OGOPOGO

Ogopogo Statue in Kelowna,British Columbia

Ogopogo or Naitaka (Salish: n'ha-a-itk, "lake demon") is the name given to a mythical cryptid lake monster reported to live in Okanagan Lake, in British Columbia, Canada. Ogopogo has been allegedly seen by First Nations people since the 19th century. The most common description of Ogopogo is a 40 to 50-foot-long (12 to 15 m) sea serpent. Lake monster investigator Benjamin Radford notes “however, that these First Nations stories were not referring to a literal lake monster like Ogopogo, but instead to a legendary water spirit. The supernatural N’ha-a-itk of the Okanagan Valley Indians is long gone.” 

Appearance:

Descriptions vary, but certain characteristics have been repeated through the decades: Ogopogo is green with a snakelike body about 25 meters long. Some say its head looks like a horse, while others say that it’s reptilian or goat-like. Many even claim to have photographed Ogopogo. The pictures have always been inconclusive.

However, Because the physical evidence for the beast is limited to unclear photographs and film, it has also been suggested that the sightings are misidentifications of common animals, such as otters, and inanimate objects, such as floating logs it's also possible that its a plesiosaur, mosasaur or pliosaur.

Chronology:

In 1926 a sighting is claimed to have occurred at an Okanagan Mission beach. This event was supposedly witnessed by about thirty cars of people who all claimed to have seen the same thing. In 1968 Art Folden filmed what is claimed to be footage of the alleged creature, showing a large wake moving across the water. A computer analysis of the footage concluded it was a solid, three-dimensional object

In 2011, a cell phone video captured two dark shapes in the water. A suggested explanation is that the video shows two logs. Radford analyzed the video forDiscovery News and concluded that “The video quality is poor and the camera is shaky, but a closer look at the 30-second video reveals that, instead of one long object, there are actually two shorter ones, and they seem to be floating next to each other at slightly different angles. There are no humps, nor head, nor form; only two long, darkish, more or less straight forms that appear to be a few dozen feet long. In short, they look a lot like floating logs, which would not be surprising since Lake Okanagan has tens of thousands of logs harvested by the timber industry floating just under the lake's surface.".

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El Sacoman (The Sack Man)

El Sacoman by FAB-Dark

El Sacoman or The Sack Man (also called the Bag Man or Man with the Bag/Sack) is a figure similar to the bogeyman, portrayed as a man with a sack on his back who carries naughty children away. Variants of this figure appear in many Latin countries, such as Spain, Portugal, Brazil and the countries of Spanish America, where it referred to as el "Hombre del costal", el hombre del saco, or in Portuguese, o homem do saco (all of which mean "the sack/bag man"), and also in Eastern Europe, Haiti and some countries in Asia.

Appearance:

The "Sack Man" is envisioned as an impossibly ugly and skinny old man carrying a large sack who wanders the land searching for "naughty" children - whom he is said to capture and stuff in his bag before spiriting them away to a grisly fate (many tales say that the "Sack Man" eats his young victims).The character is not considered as a mythical creature by children.Instead,he is recognized as an insane psychotic murderer that has been accepted by Society.

Chronology:

The "Sack Man" was likely inspired by a very real man who, during the 16th and 17th centuries, was in charge of collecting orphan babies in order to take them to the orphanages: he would put them in a huge bag or in wicker baskets, and carry them all through the province collecting more children. Most of them usually died before reaching the orphanage due to the lack of care and the obviously insalubrious conditions in which he transported them: the lingering memory of this figure may well have inspired the bogeyman as envisioned in modern lore.

In Spain in 1910, a seven-year-old boy was kidnapped to be used as a cure for Francisco Ortega’s tuberculosis. Ortega had been told by a local healer that he could rid himself of the disease by drinking the blood of a child and applying a hot poultice made from the child’s fat on his chest. For a large sum of money, the healer drugged the boy and put him in a sack. He was killed and used as prescribed. Ortega and the healer were both executed.

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Bunyip

The Bunyip is a mythical creature from Australian Folklore.It is said to live in swamps,lakes,waterholes,stagnant blackwater (billabongs) and even wells.It is found in Aboriginal folklore tales and stories.The legend also held that the Bunyip was a aggressive hairy animal with supernatural powers.

