Malcolm's Musings: Cryptozoology
Cryptozoology is the investigation of animals not yet recognized by science, but whose existence is hinted at by eye witness accounts, photos, or traces. I provided a major review of Australian cryptozoology in my 1996 book, "Bunyips and Bigfoots". This blog aims to continue reporting on that research. However, initially, I intend to provide a service of translating into English a number of foreign language accounts from around the world.
Friday 13 September 2024
A Footprint Expert Meets Bigfoot
Sunday 11 August 2024
When Roger Met Patty: Review
When Roger Met Patty by William Munns (2014), Createspace Independent Publishing, Platform, 510 pp, paperback and Kindle.
Sunday 12 March 2023
More on the Malayan Ape-Man
Saturday 15 October 2022
A Bug-Eyed Monster off New Zealand
Readers will no doubt be familiar with the name of Ivan T. Sanderson who, along with Bernard Heuvelmans, was one of the founders of cryptozoology. All sorts of other Fortean phenomena captured his imagination, if not always his critical faculties, with the result that he founded the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained (SITU), with its journal, Pursuit. Now, in my old age, I am going through my own copies of this journal, and thus happened to come across an article inspired by a clipping from a Japanese newspaper. So, as this blog seeks to rescue stories which are likely to get overlooked or lost, I shall republish it here verbatim. The comments at the end were, I presume, written by Sanderson himself. As for the last sentence, there does not appear to have been any follow-up. And no, I have no idea what the animal was. If any reader is an expert in large marine life and has any suggestions, they are welcome.
Saturday 6 November 2021
The 1983 Californian Sea Serpent
Saturday 23 October 2021
A "Tree Crocodile" in Papua?
Monday 27 September 2021
The Thylacine That Wasn't
Sunday 15 August 2021
Yes, There Really Are Pygmy Elephants.
Saturday 3 April 2021
Up Close and Personal with Ogopogo
Thursday 11 March 2021
Apes in North Queensland
Friday 5 February 2021
"Bunyips and Bigfoots" is Back!
Doesn't time fly! It was a quarter of a century ago - in 1996- that my book, Bunyips and Bigfoots, in search of Australia's mystery animals was published. Since then, it appears to have become a boon to second-hand booksellers. From a recent websearch, I notice that the asking price varies from $50 to $220 US. At least that's lower than the £3000 (pounds, not dollars!) one seller was asking in late 2013. Even I admit that it wasn't worth that much. Never fear, however; I have just published an up-dated second edition at a reasonable price in both print-on-demand paperback and Kindle editions.
Wednesday 4 November 2020
Big Footprints in the Malayan Jungle
Tuesday 6 October 2020
Introducing the Malayan Bigfoot
Monday 31 August 2020
When Scientists Were Visited by a Yeti
Monday 17 August 2020
Forgotten Bigfoots Around the World - a New Book
Everyone has heard of the bigfoot, or sasquatch of North America, but it is not so well known that reports of similar beings exist in every continent except Antarctica. Ivan T. Sanderson did a fairly good job of summarising the evidence in his 1961 book, Abominable Snowmen: legend brought to life - though even he managed to miss the yowie of Australia, one continent where such animals definitely should not exist. Now I have published a new book on the subject - in both paperback and e-book editions, and available through Amazon - to provide information otherwise unavailable to the average Anglophone reader.
Saturday 1 August 2020
Lost 20th Century Sea Serpents
Wednesday 1 July 2020
Lost 19th Century Sea Serpents
Thursday 4 June 2020
Half Snake, Half Crocodile, Fully Forgotten
Thursday 7 May 2020
The Amazing "Nestor" Sea Serpent of 1876
Friday 20 March 2020
Introducing Three New Books
Tuesday 3 March 2020
The Footprint on the Cliff Face
If you visit Carnarvon Gorge, Central Queensland, as thousands do, you will come to a cliff face where the aborigines have carved the footprints of numerous animals, perhaps as a blackboard for their children. Only a sign erected by the National Parks and Wildlife Service will alert you to the fact that one of them is not referable to any known animal. However, a keen cryptozoologist will immediately recognize its similarity to a footprint found north of Cardwell, nearly 900 km away.Well, that was what I wrote on page 69 of Bunyips and Bigfoots, introducing the chapter on the north Queensland tiger. To my surprise, however, in the quarter century since then I have discovered that I appear to be the only person aware of it. Those who mention it always cite my book. The current staff of the Carnarvon National Park don't know about it. They used to, and they should, but they don't. With this in mind, it is time I set the record straight.
Wednesday 12 February 2020
Last Forgotten Sea Serpents (1926 to 1931)
Tuesday 4 February 2020
More Forgotten Sea Serpents, 1914 to 1926
Saturday 25 January 2020
Forgotten Sea Serpents, 1905 to 1911
Wednesday 15 January 2020
1903 Was a Good Year for Sea Serpents
Saturday 4 January 2020
Forgotten Sea Serpents, 1900 to 1902
Tuesday 19 November 2019
The Gatton Yowie, 1998
Sunday 10 November 2019
Forgotten Sea Serpents of 1879
Tuesday 29 October 2019
Two Unknown Bipedal Apes in the Congo
Saturday 5 October 2019
The Last (Forgotten) Sea Serpents of the 19th Century
Saturday 15 June 2019
The Great Koolunga Bunyip Hunt of 1883
They sought it with thimbles,Bunyip: The bogey of the bush, a mythical monster which lurks in the rivers and swamps of inland Australia, and makes Aborigines turn white with terror. Everyone has heard about the bunyip, but no-one can tell you what it looks like.
They sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.
(The Hunting of the Snark, Lewis Carroll, 1876)
Koolunga, South Australia: population 195, the epitome of a one horse town. You'll need a really detailed map to find it, so I shall give the co-ordinates: 33½° S, 138.1° E, on the banks of the Broughton River, 33 km south of Crystal Brook, and 46 km north west of Clare.
Yet, in early 1883 it was the centre of a colourful bunyip hunt which kept the rest of the continent amused long after it had ended with a blast. No doubt many readers in Queensland and Tasmania were asking themselves at the time: "Where the [expletive] is Koolunga?"
Monday 10 June 2019
New Zealand's Mystery Animal
The fauna of New Zealand has suffered dreadfully from human settlement, and many species have been driven to extinction. To cite just one example: in 1986 the world's largest gecko was discovered as a stuffed specimen in the Natural History of Marseilles, and was recognized as a lizard described in Maori oral tradition, which only a single person had ever claimed to have seen alive. New Zealand is a land where flightless birds take the place of mammals, for the only native land animals are two species of bats, because New Zealand has been isolated from the rest of the world since the age of dinosaurs. It even possesses a strange reptile, the tuatara, which looks like a lizard, but is really the last survivor of a group which otherwise died out with the dinosaurs. It stands to reason, therefore, that any non-flying native land mammal may well be a monotreme, like the platypus and echidna, or something more ancient and primitive. With this in mind, let us proceed to the translation.
Wednesday 1 May 2019
The Beast of Gévaudan - Solved !
Tuesday 2 April 2019
Four More Forgotten Sea Serpents
Friday 1 March 2019
In a Dark Hut With a Mystery Monster
Saturday 2 February 2019
Forgotten Sea Serpents of 1888 - 1889
Wednesday 2 January 2019
The Georgetown Sea Serpent, 1888
The sea-serpent is distinctly seen in Georgetown Harbour, on the 20th. of August, 1888, sleeping on the surface, &c. - Chambers' Journal, 1888, Nov. 24. - (R. P. G.)The three last initials stand for Mr. R. P. Greg, who provided him with his whole collection of clippings. But why was it classified as a hoax? Did he know something he wasn't telling?
Tuesday 4 December 2018
The Mongolian Wild Man's Last Stand
In any case, in 1964 Prof Rinchen wrote a paper for the Italian journal, Genus in which he claimed that almas were then restricted to an area of 1,000 square kilometres [380 square miles] in his country.
Saturday 3 November 2018
Forgotten Sea Serpents, 1880 - 1886
Wednesday 1 August 2018
Sea Serpents Galore! (1869 to 1875)
Wednesday 11 July 2018
Bigfoot in the Andes?
I apologize in advance for the text. The author's form of literary Spanish tends to convert to a rather stilted English, but I have chosen to sacrifice style in favour of accuracy. Even in regard to the latter, problems arise. Firstly, my Spanish is only passable. Secondly, every word in a language bears a variety of meanings and connotations which do not transfer exactly into a second language. Thirdly, this essay contains a number of dialectal terms and slang absent from even the best dictionaries. Nevertheless, though I am prepared to accept criticism of specific words and phrases, I believe the overall meaning of the text has been preserved.
Tuesday 5 June 2018
The Lake Minnetonka Monster
Tuesday 1 May 2018
Giant Ape Attacks Hunters in Guatemala
Some papers are in English, and you can even read Ivan Sanderson's original description of the Minnesota Iceman. The whole of volume 21 for 1965 - more than 400 pages - is given over the discussions of "abominable snowmen" in various parts of Asia. Unfortunately, the whole of it is in Italian, a language with which I am unfamiliar. Since it will take a while to learn the language, anyone who wishes to undertake the task is welcome to be a guest on this blog. In the meantime, I feel I owe it to the world to translate the Spanish and French articles, commencing with this short article.
Sunday 1 April 2018
The "Dimboola" Sea Serpent, 1913
Thursday 15 March 2018
The Monster of Crescent Lake, Oregon
Friday 2 March 2018
The Monster of the Everglades, 1901
Friday 2 February 2018
Sea Serpents Galore ! (1850 - 1869)
Monday 1 January 2018
Sea Serpents Galore! (1834 to 1849)
Wednesday 6 December 2017
Sea Serpents Galore! (New Zealand, 19th Century)
Tuesday 7 November 2017
Sea Serpents Galore! (Australia, 19th Century)
I have been going through the digitalised Australian newspapers on Trove for the nineteenth century, and my system has been simple. I just used the advanced search option to look for the phrase, "sea serpent" for a particular year. Frequently what turned up was a flippant remark, and all too often a reference to a horse or a ship of that name. (I regret to say that the latter was never involved in an encounter. I would have loved to have read the headline, SEA SERPENT SEES SEA SERPENT.) Nevertheless, quite frequently I was met with a report of an actual (alleged) sea serpent sighting, which typically appeared in a large number of periodicals over a considerable period of time. If the story could not be found in Bernard Heuvelmans' comprehensive tome, In the Wake of the Sea-Serpents (1968), I have assumed it is unknown, and have copied what appears to be the earliest and/or most detailed account. I only wish the journalists had been prepared to ask questions. As if was, they normally recorded merely the information provided by the witness, without any attempt to obtain more details. But at least they took the subject seriously - which is more than they do today. In any case, this month's post shall deal with the Australian encounters. At this period, it is important to note, most trade between the Australian colonies was by sea.
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