Meets The Weird » Cryptid

Yet Another Chicago Mothman Sighting Reported

John D — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:20:49 +0000

It would seem that the bat-like Chicago Mothman that we have been following for the last week has made yet another appearance. Here we have a report submitted to the UFO Clearinghouse (unedited):

“I am currently attending university in Chicago , Illinois and I wanted to respond to the informational flyers about recent events involving the large bat-like creatures. I was enjoying an evening with my girlfriend and taking a well deserved break from my studies. We decided to go out and enjoy the unusually warm weather that we were having and go for a walk. As we walked toward a community park near the campus, we were talking about our classes when a commotion amongst a group of people caught our attention. As we looked toward the group of about 4-5 people, something caught my eye and I looked up to see this thing fly overhead.

It looked like a man; it looked like a man with wings! He flew about 10-12 feet above us and was perfectly silhouetted against the evening sky. In all honesty, it looked like an immensely oversized Sugar Glider, the kind I would see back home in Tasmania . It had the rough shape of a sugar glider, but its eyes were nothing like the soft eyes of a glider. They glowed red! We saw it for about 4 seconds before it disappeared from view. At first I thought I saw a man in a hang glider, but it was those bloody eyes that made me thing otherwise!

I at first thought of ringing someone, but I didn’t want them to think I had gone crazy. To say that I was Gobsmacked would have been an understatement”

As one commenter on UFO Clearinghouse stated, the report seems a little “overwritten”, but I am not as quick to immediately write it off as a hoax as the commenter is (though I am not about to accept it as gospel either). There are some people who just happen write/talk in an overly flowery manner for a number of reasons. It is troubling that the report while so full of “detail” seems to lack any real detail of the encounter like where or when it occurred. It is possible that those details are missing because the encounter never happened. I also think that it is possible, especially if more cowardice was involved in the encounter that the witness is willing to admit, that he may not be sure where or when the encounter happened and the extra fluff is an attempt to compensate for the details he is to proud to admit. If the Chicago Mothman is becoming a “thing” we do need to become more mindful of hoaxes as the awareness of the phenomena grows. Unfortunately, we will see false reports from skeptics poking fun at investigators and from everyday people who just want to be a part of the excitement. Hopefully more witnesses will come forward and help to corroborate these Mothman sightings.

Another sighting report of the Chicago/UIC Mothman

New Chicago Mothman Evidence Emerges

John D — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 19:05:04 +0000

Earlier this week we reported on possible Mothman/bat-like creature sighting in the University Park area of Chicago. Yesterday, photo evidence of a similar type creature was submitted to the MUFON database. Taken September 22, 2011 on the corner of 63rd St. and Pulaski Rd. by an individual using a HTC Sensation 4G to photograph the large indian statue that sits on the building at the northwest corner of the intersection (apparently, when viewed from this particular angle the statue’s left thumb sticks out giving the illusion that his “totem pole” is showing). At home, the photographer reviewed the images and noticed a black object in one of the photos just to the left of the indian (enhanced with 4x magnification to the left). Upon enlarging the image, he noticed that the object appeared to be some sort of large bat like creature.

Examining what appears to be the original image, there does not appear to be any obvious fakery/photoshopping (though I will be the first to admit that I am no expert in image forensics). This leads me to believe that the bat-like object was in fact present when the photo was taken. This leaves us to consider where the object was in relation to the camera. Was it closer than the cars in the foreground, making is relatively small, or was it beyond the indian statue (which would make it quite large)? Unfortunately, there is no good frame of reference for us to really judge size by. However, in the original image, the “creature” appears sharp and focused, as does the indian, satellite dish and street lamp. Most likely since the photo’s true subject (the indian) was so far away, the camera was set to infinite focus. This means that anything over a certain distance from the lens should appear, more or less, in focus. Since the object is more or less in focus, I am led to believe that it is in fact positioned at a equal or greater distance from the camera as the foreground cars and is quite large. The fact that the witness did not notice the creature at the time the photo was taken would seem to support this hypothesis.

