Why is this important?

Well, it turns out that ol’ Lykaon grew up just a mere 30 miles from Stephenville. Whatever those folks saw may have well been visible to my hometown and all of its residents.

The original article on the sitings was posted up on January 17, 2008 and told of the accounts. At the time, the Air Force denied having any aircraft in the area, fueling speculation that the townfolk really did see a UFO.

This morning, however, the Air Force has backpedaled into this statement:

In the interest of public awareness, Air Force Reserve Command Public Affairs realized an error was made regarding the reported training activity of military aircraft.

So, now the Air Force is saying that they did in fact have aircraft flying over Stephenville in the form of a number of F-16s.

I’m not going to jump on a conspiracy band wagon here and say the Air Force is trying to cover something up.

I’ve had enough experience to know that, more than likely, they really did just fudge it up and fail to realize that they had multi-million dollar fighter jets flying around.

The problem, of course, is that this is how UFO conspiracy theories are born. The Air Force failing to check its facts will cause decades of UFO talk in Stephenville, ultimately hurting the credibility of the US Government (and probably Stephenville as well).

It’s sad that they couldn’t have been a little more thorough when releasing their first statement.

Or maybe it really was a UFO cover-up…

It’s not that I’m completely unwilling to believe in UFOs and Ghosts, but I require some evidence that can’t be explained away with science.

One of the more recent and interesting scientific explanations for a paranormal encounter is the idea that sleep paralysis is responsible for people believing they have been abducted by aliens.

When your body enters REM sleep, it ‘paralyzes’ your muscles so you don’t get out of bed and try to live through your dreams, ultimately hurting yourself or others. It’s a defense mechanism that is incredibly important.

Occasionally, however, it can happen that your mind awakes from REM but your body doesn’t wake up with it. This leaves your body in this funky state where you’re completely aware but cannot move your body.

This can be slightly terrifying to say the least, but it gets worse with a high chance of hallucination occurring during this time as well. Many people who experience sleep paralysis report seeing strange things in the room with them, and more commonly, figures around the bed.

Another common theme of the hallucinations is the feeling that something is weighing on you, such as someone sitting on your feet or chest.

Since the hallucinations are usually unreasonable and unearthly, most people report bouts of sleep paralysis as a dream, easily chalking up their visions to an overactive dreamstate.

A common theme in alien abductions is waking to aliens standing near your bed and being unable to move, followed by being taken to an alien ship.

Sounds an awful lot like sleep paralysis to me, and so far is one of the most interesting theories for such a widespread phenomenon that I’ve heard.

To my delight, I believe I encountered sleep paralysis last night (or I was abducted by aliens).

I was dreaming about being on vacation at a lakehouse that I’ve never seen before. On the lake there were two piers. I was on one with my wife, and some friends of ours were on the other.

We were yelling across the water at each other, waving and having fun, when a UFO popped out of the water on the other pier and started flying circles around our friends. I had a camera with me and tried to snap a photo when the other pier collapsed, our friends falling into the water.

I awoke, a bit winded and scared. My cats were sleeping on my feet (as they are prone to do). I couldn’t move, and I remember thinking how heavy the cats seemed and how strange it was that their weight was preventing me from moving.

Then I saw someone standing in the doorway of our bedroom. Just a shadowy figure. I couldn’t tell you if it was human or not. I could really only see it out of the bottom of my eyes since I was laying down.

Strangely, I wasn’t scared. I felt one of the cats methodically bathing himself. I thought to myself, “Ok, Lykaon, if there was someone in the bedroom with you, the cats wouldn’t just be bathing themselves. They’d be freaked out.”

I looked again and the figure was gone, and I drifted back to sleep.

I’m not sure how awake I ever really was. The fact that the figure in my doorway didn’t really scare me is a bit odd. I hope I don’t react that way if someone ever really is in my bedroom!

I also now question whether my cats were really on my feet at all. Since one of the symptoms of sleep paralysis can be the feeling of something on your feet, I wonder if I just assumed it was my cats. It was certainly too dark to see.

I’ll never know for sure if I experienced true sleep paralysis, but it was a delightful experience nonetheless, and not nearly as frightening as I would have imagined.

I don’t know how I missed it, but I didn’t know a lick about Orang Pendek until my TiVo did me the service of taping an episode of “National Geographic’s Is It Real?” all about the little fella.

In the remote jungles of Sumatra, there is a legend of a bipedal ape-like creature that has been roaming the area for centuries.

The farmers of the land seem to treat it as if there is no myth whatsoever, but science has yet to capture or otherwise prove its existence.

The locals call it Orang Pendek which reportedly means “short person” in Indonesian.

My first thought when starting the episode was “Oh great, another bigfoot. Woohoo.” It seems like every area has their own bigfoot and all of the stories always seem the same.

