DAUNTING DRAGONFLIES OF THE DEMONIC, HORSE-HEADED, AND BROBDINGNAGIAN VARIETIES!

 

My very own giant dragonfly, chanced upon in a charity shop recently and now residing in my study (© Dr Karl Shuker)

This ShukerNature blog article of mine documents an entomological enigma of the cryptozoological kind that has long fascinated, me but which I've never previously blogged about. Namely, the extraordinary possibility that extra-large dragonflies, veritable giants in some cases, exist unrecognised by science in our modern-day world. Consequently, I have gathered here an exclusive selection of such reports for your perusal. First of all, however, I'd like to set the scene for them by presenting a couple of comparable examples plucked from traditional folklore and medieval fancy.

 

GIANT DRAGONFLIES IN FOLKLORE

On 16 August 2015, I documented here on ShukerNature (and subsequently redocumented in expanded form within the first of my ShukerNature compendium books, ShukerNature Book 1: Antlered Elephants, Locust Dragons, and Other Cryptic Blog Beasts, 2019), a fascinating but thoroughly baffling centuries-old engraving illustrating a mysterious beast so bizarre in appearance that I dubbed it the locust dragon (click here to view my original blog article concerning it).

The original source of this specific engraving was a series of prints produced in Antwerp, Belgium, by Flemish engraver Nicolaes de Bruyn (1571-1656) in 1594 that depicted various flying creatures.

Although he is best known for his many biblically-themed engravings and his large engraved landscapes reproducing designs and paintings by other artists, de Bruyn produced approximately 400 works in total, including a number that featured animals.

 

Nicolaes de Bruyn's mystifying engraving from 1594, depicting a wide range of readily-identifiable insects, plus what can only be described as a truly bizarre 'locust dragon' (public domain)

The series containing the locust dragon was entitled Volatilium Varii Generis Effigies ('Pictures of Flying Creatures of Varied Kinds'), and was first published by Ahasuerus van Londerseel (1572-1635) of Amsterdam.

It was subsequently reissued (with van Londerseel's name neatly trimmed off!) by Carel Allard in 1663 (or shortly after – there are conflicting accounts concerning this detail).

My investigation of what the locust dragon might conceivably have been attracted a number of replies from readers, posted beneath my blog article, including one whose subject was entirely new to me and very intriguing.

Posted on 30 August 2015 by a reader with the memorable Google username Dracula van Helsing, it mentioned that de Bruyn's grotesque locust dragon reminded him of a legend from Cantabria, a region in northern Spain, concerning certain horse-like demonic dragonflies known as Caballucos (aka Caballitos) del Diablu ('little horses of the devil', despite being said to be at least as big as real horses!).

 

Giant model of a southern damselfly Coenagrion mercuriale, a very eyecatching species of slender-bodied dragonfly native to Britain and several countries across mainland Europe (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Here is Wikipedia's then-current entry on these very intriguing yet little-known mythical beasts, which has since been reworded somewhat and expanded (see also below), but was originally derived from Manuel Llano Merino's book Mitos y Leyendas de Cantabria, published in 2001:

On St John's Eve (June 23), when the people make bonfires to purify their souls, giant dragonflies appear amongst the ashes. These dragonflies - the Caballucos - are the souls of sinners, and they come to release their fury over a year's worth of sins with fire and terrifying screams.

 

The Caballucos del Diablu appear in a variety of colors, each one being the soul of a different sinner. The red horse was a man who lent money to farmers and then used dirty tricks to steal their properties; the white one a miller who stole many thousands of dollars from his master; the black one a hermit who played tricks on people; the yellow one a corrupt judge; the blue one an innkeeper; and the orange one a child who abused his parents.

 

 

Worryingly close to a giant damselfly! (© Dr Karl Shuker)

 

And here is this entry's present version, i.e. as of today, 28 November 2023:

 

On St John's Eve (June 23) at night; when the people make bonfires to purify their souls, horses (Percheron purebred) with damselfly wings [damselflies are slender-bodied dragonfly species], black manes and foaming mouths appear amongst the ashes. These stallions – the Caballucos – are the souls of sinners, damned to roam Cantabria for eternity, come to release their fury over a year's worth of sins, creating a rumbling explosion with fire accompanied by terrifying screams. 

