The following reader submissions relate to encounters with strange animals...possibly cryptids or other beings:
STALKED IN ARIZONA
Hi - I was wondering if you could give me your thoughts? My fiancee and I live in the mountains of Arizona and we went night fishing at an old fish hatchery, now privately owned ponds, tonight. We were there for a couple of minutes when we started to hear something rustling around at the pond next to us. At first I thought it was just an elk (we'd been there a couple of days before and there were tracks in the mud on the shore) but my fiancee was worried that it might be something else so he made a fire to try and scare it away. After a while the rustling stopped and we relaxed.
Not long later we heard a huge splash from the other pond. We thought that maybe a mountain lion or bear had jumped in trying to get some of the fish, as unrealistic as that seemed, but we never heard any more splashing and it was very unlikely that there was a fish the size of a full grown man in the pond next door. We didn't hear anything after that for a long time until suddenly there was another huge splash in our pond, but I couldn't see where it had come from or what had made it.
I was starting to get creeped out and the fire was dying out and I wanted to leave but my fiancee wanted to stay and fish some more. We could hear some more rustling in the reeds near us and suddenly my fiancee just started packing things up and dousing the fire and told me that he was ready to leave. We had left the car up by the highway by the gate and walked all the way down the dirt road, through the meadow, and past some other ponds to get to where we were fishing...so we still had a ways to walk before we would hop the fence and be back at the car. Every couple of seconds he would look behind us and then start walking faster. He told me that he thought there was a bear by the ponds and kept looking back and getting more panicked and walking faster. I was too chicken to look back at what he was obviously looking for.
By the time we were almost back to the car I was practically jogging to keep up with him and he was making comments like "once we get over the gate we'll be fine." When we finally did make it to the car he kept looking back over the meadow and acting antsy until we were driving back home. When I asked him if he'd seen the bear he replied "I don't know what that was, but it wasn't a bear." He proceeded to tell me about the animal he'd seen and that had looked right at him while he stood on the edge of the pond. He described it as being as big as a bear, but looking like a half dog, half crocodile mutation of some kind. He said it looked scaly and that they had looked at each other right at the same moment and the creature had almost all black eyes. He also said that he felt like he was being studied by it, like it was very very smart.
We were a little ways away from the ponds when he started looking back and walking faster. He said that first he saw the thing sitting on the top of the hill by the pond looking at us. This freaked him out so he started walking faster. When he looked again it had come down the hill and was still looking at us, making him walk even faster and tell me the bogus lie about the bear (he knew very well what a chicken I am and that I wouldn't look back). When he looked again, it was in the field, still far away, but still following us. The next time he said it was on the road behind us, walking like a cat does when stalking it's prey. This was when he started making comments about getting over the gate and freaking out over the lantern because it was starting to dim (he's a scout and I guess the theory is that if you have light with you it will keep most everything away).
I've never seen him so freaked out before and I didn't know if I should think that he was just seeing things? But he swears up and down that he saw whatever it was. So we came home and looked up "giant alligator dog sightings" and came across the Doyarchu. The descriptions of it sound amazingly accurate to what he told me on the drive home and we kinda freaked ourselves out wondering if the second splash in our pond would have been it's mate. I do believe that he saw something tonight, he's also sworn that he's never going back out there again.
After my parents laughed at us they suggested that we go back in the morning and look for tracks, but he flat out told me no! I know that this probably sounds like just a crazy story, doyarchus are supposedly mythical creatures from Ireland, as I understand it. I just don't know how to explain what he swears he saw and felt like was going to eat us. MN
NOTE: Here's a piece I posted earlier - The Irish Crocodile. Lon
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FLYING RAY-SHAPED BEING - CHARLOTTE, NC
Lon - One evening in 2010 around dusk, with a fair amount of twilight still in the sky, I stood out in my well-lit driveway waiting to be picked up to go eat dinner. As I stood looking around, watching the sky as airplanes flew in and out of the Charlotte, NC airport (30ish miles away), something caught my eye that was much, much lower in the sky than the airplanes I had been watching. Flying directly over my head, was a translucent/transparent manta-ray shaped figure whose speed and size would suggest an extremely low altitude, maybe a little higher than a telephone pole, and maybe an 8ft wingspan. This manta-ray flew and moved in a fashion that suggested to me that it was a living creature as opposed to an aircraft. I could see directly through it but was easily able to see its shape/figure. I watched it fly directly overhead in a straight path for maybe 10 seconds, then it completely disappeared, long before it flew out of sight.