Orang Pendek is no bigfoot, though. Orang Pendek is tiny — reportedly never more than 3 or 4 foot tall. He’s covered in fur, and has been known to rummage through and steal the crops of the local farmers.

There have been a number of expeditions to try to recover the creature, but other than a few compelling eye-witness accounts there has been no body or even photographic evidence of the creature.

What has been found, however, is a few tracks and a few hairs. The hairs were sent in for DNA analysis but only returned human DNA.

My first thought was that it was because it was human hair, but the scientist conducting the tests warned that it could be from improper handling of the hairs.

The tracks are odd things, too. The big toe is off to the side of the foot, instead of pointing forward like in humans. This is interesting, since it would be bipedal motion that isn’t quite like our own.

National Geographic is funding a study for which they have placed numerous cameras around the Sumatran jungle that will take pictures of any animals that walk by. Only time will tell if they catch the elusive Orang Pendek on film.

Give up?

The answer is a new comic by Image Comics called Proof.

Apparently this new comic is going to detail the exploits of a duo of cryptid hunters as they traipse around the globe searching for cryptids for an undisclosed government agency.

The first story arc is reportedly going to be called ‘Goatsucker’ and we can all guess what that’s going to be about.

But wait — there’s a twist. It turns out that one of agents, John “Proof” Prufrock, is a little bit odd.

So odd, in fact, that he’s not even human. He’s Bigfoot himself.

The driving motivator for the main hero is to discover other hairy bipeds out there that may be related to him.

It sounds like the premise for the comic is pretty solid, but the article linked above mentions all of the cryptids they’ll be running into in the first six issues and I seriously worry that they may run out of cryptids way too fast.

There are a lot of alleged cryptids in the world, but if they hit all of the major ones too early, they’ll have to fall back to the really boring, rare, or unlikely ones and that won’t be any fun for anyone.

But if you’re into comics and you’re into cryptids, this is going to be the book for you. I’ve been out of the comics loop for a while, but maybe this is a reason to get back in.

I gotta post about something on Fridays, though, and I think it’s safe to assume that there isn’t 100% overlap with our respective readerships.

So basically there’s a lady in Texas who has found herself a Chupacabras — as roadkill no less.

Being a smart one, she’s preserved the specimen and it can be viewed in its horrifying detail through a number of photos.

Take a look at the picture on the right here and you’ll see that there is little resemblance.

The creature that Ms. Canion has on her hands looks an awful lot like a dog to me (or at least some member of the family Canidae).

At any rate it seems to be an odd breed of dog. A lot of folks seem to be pointing towards the Mexican Hairless Dog as the culprit, but it is also pointed out that this breed of dog is exceptionally rare and wouldn’t be expected to just be found as roadkill in the middle of Texas.

Stranger things have happened.

It remains to be seen whether DNA testing will be done on the specimen. I hope that it is because it’s always nice to end these things definitively.

Whether it’s a new breed of dog or some coyote with mange, it’s just not freaky enough to be a Chupacabras in my opinion.

I’m gonna hold my breath for a sexier specimen somewhere down the road.

(Look Loren, I learned to spell it right!)

The cats are an amazing species of animal. They are the epitome of the natural hunting machine and they’re one of the most adaptable species on the planet.

There are cats that live in mountains, deserts, jungles, tundra, and plains. They range in size from that of the modern house cat to the huge tigers of Siberia.

Yet there are some places that cats don’t live. Or are there?

(Note that the picture below is not a picture of the Beast of Exmoor — it is a stock picture of a black panther)

The Beast of Exmoor is really no beast at all.

Although the name would have you believe it was a hulking monster from the annals of the Brothers Grimm, the Beast of Exmoor is actually more commonly described as a puma or panther.

This fascinating cryptid has been reported since the 1970s in the areas of Somerset and Devon of the United Kingdom where there are no official populations of large cats. Numerous witnesses have claimed to see these cats in the area, with many farmers blaming them for a loss of livestock.

Largely, the UK government maintains that there is no Beast of Exmoor and any sightings are merely exaggerated reports of house cats or dogs.

There have been a few pictures that have shown up over the years but skeptics maintain that these pictures are of common house cats since there are no other objects in the picture to indicate the size of the animal being photgraphed.

Cats have definitely shown their ability to survive almost anywhere, however, so is it possible that a few escaped big cats could lead to a sustainable population in the hills of Exmoor?

Or is it a breeding population of big cats that have escaped human detection for centuries?

Until such an animal is captured or more accurately photographed there is nothing to do but speculate on what exactly the Beast of Exmoor is.

Somehow, that led my twisted mind to land on the Lake Worth Monster for Cryptid Corner this week.

