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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Yeah ABCs are quite plausible because there's always some nutter who has been secretly keeping a tiger in his house for years without anyone knowing, like that guy in Harlem who went to hospital torn to shreds and tried to tell the staff he was mauled by a pit bull and they went "You think WE don't know exactly what pit bull bites look like, dumbass??" and tipped off the cops
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Oct 24, 2019 18:38
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I worked with someone whose family runs the official Bigfoot museum. She told me that it was a costume that they still keep hidden inside their home and it's been extremely profitable.
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Oct 25, 2019 00:20
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My uncle works at Nintendo too
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Oct 25, 2019 00:25
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As a kid I remember reading (or more accurately looking at the pictures) of my brother's Time Life Unexplained Mysteries (or something similarly titled) books. I remember being creeped out by the description of werewolves in France. Usually stories of the tales would go of some man in black giving some poor idiot a potion and that potion would turn the poor idiot into a murderous werewolf. I really was into werewolf stories so those stuck with me. Another one that stuck with me was the story of the Devil's footprints. How in a snowy town strange footprints appeared one day that were found on people's rooftops and all over the town. No-one really knows what left the footprints, but it could have been the devil (it wasn't)
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Oct 25, 2019 01:26
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Madkal posted:As a kid I remember reading (or more accurately looking at the pictures) of my brother's Time Life Unexplained Mysteries (or something similarly titled) books. I remember being creeped out by the description of werewolves in France. Usually stories of the tales would go of some man in black giving some poor idiot a potion and that potion would turn the poor idiot into a murderous werewolf. I really was into werewolf stories so those stuck with me. I just bought the complete set of these for my birthday! 
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Oct 25, 2019 03:18
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There's a healthy population of water deer living in the UK thanks to various escapees, and I'm surprised we don't get more reports from people freaking out about finding their teeth on the ground and mistaking them for a mysterious predator. We haven't had any large predators besides ourselves since like the 1800s, there's potential. 
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Oct 25, 2019 13:01
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Pyrotoad posted:There's a healthy population of water deer living in the UK thanks to various escapees, and I'm surprised we don't get more reports from people freaking out about finding their teeth on the ground and mistaking them for a mysterious predator. We haven't had any large predators besides ourselves since like the 1800s, there's potential. You know those parasites that you can get around cats, that tell you cats are good and safe and you should not worry about them? Yeah.
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Oct 25, 2019 14:53
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Pyrotoad posted:. We haven't had any large predators besides ourselves since like the 1800s, there's potential. Sounds like you should fix that. For funsies. I vote a bunch of you release canadian moose and Siberian tigers into the british wilds. Both for recreational hunting and to kill poor people, which are the favorite past times of rich brits everywhere.
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Oct 25, 2019 17:42
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value-brand cereal posted:Sounds like you should fix that. For funsies. I vote a bunch of you release canadian moose and Siberian tigers into the british wilds. Both for recreational hunting and to kill poor people, which are the favorite past times of rich brits everywhere. Nah, no non-(ex)natives thanks. However; wild wolves, lynx, bears, boars and bulls would all be good, and capable of loving up the unwary. Chuck in the eagle owl too.
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Oct 25, 2019 18:23
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Moose were native, though! Just, a while longer back than some of the other animals y'all killed off. I understand it like this: So in the parts of Europe that still have them, they're called "alg", which is cognate with "elk". Even its scientific name, Alces alces, preserves this. However, the European elk was extirpated on the British isles sometime in the bronze age. English colonists in North America knew of the word "elk", meaning roughly "huge fuckin deer", so when they met the giant-rear end deer also known locally as the wapiti, they called that an elk, because they didn't quite get what an elk actually was. Guess they didn't have any Norwegians with them. Then when someone ran into an even bigger "deer", this one with a distinctive floppy snout and palmate antlers, they adapted one of the local natives' name for it, "moose".
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Oct 26, 2019 14:43
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Yah, the Norwegians didn't come along in numbers until a couple centuries later. Meanwhile in Scandinavia we have our own cryptids and folklore creatures, not too dissimilar from ones found on the continent or in the British isles but not exactly the same either. Surviving legends of trolls, gnomes and sea serpents can to some degree be traced back all the way to pre-Christian mythology; in the present day they have been largely sanitized and made a lot cuter and more family-friendly than they used to be. Folk traditions die hard and slowly, lots of farmer families will still put out a bowl of porridge for the barn gnome (and if you don't, he will be offended and give your farm animals horrible fatal diseases -- well, few people actually believe that anymore, but they still put out the porridge).
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Oct 28, 2019 10:21
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Phy posted:Moose were native, though! Just, a while longer back than some of the other animals y'all killed off. Yeah, sorry - brainfart due to them being called elk in UK archaeology and thinking about historical extinctions (worked as mainly prehistoric archaeologist here). Would rather recreate the Irish Elk if it was possible. Go back further and we also had wolverines which could be fun (even further back and we had lions but they'd likely not like the current climate).
