Buzz
Cryptozoology has captivated those fascinated by the supernatural for generations. Across cultures and eras, tales and encounters of strange beings have consistently intrigued the masses. These mysterious entities were officially categorized as “cryptids” in 1983, marking a milestone in their study. While the notion of monsters is undeniably thrilling, evidence of their existence often leads to mundane explanations. In most instances, appearances can be misleading.
10. De Loys’ Ape
According to the tale, Swiss geologist Francois de Loys embarked on an expedition to Venezuela in 1917 to search for oil. By 1920, he and the remaining members of his team reached the Rio Tarra near the Colombian border, where they came across two unusual primates. These monkey-like beings walked on two legs, stood approximately 140 centimeters (4’ 6”) tall, and had no tails. They acted aggressively, waving their arms, shouting, and throwing feces, prompting de Loys to shoot and kill one. The other fled into the jungle. De Loys photographed the dead creature and preserved its head and skin. Sadly, most of the remains and photos were lost or damaged in a boating accident later during the expedition, leaving only one photograph.
For nearly a decade, the photo remained hidden in de Loys’ personal collection until anthropologist Georges Montandon took an interest. Montandon’s research focused on human evolution and racial origins—he believed different human populations descended from specific large primates. For instance, he claimed Asians evolved from orangutans. De Loys’ find provided Montandon with what he considered a missing link between spider monkeys and South America’s indigenous people. Montandon named it Ameranthropoides loysi and collaborated with de Loys to publicize the discovery. However, it was soon exposed as a clear fabrication.
While de Loys shared his story with the media, sparking widespread curiosity, Montandon presented the photo to the scientific community, where it was swiftly debunked. Experts identified the creature as a common spider monkey, noting the absence of a visible tail. The photo lacked any definitive scale for size comparison, and the presence of non-native banana plants suggested the story was staged. Years later, Dr. Enrique Tejera, a physician and politician, revealed in a letter to a Venezuelan magazine that he had worked with de Loys during the expedition. He claimed the monkey was de Loys’ pet, which had lost its tail due to a medical amputation, and the photo was taken after its death.
9. The Yeti Hand
The story of the Yeti hand at Pangboche Monastery is intricate, spanning decades and involving notable figures. It began in the early 1950s when numerous expeditions aimed at conquering Mount Everest shifted focus to finding proof of the Abominable Snowman.
Though the Yeti legend is deeply rooted in Himalayan folklore, with the first documented sighting over a century earlier, global interest surged after Everest climber Eric Shipton captured photographs of its tracks in 1951. By 1953, Edmund Hillary had summited Everest, and the West became captivated by both the mountain and the Yeti. The Daily Mail in London funded a major expedition solely to hunt for the Yeti, leading to the discovery of remains at Pangboche.
In the Himalayan village of Pangboche, an ancient Buddhist temple houses what was claimed to be a Yeti’s scalp, preserved as a sacred relic. The expedition team was permitted a brief examination and collected a few hairs for analysis. Zoologist Charles Stonor initially believed the scalp was genuine, but a thorough investigation would not occur for years.
During this time, Texas oil magnate and adventurer Tom Slick launched three high-profile Yeti hunts in the late 1950s, recruiting mountaineer Peter Byrne. Byrne visited the temple in 1958 and discovered a mummified Yeti hand, but the monks refused to part with it. Determined, Slick sent Byrne back in 1959 with a human hand, hoping to trade for the Yeti’s. Byrne claimed he persuaded the monks to exchange one finger from each hand. Actor Jimmy Stewart, a friend of Slick, smuggled the finger to Britain in his wife’s lingerie case. Primatologist William Osman Hill studied it, with a sample sent to anthropologist George Agogino in the U.S. Hill’s analysis was inconclusive, suggesting the hand was hominid but more Neanderthal-like. Decades later, another expedition revisited Pangboche for further study.
In 1960, Edmund Hillary organized another expedition to Nepal, this time for his own investigative purposes. At Pangboche, he examined the scalp and matched it to the hides of three serows, concluding they were identical. Hillary’s team quickly dismissed the hand as fake, observing it had been wired together—a modification made by Byrne the previous year. A more detailed analysis didn’t occur until 1991, when Agogino provided his sample for an episode of the TV show Unsolved Mysteries. The results were again inconclusive; while the finger appeared human, it might have belonged to an unknown species. The TV exposure, however, led to the theft of the scalp and hand from the monastery, leaving only Agogino’s tissue sample as evidence.
