Rare Monsters

  The shussebora is a yokai from Japan. It is a mythical version of the triton conch snail. The name means promoted conch, because it was believed to transform into a dragon as it aged. Many monster in Japanese mythology, and regular animals too, were believed to transform into different, more powerful monsters when they reached a certain age. The triton conch would start out as a land snail living in mountain meadows, make its way down to the ocean and transform into a conch, then when it became a thousand years old it would transform again into a dragon with a conch shell. Many other animals in Japanese mythology also had complex transformations, such as bats, foxes and other more traditional dragons. So now you know what Pokemon evolutions were inspired by. The belief that the triton conch started its life high in the mountains was probably inspired by finding fossilized shells high in the mountain rocks, pushed up by tectonic lift. Before plate tectonics or the science b...

  Guissepe Zitella and his family were on an outing together in Pettorano sul Gizio, Itally. It was June 20 th , 1993. Mr Zitella was there with his wife Concetta, and his brother and his family. Mr Zitella was a retired air force officer. One article says he was a marshal, while another says he was a non-commissioned officer, so who know what his rank actually was. They were sitting at a restaurant patio when the brother’s wife saw something fly by, about 100 meters away, over some short trees. She pointed it out to the rest of the family. To Mr. Zitella, it looked like a balloon, a large one that would usually be won at a carnival. Mr Zitella decided to chase after the balloon and capture it for his nephew. He followed it out towards the edge of town. As he ran he noticed it had two long structures hanging down from the main body. On the edge of town he saw it hovering over a field, just skimming the tops of the wheat. It appeared to be in the middle of the field. Mr Zitella ra...

   The Ziz is a giant bird from Jewish mythology. It also appeared in earlier versions of the bible, but has since been edited out. The Ziz was one of the archetypal animals, like the Leviathan and Behemoth. As Leviathan was the king of the sea creatures and Behemoth the king of the beasts, Ziz was king of the birds. The Ziz was said to look like a gryphon. Its exact appearance beyond that is left vague, other than its great size, which is discussed in two stories. One story said there were some sailors who saw a giant bird standing in the water when they were out at sea. The water was only ankle deep on the bird, and it was so massive its head towered into the heavens. The sailors assumed the water must be shallow there where the bird stood, so they planned on bringing their ship ashore and swim in the water. God called out to the sailors and told them, “Do not stop there. That bird is the mighty Ziz, who towers above all beings. The water there is so deep once a carp...

  The pyraustra, also known as the pyrallis was a fiery dragon like insect from Greek and Roman mythology. It is tiny, somewhere between the size of a gnat and a house fly. It had fiery colours, and a glowing bulb on the end of its tail. It also only had four legs in spite of being insect like, but believing insects had only four legs was a pretty common thing in ancient times. Pyraustras are born directly from fire. They must stay within the heat of the fire or die. Within the fire’s range pyraustraus fly about chaotically, mostly moving upward until they are out of range of the fire and then puff out of existence. The pyraustra were primarily found in the copper smelting furnaces of Cyprus. It’s wildly believed today that the legend of the pyraustra was misinterpretations of sparks or embers flying away from the fire. How dragony the pyraustra was has been called into question, as the only reference to it being dragon like comes from a modern source, Inventorum Naturum ...

  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...

  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 ...

  The moha moha is a cryptid from Australia, spotted on June 8 th , 1890. It was seen my Selena Lovell, a school teacher and amateur naturalist, as well as a group of people accompanying her, while they were on an outing to Great Sandy Island. The creature was well known to the natives, who called it the moha moha, or danger turtle, as it was known for attacking their fishing camps and grabbing their legs in the water. With all the other strange Australian wildlife discovered Ms Lovell didn’t question the creature’s odd appearance and wrote up a report on it. This report was then used by Willian Saville-Kent to publish a formal description of the creature in Land And Water and give it the name Chelosauria lovelli. Little did either of them know that this creature would only ever be seen once, and become the topic of controversy. The moha moha had a rounded head that was more like that of a lizard or other reptiles than a standard turtle. Ms Lovell didn’t see any nostrils and...

  The hyakume is a yokai from Japan. It’s name means one hundred eyes. The hyakume is roughly human shaped, but made out of flabby flesh lumps. It had a hundred eyes poking out from under the flesh flaps all over its body. It’s also about the size of a fat human. The hyakume looks somewhat similar to the nuppeppo, which is another yokai made of flabby flesh roughly in the shape of a human. Although the nuppeppo doesn’t have any eyes. Hyakumes live in abandoned places, usually temples or large houses. They live alone and shy away from interacting with any other being. They also come out only at night as the sunlight hurts their eyes. Hyakumes are not aggressive and just want to be left alone. However they will defend their home from intruders and thieves. Each night the hyakume will remove one of its eyes and send it out to patrol its territory for intruders. The eye floats around on its own like a will-o-wisp fireball. If the eye spots anyone it will attach itself to the...

   The kotobuki was a chimeric beast from Japan which was made of the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac. It had the head of a rat, the ears of a rabbit, the beard of a ram, the comb of a rooster, the horns of a bull, the neck of a dragon, the mane of a horse, the back of a boar, the belly of a tiger, the front legs of a monkey, the back legs of a dog and the tail of a snake. It’s name in Japanese means congratulations or long life.  It was said that the kotobuki lived in India, which often features as a place of holiness or goodness in Japanese stories as it’s the homeland of Buddhism. The kotobuki was also said to be able to understand human speech. Other than these two facts there’s little else said about the kotobuki as a creature, no legends or stories about it. The kotobuki was seen more as a luck charm that would grant people luck based on its association with the zodiac. It became popular to carry small woodcuts with images of the kotobuki during the Edo period....