 

The Caballucos del Diablu appear in a variety of colors, each one being the soul of a different sinner, as legends highlight. The red horse was a man who lent money to farmers and then used dirty tricks to steal their properties; the white one a miller who stole many thousands of dollars from his master; the black one a hermit who played tricks on people; the yellow one a corrupt judge; the blue one an innkeeper; and the orange one a child who abused his parents;^[1] the green one a lord who possessed many lands and dishonoured plenty of young women. It is said that the Devil himself roams the streets riding the red fire-breathing steed, the sturdiest and most powerful who leads the raid, while other demons ride the rest. The force in their stomping is such that their horseshoes leave prints on rocks, as if they were freshly ploughed soil. They have gleaming eyes, and blow a strong wind with their nostrils to try impeding lovers from giving corsages to the girls. The huffs, as cold as winter, are strong enough to make leaves fall from trees and bushes. The horses’s food are shamrocks, with they eat tastefully, probably to prevent the seekers who come out at night from finding any. The Caballucos pounce on everyone they come across, the only things that repels them is a bunch of vervain that the person can carry along; the plant has to be collected the day before though, or should be placed next to St John’s fire, to which they won’t come near. The locals note that sometimes, after becoming worn out by the search, the Caballucos stop to rest and their saliva drips on the ground, and turns into gold ingots. Whoever takes them will be made extremely wealthy, but will descent straight to hell after death. 

 

 

Obverse side of a stele (carved upright stone) from San Vicente de Toranzo (Cantabria), depicting a ridden Cabulluco del Diablu, and displayed at the Museum of Prehistory and Archaeology of Cantabria, Spain (© Valdavia/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

 

Yet although giant dragonflies of equine appearance would undoubtedly be eyecatching in their own right if such creatures ever existed in reality as opposed to mere mythology, they would not bear any tangible resemblance to the enigmatic entity upon which my locust dragon investigations have been focused.

 

Interestingly, what has been described by some writers as a four-legged, horse-headed dragonfly is also portrayed in the Luttrell Psalter, an English illuminated manuscript dating from c.1325-1340.

 

However, as can readily be perceived here, the illustration of this incongruous insect bears no resemblance to those of the locust dragon.

 

 

A four-legged, horse-headed dragonfly depicted in the Luttrell Psalter (public domain)

But that is still not all as far as controversial giant dragonflies or dragonfly-like mystery beasts of the decidedly daunting kind are concerned.

 

GIANT DRAGONFLIES IN FACT?

One of the fantastical lands visited by physician Dr Lemuel Gulliver in Jonathan Swift's famous satirical fantasy novel Gulliver's Travels (1726) is Brobdingnag, a remote, hitherto-unexplored peninsula of the western USA, whose human inhabitants and wildlife are all of gigantic proportions.

Accordingly, in real life the adjective 'Brobdingnagian' is often applied to anything of extraordinarily large size – and could therefore be definitely applied in relation to certain reports in the cryptozoology archives of supposedly real but unequivocally oversized dragonflies.

 

A painting of Gulliver being inspected by one of the giants of Brobdingnag – note the enormous wasp in the foreground! (public domain)

One of these was posted on Lon Strickler's Phantoms and Monsters website, and reads as follows:

Me and my younger brother saw a huge dragonfly spanning well over a foot and half long in Bolton, England in 2002. It must have been over an inch in diameter as well at the centre. I would have questioned myself but as it was witnessed by someone else too. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just me seeing things. Sometimes I think was it an RC [radio/remote-controlled] helicopter? But no way could it move with such swiftness, agility and silence especially with 2002 technology. I went to the Manchester museum and checked with the insect experts and they said it sounds like you’ve seen something from the prehistoric and that no species of dragonfly that exist today are that large. It’s not a giant bird but has anyone ever seen these massive dragonflies? I would love some confirmation some more witnesses across the world.

Two years after this sighting, two comparable ones were posted online in the forum of the Charles Fort Institute's website on the very same day, 25 July 2004. One of these was posted by someone I know personally, a well-respected naturalist named Oll Lewis. Here is his typically matter-of-fact account of his encounter, which took place in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales:

I have seen a large dragonfly before, I live near a large country park with 2 huge lakes and extensive reed beds so if there were an ideal place for dragonfly and damselfly spotting, that's it. The largest dragonfly I observed was in Cosmeston Lakes Country Park [and] had a wingspan of at least 1/2 a meter [50 cm] skimming over the surface of the lake about 3 metres from the bank. It was brownish yellow in colour and apart from its size quite unremarkable.

