Zoological Journalist - Richard Freeman, Considers the Question: Is Bigfoot A Man, Another Ape, An Unknown species of Bear, or All of the Above?

...And we're back!

During my long hiatus from updating this blog, I have become increasingly fascinated by accounts of the Himalayan Yeti and North American Sasquatch, often called Bigfoot because of the large humanlike footprints of these mystery animals or 'wild men' leave in the forests of North America, and the wild, remote mountains of Asia. 

Roger Patterson with Bigfoot print cast from 1967

  Yeti footprint taken by Himalayan mountaineer Eric Shipton in 1951

Yeti footprint taken by Himalayan mountaineer Steve Berry in 2016
(Lost Kingdom of the Yeti, 2018)

Although the name 'Bigfoot' was not coined by newspapers until the 1950s, the phenomenon of an ape-like wild man living in the forests and mountains had been recorded in the storytelling cultures of different Himalayan peoples and Native American tribes for centuries. How could it be possible that two almost identical legends could develop independently from one another, separated by vast oceans in complete isolation, with a traceable lineage that extends over centuries? 

Further, if there are no native ape species in America; how is it possible then that Native Americans seem to have appeared to have known what an ape looked like before contact with European-American settlers? 

At the very least this would suggest that something resembling an ape must have been known to the ancestors of modern Native Americans. Could this be a race memory from the time before the Native Americans arrived on the American continent, presumably from Asia where the Yeti dwells? 

After combing YouTube for every documentary I could find, and joining Kindle Unlimited to read up on what Arthur C. Clarke called in his popular 1970s series Mysterious  World, "The Missing Apemen", I had more questions than answers.

Back in 2009, I had the privilege of asking Zoological Journalist, Richard Freeman, a few questions about his Cryptozoology research into mystery animals not yet accepted to exist by the scientific establishment. This was Freeman's response when I asked him about the Yeti:

The yeti, possibly a surviving form of the giant ape Gigantopithecus blacki that lived in China and India 500,000 years ago. Hair has been analysed in the UK, USA and China. The results were the same: unknown primate.

The full Q&A text interview can still be found HERE. Over a decade on, I decided to get back in touch with Richard Freeman to see if he had any thoughts on some of the questions I had. It would take a book for anyone to answer all of my questions, so in our email correspondence we focused on the following topics for discussion:

Is Bigfoot an ape more closely related to known apes? Or is it an offshoot of earlier forms of humans that survived into modern times? Is it a bear, an ape, a man, or three different creatures including all of these?

What are the similarities and differences between the footprints found in Asia and North America? 

The Patterson-Gimlin film. What is the best evidence it is real?

The famous Yeti scalp that was was found to be a fake. Is it possible it could be a form of clothing worn by real Yetis? 

Below is Richard Freeman's full, informative and thoughtful reply to my questions.

Richard Freeman

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Orang Pendek drawing from the documentary The X Creatures
(BBC/Discovery, 1998)

There is more than one type of mystery primate around the world. Some of these, like the Orang pendek, seem to be undiscovered species of ape. Others like the Almasty seem to be relic hominins - relations of the ancestors of man. The long and short of it is that we do not know for sure until we get a type specimen. 

We found hair near Orang pendek tracks in Sumatra. These were analyzed by Lars Thomas, an expert in animal hair based at Copenhagen University. He concluded that they were similar too but distinct from the Sumatran orangutan. Lars concluded that there is a large, unknown species of primate on Sumatra. I think this is the fourth extant species of orangutan. 

Startling new evidence for the Yeti has emerged recently. TV vet and naturalist Mark Evens, formally a Yeti skeptic, took an expedition into the mountains of Bhutan to make a documentary called Lost Kingdom of the Yeti. Water was taken from a pool in the mountains where the Yeti had been reported. From this environmental DNA was taken. Known as eDNA for short, this consists of traces of DNA an organism leaves in the environment. It is a relatively new development and could prove an invaluable tool for cryptozoology as the techniques for extracting traces of eDNA improve. Back in the lab the eDNA from the water was tested and several known species were discovered but there was also anomalous DNA. It came from a primate that shared 99% of its DNA with humans. Chimps share 98%. Whatever left that eDNA at the drinking hole was something unknown to science and closely related to man.

Dr Eva Bellmaine and Mark Evans discuss eDNA testing (Lost Kingdom of the Yeti, 2018)

I contacted Dr Eva Bellmaine, the French geneticist involved in the project. She confirmed the details and said that the samples were being held by a French company called Spygen. I contacted Spygen in order to see if we could conduct further tests. Spygen said that they were not the legal owners of the sample and later claimed it had been destroyed.

Some have suggested that it is nothing more than a bear. Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner claimed in his 2000 book My Search for The Yeti that the creature was nothing more than a brown bear. This is curious as on previous occasions he had claimed to have seen the Yeti and described it as a primate-type animal.

I once interviewed the actor Brian Blessed, a renowned explorer, and mountaineer himself, for a long-defunct and not very good magazine called Quest. Blessed, who is a friend of Messner, said that he had told him of his encounter with a Yeti. Blessed said that Messner had walked around some rocks and came "face to face" with the creature. He said it was not a bear, was 7 feet tall, man-like, and stood erect.

There are other occasions when Messner’s descriptions sound precious little like a bear. Julian Champkin of the Daily Mail wrote on August 16th, 1997, that Messner has:

…encountered the Yeti; and not once, but four times, once close enough to touch it. More importantly, he claims to have photographs of the creature, including a mother Yeti tending her child, and a Yeti skeleton.

 

Needless to say, none of his pictures have been forthcoming. Messner goes on to be quoted in the newspaper article to claim:

“...I searched for a week, 12 hours a day, in an area with no trees,” he says. “I didn't expect to find one so soon. First, we saw a mother with her child. I could only take a photograph from the back. The child had bright red fur, the older animal's fur was black. She was over two meters tall, with dark hair, just like the legend. When they saw us they disappeared.”

Two days later, he claimed to have come across and filmed a sleeping Yeti. The film is just as noticeable as the photos by its absence.

In an article relating to the BBC’s Natural World documentary on the Yeti, Messner describes seeing one from a range of 30 meters in Southern Tibet. The article says Messner is sure it is some kind of primate. He describes it in the article thus:

It was bigger than me, quite hairy and strong, dark brown-black hair falling over his eyes. He stood on two legs and immediately I thought he corresponds to the descriptions I heard from Sherpas and Tibetans.

So why did Messner write a book trying to explain away the Yeti as a bear when this transparently was not the creature he claimed to have seen? Was it because of fear of ridicule? And what became of the photos and film? Was Messner trying to take the focus away from these or make them seem less important by saying the yeti was just a bear? Could this be because the film and photos did not exist?

Sherpas become angry when Westerners say that the Yeti is just a bear, and quite rightly. The animal they pick repeatedly as looking most like the yeti is the gorilla but walking on two legs rather than four. The Yeti has a flat, ape-like face. The Yeti walks almost constantly on two legs. The Yeti can manipulate things with its hands and hence must have opposable thumbs. It is said to sometimes hurl large rocks and swing clubs. Bears have none of the above features. The Yeti is clearly some kind of primate, most likely a great ape. Until he delivers the goods, I’m inclined to dismiss Messner’s claims.

The term ‘Yeti’ is applied to three different creatures. The Dzu-teh is a hulking biped eight to ten feet tall with dark hair. It leaves massive, manlike footprints. 

The Mi-teh is more man-sized and moves both bipedally and on all fours. It has reddish hair and leaves tracks that have a divergent big toe. 

The smallest type, around four feet tall is known as the Teh-lma and has light brown to yellowish hair. The creatures have many regional names and are reported from the Himalayas, Tibet, China, Malaysia, and India.

