03-19-2019, 02:57 PM (This post was last modified: 05-04-2019, 12:37 PM by BIAD.)
Here's strange tale from an area of England known as 'The Fens'.
On the Eastern side of the country, there's a stretch of marshland that -due to the contours of the coastline called 'The Wash'
and its elevation, spent most of British history as a inhospitable place until some work was done to create drainage for
farming use.
Anyway here's the recent account, it's a long story but the images are fascinating. (Link to article here)
Quote:It was almost a year before Michael’s story reached me and truly came under scrutiny and into the public domain. This happened quite by chance, while I was pursuing another, apparently fruitless story on the southern edge of the Fens.
Chris Nailer was visiting friends out in the wilds near Burnt Fen, some miles from Ely, when, soon after midnight on 22 August 2002, they had heard some strange sounds, somewhat like those of a dog, outside the house. When the owner of the house shone a torch from a downstairs window, he glimpsed something ‘very large and dog-like’ disappear through a gap in the hedge.
Though it had clearly been disturbing for them, the phrase ‘like a dog’ cropped up a great deal in their testimony. So much so that, regrettably, there seemed to be only one conclusion to be drawn. I left feeling convinced that they were unfortunate victims of a local stray and ‘Black Shuck mania’.
Afterwards, I was discussing the matter in a local pub with a friend. We talked about the recent phenomenon of the Fen Tiger, and Black Shuck – a great black dog, said to inhabit the Fens (there have been numerous terrifying encounters with this beast since the earliest properly recorded sighting in 1570, near Bungay, Suffolk). This friend, it transpired, also knew a friend of Michael’s and mentioned some of the details of the case.
Though he was concerned about betraying a confidence, I made subtle enquiries and met Michael two weeks later, who, it turned out, was very willing to talk. I had the impression that while he had been reluctant to push his case before the public, it was a great relief to him that someone had finally come to take the matter off his hands.
We talked several times over the next couple of weeks, and he produced a drawing of what he had seen. It was all perfectly clear in his mind, even after many months, though he apologised for the quality of his draughtsmanship (‘I’m not an artist…’ he laughed). I was firmly convinced that he believed in what he saw, and that it was something quite real. Nevertheless, for the moment, as so often, the investigation was at a dead end – a detailed account, but nothing more.
But more was to come, quite suddenly, and quite unexpectedly. While pursuing other investigations in Scotland towards the end of September, I picked up a message on my mobile from Chris Nailer, saying that the same disturbances had occurred again at approximately 1.30pm on the morning of 22 September.
When he joined his friend for a walk later that day they had also found unusual, large footprints –one whole and three partial –which they said they could not definitely identify as either animal or human. ‘If they are made by a person,’ said Chris, ‘then they were walking barefoot and had claws’.
These were found near a ditch at the edge of an open field, which according to Chris’s friend tended to drain poorly during Autumn, and was often half full of water. Chris speculated that the ‘creature’ had stopped here to drink. However, poor mobile reception had meant a significant delay in me receiving the message.
The day after the discovery the footprints were already gone, the field having been freshly tilled. Most frustrating of all, no one had managed to take a photograph on Sunday, because the battery in the only available camera was flat. Nevertheless, by this time I’d put myself on a train heading south.
On the journey, I had another dramatic call, this time from my partner Charlie Marlowe. A friend of hers –a long-serving country vet –had called her with a curious story about a cow that had been found dead – and severely mutilated –at a farm in the Fens.
Both the farmer’s dogs had refused to go anywhere near the carcass. The farmer had called the vet immediately. Several weeks had now passed since the original discovery, and the animal’s body had long since been destroyed, but I’d seen mutilated cattle before -in Nevada -and it is a horrific sight. Ironically, the usual explanation for mysterious cattle mutilations is that it is a predatory animal.
It was clear that here it really was an animal that was responsible –but neither the farmer nor our friendly vet could satisfactorily explain what animal (in England, at least) could wreak such damage. Even more significantly –and this was not known to the farmer, the vet, or even Charlie –the attack had taken place just hours after Chris Nailer and friend had heard those mysterious sounds at the Burnt Fen house (in the early morning of 23 August), which was only 9 miles away.
But by the time I got back into East Anglia, there was far more dramatic news. Over the weekend of 21 September, the same farmer had had another encounter –one that, this time, would not need to depend on anyone’s drawing skills.
The farmer –let’s call him John –had been severely shaken by the attack, and with a resourcefulness worthy of a true investigator immediately set about introducing security measures. The cattle were kept in a locked shed at night, opposite which there was already a security light. This is set off by movement in the yard –anything bigger than a rabbit will do it.
