Creatures of the Mind – Part Three

As reports of sightings of various anomalous creatures continued to accumulate from around the world, it began to dawn on seasoned veterans of bigfoot investigations, that their quarry might not be “normal” primates after all.

These creatures seemed to be able to appear mysteriously in various places, often in quite inappropriate terrain, and then disappear equally mysteriously. While they might leave evidence in the form of tracks in the earth, there was never any additional corroborating proof of their physical existence.

Furthermore, there were disturbing reports, such as the one from Rochdale, Indiana in 1972, of a bigfoot that was seen at close quarters, but which left no footprints, even though the ground was muddy.

Another witness claimed that she could see right through the animal. Others reported footprints which simply vanished into thin air, or appeared suddenly, in the middle of a field.

These hairy ape men seemed to be as tantalising and elusive as the omnipresent lake monsters referred to in Part One. Yet these enigmatic accounts are not confined to reports of anthropoids and lake monsters. They also include a host of other mysterious creatures.

Not only do strange monsters appear to be inhabiting numerous lakes around the world, and ape-like beasts roaming the forested regions of the earth, but bizarre creatures have been observed flitting in the heavens as well.

In 1976, some very odd things began to happen in the state of Texas. They started on New Year’s day, when two young girls saw something strange in the town of Harlingen. Jackie Davis (14) and Tracey Lawson (11) told their parents that they had seen a “bird” that was five feet (1.5 metres) tall, that had “shoulders” three feet (90 centimetres) wide.

It was black in colour, with a bald head, sharp beak, dark red eyes, and a face like that of a gorilla. Their parents naturally reacted with considerable skepticism, but when they investigated the area of the alleged sighting the following day, they found three-toed tracks in the ground that were eight inches (20 centimetres) across, and one-and-a half inches (4 centimetres) deep.  1

On the evening of January 7, 1976, Alverico Guajardo was at home in his house-trailer at Brownsville, Texas, when he heard the sound of something heavy hitting the house. He went outside to investigate, and switched on the lights of his station wagon to illuminate the scene.

Guajardo was shocked to see a large, bird-like creature staring at him with red, glowing eyes. It was four foot (1.2 metres) high, had a beak that was several feet long, and possessed bat-like wings. The creature made an alarming sound as it backed away. Guajardo was still terrified when he spoke to newspaper reporters the following day.  1

Just one week later, Armando Grimaldo was attacked by a mysterious bird-like creature. Grimaldo was sitting in the backyard of his mother-in-law’s house at Raymondville, Texas, when he heard a strange whistling sound together with a flapping noise.

He looked around, and was grabbed by something that had huge claws. Armando was somehow able to wriggle out of the creature’s clasp and, as he fled, he looked back to see what had attacked him. He saw something as big as a man that had a wingspan of about twelve feet (3.5 metres). It had a face like a bat or monkey, with big red eyes, and had dark, leathery skin. It had no beak and no feathers.  1

In the 1960’s, residents of the American state of West Virginia were plagued by a series of encounters with a creature that appeared to be half bird and half human. It came to be known by the locals as “mothman”.

This extraordinary creature made one of its first appearances before two couples on the evening of November 15, 1966, as they were driving through an abandoned explosives factory at Point Pleasant. Roger Scarberry, Steve Mallette and their wives saw two bright, red circles, which looked like eyes, peering at them through the darkness of an old generator plant.

The couples took a closer look and saw a human-shaped figure some seven feet (2 metres) tall. It was greyish in colour and had huge, folded wings. It seemed to them to be shuffling along on two legs. The four young people decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and sped off in their vehicle.

As they drove off, they saw a similar creature standing near the road. As they passed it, it spread its wings and began to follow them. Although they accelerated to one hundred miles an hour (160 kmh) the “mothman” kept pace with them. Yet the amazing thing was that the creature never once flapped its wings.

Later, when they reported this incident to the Police, Mrs. Mallette said that she could hear it “squeaking like a mouse.”  1

Some years after the citizens of West Virginia were terrorised by this red-eyed “mothman”, a transatlantic cousin was busy whooping it up in Cornwall, England, under the name of “owlman”.

On July 3, 1976, two teen-aged girls, Sally Chapman and Barbara Perry, were out camping in the woods. About ten o’clock in the evening they were startled by a strange hissing noise. It was coming from a large figure standing among the pine trees. Sally described this peculiar apparition.

“It was like a big owl with pointed ears, as big as a man. The eyes were red and glowing. At first I thought it was someone dressed up, playing a joke, trying to scare us. I laughed at it, we both did, then it went up in the air and we both screamed. When it went up, you could see its feet were like pincers.”  1

Sally’s friend Barbara described it as a horrible creature with an owl’s face, big ears, and enormous glowing, red eyes. Its body was covered with grey feathers, and it had black claws on its feet. When it flew off, it simply went straight up and disappeared among the treetops.

The following day it was seen again. This time it was described as having red slanting eyes and a very large mouth. Its black feet were likened to the claws of a crab. This weird creature continued to make sporadic appearances in the area for several years and then, like so many other creatures of its kind, was never seen again.

Regular reports continue to circulate of odd creatures that simply appear in certain areas, and then after a few encounters with people, disappear without trace. These cases seem, at first glance, to involve familiar animals. Yet they seem to be peculiarly inappropriate to the regions in which they are spotted.

