Some Scottish Sea Serpents

 

The Sea Serpent on the Firth of Clyde

Where the Western Ferries Terminal is in modern times is said to be  where The Gourock Sea Serpent was seen.

In 1942 and Council worker, Charles Rankin spotted something washed up on the beach at McInroy’s Point. It was like nothing he recognisesd.He described it as about 30feet long ( 10 metres) with a long neck .It had a seal like head with large eyes and  pointed teeth in both jaws.The tail was rectangular and it had two pairs of flippers. The skin was covered in rough hairs.

Mr Rankin said it resembled a huge lizard.  ‘The Gourock Times’, reported the sighting. However it was wartime and there was a navy base in the Clyde so it was hushed up. It was thought the body was dissected and either incinerated or buried on Municipal grounds.

Was it a prehistoric creature or an unknown sea serpent or just a basking shark ? Maybe a relative of Nessie who got stranded.

The Firth of Forth Monster.

In September 1903 the crew of the Fraserburgh fishing steamer Glen Grant saw something strange about  80 miles off the coast.

They thought they saw a whale but a huge dark body arose and made for the boat. The men froze  with fear as the huge creature approached them while making an intimidating swaying motion.

It got within 20 feet ( 6 or 7 metres), of the boat then it rose to a great height, hissed and plunged back into the sea. The beast plunging caused the bow of the boat to dip and the engine room filled with water.

It then reappeared and came racing back at them.One of the crew shot it and it sunk below the waves.They said it was 200 feet long (66 metres) and a head like a horse.

In 1903.a few weeks before this , the men of Montrose trawler, Rose, were off Arbroath when they saw a monster  for approximately 15 minutes. They described it as being like a huge snake.

Two fishermen William Christie and George Salmond, claimed to have come  face-to-face with a beast in the Firth of Forth in July 1939.

Described as having  a horse shaped head with a long neck and protruding eyes.They  circled the beast in their boat and it kept staring at them .If they got too close it would submerge.It was about an hour before it departed.

.Dolphins seals and other marine mammals are  often seen in the area. On 16 Apr 2021 a  46 foot (15 metres) whale was spotted .

“Incredible moment giant rare Sei Whale seen splashing around in Firth of Forth at South Queensferry” https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/6975655/sei-whale-firth-forth-south-queensferry/

However one would presume fishermen would recognize these creatures are familiar. So what did they encounter ?

More on Scottish sea serpents:

https://cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.com/2009/04/saturday-sea-serpent-from-scotlnand.html

 

Scottish Bigfoot?

 

Bigfoot investigator claims he has proof legendary monster is hiding out in SCOTTISH forest

Robert Shankland, 56, has shared snaps of what he claims is a 14-inch footprint left by the giant creature in Dumfries and Galloway

Part-time labourer and gardener Robert Shankland has shared snaps of what he claims is a 14-inch footprint left by the giant creature in Dumfries and Galloway.The 56-year-old has spent two years hunting for evidence of a "bipedal hominid creature" in Galloway Forest Park, which spans 300 square milesAs well as pictures of the "footprint", Robert, from Burnside, Lanarkshire, reckons another image could show the creature staring at him from trees. Scotland already has a Bigfoot legend in the shape of "The Scottish Wildman” - Am Fear Liath Mor, in Gaelic - which haunts the summit of Ben Macdui, the highest peak in the Cairngorms.

Robert's theory is that the Galloway creature could be a relative and may even use a "green corridor" of woods to travel between the south-west of Scotland and the Cairngorms. Robert’s photographs show a large footprint-shaped mark outlined in gravel near to Corson Cone in the Craigdulyart Forest, New Cumnock.Using a four-inch long phone for scale, the “footprint” is at least 14 inches long and seven inches wide.He also highlighted parts on the creature that he believes are pressure points on the ground and show the curve of its heel.

Speaking about his encounter with the beast, Robert said: “I actually didn’t realise it was there until I got home and looked at the pictures.