  The hellidid is one of the fearsome critters of American folklore. Unlike most other fearsome critters, it’s found in the deserts of the south west. It is a chimeric monster with the head of an ant eater, the body of a zebra and four ostrich like legs, and a fluffy tail. The hellidid primarily ate fibrous plants, such as yuccas. It would use its long, serrated tongue to lick at the plants, scraping off the soft bits and leaving the fibre within the leaves behind. The hellidid was also extremely shy and would run off, allowing only quick glimpses of the creature. However, at night it would approach travellers sleeping out in the open and use its rough tongue to lick all the hair off their heads, leaving them shaved in the morning. Obviously the legend of the hellidid was part of a prank cowboys would play on greenhorns and people who overslept, shaving their heads, and blaming it on the hellidid. Sources https://www.deviantart.com/monstrumamericanum/art/Hellidi...

 While dragons vary greatly around the world they can generally be placed into to broad categories, the eastern and western dragons. You would expect that if dragons are being seen in modern times that each type of dragon would be witnessed in their respective regions, eastern dragons being seen in Asia and western dragons being seen in Europe and North America. So far this has held true with the cases I’ve showcased in this blog, with western style dragons and wyverns appearing in America. However I’ve found two incidents that go against this trend, where each kind of dragon is found far outside their respective lands. In 2001 cryptozoologist Karl Shuker received a report from a group of scientists from the British Naturalists Association. They were adamant about keeping their anonymity, as any admission of a paranormal event happening to them would be career ending. In March of that year this group of scientists had been out at a quarry in Powys, Wales. There they saw a cre...

  On October 7 th 2007 there was an astonishing sighting of a mythical dragon straight out of a fantasy story in Oconto Falls, Wisconsin. Not only this but it was seen by multiple witnesses, who corroborated each other’s stories. All the names in this retelling are pseudonyms. Jim was the primary witness, who saw the dragon the most times. He, his friend Kay, and six other friends were leaving an arcade, after hanging out there for the evening. In the parking lot one of the friends said he saw something large in the sky, although he didn’t know what it was. The group of them laid down in the grass at the edge of the lot and watched for it to return. After a few minutes they saw a white and tan colored dragon. They described it as a classic European dragon, with four legs and additional wings, a long neck, reptilian head and a long tail. Jim noted that it had smooth, shiny scales that reflected the street lights. They waited a few minutes longer and it returned again, this ti...

  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 ...

  Butler county Gargoyle was a winged cryptid seen by several witnesses in Butler County, Pennsylvania during 2011. First witness was a businessman known only as RK. He saw the monster several different occasions. Rk described the monster has being overall humanoid in shape. It had brown or tan leathery skin. The face was small and punched in, with almond shaped eyes that were pointed at the ends. The head was swept back and came to a point at the back, similar to a performance bicycle helmet. The creature also had ears that were long and swept back to points which pointed to the back of the head. The body was very muscular. The arms were longer than a human’s and ended in hands with four fingers and sharp claws. It had very muscular legs, with knees that pointed back in the opposite direction from normal. Most notably were a set of large wings on the creature’s back. These were bat like, with their ends pointing back towards the creature’s head. The first known report of the...

  Tianlu Pixiu The pixiu is a mythical beast from China. It first appeared in the Han dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD) and are still popular today, although both their appearance and role have changed greatly over the centuries. Today the pixiu are bringers of wealth and associated with the practice of feng shui. Bixie Pixiu There are two types of pixiu. The bixie, or female pixiu, has two horns or antlers. It was responsible for guarding its masters and protecting them from harm. The tianlu was the male and only had one horn or antler. The male was responsible for guarding and attracting wealth. Today the bixie pixiu has largely been forgotten about and pixius are almost always depicted with one horn. Likewise the pixiu has become more associated with wealth than protection. The pixiu comes in several colors. It is often gold, to represent its association with wealth. It can also be black to represent its protective aspects. The pixiu is often depicted as white or red as well. O...

  Bai Ze is a monster from Chinese mythology. It’s also found in Japan, where it’s known as hakutaku. It is a good and pure creature responsible for warding off evil spirits. The bai ze was a wise and intelligent creature. It was one of the nine spiritual beasts which resided in heaven. Bai ze descended to Earth where it taught the Yellow Emperor about the various harmful ghosts in the world and how to expel them. These lessons resulted in the Bai Ze Diagram, a scroll depicting various harmful spirits and how to ward them off. The Bai Ze is mentioned many times throughout Chinese literature. Over time the bai ze became a protective charm. Images of the beast were hung in homes or carried with people to ward off ghosts and disease. The bai ze has many varying appearances in Chinese mythology. In the History of Yuan, written in 1370, the bai ze was described as having the head of a tiger, the body of a dragon, a single horn and a red mane. In the Sancai Tuhui, written in 1609, the ba...

  While most people know panthers as a jungle cat today in medieval bestiaries it was a very strange beast indeed. Just like other ‘mythical’ creatures like the calopus and the crocatta, the panther in medieval bestiaries is an example of a real animal from far off lands gaining a mythical status, to the point where it barely resembled it’s real life counterpart. The panther was first known to the ancient Greeks. To them it was still very cat like, being almost identical to a normal leopard, but with a multicolored coat. It was considered the mount of Dionysus. The panther was handed down from Greek records to medieval bestiaries, but by this time Europe was cut off from areas of the world where leopards actually lived, and the details of panther’s nature was largely forgotten. Instead the panther was made into an allegory about Christ gathering the people of the world. The panther would feast and then sleep for three days in a cave. On the third day the panther emerges and emits a...