FINDING OUT ABOUT 'FINDING OUT'!

Naga king, from Finding Out (Angus McBride)

Scottish cryptozoologist Alan Pringle has brought to my attention a very intriguing mystery of the cryptozoologically-related kind. Back in 1970 or 1971, at a friend's home, he saw a complete set of a magazine partwork series containing at least 30-40 issues, on an encyclopaedic or scientific theme (possibly aimed at children), and entitled Finding Out.

However, it was not their contents, but their covers, that attracted his particular interest and attention, because each issue's back cover featured an animal or entity from the myths and legends of the world, including a number that have cryptozoological relevance. A very dramatic, full-colour illustration of the creature occupied one half of the cover's page, with accompanying text occupying the other half.

The creatures that Alan can definitely remember appearing in this set of covers included the western dragon, eastern dragon, siren, tokoloshe, leshy, thunderbird, Midgard serpent, Assyrian winged bull, minotaur, centaur, bunyip, Egyptian ammut (soul eater), sphinx, and harpy. Others that he thinks may have been present include the werewolf, vampire, unicorn, cyclops, zombie, and banshee.

Alan has never seen this partwork again (and has long since lost contact with the friend who owned it), but he can still vividly recall some of the back covers due to their very eyecatching nature. I have certainly never seen them, and despite their dramatic appeal they do not seem to have been reproduced in any other publication. Moreover, in a letter to me from Phil Hide of Aylesbury, I learned that he actually owns most issues of this partwork up to volume 11, and that it was published by Purnell & Sons. Unfortunately, none of those particular issues' covers has any cryptozoology painting!

Happily, however, I have also received a letter from Alex Lamprey of Cardiff, who owns seven issues from volumes 16 and 17, and each of these issues' covers does depict a mystery beast or legendary entity. These are: sea serpents, bunyips, the cailleach-bheur, morrigan, gnomes, the Little People, and lamassu. Obviously, therefore, this series of illustrations did not begin until sometime after volume 11. The artist responsible for them was Angus McBride.

If there is anyone else out there who has seen this partwork (or, better still, owns an edition of it ior at least a run of those issues with cryptozoological back covers), or can offer any extra details, I'd love to hear from you.

STOP PRESS: 20 February 2011.

I'm delighted - and extremely grateful - to say that Alex Lamprey has very kindly donated to me his above-mentioned seven copies of Finding Out. They arrived this weekend, and their Angus McBride back-cover illustrations are every bit as spectacular as I'd hoped for! Needless to say, these near-legendary magazines (at least in my eyes!) now constitute a greatly-treasured addition to my library and images archive, and I shall be keeping a sharp lookout for the remaining 23 issues with McBride zoomythological back covers in order to complete my collection. Meanwhile, a massive THANK YOU!! to Alex for fulfilling a long-held ambition of mine to own at least some of them.


STOP PRESS: 3 March 2011.

Click here to read the fully-illustrated version of my ShukerNature blog post containing today's very exciting news! Thanks to the kindness of correspondent Ivan Waldock, who owns all 36 issues of Finding Out that possess cryptozoological/mythological back cover illustrations, and has sent me a scan of every one of them, I have been able at long last to provide the full set here online!

STAR STEEDS...AND FEATHERED SNAKES

Jon at CFZ Press tells me that my poetry book, Star Steeds and Other Dreams, could well be out by the end of this month, so here, as a taster, is one of its poems, in which I portray the Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatl in his feathered serpent guise. As a contrast, the above photo, of a statuette purchased by me a few years ago in Tijuana, Mexico, depicts him in his human form.

The concept of Quetzalcoatl – an Aztec serpent god adorned with feathers rather than scales, and gifted with the ability to soar majestically through the heavens without needing wings – is one that has long fascinated me, so it was inevitable that sooner or later I would attempt to capture the wonder of this spectacular reptilian deity in verse.

A TRIBUTE TO QUETZALCOATL

Green feathered serpent like Heaven's liana,
Plumes of bright malachite, jasper, and jade,
Furled in rich flourishes, dazzling in glory,
Verdurous rays borne on emerald blades.

