SUMMA FAERYOLOGICA, part eight

Stumbling around in the Realm of the Cryptids

Why this one now: the only possibly important thing for me to write about at this point (relating to Faery) is the argument that there might exist a parallel reality from which these entities could emerge. That requires some real reading/research, however, and even with spending most of a week on it (Jotts, Glitches, Reality Shifts et al), the task is overwhelming. So: not quite yet. Instead I'm going to post some thoughts about Faery and Cryptids off the top of my head.

I can't claim status as a cryptozoologist. But I'm not stone ignorant about that field either (above is the shelving unit for my book library on these matters and there are a few file cabinet drawers.) I can't claim to have earned a "professional opinion" on all I'm about to type, but I can promise you that I've given most of the "big" crypto topics an honest try. 

  
 I've had a lot of exceptional help. As many know, I've been privileged to be tasked with the preservation of Ivan Sanderson's famous three-ring notebooks wherein he collected much of his raw materials for his own launching into these things. (above are most of the cryptozoology ones.) Here and there you can, by surprise, turn up other bits and pieces of crypto-joy in the larger SITU files. This, plus having close friends involved (Jerry Clark, George Eberhart, Henry Bauer), .... well, it's been an honor and a lot of fun. I'm only mentioning these things because I want you to know that the following "crazy" remarks about several of the cryptids haven't just sprung forth out of shallow imagination. 

Let's just jump in the deep end ....

Sea Monsters, Lake Monsters.

Everyone's favorite cryptid (well almost), Nessie, and all her lake and sea serpent cousins? Bunk? Bio? or Faery? Let me start with the Oceans ...

Sea Serpents: I gave this one a good try on this blog between May and July of 2011. There were 14 posts covering Ivan Sanderson's Sea Serpent files notebooks, which looked at 114 different claims. The claims were mapped crudely at least, and the best cases, in my opinion, were highlighted in the texts. The analyses made at least one thing very close to certain for me: none of the claims of sea serpent carcasses hold up. (There's a skeptical fellow going by the e-name of Markus out there who is a relentless attacker of such claims, and though I lack affection for that mindset, I know enough of the biology to realize that such debunking in this topic is legit.) 

Having said that, there are also some terrific witness reports on swim-by observations of very odd sea creatures. 

Some reports are  surely the products of hysterical people, and even a fantasy-prone person here and there. Even if one is very liberal with such opinion, very few cases sound like that at all. Some of the cases DO sound like mis-identification of course. If everyone knew about Oarfish etc the data pile would be cleaner. But there are way too many "close encounters" with good witnessing to honestly claim universal debunking statements anywhere. Some serious numbers of the cases are "good anomalies."

 So, what are they? Biology or something stranger? I don't think that Biology is the correct answer. Biology should have carcasses. I've heard all the decades worth of anomalists dancing around this, but No. These things are a big deal --- not just in size but interest. We've had centuries of real interest in these things. NO carcasses. 

Maybe I could "forgive" that lack if we were still in the 19th century. Not now. In the 20th, the probable only real bio-monster (the Giant Squid) has been found, and found pretty much several times. Maybe a similarly gigantic octopus cousin could still hide out as a region-restricted bottom liver. So, OK if that character finally shows. But we are "radar-ing" the entire oceans now. We NEED to know submarines from underwater serpents, and apparently we are just fine with the knowledge that no such physical serpents freely roam the seas. But some serpents DO seem to occasionally roam. If not "physical", what? 

  There was one crypto-case which I spent a lot of original research upon: the alleged Pacific North West crypto-orm called by the local cultures "Wasgo", "Sisiutl", "WasX", and other names. This was a particularly rich possibility. The Wasgo not only had recent witness claims, but Native American PNW legends concerning it, many sorts of representative artifacts, and even ancient rock carvings. Something was obviously behind all of that. (The picture by the way is of my own artifact of the Wasgo: a ceremonial mask created by a famous mask-maker which I purchased while on a trip to Alaska --- at Skagway.) 

