sheepsquatch

[sheepsquatch]

On the Hunt For A Yowie (source)

Not sure if this is the ideal place for this story but I'll go for it anyway. In the late 90's I went on a "Yowie hunt" with a group of cryptozoologists in the Blue Mountains (just west of Sydney, Australia). The Yowie is the Australian version of bigfoot, yeti, etc. I was just an undergrad anthropology student who had stumbled across this group online, ended up corresponding with the organiser, and decided to tag along. I'm a skeptic by nature and kinda wanted to see whether these guys were just crackpots.

For anyone who's not been there, it's very mountainous terrain covered in thick bush, just a maze of canyons, ridges, cliffs, creeks, waterfalls, etc. A few of the places we went are only accessibly by foot. Absolutely spectacular though.

Anyway, we spent about 3 days up there, there was a Canadian film crew from the Discovery Channel there as well making a documentary about these crypto guys. I haven't seen the documentary but I'm told my car is in the background of most shots ;-) Anyway, in the time I was up there I saw some weird shit....

*a tree about as thick as my thigh that had been woven between other trees, like lattice (I still have a photo somewhere). Not broken, just... woven.

*A giant footprint in some sand. I wear size 12 boots (Australian sizes), and my foot fit comfortably within it.

*There was one guy who was kind of "hosting" the cryptos, claiming he saw the Yowie all the time and had even been leaving food out for it. He claimed that he had set a sound-activated tape recorder under the food bowl one day. The tape contained some footsteps, some rustling, obvious chewing of food, and then more rustling as the covering layers are obviously removed from the recorder, and a massive bang. He claimed he found the food bucket smashed to pieces after this.

*Pretty well everyone in this guy's road claimed to have seen this thing as well. One lady claimed it even came into her house and stole some baby clothes (baby clothes? what the hell does a Yowie want with baby clothes?). The only guy who wouldn't say he'd seen it had just bulldozed a 30m perimeter around his house (this is in thick bush turned into scorched earth stuff), put bars on all the ground floor windows and installed (to my count) 22 motion-activated floodlights around his house. The place was a fortress. He was right at the end of the road, closest to the bush.

*Several people told us that the NSW police had just finished a stakeout in the area looking for something after a number of people had phoned in terrified sightings. Always wondered if there is some form of FOI process I could go through to confirm this.

*After the first night a tree near where we were staying had been demolished, I mean absolutely smashed. This tree was one of those ones that forks out into a double-trunk just above the ground, one half of it was just torn to shreds, and it was a thick tree. Just huge scraps of wood everywhere. It had been OK the day before, the other trunk was untouched.

*One night out in the mountains, I was walking back to my car a few hundred metres from the campsite by myself (I'm a skeptic remember, nothing to be afraid of), suddenly everything goes quiet. I mean crickets stop chirping kind of thing. The most irrational terror came over me, I could barely walk and was shaking terribly, I stumbled to my car, got in and got the fuck out of there. I was supposed to go back to the campsite but every instinct was just screaming at me to GET AWAY. Never been that scared. When I told the guy who was hosting us up there, he said he had a similar reaction when he had seen the Yowie and had shit himself in terror.

*Big chunks taken out of trees everywhere. Hundreds. The locals called them tree-bites, the story is the Yowie listens for grubs under the bark and finding them, bites a huge chunk of wood out to get them. These things were sometimes 2-3 metres off the ground, and each had two parallel gouges along the edges that could conceivably have been big canine teeth.

*One night camping on a ridge, in the middle of the night we hear a CRASH in the bush below us, enough to wake several us, then a THUMP THUMP THUMP like an elephant running, all the while with crashing like a bulldozer was going through the bush. In the morning, there is this path of destruction just torn through the bush in a straight line... small trees broken, bushes flattened. Imagine taking a 1m-wide bulldozer and just roaring through thick bushland. I should say I've heard kangaroos crashing through the bush before, and tree kangaroos dropping down from high perches (they kinda just smash through the foliage on their way down) and this was different.

Anyway that's my story, make of it what you will. I'm still a skeptic, and I don't believe in Yowies, but alot of this stuff still freaks me out even now because I can't find good rational explanations. I've also heard numerous Yowie stories since.