On an adjacent barn, John installed a small webcam overlooking the yard, triggered by a simple light sensitive switch. If the security light comes on, the webcam snaps high resolution images every two seconds, saving them directly to the hard drive of a PC. It keeps this up until the light switches off again (once triggered it stays on for approximately 3 minutes, unless the beam continues to be interrupted). In the three weeks it had been in operation, it had snapped nothing but a few cats and the odd fox. Then something much bigger paid a visit.
At 3.20am on 22 September –again, just a few hours after the second disturbance at the Burnt Fen House –John was awoken by a loud crash. In the next few moments he was convinced he could hear something moving outside. Looking out of all the windows towards the yard and the nearby cattle shed, he could see nothing.
But the security light was on. By now, the sounds had stopped. John headed to the PC to see what, if anything, the camera had picked up. What he found was startling.
At exactly 3.17am, an upright figure enters the yard from the left (the drive leading to the road), triggering the security system. Seemingly unpertubed by the security light, it stands for several seconds looking from side to side before moving further into the yard. It stops again, dead centre, in the full beam of the light, and appears to look directly at the camera.
Then, very suddenly and swiftly, it moves off to the right, in the direction of the cattle shed and fields beyond. When I saw these images for the first time I found it a truly chilling experience. One can only imagine how John must have felt that night. This creature, whatever it was, had passed just yards from him only moments before.
The first thing that struck him in the silence that followed was that his dogs hadn’t barked once. He found them downstairs in the kitchen, cowering in a corner, their ears flat against their heads. Needless to say. he did not investigate further outside until daylight. He never did discover the source of the crash. There were no other signs of an intruder of any kind...'
I do apologize. That was just me. The lighting was horrendous, and the photographer did not get my best side. Plus, it was the middle of the night, and I had not had my morning coffee yet. I would be willing to return any missing livestock, but cannot at the moment recall where I misplaced it. I blame old age. I was told by a young whipper-snapper just today that I'm really getting old in my old age...
I dunno. Some of it looks convincingly like the modern conception of a werewolf (think "Dog Soldiers" and the like), but parts of it look disturbingly human - like the legs, feet, and hands. In most modern werewolf flicks, the "heel" is midway up the leg where a dog's hock joint is, and just the toes and forefoot ever touch the ground. Still, if it's a suit, it's a really good fit, don't you think? Not much slack showing in it for a suit.
maybe CGI...
OR - it could be the real deal, and the movies have it wrong. Maybe stretching a human foot into a dog-leg during the transformation is just too much wear and tear on the human body, so the movies have it wrong.
Who knows? Nice clear pics, in general. Now, if Bigfoot ever wanders through that fella's barnyard, we've got him cold!
.
Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king.
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’
06-26-2020, 10:48 AM (This post was last modified: 06-26-2020, 10:49 AM by BIAD.)
(06-26-2020, 10:18 AM)F2d5thCav Wrote: Check, what is odd about the images is that the top half of the beast looks vaguely wolf-like while the bottom half is
more like a frog or a lizard.
Hmm.
Cheers
There's not a lot more on this incident that I can find and the link to the BB Sightings website has been set at 'forbidden'.
But you're right, the lower part does look 'scaly' and if it hadn't been for the many other strange reports from that area,
I'd have written it off as a joke by the unnamed farmer.
Here's one from 2016 in The Yorkshire Post. Barmston is in that area and 'The Beast Of Barmston' or 'Old Stinker' legend
is well-known around there. But I doubt -as the article suggests, that there's a 'guilt' in regarding killing-off wolves from
centuries ago!
Quote:Truth' behind those sightings of Hull's Beast of Barmston Drain werewolf.
Collective guilt about wiping out the native wolf population could be cause behind the sightings
of 'Old Stinker' in Hull, according to an academic.
'Media round the world picked up on claims that a “half-man, half-dog” creature had been spotted stalking
the banks of the city’s Barmston Drain earlier this year. There were lurid reports of the “tall and hairy” beast
being seen gobbling a German Shepherd and then jumping 8ft over a fence - with its prey still in its jaws.
The creature, dubbed the “Beast of Barmston Drain” was connected by folklorists to the legend of “Old Stinker”,
a werewolf said to stalk the Yorkshire Wolds. Further sightings followed - including in August when a woman in
a car with friends claimed she saw a beast with a human head started walking towards them on two legs on a
road through the East Yorkshire village of Halsham.