Read rest see photo here:

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2920940/bigfoot-spotted-legend-scotland-dumfries-galloway-forest-park-robert-shankland/

I live in this area and there have never been reports of wildmen or bigfoot type creatures according to locals. There have been reports of big cats and a friend of mine found a paw print in the forest (see link below).I would be more inclined to believe in a big cat living in the forest than a bigfoot. It’s a busy tourist area and surely someone would have reported something before this?

What is also interesting is this appeared after my crypto fiction book came out set in this area which has a bigfoot like creature in it. (The Weird Helmet ) They say life imitates art or something.

https://cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.com/2014/01/has-galloway-puma-left-paw-print.html

Sea Wolf, myth or killer whale?

 

Wasgo or sea wolf

Sea-Wolf, is a creature believed in by the Tlingit and Haida peoples of British Columbia and Alaska .It is said to be  a sea-monster who was once a human being. The Sea-Wolf was said to bring  luck and wealth to anyone who sees it, or hears its  call.

It is described as a  long ,sea-going creature with a horned or crested  head.It has large  eyes and a mouth full of  sharp teeth, like a crocodile  .Some describe fins or flippers with a long powerful tail for swimming.

It is supposed to be represented on a totem pole which was purchased by the Canadian Museum of Civilization. The Field Museum restored the talking stick to the pole, where it now protrudes from the forehead of the lowest of two Wasgo (or Sea Wolf) figures. The myth associated with this pole is that of the Wasgo, who lived in the lake behind Skidegate village and had the ability to transform between the form of a Wolf and a Killer Whale. The pole shows the Wasgo in two states, with and without his Whale attributes.

So is the Wasgo simply a killer whale or something else? Descriptions sound more like a prehistoric beast ,a plesiosaur.Could it simply be a myth or another mysterious beast as yet unidentified?

Pterosaur Sightings.

 A reprint of an old post from 2009  by request.

Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs sightings 35 years later

A report 35 years later of a prehistoric bird sighting:

LONG BEACH, Calif./EWORLDWIRE/June 8, 2007 - A psychologist at a university in Central China asserts that he saw, in 1971, a prehistoric-looking creature flying in Papua New Guinea. Brian Hennessy of the Chongqing University of Medical Sciences described the creature as black or dark brown with a "longish narrow tail" and a beak that was "indistinguishable from the head." In the daylight of an early morning on Bougainville Island, on a dirt road that led down to the coast, Hennessy heard a slow "flapping" and looked up to see a "very big" creature with a "horn" at the back of its head. There was "not a feather in sight." After thirty-five years, in the summer of 2006, a friend of Hennessy referred him to the American, Jonathan Whitcomb, author of the book "Searching for Ropens," who interviewed him. The eyewitness account was added to the second edition of the book, which was published on May 30, 2007. Until 2006, Hennessy had been unaware of cryptozoological expeditions related to what he had seen. (Whitcomb's book tells how, in the 1990's, a few Americans began investigating, in Papua New Guinea, creatures described like living pterosaurs, commonly called, by Americans, "pterodactyls.") Hennessy was also unaware that many natives have names for giant flying creatures: One of those names is "ropen."
The American author noticed similarities between Hennessy's description and that of a creature reported 500 miles to the west, near Finschhafen, Papua New Guinea, twenty-seven years earlier. In 1944, Duane Hodgkinson, now living in Montana, saw a giant "prehistoric" creature flying over a clearing where he and another soldier were standing. Whitcomb had interviewed Hodgkinson in 2004 and realized, two years later, that both the American veteran and the psychologist had seen a dark flying creature with a long tail but no sign of feathers. Both men used the word "prehistoric." In 2006, Whitcomb showed Hennessy a series of sketches for determining the shape of the head, including the beak and the head appendage. (A similar questionnaire had been given to Hodgkinson two years earlier.) Whitcomb then drew a sketch based on Hennessy's answers, and concluded that Hennessy had seen, in 1971, the same type of creature that Hodgkinson had seen in 1944.