And, as you gleam in your jewel-clustered temple,
Coils gliding over your tributes of gold,
Ruby eyes glow with the flames of the cosmos,
Deadly yet passionate, blazing but cold.

Now, as your lightning-forked tongue flickers brightly,
Sibilant breath hissing softly and long,
Bowing before you in rapt veneration
Kneel your disciples in reverent throngs.

Yet, do you laugh at these weak, puny mortals,
Scuttling like ants in the fire of your gaze,
Shielding their eyes in the depths of your shadow –
Turquoise and terrible, willing their praise?

Quetzalcoatl – ophidian idol,
Soaring through Space like a radiant stream.
Aztec divinity, ageless, eternal –
Incarnate god, or a deified dream?

SHAN HAI JIN - AN ANCIENT CHINESE WONDER BOOK

There are a number of highly significant tomes out there that have never attracted the degree of cryptozoological and zoomythological attention that they deserve. One such example is the Shan Hai Jin (or Jing) - a classic Chinese text at least 2,200 years old, roughly 31,000 words long, divided into 18 sections, and containing a wealth of information on all manner of extraordinary beasts. Although most are assuredly mythical, there could well be some genuine cryptids amongst them - the trick is deciding which is which.

To give you an idea of the scope of this remarkable book, the following mentions of entities referrred to in it are quoted from an extensive, highly informative communication that I received quite a while ago concerning the Shan Hai Jin (and also various other notable Chinese sources of info re mystery/legendary beasts) from one of my correspondents, Chinese-born S. Lu, now living in Washington, USA:

"Throughout the years I found so many, many, many parallels between the East and West myths and legends...For instance, the cockatrice's Chinese "cousin" described in Shan Hai Jin [SHJ] is the Suan Yu bird. It's like a snake with four wings, six eyes and three legs. If we picture it as having a bird's/rooster's head and talons, it'll look almost exactly like a cockatrice. The book also says that the Suan Yu bird's appearance foreshadows the coming of bad things.

"Shan Hai Jin is such a treasure with extensive knowledge of lots of things, it's a shame that many people keep a close mind toward the strange creatures and phenomena documented inside.

"There are accounts of mermaids (it's called Ling fish in SHJ), the kind that has human legs and arms with a fish/dolphin tail. I've seen depictions of this creature in the Arabian Nights when Sinbad was taken to an underwater palace by such a man or a merman.

"Europeans' view of the Indian people as dog-headed [cynocephali] is not completely out of the question. In SHJ yellow humanoid creatures with dogs' heads are described. Their name is Huan dog. There are also three-leg people, three-head people, egg-laying people, bird-body people (Siren?), one-foot people, snake-body people (Lamia?) [one such entity is the nuwa, as pictured here in this blog utilising an SHJ illustration], etc.

"Chinese centaurs have often been referred to as deities of some sort, they are horses or bulls with "human heads and hands". Chinese satyrs or pans are a people from the country of Dinling. Their upper bodies are like humans and lower parts are of the hairy horse legs with hooves, and they like to run. Water horses, the kind you talked about in Flying Toads and many other Western folklores, can also be found in SHJ...

"There are much more in other ancient texts in China that document similar things. One even says that the yerens [Chinese wildmen] are able to make themselves invisible and transform to dodge humans....

"There is a china.com [not any longer, sadly] that contains reports from Shen Nong Jia about yeren, albino animals, giant toad monsters, donkey-head wolves, rooster-crest snakes (my grandma told me her mother's story of how such a snake was found in a local "Tu Di" (earth god) temple in the rural Nanjing, Jiangsui Province, the snake didn't siss, but sounded like chicken, the locals thought it has a crest because it was old), unicorns (the website has personal stories of hunters [who] shot dead a couple of unicorns, they say the creature is not exactly a horse, nor a goat, nor a deer; in one account the single horn tilts/curls backward and another forward; they are very agile, and their meat was good; again the local people are sure that they are there), scarlet bats and hogs, etc.

