FINDING THE FEATHERED LIONS OF LARRY HAGMAN – AGAIN!

 

Did American actor Larry Hagman see something like this during his 'trip'?

My memory has always been akin to an exceedingly eclectic but generally well-organised, well-maintained filing cabinet whose innumerable drawers contain all of the myriad facts that I've acquired throughout my life, including the 40 years that I've spent researching and writing about cryptids, mythological beasts, and fantastical fauna (flora too) of every imaginable, and unimaginable, kind. Occasionally, however, a fact file somehow becomes misplaced, misfiled, or just plain missing. And so it was with the slim but stimulating file of the feathered lions.

Quite a few years ago now, I distinctly remember reading about some celebrity's autobiography in which he'd referred in passing to some feathered lions – enough in itself to attract my attention and thereupon file away this intriguing snippet for some future use. As the years passed by, however, and it remained unused and unreturned to by me, its details began to fade from my mind. Still, not to worry, I thought, I have it filed safely away in my physical archives as well as in my cerebral ones – until, that is, the subject came to mind again earlier this week, prompting me to seek out the relevant information in my archives and write it up at long last for ShukerNature. But could I find it? Not a chance!

Moreover, by now no longer able even to recall who the celebrity was in whose autobiography these ethereal entities had appeared, there seemed no chance of tracking anything down (online searches drew a blank). So I finally abandoned the subject, and started looking up a totally different one instead – at which point the Library Angel, aka the Seraph of Serendipity, clearly took pity on me, as has happened so many times in the past, to my undying gratitude.

 

If such an exotic creature as a feathered lion existed, what a spectacular sight it would be!

Opening on my laptop a cryptozoology-themed folder of chronologically-arranged files consisting of reports, articles, and other info downloaded by me from the Net during the year 2016, I started looking for the file that I needed for my new investigation, but there were a very sizeable number of files in it, and I had no idea of the specific date on which I'd downloaded the file in question. So I automatically rearranged all of that folder's files into alphabetical order instead, by file title, hoping to spot the file quickly by way of its title's subject. The titles were organised into columns, and while casually casting my eyes across and down a few of these columns before beginning the full painstaking scrutiny of each file title in each column, my eyes alighted upon one particular file title, and opened wide as they did so – 'Larry Hagman sees feathered lions'! Of course – Larry Hagman! Even before opening the long-overlooked file, its title alone was sufficient to usher forth the basic information that it contained, but obviously I still opened it anyway. And here is what I read.

The relevant information had appeared in a posthumously-published newspaper article recalling some of the wild events from Hagman's life that he'd documented back in his 2001 autobiography Hello Darlin': Tall (and Absolutely True) Tales About My Life. Hagman had of course been an American actor best known for his role as astronaut Tony Nelson in the 1960s fantasy comedy TV show I Dream of Jeannie; and, above all else, for his globally-acclaimed tour de force as ultra-villainous oil baron J.R. Ewing in the glossy mega-successful American soap Dallas, originally running from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, then revived in various spin-offs that began a decade later.

 

A multicoloured monarch of all that he surveys!

The newspaper article had been published back in 2012 (thus explaining why I'd not thought to look for it in the 2016 folder, the reason why it was in there and not in the 2012 folder being that I'd only learnt about this article and downloaded it on 7 June 2016, but I'd long since forgotten that small yet crucial fact!), by London's Daily Mail, on, of all days, 9 December (my birthday!), which was just over a fortnight after Hagman had passed away, on 23 November 2012.

Anyway, reading through this article it transpired that some time prior to 2001, feeling very stressed after always having been a total workaholic and perfectionist had eventually taken a sizeable toll upon his emotional well-being (a situation exacerbated after he had perhaps unwisely also decided to give up two longstanding vices – smoking and slimming pills – on the very same day), Hagman had sought aid, advice, and assistance from all quarters. Two years after his issues had begun, however, one of those he'd consulted now suggested that perhaps he should "drop some acid", i.e. try taking some tabs of the potent hallucinogenic drug LSD.

Although Hagman initially dismissed this idea, it became firmly lodged in his mind, until eventually he gave into temptation, and obtained some pure LSD tabs from none other than the late American rock singer/songwriter David Crosby, of Crosby, Stills and Nash fame, after he'd attended one of their concerts and had gone backstage to meet them afterwards. Even so, it still took Hagman a month before he finally summoned up the nerve to take one, and thereby experience his first trip. Here is how he described it:

Just a few moments after I'd swallowed a tab, part of the room I was in became a cave that was guarded by two feathered lions as well as octopus-like creatures with long, writhing tentacles.

So there it is, such that it is, simply a Hagmanian hallucination of the plumed and tentacled trippy kind, but nonetheless notable as the only reference to feathered lions that I've ever encountered (other than certain legendary lions with avian wings, documented by me in my book Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery), albeit from a most unlikely source, and generated in a very unexpected fashion. Yet even though this case may not contribute greatly, therefore, to our shared global lore on fantasy felids, it is nothing if not interesting, and memorable – which is why it has compelled me to track it down almost a decade later, and document here on ShukerNature the exotic creatures mentioned in it.

 

Cave-dwelling ctopus-like creatures also featured in Hagman's drug-induced hallucination

Finally: all of the very eyecatching illustrations of feathered lions and cave-dwelling octopuses included here were created by me specially for this article yesterday, utilizing the MagicStudio image-generation program.