#mokele-mbembe — Public Fediverse posts

Pop Cryptid Spectator 12

Hello and welcome to Pop Cryptid Spectator no 12 – an “approximately weekly” collection of thoughts and opinions about Pop Cryptids. What are Pop Cryptids? Well, I’ve been working on idea that for a while now and it is coalescing around the observation that cryptozoology is far less about zoology than about the various creatures of cryptozoology and their popularity. And, the subject creatures are far less zoological than ever before, at least since the term “cryptozoology” was invented. Hence, this week’s collection of the various examples of how mainstream cryptids are these days.

In this edition:

• New cryptid alert: North American Pine Squid
• Bigfoot in the Backyard
• Be the Bigfoot
• Cryptid media: Nessie, the Musical
• Big little cat makes headlines in UK
• Fiji mermaid seen at Margate beach in Kent
• The mokele-mbembandwagon

North American Pine Squid

I bet you haven’t heard of this cryptid! Or, if you live on YouTube, you might have. But if you know of hoaxes from the late 1990s, it might sound familiar. The North American pine squid is being touted online, particularly on TikTok, as a large, black mass of tentacles that emerges from a pine tree and feeds on people and/or pinecones. The creature is said to be lurking in the forests of the Pacific Northwest and the Appalachians (clue #1 – these would likely be different species because of the lack of pine forests in between). It “swims” above the forest floor. From what I can tell, the tall tale of this fearsome creature went mainstream around September of 2024. I totally missed it, maybe because I’m not a regular consumer of TikTok that is like 90% garbage content. The NAPS is a rip off of the Pacific Northwest tree octopus, a hoax from 1998. But, hey, it’s the 21st century and we can haz AI naow! Someone birthed the new, more evil variant and it grew. So we can count the NAPS as another in a growing list of AI cryptids. And, make no mistake, there are many people who have no education regarding the natural world and may assume these are real animals. Here is the “fascinating truth” about the pine squid.

Bigfoot in the Backyard

A group of National Weather Service investigators, documenting storm damage, captured an image of a dark figure in the woods west of Uniontown, in western Pennsylvania. The incident made it to the local news. What they saw was not Bigfoot but an extremely common Bigfoot sillouette placed in the forested land surrounding the property. Bigfoot sighting reports are quite common here, as the area is part of the Chestnut Ridge, now known as a “Gateway to the Paranormal” thanks to a local county tourism initiative. I often wonder who makes the choices about stories to include in the news. But, maybe it was someone who wanted to demostrate the Pop Cryptid idea. You will quickly run out of fingers with which to count the properties who have a Bigfoot sign or marker in their yard like this or more obvious. They abound. People seem to enjoy displaying their love for Bigfoot, or their hope that the yard ornaments will attract a curious monster, or at least some like-minded neighbors. Check out the article, if you can spare a minute you will never get back.

Be the Bigfoot

If you really are obsessed by Bigfoot, soon you will have the opportunity to be one in a digital simulation called Bigfoot Life. The Demo is out now. You can scare animals and other humans, throw rocks, bang on a tree with a big stick, eat berries, steal picnic baskets, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOX_lUAs1Dw

Cryptid media: Nessie, the Musical

The Guardian posted a short trip through some interesting depictions of the Loch Ness monster on TV and in film. The headline for “From The Simpsons to Werner Herzog: the coolest, craziest, scariest Nessies ever” turned out to be misleading and disappointing as the short-ish article only touched upon a handful of selections including an appearance on The Simpsons, and the movies The Secret of the Loch, and Incident at Loch Ness (which I need to rewatch because it was lots of fun). Mostly the piece was intended to publicize a new Nessie musical in Edinburgh this summer.

Big little cat makes headlines in UK

Hardly a week goes by without some story from the UK adding to the rumors that big cats (usually of the zoologically ambiguous “black panther” type) are slinking around the villages and fields. The examples are almost universally terrible. But people want so badly to believe they have encountered the elusive creatures, which are typically named after their locations (Beast of Bucks, in this case). This recent claim comes from a man who lives “near” Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England and it’s accompanied by a video. The entirely black feline is seen on the edge of a “skip” or dumpster in USAnian English, and then it jumps in to pick at the trash. The video does not show it exiting so we never see the creature head on. You can see the video here. This is not a big cat. It’s a hefty domestic cat. The camera location and angle give the impression of it being large. But it does not at all resemble a jaguar or leopard (the only two wild cats that fall under the general term “black panther”). Many photographic and video claims show similar black felines that are all almost certainly just regular house cats where the surroundings allow for a perception of exaggerated size.

