Eyewitness Accounts

Sea Monster Week

Darren Naish, over at Tetrapod Zoology, just rolled through five days, last week, of sea monster photographs and remarks about the mostly fake, false, or misleading images. Let’s take a look. First up was the March 1965 photograph (below) from Robert Le Serrec of a huge, tadpole-like creature encountered in Stonehaven Bay, Hook Island, Queensland, Australia. The case has been rather universally labeled a hoax. I mentioned in my field guide that Interpol was even after the guy. Naish does gather together all the “other photos” linked with this episode, and that’s a rather interesting angle ignored by most. Naish [...]

Jaws Now Off Martha’s Vineyard & In Aussie Lake

The Associated Press is reporting that the island where Jaws was filmed got a real-life shark scare when two beaches were closed on Thursday, July 10, 2008, due to an unconfirmed sighting of a great white shark nearby. A spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation said state-run South Beach was closed for a time Thursday after the Coast Guard received reports of the shark sighting. Swimmers were also kept out of the water at State Beach in Edgartown. A plane was sent up to try to confirm the sighting. In 1974, Steven Spielberg chose Martha’s Vineyard for [...]

Update: New 2008 Nessie Video

Above, one of the two photographs of the original uncropped “Surgeon’s Photograph[s]” from 1934. A new video of the Loch Ness Monster has been taken. Here is the footage: The Garside video appears to show three or several disjoined darkly colored patches moving along on the surface of the Scottish lake. What do they show? Nessie? Otters? Waves? Wake of a boat? A toy? What do you think? How was it obtained? Here’s what is known: David Garside, 31, and his dad, Graham, of Glenside Road, Slaithwaite, were on holiday in Scotland in April 2008, when David saw what he [...]

Early Texas Big Bird Researcher Dies

Ken Gerhard, author of Big Bird! Modern Sightings Of Flying Monsters, sends along word of the death of Guadalupe Cantu III, a historically significant participant in Texas Big Bird matters: I was very saddened yesterday [July 8, 2008] to learn of the passing of my friend Guadalupe Cantu III recently. Guadalupe first rose to prominence in the classic cryptozoology book, [Creatures of the Other Edge] by Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman [(NY: Warner, 1978; reprinted, NY: Anomalist, 2006], when the authors had discovered the then teenage Cantu investigating Big Bird reports in San Benito, Texas. Years later, I rediscovered him [...]

Queensland: Tasmanian Devil Sighted

A mainland Tasmanian devil sighting has been reported from Blackbraes National Park, 320 kilometres south-west of Cairns, Queensland, according to Mainland Devils’ Chris Rehberg. Neil Van contacted Mainland Devils to report an unusual black animal which he and a friend sighted at 9.30pm on Wednesday, the 2nd of July 2008. They were travelling along the Kennedy Developmental Road near the northern boundary of Blackbraes National Park in Queensland when they saw the dark coloured animal feeding on a road-killed wallaby. Says Van, “A mate and I saw a weird animal fairly close up … with the way it ran and [...]