cranky-cryptozoologist

[cranky-cryptozoologist]

Cryptid of the Day: Saytoechin

Description: In the 1980s, a woman claimed that her sister-in-law saw a 9ft, hairy creature while fishing on Lake Tatchun, Yukon, which she called the Saytoechin. Theories range from giant sloths to giant beavers, to Bigfoot, to short-face bears. 

[cranky-cryptozoologist]

The Jersey Devil

The Jersey Devil, the supposed mythical creature of the New Jersey Pinelands, has haunted New Jersey and the surrounding areas for the past 260 years. This entity has been seen by over 2,000 witnesses over this period. It has terrorized towns and caused factories and schools to close down, yet many people believe that the Jersey Devil is a legend, a mythical beast, that originated from the folklore of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Others disagree with this point of view. The following text will show there is evidence to support the existence of an animal or supernatural bring known as the Jersey Devil. The evidence consists of the stories of the Jersey Devil’s origin, the sightings of it, and finally, the theories on it.

There are many different versions of the birth of the Jersey Devil. One of the most popular legends says a Mrs. Shrouds of Leeds Point, NJ made a wish that if she ever had another child, she want it to be a devil. Her next child was born misshapen and deformed. She sheltered it in the house, so the curious couldn’t see him. On stormy night, the child flapped it’s arms, which turned into wings, and escaped out the chimney and was never seen by the family again. A Mrs. Bowen of Leeds point said, “The Jersey Devil was born in the Shrouds house at Leeds Point.” 1 Another story that also placed the birth at Leeds Point said that a young girl fell in love with a British soldier during the Revolutionary War. The people of Leeds Point cursed her. When she gave birth, she had a devil. Some people believe the birth of the devil was punishment for the mistreatment of a minister by the Leeds folk.

“It was about three feet and half high, with a head like a collie dog and

a face like a horse. It had a long neck, wings about two feet long, andits back legs were like those of a crane, and it had horse’s hooves.It walked on its back legs and held up two short front legs with pawson them. It didn’t use the front legs at all while we were watching.My wife and I were scared, I tell you, but I managed to open thewindow and say, ‘Shoo’, and it turned around barked at me, and flew away.”

Tuesday afternoon 2 professional hunters tracked the devil for 20 miles in Gloucester. The trail jumped 5 foot fences and went under 8 inch spaces. The hoof prints were found in more parts of South Jersey. A group of observers in Camden, NJ, saw the devil. It barked at them and then took off into the air.

The next day, a Burlington police officer and the Reverend John Pursell of Pemberton saw the Jersey Devil. Rev. Pursell said, “Never saw anything like it before”.3 Posses in Haddonfield found tracks that ended abruptly. In Collingswood, NJ, a posse watched the devil fly off toward Moorestown. Near Moorestown, John Smith of Maple Shade saw the devil at the Mount Carmel Cemetery. George Snyder saw the devil right after Mr. Smith and their descriptions were identical. In Riverside, NJ, hoof prints were found on roof tops and also around a dead puppy.

On Thursday, the Jersey Devil was seen by the Black Hawk Social Club. He was also seen by a trolley full of people in Clementon as it circled above them. The witnesses descriptions matched others from the days before. In Trenton, Councilman E.P. Weeden heard the flapping of wings and then found hoof prints outside his door. The prints were also found at the arsenal in Trenton. As the day wore on the Trolleys in Trenton and New Brunswick had armed drivers to ward off attacks. The people in Pitman filled churches. Chickens had been missing all week throughout the Delaware Valley, but when the farmers checked their yards that day, they found their chickens dead, with no marks on them. The West Collingswood Fire Department fired their hose at the devil. The devil retreated at first, but then charged and flew away at the last second.

Later that night, Mrs. Sorbinski of Camden heard a commotion in her yard. She opened the door to see the Jersey Devil standing there with her dog in it’s grip. She hit the devil with a broom until it let go of her dog and flew away. She started screaming until her neighbors came over. Two police officers arrived at her house where over 100 people had gathered. The crowd heard a scream coming from Kaigan Hill. The mob ran toward the creature on the hill. The Policed shot at it and the devil flew off into the night. The streets of Camden were empty after this.