As an aside, in the US, our locally named beasts aren’t usually big cats but varieties of bipedal monsters. (Beast of Whitehall, Beast of Boggy Creek, Beast of Bray Road, etc.)

Fiji mermaid seen at Margate beach in Kent

A news story circulated this week about a couple walking the beach on March 10 in Margate, Kent, England, who came across a strange object. With a front described as “skeletal” and the back end of a fish, the object, which looks to be about 2 ft long, is a replica of the Fiji mermaid. The original story from Kent Online didn’t pick up on this but subsequent outlets recognized the relation to the infamous hoax from 19th century associated with P.T. Barnam. Clearly, this object copies that depiction. However, what was most frustrating is that no article that I could find described what the Margate object was made from. There is no way it could have survived made of a real fish and paper mache – and it definately does not look like a genuine fish tale. It seems most likely it was made of resin. I could not find a good match online; the head is more alien-like than most depictions. Also, there is no mention of who picked it up and took it, because SOMEONE had to. This makes me think that it could have been a deliberate plant as a hoax.

The mokele-mbembandwagon

In PCS no. 7, I linked to an article on SyFy that was spun off from a February Nat Geo article regarding the increased local sightings of mokele-mbembe in the Congo Basin in Africa. The Nat Geo article was a good one, noting the resurgence of a contemporary legend in response to deforestation in the region. The story of this cryptid began in the very early 20th century when it was framed as a “saurian”. Cryptozoologists and Creationists loved the highly romanticized, “Lost World” idea of a surviving dinosaur living in the unexplored African jungles. With the rise of Pop Cryptids in culture, mokele-mbembe is having another spotlight moment along with growing interest in sightings of other prehistoric survivor cryptids such as Kasai Rex, the thunderbird, megalodon, and the ropen. This week, not only did IFLScience copy SyFy (I often think these two enties are related), but now Popular Mechanics joined the fun with an article that took snippets from knowledgable writers such as Darren Naish (who is an expert on the “Prehistoric Survivor Paradigm” – the cryptozoological habit of resurrecting extinct animals as potential explanations for mystery animal reports), Eddie Guimont, and Loren Coleman regarding their view of living dinosaurs to get clicks related to the creature. Like the other copycats, this article uses the same brontosaurus imagery and also drops clues that the writer doesn’t actually know much about cryptozoology. At least this piece may introduce readers to the thoughts of more qualified individuals than those of Creationists or uncritical cryptozoological explorers who seem to simply embellish and repeat witness stories.

There remains zero evidence that any large creature that went extinct many millions of years ago is still out there for us to find. But the facts never seem to stand in the way of a good story about popular cryptids.

According to Google trends, it does not appear that people are searching for more info on mokele-mbembe. Maybe they don’t know how to spell it. But speculation on the creature regularly turns up on Reddit and in other online cryptid content.

For more on the background of cryptids as extinct animals, see my 2014 article “Prehistoric Survivors? They are Really, Most Sincerely Dead”. (Excuse the terrible formatting, though, since the publishing website never checked their pages after a upgrade years ago.)

And to close out, I was sent this pic of a very cryptid sign posted at the Venice canals in California this week.

Thanks for reading! Send comments, questions, or suggestions to sharon(at)sharonahill.com. If you want to send some cryptid plushies or other merch, or books to review, email for my physical mailing address.

For more, click on Pop goes the Cryptid landing page. Make sure you subscribe to all the posts – it’s always free and I don’t send annoying spam. 

Pop Cryptid Spectator is also available on Substack. Please share this with cryptid fans you know!