The Dzu-teh seems identical to the North American Sasquatch. It may have crossed over the land bridge between Asia and North America during the ice age. The prime candidate for this larger kind is a massive ape from the fossil record known as Gigantopithecus blacki. This creature is known only from its massive fossil teeth and jaws. The fossil teeth were first found in a Chinese apothecary shop in 1935 by Dutch paleontologist Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald. They were being sold as 'dragon's teeth'. Koenigswald recognized them as the molars of a titanic ape. Post-cranial remains have never been found but extrapolating from the size of the teeth and jaws Gigantopithecus may have stood ten feet tall and weighed 1300lb. The flaring of the lower jaws made Grover Krantz and Jeff Meldrum conclude that the neck extended directly under the creature's head meaning that it walked upright on two legs.

Pitting and wear patterns on the teeth of Gigantopithecus suggest a fibrous diet similar to that of the giant panda. The creature probably fed on bamboo, but fossil seeds found lodged between the teeth prove that it also fed on fruit. Gigantopithecus fossils have been found in China, Vietnam, and India. It was a hugely successful primate species existing for over two million years before becoming extinct 100,000 years ago due to climate change. However, some think that the animal simply retreated into the mountain forests and still exists today.

Another theory holds that the Yeti is some huge relic hominin.

The Yeti is not white. Its hair ranges from reddish to brown to black. In all my years of research, I have only come across two reports that give the Yeti white hair. The confusion comes from a mistranslation of one of the beast's many names, Metoh-kangmi, Sino-Tibetan for 'abominable man of the rocks'. It was mistranslated as 'abominable man of the snows. This is where we get the western term ‘Abominable Snowman’ from. It is also where the false idea of a white, snow-dwelling beast comes from. Above the snowline, there is little for a large primate to eat. The lush forests in the lower valleys make much more sense for a Yeti habitat. The term ‘Yeti’ is Tibetan for 'rock beast'.

The witnesses I spoke to in the Garo Hills in Northern India described the Yeti, known there as 'Mande barung', described it as ten feet tall and looking like a huge, upright gorilla.

The wild men of the former USSR, Mongolia, and Central Asia sound much more man-like than the hulking Yetis of Tibet, the Himalayas, and north India. The Russians took them so seriously that they even had an official Snowman Commission to investigate the creatures. At the time it was thought that they may be a relic form of Neanderthal. Since then, however, we have discovered that Neanderthals looked very much like us. It has been said that if you washed and shaved a Neanderthal and put him in modern clothes, he could walk down the street in any major city without raising anybody's eyebrows. Sure, he may look somewhat ugly by our standards, but he would clearly be human. Neanderthals used fire, made sophisticated tools and clothes, and may have even had a concept of religion and an afterlife. They sometimes buried their dead with grave goods. This is clearly not what we are dealing with here.

It is more likely that the wild men reported today are an offshoot of a much more primitive species of hominin. In recent years both fossil, sub-fossil and genetic evidence has unearthed many new species of human relatives. We know that Neanderthals interbred with modern humans. The genomes of all non-African people contain 1.5-4 % Neanderthal DNA.

In March of 2010, a tiny fragment of finger bone was found in the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains. The bone was so well preserved that the whole genome was intact within it. It turned out to be from a new species of archaic human that have since been named the Denisovans. Only fragments of this species have been discovered - the finger bone, a toe bone, and two teeth - so the appearance of the Denisovans is unknown. However, they interbred with both Neanderthals and modern humans. Between 4 and 6% of the genome of Melanesians (people from New Guinea and the surrounding islands) is inherited from the Denisovans.

Some hominins are suggested not by any fossil remains but by genetic markers on populations of modern man. As well as Denisovan DNA Melanesians appear to have inherited DNA from another hominin currently unknown from the fossil record. Yet another unknown archaic hominin appears to have left genetic material in the populations of sub-Saharan Africans.

In 2003, some sub-fossil remains were found in the Liang Bua cave on the island of Flores in Indonesia. The remains were of a tiny species of hominin that were named Homo floresiensis. The remains were dated to around 50,000 years ago. The creatures would have stood no more than three feet, seven inches tall. The remains were found with stone tools and weapons as well as evidence of fire making. They seemed to have hunted giant rodents and pygmy elephants that lived on the island.

Homo floresiensis was thought to be a dwarf island form of Homo Erectus, the hominin that was the ancestor of not only modern humans but Neanderthals, Denisovians, Homo heidelbergensis, and Homo antecessor. More recent examination of the remains however showed that they were more closely related to Homo habilis a more primitive hominin that has never been recorded outside of Africa and died out some 1,5 million years ago. So, Homo floresiensis not only half a world away from where it should have been but also nearly one and a half million years out of time. It also begs the question “what else is out there?”

TV Naturalist Mark Evens compared with the height of Homo floresiensis (Yeti: Myth, Man or Beast, 2016)

More recently, two, as yet un-named species of hominin dating to only ten thousand years ago (an eye blink in evolutionary terms) have been unearthed at Red Deer Cave in southwest China. They seem also to have affinities to Homo habilis. It seems that Homo habilis may have had its own lineage outside of Africa alongside Homo erectus.

As for the Patterson-Gimlin film, I will share my own thoughts, looking at the film through the eyes of a natural historian.

Firstly, the creature is a female, with visible breasts. If you were going to fake a film of bigfoot by using a tall man in an ape suit, where in the equation would you think of adding large hairy breasts? Such an artifact would make the costume more expensive and harder to create. In known ape species, the females have fairly flat breasts. Human females have rounded breasts as a counterbalance to the large buttocks. Humans are bipeds and walk upright. The gluteal muscles keep the body level when the legs are lifted. Human female pelvic girdles are broad in order to accommodate the birth canal. Hence the buttocks of human females are larger and more rounded than males. Great apes are knuckle walkers and move on all fours, ergo they lack developed buttock muscles and the pendulous breasts that counterbalance them. A hypothetical upright walking female ape would have rounded buttocks and breasts. The creature in the Patterson-Gimlin film possesses both of these. 

Secondly, the creature turns its head sideways and the viewer can clearly see a thick brow ridge and a forehead that slopes away at an angle to make a cone-shaped head somewhat like that of a gorilla. Fossil hominins display this same acutely sloping forehead above a thick brow ridge. The human forehead rises up directly above the brow. If the creature in the film was a man in a suit his human head would not fit into a mask with such a sloping forehead, there simply would not be enough room unless the mask was very oversized like some kind of carnival headpiece which it is clearly not.

Thirdly, the limb and body proportions of the creature are non-human. The torso is longer than a human's and the hip proportionately lower. The arms are 10% longer than a human's. The upper legs are longer than a human’s and the lower part is shorter. Even if you could make such a convincing costume, you could not get a human to fit into it. The arm and leg joints cannot be made to line up. Muscles can clearly be seen moving under the hair. In short, the subject in the film is not a man in a costume. 

 

And then we have the footprints. Jimmy Chillcutt a crime scene investigator and latent fingerprint examiner from the Conroe, Texas Police Department has taken fingerprints of many primates in zoos. He has examined many of the sasquatch print casts in the collection of Jeff Meldrum. He has found dermal ridges that lay parallel to the edge of the feet. 

The ridge flow pattern and the texture was completely different from anything I've ever seen. It certainly wasn't human, and of no known primate that I've examined. The print ridges flowed lengthwise along the foot, unlike human prints, which flow across. The texture of the ridges was about twice the thickness of a human, which indicated that this animal has a real thick skin.

The Yeti scalp from Nepal was an artifact made from the skin of a serow, a type of wild goat. However, it is thought that the monks used it in rituals where they dressed up as the Yeti. 

