mythical creatures bestiary

empty mirror

empty mirror

remember the jackalope
the jackalope is an american phenomenon, i think. are any non-US-based dissensians familiar? a rabbit with a rack of horns, essentially. not sure about its origins, but it is a popular legend in the american south. and west. american southwest. from a postcard on my desk:

The Western Jackalope: Among the rarest of the hunter's trophies is the timid jackalope. The nocturnal antlered, long-eared mammal has keen senses of hearing and smell and is said to be attracted to alcohol...

yeah, and there's the loch ness, as documented in that flick "the incident at loch ness".
;)


and of course, sasquatch:
bigfoot.gif


and so wildly popular in philosophy departments, the flying spaghetti monster, and the invisible pink unicorn:
800pxtouchedbyhisnoodlyg.jpg





what else is (or isn't) out there?
 
STN

STN

sou'wester
I'm a big fan of kelpies. If I was in a postrock band it would be called kelpie. I also like pookas, redcaps, kappas and cobbolds. Harpies are okay, but I'm not keen on manticores or basilisks. I think a basilisk the same as a cockatrice. I also like inkwell monkeys and any unconvincing were-beast (parrots, fishes, grasshoppers).
 
CHAOTROPIC

CHAOTROPIC

on account
My favourite cryptid (mystery animal) is definitely the Dobhar Chu, the irish Master Otter. Supposed to be a huge vicious white otter with (usually) a black cross on its chest. No modern sightings, unfortunately.

The Tatzelwurm from Switzerland is also ace, being a long dragonlike reptile with two legs & the face of a cat.

& don't forget the electrified, venom-spitting Mongolian Death Worm, which I spent a month in Mongolia looking for in 2005 & singularly failed to find (probably quite lucky really)...
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
This book is one of the funniest and most delightful things I have ever read. A perfect birthday present, radically different from the usual coffee table book nonsense.
 
D

D84

Well-known member
Giants

Cool links! The Ceiling Cat made me laugh and the Mongolian Death Worm is definitely one for future boredom killing "research".

I have just been doing some of the latter and stumbled on this guy's nutty but fascinating site promoting his book about Giants

Unfortunately the first chapter provided doesn't say much about his thesis (I skimmed it) but he does include samples of quotes that he seems to have used and a page of sample illustrations he's used such as his own rendering of a Special Forces soldier's encounter with a troll.

There must be a story behind that last picture because the blog post that put me on this guy included this picture which has to be related:

nephilim320.jpg


If anyone else knows or can find anything about this story please let me know because my brain is about to explode... :)

There's also a page of articles including one by a Boyd Rice which gives a list of all the mythical giants and their stories noting their similarities as well as a list of archaelogical evidence of giants taken from this book..
 
empty mirror

empty mirror

remember the jackalope
ah on my coffee table there is Albertus Seba's The Cabinet of Natural Curiosities----ostensibly a science book undertaking the taxonomy of earth's fauna but somehow most of the animals are strangely anthropomorphized, as if drawn from memory or based on verbal description only. and yeah, some creatures of lore managed to scuttle their way into the pages, such as the hydra:
seba8-thumb.jpg

"The hydra is of a bay colour, which seems to have an ash-grey shading. The back is uneven and bumpy, and one can see on each side six thick welts, oblong and hard as horn, under which are set seven other tubercules of the same nature but round… There is not a single scale on the skin of the main trunk, nor on the seven heads, but it has a marbled colour approaching chestnut. The seven heads are banded in the front section, like transverse rings. All the seven mouths are open equally wide and lined with lion’s teeth. The long tail is completely covered in rhomboid scales. Each foot terminates in toes that are armed with long, sharp claws."
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
whatever made that bloop sound needs to just swallow up the CCP in one go and we'll be like "well thats that."
 
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