 

A view of Cosmeston Lakes National Park (© Nagezna/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 4.0 licence)

I subsequently learned from Oll that he had reported his sighting to a university-based entomology professor, who blithely discounted it. The longest-bodied dragonfly native to the UK is the golden-ringed dragonfly Cordulegaster boltonii, whose slender elongate body can reach almost 8.5 cm long in adult females with fully-formed ovipositors, and whose wingspan can be as much as 10 cm, The largest UK dragonfly species in terms of wingspan is the emperor dragonfly Anax imperator, whose body averages around 8 cm long but its wingspan is up to 10.5 cm. However, these species' impressive dimensions still fall far short of those for the two mystery British specimens described above.

The second Charles Fort Institute forum report was posted by a contributor with the username laphip. Here it is:

When I was around nine years old me and my two sisters watched a dragonfly with a body about half a metre long circle around our backyard just above the height of our bungalow (in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada). When we told our mom about it, she just said it must've been a toy plane shaped like a dragonfly. It looked quite naturally an insect to me, and it made no sound. Would a dragonfly of that size make or not make noise in flight? Can toy remote controlled planes be soundless?

Due to their rapid aerial movements and continual hawking, the size of these insects is notoriously difficult to gauge accurately, especially by eyewitnesses not familiar with them. So overestimation of size would not be difficult. Having said that, the above-noted mentions of remote/radio-controlled aircraft may well be relevant, especially in light of an unexpected but fascinating discovery that I made recently, and which I'll reveal later here.

 

Golden ringed dragonfly Cordulegaster boltonii, male (© Charles J Sharp/Wikipedi – CC BY-SA 4.0 licence)

Another report, forwarded to me in 2001 by Strange Magazine's founding editor, the late Mark Chorvinsky, consists of a report e-mailed to him by correspondent Victor Engel. It reads as follows:

You may be interested in an expedition I plan on this summer. In May/June 1974 while driving through Mexico, I saw the largest dragonfly I've ever seen. At the time I estimated its wingspan at 14 inches. Since that time, I've not seriously searched for it again, but I have done some research. I've contacted dragonfly experts and other insect experts. The general consensus in the scientific community is that while there used to be dragonflies of that size, and, in fact, even larger, they don't, and cannot exist today. The reason cited for believing they cannot exist today is that the oxygen content of the atmosphere is too low to support the high metabolism required for the dragonfly to catch its prey. Then I got in touch with Dr Gilbert, of the University of Texas at Austin, who is doing research with imported fire ants and their parasitic phorid flies. He gave me two well thought-out lists. One was a list of all the reasons why such a dragonfly cannot exist. The other was a list of reasons why such an insect could possibly exist. Anyway, I'm so convinced at what I saw in the 70s that now I'm making a special trip just to find one again.

As Engel correctly mentions, back in ancient prehistoric times there were dragonflies – or, to be precise, dragonfly-resembling insects – that were even bigger than the size estimate offered by him for his Mexican mystery specimen. These veritable giants are known as griffinflies, in homage to those legendary winged monsters the griffins, Originally housed together with the true dragonflies and damselflies within the taxonomic order Odonata, griffinflies are nowadays housed in a separate, extinct order, Meganisoptera.

 

Griffinfly in prehistoric scene, vintage illustration (public domain)

Indeed, fossil remains of Meganeura monyi, a dragonfly that lived approximately 300 million years ago during the late Carboniferous Era in what is today France, indicate that it sported a spectacular wingspan of up to 29.5 in.

Moreover, Meganeuropsis permiana, living during the early Permian Era, sported a comparable wingspan, thereby making these the largest insect species, past or present, currently known to science.

 

Blue-winged helicopter damselfly Megaloprepus caeruleatus (© Katja Schulz/Wikipedia – CC BY 2.0 licence)

Today, conversely, the largest Odonata member is the blue-winged helicopter Megaloprepus caeruleatus, a damselfly native to Central and South America, whose wingspan measures up to 7.52 in, and whose body length is up to 4.72 in. Hence Engel's specimen, if accurately estimated, would have a wingspan twice this.