Khumjung's famous Yeti scalp (The X Creatures, 1998)

There are no reports of yeti wearing clothes. Their thick fur would give them ample protection and they are forest dwellers and not creatures of the eternal snows of the mountain peaks.

The sasquatch has on rare occasions been seen wearing human clothes. It seems they had stolen the clothes and put them on for amusement. Known apes and monkeys have been recorded as doing this. The Russian Almasty is said to sometimes do the same thing.

Big thanks to Richard Freeman for doing this!

Please visit his Amazon Author Page where you can find all of his books.

Visit The Centre for Fortean Zoology to find out more about Richard Freeman's Cryptozoology work: cfz.org.uk

Adam Davies (Monster Quest) answers some questions about the similarities 

between the Himalayan Yeti and North American Bigfoot.

Nigel Kneale - Richard's Room 101

Born on the Isle of Man, Nigel Kneale was a writer active in television, film, radio drama, and prose fiction. He wrote professionally for over fifty years and was, in many ways, the father of serious science-fiction drama on television. Kneale’s most famous creation is the legendary Professor Bernard Quatermass, a heroic rocket scientist who saved humanity from a range of very different alien menaces in a trilogy of stories written by the Manx writer in the 1950s. 

   

The trilogy began with The Quatermass Experiment, in which the first-ever manned space rocket returns to Earth with two of the three astronauts on board missing and the third possessed by some kind of hostile alien organism. In time, this organism consumes and changes the last astronaut into something horrific: a creature that threatens to possess and consume all other life on Earth. However, Quatermass confronts the monster and, with a moving speech, reaches what is left of his friend's humanity, persuading him to sacrifice himself to save the rest of mankind.

   

In the next story, Quatermass II, the professor is asked to examine strange meteorite showers falling in rural England. His investigations lead to him discovering a vast conspiracy involving alien infiltration at the highest levels of the British Government. Somehow these aliens, who have a group consciousness similar to the Borg in Star Trek, can control the minds of people exposed to an alien parasite concealed in their meteorite-like projectiles. The aliens plan to colonise the Earth, but Quatermass manages to stop them by destroying their asteroid base in orbit, very sadly losing his close friend and colleague Dr. Pugh in the process. 

    

Finally, in the best and last story of the 1950s trilogy, Quatermass and the Pit, Quatermass becomes involved in the discovery of a strange object near some apemen remains that are millions of years old, at an archaeological dig in Knightsbridge, London. The odd object is first thought to be an unexploded World War II bomb, but then more apemen remains are found mysteriously inside the back of the object and later, more disturbingly, the decaying bodies of dead insect-like creatures are found inside the front. The object turns out to be a nuclear-powered spaceship, five million years old, the creatures: Martians and the apemen: their creations … us … the human race.

  

In the story, we learn that when Mars was dying, the ancient Martians had tried to create a colony on Earth by proxy. They altered mankind’s early ancestors, giving them minds and abilities like their own, but with a body adapted to Earth. More worryingly, they also passed on to mankind their genocidal instincts to destroy anyone different from themselves. In effect, making us the Martians now. Fortunately, the Martians died out before completing their plan, and, as humankind bred and further evolved, most outgrew their darker Martian inheritance.

  

Unfortunately, somehow the spaceship reawakens the old Martian instincts, transforming more and more people into genocidal Martians on a race purge, destroying anyone unaffected by the ship’s evil influence. However, Quatermass finds a way to stop the ethnic cleansing before the Martians turn the Earth into a second dead planet. He also tragically loses another friend in doing so.

  

   

  

In each of the three Quatermass stories, Kneale managed to tap into the popular interests and, more importantly, anxieties of the time. In The Quatermass Experiment, he played on the mass interest in the early space race and the new threat of nuclear war. The UK conducted the earliest post-war tests of captured Nazi V-2 rockets in Operation Backfire, less than six months after the war in Europe ended, and the development of a British launch system to carry a nuclear device started in 1950. So there was a real fear that one of these rockets could come falling out of the sky bringing with it destruction, as one does in The Quatermass Experiment. Then, in Quatermass II, before Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Kneale exploited the popular paranoia about the threat of communist infiltration and subversion of the West. Like nuclear war, this was a real fear at the time. For instance, in 1951, two members of the British establishment, Burgess and Maclean, had made international headlines by very publicly defecting to the Soviet Union. And, finally, with the Notting Hill race riots of 1958 still very much fresh in peoples' minds, Kneale wrote Quatermass and the Pit admittedly as a fable about race hate.

  

Kneale’s Quatermass trilogy clearly had a huge impact that continues to be felt even today, influencing everyone from Chris Carter to Gene Roddenberry. The Quatermass Experiment (1953) was the very first science fiction production to be written especially for an adult television audience and cleared the way for the many others that followed it. Also, the three basic alien invasion storylines were first pioneered on television by Kneale in the Quatermass stories. In The Quatermass Experiment, we go to the aliens and bring them back, in Quatermass II the aliens come to us, and in Quatermass and the Pit, we discover that the aliens were here all along.

  

But it would be a mistake to think that Nigel Kneale only wrote stories involving alien possession and invasion. An excellent example of this is The Abominable Snowman, a 1957 Hammer horror film based on Kneale’s own BBC television play The Creature. Again tapping into popular interest at the time, the film follows the exploits of an English anthropologist with an American expedition as they search the Himalayas for the legendary Yeti, the apemen of Tibet. In the real world, speculation about the existence of an unidentified creature living in the Himalayas had been sparked off in November 1951, when Eric Shipton and Michael Ward of the Everest Reconnaissance Expedition found several large footprints as they traversed the Menlung Glacier, and, two years later, Edmund Hillary made a similar discovery during his historic conquest of Mount Everest.

   

In the film, Kneale turns perceptions on their head by suggesting that the so-called Abominable Snowman is not so abominable at all and, perhaps, even a great deal better than mankind who turn out to be the real monsters. The central idea being that the Yeti are our collateral descendants from the apes and are patiently and peacefully waiting for mankind to destroy himself, either quickly through war or slowly through pollution, before descending from the mountains to inherit the Earth. 

  

Another excellent example is The Stone Tape, a Christmas ghost story from 1972 and Kneale’s last major original work for the BBC. Like Quatermass and the Pit before it (which suggested that poltergeist activity could be explained by the psychic abilities left to us by the Martians), The Stone Tape combined science fiction with the supernatural. The television play revolves around a group of scientists who move into a new research facility: an allegedly haunted Victorian mansion. Curious, they investigate the alleged ghost but soon determine that it is really just some kind of recording of a past event somehow stored by stone in one of the rooms (the stone tape of the title). Believing that this discovery may lead to the development of a whole new recording medium, which they were originally brought together to find in the first place, they throw all their knowledge and high-tech equipment into trying to find a means of playing back the stone tape recording at will. However, their investigations only serve to unleash a far older and more malevolent force, with tragic consequences. Of course, The Stone Tape is where “the stone tape theory” familiar to many paranormal researchers today originates. 

   

Kneale also wrote three excellent dystopian texts, a fourth Quatermass story The Quatermass Conclusion, a 1954 television adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four for the BBC, and The Year of the Sex Olympics. It is the last of these that proved to be the most prophetic. Broadcast in 1968 The Year of the Sex Olympics seemed to accurately predict the creation of reality TV in the 1990s.

 

Set “sooner than you think” in the TV play society is divided between “low-drives” that receive no education and “hi-drives” who control the government and media. The low drives are controlled by a constant broadcast of pornography that the hi-drives believe will pacify them. But after the accidental death of a protester during the Sex Olympics gets a massive audience response, the authorities create a new TV programme, The Live Life Show. In the new show, a family is moved to a remote Scottish island while the low-drive audience watches. 

