The Fortean/paranormal/conspiracy thread

[David]

If you tilt your head and squint at it out of one eye it looks a bit like a decomposed dragon.

[chokeout]

Dead sharks rot really oddly. One of my favourite pictures as a kid was the 'dead plesiosaur' picked up by a Japanese fishing ship in the 70s.

 

 

Look at that! It's a fucking dinosaur! In the 70s!

 

That one and this were the best monster pictures of the 70s and 80s

 

[Astro Hollywood]

That one and this were the best monster pictures of the 70s and 80s

 

 

God, yes. The picture that inspired many a wannabe cryptozoologist. There are some other, less-famous, but no less magical shots from that too.

 

Another angle:

 

 

And some close-ups of the head:

 

[chokeout]

I was gutted when it came out that it was probably just a bin bag

[David]

I was gutted when it came out that it was probably just a bin bag

A bin bag? What's a rogue bin bag doing in such clear and clean water?

 

On another note, the Loch Ness monster saga has been given a bump by "amateur photographer" David Elder, who snapped this photo;

 

[Loki]

Looks like a wave to me

 

The giant tadpole is, I think, an obvious fake. First of all, it doesn't move even though the camera man, and the chap in the boat, are moving around it. Secondly, you can see in the close ups that the sand ingresses into the outline of the object, suggesting it's buried in the sand. So more than likely it's a tarpaulin buried in the sand and weighted down with rocks (the eyes).

[Astro Hollywood]

I was gutted when it came out that it was probably just a bin bag

 

It never 'came out' that it was a bin bag. Like the whole 'frog rain is caused by mini whirlpools' thing, a sceptic suggested it once as an explanation, with no rhyme or reason, and it became the accepted story.

 

On another note, the Loch Ness monster saga has been given a bump by "amateur photographer" David Elder, who snapped this photo;

 

 

That looks quite impressive in still, but the video is clearly just a boat wake.

 

Apologies for the Daily Mail source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/coul...2056/index.html

[David]

It never 'came out' that it was a bin bag. Like the whole 'frog rain is caused by mini whirlpools' thing, a sceptic suggested it once as an explanation, with no rhyme or reason, and it became the accepted story.

Does anyone else think that this kind of thing happens a lot? Someone will provide a photo or something, which obviously has to be proven 110% beyond a shadow of a doubt before any intelligent person will buy into it, yet when a half-arsed explanation is made with no real basis said intelligent people seem to just go along with it?

[quote the raven]

What the hell is this?

 

 

Dartmoor

[Astro Hollywood]

It never 'came out' that it was a bin bag. Like the whole 'frog rain is caused by mini whirlpools' thing, a sceptic suggested it once as an explanation, with no rhyme or reason, and it became the accepted story.

Does anyone else think that this kind of thing happens a lot? Someone will provide a photo or something, which obviously has to be proven 110% beyond a shadow of a doubt before any intelligent person will buy into it, yet when a half-arsed explanation is made with no real basis said intelligent people seem to just go along with it?

 

It happens all the time, and it drives me up the fucking wall. I always use the mini-whirlpool thing as an example, because you hear it every time it rains fish or frogs or whatever from the sky. Except nobody's ever seen one either travelling through the sky, or in action; nobody's ever reported the loss of frogs/fish; nothing else -- water, weeds, other animals -- ever comes down with it, which you'd expect if they were sucking up the contents of ponds like we're told. It's just a theory a scientist said once, to calm himself by making sense of something that didn't make any, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

 

When someone confesses something, they're instantly believed, which seems insane. Critical thinking tends to go out of the window when sceptics want to solve an irritating mystery. For example, I never bought the story of the Surgeon's Photo hoax.

 

 

The accepted story now is that Marmaduke Wetherell, a guy who'd already hoaxed a Pathe news team with "nessie footprints" he made out of an elephant's foot umbrella stand while posing as a big game hunter, glued a Nessie head onto a submarine. Except then you're left with the second, less well-known photo, where it's half submerged, at an angle that couldn't possibly have a sub attached, and with the 'jawline' an entirely different shape. The second photo was dismissed altogether in the book that 'outed the hoax' because it didn't fit the narrative. Then there's the story of how they kicked it into the water right after snapping the picture, when a water balliff approached, which doesn't add up when you see the full, uncropped shot and realise it was way too far out for anyone to reach it from standing in the sholes, unless it was about 2mm high.

 

But who's more honest than a fame-hungry, self-admitted hoaxer on their deathbed? "You know that Nessie? That was me! I fooled the world!" Maybe I'll claim I was inside the Bigfoot costume of the Patterson-Gimlin film, like about a dozen other people have. I'm not saying the Surgeon's Photo shows a monster, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't show a child's submarine with a papier mache dinosaur head on it. But Wetherall and his partner get the credit now, and they always will.

 

Half of Charles Forts stuff, especially his latter books, spent most of the time satirising this. These days, the easy get-out is to claim something's Viral Marketing.

 

What the hell is this?

 

 

Dartmoor

 

Big cat. They're so obviously out there that this barely even seems like a mystery any more.

Edited August 27, 2013 by Astro Hollywood

[quote the raven]

Just confused by it being black, unless its a dirty lion?

 

You hear about Pumas, and the smaller big cats, but a fucking lion?

[David]

Big cat. They're so obviously out there that this barely even seems like a mystery any more.

Yeah, isn't it widely accepted that big cats still roam certain remote places in the UK?

[Richie Freebird]

Yeah, isn't it widely accepted that big cats still roam certain remote places in the UK?

There have been sporadic sightings of massive black cats round here for about 4 or 5 years, which are usually explained by the local paper as a panthers escaped from a small zoo in the next town. What

[wandshogun09]

I definitely think there are these big cats out there in certain parts of the UK. But I love the stories where everyone loses their shit and it turns out to be a dog or something. I loved that one a few years ago where people were reporting sightings of some big beastly creature roaming around fields. They thought it was the 'Beast Of Bodmin'

 

 

It turned out to be some woman's Newfoundland;

 

[Loki]

What the hell is this?

 

 

Dartmoor

 

A wild boar, was my first guess. They're everywhere now.

 

That said, I'm a total believer in British large cats, that's a great Fortean mystery with a decent amount of evidence attached.