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Oct 28, 2019 13:24
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Speaking of extinct animals, I always enjoyed the theory that the Cyclops was based on fossil elephant skulls. Not saying it's true or anything but it's a fun theory. also someone hit a kangaroo with their car in Denmark this morning so the legend of the Danish roos lives on
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Oct 29, 2019 11:03
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Ralph Crammed In posted:The only thing I can think of that's 'new' is killer robot/AI, and that has already been done to death in the forty years or so we've had that as a concept.
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Oct 29, 2019 14:36
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Winklebottom posted:Speaking of extinct animals, I always enjoyed the theory that the Cyclops was based on fossil elephant skulls. Not saying it's true or anything but it's a fun theory.  I like this too, and am also pleased to find out someone made the "if elephants had no trunks or ears" comic real 
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Oct 29, 2019 16:19
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I like the pictures of modern animals drawn like dinosaurs are typically drawn. They all look like emaciated hellbeasts with massive fangs.
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Oct 29, 2019 20:17
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Pvt.Scott posted:I like the pictures of modern animals drawn like dinosaurs are typically drawn. They all look like emaciated hellbeasts with massive fangs. Ah, the "shrinkwrapped lizard" vs "fatbirb" dichotomy
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Oct 29, 2019 21:52
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Winklebottom posted:Speaking of extinct animals, I always enjoyed the theory that the Cyclops was based on fossil elephant skulls. Not saying it's true or anything but it's a fun theory. Oh my goodness! Suddenly the Space Harrier mammoths make sense! 
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Oct 30, 2019 01:06
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Winklebottom posted:Speaking of extinct animals, I always enjoyed the theory that the Cyclops was based on fossil elephant skulls. Not saying it's true or anything but it's a fun theory. I wouldn't be surprised if it was true, it makes a lot of sense. It's also been theorized that protoceratops fossils inspired the griffin since it's a big four-legged beaked creature with elongated shoulder blades that may have been interpreted as part of wings. Griffins were even believed to have lived in Central Asia, where protoceratops fossils can be found. I've also always been really fond of the image on this ancient Greek pot: 
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Oct 30, 2019 01:16
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I don't remember seeing that particular one before, that's really cool. (even if it did put me on the road to re-reading the kind of pseudoscientific theorizing I would've accepted uncritically for all too long  )
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Oct 30, 2019 01:26
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PBS Eons just uploaded an episode about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do-ihwWeS3Y
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Oct 30, 2019 01:46
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Alright motherfuckers, let's get some African cryptids up in this poo poo. My favourite lesser-known beastie is the Grootslang  When the world was new and the Gods were still figuring poo poo out, they made a snake except hundreds of feet long, with an elephant's head, and filled with an unquenchable hunger and malice. It hosed up everything else in creation so much that they split snakes and elephants into two animals forever more. EXCEPT, one apparently survived, and lives in a cave in the Richtersveld along the South African/Namibian border. Occasionally, men go missing on the veld—it's strange, rugged, dotted with plants that seem to be transplants from another world entirely. Somewhere beneath the earth, an antediluvian evil lurks.
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Oct 30, 2019 11:54
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Winklebottom posted:Speaking of extinct animals, I always enjoyed the theory that the Cyclops was based on fossil elephant skulls. Not saying it's true or anything but it's a fun theory. This is an interesting example of a fossil being identified completely wrong... "These animals sported plates instead of spines on their back, which made it easy to identify their "tentacles" for what they truly were: legs. Conway-Morris had been looking at Hallucigenia upside-down the whole time." "One mystery remained, however. Which end housed Hallucigenia’s head? Conway-Morris figured it was the blob-like structure located at one end of the Burgess Shale fossil. But in 1992, Ramskold suggested that the blob might just be a stain that was made when Hallucigenia died" https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/24/8838169/hallucigenia-worm-fossil-nature-study-2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-Z9Ssgb0Kg&t=38s
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Oct 30, 2019 12:39
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Alright motherfuckers, let's get some African cryptids up in this poo poo. My favourite lesser-known beastie is the Grootslang
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Oct 30, 2019 17:30
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InediblePenguin posted:literally just "big snake" in Dutch lol I was going to say, kind of interesting that an African cryptid involving older gods and world creation and stuff would have an Afrikaaner name. Anyway, I would be really interested in learning more about African cryptids. The only one I know about is the tokolosh who were small imps or something, and they would either kill you in your sleep or take you away never to be seen again. The only way to stop them was to put bricks under your bed.
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Oct 30, 2019 20:21
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Madkal posted:I was going to say, kind of interesting that an African cryptid involving older gods and world creation and stuff would have an Afrikaaner name. A fairly well-known one is Mokele-mbembe in the Congo River Basin. Locals describes it as a huge water-dwelling spirit or creature. Around the early 1900's, European hunters and naturalists heard of it and concluded it was a dinosaur (there were many theories on living dinosaurs in Africa at the time), usually some form of sauropod.  There's been a lot of hunts for it over the years without any result. Creationists have been involved in many of the hunts as they feel that a living dinosaur would disprove evolution. A BBC team showed a local tribe an animal encyclopedia in the early 00's and they identified a rhino as the thing closest to Mokele-mbembe. Rhinos are quite uncommon in the area so the team theorized it might be a folk memory from when they were more common. Another theory revolves around it being a giant monitor lizard 
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Oct 30, 2019 22:42
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The locals could have been just loving with the outsiders too, thats not unheard of.