   

Hopefully, this goes some way to answering the question of who Nigel Kneale was. Of all the great science fiction writers to emerge from these islands since World War II, including the likes of Arthur C. Clarke, perhaps only Nigel Kneale comes anywhere close to matching H G. Wells in terms of lasting public impact and sheer brilliance. Both successfully tapped into the mass anxieties of their time and placed them at the centre of their stories, making science fiction accessible to the general public. In short, what Wells did for science fiction in print, Kneale did on television, clearing the way for intelligent science fiction drama on the small screen.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

Welsh Dragons

The below guest article is by Richard Freeman, Zoologcal director at the Centre for Fortean Zoology.
 
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Welsh Dragons

By Richard Freeman

 
GLAMORGAN

Penllin
Brilliantly coloured flying serpents were said to inhabit the woods of Penllin as recently as the mid 19th century. People who were old men and women at the beginning of the 20th century recalled them well from their youth. They were prone to raid chicken coops and as a result were hunted into extinction.

Penmark
Another colony of the winged serpents resided here. One old woman said her grandfather had killed one after a fierce fight. She recalled seeing the skin preserved at his house when she was a girl. To the horror of cryptozoologists, it was thrown away upon his death.

Cardiff
A worm was supposed to live at the bottom of a whirlpool in the River Taff. It was said to drown people and suck down their bodies to eat.

DYFED

Trellech a’r Betws
A gwiber is supposed to guard a prehistoric tumulus in the area.

Newcastle Emlyn
A flame-spewing wyvern lived in a ruined castle, and was covered in impenetrable scales. A soldier waded into the river with a large piece of red cloth. The wyvern reacted to the cloth like a bull (or a male robin) and swooped down to attack it, allowing the soldier to shoot it in its one vulnerable spot. Like the dragon of Wantley, the vital spot was its rear end!

Castle Gwys
In one of the strangest British dragon legends, the beast here was a cockatrice whose body was covered in eyes. For some unexplained reason the estates of Winston were up for grabs to whoever could look on the freakish thing without it seeing them.

One resourceful chap hid inside a barrel and rolled into the cockatrice’s lair. He shouted out “Ha, bold cockatrice! I can see you but you cannot see me!”

He was granted the estates. What happened to the multi-eyed monster is anyone’s guess.

POWYS

Llandelio Graban
A dragon roosted in the tower of Llandelio Graban church until a local ploughboy worked out a way of destroying it. He carved a dummy dragon out of oak, and had the blacksmith cover it with steel hooks and spikes. It was then painted red and erected on the tower whilst the dragon was away hunting.
Upon returning, the dragon saw what it thought was a rival and savagely attacked it. The real dragon coiled about its facsimile and tried to squeeze the life from it. The genuine dragon was fatally wounded, and both the monster and the fake dragon came crashing down from the tower to their ruin.

GWYNEDD

Betws-y-Coed
A monster known as the Wybrant gwiber terrorized the neighbourhood. An outlaw from Hiraethog tried to kill it, but it bit him, tore out his throat, and flung him into the river for good measure!

CLWYD

Llarhaeadr-ym-Mochant
A gwiber brought a reign of terror to the area until the surviving locals studded a huge megalith with spikes and hooks and swathed it in red cloth. The red colour enraged the gwiber who attacked, becoming fatally entwined on the hooks. The megalith is known as the Red Pillar, or the Pillar of the Viper.

Penmynydd
In this detailed story a rich nobleman invites a soothsayer to the celebration feast after his son’s birth. The sage foretells that the boy will die of a gwiber’s bite. The boy is sent away to England for safekeeping, and his father offers a reward to whoever can slay the last gwiber in the area.

A clever lad digs a pit on the path were the gwiber usually slithers. At the bottom he places a highly polished brass mirror. He covers the pit with sticks and grass then waits. The gwiber falls into the pit and sees its own reflection. Thinking it a rival, it attacks the mirror until exhausted; then they boy leaps into the pit and hacks off the gwiber’s head.

Years later the nobleman’s son, now a spoilt teenager, returns and is shown the gwiber’s skull. He contemptuously kicks it and one of its long, dead fangs slices through his boot. The fang retains traces of venom and, as prophesied, the boy dies.

Cynwch Lake
A wyvern dwelt in this lake beneath the slopes of Moel Offrum. It emerged to poison the countryside and devour whatever it could catch. The Wizard of Ganllwyd employed a group of archers to kill it, but the wyvern always eluded them.

One day a shepherd boy named Meredydd found the wyvern sleeping on the hill. He ran two miles to Cymmer Abbey and borrowed a magick axe. He hacked the wyvern’s head off while it was asleep.

Nant Gwynant
After the Roman Legions left, Vortigern became the first British king. He decided to build a stronghold on the Iron Age hill fort of Dinas Emrys. Every time work began upon Dinas Emry, it would be destroyed by earthquake-like disturbances. Vortigern’s wizards said that in order to stop these events, the ground should be sprinkled with the blood of the son of a virgin. A boy was found whose mother had apparently been magically impregnated by a spirit. He was about to be sacrificed when he went into a trance and announced that beneath the hill was a lake. In the lake dwelt a red dragon and a white dragon who perpetually fought.

Vortigern’s men dug down and found the lake. When the lake was drained they found a pair of dragons. The two great reptiles fought until, at last, the white dragon gave way and fled. Seeing this as an omen that his forces would defeat the invading Saxons, Vortigern adopted the red dragon as his emblem.

The boy was none other than a young Merlin.

Llyn-y-Gadair
In the 18th century a group of men were swimming across this small lake close to Snowdonia. One of them was grabbed and devoured by a worm.
 

Read part one and two of my interview with Richard Freeman for Binnall of America.

 

Early Bigfoot Tales

The following guest article is by Rupert Matthews, author of the book Bigfoot and Other Mysterious Creatures.

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Early Bigfoot Tales
By Rupert Matthews

The oldest contemporary account of a sighting that seems to be of a Sasquatch so far traced comes from the Watchman newspaper of New York state on 22 September 1818. This report states that a few days earlier, near Ellisburgh, a “gentleman of unquestionable veracity” saw “an animal resembling the Wild Man of the Woods”. This would seem to indicate that the supposed Wild Man of the Woods was already a well known figure of legend or rumour. The creature was described as being like a large man, but covered in hair. It walked out of the woods on to a road a few yards in front of the witness. Seeing the human, the creature turned and ran off, leaning forwards as it did so. The creature left behind footsteps that were human-like but very wide at the toes.

In 1851 two hunters out in Greene County, Arkansas, watched a Sasquatch apparently trying to catch calf from a herd of domestic cattle. They described the creature as being “an animal bearing the unmistakable likeness of humanity. He was of gigantic stature, the body being covered with hair and the head with long locks that fairly enveloped the neck and shoulders.” As soon as the creature realised that humans were in the vicinity it stopped chasing the cattle and instead stared at the hunters, then turned and ran off at high speed. It left behind human-like footprints that were 13 inches long.

The newspaper that reported the incident speculated that the creature was a human survivor of an earthquake that had taken place in 1811. It was thought that he had taken to an animal-like existence to survive and so had acquired animal-like hair and appearance. It was a not uncommon theory in the 19th century.

In the 1860s similar creatures were reported in Michigan newspapers as having been seen several times around the Lake Saint Claire region. In 1869 “wild men” were reported being seen in Iowa. In 1874 Pennsylvania newspapers carry similar stories, and Indiana newspapers carried reports in 1895 and 1897.