In a JournalnewsOnline article of 15 February 2022, veteran mystery beast investigator Brent Swancer recalled being told by a supposed giant dragonfly eyewitness that he and a friend had been hiking together through Florida's famous Everglades National Park on a clear day when they saw what seemed at first to be a bird, but then they saw that it had four beating wings, not two, and that its metallic green body was very elongate, measuring over 1 ft long. Moreover, as they watched, the creature came close enough for them to discern the multi-faceted form of its eyes, as characteristically exhibited by the compound eyes of adult insects, hovering in front of them for a moment before it swooped off again, its flight entirely silent throughout.

 

Scale model of a griffinfly (© GermanOle/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

It is well known that the tracheal-based respiratory system of insects, whose internal network of minute cell-penetrating, air-transporting tubes is only capable of transporting oxygen over tiny distances, precludes these creatures from attaining the gargantuan sizes beloved of sci-fi movie makers, and even from those attained by the long-demised griffinflies, as the oxygen content of the atmosphere that existed way back in their time was much greater than it is today.

Bearing this in mind, therefore, what on earth – or anywhere else, for that matter! – can we say about the absolutely ginormous dragonfly lookalikes that a reader with the username PoeticsOfBigfoot posting to the cryptozoology website Cryptomundo on 28 June 2013 claimed to have observed over a lengthy period one evening in, fittingly, Texas?

Giant insects are more common in the Southwest than people realize. I saw huge dragonfly-like insects around sundown near Terlingua TX once. I estimate they were eight feet long or so, with about the same wingspan. They had some sort of long whip-like appendage at their posterior end, a little longer than their bodies, that arced upward. I saw three of them over a two-hour time span.

 

Confronted by a monster dragonfly sculpture of truly monstrous proportions in Wroclaw, Poland (© Piotr Przybyszewski/Wikipedia – CC BY 3.0 licence)

Male dragonflies do possess a pair of claspers at the tip of their most posterior abdominal segment, and females bear a single circus there, but these are nowhere near as long as the insects' bodies. So too did griffinflies, but with the same proviso. Moreover, for the respiratory reasons mentioned above, an 8-ft-long insect living today, most especially one as metabolically active as a fast-flying dragonfly, would be a physiological impossibility.

And even if it wasn't, such a spectacular, readily visible entity native to North America would assuredly have been discovered, described, and fully documented by science long ago. So although dragonflies are predatory, I wouldn't worry unduly about being dive-bombed any time soon by the terrorflies of Terlingua!

Unless, of course, this titanic trio had winged their way to Texas from Brobdingnag's secluded peninsula??? Gulliver's remarkable travels and his numerous hair-raising experiences during them had so transformed his personality that after he finally returned safely home, he became a recluse. After encountering monsters like these, can you blame him??

 

Fictional giant dragonfly with long whip-like posterior process like the three 8-ft-long Texas specimens (public domain)

Seriously, however, I have recently learned to my surprise but delight that giant radio-controlled dragonfly models not only exist but be readily purchased on certain websites – so might these fascinating fliers explain such sightings, including laphip's noted earlier here, especially if they were spied in dim light conditions? Then again, eyewitnesses of such creatures have often claimed that their flight was totally silent, thus suggesting that they weren't remote-controlled aircraft or drones after all.

In short, unless we dismiss all such reports as involving hoaxes, misidentifications of non-insect aerial creatures, or exaggerated size estimates of bona fide dragonflies, the mystery of these giant flying insects remains very much up in the air – as indeed do they!

For my expanded coverage of the locust dragon, be sure to check out  ShukerNature Book 1, whose front cover sports a gorgeous full-colour painting by longstanding friend and superb artist Anthony Walls, in which he portrays me with said locust dragon perching contentedly on my shoulder:

 

 

GIANT SPIDERS IN LOUISIANA? Part 2: TWO EVEN CLOSER ARACHNID ENCOUNTERS IN 2007

A second spectacular giant spider illustration by Swedish artist and friend Richard Svensson – see Part 1 of this ShukerNature blog article for a previous one by him (© Richard Svensson)

In Part 1 of this online world-exclusive ShukerNature blog article of mine (click here to read it), I documented a hitherto-unpublished alleged sighting of a giant spider in 2005 by an American soldier in Louisiana, as recalled to me by him via a series of emails. However, the soldier, whom I am referring to merely as Sgt S (not his real rank or initial), also had two further sightings of such creatures, and in much the same location, but this time in 2007. I ended Part 1 of this article by quoting a section from his email to me of 29 July 2019 concerning his 2005 sighting, but this same email also contained a full account of his two 2007 sightings, plus some thoughts by him concerning the possible lifestyle of these mega-spiders. So here are his 2007 account and thoughts:

2007 Sightings

During another pre-deployment training exercise at Fort Polk, Louisiana, within the Fort Polk Wildlife Management Area and centered at FOB Forge in the same area as the 2005 sighting, I briefly observed another giant spider in daylight hours and again at night. This one was different than the 2005 sighting as it was larger, with thicker legs and body, as well as a darker coloring. I attached a map depicting the approximate location of each sighting.