Could then, if this photo is not a hoax, the creature in this photo be the the same one spotted by multiple witnesses eight days later in Miller Park? The two locations are only separated by approximately 7 miles and in the photo the creature seems to be flying away from the camera (assuming a bat-like anatomy), which was facing North Northeast, which happens to in the direction of the second sighting. If neither report is a hoax, then it seems it would be safe to assume that the creature in this photo is at least the same type of creature (if not the same one) that was later spotted in the University Park area. This only leaves one question, what exactly has taken to the skies above Chicago? Is the windy city the latest host of a Mothman or is the bat-like creature something else entirely?

Photo: 2nd Mothman / Bat-Like Object Witnessed Over Chicago

Possible Mothman Sighting In Chicago, Illinois [September 30, 2011]

John D — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 16:00:14 +0000

[UPDATED] It looks as if a Mothman may have paid a visit to the Windy City. According to witness reports a large bat-like creature with glowing red eyes was spotted in the University Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois on Friday, September 30th 2011. Witnesses spotted the creature, which they estimated to be 6 to 7 feet tall, perched on a basketball hoop in Miller Park. When it took off, the heard an audible “whoosh” as it beat its wings. Nearby two female witnesses were moved to hysterics when they spotted a pair of glowing red eyes peering in the window. Researchers have identified multiple witness and are currently investigating the incident.

If the creature that was spotted in Chicago was a Mothman, could there be a tragedy in the city’s future? If we are to believe the historic sightings of the Mothman, it very well may be. After the 1966 and 1967 sightings in Point Pleasant, West Virginia the Silver Bridge, which connected the town to Kanauga, Ohio over the Ohio river collapsed during rush hour killing 46. There are also reports of a Mothman type creature being spotted around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant shortly before the plants catastrophic failure in 1986. If the Mothman is indeed an omen of catastrophe, what does the future hold for Chicago?

UPDATE: I can’t believe that I failed to make the connection when I was writing the post, but Friday Oct 8th there was a major freight train derailment 100 miles outside of Chicago. The derailment set off a series of massive explosions that caused the evacuation of the 800 residents of the small town of Tiskilwa, Illinois. Amazingly, no one was hurt in the accident. Could the Mothman sighting be linked to this accident, or is something else in store for Chicago?

A possible Mothman sighting in Chicago, Illinois? [via @CoraxSays]

Could There Be A Conspiracy To Cover-Up The Existence Of Sasquatch?

John D — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 13:49:13 +0000

Is it possible that there is a conspiracy afoot that has moved to suppress the existence of Sasquatch in the United States? According to a series of tweets by Big Foot researcher William Jevning, that is exactly the case. Jevning relates an incident that he was involved with in 1994.

While scouting a favorite hunting spot the father of one of Jevning’s co-workers and his friend came across a series of what they believed to be Sasquatch tracks running down a little used access road in the Mt. Adams area of Washington state. On the way out of the area the two reported the prints to a forest service supervisor. The supervisor then headed out to the area with a camera to document the tracks. When they returned home, the two contacted Mr. Jevning and offered to take him out to the area. On the way in, they passed a forest service water tanker that was leaving the area. Upon arriving where the tracks had been, Jevning discovered that the water truck had been driven down the access road spraying water, destroying any evidence. Jevning attempted to follow-up with the forest service, but was told the supervisor the hunters encountered didn’t exist. According to him, the forest service personnel he spoke with responded in a less than honest tone.

But why would the forest service cover-up the existence of a big foot? According to Jevning, it all has to do with the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and the logging industry. While researching his new book, “Notes From the Field: Tracking North America’s Sasquatch“, Jevning discovered that if the existence of a North American Hominid or Great Ape were proven, the entire logging industry in the area would be shut down while scientists conducted research on the new species and studied the impact that continued logging would have, costing the industry what would certainly amount to billions of dollars.

