Rare Monsters

  Cryptozoologist Chad Arment wrote about a mystery animal from Honduras in his Biofortean Notes, Volume 5 While attending a cryptozoology conference Chad heard second hand stories about a missionary working in Honduras who had seen a strange creature. After extensive searching he was able to track her down. The woman didn’t want to be identified, and is only known by her initials LS in the report. She had no interest in anything fortean or paranormal. As well, she had only told people about the encounter a few times shortly after it happened in 2001, and then moved on with her life. She has never tried to profit off the encounter or tried to widely publicize it. These qualities together convinced Chad Arment that she was a reliable witness. The sighting happened on the mission’s farmland in Cort é s Department, Honduras. The landscape was along a mountain river, with cleared pasture on one side and jungle on the other. The time was between late morning and noon. LS was d...

Tsukumogami are a type of yokai from Japan. These are ordinary objects that have gained souls through some means. Usually this happened because the object was very old. It was believed that after a 100 years an object would receive a soul, making it conscious and giving it the ability to transform into a being who could interact with the world. Usually these objects would continue to behave themselves and not show off these abilities if they continued to be used and cherished by their owners. It was very old objects that were thrown away or abandoned that would start turning into creatures and misbehaving. They could do anything from pulling silly and annoying pranks to being actual threats. When an old object was broken and had to be discarded a small ceremony was held by the household to appease its spirit, and old objects in working order were not thrown away if it could be avoided. Cherishing old objects was part of the concept of mottainai, the desire to not be wasteful. Anoth...

  The keythong is a gryphon like beast, which is supposed to have come from heraldry, but it’s history is more complicated than that. It looks like a gryphon, but without wings. It has spikes on various parts of its body, often on its legs, back, and a fan of spikes on its shoulders where the wings should be. It also have a pair of swept back horns on its head. I say its history is complicated, because while both the name and appearance of the keythong appeared historically used in heraldry, they didn’t come together to mean the same creature until modern times when the internet took interest in the creature. The name keythong appears to have been created as late as the 19 th century. It comes from J R Planche’s Pursuivant Of Arms, he describes the coat of arms for the Earl of Ormonde as having rampant keythong on the right. However, what is actually shown on the arms is a wingless gryphon with flames, no horns or spikes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_of_Ormond_%...

 The dingbat was a fearsome critter from the local folklore of the western Great Lakes region. It’s origin was a taxidermied mash up of different animals that was displayed in the Friendly Buck-horn Tavern in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. The dingbat had the head of some small predatory mammal, often some sort of mustelid, the body of a bird of prey, and the antlers of a young buck. The legend of the dingbat states that it revelled in making the life of hunters difficult. The dingbat would whinny like a horse just as a hunter was about to take a shot at a buck, breaking his concentration and making him miss. If that didn’t work, the dingbat was capable of flying at incredible speeds and capturing the bullet mid air. The dingbat fed on bullets and gasoline, which it would drink from the hunter’s truck, leaving him stranded. The dingbat was a humorous way for hunters to explain why they had bad luck on a hunt or came back empty handed. The Friendly Buck-horn Tavern had several taxi...

  The nian is a mythical beast from China. It is associated with the lunar new year. It’s full name nian shou means year beast, although the name is usually shortened to just nian. The nian looks like a giant lion with a single horn in the middle of its forehead. It has monstrous fangs or tusks. The niam is huge, the size of a house or larger. The legend says that each year on new years the people of a remote village would hide away in their homes in fear. The nian would come out of the ocean or the mountains, depending on where the village was said to be, and devour everything, animals, people, etc. So the people would lock their doors, hide away inside and not make a sound, for fear the nian would find them. One day an old beggar wandered into town on the evening of new years. He saw everyone running away, turning out their lights and locking their doors. He went around knocking on doors, asking for a place to stay, but no one would answer him. At one house and old ...

  Ogopogo is the most famous lake monster in Cananda. It’s found in Lake Okanagan in British Columbia It’s said to live in an underwater cave somewhere near Rattlesnake Island. The name Ogopogo comes from a 1920’s folk song The Ogo-pogo funny foxtrot , which was a satirical song making fun of local monster sightings. The name stuck. Ogopogo is described as being 30 to 50 feet long and serpentine in shape. It often travels with an undulating up and down motion, which creates humps on the surface of the water. Ogopogo has two small horns that are similar to a giraffe’s ossicones. Ogopogo is dark green to black in colour. Other details are less consistent. It’s described as having either a horse or sheep like head. Sometimes it has a hairy mane down its neck. Sometimes it has sturgeon like scales down its back and sometimes it had either a fish’s or whale’s tail. Long before settlers came to the area Ogopogo was known to the Syilx people as N’ha-a-ikt. They saw Ogopogo as ...