Eerie Monster on Deer Cam in Berwick, Louisiana
The Hype:On December 10, 2010 NBC 33 reported a picture that an anonymous hunter had found on his deer cam after coming back to his destroyed camp in Berwick, Louisiana. It was reported in news outlets around the world, illustrating the fact that if it's printed somewhere in "letters", local TV news will pick up news of the biblical apocalypse being here. The hunting picture shows a thin, gangly, fast-moving, seemingly nocturnal creature that can most likely swallow your soul with one backwards-sounding howl.
What's really the creepiest part of this whole thing is how powerful and mobile the creature looks.
Reality:
The mystery hasn't completely been solved although many believe it is a photoshopped hoax.
Two different companies tried to exploit this by saying the creature is part of their viral marketing campaign. The first was a report for J.J. Abram's Super 8, which is due out in June of this year. Movieweb.com linked the creature to the film because in a video, Cameron Marie Saunders, who worked on Super 8, she talks about running into a "zombie" and having to cry in the scene. There was no further evidence that the creature was part of Super 8's viral marketing campaign.
Then Playstation claimed that the creature was a Grim from their Resistance 3 game and part of the marketing campaign. Insomniac Games posted an update to their Twitter that read "Whoops...looks like one got out. If you see a Grim on the loose...please return to Insomniac Games," which further convinced people that the truth had finally been revealed. This, of course, also isn't true because if Playstation/Insomniac Games had actually been behind this, they wouldn't have made the image so sad. I mean, the poor guy's missing a few eyes.
This is what a "grim" looks like:
Montauk Monster Washes Up On A New York Beach
Hype:The story goes that local youths just found it and then photographed it, then sold it to papers (yay humanity!) Now, this happened near Plum Island Animal Disease Center which brought up theories about the government doing weird experiments. Its dinosaur beak was pointed out along with the speculation that it could be a previously undiscovered prehistoric mammal.
Other possible identifications of the creature included a dog and a turtle without its shell (but turtles don't have teeth).
It's also apparently not a demon dog who only serves the great and powerful Zuul...
Reality:
Larry Penny, the East Hampton Natural Resources Director, along with other experts, confirmed it was nothing more than a decomposing raccoon carcass, which matched dental and skeletal points but was missing its upper jaw.
Since the case of the Montauk Monster was solved, other carcasses have been found in the same area. A website called montauk-monster.com is dedicated to following up on these cases with photographs and insists that the similarities between all of the beasts means they are coming from Plum Island.
Alien Baby Drowned by a Farmer in Metepec, Mexico
Hype:On May 11, 2007 Mario Moreno Lopez (who is in no way related to AC Slater but is actually a farmer in Metepec, Mexico) found this creature in the steel trap he had put out for his rats meaning that Mr. Lopez is used to some pretty serious f*cking rats.
He had to drown it three times in order to kill it (which really just means he only drowned it once, doesn't it?) The creature is tiny (the farmer described as being 70 cm. long) and has an elongated head, which led to the possibility of it being an alien baby with a high level of intelligence. Skeptics stayed closer to home, calling the creature a reptile or skinned squirrel monkey to explain its tail and spine, and large head and eyes.
Mario Moreno Lopez mysteriously died in a car fire (the fire was at an unusually high temperature for a normal fire) some time after having drowned the creature, leading UFO enthusiasts to believe that the alien baby's guardians had sought revenge against Lopez, which also begs the question: where the h**l were they when it was stuck in a rat trap?
Supposedly there have been many reports of UFO sightings and mysterious crop circles in Metepec, which could just mean the locals are superstitiously making up stories and producing images and carcasses that the Weekly World News would KILL for or that an actual alien baby was left behind.
No loving little kids, no Reese's Pieces, just huge traps and slow, unsuccessful drowning.
Reality:
Mexican UFO specialist Jaime Maussan was the first to discover the story, buy the corpse off Moreno for $32,000 and say it was not a hoax, which further convinces skeptics that the so-called alien baby had been a scheme.The alien baby was investigated by History Channel's MonsterQuest.
The Metepec creature has so far stumped scientists, who found that its teeth are not rooted like human teeth. To disprove the initial possibility that the creature was a skinned monkey, forensic scientists found that the creature still had a unique kind of tissue and had not been tampered with.