On Friday, Camden police officer Louis Strehr saw the Jersey Devil saw the devil drinking from a horses trough. The school in Mt Ephraim was closed because no students came in. Mills and factories in Gloucester and Hainesport had to close because none of the employees came to work. Many New Jersey residents wouldn’t leave their houses, even in daylight. Officer Merchant of Blackwood drew a sketch of the creature he saw. His sketch coincided with the descriptions from earlier in the week. Jacob Henderson saw the devil in Salem and described it as having “wings and a tail"4. The devil was only seen once more in 1909 in February.

Since 1909, the Jersey Devil has continued to be sighted by people all over New Jersey. The number of sightings that have been reported to the authorities has dwindled over the years. This could be attributed to the fact that people don’t want to be branded as crazy. Even though the number of reported sightings has dropped, there’s still a considerable amount of sightings in the post 1909 era.

IN 1927, a cab driver on his way to Salem got a flat tire. He stopped to fix the tire. As he was doing this, creature that stood upright and was covered with hair, landed on the roof of his cab. The creature shook his car violently. He fled the scene, leaving the tire and jack behind. Phillip Smith, who was known as a sober and honest man, saw the devil walking down the street in 1953. The characteristic screams of the Jersey Devil were heard in the woods near Woodstown, NJ, in 1936.

Around 1961, 2 couples were parked in a car in the Pine Barrens. They heard a loud screeching noise outside. Suddenly the roof of the car was smashed in. They fled the scene, but returned later. Again they heard the loud screech. They saw a creature flying along the trees, taking out huge chinks of bark as it went along.

There have been other sightings since 1909, such as the Invasion of Gibbsboro in 1951. The people there saw the devil over a 2 day period. In 1966, a farm was raided and 31 ducks, 3 geese, 4 cats, and 2 dogs were killed. One of the dogs was a large german Shepard which had it’s throat ripped out. In 1981, a young couple spotted the devil at Atsion Lake in Atlantic County.

In 1987, in Vineland an aggressive german Shepard was found torn apart and the body gnawed upon. the body was located 25 feet from the chain which had been hooked to him. Around the body were strange tracks that no one could identify.

The sightings and prints are the most substantial evidence that exists. Many of the theories on the Jersey Devil are based upon that evidence. Some theories can be proven invalid, while others seem to provide support for the Jersey Devil’s existence.

[cranky-cryptozoologist]

Cryptid of the Day: Pumina

Description: The Pumina is a massive snake reported in the Kasai and Katanga regions of Dem Congo around Lake Upemba. Described as 38-46ft long, resembling a rock python, it was photographed in 1959 by a Belgian pilot. 

[cranky-cryptozoologist]

Cryptid of the Day: Fresno Nightcrawler

Description: It began with low-res security footage of a biped, torso-less creature walking across a yard in Fresno, California. The homeowner kept waking up by his dogs barking so he set up the camera to see what disturbed them. Since then the Nightcrawler has been seen all over the world

[cranky-cryptozoologist]

saw my first thylacine at the natural history museum today!!!! 🥹🥹🥹

[cranky-cryptozoologist]

Sea Cryptids 

[cranky-cryptozoologist]

Beast of Bladenboro

The first animal deaths possibly related to the Beast of Bladenboro were reported on December 29, 1953. Witnesses described a creature that was “sleek, black, about 5 feet (1.5 m) long”, which killed a dog in Clarkton, North Carolina, approximately eight miles (13 km) from Bladenboro. On December 31, 1953, two dogs belonging to a resident of Bladenboro were found dead with a significant amount of blood near their kennels. 

Their owner reported that the dogs were “torn into ribbons and crushed”. “My dogs put up a good fight. There was blood all over the porch, big puddles of it. And there was a pool of saliva on the porch. It killed one dog at 10:30 and left it lying there. My dad wrapped the dog up in a blanket. That thing came back and got that dog and nobody’s seen the dog since. At 1:30 in the morning, it came back and killed the other dog and took it off. We found it three days later in a hedgerow. The top of one of the dogs heads was torn off and its body was crushed and wet, like it had been in that thing’s mouth. The other dog’s lower jaw was torn off.” 

