The First Yeti Report

      The yeti, as every schoolboy knows, was introduced to the outside world in 1921 when Charles Howard-Bury, leader of the first Everest Reconnaissance Expedition reported a series of footprints in the Lhakpa Pass. Although he thought they were made by a "loping grey wolf", his sherpas identified them as belonging to a metoh-kangmi. To this the Calcutta journalist, Harry Newman gave the whimsical, and no doubt very inaccurate translation of "abominable snowman" - thereby casting a cloud over the issue. After all, logic tells us that the presence of an unknown primate in the Himalayan wilderness cannot be ruled out, but how can anyone take a "snowman" serious, especially an "abominable" one. Thank goodness Howard-Bury provided a couple of rival names, one of which was "yeti"!
       There had been previous reports of footprints, and of the legend, which had not caught the public's imagination. But as far as can be ascertained, the earliest reference was by B. H. Hodgson, the British Resident at the court of Nepal from 1820 to 1843.

A Footprint Expert Meets Bigfoot

 

    Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science by Jeff Meldrum (2007), Forge Trade, 320 pp, paperback and Kindle.

    Dr Jeff Meldrum is Professor of Anatomy and Anthropology at Idaho University. He has extensively studied the adaptations of the feet of African primates with their implications in the evolution of human bipedalism, and was the senior editor of the scientific book, From Biped to Strider: the emergence of modern human walking, running, and resource transport. In short, he is an expert on human, monkey and ape feet and gaits, and the sort of footprints they produce. But then, in 1996 in the Blue Mountains of Washington State, he was introduced to a set of footprints which blew his mind.

When Roger Met Patty: Review

 

When Roger Met Patty by William Munns (2014), Createspace Independent Publishing, Platform, 510 pp, paperback and Kindle.

    In October 1967 Roger Patterson rode into the area of Bluff Creek, California hoping to film a bigfoot. And he did! This was just nine years after the whole concept of bigfoot had been publicised by the appearance of some remarkable footprints at Bluff Creek, and by John Green's discussions on the sasquatch in Canada. What incredible good fortune! And nothing like this has been filmed since. Yes, especially since the advent of digital photography and phone cameras, innumerable films purporting to show such a creature have surfaced, but nothing of this clarity.

     The Patterson-Gimli film, to give its official title, and "Patty", the whimsical name of its subject, has been the focus of intense controversy ever since. Even its detractors admit that, if it is a hoax, it is a very good one. But could it really be just a man in a gorilla suit and if it was, how was it made? Or is a really possible that such a creature could actually exist and, if so, that Patterson was one of the luckiest documentary makers in history? Fortunately, now an expert has entered into the fray.

More on the Malayan Ape-Man

      Who knows what mysterious creatures might walk out of the jungles of southeast Asia? Rumours abound of strange bipedal apes sequestered in those rainforests. Many US troops saw them in Vietnam and called them "rock apes". (See also here.) But it is on the Malay peninsula that things get really weird.

      A year and a half ago I reported on Harold Stephens' expedition in search of the orang dalam, and his discovery of humanoid footprints consistent with something 8 feet or 2.4 metres in height. The orang dalam would thus appear to be similar to the North American bigfoot. But this is pedestrian compared to what came out of the jungle at Christmas 1953. I also reported Harold Stephens' summary of those events. On three occasions there were encounters with two male and one female humanoids with pale skin, long body hair, and protruding fangs, all of them wearing rough loin cloths, and with the males sporting mustaches which reached to their waists. This represented a whole new level of weirdness. They sounded like some bizarre group of human beings. Now, however, I have just come across a document published in 1957, which not only provides full details of the encounters, but contains a lot of follow-up information.

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.

The 1983 Californian Sea Serpent

       Personally, I consider sea serpents more credible than lake monsters. It's the logistics of it all. The sea is vast, and we move across it with noisy vessels along narrow sea lanes. Anything could be there. Lakes are small, and tend to be surrounded by people. What lives there ought to be seen a lot more often. Yet, when I was researching the digitalised files of Australian newspapers for Australian and foreign sea serpents, I noticed something peculiar: up to the Second World War, it was respectable to see and report sea serpents, often uncritically. However, once the war started, people had much more important things to talk about, and after that date, although it has become respectable to see and report lake monsters, reports of sea serpents droppedoff  dramatically. But they still turn up. One case was in late 1983, off the coast of California. Again, I have the old International Society of Cryptozoology to thank for the summary. Although it is anonymous, the author was almost certainly the editor, J. Richard Greenwell.

