Читать книгу Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside - Brad Steiger - Страница 9

Large apelike creature in the United States and Canada are known in the oral traditions of native tribes by such names as Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Wauk-Wauk, Oh-Mah, or Saskehavis. These creatures have also been described in the journals of early settlers and in the columns of frontier newspapers, but wide public attention was not called to the mysterious beast until the late 1950s, when road-building crews in the Bluff Creek area north of Eureka, California, began to report a large number of sightings of North America’s own “abominable snowman.”

The humanlike creature—whether sighted in the more remote, wooded, or mountainous regions of North America, South America, Russia, China, Australia, or Africa—is believed by some anthropologists to be a bipedal mammal that constitutes a kind of missing link between humankind and the great apes, for its appearance is more primitive than that of Neanderthal. The descriptions given by witnesses around the world are amazingly similar: height between six and nine feet; weight anywhere from 400 to 1,000 pounds; black eyes. Dark fur or body hair from one to four inches in length is said to cover the creature’s entire body with the exception of the palms of its hands, the soles of its feet, and its upper facial area, nose, and eyelids.

In North America, the greatest number of sightings of Bigfoot have come from the Fraser River Valley, the Strait of Georgia, and Vancouver Island, British Columbia; the “Ape Canyon” region near Mt. St. Helens in southwestern Washington; the Three Sisters Wilderness west of Bend, Oregon; and the area around the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation, especially the Bluff Creek watershed northeast of Eureka, California. In recent years, extremely convincing sightings of Bigfoot-type creatures have also been made in areas of New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida.

Most scientists remain skeptical about Bigfoot’s existence, and the controversy rages on after 60 years.

The Mothman legend began in the 1960s. On November 15, 1966, two young married couples were driving through the marshy area near the Ohio River outside of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, when a winged monster, at least seven feet tall with glowing red eyes, loomed up in front of them near an abandoned TNT plant. Later, they told Deputy Sheriff Millard Halstead that the creature followed them toward Point Pleasant on Route 62 even when their speed approached one hundred miles per hour.

News of the mysterious encounter achieved local notoriety, and numerous other area residents added to the story with reports that they had also seen the giant birdlike creature near the same abandoned TNT plant. A few days later, Thomas Ury said that an enormous flying creature with a wingspan of 10 feet had chased his convertible into Point Pleasant at a speed of 70 miles per hour.

More witnesses came forward with accounts of their sightings, and the legend of Mothman was born. Although the majority of witnesses described the tall, red-eyed monster as appearing birdlike, the media dubbed the creature “Mothman” because, as writer John A. Keel noted, the Batman television series was very popular at the time.

Intrigued by the stories, Keel visited Point Pleasant on numerous occasions and learned about the bizarre occurrences associated with Mothman’s appearance, including the eerie forecast that the Silver Bridge in Point Pleasant would collapse and many people would be killed as a result.