The Fortean/paranormal/conspiracy thread

[Keith Houchen]

I may be wrong, but I'm sure that new species are being discovered quite regularly, so it's not as easy or clear cut as you may believe.

I

[quote the raven]

My favourite ones are animals that are officially extinct but still occasionally sighted, like the Giant Sloth, or Moa or Orang Pendek. There you know it DID once exist...

 

 

 

Did you see that program about them beast hunter some guy was more or less killed by one.

 

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/wild...ian-mapinguari/

 

A different one but same kind of story. I think they are still out there

Edited August 28, 2013 by quote the raven

[Richie Freebird]

Such as a new species of "Walking Shark" discovered off Indonesia.

Interesting stuff Keith. I

[Duke]

Blimey! That's a Reaper!

[Egg Shen]

fuck that!

[Loki]

I like stories like the Agogwe:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agogwe

 

Basically, reports of small furry hominids still hiding out in the jungles of East Africa, like Orang Pendek further east. The idea that varieties of Australopithecus didn't die out a million years ago but have survived even till the modern age would explain many of the myths of pixies, faeries, bogles, dwarves and other little folk. A world in which early man lived side by side with Australopithecus and Neanderthal would indeed be a strange place.

[quote the raven]

The world is a boring place now.

 

I love looking at the old drawings that people did when they went to africa and oz.

 

Check out a few of these.

 

http://www.tomlytle.com/SeaSerpents.htm

Edited August 29, 2013 by quote the raven

[Loki]

The world is still an interesting place in some areas.

 

Good story on the Sentinelese, a tribe on a remote island that have resisted all attempts at contact.

 

http://himalmag.com/component/content/arti...e-Andamans.html

 

They recently killed and ate a fisherman that was illegally fishing off their island. They also have an interesting fighting style, where they copulate madly in front of strangers to frighten them.

[quote the raven]

The world is still an interesting place in some areas.

 

Good story on the Sentinelese, a tribe on a remote island that have resisted all attempts at contact.

 

http://himalmag.com/component/content/arti...e-Andamans.html

 

They recently killed and ate a fisherman that was illegally fishing off their island. They also have an interesting fighting style, where they copulate madly in front of strangers to frighten them.

 

"In the 1970s, some Indian anthropologists began attempting to contact the Sentineli. A film crew visiting in 1974, to shoot a piece called Man in Search of Man, fled when arrows whistled down around them. The director was hit in the thigh, throwing the successful marksman into fits of laughter. To add to the farce, police in cricket pads left gifts of a pig and a plastic doll, which the Sentineli promptly speared and buried in the sand"

 

I take it all back

[Keith Houchen]

That's cracking, Ritchie! I too am amazed by the deep sea. As a child I saw a segment on the news or Blue Peter or some shit. A lad at school the next day was on about how they were transluscent and couldn't be brought to the surface as they exploded due to the pressure.

 

His trainers were better than mine, I had Adidas Kick, he had Apollo, so I believed him.

[Richie Freebird]

That's cracking, Ritchie! I too am amazed by the deep sea. As a child I saw a segment on the news or Blue Peter or some shit. A lad at school the next day was on about how they were transluscent and couldn't be brought to the surface as they exploded due to the pressure.

 

His trainers were better than mine, I had Adidas Kick, he had Apollo, so I believed him.

I've certainly seen documentary footage of translucent crab like creatures inhabiting the ecosystems around hydrothermal vents at the deepest points of the ocean bed that are accessible to research subs. In the absence of any light at all from the sun, a lot of deep sea fish are translucent too, save for the little "head light" antennas that some species have evolved to provide their own light and to act as a source of bait for their otherwise similarly blinded prey.

 

As far as the exploding thing, I'm not entirely sure that would apply to crustaceans or isopods, but there have certainly been instances of deep sea fish being raised to the surface, only to have bodies and organs so ruptured as to render them useless for scientific research. I think the inhabitants of such harsh and inhospitable parts of our planet will remain somewhat of a mystery to us for some time to come.