One of the most detailed and interesting of these mid-19th century reports was made by a hunter who had been out near Antioch, California, in 1869. He found a good area and pitched his camp. He soon noticed that while he was out hunting during the day something had come into his camp, scattered the ashes of his fire about and left footprints that looked like those of a man, except for their immense size. Curious, the man decided to secret himself in a patch of brush which gave him a good view of his camp from a distance of about 70 feet. After two hours of waiting he was rewarded when the mysterious intruder arrived.

“The creatures, whatever it was, stood five feet high and disproportionately broad and square at the shoulders, with arms of great length. The legs were very short and the body long. The head was small compared with the rest of the creature and appeared to be set upon his shoulders without a neck. The whole was covered with dark brown and cinnamon coloured hair, quite long on some parts, that on the head standing in a shock and growing close down to the eyes.”

After looking around carefully, the creature kicked the embers of the camp fire. It bent down and picked up a stick which it whirled around its head producing a circle of smoke. After the glowing end of the stick had gone out, the beast threw its head back and whistled. Then it picked up a second stick and again swung it around. After about fifteen minutes the creature “was joined by another – a female unmistakably – when both turned and walked past me, within 20 yards of where I sat, and disappeared into the brush.” Given the date of the encounter, the writer’s reference to the second creature being unmistakably female would probably mean that it had breasts.

The hunter concluded by saying that he had met one other hunter who had seen the creatures, and about a dozen more who had seen mysterious gigantic human-like footprints. This acceptance of the reality of the creatures by those who spent a lot of time in the forested hills is a feature of theses early cases that surfaces again and again. The educated townsfolk who wrote and read the newspapers were amazed by the stories of wild men, the hunters and trappers were not.

In 1895 a man named of Riley Smith was picking berries near Winsted, Connecticut, when his bulldog came dashing out of a patch of woodland whimpering and trying to hide behind Smith. Wondering what had caused this, Smith stood up to see “a large man, stark naked and covered with hair all over his body” emerge from the trees. The instant the “wild man” saw Smith it gave a terrifying yell, then turned and fled back into the woods. Smith later admitted that he had been paralysed with fear.

Meanwhile, newspaper reports were beginning to term these unusual creatures “gorillas” in deference to the newly discovered great apes of the African forests. The idea that the sightings were of men gone wild was gradually dropped in favour of the idea that they were gorillas or similar apes escaped from zoos or travelling shows. A newspaper report from Arkansas ended with the words “If this meets the eye of any showman who has lost one of his collection of beasts, he may know where to find it. At present it is the terror of all women and children in the valley. It cannot be caught and nobody is willing to shoot it. ”

This last comment is interesting as it is the first appearance in print of a feature of many later Sasquatch sightings. Several hunters have had a Sasquatch square in the sights of their rifle, only to find themselves unwilling to shoot. There is something about the Sasquatch that seems to be very human, which would make killing one something like murder. Others have been less squeamish and have blasted away at a Sasquatch without compunction but also, at least to date, without much effect.

For more informaiton on the Bigfoot see the book written by Rupert Matthews “Bigfoot and Other Mysterious Creatures.” The book is available from Amazon. 
 

You can find Rupert’s website at www.rupertmatthews.com. He maintains a blog about the unexplained at www.ghosthunteratlarge.blogspot.com.

The Eastern Bigfoot

The following guest article is by Rupert Matthews, author of the book Bigfoot and Other Mysterious Creatures.

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The Eastern Bigfoot
By Rupert Matthews

Some researchers draw a clear distinction between sightings of the classic Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, and those of the Eastern Bigfoot. While the classic Bigfoot looks and behaves like a real wild animal, its eastern counterpart behaves in a very different fashion. It frequents heavily populated areas, has a rather different appearance and - most disturbingly - is prone to attack humans.

A few sightings of the Eastern Bigfoot give a flavour of the odd behaviour of this cryptid - if that is what it is.

Lew Lister had been driving home the 18 year old girl who would later become his wife. The young couple pulled over at the side of the road that led to the girl’s farmhouse home near Point Isabel in Ohio. They saw an unnaturally tall human-like figure approaching over a field. The thing moved with a series of bounding leaps. Lew switched on the car’s headlights to get a better look at the creature. It was revealed to be tall, two-legged, covered with yellowish blonde hair and possessing enormous eyes that glowed a blazing orange.

As soon as the headlights came on the creature began running toward the car. It passed through a wire fence, rather than jumping over it and then began to attack. It reached in through the open window trying to grab at Lister, but he managed to duck aside and wind up the window. The girl, meanwhile, felt mesmerized by the creature’s orange eyes. The creature curled back its lips to reveal hideous fangs. Then it dropped down on to all fours, snarled and vanished into thin air.

Another apparent Eastern Bigfoot attack took place on 13 September 1965. Christine van Acker, aged 17, and her mother were driving through woods near Monroe in Michigan. It was a balmy night and the pair had the car windows down. Suddenly a hulking great figure stepped out of the trees to stand in the road. It was about 7 feet tall and covered in dark hair. Christine, a novice driver, tried to swerve past it and accelerate, but succeeded only in stalling the car. Seconds later the creature was beside the car and reached in. The smell was overpowering. It put a hairy hand on Christine’s head and banged her head against the steering wheel. Then it turned and walked off as another vehicle approached.

Even more terrifying was the Bigfoot encountered by James Crabtree when out squirrel hunting near Fouke, Arkansas, in 1965. He saw some horses bolting across a field and heard what he thought was a dog howling in pain. Going to investigate, 14 year old Crabtree found himself suddenly confronted by something 8 foot tall, human-shaped and was covered with reddish hair. The beast’s face was completely featureless, apart from a broad nose and masses of cascading hair. This hairy being began moving toward Crabtree with solid, lumbering steps. Crabtree raised his shotgun and blasted the creature at a range of about 25 feet. The shot had no effect, so Crabtree shot again. Again, it had no effect. This time the boy lifted the gun so that its barrel was pointing at the Bigfoot’s head at a range of under 10 feet and pulled the trigger. Still the beast came lumbering forward. Crabtree fled, and got away uninjured.

Equally odd, though reported in all good faith, was the 7 foot tall Bigfoot covered in glossy black fur that was reported to be strolling through a park in Morristown, New Jersey, on 21 May 1966.

For more informaiton on the Bigfoot see the book written by Rupert Matthews “Bigfoot and Other Mysterious Creatures.” The book is available from Amazon. 
 

You can find Rupert’s website at www.rupertmatthews.com. He maintains a blog about the unexplained at www.ghosthunteratlarge.blogspot.com.

The Bluff Creek Bigfoot case

The following guest article is by Rupert Matthews, author of the book Bigfoot and Other Mysterious Creatures.

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Bigfoot Hits the Headlines

By Rupert Matthews

The Bigfoot or Sasquatch is a cryptid (allegedly real animal as yet unrecognised by science) that lives in the densely forested wilderness areas of northwestern North America. Reports about this gigantic upright walking ape had been filtering out of the area for decades, but nobody really took any notice of it until events at Bluff Creek in 1958. The fact that the stories got such wide coverage was partly due to the fact that reports about the Yeti had been filling the international news media for some years. Cryptozoology – though the word had not yet really caught on – was an acceptable topic for coverage. It was also due to the dramatic and very photogenic evidence that was produced. Any reporter will confirm that a good photo will “give legs” to a story and ensure that it continues to run, while the same story without a photo would soon die down and lose public interest.

The trail of events actually began in 1957 when work began on building a road through the Bluff Creek area of northern California that was designed to aid the logging industry by opening the region up to heavy machinery. The head of the firm hired to do the job was Ray Wallace, who had his brother Wilbur as one of the team foremen handling the actual workteam tasked with clearing a flat roadbed through the rugged and densely forested terrain. The Wallace company was an established construction outfit in the area and was running more than one project.

