Adams, who also wrote The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. At the time, police treated the incident involving Mr Tayor as an assault, and investigations at the scene revealed marks on the ground corresponding to Mr Taylor's description of events. A forensic investigation of his clothes also revealed that his trousers had been ripped in such a way that suggested implements had been used that had been attempting to lift Mr Taylor up by the legs. Mr Taylor died in 2007 at the age of 88. He was regarded as a reliable witness, and never sought payment for his story. There have been other theories about the cause of the sighting, with suggestions that it could have been ball lightning or an episode of epilepsy, although Mr Taylor never suffered from epilepsy before or after the incident. While many will maintain that the evidence still suggests an extra-terrestrial explanation, the new theory adds another possible explanation for one of Scotland's strangest incidents. ********** The Case of the Missing Unicorn latimes - Typically, missing-animal posters encourage one to wonder: Have I ever seen that creature? In the case of one "missing" poster seen on the Upper West Side in New York earlier this month, the lost animal was not a puppy or someone's cat. It was a unicorn. Described as a female with a friendly disposition, the missing unicorn in question and the poster belonged to Camomile Hixon, a New York-based painter. The missing unicorn, in fact, was part of a larger vision for New York City. "I was travelling back and forth in the subways, and I just noticed the dejection. I'm a pop artist, and I thought –- if I could just make one person smile. I was thinking about ways to do that," she said. "A unicorn is beyond race, beyond religion. I wanted something that could reach anyone at any age. I thought, if I could just make a handful of businessmen on Wall Street think about unicorns, I will be successful." So on Oct. 29, she and a team of friends hung 2,000 posters all around the city. By the next day, she'd received 350 phone calls. She started a missing-unicorn hotline and a corresponding website www.missingunicorn.com. On the website those who had seen the poster could upload photos of unicorns if they had seen one, or upload their thoughts about unicorns to a chat section. Perhaps the most telling part of the website, in terms of the public reaction, are the voice recordings -- transcribed from her voicemail onto the site. The messages reveal those who are frustrated, excited, or want to joke around. "How would you have a unicorn in New York City? Your apartment is that big for you to have a unicorn?" asks one skeptical caller. New Yorkers have played along with Hixon, as have interested parties worldwide. She's received 3,200 phone calls and heard from people in 46 states and 43 countries. Someone even sent in a picture of George Clooney in bed with a unicorn. "I would put up a poster and then wait out and hide and see the joy on people's faces. I thought of it as a philanthropic gift to the city," she said. An interactive art project in the city of Manhattan had a larger purpose for Hixon: She wanted people to notice the gaps in their own lives. "I wanted some childlike play. I wanted people to go on a quest to find what they were missing." Hixon was recently shut down by the City of New York for hanging the posters. Though no new posters have been hung since, on her website anyone can download a free missing-unicorn poster. The history of the unicorn and man's search for one dates back over 2,500 years. According to Chris Lavers, author of "The Natural History of Unicorns" (Granta, 2009), for most of history, people believed that unicorns actually existed. As early as 398 BCE, the unicorn made it into European literature, when Greek physician Ctesias travelled through Persia and wrote a book called "Indica," in which he first described a unicorn. Writers after him kept this idea alive. Among them were Aristotle, Pliny the Elder and Claudius Aelilanus, who detailed a one-horned horse that roamed the wilds of India. The creatures were thought to have magical powers. Some believed the horn had healing capabilities; others believed the horn could absorb the emotions of other creatures if placed on their heads. For the unicorn itself, some said the horn held extra stores of solar energy that the beast could draw upon in times of need. More curious, the unicorn, for many years, was hunted as a real animal. The last great unicorn hunt took place in 1900 in Uganda and the Congo, when British colonial explorer Sir Henry "Harry" Hamilton Johnson went looking for the creatures. Instead he found okapi -- a mammal that resembles a small zebra and is closely related to the giraffe. Unicorns also became imprinted on world culture. Images of the one-horned creatures can be seen in 15th century tapestries. Perhaps among the most famous is "The Lady and Unicorn," a series of six wool and silk tapestries, considered one of the great works of the Middle Ages. Unicorns can be found imprinted on the coat-of-arms of various countries and depicted in antique metalwork. Beyond high art, today we have Robot Unicorn Attack -- the AdultSwim free online video game (also an iPhone application) in which unicorns with rainbow manes dash from level to level to rack up points. And there's the wacky YouTube video sensation "Charlie the Unicorn" -- named one of YouTube's 50 Best Videos by Time Magazine in 2010 -- in which a cartoon unicorn named Charlie is lured to Candy Mountain. The video has been viewed over 50 million times. In over 2,000 years, global fascination has not waned. Whether ancient text or amusing app, we can't seem to get enough of the mythological creatures. Perhaps it's because we want them to be real. Perhaps it's because we want something to believe in. Whatever the reason, Hixon will not stop her search. "It's been a journey beyond my wildest dreams. I'd like to continue to spread this joy. I want to take it to other cities that would be more mellow about posting. If we can all think about unicorns in this world, then anything is possible." It's not likely the rest of the world will stop the quest either. **********  A New Sea Species Discovered in Indonesia U.S scientists have discovered a new sea species in the ashore of Indonesia. Scientists who are working in the the California Scripps Oceanography Institute and Massachusetts Woods Hole Oceanography Institute discovered 9 centimeters long sea creature in the deep waters of the Sulawesi Sea. American scientists said that, they had never seen this kind of creature