The following day, on January 1, 1954, two more dogs were found dead at a Bladenboro farm, and on the night of January 2, 1954, a farmer reported that a dog of his had been killed.

Two more dogs were found dead on January 3, 1954. An autopsy was performed on one of the dogs and it was reported that “there wasn’t more than two or three drops of blood in him […] The victim’s bottom lip had been broken open and his jawbone smashed back.”

Further deaths were reported in the subsequent days: on the night of January 5, 1954, a pet rabbit was found “cleanly decapitated and still warm”, and on January 7, a dead dog was found in a pasture near the Bladenboro swamp. A goat was also reported to have died with its head flattened.

One local described the animal as “about four and a half feet [1.4 m] long, bushy, and resembling either a bear or a panther”, while another person described it as “small” and noted that there was “a little one just like it […] running beside it.” Another local described hearing “a strange noise […] like a baby crying”. Though he did not see the animal, he estimated it was “close to 150 pounds [70 kg], the way it went through the bushes.”

Another account detailed in a local newspaper contained the following physical description: It was bout 20 inches [50 cm] high. It had a long tail, about 14 inches [35 cm]. The color of it was dark. It had a face exactly like a cat. Only I ain’t ever seen a cat that big. It was walking around stealthy, sneaky…

A group of hunters from Wilmington spent that night tracking the creature for three miles (4.8 km) around swampland. According to them, the tracks showed claws at least an inch (2.5 cm) long and indicated an 80-to-90-pound (35 to 40 kg) animal. The beast’s circling movement suggested it might have had offspring or a mate nearby, the hunters said.

On January 5, the beast was witnessed attacking a dog which ran away and was not found. Tracks were seen along a creek bank near one of the attack sites; there were two sets of prints and one was smaller.  Later that day, in the early evening, another resident described “a big mountain lion” near some dogs three houses down. The creature ran toward her, but turned and fled when she screamed. Outside her home, the tracks left in the dirt road were “bigger than a silver dollar” according to Police Chief Fores.

A young boy named Dalton Norton reported seeing what he called “a big cat” on January 6, which “made a noise like a baby crying” on his porch before leaving.

On January 11, two cars stopped for an animal reported to be four feet (1.2 m) long. One of the men in the cars was quoted as saying he animal had “runty-looking ears” and was “brownish and tabby.”

On the night of January 3, Police Chief Roy Fores searched for the creature with his dogs, but they reportedly would not follow the trail. “A half-dozen brave youths” and their dogs then spent January 4 searching for the creature, while that night, Fores and eight to ten other officers conducted their own hunt. Hunters who travelled to Bladenboro from Wilmington also searched for the beast that evening, reportedly tracking it for 3 miles (4.8 km) around the swamp.

On the night of January 5, more than 500 people and dogs hunted through the woods and swamps for the creature.

On January 6, more than 800 people turned out to hunt for the beast in the swamps. Fores planned to tie up dogs as bait to lure the creature out, but this plan was not put into action. The hunt itself was also ended by officials due to safety concerns.

On January 7, another 800 to 1,000 people gathered to hunt the creature.

During the evening of the 8th, four fraternity brothers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were the only reported hunters. Mayor Fussell officially called off the hunt unless the creature made another obvious kill or there was a legitimate sighting. The armed hunting parties of previous nights had become too large for safety, and Fores received a telegram from a humane society in Asheville, North Carolina protesting his plan to stake out dogs as bait for the creature.

On January 13, Luther Davis, a local farmer, found a bobcat struggling with a steel trap in Big Swamp, four miles (6.4 km) from the city, and shot it in the head. Woodrow Fussell, the mayor of Bladenboro, told newspapers that the beast of Bladenboro had been found and killed. However, it has been questioned whether such a small cat could have killed and mangled the dogs. On the same day, Bruce Soles from Tabor City was leaving Bladenboro when he hit a cat with his vehicle. According to reports, it was “spotted like a leopard,” about 20 to 24 inches (50 to 60 cm) high, and weighed between 75 and 90 pounds (35 and 40 kg). He took the cat home with him to Tabor City. Yet a third man, “professional hunter and guide” Berry Lewis, is credited in some newspapers as having killed the animal. There were conflicting reports about whether it was Davis’s or Lewis’s cat that Mayor Fussell photographed and sent out to the press. Lewis was reportedly hunting in a different part of Bladen county when he shot and killed his bobcat.