With hindsight workmen at a Wallace site near Mad River remembered that in March 1958 they found some strange tracks. Nobody could recall exactly what they looked like, and at least one man said that they were bear tracks while another said that they were faked by some unidentified prankster who wanted to spook the workmen. At this distance in time it is impossible to state anything definitive about this event, except that it was odd but quickly dismissed at the time. It is only later events that have given it any importance.

On 3 August the workmen on the Bluff Creek Road turned up for work to find some of their equipment disturbed. A spare tire weighing around 700lb had been rolled about, causing the men to wonder who or what had been interfering. On 27 August the workmen found that the site had again been visited by something odd overnight, but this time it had left footprints.

It was Gerald Crew, known as Jerry, who found the footprints. They were impressed into the soft soil around his bulldozer. The footprints were later described as being exactly like those of a naked human foot, but much larger. At first Crew thought that they must be some sort of practical joke, but after following the tracks about and studying them move closely he became convinced that they had really been left by some huge man of some kind. He went to see his foreman, Wilbur Wallace, who came to look at the tracks. The other workmen also studied the prints. After some discussion it was decided to ignore the strange nocturnal intruder – so long as he did not turn up during daylight hours when the workcrew were on site.

On 21 September the local newspaper, the Humboldt Times, printed a letter from Mrs Jess Bemis about the events up at Bluff Creek. Jess Bemis was the wife of one of the workmen on the site. The letter was printed, and prompted the editor Andrew Genzoli to dig out some old stories along similar lines. Reporter Betty Allen then made the link between the mysterious giant footprints and the stories that had been circulating for years about a hairy man-ape that the white settlers and farmers called “Big Foot”. Allen went out to talk to people who had seen either the tracks of the man-ape itself. On 28 September she had a piece published about the creature she called “Bigfoot”, summarising the evidence known to that date. She also suggested that next time somebody found any footprints they should take a cast using plaster of paris.

Then, on 1 October, Jerry Crew and the work gang at Bluff Creek found more footprints that had been left overnight around their worksite. Two of the workers promptly quit. Wilbur Wallace sent for his brother, and boss, Ray Wallace to come up to Bluff Creek to inspect the situation and talk to the workmen. Meanwhile Jerry Crew had called an old friend of his, Bob Titmus, who went to see Betty Allen to get some plaster of paris and instructions on how to use it. On 3 October Titmus arrived at the worksite and, with Crew, poured the plaster into the clearest of the footprints.

The cast was taken down to the offices of the Humboldt Times by Crew. The man and the cast were photographed and the amazing photo used to illustrate an article by Andrew Genzoli. It was that combination of a stunning photo, solid evidence and well researched writing that propelled the “Bigfoot” into the national media. The story was taken up and reprinted across the USA and Canada, then filtered out to media in other countries.

Back at Bluff Creek, the excitement mounted when on 12 October two workers – Ray Kerr and Bob Breaezle – actually sighted the mysterious footprint maker. Driving along a local dirt road after dark, they momentarily caught a gigantic upright figure in their headlights. The creature ran off into the woods very quickly, but the two men described a hairy human figure well over 6 feet tall. Within 48 hours another 13 men had left their jobs on the road construction project.

Bob Titmus was meanwhile out in the forests looking for signs of the mysterious creature. So far as is known he was the first man ever to go out into the forests looking for Sasquatch. He found some more footprints, and took casts.

For more informaiton on the Bigfoot see the book written by Rupert Matthews “Bigfoot and Other Mysterious Creatures.” The book is available from Amazon. 
 

You can find Rupert’s website at www.rupertmatthews.com. He maintains a blog about the unexplained at www.ghosthunteratlarge.blogspot.com.

A Room 101 Interview with Richard Freeman

This fortnight in Room 101, I've been fortunate enough to track down Richard Freeman of the Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) for a special two-part interview. Here in Part I, we'll be discussing cryptozoology, from a number of angles, including looking at such infamous beasties as Alien Big Cats, the British Bigfoot, the Tasmanian Wolf, the Almasty, Yeti, and the Chupacabra. In part II (which will be featured in my new column here at BoA Sci-Fi Worlds) we'll be exploring the 45-year-long relationship between monsters and Doctor Who. 

 

Richard Thomas: First things first, thank you very much for giving us the time to answer these questions. I really appreciate it and I'm sure our readers will too. 

  

In hindsight, how do you think you first became interested in cryptozoology and other Fortean-type subjects? Richard Holland (editor of Paranormal magazine) and Nick Redfern both tell me you're a "huge" Doctor Who fan, would I be wrong in thinking that, like me, a childhood obsession with the classic series played a big part? 

  

Richard Freeman: Yes, you would be right. I grew up in the Jon Pertwee era and, because he was incarcerated on Earth by the Time Lords, the monsters the third Doctor faced seemed more compelling and real. A monster in your backyard is more frightening than a monster on some alien planet. Doctor Who oozed menace and weirdness in a way no other show has before or since. Giant maggots exploding out of Welsh slag heaps, killer dolls animated by an alien will, super-evolved marine dinosaurs, you wouldn't get stuff like this in Star Trek. This sparked my interest in monsters.

  

Richard Thomas: I understand you're the "zoological director" for the Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ). What exactly does the CFZ do and how did you become involved with it? 

  

Richard Freeman: The Centre for Fortean Zoology is the only full-time scientific organisation dedicated to cryptozoology, the study of unknown species of animal. I came upon a copy of the society's journal Animals & Men in the now-defunct Potter's Museum of Curiosities in Cornwall. I started to write for them, became the Yorkshire rep then, after I finished my zoology degree, I was invited down to work with them on a permanent basis.

  

Richard Thomas: As a cryptozoologist who has written and lectured widely on the subject, aside from ABCs and the British Bigfoot (which we will discuss later), what are some of the "mystery animals" you are convinced are probably real? 

  

Richard Freeman: The thylacine or Tasmanian wolf, a striped, dog-like, flesh-eating marsupial. The thylacine was supposedly hunted into extinction in the mid-1930s but there have been over 4000 sightings since then, some by zoologists and park rangers. There have also been a couple of film sequences that I have seen analysed frame by frame. I have no doubt this creature is still around.

  

The giant anaconda. This snake gives birth to live young rather than laying eggs. Ergo it has severed its last link with the land and can spend 99% of its time in the water. Thus buoyed up, it can reach huge sizes, perhaps as much as 60 feet!

 

Orang-pendek, an upright walking ape from Sumatra. Debbie Martyr, head of the Indonesian Tiger Conservation Group has seen it four times. It is probably related to the orangutan but adapted for a bipedal existence on the forest floor.

  

The yeti, possibly a surviving form of the giant ape Gigantopithecus blacki that lived in China and India 500,000 years ago. Hair has been analysed in the UK, USA and China. The results were the same: unknown primate.

  

The Almasty, a relic hominid, an ultra-primitive kind of man, it has no fire and only ape-like tool use. I know two scientists who have seen this creature and I think I came within 12 feet of one last Summer on a derelict farm in Russia at 2.30 am.

  

Dragons, the original uber monster. Found in every culture and dates back at least 25,000 years in cave paintings. Still seen today in parts of Asia and Africa and the world's oceans. Possibly the descendant of a group of prehistoric seagoing crocodiles. World wide the dragon is more associated with water than it is with fire.

  

Richard Thomas: Likewise, are there any of these alleged cryptozoological creatures that you think are just modern-day myths or simply a product of peoples' imaginations?  

  

Richard Freeman: Surviving dinosaurs can be explained by other animals. The sauropod reports by an unknown species of giant, semiaquatic monitor lizard in both Africa. The Tyrannosaur like reports in New Guinea and Australia are probably giant monitor lizards rearing up onto their hind legs. The supposed horned dinosaur in Africa is probably a species of rhino. 