Pop Cryptid Spectator 11

Pop Cryptid Spectator 10

Pop Cryptid Spectator 9

Pop Cryptid Spectator 8

Pop Cryptid Spectator 7

Pop Cryptid Spectator 6

Pop Cryptid Spectator 5

Pop Cryptid Spectator 4

Pop Cryptid Spectator 3

Pop Cryptid Spectator 2

Pop Cryptid Spectator 1

#1 #AICryptids #alienBigCats #Bigfoot #BigfootLife #cryptid #cryptids #Cryptozoology #FijiMermaid #mokeleMbembe #NorthAmericanPineSquid #PacificNorthwestTreeOctopus

https://sharonahill.com/?p=9707

Pop Cryptid Spectator 7

Welcome to the Pop Cryptid Spectator no. 7. This edition is chock full of news, media, and pop cryptid information. Cryptid popularity is exploding. Even old cryptid ideas are resurfacing in new ways all the time, as we’ll see regarding sea serpents and living dinosaurs. Books, movies, internet content, and music work to spread the modern concepts of cryptids, leaving behind crusty old ideas of “unknown animals” and repackaging them as new and exciting entities that share whatever “reality” we wish to embrace.

In this edition:

• Cryptozoology diploma
• Saxsquatch in Rolling Stone
• Past and future of Small Town Monsters
• Modern resurgence of mokele-mbembe
• Fresno Nightcrawler on Monstrum – Is it a cryptid?
• Frogman Festival in March
• Cryptid biographies
• Book review: A Natural History of Sea Serpents

Cryptozoology Diploma

A participant on the Forteana Forums on the Pop Goes the Cryptid thread pointed me to a “Cryptozoology diploma” provided by the Centre for Excellence online shop. You can take a (paid) course that claims to teach you to able to “decide whether lake monsters, sea serpents, Thunderbirds and other mythical monsters are rumours or a reality”. That is, if your really need to pay for that! This tip was in response to the item in last PCS 6 exposing the ridiculous article on the Indeed job search site regarding “How to Become a Cryptozoologist”. This “diploma” is worthless as credentials but might be fun if you like learning new things you don’t known anything about. And, it shows just how mainstream the topic is. Unfortunately, as I discovered with a similar course, I can safely assume the instruction is terrible, the source material is low quality and full of errors, and the effort might make you more misinformed than educated in the topic.

Saxquatch in Rolling Stone

Regarding the Saxsquatch story from last week, he then appeared as a Creature Feature in Rolling Stone. He’s a very BIG deal!

Past and Future of STM

You really can’t talk about the spread of cryptids in popular culture in the US without recognizing Small Town Monsters, a production company founded by Seth Breedlove and friends, that has been making documentary films for 10 years now. They make little-known cryptids into icons, small towns into tourist attractions. I was a big fan of STM films starting with The Minerva Monster (Ohio) and Beast of Whitehall (New York). Since those early projects, it’s become increasingly difficult to keep track of, let alone watch, all the various monster and paranormal content that they put out. Every time I watch a new film or YouTube series episode, I see familiar faces from the field of high strangeness, and I learn new things. While STM prides themselves on being the only company who take an “objective” approach to their subjects, making an effort to let the witnesses and researchers do the talking, they have slanted more towards the extreme paranormal stuff as time has gone on. This tendency, however, is the normal trajectory of Pop Cryptids, so it’s altogether possible that STM isn’t just riding the wave, but also helping to steer the boat.

Seth has produced a new intro video for this year explaining some of the challenges to the small company, mainly distribution issues, that shed light on the seemingly chaotic release schedule. He also gives a preview of the movies for 2025.

• The Kinderhook Creature is a story about a Bigfoot that terrorized families in the Catskills of New York in the 1980s. I am unfamiliar with this story which Breedlove calls “Minerva Monster writ large”. I fully expect the film treatment will launch this cryptid into the popular sphere.
• Dawn of the Dogman promises to explore the origins of the Michigan dogman, which is known to have been popularized by a hoax story put into song. Breedlove says that Linda Godfrey was consulted on the project prior to her death in 2022. Again, really looking forward to this topic since Dogman is the current king of Pop Cryptids.
• From the Beyond: The Bennington Triangle will take on the array of different phenomena reported in this area of southern Vermont. Window areas are of particular interest to me related to my Spooky Geology niche. I have written about the Bennington Triangle.

