Rare Monsters

The Funeral Mountain Terrashot is a fearsome critter from American folklore. The legend of this creature was used to explain the name of the Funeral Range in California. The terrashot was a six to eight foot long beast. It had a coffin shaped structure on its back. It also had long wobbly legs, which caused it to sway with uncertainty with every step it took. The creatures would spend most of their lives up high in the mountain meadows, grazing on the alpine grass. There they would gradually increase in number. Some unknown compulsion would cause the terrashots to all leave their mountain homes at once and travel through Death Valley. They would all travel down from the mountains in a single line. One by one each of the terrashots would bloat and explode in the heat, leaving behind a grave shaped pit. Even after witnessing the previous member in front of them die, the next terrashot would not be convinced to turn away. It would proceed onto its death in the exact same manner. It was un...

  The Enfield monster incident, also known as the Enfield horror, happened in Enfield Illinois on April 25h, 1973. These events should not be confused with the Enfield poltergeist, which took place in England. At 10pm, Henry McDaniels was returning home after a long day at work. On exiting his car he found all the lights on and the drapes pulled shut. By this point his two teen children should have been asleep. Henry knew something had to be amiss. When he went inside he found his children cowering in fear. They said there was a monster lurking outside and that it had tried to pull the air conditioner out of the wall to get inside. Henry was skeptical of their story. He had just been outside and seen nothing. Henry was a widower and a single father. Previous to this he had refrained from working late so he could look after his children in the evenings. But had believed them to now be old enough to be left alone for a few hours, being ages 15 and 12. So Henry believed this was nothi...

  On November 14th 1974, a fireball fell from the sky near Bald Mountain in Lewis County, Washington. The impact site stayed inexplicably lit even after the fireball hit the ground, not usual behavior for an ordinary meteorite. It was seen by several people in the nearby town of Chehalis. Things would go from unusual but explainable to outright strange three days later. On November 17, Ernest Smith saw a strange alien creature while he was out deer hunting on the slopes of bald mountain. He said it was the size and shape of a horse. It had a football shaped head with insect like eyes and a beak like mouth. The creature was covered in scales. It had four tentacle-like legs that even had suckers on the underside of them. The whole beast glowed green.  While researching this beast I found conflicting descriptions on whether it had one or two antenna like protrusions from its head. I drew one here, but two are also valid. Mr Smith doesn’t elaborate on what his reaction was on find...

  The case of the Fayette Dragon was reported to Fortean researcher, Stan Gordon. It happened in Fayette County Pennsylvania on March 18, 2012.  At 11:45 a man took his dog out to the front yard to relieve the animal. The night was cold and silent, without any other animals moving about. That silence was then broken by the sound of flapping wings coming from a large creature. The man saw a shadow pass over his house, about 50 feet up. It was 22 feet long, with an 18 foot wingspan. As the beast flew over the man’s house it triggered the motion lights, illuminating it entirely. It was then that the man got a look at the strange creature.  He reported that it looked like a dragon. It had a reptilian head, with a row of spikes under its jaw. There was a cone-like fin sprouting from the back of its head and over the neck. Its arms were attached to its wings, and ended in four clawed fingers. The wing membrane was thick and muscular, unlike that of a bat. The hind legs trai...

  This is an odd one, not only because the creature is so bizarre, but because the place it was alleged to take place doesn’t exist either. It supposedly takes place on Henderson Island in the Puget Sound. But there’s no Henderson Island there. It’s possible the men relating this story meant Anderson Island, which does exist. Regardless, the location has led to one of the creature’s names, the Henderson Island Monster. It’s alternatively known as the Tacoma Electric Serpent, not to be confused with the Tacoma Sea Serpent, that’s a different monster.  This story first appeared on July 3rd, 1893, in the Tacoma Daily Ledger, with the events happening only days earlier. Seven men were on a fishing trip to the so-called Henderson Island. Two of them remained unnamed, while the other five men were William Fitzhenry, H. L. Beal, W. L. McDonald, J. K. Bell and Henry Blackwood.  The first day of their fishing trip went without incident.That night they camped near the shore. The me...

  What follows is a report of a cryptid or alien creature that feels oddly connected to the previous entry of this blog. Yet the only thing that connects them is the cephalopod appearance of the creatures, and that both stories took place in Spain, albeit on opposite sides of the country.  In the summer of 1961 Arquimedes Sanchez and an unnamed coworker were driving through the Basque Mountains in the province of Vizcaya. They were hauling construction equipment, driving along the road at night. However the two of them knew the route well and had done this run many times before.  They were nearing their destination at Puerto de Barazar when an alarmingly strange creature climbed over the embankment on the side of the road and ran in front of the truck. It was an octopus like being covered in rusty red hair. It walked upright on four tentacles (yes, I know I drew six) and stood about 3 to 4 feet tall.  Mr Sanchez slammed on the breaks and stopped before hitting the cr...