The first sighting was in the late afternoon when two other soldiers and I went for a run on Alligator Lake Loop, a wide dirt road between two wooded areas near Highway 469. One of the soldiers began suffering from heat exhaustion and sat down in the road. We moved her to the shade, and I ran for help. When I returned with the medics, they placed the patient on the truck, and we all started moving back when a Sergeant complained he stepped on something sticky. Immediately a batch of leaves on the embankment started moving. He and I both saw the head of a giant hairy spider pop up and back down. He wrote it off as a squirrel, but I clearly saw it pop up and move its head around then drop back down. It had two huge shiny black eyes each about three or four inches around. The head itself was bigger than one foot and looked like the head of a tarantula. It had thick hairy bristles all over it with large white or clear fangs which were only partially exposed, but with smaller horizontal pinchers facing each other at a small mouth about two or three inches each. Its coloring was a dark brown with light striped color variations giving it excellent camouflage for the area. It dropped back down into the leaves and essentially disappeared so when we asked if anyone else saw it, there was nothing to see but dry leaves and dirt. Everyone was heading back so we took off running and jumped on the medic truck. When we got back to the aid station, the Sergeant who stepped in the sticky spot had lost his running shoe. He went back later looking for the shoe but could not find it anywhere on that trail.

In the late afternoon, our Platoon Sergeant wanted to see how far we ran and exactly what happened, so we walked back to the same spot. At the location of the sighting, we were talking about the incident and heard leaves rustling and a light thud behind us. We turn around and the missing shoe was there behind us in the middle of the road that we just walked through. We were both astonished as we could not have missed a white shoe in the middle of a wide dirt road. The shoe was wet (on a hot, dry day on the dry dirt road) and it looked like it had been chewed on, with big holes in it. My Platoon Sergeant thought someone was playing tricks on us and angrily started yelling “Who’s out there? Show yourself?” We heard a loud hissing and clicking coming from the ground and the leaves on the embankment started shaking so naturally, we both took off running and screaming like banshees. Senior leadership ordered us not to say anything about it to anyone and cautioned everyone to stay in groups.

Louisiana giant spider, 2007 daytime sighting (plus earlier-described 2005 sighting), marked out by Sgt S on Google map (© Google Maps – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Later that week during the training exercises, I was positioned at an attic window of a fake wooden house in a staged village. Around midnight I saw an old buddy from basic training walking by and I stopped him to talk. I walked out on the roof and jumped down to catch up and have a cigarette. A few minutes later, while talking with my back to the house he suddenly got very scared, yelled and threw his cigarette lighter at the house, and ran away. When I turned around, I caught a glimpse of the giant spider walking away on the roof I was just standing on about 12 feet away. It was easily six feet around at the feet and the torso was roughly one foot thick by two feet long. I could see two claws at the end of the back feet. It was dark brown with light stripes. It looked very much like an enormous tarantula with thick legs about two inches around at the feet and three to four inches at the base. I threw rocks at it as it scurried away, and it scampered off the roof and disappeared into the darkness of the woods.

My old friend came back with his Commander and he was noticeably shaken, hyperventilating, and almost crying, completely out of character for him (he was later referred to mental health and I did not see him again after that night). I confirmed to the Captain what I saw and after conferring with senior leadership, once again they told us it wasn’t real, and if we talked about it, we would be ridiculed, and our careers jeopardized. As far as I know, nothing was put on record about the incidents.

This concludes my accounts of the giant spiders at Fort Polk, Louisiana.

Louisiana giant spider, 2007 night sighting, marked out by Sgt S on Google map (© Google Maps – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My assumptions based on observations of the incidents:

1. The spider is rarely seen because it is nocturnal and burrowing, probably living in underground nests connected by spider-tunnels, it also moves extremely fast and retreats hastily when confronted.

2. It is an ambush Alpha predator, utilizing trapdoor-style burrows with draglines to detect prey. It makes thatched covers for these trapdoor burrows with sticks and leaves and its own silk. It may attack and consume humans if they are alone.