"Have you heard about the famous 'Legend of the White Snake' about a white snake, accompanied by her friend or maid a green snake, transformed into a beautiful woman to marry a mortal, who saved her life a thousand years ago (reincarnation)? In Shen Nong Jia, scientists found that the rare white snakes are often seen to be with green snakes."

And this is just a taster of the treasures to be found inside this amazing work. Of all the subjects mentioned above, however, the one that possibly intrigues me the most received the least mention - scarlet bats. They're certainly new to me, so if there's anyone out there who has any info on Chinese scarlet bats, I'd be delighted to receive it.

FROM LIGHTNING DOGS TO MIRRII DOGS

Mirrii dog (Philippa Foster)

As its name clearly reveals, the Centre for Fortean Zoology is interested not just in corporeal mystery beasts but also in other, more esoteric, paranormal creatures, i.e. zooform entities, of which there seems to be an abundance of canine versions.

It is well known, for example, that many reputedly paranormal, phantasmal dogs - in particular the so-called Black Dogs - have been reported from the British Isles and from North America. However, a surprising variety of comparable entities have also been recorded from elsewhere around the world. Some of these canine curiosities are every bit as exotic as their localities, but others appear surprisingly familiar.

Take, for instance, the linani of East Africa. Judging from its description, this erstwhile phantom beast was very similar to Britain's famous spectral black dogs with flaming eyes and mouths. According to Kenya's Bantu people, the linani was a big black dog with sparks of fire spurting out of its mouth. By day, it slept tranquilly in the grass, but at night it roamed the countryside in search of unfortunate human victims to devour. Happily, by the early years of this century it had apparently disappeared, as no-one speaks of it any more.

Equally daunting is the lightning dog of the Lower Congo. Here, in traditional lore, lightning is believed to take the form of a magical dog that springs down to earth in a single great bound, and emits a single sharp bark. As soon as it gives voice to a second bark, however, it leaps back into the sky. The lightning dog is said to be either black or red in colour, with a shaggy coat and a curly tail. If it should happen to touch someone, that person will immediately catch fire and die, but no magical charm has any effect upon this creature, and not even the most skilful witch-doctors and wizards can prevent its attacks.

As we might expect, the mystic lands of the Orient are well-supplied with unearthly hounds. One of these is a peculiar composite of sorts, combining the striped body of a tiger with the head of a wolf. Reported from Nepal and known as the chuti, it is frequently portrayed in traditional Nepalese art, in which each of its paws is depicted with four claws pointing forwards and one pointing backwards. As revealed in his book Look Behind the Ranges (1979), when renowned mountaineer Hamish MacInnes visited Nepal he was informed by the local lamas that chutis could be found in the Choyang and Iswa Valleys. One Russian scientist, Dr Vladimir Tschernesky, suggested that the chuti may actually be one and the same as the striped hyaena, but at present it remains firmly entrenched in Nepalese legend.

So too, luckily, do the sharameyas or yama-dutas of India, for according to Vedic belief, each of these monstrous dogs has a huge muzzle, smoke-belching nostrils, and four eyes! A pair of sharameyas guards the road to Yamapur - India's Underworld, or City of the Dead. Equally terrifying is the t'ien kou - the red-furred celestial dog of China. Its normal abode is the night sky, but sometimes it descends to earth, and when it does it resembles a blazing comet with a great fiery tail. Emphasising its comet affinities is the tradition that this beast's appearances portend disaster and doom - an ancient belief in relation to comets too.

Chile in South America lays claim to a very distinctive preternatural dog, called the calchona. It is described as a huge white dog resembling a Newfoundland but with a very woolly coat and a billy goat's beard. Notwithstanding its placid, almost sheep-like form, however, the calchona is exceedingly mischievous, delighting in playing tricks upon evening travellers passing through its dark mountainous domain, and also frightening their horses.

Perhaps the most intriguing phantom dogs of all are the mirrii dogs or mirriuula, featuring in the ancient lore of the Wiradjuri aboriginals inhabiting the central west of New South Wales, Australia - because in spite of their wholly separate ethnological origin, they bear an uncanny resemblance to the black dogs of British and North American traditions.