In 2008, Byrne’s Yeti finger was rediscovered among Hill’s belongings, which he had bequeathed to the Royal College of Surgeons’ Hunterian Museum in London. In 2011, the BBC uncovered its existence and obtained a sample for a news feature. DNA testing ultimately revealed it was human, ending the decades-long mystery.
8. The Cuero Chupacabra
While Bigfoot is the most famous cryptid in the United States and Canada, Latin America is better acquainted with the notorious, blood-drinking Chupacabra. First sighted in Puerto Rico in the mid-1990s, locals blamed the creature for a series of livestock deaths involving drained blood. The first eyewitness, Madelyn Tolentino, described a two-legged creature with enormous, alien-like eyes and a spiky back resembling a stegosaurus. Her description was illustrated by UFOlogist Jorge Martin, and the widely shared sketch became the first visual representation of the Chupacabra. So, why do many now picture it as a zombified dog rather than a reptilian dwarf?
Enter Phylis Canion, a rancher from Cuero, Texas. Canion claimed that in 2007, her chickens were mysteriously drained of blood, similar to the Chupacabra’s alleged victims. She also reported seeing strange hairless, blue-gray animals around her property. When one was found dead on a nearby road, its bizarre appearance led her to preserve its head for DNA testing and declare it the Chupacabra. However, two separate DNA tests revealed it was not a mythical creature but a hybrid of a wolf and coyote suffering from severe mange. Researchers explained the bloodless livestock as a result of natural coagulation. Despite this, the public’s perception stuck, and numerous sightings of mangy canids have since been reported as Chupacabras.
7. The Raleigh Sewer Monster
In 2009, a video titled “Unknown Lifeform in North Carolina Sewer!” was uploaded to YouTube by an independent UFO site and quickly gained traction on Gawker’s sci-fi blog io9. The footage showed several strange, quivering, membranous sacs clinging to the inside of a sewer pipe. It went viral, amassing millions of views in days. Despite its dubious origin, the creature—reminiscent of the classic movie monster The Blob—appeared eerily real. When Raleigh officials learned of the video, they confirmed its authenticity, and the “sewer monster” made national headlines.
According to Raleigh’s Public Utilities Department, the video was filmed by an independent contractor in a private sewer line. They had received the footage a month before it went viral but claimed not to know its source. Biologists identified the “monster” as a colony of tubifex, or sludge worms, reacting to the camera’s light. These worms, commonly used as fish food, are typically found near sewer outlets but rarely inside pipes. A University of North Carolina biology professor suggested the sacs might be Bryozoa, but this was later disputed by a bryozoan expert and a Dutch man who replicated the phenomenon with tubifex worms. Both supported the city’s conclusion. Whether tubifex or bryozoans, it’s safe to say the creature wasn’t an alien protoplasm.
6. The Cerro Azul Monster
In late 2009, a story about four teenagers who allegedly killed a strange creature went viral online. Accounts of the incident vary, but all agree the boys claimed to have stoned the creature to death near a creek in Panama City’s Cerro Azul region. They threw its body into the water and later returned to photograph the remains. These images were shared by a local TV program and briefly covered by American and British media.
The photos depict a pale, mostly hairless creature with long, thin limbs, an oddly shaped torso, and at least one hooked hand. Speculations ranged from an alien to an entirely new species, but some quickly identified it as a decaying three-toed sloth. Panamanian authorities recovered the body four days later, and a biopsy confirmed it was indeed a sloth. The creature had been dead and submerged in water for about two days before being found, leading to hair loss, skin smoothing, and organ swelling, which contributed to its bizarre appearance. One boy’s account supported these findings, claiming the creature grabbed his legs in the creek, prompting the group to remove it from the water and attack it. If the boys weren’t lying, they were likely misled by the water’s currents.
5. The Omajinaakoos
In 2010, an online debate erupted when photos of a mysterious creature were shared on the website of Big Trout Lake, a Canadian reservation in northern Ontario. Two nurses reportedly found the odd animal while walking their dog near a causeway. The dog pulled the creature from the water, revealing a bald white face and large teeth. While online commentators offered various theories, local elders suggested it might be the Omajinaakoos, or “Ugly One,” a legendary omen from tribal folklore.