If I was going to find a real crypto-beast and a biological animal, this was a bigtime shot. I put everything together that I could. The beast seemed to be very like a zeuglodont,  a primitive whale with front legs but none at the rear --- an odd fact to be replicated in a myth and esoteric palaeontology identically. The research seemed to push the mystery out towards others, like Ogopogo. I liked the data. No matter how good it was, however, it really didn't distinguish between the paranormal possibility and the biological. I published this in the Journal for Scientific Exploration and am proud of the piece, but I really can't say that I solved the mystery. Here was the best case of a "sea monster" that I could ask for, and I was still juggling two hypotheses --- and no carcass and no high technology supportive evidence. What I DID have were local stories from the Native American cultures which pictured encounter incidents with the Wasgo very much like a fairy incident AND a list of common tribal crests which listed the Wasgo amongst the most popular choices of spirit icon entities. I am as sure as I can be in such a situation that the Wasgo exists, but not at all sure that it can be bio-textbook physical. 

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Nessie? ... and her cousins.

"Not a legend but a fact ... " I rather agree with that. 

 There are enough reports. It surprises me in fact that writers keep repeating over and over the same ones without realizing that others have continued to see things in the Loch, and some of the witnesses are, to me, certainly more impressive  than some of the standard photos. 

 
I'll break Loch Ness tradition by saying that I strongly prefer many of the witness reports (ex. the ones from the monks at the old monastery or some of what Alex Campbell reports or the witnesses that Ted Holiday audiotaped --- I had the privilege of listening to Holiday's old tape with several of them in the company of a good friend and Nessie enthusiast, Will Matthews) to other film classics even including Tim Dinsdale's black triangular hump-above-water filmstrip. In heresy, I am almost unmoved by the "film evidence" even including the flawed hi-tech sonar stuff. But the witnesses tell a very different tale. ... and I'm sold on them. 

 

 So, again in heresy, I find myself sitting in this boat with Ted Holiday and the priest who is trying to exorcise a local loch. As to exorcism for paranormal Orms, I don't know about that. But the paranormal part seems ringing true here ... even more so than in the oceans or the Vancouver Strait of the Wasgo-Sisiutl.

On the right is a page of one of the rarest books in the world. Sorry for the quality of viewing but we can't have everything from a book of only two known copies. (The book was "discovered" by some great detective work and industry by Theo Paijmanns.) 

One of its few chapters describes local (north Scotland) interactions of folks with their lake monster, The Mhorag. Here is an old group of stories about a Nessie cousin. These stories indicate a beast well known to people, but one which is clearly paranormal. Mhorag is a ragingly dynamic "Kelpie." Not a biological specimen. 

If we cross the world, we find these things all over --- and all over in impossibly small bodies of water. But we moderns continue the dance of trying to believe that these are textbook physical. Thankfully I am not an honorable member of the crypto-tribe. That allows me to step back a bit and say: Stop the absurd Dance of rationalization. The academics are never going to buy any of this anyway, so give it up. 

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Mermaids: everyone's favorite cryptid.

I'm going to be brief with this segment and then skip until the next post (as we're getting long today.) I gave this one an honest try also. 

This topic is not rich in data. Although there were 119 claimed incidents that I was able to dig out and log (the blog posts on the four main entries are from 2015, with two earlier ones from 2011 and 2013, and a scatter of comment inter alia), the quality of those reports was nowhere near that of the sea serpent or lake monster narratives. As usual, no legitimate carcass cases --- I am sort of relieved about that given "who" we're talking about here. More sadly, in my opinion VERY poor credibility in the narratives or very poor detail. I've forgotten the 19th century folklore collector who I'm about to quote, but he, operating along the western shores of Britain said: you can get a tale about mermaids almost anywhere, and none of them is like another. I am not sure that I'd go that far, but there are very few close encounters which are also attested to by credible reporters, and whose story has some reasonable second party to report and attest to anything about the case. 

I can say to you that if you want to make money, mermaids are probably the way to go --- the relevant posts have created more old consistent traffic here than any other topic. People like mermaids whether they ever existed or not. For me, maybe they exist, but if so are with absolute certainty paranormal --- the impossible evolutionary biology gets you that conclusion without going any further. (This is not the "land half joined to a water half", it's that the joining halves bear no physical sign of any historical relationship to one another.) 