  

Richard Thomas: My younger sister actually had an ABC (Alien Big Cat) sighting here in Wales. What are your thoughts on the "big cats" seen in Britain? Do you think they're simply flesh and blood animals or do you think in some cases something far stranger could be happening?

  

Richard Freeman: There is no doubt big cats are alive and well in the UK. A female puma was captured in Inverness in 1980. These are descendants of escapees and deliberate releases. Until the Dangerous Wild Animals act anyone could keep anything as a pet and up till the early 1980s, an old duffer could start a zoo in their backyard! The nucleus of the current ABC population in the UK was from these irresponsible people.

  

Richard Thomas: Neil Arnold has written Monster! - The A-Z of Zooform Phenomena, is a truly unique book about: "a void of creatures which clearly aren't flesh and blood, yet which cryptozoology and the paranormal realm attempts to file, and yet ... fit into neither." What are your thoughts on "Zooform" phenomena?

  

Richard Freeman: Zooform phenomena may have something to do with the human mind. There is a global monster template of archetypes that are found all over the world. Dragons, hairy giants, little people, big cats, monster dogs, monster birds. These all have analogues with creatures that would have been preying on or competing with our primitive ancestors on the plains of East Africa three million years ago. Crocodiles, pythons, larger and smaller primate species, leopards and lions, hunting dogs, and large raptors like the martial eagle. I think we carry these beasts as fears or fossil memories in our collective subconscious. At certain times they can become externalised and take on a quasi-solid form for a while.

  

Richard Thomas: Nick Redfern has written a book with the interesting title Man-Monkey: In Search of the British Bigfoot. What do you think the likelihood of such a creature in the UK really is and, perhaps more interestingly, what do think it could be? For instance, do you think we're dealing with some kind of missing link or something else entirely?

  

Richard Freeman: There is no way a species of giant ape could live undetected in the UK. You would need a population to carry the species on and there is just not enough room. The UK is not like Canada or Tibet, a real ape or hominid would have been discovered decades ago. I think what people are seeing are zooform creatures.

  

Interestingly though, relic hominids may have lived on mainland Europe until relatively recently. The trolls of Scandinavia sound very like them and as recently as the 1980s a hominid was reported from western Russia only 15 miles from the borders of Finland. 

  

Richard Thomas: The Chupacabra of Latin America is probably the strangest cryptozoological type creature I've heard of and think just might actually exist. What are your thoughts on the Chupacabra? Do you think we're dealing with something extraterrestrial or something much more mundane? 

  

Richard Freeman: My colleague Jon Downes has investigated the Chupacabra in Puerto Rico. He concluded that most of the attacks on livestock were done by imported mongooses as well as feral dogs. He thinks that the spiny-backed beast reported from the area is an unknown species of new world porcupine.

  

Richard Thomas: Have you got any books or anything coming out soon? Maybe a new case or something has grabbed your attention recently? 

  

Richard Freeman: I have two books out currently Dragons: More Than a Myth? from CFZ Press and Explore Dragons from Heart of Albion. Later this year my new book, The Great Yokai Encyclopaedia: an A to Z of Japanese Monsters is out from CFZ Press. I have become enthralled with Japanese folklore. They have the weirdest monsters on Earth including a giant man-eating sea cucumber that grows from the knickers of a girl, a giant flesh-eating rabbit that digs up human bodies to eat their livers, and a flaming pig that steals human genitals. Fortunately, most of these are purely imaginary. 

  

Richard Thomas: Thanks again, I'm looking forward to doing part II of this interview with you for my other BoA column Sci-Fi Worlds. There we can go more in-depth about our shared obsession with Doctor Who.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

A Room 101 Interview with Neil Arnold

So far in these new text interviews, we've centred on Ufology, so I'm sure this monster interview will make a nice change. Neil Arnold has written Monster! - The A-Z of Zooform Phenomena, a truly unique book with a foreword by Dr Karl Shuker. He has also done over 20 years of research into the "big cat" phenomenon. So when he volunteered to do an interview (after reading my ABCs - Alien Big Cats in Wales? piece) I quickly took up his offer. 

Richard Thomas: First things first. Thank you very much for getting in touch and taking the time to answer these questions. I really appreciate it and I'm sure the BoA readers will too.

How did you become interested in cryptozoology and related topics in the first place? 

Neil Arnold: I first became interested in monster folklore when I was around nine. I'd always heard tales of strange local creatures and eerie stories from my dad and grandad, and so at a tender age I took it upon myself to log such reports. I was also heavily influenced by the chilling '70s movie THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK and a book by Carey Miller (1974) called MONSTERS & MYSTERIOUS BEASTS and of course programmes such as Arthur C. Clarke. I even began to collect crypto etc, documentaries and have a vast collection. I had a passing interest as a kid in UFOs and ghosts but there's nothing as exciting as a monster hunt! Richard: Your book is called Monster! - The A-Z of Zooform Phenomena. What exactly do you mean by "Zooform Phenomena"? 

Neil Arnold: Zooform Phenomena was a term coined by Fortean researcher Jonathan Downes who runs the Centre for Fortean Zoology. It is a term which collates a void of creatures which clearly aren't flesh and blood, yet which cryptozoology and the paranormal realm attempts to file, and yet such 'monsters' fit into neither.

  

Richard Thomas: Black hellhounds, phantom dogs, winged humanoids...the book is an alphabetical listing of thousands of weird creatures. What are some of your favourites and why? 

  

Neil Arnold: The book isn't that complex despite being 400 pages. It began life as a four-page article and then I realised that there's a veritable feast of info out there never before published, and these are classic campfire tales of real creatures which fit into some complex yet foggy void, i.e. black phantom dogs, winged humanoids (Mothman etc), it is difficult to pick out favourites, I just wanted to assemble the obscure info because no-one else had ever done it but creatures such as India's Monkey Man, the Highgate Vampire, Goatman and the varying phantom hounds of differing colour and purpose certainly hold my interest, but there are just so many monsters in the book, from the more known forms such as Mothman and the Jersey Devil to some very obscure stuff such as Noodleman, Sheepsquatch etc. These are creatures which have been witnessed but which clearly DO NOT lurk in the woods or the oceans despite what cryptozoologists believe. Richard: What is the nature of this "complex void" you write about?

  

Neil Arnold: Zooform Phenomena is a unique study and I'm honoured that my book is the world's first on a subject. Sure, authors such as Loren Coleman have touched upon some of these creatures but they are NOT part of cryptozoology. I do not know where they are from but I believe there are connections to the human psyche because such critters can be the product of anything from hysteria, hoax, misidentification or local dread. The classic example of this is the Chupacabras, the 'goatsucker' of Puerto Rico. This vampiric beast has terrorised this island for centuries but only since the '90s did it take on a form resembling a small-winged, bug-eyed bloodsucker with a feathery spine and small-clawed hands, however, look back into south American folklore and you'll find that the Chupacabras has always been here and has many so-called relatives, and the same can be said for the Bray Road Beast of Wisconsin, or the Mothman of West Virginia. Society creates these 'demons', and I've always been of the saying that if you believe in something enough it starts to happen, but, if no one is there to see it, does it still appear?

  

These are manifestations that produce a snowball effect. The Jersey Devil of the New Jersey Pine Barrens has resembled everything from a large cat, a small dragon and a bat, and it has existed for centuries but it's NOT a flesh and blood creature and neither was Mothman, these are zooforms, strange entities with animal characteristics and they need to be collated together and NOT melt into the cryptozoological or paranormal void, they need their own place and that's what MONSTER! is. 

