Category: Cryptozoology & Strange Nature

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Dropping From The Sky In Alaska

When Charles Fort wrote his Book of the Damned, he talked about a number of strange events where things rained out of the sky. There were black rains, red rains, rains of fish, rains of frogs! Apparently that sort of thing still happens. This time it’s bizarre eel-like fish called lampreys in Alaska. (This is not like the rain of spiders that we reported recently.)

There were simple explanations in Fort’s time about all the bizarre goings on, which is what prompted him to write his book in the first place. Here, the official explanation is that seagulls are digging these up and dropping them around. Hopefully we can look forward to photos and video of these bomber birds in action. In the mean time we will also wonder if the lampreys are simply collecting in the Super-Sargasso Sea, the dimension of lost things that Fort proposed.

There must be a lot of keys there…and socks.

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What is that in the sky?!

Imagine driving down the road and you see this up ahead.

640px-Saucer_cloud_over_Campbell_Mesa,_AZ
By Brady Smith; Coconino National Forest [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
You might feel that we were being invaded, but what you see is an unusual formation called a “lenticular cloud.” These clouds form in situations where some sort of large object (like a mountain or a building) disturbs the air flow and creates an eddie of air. When the conditions are right, clouds form in these eddies and take on a bizarre saucer shape that looks like something from the film, Independence Day.

These weird clouds may account for some UFO reports. Here are some more amazing examples.

512px-Lenticular_clouds_and_Mount_Hotaka_from_Mount_Otensho_1994-06-25
Lenticular clouds and Mount Hotaka from Mount Otensho 1994-06-25
By Alpsdake (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
New-Mexico-Lenticular
By Brandy Jenkins [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons
Lenticular Clouds over Cagliari
Lenticular Clouds over Cagliari
By fdecomite [CC BY 2.0]
 Of course, not all reports can be explained by clouds. Soon we’ll examine some of the more detailed reports and the organization that constantly tracks and investigates them.

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Gator:1, Pickup: 0

A man is driving his truck through some high grass and comes across an alligator. Of course, you’re going to take out your phone and film this. Then you might play a little chicken with the gator, trying to get him to move along. Then…

 

Wow! I guess they don’t make them like they used to! The steel bumper on my Grandaddy’s old Chevy pickup would have been more of a match for this thing. I wonder if having video of you taunting an alligator into going Godzilla on you affects the insurance claim.

If you have video of a strange animal encounter, send it to us!

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Rain of spiders

It’s an arachnophobe’s worst nightmare… spiders literally raining from the sky, falling into everything and leaving a debris of web. That was what many experienced recently in the Australian city of Goulburn.  (See amazing photos from the Sydney Morning Herald.) This isn’t the first time such a thing has happened either. This video shows an incident two years ago in Brazil.

https://youtu.be/htSDlXzWV-w?t=1m17s

While bizarre, this is a natural event when a large population of spiders migrates from one area to another, using a bit of web to catch the wind and fly them to a new home. Texas also had a migration in 2013.

Spiders are generally under-appreciated creatures that are often used for their fear-factor in movies. In reality, spiders consume a vast number of pests that invade the home and farm. In fact, a single spider can eliminate about 2,000 insects in a year (according to this spider fact page from the National Geographic Society).

Yes, they are weird and alien. Their lifestyle is gruesome. We’d rather have a rain of spiders than a rain of jellyfish any day.

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Strange new creatures

Photo by NBC News

In 1995, divers discovered bizarre configurations about 6 feet in diameter off the coast of Japan’s Amami-Oshima Island. They resembled crop circles. Were these underwater aliens?

The answer turned out to be a newly classified pufferfish, Torquigener albomaculosus. The “Crop Circle Fish” was among many species that received scientific names over the last year. The International Institute for Species Exploration has listed their their top 10 of nearly 18,000 newly named species.

These obscure creatures may be hidden away in environments that are not populated by people, such as the strange creatures we are discovering deep beneath the ocean. Others are known locally, but only recently noticed by the scientific community. Here are the other nine recognized on this “top 10” list:

  • Anzu wyliei, also known as “the Chicken From Hell,” is a 10-foot-tall birdlike dinosaur which lived around 66 million years ago in the Dakotas.
  • The Balanophora coralliformis is a parasitic plant found only on the southwestern slopes of Mount Mingan in the Philippines. It has a unique, coral-like appearance because of branches of above-ground tubers which have a coarse texture.
  • The bizarre Cebrennus rechenbergi, or cartwheeling spider, uses a strange flipping motion to propel itself over the sands of Morocco.
  • Dendrogramma enigmatica are multicellular animals resembling mushrooms. Not only a new species, they may represent an entirely new phylum!
  • The so-called Bone-house wasp, Deuteragenia ossarium, from southeast China, uses corpses of ants to ward off predators by stuffing them into crevices on the outside of the nest.
  • The Limnonectes larvaepartus is a fanged frog from Sulawesi Island, Indonesia, that gives live birth to tadpoles that are deposited into pools of water. Other species hatch from eggs.
  • The Phryganistria tamdaoensis, discovered in Vietnam, is the world’s second longest insect.
  • A Sea Slug, Phyllodesmium acanthorhinum, is a particularly beautiful variety that might be a sort of “missing link” in the sea slug world.
  • A Mexican plant had been used for years in “nacimientos,” or altar scenes depicting the birth of Christ, by villagers in Sierra de Tepoztlán, Tlayacapan, San José de los Laureles, and Tepoztlán.  It turned out to be a species of Bromeliad previously unknown to science. It’s been dubbed Tillandsia religiosa.