Several stories concerning these weird entities are contained in You Kids Count Your Shadows (1990) - a fascinating book dealing with Wiradjuri folk traditions, by folklore researcher Frank Povah from Wollar in New South Wales. According to the Wiradjuri, when a mirrii dog is first seen it is only quite small, with red eyes and noticeably pointed ears - but the longer that someone looks at a mirrii dog, the bigger it will grow. Indeed, it can sometimes attain the size of a calf or even a pony. As with certain British black dogs, mirriuula are often associated with water, and some are actually referred to as water dogs:

"They'll follow you and coax you away. They live in the river, in the water, and they've got real big eyes like saucers. The eyes is [sic] on the side of their face, like a fish...I've heard a lot of stories about people being followed home at night by these big dogs. People just see em. Down the river fishin, a dog'll come out of the river, or a dog'll suddenly be behind em, followin em. Every time you look back, it's a bit bigger. Look back again and there's nothin there. We got a very special site called the Mirriigana and mirriigana means - well mirrii is a dog and gana is like ganya, place. Place where the water dog lives. It's one of our sacred sites."

Several Wiradjuris recalled modern encounters with mirriuula to Povah. For instance:

"They used to go to the pictures and when they'd come home this little dog used to follow them. He had pointy ears and red eyes. When they got to their house he used to disappear. Another one, too, you'd see a little dog in front of you about sundown, and as you get closer it'd get bigger and bigger. And it was hairy, real hairy. Oh yeh, it'd send you. It'd make you run, I'll tell you...Goin' to Bushranger's Creek one night and this big, black Doberman lookin thing kept appearin and disappearin. You'd see it and then you wouldn't. Oh it was a scary lookin thing. Mirriuula they used to call em. Great big dogs that grow."

Today, most scientists would swiftly dismiss tales of the mirrii dogs as mere folklore, discounting them as fanciful spirit beasts of the Dreamtime - belonging to an early age long since past. But time is never still, and perhaps, one day, their time will come again.

GIANT BATS IN MY BELFRY, AND OTHER UPDATES

Time for some more updates, I think.

Firstly, the current issue of Britain's ever-excellent Paranormal Magazine has an article of mine on giant bats and bat-like entities from around the world. The Javanese ahool, African olitiau and sasabonsam, a bat-winged monkey bird from Kent, and a truly weird assortment of North American man-bats (including the LaCrosse entity depicted here in spectacular form by awesome Swedish artist Richard Svenssen - thanks, Richard!) are just some of the things with wings documented therein - so if you're batty (groan!) about cryptozoology, you know where to look!

Turning to books: first up is the exciting news that Extraordinary Animals Revisited has now achieved its first reprint, which contains a few updates and amendments, including extra info regarding the shunka warak'in and an American platypus-like mystery beast, and the inclusion of some Cobra Courting references that didn't make the original printing.

The updated, expanded edition of In Search of Prehistoric Survivors is still in preparation, and should be out next year, in good time, I hope, for Weird Weekend 2010.

Meanwhile, my collected poetry volume, currently entitled Star Steeds and Other Dreams (its original title was The Mirror of Mnemosyne, but as Mnemosyne is not the most readily-remembered - or pronounceable! - of names, I decided that a change of title might be in order, since when it has changed several times!) is now complete, and should be out fairly soon, courtesy of those fine people at CFZ Press.

And last, but definitely not least, the latest, fully-updated edition of The New Zoo: New and Rediscovered Animals of the Twentieth Century (which originally appeared in 1993 as The Lost Ark, and was republished as The New Zoo in greatly expanded form in 2002) has been accepted for publication! So look out for that too, which will be published in colour.

Exciting times, indeed!

LOOK OUT, LOOK OUT, THERE'S A DINOSAUR ABOUT...IN ALBUQUERQUE!

Wearing my 'Operation Congo 1985' Fortean Times mokele-mbembe t-shirt with pride (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Over the years, there have been a number of so-called 'living dinosaur' reports filed from the USA, describing a mystery reptile seen running erect on its hind legs and likened by its startled eyewitnesses to a small bipedal dinosaur. I pesonally consider it likely that these sightings are based upon encounters with escapee monitor lizards (varanids), which can indeed run for short bursts on their hind legs.