A "Tree Crocodile" in Papua?

       The jungle clad mountains and valleys of New Guinea, just north of Australia, have turned it into a vast patchwork of "ecological islands" with new, rare, species just waiting to be discovered. By following up clues left by the natives, one of our more prominent zoologists, Dr. Tim Flannery managed to locate two new species of tree kangaroo concealed in localised pockets. The possibility that the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, believed to be extinct in Australia, may still exist in the Indonesian half of the island, is something I have discussed in this blog (here and here) and in my up-dated second edition of Bunyips and Bigfoots. Just the same, it was still a surprise to discover a 1955 article by a certain Walker Pearson, about a legendary giant lizard, or "tree crocodile" in Papua. Not only that, but he was able to cite, not only native legends, but credible reports by Europeans concerning the cryptid.

The Thylacine That Wasn't

       When researching reports of mystery animals in Australia, the ones which give me the most headaches are not alien big cats (which shouldn't be here), nor the bigfoot-like yowie (which definitely shouldn't be here!), No, they are the ones describing thylacines, or Tasmanian tigers, on the mainland. The reason is, firstly, they were never recorded there in historic times (at least, not in the areas where they are now being reported) and, secondly, it is just so easy to mistake a mundane animal for a thylacine. The most disconcerting thing is, there still remain a residuum of cases which are not so easy to reject. So, my initial feelings were, "Here we go again!" when, earlier this month, I received an e-mail from a Mr. David Szabo concerning his experience in southeast Queensland, close to the New South Wales border. He has generously agreed to let me share the story.

Yes, There Really Are Pygmy Elephants.

      Let's be realistic: the idea of a big hairy ape stomping around North America, all unnoticed by science, is weird. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it is definitely counter-intuitive. Even weirder still is the idea of monsters, which don't breathe air, lurking in our lochs and lakes. But there is nothing weird about pygmy elephants wandering the trackless depths of the African jungle. The jungle is big enough to hold them all. The pygmy elephant was described back in 1906, and named Loxodonta pumilio, and since then they have been repeatedly sighted in the wild, and live specimens have even turned up in zoos. Nevertheless, the scientific consensus has been that they were just dwarf individuals of the known elephant species, or juveniles roaming in their own temporary bands. 

     Nevertheless, 30+ years ago, two German zoologists, Drs Martin Eisentraut and Wolfgang Bohme marshalled the evidence and produced two papers establishing the existence of the animals. As they were published in German in the journal of the Cologne Zoo, a publication not prominent in the libraries of English speaking universities, they were largely ignored by English speaking scientists. Fortunately, the now defunct International Society of Cryptozoology got hold of them and summarised them in their newsletter. It is these summaries which I now intend to summarise in turn.

Up Close and Personal with Ogopogo

     I was a foundation member of the International Society of Cryptozoology (ISC) in 1982, even contributing to its peer reviewed journal, Cryptozoology, and continued until it folded in 1998. Recently, I was going through the old Newsletters, and found an article I remember well: of a close encounter with Ogopogo which, I am sure you are aware, is the monster of Lake Okanagan in British Columbia, Canada. Reading it again, I realised that it had never been published elsewhere. As you are unlikely to have any copies of the ISC Newsletter, I shall share it with you. The author was anonymous, but was almost certainly the editor, J. Richard Greenwell, now deceased.

Apes in North Queensland

      The yowie, for those who are unaware, is the Australian version of the North American bigfoot. Of course, it shouldn't exist, because Australia is marsupial country, and no non-flying, non-swimming placental mammal larger than a rat has ever arrived here without human help. I didn't believe in it, until the evidence became too strong to ignore. In their definitive work on the subject, The Yowie, Tony Healy and Paul Cropper catalogue sightings and encounters from the south of the continent all the way up to north Queensland. Newspapers have not been as active in reporting sightings as they used to be, but last month a major capital city newspaper provided a glimpse into the situation in north Queensland. I have therefore decided to copy the report which appeared on page 26 of The Sunday Mail (Brisbane) on 7 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.