Jonathan Whitcomb, the author of Searching for Ropens, and Live Pterosaurs in America, interviewed Hennessy by email in 2006 and made up a composite sketch of the head from the descriptions. Whitcomb said it was very similar to a composite sketch from another interview two years earlier with Duane Hodgkinson who described a "pterodactyl." Hodgkinson talked about the size of the creature he saw saying it was similar in size to that of a "Piper Tri-Pacer airplane" .In the second edition of the book Searching for Ropens, Brian Hennessy was quoted as saying : “It was so unusual. I actually heard it before I saw it. A slow flap . . . flap . . flapping sound. The air was still, and our truck had stopped on our downward journey from the top of the range to the coast way below . . . it was very big (wingspan at least two metres, probably more . . . possibly much, much more). It was black or dark brown. I had never seen anything like it before. . . . I recall seeing this creature with a longish narrow tail . . . the head was disproportionately large compared to the body [no feathers in sight]."

Both the 1944 and 1971 sightings were in daylight and Whitcomb's book asserts that Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs live in Papua New Guinea and that they are larger than the normally discovered Rhamphorhynchoid fossils.

Although I don’t dispute the men saw something , I am not sure that it could the Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs that Whitcomb asserts it is. The world has changed so much that creatures would have had to evolve and would not look exactly the same as the fossil record. Plus bear in mind we can only guess a lot of the time what creatures looked like from fossils. Very few complete skeletons are found and often no tissue so colour and texture is often guesswork. There may be an unknown species of giant bat as some assert or it may be some evolved creature from the Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs .

Free Cryptozoology Conference

 Free Cryptozoology Conference UK

Sign up at this link:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/thecfz/permalink/10160270872597013/?comment_id=10160272112482013&notif_id=1707132494959046&notif_t=feedback_reaction_generic&ref=notif

A great opportunity to chat with like minded people.

Mongolian Lake Monsters

 

Mongolian Lake creatures

Several lakes are said to have lake monsters dwelling in them in Mongolian.

Lake Hovsgol

Thought  to be between  two to five million years old, Lake Hovsgol in is northern Mongolia is the home of a large creature..It is Mongolia’s largest freshwater lake, with depths of over 800 feet. The lake  drains via the Egiyn River, which feeds the Selenge River in the Lake Baikal drainage basin.

Lake Baikal has its own monster.See link below.

https://cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.com/2021/03/mysterious-lake-baikal.html

South of the lake lies the Hövsgöl Mountain Range. In October 2007  a report appeared in some Chinese newspapers. Diver Dave Woodward and sonar operator Gregg Mikolasek were  boating on Lake Hovsgol when they saw  a giant 'trace', or shape, suspended about 35 metres below the surface in the freshwater lake..

'I think we saw something and I think it was about six metres long,' Woodward recalls telling his diving buddies back at the camp later that afternoon. About three metres wide in the middle, whatever was down there exhibited the half-moon shape typical of the image of a fish on sonar. Its thick central section glowed red, indicating density, another pointer that whatever it was, it was probably a single entity and not a school of fish. Woodward thought about going in, hesitated, then decided not to.

(I cannot show the link to the newspaper articles as it contains a virus.)

It sounds typical of a lake creature description . I was unable  to access other reports.

Could the creature be the same one as in Lake Baikal perhaps travelling from one lake to another.

 

Lake Uureg.

 

The Lake is a saline lake in western Mongolia. It has a maximum depth of 42 m (138 ft).

A Mongolian traveller  saw a huge creature, which he captured on video whilst he was taking a trip around Uureg Lake .Traveller Mr S. Sodnomdorj said “Foremost I thought there was a timber floating on the lake. Then I asked from a local man who was joining with me if it was possible or not. The local said ‘It is not possible’. We were in the distance of 250 meters away from the object. After that I tried to see that thing carefully, and then it seemed like an animal. I switched on my camera and started to record. I was running to the lake while recording because it was too far to capture it. That animal began to move its body and turned to the centre of the lake. Finally I realized it was an animal”.The creature’s fin appeared on the surface of the lake and it was approximately 7-8 meters.

Local people tell of a myth about a giant creature in the Uureg Lake. They call the giant creature  “Khukh bukh” (Blue bull).It is said to moo like a bull and appear once in 60 years. Elderly people used to say “I will give you to ‘blue bull’, if you behave naughtily” to children. They also used to warn people not to swim in the lake.