Thus sightings of panthers and alligators have been reported from New York City, African lions on the loose in California, kangaroos in Chicago and Wisconsin, and Nile monitor lizards in Florida. These mysterious animals were never caught, despite intensive searches.

When authorities felt obliged to comment on these sightings, they were generally attributed to exotic pets that had escaped suburban custody, or else to the escape of zoo or circus animals. But no zoo or circus ever came forward to announce its loss, and no citizen confessed to having in his home African lions, panthers or alligators.

Some of the creatures that are reported do not seem to be identifiable animals at all. Instead they seem to be mixtures of different species. One  such, known as the “Dover Demon” of Massachusetts, was described as “a small gnome-like entity with an enormous head, large round glowing eyes, and long spindly limbs,” by four teenagers who spotted it in April 1977.

In October 1986, a mysterious animal was sighted in Lochaber, Nova Scotia. It was described by several people who saw it as being over a metre tall, having short forearms, large legs, and a long tail.

To biologist, Bob Bancroft, who examined its tracks, the three-toed imprints left by the animal looked like those of a kangaroo or wallaby. Yet he was forced to admit, “I don’t know what kind of animal native to Nova Scotia would make these tracks.”  2

Residents in Old Lyme, Connecticut, found themselves confronted, in mid-July 1986, by an animal that seemed to be a cross between Bugs Bunny and Rin-Tin-Tin. Witnesses claimed that it had the body of a dog and the head of a rabbit with long floppy ears.

Although about the size of a medium-sized dog, this creature apparently hopped like a rabbit on its hind legs. Witness John Hubbard said the creature was as thin as a greyhound, with short grey hair and a long thin tail. He indicated that it moved its front paws forward in pacing fashion when it jumped. “It was a funny looking sight“, he exclaimed.

To Paul Rego, wildlife biologist for the State Department of Environmental Protection, it was clear that there could be no such thing as a cross between a rabbit and a dog. Noting that there existed no animals native to Connecticut that would fit the description of this extraordinary beast, Rego concluded, “Maybe it was just someone’s ugly dog.”  3

Serious investigators remain bemused by this cornucopia of creatures that cannot be identified in terms of known animal species. Yet it is impossible to write off all these reports as hoaxes, misinterpretations, or the meanderings of unsound minds.

Clearly, something very strange is happening on this planet, and it is something that defies conventional explanation. Crypto-zoologists who have studied the enormous variety of these reports have been forced to turn to unconventional solutions.

When New York investigator John Keel was confronted by these anomalies, which included reports of living dinosaurs that had been seen in various parts of the United States, Italy and France, he asked: “Where does a dinosaur hide? or a ninety-foot serpent? or an eighteen-foot tall hairy humanoid? Do they creep into a hidden network of deep caverns, as some of the believers claim?”  4

Another investigator, Thomas Bearden, noted that ape-like creatures of the Bigfoot variety constantly managed to elude their pursuers. “But Bigfoot cannot be caught by packs of hounds”, he wrote. “This has repeatedly been tried. His lair is never uncovered, nor can he be tracked to it. He has never been found dead of old age or injury. The bones of sasquatch have never been uncovered in caves or elsewhere.”  5

For John Keel, the solution to the origin of these enigmatic creatures which appeared to riddle the globe, lay in a re-evaluation of our concepts of reality. Just because they could be seen and heard, and leave footprints in their wake, did not mean that they were necessarily physical creatures like you or I.

“It is more probable”, Keel argued, “that these are not actual animals but are distortions of our reality, inserted into our space-time continuum by the mischievous forces of the super spectrum.”

As he explained, “Since energy masses in the super spectrum can alter their frequencies and move up and down the electromagnetic spectrum, we can assume that they can also manipulate atomic structure and enter our plane of reality by creating atoms compatible with our atomic structure. The ancients called this process transmogrifications.”  4

Thomas Bearden reached a similar conclusion. But while Keel attributed the appearances of these temporary transmogrifications to the agency of “mischievous forces of the super spectrum”, Bearden considered their source to lie in the hidden layers of the human subconscious.

“Bigfoot-like creatures are materialisations from the collective human unconscious”, he argued, “shaped and formed by the layers (race, culture, nation, territory, state, religion, family, etc.) between the collective unconscious and the individual unconscious minds of the observers“.  5

The vital clue for Bearden came with recognition that there was no common character to the bigfoot phenomenon. He found that no single type of creature was consistently being described. These creatures were found to have feet of varying sizes, types and shapes, with the number of their toes ranging from three to six.

Furthermore plaster casts taken of bigfoot footprints were found to vary considerably in definition. While some were precisely formed, with clear indentations in the ground, others were found to be vague, amorphous shapes, lacking clear definition.

“This is one particular clue”, he wrote, “to the fact that we are not dealing with a species of shy and elusive wild man, but instead with a tulpoid.”  5

(Continued in Part Four)

References:

1  Janet and Colin Bord, “Weird Winged Creatures“, in “Creatures from Elsewhere“, op.cit., pp. 26-31.

2  “Province“, Vancouver, British Columbia, October 9, 1986.

3  “Gazette“, East Hartford, Connecticut, September 4, 1986.

4  John Keel, “The Cosmic Question“, Panther Books, London, 1978, p. 107.

5  Thomas Bearden, “Excalibur Briefing“, Strawberry Press, San Francisco, 1980, p. 71.

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