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Nov 8, 2019 14:05
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Dreadwroth2 posted:The locals could have been just loving with the outsiders too, thats not unheard of. If some idiot came to my town and wanted to pay me way more than I make at my dayjob to help them look for the Minnesota Corn Goblin or whatever, I would absolutely tell them that I saw it and then lead them through a series of mosquito infested fields to look. "Oh yah, my Uncle Ole saw it down here last week. He was comin' back from the church's annual meatball supper and the dang thing jumped out in front of his truck. Darn near made him have a heart attack donchaknow. Had two ears of corn in each hand and one more in his mouth. Now, I know what yet thinkin' and no, it wasn't the Tollefson boy from down the road. I know he hasn't been quite right since that pony kicked him in the face, but he only steals lawnmowers, and his parents feed him good, so he'd have no reason to steal no corn. Besides, Vern vouched that he'd been up in his room all night, and he's not exactly quick, what with how his balance is all off now, and that darned Goblin ran in a straight line faster than a four wheeler. Now, if we're gonna do this right my Uncle Ed, no he's not Ole's brother, he's on my mom's side, if we're gonna do this right, you should hire my Uncle Ed too, he's got a good pickup with a spotlight that he uses to go out shining deer and I bet with that you'd see that Goblin from a football field away. No he doesn't shoot the deer, he just looks at 'em. You ever been out shining? It's fun, my buddies and I are going out tonight, you should..."
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Nov 8, 2019 21:52
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You could probably make script off that parodying how GBS farted out Slenderman.
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Nov 8, 2019 22:36
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https://twitter.com/ScarredForLife2/status/1193270596676837380 sneaking looks at these was a formative part of my childhood, I'd completely forgotten about them but I want to pick up a new copy and be spooped all over again 
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Nov 9, 2019 22:00
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Captain Hygiene posted:
Oh yeah I totally had those as well. I suspect that UFO book was the one that had that one illustration that really creeped me out 
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Nov 10, 2019 12:20
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For me one of those books was Childcraft Encyclopedia’s 1986 annual Mysteries and Fantasies - the link has a few art examples but is sadly missing my favorite, an “ancient aliens” page where a fish man is talking to a Babylonian while they review architectural plans (I think, I could be mixing up details).
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Nov 11, 2019 13:39
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I own a copy of Everything Is Under Control: Conspiracies, Cults and Coverups, an insane encyclopedia of conspiracy theories, cryptids and a lot more. I can snap some pictures or transcribe entries if someone wants to see what the book has to say about a given topic. Keep in mind that the book was published in 1998, though.
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Nov 12, 2019 17:46
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Pvt.Scott posted:I own a copy of Everything Is Under Control: Conspiracies, Cults and Coverups, an insane encyclopedia of conspiracy theories, cryptids and a lot more. I can snap some pictures or transcribe entries if someone wants to see what the book has to say about a given topic. Keep in mind that the book was published in 1998, though. Tell me about either Atlantis or the CIA or Area 51, please!
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Nov 12, 2019 18:05
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StrixNebulosa posted:Area 51 Seconded on this one in particular 
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Nov 12, 2019 18:07
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StrixNebulosa posted:Tell me about either Atlantis or the CIA or Area 51, please! I will do so once I am home. It’s been years since I paged through the drat thing
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Nov 12, 2019 18:10
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Atlantis please!
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Nov 12, 2019 19:31
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I need you to crystallize that poo poo so I can freebase it
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Nov 17, 2019 18:17
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Captain Hygiene posted:Seconded on this one in particular Count me for wanting to see the Area 51 stuff too. Since I moved out to New Mexico from Chicago, I can definitely understand why people can believe they've seen weird poo poo in the skies and the like. Nothing's really built as high as some other cities like New York or Chicago so you definitely see much more of the sky, especially with the streetlights not being the high bright ones. Aircraft lights do look different high up without the usual environmental interference you see elsewhere. I've seen plenty of weird lights which are usually night training from the nearby airforce base. Sound also travels differently with not so much to bounce off of. For the longest time at my apartment complex, we'd hear this weird machine sound at odd hours when we'd have the windows open, turned out it was the boilers which are in an attached building just off the parking lot so the sound carried with not much interference.
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Nov 17, 2019 22:49
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M_Sinistrari posted:Sound also travels differently with not so much to bounce off of. For the longest time at my apartment complex, we'd hear this weird machine sound at odd hours when we'd have the windows open, turned out it was the boilers which are in an attached building just off the parking lot so the sound carried with not much interference. Oh yeah - I lived out in the country a couple miles from a river, and with the right weather conditions (especially at night) some of the engine noise from river barges would make it out to our place. But not the whole sound, mostly just the lower frequencies, so you'd get this weird low-pitched throbbing noise fading in and out with no really identifiable source or direction. Kinda spooky sometimes even knowing exactly what it was.
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Nov 17, 2019 23:59
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