Lake Worth is a Texas town about 10 miles from the Dallas/Forth Worth metroplex. It’s not really known for much, and I only encountered it when we played against them in Football.

In 1969, however, Lake Worth was put on the map for a rash of sightings of a creature not unlike Bigfoot. Initial reaction by law enforcement was that it was a hoax, but even they changed their mind after a particular sighting in which 30 people witnessed the creature.

The Lake Worth Monster sightings are very compressed in history, but I’ve always found the reports interesting in their detail.

For example, the Lake Worth Monster was reported to have hurled a spare tire some 500 feet towards curious onlookers. There are descriptions of his cry, reports of him breaking limbs off of trees, and even one report in which he jumped up onto the hood of a car.

Numerous tracks were found as well as many reports of hearing and smelling the creature around the area. In one incident, the creature was shot, leaving a blood trail that was followed for some time before yielding no monster.

Whatever this white bigfoot-like creature was, it seemed to disappear by 1970. Whether it died, moved on, or was killed by the gunshot wounds it received we may never know.

The Lake Worth Monster, however, has always been a story to me as to how close these cryptids can really be. My hometown is a mere hour’s drive from Lake Worth. So keep your eyes open — you never know when you’ll find a cryptid in your own backyard!

But I’ve been busy this week and don’t have anything better for you, so I’ll just post this picture. I know that makes the 3rd Friday in a row with no meaningful Cryptid posts, and I promise to do better. Honest!

Thanks to Hemisphire for the link.

The Ashburn Goatman is a cryptid that haunts only my dreams. My recent research of all things crypto have caused me to start inventing my own cryptids in my nightmares.

I’ve now had two dreams about the Ashburn Goatman, which as far as I can tell has never been reported.

Ashburn — a small Northern Virginia community — is about as void of wild animals as anywhere in the concrete metroplexes of the country.

Take that as a disclaimer: none of this is real. It’s just my cryptid charged imagination going into overdrive while I sleep.

As the story goes, my neighbor came over to tell us that she had seen something very strange. It was the size of a goat, with a goat body, but a centaur-like man half. In my dream, I was completely non-skeptical and hoped to see it for myself.

A few hours later (dream-time), one of my cats was meowing at the window. Curious, I looked out to see not only the Goatman, but a baby goatman as well. Although you would think the feeling would be one of awe, I remember feeling extremely creeped out and scared.

Despite my fear, I went outside with a camera to catch at least a photo of the Ashburn Goatman, only to have it run away before I could get its picture.

Then there was a rustle in a nearby bush. I could barely make out what appeared to be the baby. Upon closer inspection, however, it was merely a small baby deer who had hid in the bush (presumably to escape the Goatman).

Dream 2: The Ashburn Goatman had been spotted around Ashburn multiple times. Law enforcement had tried to catch it, and zoologist were en route to find it. It was in all the papers — a national event.

Although the Goatman had never harmed anyone, there was a state of fear surrounding my neighborhood. Children weren’t allowed to go outside. People rushed in from work and only went out in groups.

Weird dreams. I’m not a dream analysis expert, but certainly there is a part of me that longs to see something unexplained and abnormal like a cryptid or a UFO. Perhaps it is that desire that led to these strange dreams about the legendary Ashburn Goatman.

Not only does it have an awesome name, it also has an awesome M.O. It sucks the blood out of goats and other livestock. Now that’s just cool.

The interesting thing about the Chupacabras is that it’s an extremely new cryptid.

Unlike old standbys like Bigfoot and Nessie, the Chupacabras isn’t recorded in modern lore until the 1970s.

Originally, our little fanged friend was known as El Vampiro de Moca but after the phenomenon spread far and wide, it took on the name Chupacabras which literally means “goat sucker” “sucker of goats.”

Interestingly, the Chupacabras originated in Spanish speaking countries and stayed there for most of its sightings (and killings), but in the current decade it has been reported as far north as Maine in the US, and even as far away as Russia.

As recently as May 2007, there was a report of 300 dead sheep in Boyaca and sketchy rumors that a specimen of the culprit was captured and sent to Universidad Nacional of Colombia for further study.

For me, I think the biggest question of the Chupacabras phenomenon is what exactly is killing these animals?

Is it some sort of deranged behavior of a wild animal, or is it a more gruesome version of the crop circle hoaxes?

Whether the world ever identifies Chupacabras, I hope it lives on. It’s just too cool to disappear from human lore.

EDIT: Loren Coleman of cryptomundo.com has responded to correctly point out that the term “Chupacabra” to refer to this cryptid is technically incorrect. Instead, the correct spelling for even a singular creature would be “Chupacabras” which actually means “sucker of goats.”

Sorry for the mistake and thanks for the lesson! Seems like its a common mistake in the reporting of the Chupacabras.