Many reported accounts describe the Beast of Bladenboro as feline, but do not agree on any one species.

[cranky-cryptozoologist]

The Kalanoro is a cryptid said to live on the island of Madagascar. It is described as a humanoid creature with hooked claws, backwards-facing toes, and spines running down their backs. They stand no more than two feet high, and subsist on a diet of vegetables, grain and raw fish.

Kalanoro have been accused of kidnapping children, and are said to possess some magical ability. Some herbalists in Madagascar claim that powders infused with Kalanoro hair can grant mystical powers. Certain Madagacan tribes call the Kalanoro “Kotoky” or “Vazimba.”

Image source.

Monster master list.

Suggest a spook.

[cranky-cryptozoologist]

꧁•⊹٭𝙲𝚛𝚢𝚙𝚝𝚒𝚍𝚌𝚘𝚛𝚎٭⊹•꧂

(this is getting alot of attention so for those interested in crypids consider joining this server)

[cranky-cryptozoologist]

I realized i hadn't posted all of the cards i completed last year, especially some of my favorites like the Rods and Mokole Mbembe, and since i didn't like the format i was posting them in anyway I figured i'd make a masterpost here. Sorry for the length! I'm not selling these at present since a 17 card deck is such an awkward length, but maybe i could add to it in the future? I love rods/skyfish so much man they're so dumb.

[cranky-cryptozoologist]

~who is she~ I love the flatwoods monster, such a cute and fashionable cryptid/alien visitor! Also supposedly flanked by some smelly vapors, hm.... My shop

[cranky-cryptozoologist]

Hiking is the best way to spend your time, seriously.

[cranky-cryptozoologist]

[cranky-cryptozoologist]

The Wood Ape, from Travel and Adventure in Northern Queensland by Arthur Bicknell. 1895

[cranky-cryptozoologist]

I like how the one dude had to sit down twice he was so overwhelmed

[cranky-cryptozoologist]

I made some Teeny Beanie 'Cinies! Or Thylabeanies... Adopt one here: https://www.palaeoplushies.com/shop/beanie-cinies These are inspired by Beanie Babies and the McDonald's Teeny Beanies. The little ones are the same size and the same fabric! (As such, they might have the same sensory issues). The bigger baby is soft minky. The pattern wasn't traced directly, but eyeballed from early Beanie Baby dogs. These are a limited experiment- these are the only ones I'm likely to make!

[cranky-cryptozoologist]

Okay, as a hopeful future Dev, how do I avoid these pitfalls

To give a vague overview of where I'm aiming:

Cryptozoology based. Humans: find evidence of Cryptid, don't die/ Cryptids: Avoid getting caught, don't die.

Single player PVE, Asymmetric mutiplayer PVP/PVE (1-4vComp or player)

Each match has primary and secondary objectives (voted on at start)

RPG elements (characters have customizable stats/loadouts, certain events may have skillpoint requirements)

Probably the most resource intensive thing would be the large roster of Cryptids I have in mind (feel like this might justify some DLC????? If I'm gonna have almost 100 playable Cryptids, it might be smart to have a core selection of, like, 20-30 and put the others in cheap DLCs so you can add the extra load at your discretion????)

Open world maps (moderate variety. 10~) with multiple intractables and collectables

Difficulty settings that add survival mechanics like eating and rest (lowest difficulty has no food/sleep mechanics, mid has food but no sleep mechanics, high has both, maybe a nightmare one, will see)

The one I REALLY want to focus on is optimization. I (presently) know the struggle of wanting fun games that my comp can't run (a $300 hp laptop) and I really want as many people as physically possible to be able to run it. Fuck it, if I can, the lowest performance settings are gonna turn the game into Oregon Trail. XD

But seriously, any help would be beyond appreciated. Any questions are accepted.

#cryptids #cryptid #cryptozoology #cryptozoologist #games #indie games #game development #indie game dev #halp plz