You can see Monster Chronicles: The Past and Future of STM on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE7xW4yfN5c

Modern resurgence of mokele-mbembe

Syfy website put out an article regarding the claim of living dinosaurs in the African Congo River Basin. The most famous of these is mokele-mbembe, which cryptozoologists interpret as a potential sauropod dinosaur. The article is, as you will often find, clickbait promotion, in this case linked to the next upcoming Jurassic Park franchise movie. It piggy backs off a Nat Geo article from early February about deforestation. Due to this environmental condition, encounters between locals and wildlife are becoming more frequent. People aren’t all that used to being so close to elephants and gorillas and seem to be attributing sounds and experiences to the folklore creature instead.

“In bigger settlements where habitats are being pushed into and people aren’t used to seeing large animals, they’re suddenly encountering them all the time,” says Laura Vlachova, a Czech conservationist. “It’s these people who tell me they’ve seen mokele-mbembe. I think what it really shows is how folklore is starting to reflect the reality of a shrinking ecosystem.”

Fresno Nightcrawler on Monstrum – Is it a cryptid?

Monstrum is a very popular PBS produced series on folklore creatures. The latest episode is on Pop Cryptid star, the Fresno Nightcrawler – a creature known from a grainy video from 2007 that shows a pale entity made up almost entirely of billowy legs and maybe a really tiny head on top. Host Emily Zarka can’t decide whether this is a “cryptid” or not, first calling it that but then suggesting it’s something else. She defines a cryptid as a biological creature that people say exists but science hasn’t documented, which, as I have shown in previous issues of PCS, can be problematic. The old school idea of a cryptid is zoological, however, the nightcrawler doesn’t seem to be perambulating anywhere near the path of zoological discovery. Mostly perceived as a hoax, I have seen some attempts to recreate it – digitally and manually. But nothing quite works. So the Nightcrawler remains a fun and creepy mystery. But, is it a cryptid?

• Yes. People claim to encounter the creature in other areas after the original Fresno incident came to light. If we consider cryptids as a mysterious and unrecognized creature that, supported by anecdotal (and bad video) evidence, then it’s a cryptid.
• Yes. Even if the supposition is that it’s an alien or spirit being, it’s a usually hidden entity that sometimes walks through our physical space. This is boosted by poorly sourced claims that it resembles some creature of Native American lore.
• No. In no way does it depict a plausible biological creature, and there is no indication it can be captured or has a typical organic existence; it looks like a pair of puppet pants; it’s a made-up creature.
• Yes. The Fresno nightcrawler always ranks high on lists of favorite cryptids. People remain fascinated by it, and it is the subject of a crazy amount of merchandise because it is cute and easy to draw! Pop cryptid all the way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrGcxeyIPx4

Frogman Festival in March

Coming up on March 1-2 in Loveland, Ohio is the Frogman Festival celebrating the sightings of a humanoid frog- or lizard-like entity reported in 1955, 1972 and 2016. The festival features the usual family fun and merch vendors riding the Pop Cryptid wave. But the speakers are always my main interest. Among the paranormal and metaphysical “researchers” speaking at the event is an academic who is the most knowledgeable of all these presenters put together, Dr. Jeb Card. Unfortunately, this location is a bit too far for a day drive for me. If you are within reach, give it a go and let me know what you think.

Cryptid biographies

Incidentally, the Frogman has no well-researched cryptid biography. Surprisingly, neither does Mothman. Here are some recommended books to explore the “true” stories behind some famous cryptids:

• Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore – Benjamin Radford, 2011
• The Secret History of the Jersey Devil: How Quakers, Hucksters, and Benjamin Franklin Created a Monster – Brian Regal and Frank Esposito, 2018
• The Untold Story of Champ: A social history of America’s Loch Ness Monster – Robert Bartholomew, 2012
• Ogopogo: The True Story of the Okanagan Lake Million Dollar Monster – Arlene Gaal, 1955
• The Beast of Boggy Creek: The True Story of the Fouke Monster – Lyle Blackburn, 2012
• Lizard Man: The True Story of the Bishopville Monster – Lyle Blackburn, 2013
• The Great Sea Serpent: An Historical and Critical Treatise – A.C. Oudemans, 1892
• The Great New England Sea Serpent: An Account of Unknown Creatures Sighted by Many Respectable Persons Between 1638 and the Present Day – June P. O’Neill, 1999
• Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend – Joshua Blu Buhs, 2009
• Bigfoot: The Yeti and Sasquatch in Myth and Reality – John Russell Napier, 1972