The Blue Hill Horror in Cerro Azul, Panama
Hype:Around September 17, 2009, four adolescents playing in Cerro Azul, Panama claimed they saw the rubbery E.T. look-alike run out of a cave. According to them, it started chasing them, so they threw rocks at it until it was dead (yay humanity!) They then pushed its body into the water.
The UK tabloids called it Gollum (the creature from the Lord of the Rings) because it was living in a cave. While other papers just gave it the name "The Blue Hill Horror" because that'll make a better original SyFy movie title than "That Thing That Looks Like If E.T. and Gollum From Lord of the Rings Had a Baby Somehow".
Scientists found that the adolescents' tale was false because the sloth had been decomposing before that day. Its long decomposition in the river had removed its hair and given it its bloated and rubbery skin. It was a dead sloth, which now makes this sad instead of mysterious and awesome.
Alien Corpse in Thai Ceremony
Hype:
A series of images depicting a ceremony for an alien-looking creature held by Thai villagers in 2007, complete with incense and baby powder, resurfaced in 2010 through social networks. Speculators suggested it was anything from an alien with its large, globe-like head and gray skin to a satyr with its tiny hooves and tail.
A satyr:
A debate over the nature of the ceremony also took place with some believing it to be a respectful funeral rite for the creature, treating it as a human. This idea came from the apparent grief on the villager's faces. Who knows, maybe they just ran out of baby powder and there wasn't enough for everyone. Others said the ceremony was performed to dispel themselves from the evil surrounding the creature. There were even some who said the Thai villagers were worshipping the creature as a deity.
Click here to see the rest of the pictures of the ceremony
Science:
Apparently it's a cow. Many guessed that the creature was a deformed cow, a fact that the villagers may have known all along, but it was so terrifyingly humanoid that a proper ceremony was given to it because h**l, nobody's gonna eat that. Speculators point to the rising number of weird births of animals around the globe, going as far as suggesting that aliens are conducting experiments on animals and are creating weird creature hybrids that will one day take over the earth and eat us all (that last part isn't true... for now.)
A series of images depicting a ceremony for an alien-looking creature held by Thai villagers in 2007, complete with incense and baby powder, resurfaced in 2010 through social networks. Speculators suggested it was anything from an alien with its large, globe-like head and gray skin to a satyr with its tiny hooves and tail.
A satyr:
A debate over the nature of the ceremony also took place with some believing it to be a respectful funeral rite for the creature, treating it as a human. This idea came from the apparent grief on the villager's faces. Who knows, maybe they just ran out of baby powder and there wasn't enough for everyone. Others said the ceremony was performed to dispel themselves from the evil surrounding the creature. There were even some who said the Thai villagers were worshipping the creature as a deity.
Click here to see the rest of the pictures of the ceremony
Science:
Apparently it's a cow. Many guessed that the creature was a deformed cow, a fact that the villagers may have known all along, but it was so terrifyingly humanoid that a proper ceremony was given to it because h**l, nobody's gonna eat that. Speculators point to the rising number of weird births of animals around the globe, going as far as suggesting that aliens are conducting experiments on animals and are creating weird creature hybrids that will one day take over the earth and eat us all (that last part isn't true... for now.)
Tiny Humanoid Found in Chile
Hype:
While vacationing with his family in Concepcion, Chile, Julio Carreno found a tiny humanoid creature measuring 7.2 centimeters in a bush on October 1, 2002. The creature, which has a large human-like head was alive and opened its eyes before dying eight days later. It had fingernails and slanted eyes. Its originally pinkish color turned darker and the corpse stayed warm before quickly mummifying itself. The family suggested that maybe this had occurred because they were keeping it in a first aid kit box in the refrigerator -- just where you keep most dead humanoid creatures, next to the ham.
Several rumors spread about the story, such as people saying that the creature had made telepathic contact with the mother of the family. Others said the being had stood up but the family denied that this had happened. Speculation of the creature's identification included the possibility of it being a wild cat's fetus or an alien.
Science:
The corpse was studied by veterinarians in Santiago, who are still divided over the creature's identity. They confirmed that the creature was neither a fetus nor the remains of a feline. Some matched the creature's physical characteristics to a mouse opossum, a common animal in Chile. Others disagreed because the creature did not have the small, pointed teeth or tail of a mouse opossum and its head was double the size of one.
