Page 79 - Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained Vol. 3

Mysterious Creatures 59

If the coelacanth survived for over 380 mil- been reported since the Middle Ages. In 840
lion years, cryptozoologists maintain, why C.E., Agobard, the Archbishop of Lyons, told
couldn’t certain of the giants from the rela- of three such demons, “giant people of the for-
tively recent Jurassic Era, roughly 150 million est and mountains,” who were stoned to death
years ago, be hiding in our deepest forests, after being displayed in chains for several days.
seas, and lakes? In his Chronicles, Abbot Ralph of Coggeshall
Michael Shermer, founder of the Skeptics Abbey, Essex, England, wrote of a “strange
Society and author of Why People Believe monster” whose charred body had been found
Weird Things (1997), says that people believe after a lightning storm on the night of St.
in monsters and other things that go bump in John the Baptist in June 1205. He stated that
the night because they satisfy a human search a terrible stench came from the beast with
for significance and a desire to have meaning “monstrous limbs.”
in their lives. Robert Pyle, an ecologist and Villagers of the Caucasus Mountains have
author of Where Bigfoot Walks, expresses his legends of an apelike “wildman” going back for
opinion that creatures such as Bigfoot fill a centuries. The same may be said of the
human need for something to believe in and Tibetans living on the slopes of Mt. Everest
keep alive the concept of wilderness in the and the Native American tribes inhabiting the
modern world. northwestern United States. The Gilyaks, a
In this chapter a wide range of mysterious remote tribe of Siberian native people, claim
creatures will be encountered, from those that there are animals inhabiting the frozen
monsters dwelling only in the nightmares forests of Siberia that have human feelings and
inherited from Stone Age ancestors to those travel in family units. Based on the eyewitness
that just might be waiting to be discovered by descriptions of hundreds of reliable individuals
the next expedition into a hitherto unex- around the world who have encountered these
plored region of jungle, forest, or ocean depth. creatures, it would seem that the creatures are
more humanlike than apelike or bearlike. For
M Delving Deeper one thing, these giants are repeatedly said by
Bord, Janet, and Colin Bord. Unexplained Mysteries of witnesses to have breasts and buttocks. Nei-
the 20th Century. Chicago: Contemporary Books, ther apes nor bears have buttocks—nor do
1989. they leave flatfooted humanlike footprints.
Heuvelmans, Bernard. On the Track of Unknown Ani-
In 1920, the term “abominable snowman”
mals. New York: Hill and Wang, 1958.
was coined through a mistranslation of the
McKie, Robin. “Stone Age Man’s Terrors Still Stalk
Tibetan word for the mysterious apelike mon-
Modern Nightmares.” The Observer, November
ster yeti, “wildman of the snow.” For the next
25, 2001. [Online] http://www.observer.co.uk/
two decades, reports of the creature were com-
uk_news/story/0,6903,605611,00.html.
mon in the Himalayan mountain range, but it
Pyle, Robert. Where Bigfoot Walks. Boston: Houghton
was not until the close of World War II
Mifflin, 1997.
(1939–45) that world attention became focused
Sanderson, Ivan T. Abominable Snowmen: Legend
on the unexplained humanlike bare footprints
Come to Life. Philadelphia: Chilton Company,
that were being found at great heights and freez-
1961.
ing temperatures. The Himalayan activity
Shermer, Michael. Why People Believe Weird Things.
reached a kind of climax in 1960 when Sir
New York: MJF, 1997.
Edmund Hillary (1919– ), conqueror of Mt.
Everest, led an expedition in search of the elu-
sive yeti and returned with nothing shown for
his efforts but a fur hat that had been fashioned
Apelike Monsters in imitation of the snowman’s scalp.
ightings of monstrous apelike creatures The humanlike creature—whether sighted
lurking in the darkness of forests and in the more remote, wooded, or mountainous
Smountainous regions of the world have regions of North America, South America,

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