ardashir

Well, I was reading one of the books by that LeMay fellow, he of the 'Cowboys & Saurians' series, and he did raise an interesting point about some supposed 'dinosaur sightings' that he traced back to the original 1930s newspaper accounts. Some of the accounts were dated as late as the 1980's and 90's, occasionally with over a dozen witnesses.

They described what can only be called 5'-6' tall Tyrannosaurs, mostly seen in west Texas and Colorado, running at high rates of speed alongside roads or sometimes through the countryside. The thing is, they are described as running with their bodies held perpendicular to the ground, heads outstretched, and their tails sticking out behind. Which is how current scientific theory thinks dinosaurs ran. But at the time it was believed that dinosaurs walked upright and dragged their tails. If you've ever seen the 1933 King Kong or any stop-motion dinosaur movie by Ray Harryhausen, you know what I mean.

He argues this makes for a slightly greater chance of them being for real, while admitting it doesn't mean they are real. Simply because of all the traits for someone to give a 'dinosaur' back then, why would they choose one so at odds with the science?

He also lists a very bizarre account from 1907 of a 'hairy ceratosaurus' seen in the Yukon Territory, with sightings recorded for over 20 years. Again, he admits the severe unlikelihood of it all while pointing out that it was decades before anyone argued that some dinos might have been hairy.

A song I first heard years ago and still great, not least for the creepy tone to it. I still think it describes the foxwoman luring someone away into the forest where no one can hear as she devours her prey.

The song proper:

And the lyrics in English: https://lyricstranslate.com/en/r%C3%A4ven-fox-fox-woman.html

With some shared for those who don't want to chase after them:

Red lips hide your teeth and your tongue is so coarse Fire and frost are in your eyes are you a woman or a fox? Wild and sly you hunt in time of darkness long sleeves hide your claws with your prey you play your mouth is red with blood

You are wild and frighteningly beautiful skirt barely hides your tail Luring deeper into the woodlands with your mad wild animal's dance Just when your clothes fall and I see your naked frame you laugh and open your jaws and give me deep bites of love

Good work, isn't it? Makes me wish someone did a horror movie based on this.

A link to the information here. May it be helpful in removing these annoyances from DA.

There's been a lot of these scams in the past year or so, haven't there?

Oh yes, and here's the link, since I forgot to post it before:

Was reading up again on real-life monster stories. Especially the ones from the 70's that ended in 'monster hunts' with dozen to hundreds of people swarming the nearby wilderness, guns and hunters both well loaded and looking to blast the first 'monster' they saw. Places as wide apart as Bladenboro, NC; Louisiana, MO; Fontana, CA; and Fouke, AR, ended up playing unwilling host to literally hundreds of men out for the 'monster'. In many cases the temporary population of monster hunters and reporters was literally bigger than the town's normal population -- the 1957 hunt for the Beast of Bladenboro lead to a town of 700-800 people getting invaded by 1,200 would-be monster hunters.

Rewards were also often offered -- a Texas oilman supposedly put up a $5 million reward for the Fouke Monster, alive, and $1 million for it dead. The woods around Fouke were soon echoing to the sound of gunfire all night long, and the local sheriff had to deal with enraged local farmers who came in to complain about their animals being shot dead.

Still for all of these hunts only one ever ended with a person getting shot. And it happened in my state of Pennsylvania in 1945 when local boys tried to hunt the Pottstown Screamer.

The Screamer itself was never identified. It was seen around Sheep Hill, screaming like a woman being murdered, killing local pets and small livestock, and taking 20-foot leaps. Fear began to spread over when the Screamer would decide to start eating people. This being 1945, the very tail end of WW2, most of the local men were off serving overseas, so when a posse was assembled to deal with the Screamer, it was mostly excited teenage boys with hunting rifles and shotguns who showed up. A few local police tried to keep things under control, not very successfully.

The hunt started out in the morning and went into the night, which is when trouble started. A young man, one of the few not out monster hunting, was driving along in the old family car with his girlfriend looking for a place to stop and get better acquainted. Unfortunately for them, they drove down a country lane that had a small group of jumpy and trigger-happy monster hunters laying in wait. They swore later that they thought the glowing headlights and sound of the car were the Screamer coming for them, so they cut loose, hoping to hear the monster's agonized screams. They did indeed hear some angry screams -- both the young swain and his girlfriend were hit, and they jumped out of the car to curse out the hunters. They weren't hurt badly. They got some treatment at a local doctor's and left to return home afterwards. The Screamer left too, not to be seen again until 1973 when the whole state went crazy over the 70's UFO-hairy biped flap that lasted for several years. That time, however, nobody got shot.

I was reading a book of mine about giant snake stories/sightings in the US, and it went into detail about hoaxes, intentional and otherwise.

The best was a story told by a brother and sister about the prank they pulled on their father as kids back in the 1920s or so. They lived on a farm surrounded by watermelon patches, and one dry dusty summer day they took a large melon on a long vine and dragged it down the road behind them, leaving a broad trail in the dirt. They then hid the melon and told their father to "Come and see this." The intention was to rattle him and then tell him how they did it so they could all have a laugh.

Instead their father took one look, his eyes bugged out, and he ordered the kids to stay on the porch as he ran back inside the house. They watched silently as he returned, shotgun in hand. He jumped into the old truck they owned and raced off for town. Still bored and wondering how this was all going to end, the kids waited on the porch.

About an hour later, Dad came back. Half the county seemed to be with him. Farmers in pickup trucks, town laborers piled on cars, the local sheriff and his deputies, even the town mayor and banker and lawyer in a big fancy car, and all of them packing weapons ranging from shotguns to pistols to axes and clubs. Everyone was talking and they were obviously all very frightened and angry. The kids went from delighted to worried. This seemed to be getting out of hand. The little sister asked her brother if they should admit to making the track. He told her it might not be very smart.

Their father ordered the kids to stay on the porch, while the mayor harangued the crowd about how it was their duty to track down the monster serpent that left the track in the dirt before it ate half the county. The trail lead off to a nearby swamp so the posse headed that way, looking very grim and determined. The two children went back into their house and waited quietly, agreeing to keep quiet about their part in all of this.

They recalled later that their father and the other men returned hours later after sunset. They were filthy and sweaty and stank to high heaven from the swamp muck. The mayor got most of them to agree to keep searching tomorrow. The snake hunt went on for a week before everyone gave up.

Years later, the grown kids said, they told their father what had really happened that day. He wasn't pleased but they remembered thinking it was pretty funny once they didn't have to worry about a sound spanking over it. They never tested their luck that way again, though.