Appearance:

There are many different descriptions of what the bunyip looks like. Features that were often reported in newspapers in the early 19th-century included dark fur, a face like a dog, sharp teeth and claws, flippers, tusks or horns, and a duck-like bill.One writer, Robert Brough Smyth, recorded many different descriptions of the bunyip. But he concluded that most people did not really know much about what it looked like or its behaviour, and that they were too afraid of the creature to be able to take note of its appearance. Aboriginal drawings depict a creature with a horse-like tail,flippers and walrus-like tusks or horns.Sometimes the bunyip was enormous, other times the size of a dog.At times it was reported to have a long body and a horse-shaped head.Some researchers believe that bunyip category may have included more than one cryptid.

Traditional Art

Chronology:

In the mid-1800s, an unidentified skull was found along a river bank in New South Wales that seemed to prove the existence of bunyips. Many observers were not convinced, and believed the skull discovery was a hoax. Research was halted because the skull mysteriously disappeared after a few days on exhibit at the Australian Museum in Sydney. Coincidentally, reports of bunyip sightings increased dramatically during this time.

Although legendary bunyip sightings have emanated from throughout Australia, 19th century occurrences centered especially on Lake George and Lake Bathurst. Later reports described the once-carnivorous monster as a harmless grazing herbivore. The first sightings were reported in the early 1800s; the last recorded sighting was in 1890.

The first written account of the Bunyip was in July 1845.A newspaper reported on the finding of some fossils near Geelong. When the bones were shown to an Aboriginal man, he was said to have immediately recognized it as the bunyip. He was asked to draw a picture of the bunyip. The newspaper described it as having a head like an emu and the body and legs of an alligator. Its legs were said to be strong, with thick and short hind legs and long legs in front. It was said to have long claws. When in the water, it was said to swim like a frog, but when on shore it would walk on its hind legs, standing 12 or 13 feet (3.7 or 4.0 m) high.

In January 1846, a weird-looking skull was taken from the banks of Murrumbidgee River in New South Wales. The person who found it said that all the natives it had been shown to had called it a bunyip.The skull was put on display in the Australian Museum in Sydney. Crowds came to see it, and The Sydney Morning Herald wrote that many of the visitors told stories about their "bunyip sightings"

The Skull Displayed in the Australian Museum.

Another early story about the bunyip was written in 1852 by an escaped convict named William Buckley. He wrote that in many of the lakes he had visited, there lived an "amphibious animal, which the natives call Bunyip". He wrote that he only ever saw the back of the animal, which he said was covered in grey feathers. He described it as being the size of a small cow.He claimed the bunyip was believed to have supernatural powers.

Explanation:

Researchers have offered their own possible scientific bases for the bunyip folktales. Depending on the researcher, the bunyip lake monster could be:

• Related to the doyarchu, also called the “Irish Crocodile,” a known aquatic man-killer 
• A giant otter 
• An undiscovered aquatic marsupial 
• An undiscovered variety of freshwater seal 
• A Diprotodon, extinct for some 20,000 years, which is known to have terrified early Australian settlers 
• An Australian Fur Seal, which emits a loud cry similar to the bunyip when it is trapped inland by flooding

• Based on fossilized animal skeletons that the Indigenous Australians came across, such as of the prehistoric giant kangaroo, the Procoptodon, whose fossils indicate they weighed more than 5.8 kg or 500 pounds. 
• Scholars have suggested that the story of the bunyip may have been passed down from a time when megafauna still existed in Australia. Comparisons have been made to extinct marsupials like the Diprotodon or Thylacoleo. Other scholars have suggested that people finding the fossilised remains of such animals would identify them as the bunyip.

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Manticore

The Manticore or Martichora is a Persian legendary creature.It has a body of a lion,with three rows of sharp teeth,a face that resembles that of a human,sometimes bat-like wings and a poisonous tail.It devours its prey whole without leaving any trace of the prey behind.

Origins:

The Manticore myth if of Persian legend,where its name was "man-eater".The earliest known account of the Manticore was chronicled by Ctesias, who served in the courts of Persia in the 5th century B.C. The Roman historian, Pliny the Elder, also depicted the Manticore in his works of natural history. Aristotle,the famous philosopher also described it:


"If we may believe Ctesias...he mentions an Indian animal called Martichora, which had three rows of teeth in each jaw; it is as large and rough as a lion, and has similar feet, but its ears and face are like those of a man; its eye is grey, and its body red; it has a tail like a land scorpion, in which there is a sting; it darts forth the spines with which it is covered, instead of hair, and it utters a noise resembling the united sound of a pipe and a trumpet; it is not less swift of foot than a stag, and is wild, and devours men."