The location of the sightings, close to the East Yorkshire Wolds, which were once home to wolves, could be
significant, according to Dr Sam George, a gothic scholar and literary expert. Dr George, who was behind the
UK’s first International Werewolf Conference at the University of Hertfordshire last year, said
“I often get asked what causes belief in werewolfism, but what is most pertinent
and magical about this latest folk panic is that “‘Old Stinker’ is thought to inhabit
a landscape which saw some of the last wolves in England.
“I argue that he represents, not our belief in him as a supernatural shapeshifter, but our collective guilt at the
extinction of an entire indigenous species.” Far from dismissing it as a figment of the imagination, Dr George
says it’s important to explore people’s fears and look for deeper meanings, adding:
“My instincts are to embrace it and see it as a manifestation of our cultural memory around wolves.
“‘Old Stinker’ is a gift; he can reawaken the memory of what humans did to wolves, draw attention to re-wilding
debates, and redeem the big bad wolf that filled our childhood nightmares, reminding us that it is often humans,
not wolves or the supernatural, that we should be afraid of.”
The sightings led to a freedom of information request to Hull Council which confirmed it had no policy on
werewolves and rock legend Alice Cooper to ask: “So there are suddenly several reports of a werewolf like
creature near a small town in the UK. Do you think it could be real?”...'
(06-26-2020, 10:25 AM)WonderCow Wrote: Whatever it is, from the way it's standing, it looks like it desperately needs to go to the toilet!
It seems ridiculous that only recently, this kind of 'Man-Bites-Dog' story -which it usually falls under
for the media's silly-season, could have any serious credibility and for a farmer to go to such lengths to
perpetrate such a silly prank, is also out of their usual hard-headed, pragmatic persona.
What could one gain from performing this hoax? Fame wouldn't benefit a farmer unless he owns a
small cafe in the town in hopes of fleecing would-be paranormal visitors. I believe that tramping all
over his property would also be a no-no and his standing in the surrounding farming community would
undoubtedly take a hit.
So it alludes me what -if he was involved, he did it for.
Quote:So it alludes me what -if he was involved, he did it for.
Makes one wonder if something sinister (but not paranormal) was afoot. Threats, warnings, attempt to make the farmer look ridiculous to damage his social standing in the community . . .
This story was in the back of my mind wile I read story BAIDs story, its an oldiee but not so different to other storys over time, enjoy link
Quote:From 1764 to 1767, a ferocious beast is said to have killed over 100 people in the south of France. At first, the monster targeted solitary people out tending flocks in the forests; but later it grew bolder and would charge in to attack groups of people. Sometimes villagers would fight it off; sometimes it would claim a victim and run off with an unfortunate person in its formidable jaws. Hunters and soldiers were engaged to kill the beast but the attacks continued. Only when two large wolves were killed did the nightmare finally stop, and then the controversy began. Was the beast one (or more) of these wolves, or had it been something far more sinister?
The Gévaudan is a historical region of rural France known for its harsh volcanic cliffs, steep slopes, and dense forests. Though small villages and their fields dotted the valley floors, the Gévaudan was just the kind of place a predatory monster might hope to escape capture, and it turns out that the whole region had built-in monsters to fit that very role, in the form of wolves. It is no coincidence that European fairy tales often depict wolves in the role of the antagonist. Until firearms became more common and more advanced, wolf attacks were well known not just in this part of France, but throughout rural Europe. Many died in wolf attacks in France every year. Everyone who lived in the Gévaudan knew what they looked like. And so it was extraordinary indeed when the attacks began in 1764, with all the eyewitness accounts declaring in unison that it was not a wolf but some beast. The attacks were indeed real, and modern analyses conclude the number was indeed as high as 100. Every book or article about the beast gives an account of a few of the best known specific attacks: the first little girl to die, cases where villagers fought back and shot at it and even wounded it, finding it impossible to bring down. What sort of creature was it? Well, that's where things get murky. First of all, there is little consistency to the reports. The beast was said to be red and covered with scales, or it had long fur and a mane and black stripes. It had a long thin head like a greyhound, or it had an enormous head with a huge mouth. It had great talons instead of a wolf's claws. It could run at supernatural speed. Sometimes it hunted alone, sometimes with a mate, sometimes with its young. In contrast to the written descriptions, all the many contemporary illustrations of the beast generally look like dogs or wolves. Among those villagers who tended toward belief in the supernatural, the beast was considered a loup-garou, or werewolf. In summary, the most common candidate identifications for the beast were a large wolf, a lion, a tiger, or a hyena. All of these potential identifications were, in fact, plausible. By the mid-1700s, menageries had animals of all descriptions from all over the world. Ships came and went and brought curious creatures everywhere. It was not at all uncommon for the wealthy to have their own exotic animals, any one of which could have escaped or been turned loose. Animals like hyenas and lions were well known to everyone, with the important proviso that very few people had actually seen one — especially the untraveled peasants. People knew what lions and hyenas looked like only by description and illustration, both of which were fanciful and unreliable as often as not. Ultimately, two animals were killed that finally brought an end to the attacks. King Louis XV had sent a good-sized military contingent to the Gévaudan plus organized hunting parties, but when they failed to produce results he sent his personal Lieutenant of the Hunt to replace all of them. François Antoine arrived June 1765, and in late September he finally got his quarry. Using a monopod-mounted matchlock musket, he shot a wolf so big that he wrote:
Quote:We never saw a big wolf that could be compared to this one. Hence, we believe this could be the fearsome beast that caused so much damage.
