Bigfoot: Is this the proof?

Bigfoot: Is this the proof?

Creepy ... the mystery creature stares at the camera

Hairy ... no one knows what the animal is

By STAFF REPORTER

Last Updated: 12th January 2011

 

IT’S definitely big. It’s certainly hairy. Could this mysterious beast be the elusive Bigfoot?

Shot in snowy woods in the US state of Maine this video shows a creepy creature lurking in the treetops — and the footage has taken the internet by storm.

Speculation is rife about the identity of the fearsome animal.

IT’S definitely big. It’s certainly hairy. Could this mysterious beast be the elusive Bigfoot? Shot in snowy woods in the US state of Maine this video shows a creepy creature lurking in the treetops — and the footage has taken the internet by storm. Speculation is rife about the identity of the fearsome animal.

Video:

Is this Bigfoot?

Monkey-like creature mystifies Maine

It has been likened to a monkey and even a bear. But many of the 50,000 people who have already watched the clip are convinced it could be the legendary sasquatch.

The video was posted on YouTube by American user webtech88 five days ago. mpu

A woman can be heard telling a child to look at “the bear” in the branches.

But the terrified kid tearfully replies: “I don't like bears.”

Although the cameraman can be heard whistling to attract the animal, it sits silently in the tree.

It is only when they see the front of the animal the group realise is might not be a bear.

The confused woman says: “I see an ape.” While the cameraman agrees: “It does look like a monkey.”

Maine, in the north east of the country, has had a number of Bigfoot sightings over the years

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2798543/Bigfoot-Is-this-the-proof.html#ixzz28LRvjNoe

[The alternate explanation was given that this could be a large raccoon rather than a bear or an ape: It still looks like a chimpanzee to me, and bigger than a porcupine. However a porcupine is much more likely in this environment.-DD]

Some More New England Sea-Serpent Notes

SOME MORE NEW ENGLAND SEA-SERPENT NOTES

The picture at the top of the page was used as an illustration to represent the New England sea serpent of the 1800s. Unfortunately, I think it owes more of its design to the oarfish (right), a recurring candidate for sea-serpent reports in general. The blunt head and big eye would be the more important factors in making that determination: the colouration is wrong but Bernard Heuvelmans has said that in some sea-serpent reports the silvery sides might reflect the colour of the sea rather than show the true colour (these reports are also possibly oarfishes because of the feature).

A summary of sea-serpent reports from a New England newspaper, clipping from Ivan Sanderson's files. Interestingly enough the 'serpent' seems to be of plesiosaur design with a prolonged tail although the text basically re-tells the story of the 1817 Massachussets Bay 'flap' of sea-serpent reports. The last-mentioned Reverend Cummings had a sighting represented in the Von Ferry blog article just posted as being a "Caddy-like" sighting, presumably a moose. I don't know how many moose there may have been around Penobscot Bay in the early 1800s, but they were fairly common in much of New England up until the 1840s, at which time their range basically retreated to the north (such as in Maine, where such reports have been going on all along).

This is the Delia SS sighting off of Maine in 1818, a report which otherwise sounds much like the Pauline SS Whale-fighting-a-giant-squid sighting. Heuvelmans says of this sighting "Was it a squid or a hoax? the latter choice seems more probable."

In this case the prominent whale's tail said to be at the end of thirty feet of 'serpent' tail could be a misinterpreted view of a giant squid's tentacle. Or else it could be that a sperm whale has a type of very long, very thin whale caught head-end in its jaws and it is belabouring the smaller whale to death. If this is so, the same thing may have been sighted two or three other times in other places. The long, thin whale might be a kind of beaked whale developed along the lines of a zueglodon and we have some residual reports of this type after ruling it out as a candidate of the multi-humppd type. It would be the kind of beaked whale reported as a corpse by the Emu in the Pacific: about 60 feet long but with ribs only two and a half feet long, a ribbon-whale. The skull of this creature was definitely the skull of a type of beaked whale, or so the official report from the museum goes.