before. They also named the creature as Teuthidodrilus Samae. Theuthidodrilus Samae belongs to family of Squid worm and it can be able to dive nearly 6200 meters in the deep sea. Divers also managed to shoot its picture. It has nearly 10 arms and this specialty gives it very distinctive appearance. New discovery also published in Biology Letters Magazine. **********  Poached Egg Jellyfish? dailymail - They might look tasty but you probably wouldn't want one of these on your toast in the morning. For these bizarre fried eggs are actually a peculiar type of jellyfish that has just been successfully born in captivity. The photos were taken by keen photographer Torben Webber, who scrambled for his camera after hearing the unusual creatures had been born. The odd jellyfish are found naturally in the Mediterranean, because they require a huge amount of sunlight to survive. When captive they are incredibly difficult to breed - but staff at Basel Zoo, Switzerland, have managed to imitate their natural conditions and a new batch of tiny jellyfish have been born. A staff member said: 'Breeding is a real challenge because they're only found in far-off ocean fisheries and transportation is so difficult. 'So we have to mimic the natural environment with special daylight lamps to illuminate the aquarium as well as making sure there are lots of meals a day. 'The young jellyfish are tiny, just a few centimetres but they take the egg shape right away - we have to keep them away from the lights at first in case they toast.' The fried egg jellyfish, also known as medusa, produce eggs that are fertilised in sea water, which then develop into a tiny larva fixed to sea bed organisms. They can measure up to 35cm in diameter when fully grown, and in contrast to most jellyfish they move on their own by moving the 'white' of the egg in a waving motion. Torben took his amazing pictures on November 4 with his Nikon d3s camera. He said: 'They're beautiful creatures - but they are very unusual looking.'  |
| Local People Believe Unidentified Hair Belongs To Chinese Wild Man Posted: 24 Nov 2010 08:47 AM PST  Piao Jinlan, a researcher at the reserve, said that scientists need to continue their tests before they can identify the species. The hair is said to be thicker than human hair and thinner than horsetail hair, and the reserve posted a photo on its website on November 22.  Witnesses describe the creature as walking upright, more than 2 meters tall and with grey, red or black hair all over its body. An investigative team was set up in 2009 and started a large-scale search for the mysterious creature in Shennongjia this year. ********** Bigfoot's Chinese Cousin xinhuanet - China has its fair share of mythical creatures which roam the countryside leaving tantalizing glimpses and a footprint or two. Erik Nilsson hunts down a couple of sightings. Meet China's monster mesh - the cast of creatures, known as cryptids, whose existences haven't been verified but which some believe roam the country's wild places. China is host to plenty of myths about the not-so-distant relatives of the world's most celebrated cryptozoological creatures. Most foreigners know of Big Foot's cousin, the Yeti, also known as the abominable snowman, which reportedly roam Himalayan Tibet. But fewer have heard of the yeren, or wild man, said to prowl the primeval forests of Hubei province's Shennongjia. Zhang Jiahong, a sheep rancher in Muyu town who claims to have seen two of the ape-men in 2005, told China Daily earlier this month they had "hairy faces, eyes like black holes, prominent noses and disheveled hair, with faces that resembled both a man's and a monkey's". More than 400 locals have reported yeren encounters, the Wild Man Research Association says. Explorer Zhang Jinxing says he has found traces of the creature, including hair, footprints and scat on at least 19 occasions. He began living as a hermit in the 3,200-square-kilometer mountain range in 1994 in hopes of seeing the beast for himself and hasn't given up hope. Local trappers made world headlines when they caught a critter they said was a yeren this April. But biologists in Beijing determined the bizarre beast to be an excessively mangy civet, the Telegraph reported. While no evidence has surfaced to verify the yeren's existence, another former cryptid from the same woodland, the Shennongjia polar bear, was proven to exist in 1922, UNESCO says. Despite the animal's coloration, the "polar bear" moniker is a misnomer, as the creature's closest relative is the Asiatic black bear, as a 2006 study of its genetics published by the US National Center for Biotechnology Information confirmed. Biologists from around the globe have been flocking to Shennongjia to study the "whitenized" genetic clines of the bears and a slew of other endemic species, including white snakes, monkeys, muntjacs or baking deer and serows, a goat-like creature. But while the Shennongjia polar bear has been transferred from the cryptids list to that of scientifically recognized taxonomy, the Maltese Tiger has had no such luck. Alleged sightings of the giant "blue tiger" are occasionally reported in Fujian province, but no solid evidence confirms the big cat's existence. China also has its answers to the Loch Ness Monster. For centuries, massive water-dwelling beasts were believed to lurk beneath the surface of Xinjiang autonomous region's Kanasi Lake, occasionally wriggling onto the shores to snack on cattle. These monsters made world headlines in 2007, when a tourist's eight-minute video of 15 mysterious creatures swimming in the lake was broadcast on national television. The animals' exposed parts appear larger than the lake's largest tour boat, People's Daily reported. There have also been water monster sightings on the other side of the country in Jilin province's Tianchi Lake. The cryptid captured world attention when TV reporter Zhuo Yongsheng filmed six strange creatures swimming in the lake for 20 minutes in 2007. Be they real or not, the animals that are the stuff of Chinese local legends are gaining global appeal among those who believe the line between the mythical and the mysterious is finer than most think. Send us an email   New Items - Strickler's Celebrity Autographs  ANOMALIST BOOKS Works on maverick science, unexplained mysteries, unorthodox theories, strange talents, and unexpected discoveries. Please check out their excellent and diverse catalog  The 'C' Influence Actualizing Esoteric Discussion   "The latest news from beyond the mainstream" Join Ben & Aaron for their weekly podcast! 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