Mr. Sodnomdorj who captured the creature wants to have the video analysed  to prove if it is a creature or not.

As it is a salt water lake it could be  a sea creature that somehow entered the lake.

Near by is another lake with a creature. Uureg Lake lies a 150 kilometers from the Khyargas Lake.

Khyargas Lake.

This is also a salt water lake and is 50 metres( 150 metres approx) in depth

There was news released about Russian researchers working on a mysterious trace that was on the lake shore. A group of Mongolian and Russian geological researchers  team led by Victor Yarmoluk, discovered a huge trace on the shore of the Khyargas lake in the 1980’s. (Voice of Russia Aug 31, 2013).

The researchers  discovered several newly made footprints on the shore  1.5 km ( 5 feet approx) from the lake. It seemed like many reptiles came out and were lying on the shore for some time.

Writer and public figure Igor Grishin and a team visited Khyargas Lake in 2013 for a second time. They visited the lake first time in 2010.

“We found different sizes of traces and also bones which are cannot belong to the animals in Mongolia. However fishes that bitten by big teeth were caught from the lake many times, but there is only a species called ‘toothless Osman of Altai’ exists in the lake as known. We afforded the observation of the footprints on the ground and bed of the lake with echometer. Those footprints can be divided into 3 groups. There can be different sizes of several animals or those footprints can be traces from different parts of one animal.”

Researchers found out that some prehistoric animals such as plesiosaurs were not able to digest its food unless to swallow stones.

Valery Nikolayev is a zoologist and scientist of Valdai protected area. He stated that he agrees the prediction on existence of the prehistoric giant reptiles The Uureg Lake belongs to the same region of geography. It raises the assumption of existence of the similar giant creatures in both lakes or travelling from one lake to another.

Lake Kanas

Kanas Lake means 'a gorgeous and mysterious lake' in Mongolian. Local legend has it that there is a huge 'lake monster' in the lake, which often drags horses drinking by the lake into the water.

Read more here:

https://cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.com/2009/07/kanas-lake-monster-china.html

Lake Khaiyr

 Its depth is yet unknown. It is called "Khaiyr" (meaning "to love" in modern Mongolian) 

In1940 there was a sighting of "two large black creatures" by the polar aviator, Ivan Cherevichny and a  polar helmsman Valentin Ivanovych Akkuratov . They  saw two large animals when flying over the lake at the height of 800–1000 metres. Getting curious, they got down to 50 metres and observed the animals, but the noise of the plane scared the creatures and they submerged.

In 1964 when a group of scientists from Moscow University, claim to have encountered an animal with prehistoric biology whilst on an expedition surveying mineral deposits.An article written in Komsomolskaya Pravda by G. Rokosuev explains that the "monster" was initially seen by N. Gladkikh, the deputy leader of the expedition team.Gladkikh went out to the lake to draw water and saw a creature that had crawled out onto the shore, apparently to eat the grass - a small head on a long gleaming neck , a huge body covered with jet-black skin and a vertical fin along the spine.Gladikikh's story was at first met with incredulity by the rest of the team. However, the creature then reappeared to be seen by the leader of the expedition and several other members.

Rokosuev wrote:

“Suddenly a head appeared in the lake, then a dorsal fin. The creature beat the water with its long tail, producing waves on the lake. You can imagine when we saw with our own eyes that the stories were true”

The descriptions sound like a  a plesiosaur, which became extinct  66 million years ago. Some researchers think that this creature represents a mammalian herbivore related to the hippopotamus. Due to the isolation of this northern lake,a unique adaptation could arise.

The 1964 story has since been reported as a hoax however the 1940 sighting has not been debunked.

Being so isolated it needs an expedition of neutral scientists to get to the truth.

It seems Scotland is not the only country with  lots of lake monsters or water kelpies .Interestingly  both are in the northern hemisphere.

 

 

Seasons Greetings

 Merry Christmas to all. I hope you all find some joy in the holidays. I hope for lots of new cryptid sightings in 2024 and a better year for us all.xx