Hoax Museum Blog: Cryptozoology

Canadian artist makes Bigfoot track shoes — Montreal-based artist Maskull Lasserre has designed shoes that make footprints in the ground as you walk along, instead of shoe prints. He's got a human-footprint shoe, but also a bigfoot-print shoe. He's quoted as saying:


It doesn't seem that the shoes are available for purchase because each shoe is hand-carved. He shows them at art exhibitions, but he does sometimes wear them around himself. (link: metro.co.uk)

Icelandic Worm Monster — Earlier this month, Icelandic resident Hjörtur E. Kjerúlf was having coffee in his house near Lake Lagarfljót, when he spotted something moving in the water. He immediately picked up his camera and started recording (link: Iceland Review). Below is the video he took.

Is it evidence of the existence of the Lagarfljót Worm -- the giant worm monster said to live in Lake Lagarfljót? Or is it just a piece of fishing net floating in the water?



The worm monster, or Lagarfljótsormur, is Iceland's equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster. The legend of it is centuries old. Wikipedia offers this account of the creature's origin:

The Owlman of Mawnan — This Is Cornwall has a brief article about the "Owlman of Mawnan." They write:


The incident is suspected to be a hoax because Tony "Doc" Shiels became involved. He was the first person Melling told about the sighting, and then became the source for various illustrations of the Owlman. Shiels already has a place in the Hoax Museum because he was the source of the "Loch Ness Muppet" image. So his credibility is pretty low.

The Buxton Mermaid — An old mermaid was recently found, stored in the archives of the Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, and a research team from the University of Lincoln decided to examine it. So far they've discovered that its hair is human, its upper body is constructed of wood and wire, its teeth are carved bone, and its eyes are mollusc shell. Future tests will determine what fish its tail came from. (link: BBC News)


At first I thought it looked like the Bloomsbury Mermaid (pictured below). But no, they're definitely different mermaids. Though similar in design. (Thanks, Hudson!)

The Ingushetia Yeti — Near the end of December, reports emerged of a yeti caught in the Caucasus mountain, in the Russian republic of Ingushetia. Interfax reported Bagaudin Marshani, former head of Ingushetia's labor ministry, as saying:


Marshani also said that the creature was being displayed in a private zoo in the village of Surkhakhi, and that a team of scientists was on its way from Moscow to study it.

A video was posted on youtube showing the yeti running away from a hunter. The yeti looked a lot like a guy in an ape suit.


And, of course, it was a guy in an ape suit. Specifically, it was an Ingush hotel worker in an ape suit.

It turned out the yeti capture was a publicity stunt to raise money for charity. Marshani explained, "It was a promotional event, a New Year joke to put the spotlight on orphans and children from dysfunctional and low-income families."

People came to the zoo to see the yeti, and once there, they were asked to donate money to the orphan charity. Also on display at the zoo were ten talking animals, including a wolf and a squirrel. Links: pravda, rt.com.

Is Nessie a Phantimal? — An article by Nick Redfern on mania.com discusses the theory that the Loch Ness Monster (and Bigfoot) may be "phantimals". That is, "the spirits or ghosts of creatures that became extinct thousands of years ago." This theory is promoted by paranormal expert Joshua P. Warren, author of Pet Ghosts, who argues that "the world’s most famous lake-monster, Nessie, might actually represent some form of 'ghostly plesiosaur,' rather than a literal, living animal or colony of animals."

Nice theory. But what I found more interesting was the next part of the article, in which Redfern discusses the research of Jim Marrs, author of PSI Spies, who learned that during some of the U.S. government's experiments with remote viewing (the Stargate Project perhaps?) remote viewers were asked to focus on Nessie and detail what they saw:


And here I went all the way to Loch Ness to see Nessie. I could have just stayed in San Diego and remote viewed her.

What really lurks in Loch Ness — Apparently, it's golf balls. From cnn.com:


It would be kind of sad if Nessie died choking on a golf ball.

RIP Robert Rines — Nessie Hunter Robert Rines died of heart failure yesterday in his Boston home. From Boston.com:

Natural History Museum to provide positive identification of Nessie — According to the Daily Mail, recently released documents from the archives of the British Natural History Museum reveal that in 1987 the Museum struck a deal with the bookmaker William Hill. The Museum agreed that, should the body of the Loch Ness Monster ever be found, the Museum would provide "positive identification." Only if it receives a positive id, will the bookmaker pay out on bets about the creature's existence. (It offers odds of 500/1 on the Loch Ness Monster being found within a year.)

It seems like a pretty good deal for the Museum, since the bookmaker pays them £1,000 per year to maintain the contract.