I was very shocked to find other eye-witness accounts of this creature on your site, matching what I saw down to every little detail. What are these things?
Truly an incredibly surreal experience. SS
NOTE: "What are these things?" I ask that same question everyday...and the sightings continue. Lon
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BIG BLACK BIRDS
Lon - I used to live ten miles North of Lake Geneva in the East Troy WI area, and I investigated several reports of UFOs sailing over the rolling farmland and hovering low enough overhead to "hit with a rock", but never ran into any BigBlackBird (BBB) reports there.
However, my brother has had several strange encounters with weird things near his home in Providence, R.I., and one event that affected him the most was a sighting of two giant birds during a dawn fishing trip in Providence's famed Roger Williams Park.
As he was approaching one of the Park's larger interconnected lakes, walking across a tree-studded lawn surrounding a marble music temple, a pair of huge black "crows", with bodies as large as VW bugs, came swooping out of the early morning lake mist, flapping their enormous wings slowly as they swept between the treetops, curving past him thru the swirling fog, then twisting between the large shoreline oaks' intertwining branches and vanishing out over the lake!
They made no sound except the soft whoosh of air over their beating wings; their feathers were jet black, as were what he could see of their eyes; there was no odor. He froze in place as the apparitions flew past, then he rushed down thru the trees to the water's edge and scanned the lake's surface, but the creatures were nowhere to be seen, and never seen there again.
There are many other reports of paranormal activities in and around that Park over the years, including several experienced by my brother. - Wayne
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VANISHING HOMINID
Sir - About three years ago, I had a strange encounter in the length of woods that borders my house. It was winter and I was on one of my routine hikes with my brother. We would periodically stop and rest, listening to the sounds of the forest. We were climbing a steep hill and having a hell of a time with it. Our march was halted when I stepped in a pothole and when I finally dragged my foot out we decided to take a breather. That's when I saw it. We were just standing there, making small talk, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a figure. I turned and saw a large, lanky creature watching us from atop a hill. The very instant my gaze fixed on it, it began to barrel down the hill at us. I tried to run or even alert my brother, but I couldn't move. I was paralyzed with fear.
I heard my brother asked "what's the matter?"...but I couldn't tell him because I didn't know. I didn't know what I was looking at. I was finally able to break my paralysis and was about to tell him what was happening and then it was gone. Just POOF! Like smoke in the wind. Needless to say I hauled ass out of there. If I was to describe the thing I would say that it was at least 6'1 with some of the longest hair I've ever seen. It had a slim build and was completely nude. It's body was pale with a large patch of hair on it's chest. I never caught sight of it's face or any reproductive parts, but I have the feeling it was male.
Every time I look back on it and try to analyze what it might have been I always come up short. I can't come up with a believable or concrete explanation. I sometimes doubt I saw anything at all. Granted this is not the first strange experience I've had in those woods. The disembodied baby's cry comes to mind. CB (Tennessee)
NOTE: Was it a flesh & blood hominid, an apparition or possibly a miltidimensional being...or maybe something completely different? Not long ago, I received another interesting, but very brief account from a reader in Pennsylvania. She states that she witnessed what looked like a feral human while in vicinity of Tiadaghton State Forest in Lycoming County during the late 1970's. This being was described as only 4 ft. tall with reddish hair all over the body, though sparse on the chest where she noticed what she thought were breasts. The facial features were human in all respects. This hominid stood for a few seconds, made no sound, turned to it's left, took a step and faded away...as if it was walking through a wall of water. The email didn't go into much more detail but she did state that the area did have 'old ghost towns' in it...Lon
Phantoms & Monsters: Cryptid Encounters
The Official Cryptid Field Guide (Secret Saturdays (Unnumbered))
Werewolves: Mysteries, Legends, and Unexplained Phenomena
Encounters: With the Strange and Unexplained
