Folklore

How To Escape A Yeti

I was recently talking to Boing Boing‘s David Pescovitz about the long-held belief that the best way to escape a Yeti is to run downhill. Why might such a plan work, you ask? I’ve been reading about the reason behind why this works for a long time. First, the PG version: One of the earliest records of reported footprints in Western literature appeared in 1889, in Major Lawrence Austine Waddell’s Among the Himalayas. Waddell reported his guide’s description of a large apelike creature that left the prints. Most accounts relate that one of the tales that Waddell heard was of [...]

Arthurian White Stag Reported

Almost mystical in nature, white animals garner human attention, as this new story demonstrates. There is nothing truly cryptozoological about albino or nearly albino animals, any more than there is about melanistic ones. Neither are hidden, certainly, as their very appearance and finding them makes the news. Actually, their appeal has everything to do with them being very beautiful and visible. In the world of weird animal news, white animals tend to get more than the usual attention from humans, and thus the media. Ghostly, phantomlike, mythical, and legendary are words often associated with albinos and near-albinos (leucistic) specimens of [...]

Why Mokele-Mbembe Is Not A Rhino

The Emela-ntouka has been an unknown animal of some confusion in Africa. A few chroniclers have felt it was merely another named cryptid representing the sightings of the Mokele-mbembe. But as revealed by an image seen here exclusively at Cryptomundo in the past, it appears to be a beast unlike the saurapod-like Mokele-mbembe. Click on image for larger size Copyright: Michel Ballot – Mokélé – Mbembé CAMEROUN 2004 On page 219 of one of my field guides, coauthored with Patrick Huyghe, we noted, among several different kinds of alleged “dinosaurs” in Africa, “one animal is called by locals the emela [...]

Galveston Mothman?

In her blog this week, Ha’ri writes in “Mothman – Sighting in Galveston?” of her wonderings and ponderings. She is interested to discover if any large bird-like somethings were seen before any hurricanes hit the coastal Texas city of Galveston. Ha’ri does some research, and rightfully comes to the conclusion there’s nothing to be easily found about a 1969 hurricane – or Mothman sightings there. In the movie The Mothman Prophecies, news articles about the “Houston Batman” were flashed on the screen as the character “Alexander Leek” (“Keel” backwards) talked of how Mothmen were seen before disasters like “the hurricane” [...]

Boss Snakes Observed

Attention to Chad Arment’s newest book, Boss Snakes: Stories and Sightings of Giant Snakes in North America will be worth your time. First, let’s start with the obvious. Big snakes do exist. But various cryptozoological questions remain: Are there unknown species? How big do they get? And where are they found? Fluffy, above, who is thought to be the longest captive snake in the world at 24 feet long, drew record fans (1.53 million) to the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in 2007. The reticulated python is 15 years old and weighs 300 pounds. It will keep growing, and may live [...]

New Alux Sighting

Alux hominids are Proto-Pygmies. The Aluxob (plural Maya) are seen in the Yucatan, Mexico, mostly by the Mayans, but sometimes by Mexicans and United States tourists, quite regularly. People in the Yucatan see the Aluxob, and when I was there in the 1980s, I was able to interview informants (mostly Mayans) who had firsthand sightings. In my 1985 book, Curious Encounters, I devoted a chapter to the lore, legends, and legacy of these Little People in that corner of the world. Things do not seem to have changed there. In one recent case, Dan Gannon, the moderator of an anthropological [...]