Explanation:

Most skeptics suggest that the Manticore legend extended from nothing more than exaggerated eye witness accounts of man eating tigers, which where known to ravage jungle villages, especially in northern India. Other investigators suggest that the Manticore may be an actually creature, which through years of evolution has developed features which at a distance appear to be very human like, this is designed to both lull and lure its favorite pray, man kind.There remains no physical evidence of the Manticore in modern times, highly credible men such as Pliny the Elder have documented there existence which gives some them some credibility.

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The Dover Demon

The Dover demon is a small humanoid reported from Massachusetts. It was the subject of an intensive scare during the 1970s, when multiple witnesses came forward with their sightings.

Appearance:

 The Dover demon is described as looking sort of like the "gray" variety of alien, except that it has skin of a rosy orange instead of sickly gray. The Dover demon has a large head on a small, stick-like body. It can be bipedal, but it often travels on all fours or switches back and forth between the two modes of locomotion. It has eyes that glow, sometimes orange, sometimes green. It does not seem to wear any clothing, unless the clothing fits tightly and is the same color as its body. Unlike the grays, the Dover demon does not seem to be associated with UFOs. It just wanders around on its own.

Cryptozoologists seldom show interest in the Dover demon. First of all, mainstream cryptozoologists are rarely willing to seriously investigate humanoids other than hairy humanoids. Also, it seems that sightings only happened during a short time period, with most claiming that sightings have now ceased, so the Dover demon does not seem to be a pressing matter.

The Dover demon is, however, a preoccupation of fringe cryptozoologists. Believers are likely to try to classify it in the same alien/angel/fairy complex that is a popular destination for all unexplained extra-weird non-hairy humanoids

Chronology:

Seventeen-year-old William Bartlett claimed that while driving on April 21, 1977, he saw a large-eyed creature "with tendril-like fingers" and glowing eyes on top of a broken stone wall on Farm Street in Dover, Massachusetts. Fifteen-year-old John Baxter reported seeing a similar creature in heavily wooded area on Miller Hill Road the same evening. Another 15-year-old, Abby Brabham, claimed to have seen the creature the following night sitting upright on Springdale Avenue. The teenagers all drew sketches of the alleged creature. Bartlett wrote on his sketch, "I, Bill Bartlett, swear on a stack of Bibles that I saw this creature." According to The Boston Globe, "the locations of the sightings, plotted on a map, lay in a straight line over 2 miles".

Bartlett's Sketch

 When he returned home that night he drew a picture of the monster, later to be dubbed the Dover Demon by a local newspaper, when his father noticed that he was rather upset. Over the course of the night two more sightings occurred before the thing ambled back into the mystery from whence it came. A 15-year-old named John Baxter sighted the Dover Demon while walking home from his girlfriend's house, at first mistaking it for a very short friend of his (accounts state that the creature was less than 4 feet tall). Baxter, being braver than I, got a good look at it (I would have run screaming into the night) for a few minutes. It had long toes and fingers that it wrapped around a tree trunk and rocks as it stood, perhaps observing Baxter in return. Despite seeing it for a longer period of time, it was late at night, and his best sighting was of the creature momentarily silhouetted against a field.

Baxter's Sketch which look like Bartlett's Sketch

The next night a young man, Will Taintor, was driving a friend of his home when she spotted the creature. The girl, Abby Brabham, described it as being down on all fours, hairless, and having glowing green eyes. The witness stuck to her guns even after it became known Bartlett had described the eyes as orange.

Brabham's Sketch

Explanation:

Skeptics usually claim that the Dover Demon was simply a lost baby moose glimpsed under unusual conditions that made it seem like a bizarre humanoid that sometimes went on four legs. People who don't believe that explanation point out that all sightings happened during the wrong time of year for a moose that small to exist, and they also point out that Massachusetts is far from normal moose habitat. Even if such an orphan moose had been wandering around so close to populated areas, it seems as if it would have been easily captured. If the explanatory power of the baby moose explanation appeals to you, then you could get around the worst objection by substituting a creature that does actually exist in the area and can be born any time of year: a baby calf. An orange-furred orphan calf would be a more likely candidate for such a proposal than a baby moose. Other suggested explanations include a monkey, a dog, an alien, mutation, or simply a hoax. this creature is 3 1/2 to 4 feet tall, shaped like a baby's body with long arms and legs.

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Flatwoods monster

The Flatwoods Monster (also known as the Braxton County Monster or Frametown Monster or the Phantom of Flatwoods) is a cryptid sighted in Flatwoods, West Virginia on September 12,1952.It was also sighted in Frametown,West virginia It is believed to be of extraterrestrial nature.