I have to say, I never thought to consider the effect that the “discovery” of Sasquatch would have on the logging industry. After seeing the lengths that other industries have gone to protect their bottom line, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to learn that the logging industry was taking steps to prevent the formal identification of Sasquatch as a living species. While all we have right now is a single anecdote which hardly proves anything, I would love to see more research into this facet of the Big Foot story. (I will admit though that this has peaked my interest and I have a copy of Jevning’s book sitting in my cart at Amazon as we speak.)

[via "Recent Cryptid Odds and Ends" @ Phantoms & Monsters]

Multiple Skunk Ape Sightings In Southern Georgia

John D — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:59:01 +0000

Recently, the Valdosta Daily Times published an article about the Skunk Ape, the bigfoot like cryptid said to inhabit the south east. Since then it has received numerous calls from readers who claim to have seen the creature. One of the sightings happened as recently as the 21st of April when a reader, identified only as Joy, was driving down a stretch Highway 37 in Berrien County that is lined with swampy terrain, Georgia when her headlights caught something walking into the woods.

“I saw the back of something,” Joy says. “It was tall. … I thought it was a bear but a bear don’t walk on its back legs. … Honestly, it looked like an ape.”

According to the report, the witness gauged the hight of the creature to be approximately 6 feet tall.

A skunk ape was also sighted earlier this spring in nearby Brooks County when a witness, who asked that the paper withhold his name, spotted the reddish brown creature from the back porch of his house. Watching through binoculars, the witness observed the skunk ape for several minutes and estimates that it was over six feet tall. Originally, the witness thought what he saw may have been a human wearing a ghillie suit, but as he looked on, the creatures movements appeared strange.

“It didn’t walk like a human,” he said. “It’s joints don’t quite move like a human.”

In search of the skunk ape [via Ghost Theory]

Witness recounts encounter with a Mothman in Texas

John D — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:40:26 +0000

A statue commemorating the first Mothman
sighting near Point Pleasant, WV

photo by Fokket

Quite possibly one of the worlds best know cryptids, the Mothman has been seen on and off across the United States for the past 40 plus years. Just recently a witness came forward and contacted About.com’s Paranormal Phenomena Guide Stephen Wagner with the details of an encounter near the Ft. Worth suburb of Mansfield, Texas.

In the fall of 2007 the witness was driving with her daughter along FM 157 between Mansfield and Venus, Texas around dusk when something caught her eye. At first she thought she was seeing a plastic bag caught in the wind, but as the object neared she saw it was no bag. It appeared to have a “human-like form with wings attached”. The witness reported the creature made no noise as it glided towards her car. Filled with fear she instinctively rolled up her window. When her daughter didn’t say anything, the witness began to think she was seeing things. Finally after driving a few miles she asked her daughter if she had seen the creature. The daughter replied that she had. They then sheepishly opened the inside cover of the sun roof to see if the creature, which had disappeared from sight, had landed on the roof, which luckily it had not.

Mothman in Texas

Did a documentary crew capture footage of a sasquatch?

John D — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:31:59 +0000

[UPDATED See below.] For a few brief seconds of the 2001 IMAX film “Great North” a dark figure is seen on the far side of a river. The figure, which went unnoticed for 9 years, seems to startle part of caribou heard that the crew was filming crossing the river. While the figure is currently unidentifiable in copies of the film available online, big foot researchers are currently attempting to track down the filmmakers in the hopes of being able to find a print of the film at the full IMAX quality for further analysis. If they are able to find a high quality version of film, the researchers should be able to tell whether or not the film crew inadvertently documented the existence of an undocumented North American hominid. Until that happens we are left to ponder over lower resolution versions of the clip, like this one taken from Youtube:

While there is definitely no way to make any identification of the figure, the clip is more that clear enough to peak my interest in finding out exactly what was filmed. What do you think?