This last piece of evidence was also from Ivan Sanderson's files and I saw it back in the 1970s when the SITU library and files were still intact. I have restored it somewhat around the edges (scrapbookers, don't listen to the people that tell you to use rubber cement!). This copy comes from The Greatest Study. This page illustrates what was reported to be a film taken by a fisherman in Maine and viewed by an SITU member to be recorded in the files. I never knew what to make of it because the 'blowing' seems to come from some place on the upper neck well behind the head. Presumably that was a mistake, and it may have been there was another creature swimming parallel to this one but obscured on the far side, but far enough back that its blowhole was that much out of sync. And even though the creature was seen and filmed from fairly close to, I think it was based on a small school of dolphins. The view of the head front-on looks a great deal like a head-on view of a bottlenosed dolphin to me. This does not necessarily mean that the dolphins represented in the film are of a known species (if they actually are even dolphins); the lead animal that is best seen appears to have a sort of ragged top edge where the fin would be.

If it is really one snake-like creature as supposed, then the position of the blowhole makes no sense anatomically because it would seem to be well back of the rear end of the skull.

Best Wishes, Dale D.

Von Ferry, Caddy, and Maine: Water-Horses Revisited

Continuing to expand upon the CFZ Canada postings from last week:

I would like to go on record as stating that the fossil crocodile bears no resemblance whatsoever to any of the water-monsters under discussion. The water-monsters all have full racks of deer, moose or elk antlers and when they are spoken of as having feet at all, the feet have cloven hooves (for which the 1906 Omaha water-monster drawing reprinted below).Their long undulating backs illustrate the "String of Buoys" effect in the wake and not the back at all.


Kiowa Water Monster 1890s

 Furthermore, the fishy monsters are all supposed to be heavily armoured with thick scales while the fossil crocodile is scaleless. And the fossils actually show no obvious indication that the animals were fish-tailed in life: the fin part did not fossilize since it was only compposed of soft flesh originally.

Lorenz Von Ferry sea serpent sighting in the mid-1700s. This sighting had darker and lighter patches on the face and neck, and it had a white mane. This happens with moose sometimes. The description given by Pontoppidian in reference to this sighting mentions the large nostrils, which are not showing in the drawing, but the drawing does still show the eyes situated in the head as in a moose, and the distinctive overhanging top lip. This last feature indicates a terrestrial vegetarian browser, by the way.

Instead, all of these water-monsters belong to the same category of Eurasian creatures that started out as the horse-headed, multi-humped "Sea Serpents" of Scandinavia since the 1600s-1700s and which were seen somewhat later on off the coast of New England and then eventually off the coast of British Columbia as "Caddies" or "Cadborosaurus." They were also reported regularly in Quebec since the or early 1800s, according to George Eberhart, who calls them "Horse's Heads" in this instance. In both British Columbia and in the area around the Great Lakes they were definitely identified as the traditional horned (antlered) water serpents, and the descriptions continued across Canada from sea to sea. In Ontario the term On Niont was on record for this sort of creature sighting in 1647-48.

["The Water Horse" illustration above, and generalized indication for such sightings in North America on the map at the right]

These sightings I would say were one and all based on imperfect sightings of swimming moose. And although it would seem that only the white men would be foolish enough to be fooled by such a sight, many of the early sightings up to the 1930s were made by Indians. It may be that these were mostly older men and women or children who were not accustomed to seeing moose or elk swimming.

Navajo Water Pot LB03
This has the full rack of antlers and a shapeless
"Watery" body trailing behind the head

The giveaway is when the heads are seen to bear full racks of horns (antlers). These are shown on some of the traditional representations including the Kiowa example from the 1890s at the top of this page and on the Navajo pot labelled LB03 at the left. And although the fact might not have been recalled in connection to these traditions, the Kiowa, Apache and Navajo are actually Canadian peoples who migrated southwards in the period just before the white men came. That is why their water-monsters have the full racks of antlers like moose or elk while their neighbours do not.



Omaha Water Monster, Drawn in 1906.
Once again this has the antlered deer head
and the long trailing body (with humps) and tail
indicating the trailing wake in the original sighting



Without the horns/antlers being apparent we can still recognize swimming moose because of their 'bent' camel-noses, big droopy ears, fully-haired back, and sometimes even the beard or "bell" on the throat (See the "Cadborosaurus" representations in the photos below) Moose are indeed sometimes swimming out of sight of land at sea off both British Columbia and Scandinavia.



 "Caddy" and monstrous-looking moose above.