However, this very morning I received a letter from a longstanding colleague of mine, English zoologist Prof. John L. Cloudsley-Thompson, that contains a very different, and hitherto-unreported, American mystery dinosaur report:

"During 1969, I was a National Science Foundation Senior Research Fellow at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, U.S.A. One evening, my wife Anne and I were invited to dinner by an anthropologist we knew. He told us how the driver of the school bus was driving to collect the children when he saw a large animal step over the fence at the side of the road. Some weeks later, he saw our friend's children with a dinosaur book. He claimed he had never seen a picture of a dinosaur before and the animal he had seen was exactly like the picture of Diplodocus. So our friend advised him to keep a camera in the bus. He saw the animal once again, but he had forgotten the camera!"

Apart from the extraordinary thought that there could be anyone out there in the States who had reached adulthood without ever having seen the image of a dinosaur before, this is a very intriguing account, to say the least!

If you can shed any light on it, or know of similar reports of American long-necked quadruped dinosaur-lookalikes - veritable mokele-mbembes in miniature! - I'd love to hear from you!

Me holding a mokele-mbembe-type model (© Dr Karl Shuker)

A STUFFED THUNDERBIRD IN ONTARIO?

Painting of a close encounter between a thunderbird and a light aircraft (William Rebsamen)

Following on from last week's rainbow cat posting, here's another of my 'open' (i.e. still-unresolved) cryptozoological cases for you to read - and, hopefully, pursue yourself if possible.

In 1998, I received the following fascinating information of possible relevance to North America's ongoing thunderbird or 'big bird' mystery. And this time it involves something much more substantial than a missing thunderbird photo - nothing less, in fact, than what may be a missing stuffed thunderbird!

In an email to me of 19 October 1998, Canadian correspondent Prof. Terry Matheson from Saskatchewan University stated:

"Years ago, a friend of mine who had lived in northern Ontario told me that in the town of Spanish, Ontario, there is a stuffed specimen of a huge bird that no one has ever been able to identify. The bird had (I presume) been sighted locally and killed. I wrote the town hall asking about this, but received no reply, and, although I vowed that I'd investigate whenever I happened to be in the vicinity, I've never had occasion to be there. Who knows? Although I got nowhere, an inquiry from a person with genuine credentials, an acknowledged expert such as yourself, might elicit a response. It might be worth pursuing."

Indeed it might, which is why I lost no time in following Prof. Matheson's lead in contacting the town hall in the Ontario town of Spanish noted above, but received no reply. And email searches for additional info have failed to uncover anything either.

So if there is anyone out there with info or the opportunity to shed any light on this tantalising mystery, I'd love to hear from you!


UPDATE - 3 August 2012

Today I received the following email message from Facebook friend Rebecca Tosh Xayasith, who has been very kindly investigating this case on my behalf:

"An update on the stuffed Thunderbird in Spanish, Ontario. Couldn't find much info. I did however find out, through a friend, that the nearby Massey Area Museum had never heard anything about it. He e-mailed the museum, and they did respond back. Also, the local library has heard nothing about it either. Spanish is a small town, population around 650+ people, and it is on the decline. They lose more people every year. If indeed there IS a stuffed bird, I'm wondering if it is a bird that is known to the world, but, maybe not known to the people of that area. And this town is slowly dying. I would imagine, if they had such a thing as a stuffed Thunderbird, they would use it to the town's advantage. They would attract MANY tourists if they had such a thing, and it just might save the town. So, I seriously doubt there is anything there, or anything that is unknown to the world."

Rebecca makes some very valid, pertinent points - after all, there is little doubt that a stuffed thunderbird, or any spectacularly large bird, would help in attracting tourism to any town possessing one. So, sadly, it appears that the bird has flown - at least figuratively!

If the thunderbird were the giant extinct teratorn Argentavis, this is how it would compare in size with a human (Tim Morris)