Appearance:

The Cryptid was initially reported as being about 10 feet tall and 4 feet wide.Most agree that it was at least 7 feet tall. It appeared to be some kind of robotic suit or spacecraft rather than an organic being.It had a "Cowl" in the shape of an ace of spades behind a red round head.Its eyes were glowing green-orange.The creature's body was inhumanly-shaped and clad in a dark exoskeleton, later described as a shadow.Some witnesses claim that is was black while others claim that it was green.Some accounts record that the creature had no visible arms.Others reported that it had small arms.

Chronology:

At 7:15 PM on September 12, 1952, two brothers,Edward and Fred May and their friend Tommy Hyer (ages 13,12 and 10 respectively) witnessed a bright object cross the sky. The object came to rest on land belonging to a local farmer G.Bailey Fisher. Once they saw the thing land, the boys went to the home of May brothers' mother, Kathleen May, where they reported seeing a UFO crash land in the hills. From there, the boys and a group of locals went to the farm to try to find whatever it was that the boys had seen.

One of the locals dog ran ahead out of sight and started barking, and moments later ran back to the group with its tail between its legs. After traveling about ¼ of a mile the group reached the top of a hill, where they reportedly saw a large pulsating "ball of fire" about 50 feet to their right. They also saw (and smelled) a pungent mist that made their eyes and noses burn. A farmer then noticed two small lights over to the left of the object, and directed his flashlight towards them, revealing the creature, which was reported to have emitted a shrill hissing noise before gliding towards them, changing direction and then heading off towards the red light. At this point the group fled in panic.

Upon returning home, the mother contacted the local sheriff and a news reporter. The reporter conducted a number of interviews and returned to the site with the farmer later that night, where he reported that "there was a sickening, burnt, metallic odor still prevailing". The sheriff and his deputy searched the area separately, but found no trace of the encounter.

Early the next morning, the reporter visited the site of the encounter for a second time and discovered two tracks in the mud, as well as traces of a thick black liquid. He immediately reported them as being possible signs of a saucer landing based on the premise that the area had not been subjected to traffic for at least a year. It was later revealed that the tracks were likely to have been those of a Chevrolet pickup truck driven by a local, who had gone to the site to look for the creature some hours prior to Stewert's discovery.

After the event, investigators associated with Civilian Saucer Investigation, obtained a number of accounts from witnesses who claimed to have experienced a similar or related phenomena. These accounts included the story of a mother and her 21 year-old-daughter, who claimed to have encountered a creature with the same appearance and odor a week prior to the September 12 incident; the encounter reportedly affected the daughter so badly that she was confined to a hospital for three weeks. They also gathered a statement from the mother of the local farmer, in which she said that, at the approximate time of the crash, her house had been violently shaken and her radio had cut out for 45 minutes, and a report from the director of the local Board of Education in which he claimed to have seen a flying saucer taking off at 6:30 on the morning of September 13th (the morning after the creature was sighted).

The day after the Flatwoods incident, a couple taking a leisurely drive through the mountains of Frametown, West Virginia, at dusk were met with a similarly horrific experience. Their car came to a sudden stop and refused to start again. Shortly thereafter, a putrid sulfiric odor filled the air. The couple, circling the vehicle in hopes of spotting the culprit, spotted something far worse than they could have imagined. From the waist down it was similar to the Flatwoods Monster, but from the waist up was a reptilian humanoid. This creature, thought to be the same creature sighted in Flatwoods, is known as the Frametown Monster.

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Atacama Alien

In 2003, a tiny humanoid skeleton was found in near a churchyard in a Chilean ghost town.It was found by Oscar Muñoz near an abandoned church in a ghost town called La Noria, 56 km to the interior of Iquique in northern Chile. Barely six inches long, with a terribly malformed skull, the skeleton (nicknamed Ata) was initially thought to be some kind of alien. The specimen was turned over to Stanford University, where a battery of experts studied it. DNA evidence quickly revealed Ata was in fact a human boy, having died within the last few decades. However, the skeleton remains quite mysterious; it seems to show development consistent with a six year old, and only has 10 ribs to the typical human 12. Researchers believe that Ata was either a very tiny dwarf, or that he suffered a disorder like progeria, which caused him to age rapidly while still in the womb. Others posit that Ata was merely stillborn or aborted (the force of which could have distorted the body). Further tests may reveal Ata’s ultimate fate.

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