 

 

 

Edit - Depressingly, my spell check wanted me to change the word "isopods" to I-pods.

Edited August 29, 2013 by Richie Freebird

[Keith Houchen]

If only they wore Hi Tech Silver Shadow.

 

Tis a fascinating area, isn't it? How much of our planet lies undiscovered, not cack trainers.

[Egg Shen]

did anyone watch Tribe with Bruce Parry where he goes into some of these remote tribes and lives their way of life for a while. Fascinating stuff, i love shit like that? The Sentinelese people reminded me of that.

[Astro Hollywood]

Ironically, Woy, that "Bigfoot dichotomy" is EXACTLY what Icke uses!

 

A stopped, Jew-hating clock etc.

 

The US seems particularly rife with cryptids. I reckon there's two explanations for this, not entirely contradictory.

 

First off, the US is a vast country with large sections of deep forest right next to modern urban populations. Because it's a relatively young country, there are still some creatures not yet formally discovered knocking around.

 

The other explanation is similar to that often posited about the UFO phenomenon. The US doesn't have mythology in the European sense, where tradition stretches back tens of thousand of years, even into deep prehistory. The only sort of myth stories it has are those told by settlers as they pushed West. That's why a lot of cryptid legends start back in the 19th century as small groups of people moved into completely unknown areas and sat in the dark in their log cabins. Those stories have become the foundations of a sense of local identity and continue to resonate today.

 

This is a really interesting angle on it. That early period of the United States is super muddled in terms of folklore building, as the newspapers of the day would print outright fiction under the guise of news, and a lot of it would tumble into fact as the years went on, and it got told, retold, and reprinted in books. I'm not talking in the Piers Morgan way of today's made up news, rather, stories about flying snakes, flying men whizzing around the sky, or even a huge snake derailing a train and eating the carriages. Liars Clubs were a big thing back then too, a sort of 19th Century Playstation for blokes sitting around in pubs, seeing who could spread the most outlandish story, and these would often make it to the newspapers, muddying the waters even more, as the press usually weren't in on it then.

 

(And this isn't really connected to anything, but that's around the time where Spiritualism became huge, and for decades, the US and Great Britain were completely obsessed with Ouija boards, ectoplasm, and holding seances round each others houses every week.)

 

I don't believe in Bigfoot, but I do believe in Orang Pendek. Cyptids often come in from the cold, but some of them are just too implausible, and in between is all the wonderful mystery.

 

My favourite ones are animals that are officially extinct but still occasionally sighted, like the Giant Sloth, or Moa or Orang Pendek. There you know it DID once exist...

 

Same here. The notion of surviving species like that is far more exciting to me than UFOs or ghosts. Nothing grabs me like that stuff. Like the Pterosaur sighted in Texas in 1976, or reports of pilots who say they've seen surfacing plesiosaurs, way, way out to sea. Doesn't mean I believe it, but it's pretty fucking magical.

 

I'm totally open to Bigfoot though, as much as that invites people to suggest I'll believe in any old toot. I don't think it's everywhere, like how people have seen it in pretty much every state, but could the huge, unmapped, wooded expanses of certain states conceivably hide a surviving Gigantopithecus? Maybe. Same with the Australian Yowie. By far the most believable crypto reports come from the bush, where something smart, agile and strong could easily hide out from silly old man forever.

 

Here's a brilliant Bigfoot thing.

[King Pitcos]

I'd never heard of (or perhaps never taken notice of) North Sentinel Island until its mention a few days ago, and I'm fascinated by it. Been reading various articles online about it.

 

ONCE every few months, a greying and respectable Indian scholar named Trilokinath Pandit travels by launch to a jungle island in the Andaman Islands where the inhabitants strip him naked and steal his glasses. This is Mr Pandit's job as an anthropologist, and he loves it.

 

The anthropologists now practise the traditional Sentinelese greeting, which is to sit in a friend's lap and slap your right buttock vigorously.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/is...se-1477566.html