3.  It may scent mark its prey or deploy a chemical defense to ward off attackers.

4.  It may track or hunt by scent. (I believe the animal was able to find me on the roof of a building days later after encountering it a mile away. I believe this to be the case as I urinated in the wood line at both locations. Either that or it scent-marked me the two times I was there).

5. The sightings in 2005 and 2007 may have been the same species but different sex, as female spiders are often larger and different color than males.

6.  Military leadership may choose to keep a lid on the existence of such creatures to prevent public panic, destruction of morale, loss of training schedule and facilities as well as the loss of contracts and to avoid scrutiny of primary leadership if said creatures are responsible for missing persons.

7.  Local soldiers and cadre offer jokes about the creatures but also issue serious cautions to stay together in groups particularly at night because of actual missing person cases.

 Thank you for your time.

Louisiana giant spider, distance between 2005 and 2007 sightings, marked out by Sgt S on Google map (© Google Maps – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

As can be imagined, faced with such an extraordinary yet so soberly-written and detailed an account I was nothing if not nonplussed, and responded to it with the following email of my own:

Since my previous email to you, I've read and re-read your two very detailed emails to me regarding the apparent giant spiders witnessed by you and others at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Based upon your descriptions, there can be little doubt that the creatures were indeed spiders, but I am at a loss to explain their size, as this is so much bigger than fundamental arachnid anatomy and physiology would normally embrace. The traps and trap-lids that you mention are certainly reminiscent of those created by trap-door spiders, and I also agree with your various conclusions at the end of your second email. How such sizeable spiders, even if nocturnal, could have succeeded in eluding scientific discovery, however, remains as perplexing to me as their size. What would be interesting and potentially enlightening in relation to such questions and mysteries would be to ascertain if others, perhaps including other servicemen, have also spoken of encountering such creatures. So with that in mind, and having already received your kind permission to do so, I shall indeed compile an article at some point, based upon your accounts, and see what it may elicit. There must surely be some historical precedents involved here, local people or those spending time in the area, such as fellow servicemen as noted earlier, must surely have stories of their own, and perhaps giving yours some publicity will encourage them to come forward with their testimonies.

Meanwhile, thank you once again most sincerely for kindly making your experiences known to me and for the amount of detail concerning them that you have presented - a fascinating read indeed.

On 6 August, I received a final email from Sgt S concerning his experiences:

Outstanding! Thank you Dr Shuker for all your efforts. I will offer you two more pieces of information that I recalled about the sightings. For the 2005 sighting, when the creature turned around to flee into the trees, it appeared to have something about the size of a basketball tied or stuck to its back legs, dangling separate from the body. I think this may have been a smaller captured prey that it carried off. I bring this up because it may answer why it's evaded discovery, if it instinctually carries off its victims to multiple burrows.

Also, while inspecting the 2005 area a senior officer claimed he saw it and ordered everyone to withdraw from the area. He also ordered we remain silent on the issue or there would be serious concurrences.

In the 2007 incident, as the Platoon Sergeant and I turned to run away I felt something like water spray the back of my legs. Afterward other soldiers were complaining that I had a horrible musty smell about me and my clothing even though I was very routine with my personal hygiene. I believe the spider scent marked me allowing it to locate me inside the attic of a building a day later. My thought is that this highly predator[y] behavior has eliminated previous eye witnesses.

Thank you and good luck.

So there we have it – either a meticulously thought-out hoax or one of the most astonishing cryptozoological testimonies ever recorded! If the former, it is important that the full details as originally provided are documented so that they can be consulted if later retellings by others embellish or distort; if the latter, it goes without saying that as comprehensive a documentation as possible is essential in order to preserve an immensely significant mystery beast case.

Female Carolina wolf spider (© Noah J Mueller/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 4.0 licence)

The largest species of spider known to exist in much of North America is the Carolina wolf spider Hogna carolinensis, a burrow-digging species whose females, black in colour and larger than the males, measure up to 25 mm in body length – a far cry indeed from the colossi claimed by Sgt S. Of especial interest, however, is that his accounts of alleged giant spiders in Louisiana are not unprecedented. As I documented in a ShukerNature blog article of mine from 30 July 2014 dealing with alleged sightings of giant spiders (click here to read it), and as also briefly alluded to by Sgt S in one of his emails to me, just such creature had indeed been reported from that very same American State, but almost 60 years before the first of Sgt S's three encounters. Here is what I wrote about it:

One of the most startling giant spider reports comes from Leesville in Louisiana, USA. According to William Slaydon, it was here, while walking northwards along Highway 171 to church one cool night in 1948, that he, his wife, and their three young grandsons had spied a gigantic spider - hairy, black, and memorably described as "the size of a washtub". It emerged from a ditch just ahead of them and crossed the road before disappearing into some brush on the other side. Not surprisingly, the family never again walked along that particular route to church at night!