Might I suggest purchasing books from local or independent booksellers instead of Amazon. Try https://bookshop.org/ or https://www.ebooks.com/en-us/.

Book Review: A Natural History of Sea Serpents

A Natural History of Sea Serpents by Adrian Shine (Coming March 2025)
I am a tough book critic, particular regarding my favorite subject. No copy-paste, Wikipedia-sourced garbage passes muster with me. What I truly appreciate is a genuine expert, who has put in the time, presenting their well-reasoned arguments, supported by evidence. You can hardly get a better example of this than Adrian Shine’s new volume on sea serpents. Shine is the world’s foremost expert on the Loch Ness creature reports.

In this book, he guides us through the history of a long-bodied swimming creature that people have reported for centuries, how it changed, and what people probably saw. For example, early sea serpent sightings were of “loops” surfacing in the water with the suggestion of a flexible tubular animal. But around 1848, Shine explains the change to interpreting the same shape as “humps” connected to the back of an animal with a larger middle, like a plesiosaur. This version of the idea also continued into Loch Ness reports.

There are an array of historical sightings by sailors and other credible witnesses for which sensationalistic cryptid literature will label as representing mysterious creatures or unknown species. Shine declares what all reasonable people with some biology background already know – a hooping/looping animal is absurd. Maned water creatures, like cadborosaurus, make no sense. The volumes of eyewitness testimony, examined individually, is not compelling to suggest a mystery creature exists; there is a complete dearth of scientific evidence for these water cryptids.

Shine blasts a few worn tropes clear out of the water. First, locals and professionals don’t always know the animal they are seeing, if it’s an animal at all. Everyone can be fooled by viewing an unfamiliar or atypical situation. Second, there is no need to invent new animals to account for these sightings. Third, no single animal is going to account for all the various descriptions grouped under a single phenomenon, such as “Nessie” or “sea serpent”.

Shine provides convincing explanations for the most famous accounts cited by cryptid proponents, and he supports his conclusions with photographic examples. Even though no exotic cryptid is proposed as an explanation, his presentation is fascinating.

As with other cryptid-related books of outstanding scholarship, cryptozoological proponents will reject, ignore, or foolishly try to sink it. Back in 2012, a few big-mouthed and small-minded cryptid fans protested the book Abominable Science by Loxton and Prothero, probably because it spelled out cogent arguments against the zoological reality of famous cryptid creatures. The bottom line for sci-cryptozoologists is that they still lack substantive evidence for their extraordinary claims. I suspect they will dislike Shine’s book too. Their loss. Or, the accumulated wisdom he has will be acknowledged and respected.

Thanks for reading! Send comments, questions, or suggestions to popcryptid(at)proton.me. If you want to send some cryptid plushies or other merch, or books to review, email for my physical mailing address.

For more, click on Pop goes the Cryptid landing page. Make sure you subscribe to all the posts – it’s always free and I don’t send annoying spam. 

Pop Cryptid Spectator is also available on Substack. Please share this with cryptid fans you know!

#7 #ANaturalHistoryOfSeaSerpents #bookReview #cryptids #Cryptozoology #FresnoNightcrawler #LovelandFrogman #mokeleMbembe #popCryptid #PopCryptidSpectator #popCulture #seaSerpents

https://sharonahill.com/?p=9536

The Congo River basin is home to the fabled Mokele-mbembe, a creature resembling a sauropod dinosaur. #Mokelembembe #dinosaurs https://connectparanormal.net/2024/09/04/mokele-mbembe-unraveling-the-mystery-of-congos-cryptid/

https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Mokele-mbembe #RiverStill #MokeleMbembe