  

Richard Thomas: Is there much overlap between "Zooform Phenomena" and UFOs or ghosts? 

  

Neil Arnold: There are many cases in the book which mention UFOs and ghostly phenomena. Hellhounds have often been considered ghosts but clearly are something more complex. They aren't merely the spirit of someone's dog but instead guardians, or omens of misfortune which haunt old roads, graveyards, scenes where accidents have taken place, and pathways where funeral processions once marched. Naturally, some cases will melt into ghost folklore and UFOs will also be mentioned especially when involving witnesses who saw bizarre creatures in the vicinity of UFOs etc. I don't like the connections personally but maybe all this weird stuff is connected, it's us humans which have given it a label but maybe it's all part of the same jigsaw but many pieces are missing! 

  

Richard Thomas: The idea that the Chupacabra, far from being extraterrestrial, might have a more earthly explanation appeals to me but what are your thoughts on the Chupacabra?

  

Neil Arnold: Although I mentioned the Chupacabra earlier, it remains one of the most baffling monster mysteries of the modern era. Jonathan Downes is of strong opinion, after many years of research, that the beast is a porcupine, and his theories add up because it seems that many of the attacks on pets were not in fact made by an unknown predator, however, we all love a mystery and we have attempted to create a monster in the Chupacabra by connecting it to covert experiments, UFOs, the Devil etc, but every country has one of these bogeymen...that's all they are, night prowlers no different from goblins and the mythical creatures we read about when we were kids. They'll always be here in some form whether as Harpies or as vampires. 

  

Richard Thomas: As a researcher of more than 20 years into "big cat" sightings across the world (especially in the UK) what do you think the truth behind this phenomenon is? 

  

Neil Arnold: The 'big cat' phenomenon is NO mystery at all, not in any country. As a race we always like to add mystery to even normal situations. Crop circles, Men In Black, cattle mutilations, have always been blamed on UFOs yet without proof and the 'big cat' situation is no different. In the UK the press are to blame for the local 'beast' stories. For many the 'big cat' enigma is a modern mystery but that's because the press only became that interested the last thirty or so years, although in the UK the Surrey Puma was making a few headlines in the 1950s. The main theory as to why so many cats are out there concerns the ease such animals were obtained in the '60s and '70s. lions, cheetahs, leopards etc, were available from local pet shops, major stores and bia adverts in the newspapers and then in the '70s the Dangerous Wild Animals Act was introduced which meant any owners had to pay huge license fees for their 'pets' and so instead of paying, instead of giving them up to zoo parks, they released them into the wilds. This is a good theory but it doesn't explain the sightings on record that date back a handful of centuries. I have records which state that strange cat-like animals were sighted in the 1500s, and the main answer to such populations lies with many origins, 1) when the Roman's settled here they imported many wild animals, elephants, bears, and leopards, to perform in lethal combat in their amphitheatres, and I'm sure that some cats would have escaped. 2) Meanwhile, travelling menageries were very popular in the Victorian era, and not all of the exhibitions would have been up to scratch as rickety wagons took to the rough roads with their exotic cats behind bars, 3) Private collections. The Royals had their own menagerie, the Tudors used to hunt their own large cats, some cats such as Jungle Cats were used aboard boats to kill rats and once docked here such animals may have escaped/been released. there are so many reasons as to why large cats roam our woods, and in the USA it's no different except that many people believe the black cats being seen are black pumas but there has never been a black puma. in the '60s black leopards (panthers) were certainly a very symbolic pet to house and it's this animal which makes up for a majority of 'big cat' sightings in the UK and this cat is a true 'big cat' as, like the lion, jaguar and tiger it can roar.

  

Other cats we have in the UK are the puma which the United States can boast as a native animal, and also the lynx which we last had a few thousand years ago, but, there are too many inadequate researchers out there creating too many unnecessary complexities. These cats are NOT ghosts, NOT demons, NOT prehistoric survivors, and not mutants. Even in the US I'm convinced that most black cat sightings concern black leopards. Until someone sees a black cat scream, we must stick with the black leopard. Such animals only produce black offspring but they themselves can originally come from a mixed litter but a recessive gene means, especially in the UK, that all the leopard sightings are of black (melanistic) specimens and not normal leopards, although in the black leopard the rosettes can still be seen under the dark coat.

  

The British 'big cat' situation is not a complex one. We have smaller cats also such as the caracal, jungle cats (which can breed with the domestic cat) and possibly other smaller cats such as ocelots and servals which have been released. I see no need to create a bigger mystery but instead look at the facts, but all the while so many crazy theories keep on emerging these cats will eternally be relegated to folklore and put alongside UFOs etc. I could go on forever because a lot of people out there need to be made aware that the mystery cat situation is not a mystery.

  

Richard Thomas: I understand you don't like your "zooform" work to influence your "big cat" research, why is this?

 

Neil Arnold: The mystery cats out there are flesh and blood so there's no need to put them alongside ghosts and zooform creatures. I DO believe that Bigfoot is an unknown species of upright-walking ape so I've tried not to put many cases in the book, and I also believe a lot of sea serpent reports are of real creatures so again, anything I consider to be 'out there' in the woods, seas, rivers and skies will not be labelled a zooform. Of course, some researchers do think Bigfoot etc is supernatural, but I'm not so sure, I just think it's mankind's way of relegating an elusive creature to folklore. Richard: Have you ever seen a "big cat" or had any other cryptozoological creature sightings yourself? 

  

Neil Arnold: I've put many years of research into the 'big cat' situation and feel privileged that I've seen a black leopard on three occasions, possibly the same individual, in 2000 (twice) and then this year. I've also seen a lynx which took a few years to track and also two other cats, one possibly a puma the other I'm not so sure, but I just feel fortunate to see such beautiful animals, but I put a lot of time in the field and just like to monitor what's going on. I'm not interested in filming them or any financial gain, I'm only interested in the welfare of the animals.

  

Richard Thomas: I'm a huge Doctor Who fan and try to tie it into Room 101 whenever I can. The Loch Ness monster, yeti and even werewolves have all appeared in the series, do you have any thoughts on these creatures?

  

Neil Arnold: I've met a lot of researchers into Doctor Who! I've never been a great fan but it is exciting when such popular series incorporate crypto-related monsters. I've always thought that the Loch Ness Monster was a large eel or big catfish or sturgeon, certainly not a living dinosaur, and again, the media created the 'monster' that, if it was ever there, died a long time ago. As for werewolves, when you look at cases across the world there seems to be some inkling that such creatures exist, even if they are zooforms, i.e. Bray Road beast, Morbach Monster of Germany, Michigan Dogman. There are reports dating back many years of dog-headed humanoids. As for the Yeti, like Bigfoot, I think it's an undiscovered primate. Richard: What do you think of this crossover between Doctor Who and real life myths and legends like these? 

  

Neil Arnold: I have a massive collection of films, t.v. shows, cartoons etc that have featured/covered cryptozoological beasts and monsters so I think it's great when shows such as Doctor Who cover monsters. I'm planning a book on crypto-related movies and have a blogspot at: www.cryptomovies.blogspot.com which will eventually cover just about every tv programme/commercial and film to feature monsters which we call cryptids. 

  

Richard Thomas: What are your plans for the future? Are you working on anything or has anything new grabbed your attention recently? 

  

Neil Arnold: Around Halloween I should have a book out called MYSTERY ANIMALS OF KENT (www.mysteryanimalsofkent.blogspot.com), which will be unique locally, there are so many local ghost books but nothing has ever been published in regards to local sightings of creatures and my cat research. I may one day do a MONSTER! sequel but am also planning a London 'monster' nook and numerous projects out in the field. Richard: Thanks again, I look forward to your future work.

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