Cryptozoology, Bigfoot, Lake Monsters, and Other Unusual Creatures

[Yvonne Smith]

One of my interests has long been the stories about creatures that have been reported by someone, but are pretty much considered not to exist. In this section, we can have threads about Bigfoot (and all the other names he is called around the world), as well as other creatures that remain basically undiscovered because we have no verifiable proof, just reports of them being seen and encountered.

We have all heard of the Loch Ness Monster, but I find it very interesting that many of the large lakes all over the world have similar stories of some kind of a mysterious lake creature that is sometimes seen on the lake. We all have read that there are a lot of ocean fish that we know nothing about, and have discovered some that were thought to have been long extinct; so it seems reasonable to me that we could have the same kind of thing happening in some of the deeper lakes.

I grew up in North Idaho, near lake Pend Oreille, which is one of the deeper lakes in America, and has places where they have not found the bottom of the lake. This lake is the home of Farragut Naval Base, where submarines have been tested ever since WW2, because of its location and depth of the lake. I can remember traveling across the bridge with my mother and seeing what looked like a floating log suddenly submerging, and realizing that we had just seen a submarine.

Along with the submarines, people have seen what looks like a long eel-shaped fish creature far out in the lake, and it is locally called the “Ponderay Paddler”; but there is no defninte proof of any kind, just persistant stories of sightings of the creature. At least one of the Great Lakes has a mythical monster, as well as other lakes all over the world. With all of the stories being so similar, it seems possible to me that some such creatures could be there, but they live where people are not around enough to see them.

 

[Yvonne Smith]

Today, I was reading that some of the animals in Yellowstone park are migrating north, but doing it differently and maybe faster than normal. They said that both bear and elk have been seen in the migration. It would seem that bear would just now be coming out of hibernation, so this seems real unusual if it is indeed true.
One of the Bigfoot groups is also reporting more Bigfoot sightings in Montana than usual, and they think that might be connected to seismic activity at Yellowstone also.

I remember several years ago, when the huge tsunami came ashore and destroyed to many towns and killed people, they said that the animals had moved to the higher mountain areas at least a day or so before the earthquake and the tsunami hit. So, it seems possible that if there is some seismic activity in Yellowstone , that the animals there might have sensed it and are moving somewhere safer, too.

 

[Jacob Petersheim]

I don't expect a supervolcano eruption, but something less may be in the wind. Less doesn't mean trivial though. It could be nearly anything, like a huge "land slump" as emptied magma caverns below collapse.

I remember that a new geothermal vent was found last August or so, but that's all I have heard about.

 

[Axel Slingerland]

If you want Facts about the Yellowstone Hotspot, watch videos or read articles by Mike Poland, Scientist in Charge, Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.

 

[Don Alaska]

I suspect it is due to the seismicity of the area. Wildlife seems to be quite sensitive to Earth changes, earthquakes and such being the main source. When the big Katmai eruption occurred in 1912, it was said that moose flooded out of the area to various parts of Alaska just prior to the eruption. Most of Alaska had no moose, the Alaska Peninsula and the Yukon were the only places the animals called home. According to the Natives I talked to, their forebears were more frightened of moose than bears, since they were unfamiliar with these monster ungulates, but knew bears well. Katmai was the largest eruption of the 20th century and was felt widely.

https://www.usgs.gov/news/impact-1912-novaruptakatmai-eruption-pacific-northwest

 

[Jacob Petersheim]

Hmm, aren't we close to a magnetic pole flip?

 

[Don Alaska]

Hmm, aren't we close to a magnetic pole flip?

Maybe. It seems the magnetic field is weakening.

 

[Yvonne Smith]

I have been seeing information about that online, too. Here is a chart that shows the movement of the magnetic North Pole, as well as where the actual North Pole is located.
Many years ago, my mom had a book called “the Hollow Earth”, and it talked about Admiral Byrd’s flight over the North Pole. My mom told me that when he went on the expedition in 1926, it was on the radio, (she listened to it) and then when he was close to the actual North Pole, they stopped putting it on the radio, and she thought it might have been because of him talking about seeing more greenery as he got closer to the pole.
Anyway, Hollow Earth is a whole other thread.

 

[Jacob Petersheim]

My attention has been elsewhere recently, but I see that another "tiny human" even smaller than the Indonesian "hobbit" discovered through remains is discussed in a new paper.

First articulating os coxae, femur, and tibia of a small adult Paranthropus robustus from Member 1 (Hanging Remnant) of the Swartkrans Formation, South Africa

First articulating os coxae, femur, and tibia of a small adult Paranthropus robustus from Member 1 (Hanging Remnant) of the Swartkrans Formation, South Africa

Since paleontological work began there in 1948, Swartkrans (South Africa) has yielded hundreds of Early Pleistocene hominin fossils, currently attribu…

www.sciencedirect.com

If that's too dry to decipher, it is unrolled for the rest of us here:

New SMALLEST Human Relative Discovered! What Does it Mean?

 

[Jacob Petersheim]

Er, my point being that there is a lot in the past (and in the world) that we don't come across often enough to achieve general acceptance.

 

[Axel Slingerland]

And there's a ton of stuff that is right in front of us that many of us don't even notice, much less know anything about. Then there are too many people who get their "news" from YouTube, Tiktok, etc., without even verifying anything they see. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of stuff on there that is real, accurate and verifiable, but there is a lot more that isn't and some of it can be bad for your mental health.

I used to volunteer at a skilled nursing center in Arcata just going there a couple of times a week and visiting people. and there was this kindly old man who got so scared that the Yellowstone Hotspot was going to blow up and kill us all, that he wanted to commit suicide because he "didn't want to burn to death."

He thought Charlie from the film 2012 was a real person and was warning us of impending disaster (remember his favorite thing to say? "Remember folks, you heard it first from Charlie!"), because he saw a couple of two minute film clips on YouTube that were not 100% clear were from a movie.

So I made a playlist of videos that have accurate, up to date information about the Yellowstone Hotspot, with several short videos from Mike Poland, the Scientist-in-Charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory and his predecessor, Jake Lowenstern, and Nick Zentner, a Geology instructor at Central Washington University, as well as a few others for him, and a few years later he's turned into a "bed bound wannabe geologist" as he puts it now.

My point is, there is so much that we don't know unless we have some reason to look it up. But if YouTube hasn't taught us anything else, it has become the poster child for the need to fact-check what we see on the Internet.