[sheepsquatch]

Mothman sighted during the 9/11 disaster 

[sheepsquatch]

Hello! We are a new blog about horror stories and cryptids, we will be posting on these subjects as often as possible. We currently have 2 mods, Mod Time and Mod Ghost, we will be opening mod applications soon. You can submit asks containing the names of cryptids you’d like more information about and we will likely make a post dedicated to them! 

[sheepsquatch]

The Shadow People are a very common phenomenon, being one of the top sighted cryptids reported to date. They appear as their name would suggest, ominous, humanoid shadowy figures or silhouettes.

These ominous figures have been reported as having no eyes or facial features whatsoever, however some reports claim them as having red or yellow eyes. People who have encountered Shadow People have reported being chased, intimidated, and in some (albeit rare) cases, attacked by the Shadow People. Movement of the Shadow People has been reported to be “distorted” or “jiggly” in the sense that they move more like a fluid. (More similar to jello than water, in most cases). Viewers have also reported the Shadow People ‘jumping’ from wall to wall, or jumping around their line of sight in general.

These unsettling creatures usually appear in the corners of people’s eyes, sometimes fleeing when the person looks directly at them. They have been reported as darting into nearby walls or just disappearing altogether. They have been reported all over the world, The term “Shadow People” was originally coined as early as September 21, 1953 as the title of a radio show broadcast on Chicago’s WGN-AM “Hall of Fantasy” series.

TESTIMONIALS ABOUT SHADOW PEOPLE

Tahlia

“I'd just like to state, that I've never really believed in ghosts, or anything in that form; mainly because they scare me beyond belief.

The first time I encountered a 'shadow man', I convinced myself that it was a trick of my eyes. My first encounter occurred when I was doing my hair in a mirror. It was about 6pm, and the mirror had full view of the room. I noticed a figure staring from behind the room’s entrance, very high up on the door frame (making me think it was really tall). I couldn't see a body, kind of just arms and head leaning around. It disappeared as soon as I'd seen it. It was black, no distinguishing features, however it immensely reminded me of a male. I tried to reason with myself, thinking I hadn't really seen anything. that was until I saw another shadow person.

I was walking down a hallway, when I gazed into a room, just in time to see a black, short figure disappearing. Again, I thought it was a trick of the light, and I'm still trying to convince myself it was, because after it occurred, it seems less real, however deep down, I know that it was. I couldn't tell whether this figure was male or female.

The third time I saw it, I really began to question my eyesight theory. I was standing in our kitchen, when I turned to look into the dining room. I saw a hunched figure move before disappearing, almost as if it was walking. The hunched figure seemed fairly tall, and again male.

I have had no feeling of fear when I see these things, however at night time, when I think about them, they scare me half to death. Mainly because I worry about demons, however the actual experience is interesting, and I do not find it scary. I'm glad I finally know what they are.”

Jennie

“I was standing in the kitchen one night, at the sink doing dishes. My husband was way down the hall, in the shower. There wasn't anyone else in the house. One could enter our kitchen from either the hallway or living room.....I suddenly sensed someone moving to my right, in the dining room, and said out loud "That didn't take long", thinking my husband was already out of the shower, which would've meant less than 5 or 6 minutes....as I started to turn my head to the right, and already seeing what I thought was my husband out of the corner of my eye, I stopped dead in my tracks! This black, human-shaped "thing" was moving in my dining room, and went right through the wall leading to the outside! I was surely taken aback, but not frightened......after a few days and doing some research, I realized it may have well been a lost gold miner, as we lived in the middle of California gold rush country, and right down the road from an old gold mine that was now a museum......I can still see it.....”

Alejandro

“A couple of months ago, during midday, I was lying in my bed when a sudden need of sleep came upon me.

I think that I fell asleep because things turned slow and dizzy, but the next time I opened my eyes it felt like some time had passed and something woke me up. I slowly turned my head to the left side to see what time it was, but then I saw with the corner of my eye, something black entering through the door (that is in front of my bed).

I felt panic star to come to me and suddenly I was unable to move my head any further; I became paralyzed. The thing, a dark smoky man-shaped thing, moved into my sight and stood there staring at me for a moment. I was really scared but for some reason I began to fall asleep again. When I opened my eyes again I didn’t see anything, but I was all sweaty and scared.

The phenomena hadn´t repeated since.”