Big Footprints in the Malayan Jungle

      Last month I introduced you to the orang dalam, or "man of the interior", the bigfoot or abominable snowman of Malaya. To be more precise, I copied extracts of the background information unearthed by Harold Stephens in his Argosy article of August 1971. I promised that this month I would describe his expedition of that year (?) in search of the monster. But first, I need to cite how he first heard about it.

Introducing the Malayan Bigfoot

      Throughout the world stories crop up of unknown bipedal apes which live solitary lives, and are largely nocturnal. The North American bigfoot, or sasquatch is usually described as being like a gorilla on stilts ie it is massive and tall, just as you would expect if a gorilla had legs like a human. The Australian yowie - which definitely shouldn't exist, because it is not a marsupial - is almost identical. It is what lies between which is peculiar. The người rừng of Vietnam appears to be man-sized, while Sumatra's orang pendek, as its name ("short man") is much smaller, and the batutut of Sabah appears to be of similar size. However, the jungles of Malaya are alleged to harbour something much bigger: the orang dalam, or "man of the interior". They are still being reported, and there are citizens who are looking for them. But what came out of the Terolak Forest Reserve in Perak (3° 53' N, 101° 22' E) in late 1953 represents a new level in weirdness.

When Scientists Were Visited by a Yeti

      The trouble with cryptozoology is that its data are all over the place - newspapers, magazines, websites, in fact, everywhere except in peer-reviewed scientific literature. We really need a central registry of personal testimonies, and in lieue of something better, this blog will have to do. So let us take the case of the zoologists camped on a snow-covered pass in the Himalayas, who were visited in the night by an abominable snowman. It is surprising this has not received more comment and discussion in the scientific literature (or perhaps it isn't surprising).

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. 

Lost 20th Century Sea Serpents

     Last month I ransacked the digitalised archives of Singaporean newspapers for sea serpent reports of the 19th century, checked them against cases recorded by earlier researchers, and published those previously unknown. This month I shall complete the process for 20th century reports. Again, we have the problem that the journalists asked no questions, but limited themselves to the information the witnesses volunteered.

Lost 19th Century Sea Serpents

     As I said in my May 2020 post, I thought I had finished with forgotten sea serpent reports, when Paul Cropper suggested I look at the newly digitalised Singaporean, and some Malayan, newspapers. As before, I have checked every report against those in Heuvelmans' In the Wake of the Sea-Serpents, and my own Forgotten Sea Serpents, based on Australian newspapers. Anything not found in these is assumed to have been overlooked by previous researchers. So here goes.

Half Snake, Half Crocodile, Fully Forgotten

     Java: the most densely populated island in Indonesia, hills terraced right to the summit, miles and miles of incredibly beautiful scenes of paddy fields surrounded by green trees. (I know; I've been there.) The native tiger drifted into extinction in the 1970s. The native rhinoceros is holding on by its toenails to a single small peninsula. This is one place where you'd never expect an unusual and unknown animal to reside, isn't it? Well, here is a story originally told in 1899, although the event itself took place thirty years before.

The Amazing "Nestor" Sea Serpent of 1876

     Ah, the irony! I had started this blog intending to use it for translations of foreign language articles on cryptozoology, along with specific Australian reports which had come my way. These, of course, can still be found if you consult the Index. However, it seems that for the last couple of years it has been used to chronicle sea serpent reports overlooked by previous researchers. I had thought I had finished with it all, and had just published my two books, Australian Sea Serpents and Forgotten Sea Serpents, when I received a Facebook message from Paul Cropper. Our association went back 32 years, when we collaborated on a paper about Australian Sea Serpents, and now he suggested I check the digitalised newspapers of Singapore. Thank you, Paul! I have now done it, and this is the first installment. This is not an unknown case. Indeed it is one of most famous ones, because it is so unusual. My reason for citing it is that I now have some earlier information, and the descriptions differ somewhat.