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So, for the water entities: 

A. Giant Squid and maybe Giant Octopi? Yeh sure, put them in the bio-texts.

B. Ocean and Lake Orms? Nope. Over-sized "kelpies" it is.

C. Merpeople? I have no clue. For hypothetical consistency, I'd rather go with anthropomorphic Naiads for candidates for Faery denizens but I have essentially zero encounter claims for those. 

What about "Hairy wildmen"? What about Saurians or Too-Big Flyers ... and What All? 

I'll try a bit more next time. This is the 50th consecutive post on my exploration of this Faery topic. Although I'm still "in the Woods", I at least can claim to have earned my foggy opinions.

... and a sudden fog came down, and there ahead was a lantern light beckoning. Should we follow? ..........  off in the distance, the sounds of children giggling.

DOWN IN THE CRYPTO-DUMPS, part 2: Lost at Sea

Here's a second pass at the Crypto-dump-box pile: Sea Monsters. {I was too lazy to make a "cases grid" this time, and the structure of this part didn't lend itself as well to a list, so let's just "dive in".} 

THE GOOD OLD DAYS.

This is Olaus Magnus' great old 16th century map. As we know it's full of sea monsters, and I can't help liking it. Our old cartographer, who was really a Catholic Archbishop, claimed encounter information existed for all of these things. 

He wasn't alone. Above are the monsters from Sebastian Munster's book published in Germany {to be} in 1598. It's a delightful crew. A and B are mountain-sized whales and Physeters, as described by our favorite ancient cryptozoologist, Pliny. Sea serpents and pretty ugly critters abound. The bird-headed thing is a Ziphius. The bottom giant is another superwhale. A nice little trading run in the seas of Norway was a walk {swim} through a meaner Jurassic Park. 

Modern cryptozoologists tend to give the sea serpent the most attention [this is one of Olaus'], and they are not alone --- so, apparently did the "older folks". Magnus said this about them:

"Those who sail up along the coast of Norway to trade or fish, all tell the remarkable story of how a serpent of fearsome size, 200 feet long and 20 feet wide, resides in rifts and caves outside Bergen. On bright summer nights this serpent leaves the caves to eat calves, lambs, and pigs, or it fares out to sea and feeds on sea nettles,crabs, and similar marine animals. It has ell-long hair hanging from its neck {an ell is almost four feet long}, sharp black scales and flaming red eyes. It attacks vessels, grabs and swallows people, as it lifts itself up like a column from the water."

I can't help but wonder how our good bishop got that information, as he certainly seems to believe it. 

My personal puzzlement about these claims in this geographic area is further complicated by claims by two more priestly fellows {frequent readers know that I am a Catholic, and tend to have a bias to witnesses "of the cloth" --- well, at least I'm honest about it.} 

The above are two renditions of the famous sea serpent of Hans Egede [semi-legendary missionary to Greenland], and based upon Egede's description and a sketch by a traveling companion, Pastor Bing. Egede says:

".... that most dreadful Monster that showed itself upon the surface of the water in the year 1734, off our New Colony in 64 degrees, this Monster was of so huge a size that coming out of the water its head reached as high as the Mast-head; its body was as bulky as the Ship, and three or four times as long. It had a long pointed snout, and spouted like a whale-fish; great broad paws, and the body seemed covered with shell-work, its skin very rugged and uneven. The underpart of its body was shaped like an enormous huge Serpent, and when it dived again under water, it plunged backwards into the sea, and so raised its tail aloft, which seemed a whole ship's distant from the bulkiest part of the body." 

That re-telling leaves me torn by two images: a large elongated serpentine critter, and the totally different "leaving the area" behavior of a cavorting humpbacked whale. {recall the famous Prudential  commercial}. I know that humpbacked whales cannot be used as answers to the serpentine aspects of the tale, but if our good missionary had only described the "leaving", then that would have been sufficient. 