These are only ten from thousands of newly classified species. As we continue to seek perhaps we’ll finally be giving scientific names to some of the legendary creatures such as Bigfoot that have eluded and fascinated seekers for centuries.

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Research Group Uses Volunteers Dressed Up as Monsters to Investigate How Sightings are Reported. 

There are a lot of Cryptozoologist and they all “want to believe”. Some may say that they rush a little too quickly to conclusions about what sightings are real and what are fake. A team from the University of St Andrews in Fife, Scotland have been pulling the upper hand on this by running a series of experiments to better understand how these people react to sightings to the unknown, cryptozoological creatures of myth.

For example, one experiment involved someone dressing up in a Bigfoot costume and storming around the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. The site has an an abundance of Redwoods, making it a common area to see unidentified creatures.

BIGFOOT1sm

They divided the guinea pigs… I mean visitors, into two groups. One group was set on a route that would lead them to the costumed Bigfoot, where the others were sent safely on a galavant through the woods. Both groups were asked to write a report on their experiences throughout the walk.

“It’s a serious study of people reporting things,” said statistical ecologist Dr Charles Paxton who previously cataloged every recorded sighting of the Loch Ness Monster.

“I’m trying to see if there are statistical patterns. All my work gets published in proper scientific journals. All I do is with the aim of getting proper results.”

No reports have been published yet but we will follow up on the return of this Cryptozoological Punk’d study.

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Skunkape/Bigfoot Found Jumping into Gator Infested Waters

Outside of Tampla Florida, a Bigfoot hunter & enthusiast named Matt M. captured a video while canoeing in the swamps of Tampla, Florida.

What was thought to be a bear, has been analyzed further to be proven not to be. No bear has arms that lanky and long, and how it walks seems unnatural for a bear, even a weirdo one.

Matt saw this thing in the woods and smartly started filming this unknown creature as it dove into Gator infested waters, probably to show all the Gators why he’s a mythological creature and they’re not.

Check out the video below (which has been stabilized) and decide for yourself!

 

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Bigfoot vs. the Buffalos in Yellowstone National Park

This is one brave man, for to get this video, he had to get way too close for my comfort. In the video below, you can clearly see some Bigfoot-esque creature attacking a heard of unfortunate buffalos.

It’s easy to write this off as a hoax of sorts, but who would risk their life for a hoax like this? What do you think? Watch the video and find out for yourself.

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Hipster Bigfoot Found in Brooklyn?

Seems like a PBR drinking, fixed gear bicycle riding Bigfoot was found doing yoga… I mean walking around in Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

Existence-of-Bigfoot-Allegedly-Proved-by-Bulled-Proof-DNA-Study-2 copy

The video was shot Tuesday morning in Prospect Park by a hot toddy drinking local mustache aficionado probably filming a short film when all of a sudden a large, dark figure walked in the back of his frame and probably ruining the man’s perfect intro shot.

The video was met with great skepticism upon viewing, and has been widely decided to be a hoax. All of Brooklyn scoffed upon viewing and went back to their home micro brew.

Watch the video and decide for yourself whether this is a PBR slinging Bigfoot, or large elaborate hipster hoax.

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Cryptozoologist of 2014: Bill Munns

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Bill Munns: a name better known in Hollywood circles than cryptozoological ones. Until recently. His career is one filled with awards and accolades for his extensive knowledge and experience in makeup and FX artistry. Emmys and Oscars decorate his shelves for his work on such films as “Mask” and on various Star Trek shows. So why is cyrptozoonews.com giving him their “Cryptozoologist of the Year” award?

Munn has a real interest in cryptids, specifically Bigfoot. He spent seven years analyzing the famous Patterson-Gimlin film (yes, you’ve seen it) and has written his conclusions in a new book, “When Roger Met Patty”. The appeal of his new book to cryptozoologists is not just the exhaustive study he does surrounding all the controversy around the film, but first explaining, then bringing to bear all of his experience as a special effects wizard to be able to authoritatively state that it wouldn’t have been possible in 1967 to create so realistic a hoax.

munns

Does his book put to rest skeptical claims about the film? Some would say no, that it spends more time on Munn himself, setting himself up as a reliable source of analysis than actually dealing with the facts and allegations in the case. Regardless, it is the first organized collection of responses to the skeptical analysis of the making of the film and as such, a valuable part of any serious cryptozoological library. Here at The Museum of the Weird  we salute you, Bill Munns, for your work in advancing the study of our favorite cryptid!