Psychologists recognize a werewolf psychosis (lycanthropy or lupinomanis) in which persons so afflicted may believe that they change into a wolf when there is a full moon. Those so disturbed may actually “feel” their fur growing, their fingernails becoming claws, their jaws lengthening, their canine teeth elongating.
Number Six: Thunderbirds
The thunderbird figures prominently in the tribal traditions of many Native American tribes. To the Lakota of the American prairies, the thunderbird is an embodiment of the Great Mystery, the Supreme Being that created all things on Earth. While scholars over the centuries have attributed the Native American myths of the thunderbird to the reverence for the eagle, the largest of indigenous birds in North America, many people have claimed to have seen for themselves a great bird, far larger than the eagle, flying overhead. In fact, even in the nineteenth century, some witnesses claimed to have seen flying monsters that resembled pterodactyls, the winged reptiles that became extinct 65 million years ago.
Number Seven: Springheeled Jack
About the middle of November 1837, the lanes and commons of Middlesex, England, suddenly became places of dread. An eerie figure said to be possessed of supernatural powers was stalking the frightened villagers by night and effortlessly avoiding capture by the police. Because of this creature’s ability to leap over tall hedges and walls from a standing jump. He was given the name “Springheeled Jack.”
Close witnesses who encountered Jack face-to-face described him as being tall, thin, and powerful. A prominent nose stuck out of his pinched physiognomy and his ears were pointed like those of an animal. His long, bony fingers resembled claws.
Number Eight: Living Dinosaurs, Such as Mokele-Mbembe
For at least 200 years, stories have emerged from the swamps, rivers, and lakes of African jungles that there is a brownish-gray, elephant-sized creature with a reptilian tail and a long, flexible neck. The native people call it mokele-mbembe (“the one who stops the flow of rivers”) or emela-ntuka (“the one who eats the tops of trees”). In 1980, Dr. Roy Mackal led an expedition into African swamps that are “Mokey’s” hangouts and stated later that the descriptions of the beast would fit that of a sauropod, the giant plant-eating reptile that supposedly became extinct about 65 million years ago.
Number Nine: Flatwoods Monster
Kathleen May described the alien being that she and seven other Flatwoods, West Virginia, residents saw on September 12, 1952, as looking more frightening than the Frankenstein monster. A group of boys were at a nearby playground when they sighted a flying saucer emitting an exhaust that looked like red balls of fire. According to the boys, the UFO landed on a hilltop in back of the May house.
Gene Lemon, a husky 17-year-old, found a flashlight and said that he was going to investigate. About half way up the hill, Lemon directed the beam of his flashlight on what he believed to be the green, glowing eyes of an animal. Instead, the beam spotlighted an immense, humanlike figure with blood-red face and greenish eyes that blinked from under a pointed hood. Behind the monster was a “glowing ball of fire as big as a house” that grew dimmer and brighter at intervals.
Number Ten: Dover Demon
Whatever it was that William Bartlett and two other teenagers sighted from April 21 to 23, 1977, in Dover, Massachusetts, was real. The “thing” that has become known as the Dover Demon was seen by Bartlett as it crept along a low stone wall on the side of the road. It stood about four feet tall and carried its hairless, rough-textured body on two spindly legs. Its arms were also thin and peach-colored. The creature’s huge, watermelon-shaped head was disproportionate in size to its relatively small torso, and it had two large, glowing, red-orange eyes.
Bartlett, who has made his career as a painter, told the Boston Globe (October 29, 2006) that he definitely saw something weird that night. “I didn’t make it up,” he said. “It’s a thing that’s been following me for years. Not the creature—the story.”
In Real Monsters, Creepy Creatures, and Nightmarish Beings, we shall meet these frightening Top Ten fiends, devils, and monstrosities and many, many others. Be thankful that you can encounter them from the safety of your own home. Just ignore those shadows and strange noises that might occur while reading this book.
BIG CATS –PREDATORS OUT OF PLACE
When I was boy growing up in Iowa during the 1940s, I came to look forward during the winter months to the arrival of a curious guest—in addition to Santa Claus—who would faithfully visit our state. Santa, of course, was a welcome guest at our house on Christmas Eve. The other visitor was not at all welcome at any time. According to newspaper accounts, each winter a mysterious black panther somehow materialized among the snow banks and proceeded to frighten folks with its threatening growl and piercing yellow eyes.
Startled eye-witnesses from across the state sighted the beast near the mailboxes at the end of their lanes when they went to retrieve the day’s newspaper and bills. Others spotted it running through the groves near their homes. Livestock was killed or mauled, victims of the black panther.
Each morning, my little sister and I had a very long lane to walk in order to be picked up by the school bus, and we kept a wary eye on our thick groves and apple orchards, hoping that we would never spot the big cat stalking us. During the winter months, it was nearly dark by the time the bus dropped us off to begin the trek back down the lane to the safety of our home. On each side of our lane, there were fields with fallen cornstalks awaiting next spring’s plowing. A panther could easily crouch behind clumps of dried stalks, hungrily awaiting his prey.
Journalists had a wide variety of theories as to how a black panther could make its way to Iowa. Most common of these hypotheses was the obvious one: someone had obtained a panther as a pet and it had escaped when it reached its maturity. Pleas were made to whomever might know the origins of this dangerous creature to come forward and help provide clues to its possible whereabouts.
Experienced hunters suggested that a mountain lion (also called a cougar, puma, or panther, depending on regional preference) might easily have found its way down to Iowa from northern Minnesota, and they assured the populace that they would soon be able to hunt it down. Most people knew that cougars were not black, but others argued that the panther could be a freak of nature, turning black, rather than a cougar’s typical tannish-brown color.
Actually, a black panther is a kind of deviant cat from the norm of its kind. In South America, the black panther is actually a jaguar, whose typical markings are covered by an excess of the black pigment melanin. Although it has been rarely reported, black jaguars have been sighted in the southwestern mountain ranges of the United States. There are no substantiated sightings of black cougars. Apparently melanism never becomes dominant in the cougar as it does occasionally in the jaguar.
In the January 25, 2010, issue of the New York Times, Alan Rabinowitz, the president and chief executive of Panthera, a wild cat conservation group, responded to the recent announcement of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service that it would begin to take the initial steps toward mandating a jaguar recovery plan. The jaguar had been on the endangered species list in the United States since 1997, based on occasional sightings of the big cats crossing north over the United States–Mexico border.
Rabinowitz pointed out that although the jaguar may have inhabited large sections of the western states in prehistoric times, the last documented sighting of a female jaguar with a cub was in the early 1900s. The Arizona Game and Fish Department reported one male jaguar desperately had attempted to survive in the harsh, dry region, but they concluded that