"Caddy" drawing showing the typical features of a swimming moose sighting. By the way, the only way you can have a sea monster float on top of the water like an inflatable pool toy (as in this case) is to actually have an inflatable pool toy; in the case of a real animal, most of the body lies below the surface like an iceberg. Therefore the idea that you can see through the bottoms of the "loops" is imaginary (you can see light through waves in the water more easily than through flesh, however).

Von Ferry Norweigan SS at top;
Swimming moose at Attean Lake, Maine, below. The moose is headed toward 3 Mile Island. By now it should be evident that "Sea-Serpent" sihghtings in such a conformation do not show primitive whales, Plesiosaurs, or anything of the sort. They are usually swimming moose or elk with the head held only moderately high out of the water with the neck held in a natural curve for a moose or elk's neck and the "Humps" being the waves in the wake left behind. In the case of a swimming moose, the "humps" in the wake can be quite striking, although the same effect occurs in the wake of many unrelated animals including Orcas and tuna.




Great New England Sea Serpent With Caddy-Like features [Merhorse?]
This one likewise has a short length of neck at a natural curve for a moose



Ivan Sanderson's sea-serpent report collection, statistics posted at The Greatest Study. Dale D. touched up the colours and while he was at it, he added his estimates for how many of the "Serpent" cases were possible giant eel reports (from my notes as to what was in Ivan Sanderson's files; I did similar statistics at this time and thereafter, partially incorporating Sanderson's data). The darker blue area represents primarily 'String-of-buoys' reports and I would discount them personally, hence the mark; likewise I would also discount most of the reports in the red and white areas. The white area does also include 'marine saurian' reports, however, and several undoubted mistaken reports of misidentified whales and such (so indicated by Heuvelmans). I include this version here to indicate just how much of a percentage of the reports are in the invalid 'multi-humped'categories; the same category also dominates the freshwater sightings.

Ivan Sanderson's Sea Serpent Report Collection Mapped Out



For a full explanation of the Water-Horse theory, please see my CFZ blog at the link below: and if you still think the "Train-of-Humps" represent the back of a multi-humped monster, please pay especial attention to the illustration at the end of the posting.

Best Wishes, Dale D.

http://frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com/2011_05_01_archive.html

Connecticutt River Monster

http://vtdigger.org/2011/07/29/deen-the-big-conn-monster-or-myth/

Deen: The Big Conn: Monster or Myth?

Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Rep. David Deen, D-Westminster, river steward for the Connecticut River Watershed Council.

Loch Ness has her Nessie, Lake Champlain has her Champ, Lake Mephremegog has her Memphre and the Connecticut River, well the sting of it is that she has her monster, it just has not been named yet. The Connecticut River does have a monster or monsters, that is, if you can believe press stories from numerous historical sources, including The New York Times.

One of the earliest reports comes from the History of Lordship in 1878 when an assistant engineer on the steamer State of New York said that he witnessed the head of a monster raised several feet above the waves. The head disappeared and a portion of the body formed an arc “under which it would have been easy to drive a team of oxen.” [The arch is distinctly the curved-over neck in this instance-DD]

In 1881, soon after the Lordship incident, according to The Times, the yacht A.M. Bliss was returning from a fishing cruise when the passengers saw a veritable sea serpent moving slowly along the surface of the calm water.

And an 1886 New York Times article from Middletown, Conn., reported that “all along the banks of the Connecticut River people eagerly watched for a glimpse of the great sea serpent.” According to the story: “Out of the froth rose a big black head as large as a flour barrel and with eyes as big as small plates. The head kept rising higher and higher until 10 feet of the neck appeared. The men didn’t stop to make a long or thorough examination, but they feel sure that the sea serpent must have been a clear hundred feet long.”

The Hartford, Conn., Haunted Places Examiner recounted a story from 1894 when Austin Rice of East Deerfield, Conn., … “a plain unimaginative farmer, who for nearly 50 of the 70 years of his life has resided in his quiet home on the banks of the Connecticut River, says that nothing on earth can convince him that he did not see a snake in the river a few days ago. The report noted that “Mr. Rice’s reputation for veracity among his neighbors and acquaintances is good, and he never drinks.”