In the 1700s another sea monster commentator again zero'd in on the Norwegian Sea Serpent, with a firm piece of artwork declaring it a very big snake-like thing indeed. From the Middle Ages to the 18th century then, interested parties seemed to converge on the idea that the Norwegian Sea Monster was a big Serpentine thing, and was real. 

In 1845 this thing was reported again. This time it was a long serpentine entity [greater than 40 feet in length] with two forward flippers and none behind [note that this is characteristic of a primitive whale "zeuglodont".] It undulated like a snake [a Zeuglodont would not do that, as that is reptilian, not sea mammalian, motion]. The skull was domed and had a sharp snout. It was dark brown. No "mane" was noticed.

Again in 1847 it appeared. This was another elongated serpentine creature, over thirty feet long. Its body was about two feet in diameter and it had big five inch diameter red "sparkling" eyes. There was a mahogany-colored mane which was similar in color to the skin on the head [body color not described]. Again the swimming motion was described as undulating. 

The writer who brought these to the attention of the English public, Henry Lee, a London fisheries expert, believed that the reporters of the first case meant that the motion, while snakelike in its curves, was actually up-and-down wavelike --- leaving the door open that both were mammals. 

But then he went All-Calamari on us and suggested that the real nature of these beasts was that they were partial seeings of Giant Squids. Well, full marks for novel thinking, but, as so often happens, this seems to violate the witness testimonies, especially those witnesses who say that they clearly saw the head and eyes. {How DO theorizers simply disregard things like that?} 

I have another [very small potatoes admittedly] reason for rejecting the theory of Lee. When I was doing my research on the PNW sea serpent [Wasgo/ Sisiutl] of the Haida, Tlingit, Kwakiutl peoples, I came across an artifact in a museum case [photographed above] labeled "sea serpent" or "sea monster", I forget now just which. It was rearing pretty much like Egede's Norwegian monster. "My" Sisiutl turned out to be far more like a primitive elongated whale/zeuglodont than other candidates. 

Mid-1800s, an era of Sea Monster enthusiasm.

It seems that many people were fascinated by the idea of the sea monster in those days. Not only were they being reported, and Henry Lee writing and commenting, but the great pre-expressionist painter JW Turner began some never-finished paintings called "Sunrise and Sea Monsters." And over in the USA something weirder, well at least more spectacular was happening. 

The Director of the St.Louis Zoo "discovered", reconstituted, and exhibited the bones of the Thing Itself. A born showman, Albert Koch called it Hydrarchus, King of the Sea. So --- pretty much proves that the sea monster existed once, right? And with all the witness reports, it still must. 

 

Koch was more Barnum&Bailey than Baron Cuvier but he wasn't entirely an ignorant man, and he knew something about early palaeontology, but mainly he was an enthusiast who wanted to publicize wonders and make money for himself and the Zoo. He ended up creating such a sensation that he got invitations to pack Hydrarchus up and take it to other cities for exhibit.

Above is a letter from a Mr. Albee to his wife describing his trip to see Koch's monster. It reads:

"Though I found here well on towards an half a million of people I was never more alone {I think this fellow is in NYC}. .... I then went to the Apollo buildings where there is exhibiting the greatest wonder that naturalists have ever discovered. Dr. Koch calls it the Hydrargos. 

It is about 100 feet long, the bones are a good state of preservation. I here made the acquaintance of Dr. Koch of Dresden, of Prof. Silliman, Mr. Locke, the writer of the famous Moon Hoax and other scientific gentlemen ... I was perfectly delighted with the conversation and amply paid for all the attention I have devoted to Geology.

This monstrous skeleton was found in Alabama, everybody here who has seen it believes in the existence of the sea serpent." 

It turns out that they WERE looking at a sea monster, or rather, FIVE of them. Koch. not knowing what he was doing, and having a preconception of sea monster in mind, had tinkered pieces of five Basilosaurus skeletons together to make the beast. 