Moreover, just a few days ago, on 25 June 2020, longstanding friend and fellow cryptozoologist Ken Gerhard briefly recalled on his public Facebook timeline an alleged giant spider reported in the Atlanta area, Georgia, by a firefighter. Ken stated that this eyewitness had claimed that the spider was 11 inches across (as big as a dinner plate), and that when he first saw it out of the corner of his eye he thought that it was a cat! Ken fully documented this report as follows in his book A Menagerie of Mysterious Beasts (2016):

I was admittedly shocked when I was contacted by a man from College Park, Georgia, who described an encounter with a nightmare-sized specimen. The witness, Christopher Williams, has an impressive background, having worked as a fireman and EMT for the past fifteen years. As William tells it, he was mowing his grass early one summer morning a few years ago, and when he bumped his lawnmower into the side of a tall pine tree in his front yard, the impact caused something to move. Out of the corner of his eye, Williams detected something that was brown in color easing slowly up the tree. As he turned to look, he was horrified to realize that the object in question was in fact the father of all wolf spiders and in his own words was at least eleven inches long, "as big as a house cat."

Immediately aware that he was looking at something that wasn't supposed to exist, Williams backed up slowly and headed into the house in order to retrieve either his camera or cell phone. He was admittedly concerned that such a move could place him in danger, as it might motivate the enormous arachnid to pounce on him. By the time Williams returned a couple of minutes later with camera in hand, the thing had disappeared. All I can add to this perplexing mystery is that, despite the extraordinary nature of his claim, over the phone Williams came off as an impressively sincere and credible eyewitness.

Ken's FB post recalling Atlanta's mega-arachnid shortly afterwards received a response from a mutual FB friend, Kimberly Poeppey, who recalled two further reports of giant spiders in the USA, both of which were new to me, and she later added a few additional details on her own FB timeline following my request for any further information that she may have. According to one of these reports, a couple pulling up in their motor vehicle to their house's open drive near the Everglades in Florida reputedly spied a puppy-sized spider squatting in the garage's open doorway, but when they pulled up it wandered off into the bushes. Kimberly believes that this occurred within the past 20 years. In the second incident, two sewer operatives in New York City were working on a water line in a crawl space within an old building's basement when in their flashlights' beam many eyes shone back at them, and supposedly the beam further revealed that these eyes belonged to a huge spider, bigger than a rat! Kimberly believes that this occurred some time during the 1960s/1970s, and she recalls that the two operatives refused to go back in there afterwards.

Are the Everglades in Florida home to puppy-sized spiders? (public domain)

In over three decades of research into mystery animals of many kinds, I have read countless testimonies and spoken to numerous alleged eyewitnesses of unidentified beasts. During that very long period of time, I have gained no small degree of insight concerning the truthfulness or otherwise of such documents and persons. To my mind, drawing extensively upon this valuable experience, the accounts of Sgt S ring true, and the above-noted report from 1948 of just such a spider in the very same area of Louisiana lends anecdotal support if nothing else.

In addition, the following comments elicited from Facebook friend Willis Beyer on 25 June shortly after I posted Part 1 of this article to the Cryptozoology group on FB are well worth recording here. According to Willis:

Karl, seriously, after spending roughly five months training at Ft. Polk back in the summer of 1970, including time in the "bush" preparing for Vietnam duty, I wouldn't be surprised at all that the soldiers actually saw a cryptid arachnid there.

Please understand that I am speaking of the place as it was then from half-century old memories, OK? But at that time, areas of the "bush" there that were used for pre-Vietnam training were the hottest, most humid, "jungliest" environment that I had ever spent time in. (I later found out that they were worse than some areas of the bush in Vietnam.) Insects, snakes (both poisonous and non-poisonous), lizards, bats, opossums, raccoons, armadillos, wild dogs, feral hogs, etc., abounded. A very large cryptid species of arachnid would have had plenty of available prey!