Sources report that villagers recognized certain scars on the carcass from times it had been wounded by hunters, but no details survive. Antoine sent the carcass back to Versailles as proof, where it was stuffed and displayed. Antoine also shot a female he believed to be its mate, and also a young male pup which he reported was larger than the mother. Antoine did note that the pup had the congenital defect of double dewclaws — the vestigial digits on a canine's forepaws that correspond to a human's thumbs. He was handsomely rewarded and the attacks stopped — for two months. Some dozen or so people were killed by the beast over a six month period, until a local nobleman organized a mass hunt in June 1767 consisting of virtually every able-bodied person who could be armed. Jean Chastel was a hunter who believed the beast to be a loup-garou, and accordingly loaded his double-barreled flintlock rifle with buckshot in one barrel and a large-caliber ball in the other (Chastel's rifle became famous and still exists today in the private collection of a descendant of François Antoine). With Chastel's kill, the attacks stopped for good. The Beast of Gévaudan was no more. Chastel's kill led to the closest thing we have to empirical evidence of the creature's identity, and that's a written report of the necropsy done on this animal at the nobleman's castle, and known as the Marin Report. It is a detailed objective description of the creature, plus a long list of precise measurements — and it even includes a list of the stomach contents. The animal was no longer complete, as when the surgeon arrived he found a "great crowd of people" already having examined it "with knives which served them as scalpels", and he "saw with the greatest regret that their zeal was superior to their knowledge, and that the most curious parts of the animal no longer existed." Regardless, the notarized necropsy report records all that we know today. There's a point we've mentioned many times on Skeptoid, and it's a hint that helps you determine which sources are valid and which are not. Lazy authors often copy and paste from each other without going back to the original sources to actually check anything. Virtually any book or article you'll find on the Beast of Gévaudan written by a cryptozoologist says that inside the stomach of the animal, the collarbone of a young girl was found. Dismiss anything that says this, because it's wrong, and it shows that the author did not check their source (and you also can't determine gender from a collarbone). The two existing documents that discuss the necropsy on the animal — the Marin Report and another document known as the Letter from Auvergne — both clearly state that the stomach contained the head of a femur from a child. There is no mention of a collarbone. The French word for femur is fémur — kind of hard to get wrong. Any author who says the animal described in the necropsy report was not a wolf, and also mentions a collarbone, should be dismissed. (Wolves do not typically eat bones, however they'll often crush them for the marrow and ingest fragments.) As with Antoine's wolf, scars said to be consistent with two injuries inflicted upon the beast by locals during attacks were found on the animal. These were a bayonet injury above its left eye and a bullet wound on its left thigh. Besides this, all the measurements and descriptions of the animal are consistent with a large gray wolf — and not even an especially large one. No irreconcilable traits were noted, with the exception of its teeth. The report lists 22 teeth, and a wolf has 42; those that were specified match what a wolf has, but no mention is made of whether other teeth were missing. The notary who prepared the report, Etienne Marin, wrote:
Quote:This animal appears to be a wolf, but an extraordinary one. By its figure and its proportions, it is very different from the wolves that one sees in this country. This is what more than three hundred people from all around have certified.