Alien Baby or Hoax? — I'm guessing it's a hoax: The Daily Telegraph reports on an ongoing controversy about a "baby alien" discovered in Mexico in 2007. It was supposedly discovered by a farmer who drowned it out of fear. This farmer later burned to death in a parked car (killed by the baby's parents?). Scientists are said to be baffled by the creature.

Loch Ness on Google Earth — I missed this while on vacation. A security guard looking at Google Earth in his sparetime found what he believes might be evidence of the Loch Ness monster. Almost everyone else thinks it looks obviously like a boat, except for Loch Ness researcher Adrian Shine who is quoted as saying it looks "really intriguing" and deserves "further study."

One Million Years B.C. Bigfoot — On Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman notes a similarity between Patty (the Bigfoot that stars in the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film) and the ape creatures that appear briefly in the 1966 film One Million Years B.C. (starring Raquel Welch).

In the images below, Patty is on the left, and one of the One Million Years B.C. creatures is on the right.



Lots of people have suggested a link between 1967's Planet of the Apes and the Patterson-Gimlin film, but a link to One Million Years B.C. is a new one. Maybe Patty will turn out to have been Raquel Welch in an ape suit.

Loch Ness as one of the 7 Wonders of Nature — Loch Ness is a finalist in a campaign to name the New 7 Wonders of Nature. Other finalists include the Amazon River, the Grand Canyon, the Great Barrier Reef, and Mount Kilimanjaro.

Loch Ness is very scenic and geologically very interesting, but Willie Cameron of Loch Ness Marketing thinks that the Loch should have a leg-up on the competition because, "None of the other nominees has a legacy we know as the Loch Ness Monster. Whatever it is, it is unexplainable and that is unique."

By that reasoning, shouldn't the North Pole also be a contender, since it's the home of Santa Claus? [Highland News]

Geographical distribution of Bigfoot same as Black Bear — In its current issue, the Journal of Biogeography has published an article whose authors use ecological niche modelling software to predict the distribution of Sasquatch in western North America. The authors write:


The authors then created an ecological niche model for the black bear, Ursus americanus, and discovered that the two models (for Bigfoot and black bear) were remarkably similar, leading them to conclude that "many Bigfoot sightings are, in fact, of black bears." (via New Scientist)

Connecticut woman almost runs over Sasquatch — A Connecticut woman driving along Unquowa Road told police that she "almost hit Sasquatch." Upon investigation, the police discovered that Sasquatch was really "a 16-year-old boy dressed in a gorilla-like costume." He was standing at the corner in his costume, waving at cars as they passed. (news times)

Reminds me of the Little Blue Man Hoax of 1958.

The Evolution of the Werewolf and Bigfoot — Brian Regal, a historian of science at Kean University in New Jersey, has an interesting theory about the relationship between werewolves and Bigfoot. He notes that hundreds of years ago werewolves were very prominent in popular culture. But during the past 150 years the werewolf's place in popular culture has declined, while Bigfoot has grown enormously in popularity. He attributes this shift to the theory of evolution. From Science Daily:


Contrast this with Joshua Buhs' theory, detailed in his new book Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend, in which he attributes Bigfoot's popularity in the 20th century to working-class men who saw in Bigfoot "an icon of untamed masculinity, a populist rebel against scientific elites, the last champion of authentic reality against a plastic, image-driven, effeminate consumer society." (text from the Publishers Weekly review)

The Loch Ness Monster of the Vosges — The small French town of Xertigny, in the Vosges Mountains, thinks it may have its own Loch Ness Monster. Though instead of being a sea serpent, it's a crocodile, and it's in a pond instead of a loch.
[Clitheroe Advertiser]

Bigfoot Ornament — Two years ago I made my own hoax-themed Christmas tree ornaments. But that was before I discovered Bronner's sells Bigfoot tree ornaments. So yeah, I had to buy one.

Frenchman Collides Sacredly with Nessie — Frenchman Don Jean Habrey, whose stage name is Hors Humain (beyond human), has announced his intention to embark on a "sacred collision with Nessie." Specifically, he plans to dive into Loch Ness and "breathe with the monster to send ultimate breathing to the world of childhood.”

Later, he'll make a Christmas Eve visit to the Loch and "conjure the mythical creature from the loch, with chants, drumming, burning flares and bonfires round the shore."


I'm sad that I'm going to miss it.

Big Footprint Found — Harold Jackson, a resident of Cookeville, Tennessee, found an indentation on a rock on his property. It looks vaguely like a footprint... a very big footprint. 11 inches across and 15 inches long. The article says he took it home. (I assume he must have made a cast of it and taken that home.)

The surprising thing is that he doesn't think it's a Bigfoot print, though his friends do. He thinks it's a footprint of a Native American.

So how tall would this Native American have been if his feet were 15-inches long? According to WikiAnswers, a person's foot is usually 15% of the height of his body. Therefore, this Native American would have been approximately 100 inches tall, or 8.3 feet.