Cryptotourism

Salt & Pepper Aussie Panthers

From the reality of a new report of a white, perhaps even an albino, mystery panther in Australia, to a novel video comedy on the search for black or melanistic Aussie felines, let’s stay with panthers a bit longer today. “I WASN’T drinking and definitely no funny smokes. I think it was this mystery ancient animal people talk about that was here.” Rossville resident Jim Stone is not laughing off the mysterious creature he saw running through his property near the Bloomfield Valley on a Sunday afternoon last month. And his son’s partner, JaJa Elliot, also was stunned when she [...]

Something’s Savaging Lee Straw’s Sheep

Something’s killing Lee Straw’s sheep. Most of his flock is kept safe on remote islands, just off the rugged New England coast. But many of the rest, over the past week, have been slaughtered by a mysterious and vicious killer. If this were most parts of rural North America, dead livestock would just be part of the cycle of life. But in Maine — where Stephen King-approved dark imagery covers every unexplained and bloody happening — the twin mass killings of Straw’s flock is quickly becoming the stuff of legend and speculation. Last Sunday [June 3, 2007], the frustrated herder [...]

1981 Champ Conference

Were you there? Did you attend the August 1981 conference in Vermont, the first scientific seminar devoted to a study of the cryptids that have been reported lurking in the waters of Lake Champlain for the past 300 years? It sort of was the Woodstock of Champ. I was there. I wrote about the conference in Mysterious America. Here’s a sample what I saw and heard: In the morning session, Joseph Zarzynski ran down the historical background of the Champ sightings and introduced the audience of 200 people to the Sandra Mansi photograph. Projected on a wall-size screen in an [...]

Otter Nonsense

Otters, of course, are responsible for a few misidentifications of Lake Monsters in bodies of water worldwide. In my The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep (co-authored by Patrick Huyghe), the fact that people do make mistakes when viewing mundane mammals on lakes and lochs is acknowledged. Otters, nevertheless, have never been seen as the root of all Lake Monsters accounts, as seemed to be expressed on CNN’s “Paula Zahn Now” last week by the guest skeptic. Otters are hardly in vogue any longer. Even Bernard Heuvelmans’ theory of the “super-otters,” as [...]

Hey, Disney: Where Are the Yeti Books?

A reader Joshua Cutchin sends along the following email to Cryptomundo today: I just returned from a visit to Walt Disney World, where I rode Expedition Everest for the first time. While I enjoyed much about the ride (the Yeti was portrayed in a very realistic manner of a white snowman), I have one glaring issue to take with the attraction. Several books by Loren Coleman are on display in the queue line’s “Yeti Museum”, as well as some of the older literature as well. Yet, at the attraction’s gift shop, there is not one book on hairy bipeds to [...]

Dragon Kills Boy

Dragons on display at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City. Dragons do roam the Earth. Less than 100 years ago, a population of dragons was discovered hidden away off the coast of mainland Asia. In 1910, it is said, a Dutch pilot crashed-landed on Komodo, a rugged, volcanic Indonesian island. After his rescue he claimed to have seen an incredibly large lizard, about thirteen feet long [4 meters]. Another story, equally murky in origin, has it that in 1912, a pilot who had safely landed on Komodo returned with stories of monstrous dragons which ate goats and [...]

Nessie Footage Questions Focus On Filmmaker

Who is Gordon T. Holmes? What do we know about the man who took the Nessie footage in late May 2007? Does Gordon Holmes have visions of becoming the next Sherlock Holmes, following in the footsteps of that character’s creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? It is with no disrespect that I compile for my readers the facts that Mr. Holmes has placed out there in cyberspace about himself. He has freely admitted that he has filmed fairies, seen apparent alien black cats (ABCs, alien big cats, as they are often called because they are “out of place” or alien – [...]