I leave this long [but to me anyway interesting] trip back into time at this point. For me, the Koch story was fun, but the intrigue is in the many straight-up sounding reports of the sea orms of Norway and elsewhere. Physically real? Candidates for Biology text books? Folkloric Entities of the Waters? Spirit Entities of the Ocean? As usual they seem real and not real at the same time. 

But on to a short series of "other deep water stuff" from this SITU crypto-dump.........

SOME THINGS WHICH IVAN WOULD HAVE READ

Some nice 1900s serpents.

... and some from the 40s {30s?} too. 

And two from FATE in the 60s.

Below: one that came to SITU after Ivan, but he probably knew about the claim.

In 1981, Gary Mangiacopra sent a news-article-type of possible publication to the SITU editorial board. Somehow it got lost in the correspondence confusion and [I'm almost certain] was never published in PURSUIT. {Gary has since published an expanded version two decades later}. He had uncovered a sea monster claim with a photo in a newspaper file from 1908 [San Francisco Examiner]. Because it seemed forgotten and it had a photo, he rightly considered it noteworthy. This photo was not a sharp photo as Gary was forced to take it from the paper page on which it was printed and under poor conditions, but one does what one can. The whole photo is above, and Gary made separate shots of the two sides of the paper, and sent the negatives to SITU to accompany a possible publication. The negatives, turned positive by me [except for one where I left both a negative and positive] are below. I've tried to clean them up and get as good a contrast as I could.

The Negative version above

Neither of the experts [one was the Smithsonian's George Zug, a pro-Nessie biologist] were impressed with the pictures. Zug told Mangiacopra that he thought the picture could be a fake of a relatively small object. When added to the non-facts about who took the picture and where, this case has been generally dismissed, and perhaps rightly so. 

My humble contribution here is probably valueless, but hope springs eternal. The article states that the picture was taken from the yacht Emerald, as if a reader should recognize that name. AND, if you were alive in 1908, you would. The schooner yacht Emerald, pictured above, was the most famous "Yankee" yacht in the world, and the pride and joy of the Eastern Yacht Club, sailing out of the Boston area. In 1908, the Emerald [owned by a guy named Clarke who was very famous at the time] was making voyages up and down the Eastern coast [racing or just showing off in yachting displays], and so the location of the picture-taking would likely be between Boston Harbor and either North to Maine or perhaps south towards NY. But near the coast. 

But the photographer remains mysterious. Undaunted by lack of evidence for my wild speculations, I offer the following weak sauce: 

The photographer is named in the article as "Professor Sharpe", also as if you should recognize the name. Much later in the 1930s another mention of this case occurred listing him as "BA Sharpe", despite there being no source or hint as to why the new initials. I'm going to disregard these added initials. Why? Well, it makes what I'm about to theorize make more sense, and I think that there's no evidence for "B.A." anyway. So with that B.S. on my part, who could a famous East-Coast Professor Sharpe be? 

Sadly, I can't find any. But I did find THIS guy: Professor Dallas Lore Sharp, Professor of English at Boston University and probably the most honored Nature Writer of his age. 

Hmmmm.... famous.... nature writer..... Boston area.... OH NO!! Wrong spelling!! {Could the news article have gotten it wrong?} 

Well, that's my baloney on this one. IF this picture was taken aboard Clarke's yacht on a Boston-to-Maine run with guest naturalist Dallas Sharp on board, well, THAT would put a rather different light on the credibility of this thing. I'll leave you with that romantic door ajar.

The Chesapeake Bay Sea Serpent. 1982 era.

 

                                                                                

This is the film frame shot by Frew:

and a later offering by Mike Frizzell of The Enigma Project:

Of course, like almost every cryptozoological picture, this doesn't have much stand-alone value. The Smithsonian could only say "animate but unidentifiable object". 

One last thing for today: 

Ivan had a Popular Science [October 1959] article in his files. I read it, and I liked three of the cases that I've indicated in red in the text. It's a small [5pp] article, so I'll leave it here for your perusal.

More than enough for now, eh? 

Hope that some of it was interesting. Next time maybe I can sort out the ABSM part of the Crypto-dump. Till then, Peace and Good Fortunes.