Chupacabra Sightings in Texas
Hype:The creature people have called the Bigfoot of Latin America has been sighted several times in Puerto Rico and the U.S, particularly in Texas. The legend behind the creature is that it kills livestock and drinks their blood. The name chupacabra literally means "goat sucker."
Chupacabra, when first discovered in the mid 90s, was supposed to look like some of these pictures:
The Elmendorf Beast, or the real Chupacabra, was a twenty-pound dog or coyote-like creature that was shot and killed in August 2004 by farmer Devin McAnally in Elmendorf, Texas after having mauled 34 chickens. The creature had no hair and blue-graying skin. Its DNA was sent to UC Davis, where scientists concluded it was a coyote with mange.
In Cuero, Texas in August 2007 Phylis Canion found the carcasses of three coyote-like creatures similar to the Elmendorf Beast. She took pictures of the corpses and froze one of their heads. She connected the beasts to the Chupacabra legend because thirty of her chickens had bled out in the past few years without being eaten or carried away. DNA testing determined that the animal was a hybrid wolf/coyote with mange.
In September, 2009 CNN reported on a taxidermist in Blanco County who had preserved the body of a coyote-like creature that people were calling a chupacabra. The creature had been poisoned after being discovered in a barn and its body was later given to the taxidermist Jerry Ayer.
Science:
University of Michigan scientists believe that the origin of the chupacabra legend began with these very, very diseased coyotes. Its ability to suck chickens and goats dry, though, remains unexplained.
Alabama Boy Kills Giant Boar
Hype:On May 3, 2007, an 11-year-old named Jamison Stone shot a huge boar, which weighed 1,051 pounds and measured nine feet four inches, with a .50 caliber pistol near Delta, Alabama. This meant Stone had shot himself a pig bigger than Hogzilla, the famed boar that had been killed in Georgia in 2004.
Stone, who killed his first deer at age 5 was hunting with his dad Mike Stone on the day he killed the boar. He had to shoot the boar eight times and chased it for three hours. When the pig finally went down, trees had to be cut down to get it out of the woods. The father and son had the boar's head mounted to keep as a prize and made around 500 to 700 pounds of sausage from it.
"It's a good accomplishment. I probably won't ever kill anything else that big," Stone told the Associated Press. He was later offered a small part in a horror movie based on Hogzilla.
Stone wasn't able to enjoy his fame (his dad even put up a website called monsterpig.com for him) for long before he received death threats for having led the boar to suffer a long and painful death as he repeatedly wounded him. 800 people signed a petition world-wide advocating for the boy's prosecution on charges of animal cruelty. Skeptics believe the whole story was a hoax and the boar was really a farm animal fattened up to make a sensational story, which even I'm particularly skeptical of myself. Mostly because, according to this website, it was an obvious Photoshop job. Charges were never pressed because too much time had elapsed from the day of the crime before an investigation was conducted.
Oriental Yeti Trapped By Hunters in China
Hype:In April 2010 a group of hunters trapped a hairless possum-like mammal that was described as looking like a bear with a tail like a kangaroo and making distressed cat noises. The creature became a media sensation, being dubbed the "Oriental Yeti." According to legend, the Yeti was a bear-like figure that towered well over the height of men. This creature was only two feet long...
Science:
Bigfoot researcher Loren Coleman dismissed the Yeti speculations as "media madness." "If the Asian press starts using the word "yeti" for every unidentified animal it's going to muddy the waters of cryptozoology," said Coleman. He believed the creature was a palm civet with a serious case of mange. The beast was shipped to Beijing for DNA testing but the results were never released in the media.
Crab-like Creatures Found in a Trench in Russia
Hype:Crabs have been called the cockroaches of the sea and this creature frighteningly makes that saying quite literal. These creatures, which were found in an abandoned foundation pit in Chelyabinsk, Russia, have a hard shell, several stacked appendages and a tail poking out of their shell. People hypothesized that the creatures were huge triops, horseshoe crabs, a facehugger from Alien, or trilobites, which were extinct even before the dinosaurs lived.
Science:
Apparently, the crustaceans were an absolutely amazing species that are 200 million years old and have somehow not evolved at all for that amount of time. Apparently, they are perfect, so take notes fellas. These triops are not actually as large as purported, but they do exist and are basically always around.
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