Then in 1895, the History of Lordship reported that crew members on the steamer Richard Peck noticed “a coiling motion, and the sea monster, as such it must have been if what they say is true, dove out of sight, first raising its head as if it had not been aware of the approaching steamer and had been disturbed from peaceful slumber.”

There is something unusual about Lordship because again the History of Lordship reports that in 1896 a sea serpent with pea green whiskers passed down Long Island Sound. “He was plowing through the water at a 25- knot clip — and left a wake of foam behind him a mile in length. He was easily 200 feet in length and his head was reared 20 feet above the brine.”

It seems our Connecticut River monster then became bashful for some 100 years. Maybe part of its reclusive time was spent in the nearly mile-long Hog River tunnel under Hartford, Conn. The Hog River flows 30 feet under the city in a 30-foot-high by 45-foot-wide tunnel made of reinforced concrete that is just over a mile long and runs between the Capitol and Armory buildings to the Connecticut River. Those few brave souls who have canoed the river tunnel say, ”The darkness and the dripping and the echoes — it’s like a chance to go to a kind of alien world.” We may never know for sure, but it’s possible.

Then in 1995, according to a press release from the Main Street Museum, that “in the waters just off of Lyman Point in White River Junction, where the White meets the Connecticut River, that an extraordinary monster was seen frolicking. First reports gave indication that some cousin, or closer relative, of “Champ,” Lake Champlain’s Aquatic Apparition, had somehow found its way onto the eastern half of our beautiful state.” They offered the captured monster for display in 1995.

Not to be outdone, in 2008 NBC TV in Hartford, Conn., reported that a West Hartford resident had taken pictures of a mysterious creature living in West Hartford Reservoir Number 1. The photos taken depict something just below the surface of the water that appears to have “ancient looking” spikes along its long tail. The witness showed the photos to officials with the Metropolitan District Commission, who said that the reservoir does not hold drinking water so there is no cause for concern.

All of the sightings over the past 130 years recorded something that looked like an eel, serpent or reptile of some kind with a long neck and body or a longer spiked tail. That’s a lot of coincidence since the first sighting in 1878. Maybe there is more than one Connecticut River monster, depending on its taste for salt water. All of the people making the reports certainly seemed convinced the monster was real.

Believe what you will about The Big Conn monster, but that’s my story, and I am sticking to it.

3 responses


Wick Griswold
July 29, 2011 at 8:56 pm


The CT River’s “monster” is named Connie.


Alex Barnham
July 30, 2011 at 10:36 pm

The Connecticut River flows south into the Atlantic Ocean…Lake Champlain flows north into the Richelieu River, then into the St Lawrence River, and then into the Atlantic Ocean. We have no trouble believing in whales which are the largest air breathing mammals on earth and they are NOT fish. I just don’t know why we cannot believe people who have seen a gigantic serpent that lives in the ocean and perhaps migrates upstream once in a blue moon. Many finds of the sea monster Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus have been discovered and the ocean is a very big place to hide so do we have to kill and mount one should one have possibly survived to this day? I would say keep your eyes peeled and your lens cap off.


Alex Barnham
July 30, 2011 at 10:38 pm

Oh, and don’t try to catch it. K?

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-Now this series of reports is interesting because it is obviously the same as the typical Longnecked Sea-Serpent, including its "Merhorse" form and it is obviously also the same as the "Merhorse" that chased two boys in a boat up the Hudson River during the 1800s (That one also had long fragments of something coming out of its mouth "Like long pine shavings": these would again be fibers pulled out of a rival male's mane, they are not whiskers because the creature is at this point spitting them out of his mouth, and once asgain they are recognisably not hair Furthermore, if the creature was in a fighting mood, that might explain its unusual aggression)

Once again, the lengths of 100 to 200 feet long as reported would refer to the wakes and not to the bodies of such creratures. Experience with other reports of the type cuts the length down to a total length usually less than 50-60 feet in all.

In the case of River monsters in general, the usual explanation would be that they were Sea Monsters that wandered upstream. That would seem to be the case here and also in parallel cases in Maine,recognised by Heuvelmans as "Longneck Territory" So in all these case it's hardly even fair to say they are monsters characteristic of any one location (such as the Connecticut River in this occasion). They are just passing through.

In the case of Longnecked creatures seen inland, that is what usually turns out to be the case.

Best Wishes, Dale D.