Goodbye to LEPRECAT One and Two
The first two volumes have many more cases within them, but the ones included in past posts are sort of filtered for quality plus enough detail to make a cartoon. But it is time to go on to the third volume and push towards modern times.
1. Foxford, Ireland. 1920s. This is a good one. It is a Diarmuid MacManus case, And it is one of those wherein MacManus knew the reporting witness personally. This witness was a medical doctor and a military officer during WWI. MacManus described him as a "man of intelligence and integrity." (Oh what I would do to have had people like Diarmuid MacManus doing all of these better detail cases. If we had been that lucky, we'd be VERY sure of the amount of reality in this field of mystery.)
The Case: two boys had finished an afternoon of swimming in an isolated smallish pond near the Ox Mountains. They were crossing a field when they approached a large boulder. One of the witnesses saw movement near the boulder. The other thought he must have imagined it. They, however, decided to investigate anyway. Rounding the boulder, they were confronted by a little (4 foot tall) man. He had a black cap, black shiny material clothes (like satin or silk), a flat face overgrown with curly brown whiskers. He looked fairly old. He stood facing them with a friendly-seeming grin. Thinking that this was a "leprechaun", the boys got very scared and ran away as fast as possible.
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2. Cranagh, Ireland. 1924. This is another MacManus case so it's another good one. the credibility here is, as usual, that MacManus knew the witness personally. The witness is a nurse, who was living on her family's farm when the incident took place.
Her brothers weren't available on this day, so as was standard in those good old days, the daughter of the house went out to the fields to round up the family's cows. The cows were far afield near a nearby mountain. The cows were well behaved and as she opened the gate, they began to wander out. The more distantly dispersed group contained her favorite cow, a grey color animal. When she approached a fairy appeared. He was four and a half foot tall (about her own size), and looked young. He wore a black cap and a close-fitting red coat over buff trousers. He carried a switch of "sally" and touched her cow with it as he passed. He glanced at the girl, then walked to a ditch and simply disappeared into its bank. She told her story at home, but her family refused to believe her.
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3. Chicago, IL. 1925. I believe that this is also a good case, since the informant here was a close personal friend (since deceased.) However, it was not my friend who was the witness, but his Mother --- he insisted that she told him this story multiple times and it never varied. If you knew my friend, you'd buy this case as well --- he was a tough sell on these mysteries, exasperatingly resistant in his willingness to affirm nearly anything in these fields. But he affirmed this.
When his mother was a young girl, she used to be ill quite a lot, much to her own mother's disappointment. This day she was wanting her mother to allow her to retire to her mother's bed, so she could rest. Her mother reluctantly agreed (she was a neat freak and didn't like the bedroom messed.) Once sitting on the bed, she was looking at the upper shelving area which was mounted all around the upper part of the room. There were boxes all over these shelves, but too high so that, as a young girl, she couldn't reach up to them. She noticed some movement up there, and worried that some animal had gotten in. Then she heard laughter and little men, about a foot and a half high appeared on the shelves.
They were dressed all in green, and frolicked. Scampering and messing about and jabbering away in words she could not understand. they were so comical that she began to laugh, and her mother heard her, and stormed in. Accusing the girl of faking illness, she ran her out, despite protests. Her tale of the little men was of course disbelieved.
The next day she was still sick, and was reluctantly allowed back in the bedroom to rest. Out the little men came again with all their antics. this time even more raucous. The girl begged them to be quiet, but their leader said to her:" If we leave now, we will never come back." The little men were so active this time that the shelved boxes were getting into serious disarray, knocked and jumbled all about. Finally the mother returned (of course just missing the disappearing little people.) She was incensed at her daughter, but couldn't explain how her daughter could have reached the high shelves were all the disarray now existed. (One wonders if the little people were making some kind of statement as the box in which the mother's favorite hat was kept was particularly battered and the hat bashed in. Despite the impossibility of reaching those shelves, the girl was punished anyway by her puzzled mother.
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4. Portuguese East Africa, 1927. This one I can't say much about. The reason for that is not so much the witnesses (as these stories came to me via the publications of the major figure in the field of Cryptozoology, Bernard Heuvelmans, and thereby would have been carefully selected by him), but because of the type of sightings that we have here are in a type of biological setting that makes for too easy alternatives. We are looking at monkey-like creatures seen in the continent which is full of monkeys and apes. But --- let us see.
One of our main sightings comes from "tourists" on a boat cruising along the "Portuguese East Africa" (Mozambique) coast. I am not sure exactly where along this extensive stretch that they were.
The witness' tale:
"In 1927 I was with my wife coasting Portuguese East Africa in a Japanese cargo boat. We were sufficiently near to land to see objects clearly with a glass of twelve magnifications. There was a sloping beach with light bush above upon which several dozen baboons where hunting for and picking up shell fish of crabs, to judge by their movements. Two pure white baboons were amongst them. These are very rare but I had heard of them previously. As we watched, two little brown men walked together out of the bush and down amongst the baboons. They were certainly not any known monkey and yet they must have been akin or they would have disturbed the baboons. They were too far away to be seen in great detail, but these small human-like animals were probably between four and five feet tall, quite upright and graceful in figure. At the time I was thrilled as they were quite evidently no beast of which I had heard or read. Later a friend and big game hunter told me he was in Portuguese East Africa with his wife and three other hunters, and saw mother, father and child, of apparently similar animal species, walk across the further side of a bush clearing. The natives loudly forbade him to shoot."
Very interesting of course. But what about simple primates? There are not supposed to be any chimps nor gorillas there, but one supposes that some kind of escapees are possible.
To the right is a picture of the major baboon species in the neighborhood. Could a color anomaly explain browner baboons among the others? Do baboons ever stand upright? They ARE pretty BIG though.
The witness says that they were too far away to be seen in any detail. Well, that's a bit of a problem for me --- at least for this specific report.
I'm going to put it in the gray basket --- not enough "strangeness" for me.
Here is another report from elsewhere in Africa:
"Some years ago I was sent on an official lion-hunt in this area (the Ussure and Simibit forests on the western side of the Wembare plains) and, while waiting in a forest glade for a man-eater, I saw two small, brown, furry creatures come from dense forest on one side of the glade and disappear into the thickets on the other. They were like little men, about 4 feet high, walking upright, but clad in russet hair. The native hunter with me gazed in mingled fear and amazement. They were, he said, agogwe, the little furry men whom one does not see once in a lifetime."
Well, sort of the same problem for me. Chimps? Bonopos? Maybe little strange homonid beings or what?
The location (biological environment) is still rife with anthropoid alternatives, but it is properly legendary being so close to Mt Kenya. But mainly THIS tale includes a long tradition of sightings at a specific site with a bunch of diminutive rock-throwers.
{shrugs} OK. Today's bunch: three real good ones and a maybe.
Not bad. I'll take that every time.
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