Consider this: A late good friend of mine, a Marine, spent two tours in the central highlands. Long story short, while he was there, two Marines from his outfit were taken by tigers, both at night, both from FOPs (forward observation posts). According to my friend, they were reported as KIA, but their families were never told the circumstances of their deaths, just that they had been killed.

Also, in my experience, the military didn't actively pursue AWOLs, at least stateside. The usual response, unless the serviceperson in question had access to critical classified MOS info was, "they'll eventually turn up".

Needless to say, Willis's comments corroborate very closely a number of the claims made by Sgt S in his extensive account. How to explain his giant spider reports from a strictly zoological perspective, conversely, is another matter entirely.

Life-sized model of a griffinfly ( GermanOle/Wikipedia - CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

This is because there are notable physiological constraints to consider when considering the likelihood of such creatures actually existing. As I noted back in my July 2014 ShukerNature article and also in my emails to Sgt S, some of today's largest known spiders utilise a tracheal respiratory system comparable to that of insects, i.e. consisting of a network of minute tubes that carry oxygen to every cell in the body. However, this prevents such spiders and all insects from attaining huge sizes in the modern world, because the tracheae could not transport oxygen efficiently enough inside spiders or insects of giant stature. During the late Carboniferous and early Permian Periods, 300 million years ago, conversely, huge relatives of dragonflies known as griffinflies or meganisopterans did exist, but back in those primeval ages the atmosphere's oxygen level was far greater than it is today, thereby compensating for the tracheal system's inefficiency. 

In contrast to known species of large modern-day spider, smaller spiders employ flattened organs of passive respiration called book lungs rather than a tracheal system. Yet neither system is sufficiently competent to enable spiders to attain enormous sizes, based upon current knowledge at least. So if a giant spider does thrive in some secluded, far-off realm, let alone in Louisiana, it must have evolved a radically different, much more advanced respiratory system, not just a greatly enlarged body.

Coconut crab (© Whologwhy/Wikipedia – CC BY 2.0 licence)

Interestingly, there is a notable precedent for the development of a truly novel respiratory organ among large land-dwelling arthropods, which I discussed as follows in my July 2014 ShukerNature article:

 The largest of all such species known to be living today is the coconut crab Birgus latro, which sports a body length of up to 16 in, a weight of up to 9 lb, and a leg span of more than 3 ft. Indigenous to various islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, despite being a crab it is exclusively terrestrial (it cannot swim and will drown if immersed in water for over an hour), and has evolved a unique respiratory organ known as a branchiostegal lung that enables it to exist entirely on land, and which developmentally can be seen as midway between gills and true lungs.

So who knows: if crustaceans (which are predominantly aquatic arthropods) can achieve this during evolution, maybe spiders (which are predominantly terrestrial anyway) have also achieved something analogous. Moreover, it has been suggested that perhaps some reports of so-called giant spiders are actually sightings of giant land crabs, but crabs are very different in appearance from spiders, due in no small way to their instantly visible chelae (pincers), and no such crabs are known to exist in any of the world regions from which giant spiders have been reported.

In addition, with its extremely heavy, bulky body and thick exoskeleton the coconut crab also provides an effective counter to arguments that a species of spider possessing similar physical accoutrements, as might be expected from one with specimens as big as the claimed Louisiana examples reported here, could not exist for fundamental anatomical and physiological reasons.

Having said that, all of this is in any case sheer speculation, and is likely to remain so – unless, as hoped for by Sgt S, someone should not only capture or kill a giant spider in Louisiana but also retain or preserve its body afterwards, and duly alert scientific attention to it. Only then will we know for certain that mega-arachnids really do exist, and, therefore, have indeed overcome all physiological constraints. Meanwhile, his remarkable story is now, at last, fully accessible to the public – so who can say what it may elicit at some stage in the future?

I wish to offer my most sincere thanks to Sgt S for contacting me and for so kindly permitting me to document fully here his very thought-provoking accounts; and as always to my exceedingly talented artist friend Richard Svensson for so kindly permitting me to utilise his awesome artwork in my writings.

In addition to the two parts of this article and my previously-referenced July 2014 article, for further reports of giant spiders presented here on ShukerNature please click here, here, and here.

Atlach-Nacha, the Spider God of Clark Ashton Smith’s primordial Hyperborea (© Richard Svensson)