But this hyperbole contradicts the actual measurements, which were right in line with those of gray wolves there at the time. We might conclude that the excitement of the moment led Marin and the 300 lookyloos to come away with an exaggerated idea of what they saw. In fact this remains the prevailing scientific view on what the Beast of Gévaudan was: one or more large wolves, compounded with a hysterical widely-held belief that it was much larger and fiercer than any ordinary wolf. But this is not the final word. Chastel's wolf is not recorded to have had the same double dewclaws that Antoine's had, but the fact that double dewclaws were in the local population is noteworthy. One popular sheep herding breed of dog used in the Gévaudan was the Beauceron, a breed in which in the double dewclaws are endemic. The local gray wolves (Canis lupus) and the local Beaucerons (Canis lupus familiaris) are perfectly able to interbreed, and such hybrids are notoriously unpredictable in their behavior. According to the International Wolf Center, wolves and various dog breeds mature at different rates. This leads to unpredictable hormonal changes in a hybrid, which can produce behavioral changes that may include overt aggression. A wolf-Beauceron hybrid could well go through a uniquely aggressive phase as it matures; and once it learns humans are a viable food source, the hunting of humans can become part of their learned behavior. There is no evidence this is what happened, but hormonally induced aggression among hybrids is well known and the hybridization of wolves and Beaucerons does appear likely to have taken place. This appears more probable than one competing explanation for the beast's aggression, which is rabies. Rabid wolves are absolutely more aggressive and are more likely to attack humans. However, rabies is almost always fatal in humans and is easily transmitted by a bite. There were many survivors of the Gévaudan attacks; but all such survivors would have died of rabies if the attacking animal had been infected, and none did. So the rabies explanation is a poor fit. There is one more popular explanation that ought to be put to rest. Many modern sources report that in 1997, a taxidermist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris found a record indicating that the museum had had a stuffed hyena in its collection from 1766 to 1819. It has also been reported that the son of Jean Chastel had such a hyena in his private menagerie. We might speculate that perhaps young Chastel's hyena escaped, was responsible for some or all of the beast's attacks, then was shot by Antoine, sent to Versailles, and ended up stuffed in the Paris museum. There are two serious problems with this hypothesis. According to the museum, the stuffed hyena was positively identified as a striped hyena, and the largest of these are smaller than an adult wolf. Their features — especially the stripes — are quite distinctive, and would not have escaped mention in the written reports that described Antoine's kill as a large wolf, and would not have escape depiction in a famous illustration of Antoine's stuffed kill in the court of Louis XV where it appears as a very conventional large black wolf. It seems improbable that the King's Lieutenant of the Hunt shot a hyena then a wolf believing them to be mates, and yet was unable to distinguish between the two species. The second reason to doubt it is that the beast's attacks continued well into 1767, the year after the museum taxidermist said it entered the collection. There is no reason at all to connect the two taxidermy pieces, especially given that all indications are that they were two very different species of animal. And so, with that, we put to rest the Beast of Gévaudan, and pause to remember the 100 people it killed. Whether a wolf, a wolf hybrid, or something else unsuspected, it did indeed carve itself a gory niche in the history of legendary monsters.
Wallfire, something I find intriguing is how species can be places where no one expects them. I was surprised to learn that there are jackals native to Europe. I had always thought of them being an African species.
Also ran across a wolf once in part of Germany in which the local authorities would have sworn up and down they had not lived for over a hundred years. Pretty sure that one came up from a pack living in the Vosges Mountains.
@ BIAD Not only do the legs look scaly, it's fur has a strange bobbly clumpy look to it, in fact, the more I look at it, the less like fur it seems. It almost looks like a bouclé bodysuit.
As to why a farmer would fake this? I dunno why people do half the stuff they do. 15 minutes of fame? Looking for a book / film deal?
No idea.
Something else I noticed, the arms and legs seem to be in the same relative positions in all the photos, I think the head is the only thing that has moved slightly. I think it's some sort of mannequin wearing a suit, or a sculpture of some sort.
(06-26-2020, 11:17 AM)F2d5thCav Wrote: Wallfire, something I find intriguing is how species can be places where no one expects them. I was surprised to learn that there are jackals native to Europe. I had always thought of them being an African species.
Also ran across a wolf once in part of Germany in which the local authorities would have sworn up and down they had not lived for over a hundred years. Pretty sure that one came up from a pack living in the Vosges Mountains.
Cheers
Animals always wonder to new areas, sometimes only one or two. Like people some animals like to adventure or try to find a new mate. Its diffrent if an animal type lives some where or just one or two wonder there. If you want to know more about what can be found in Finland lets know
Wow thanks for sharing. Not sure if it's real or not. Tech is so good these days hard to tell. Sure is a creepy bastard thing though and I shall not be walking round there naked again. Thanks for the heads up good thread
Love cryptozoology but this?
They need to eat so I figure a trail of death, livestock, that sort of thing should be an obvious issue.
Additionally it wouldn’t be just a single animal, at least a mate, offspring, expect it to live in a pack. So,stay, maybe at the least two, killing at least two sheep,,cows, whatever a week to feed on. A farmer would notice that and go hunting
That and the photo, just seems a bit off, ankles, feet, very thin and small for a large body.
Also the standing up thing, just not natural enough for me
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