For anyone interested, the full documentary is available on Hulu to anyone in the US.

UPDATE: It turns out that the figure in the video was a crew member that was positioned to direct the caribou heard.

In search of Great North camera crew [via Chris Holly's Paranormal World & GhostTheory]

Bring A Cryptid Home For The Holidays

John D — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:54:06 +0000

If you have even a passing interest in cryptozoology or the unknown, Loren Coleman’s newly opened International Cryptozoology Museum has the perfect addition for your Christmas Tree. Constructed of glass and resin the bigfoot and yeti ornaments are available in the Portland, Maine museum’s gift shop along with other cryptozoology related fare. Unfortunately, it appears that the ornaments are not available for order online. For those of you that are able to get to the museum to pick up an ornament, I definitely think this is a must have addition to any Christmas tree.

Bigfoot & Yeti Ornaments [via Boing Boing]

Cryptid Of The Month: The Skunk Ape

John D — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:05:03 +0000

Sometimes referred to as the Bigfoot of the South, the Skunk or Swamp Ape is a hominid that is said to inhabit the South Eastern United Sates. The skunk ape gets its name from the horrible odor that seems to accompany most sightings of the creature. They are described by witnesses as having brown to blackish fur and stand on average about 6 feet tall, though some witnesses have reported specimen as tall as 10 feet. The skunk ape most walks upright on its hind legs, but some reports indicate that swamp apes will sometimes drop to all fours to run. While there have been skunk ape sightings throughout the swamps of the South East, a large majority of sightings occur in the Florida Everglades.

Skunk ape sightings in the state of Florida date back as far as 1818 when residents spotted the creature in Apalachicola. Sightings continue to this day with the most recent Florida sighting being reported in the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization database occurring in March of this year. The incredible consistency in the descriptions that accompany sightings in Florida have led researchers to believe that if an unknown primate species exists, it most likely does so in the swamps of Florida. Taking up most of the southern tip of Florida, the Everglades provide almost 4 million acres of sparsely populated swamp for the skunk ape to call home without ever having to see a single human. Adding to the mystery, the local Seminole and Miccosukee Indian tribes that have lived in the Everglades for centuries are very reluctant to speak to outsiders about the creature.

Skunk Ape @ Wikipedia

Thunderbird sighted near Pacifica, Missouri

John D — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:49:02 +0000

photo courtesy of Chang’r

The following is an account of thunderbird sighing last week by a father and son as they drove to their hotel in Pacifica, Missouri (though a commenter on Crytpozoology Online thinks that they may have actually been in Pacific, Missouri from some of the details in their account):

We were in Pacifica MO, tonight around 11:30 and we noticed a massive flying creature, not once but three times. My son even noticed it on his own the third time. We were near a large cliff/mountain with some type of cave openings. We don’t live in the area, I can say for sure we turned onto a road called viaduct road, went past a fire station and continued on for about 1 mile before we first noticed it. It was brownish/grey and the body portion was at least the size of a large adult human. This creature was tracking us – in a circle pattern. We were driving an escalade with the blue color headlights, this may have cause interest in us. The third time around us we viewed it in front of the vehicle, around driver side and around towards the rear of the vehicle, the factory tinted windows did help it vanish into the sky from out point of view.

Please understand when we could see it the range must have been about 150 feet in the air, not more than 250 feet. The distance was never less than 100 yards, often much greater. We were going about 35- 45 MPH. I have never thought of anything like this in my life!

The pair found their encounter with the large bird so disturbing that neither was able to sleep. Unfortunately there are no pictures from the sighting, and even tracking down the exact location where it occurred may be difficult due to the witnesses unfamiliarity with the area. Never the less, if you are in the area around Pacifica (or maybe Pacific), Missouri, keep an eye on the sky as you may get a chance to glimpse this amazing creature.

LINDSAY SELBY: New thunderbird sighting [via Get X News and Stephen's Paranormal Phenomena Blog]