Rare Monsters

  The orabou was a creature reported by André Thevet during his journeys, sometime in the 1600 th century. The creature was seen in the waters near Mount Marzouan. No mountain is named Mount Marzouan today, so it’s unknown which mountain this was supposed to be, but it was believed to be near the Red Sea. The orabou was a fish cat hybrid with an unusually humped back. The creature was covered in armour like scales that Thevet compared to brigantine armour. The orabou was nine to ten feet long. It made sounds similar to a cat. According to Thevet, the locals would occasionally fish and eat the orabou, even though the meat was said to cause kidney stones. The locals would treat the kidney stones with a folk remedies made from herbs and the orabou’s own fat. Thevet tried some of the orabou’s meat while he was there. He said it was foul tasting and compared it to preserved camel meat. The orabou was said to be extremely ferocious towards other sea life. Much thought has ...

  Kamikiri is a yokai from the Edo period of Japan. It sits on the edge between legendary creature and cryptid, with newspaper articles about encounters with the creature coming out at the time, yet being treated as folklore now. Although the line between yokai and cryptid isn’t always clear. The kamikiri is a yokai who’s all about cutting off people’s hair. In previous eras in Japan long hair was a symbol of age and status. Both men and women had long hair, men wearing their hair in top knots and women in various styles. There was a much greater need to conform in Japan’s past, people wore hairstyles based on status and role in society, rather than for fashion. So having your hair cut off was far worse for the person that it would be in modern times. The kamikiri would lurk around its victim in secret and wait for a time they were alone to attack. They would then quickly and silently cut off the victim’s hair. Often the kamikiri would never be seen and the victim would only kn...

  I'm starting a new thing, I'm going to do the monster alphabet. I've already found and planned out monsters for every letter, even q and x. So this week we're starting with A. The ambize angulo, better known to the internet as the ambize (pronounced am-bee-zay, ending like say or day), is an aquatic monster from the Congo River and its tributaries. It straddles the line of folklore and cryptid, being part of the local folk tales and being encountered by 17 th century European travellers. The ambize is described as a cross between a pig and a fish, having the overall form of a fish with a pig's head and blubbery skin. It has a rounded tail that is swung up and down while swimming, like a sea mammal. The ambize's most bizarre feature is that it has giant fleshy human hands in place of fins. Although this appears to be a feature that has been exaggerated with time, as earlier reports give it more proportional human arms in place of the hand fins, which is still ...

In the years between 1764 and 1767 there was a string of some of the most bizarre animal attacks on farmers in history. In the French region of G é vaudan close to 300 people were reportedly killed by an unknown animal, who's species has never been identified. G é vaudan was a remote, mountainous and heavily forested region in southern French, which is now part of Loz è re. It was rugged and rural, the majority of people lived as shepherds and wood cutters. People didn't have access to the education and advancements of the enlightenment found in the more populous northern regions of France. For the average farmer life had changed little from the medieval era. The local noble ruler, the Marquis D'Apcher, spent most of his time in the royal court at Versailles, so actual leadership of the communities in G é vaudan was in the hands of the church and local elders. Rural people here lived a meagre life filled with hunger and hardship. Further compounding the hardships for the...

  You would think that belief in unicorns would have ended in the medieval era and by the time the Americas were being explored people would have moved on from such notions. On the contrary, with all the strange wildlife being discovered around the world in the age of exploration interest in the possibility of unicorns was reignited in the minds of explorers and naturalists. In 1539, in the area of New Spain which would today be New Mexico there were reports by Friar Marcos de Niza that there existed a city of gold beyond the Zuni Pueblos. He said he had visited this city and seen untold treasures there. Some of these treasures he described in great detail, including the hide of an unknown animal. De Niza said it was like that of a large bull, but had a single horn on forehead, which pointed back towards its breast. No cities or creatures like these have ever been found. Its unknown what Marcos de Niza saw, or if he had made up the entire report, and why.   The next unicorn w...