The creature was later identified online as a mink whose face had lost fur due to being submerged in water after death. Since the body was never recovered, its true nature remains unconfirmed. However, the tribe has not experienced any ill omens, suggesting the creature was not a harbinger of doom.
4. The Siberian Extraterrestrial
In April 2011, a video from Irkutsk, Siberia, surfaced on YouTube, showing what appeared to be the mangled remains of an alien in the snow. The cameraman examines the bizarre find while a local explains how his dog initially discovered it. The small, humanoid figure had deep eye sockets, pale, wrinkled skin, and was missing a right leg, suggesting it had suffered a violent impact. Speculation arose that the Russian military had failed to clean up an alien crash site. Irkutsk is known as a UFO hotspot, and local media had reported several sightings before the discovery. Within two days and 1.5 million views, the video became an Internet sensation, covered by major news outlets.
The supposed alien couldn’t be dismissed as a dried-up animal, leaving only two possibilities: it was either real or a hoax. Unsurprisingly, it was the latter. The video’s creators admitted to local authorities that the “corpse” was made from chicken skin filled with bread. As for the mysterious lights seen over Irkutsk, their origin remains unknown.
3. The Huairou Gollum
The “Gollum” spotted in the Huairou hills is one of the most recent cases of mistaken monster identity to gain global attention. Shared in June 2014 on Sina Weibo, a popular Chinese social media platform, photos of a peculiar creature resembling the iconic character from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy quickly became a worldwide sensation.
The images, depicting a hairless, fleshy creature with large, droopy ears, were reposted over 30,000 times, generating tens of thousands of comments and millions of YouTube views. In the most widely shared photo, the creature is staring directly at the camera from a close distance, showcasing its bizarre features. While many assumed the photos were fake, they turned out to be genuine.
Huairou, a scenic mountainous district north of Beijing, is a popular tourist spot that includes part of the Great Wall. The photos were taken by a camper who had wandered away from his group to “relieve himself.” Within a day of being posted, the story went viral in China, with one unverified commenter claiming to be the subject of the photos, stating, “Over the weekend, my friends and I were filming a mini sci-fi movie in the mountains. While I was peeing, someone took my picture and ran off.” The next day, Beijing police confirmed, “This was an actor in a costume filming an advertisement.”
The Hauirou County government backed the commenter’s account, stating, “The actor was on a bathroom break and still in costume.” This explains why he was crouching in the bushes. Meanwhile, the creators of Guild Wars 2, a popular online game, provided additional context, revealing the actor was filming a Chinese photo advertisement for the game. He was dressed as an Asura, one of the game’s original character races, and was spotted drinking from a stream. Whether he was relieving himself or hydrating remains unclear, but Guild Wars 2’s Sina Weibo account later shared images of the same “monster,” confirming the story. While not a hoax, the explanation is entirely logical.
2. The Villaricos Sea Monster
In 2013, the strange remains of what seemed to be a giant horned sea serpent washed ashore in Villaricos, a village in Andalusia. Measuring four meters (13 ft) long and heavily decomposed, the creature puzzled both locals and Spanish officials. Photos first appeared in Spanish media, and soon blogs and U.S. news outlets speculated it might be an oarfish or even a mutant sea dragon. Spanish authorities buried the remains and collected samples for analysis but were unable to identify it. The mystery was eventually solved by NBC reporter Alan Boyle, who consulted shark morphology expert Dean Grubbs from FSU. Grubbs confirmed, “That is definitely a shark skeleton... The ‘horns’ are the scapulocoracoids, which support the pectoral fins.”
The Villaricos incident is just one of many “sea monster” discoveries that have captured global attention before being revealed as something mundane. A few months prior, a viral video of a massive carcass on a New Zealand beach sparked speculation. Despite media coverage, it was identified as the remains of an orca whale. Similarly, in the previous year, a strange, bony carcass found on a South Carolina beach made headlines but was later confirmed to be an Atlantic sturgeon. From Britain’s Canvey Island Monster (monkfish) to South Africa’s Trunko (whale blubber) to the plesiosaur-like remains (basking shark) caught by the Japanese fishing vessel Zuiyo Maru, sensational sea creature discoveries have a rich history and show no signs of stopping.
1. The East River Monster
Another oddity that briefly gained Internet fame, the East River Monster, was discovered in Manhattan near the Brooklyn Bridge. A pedestrian photographed its bloated, unrecognizable carcass in 2012, and the images were first shared by the New York City–based site Gothamist.
Speculation briefly surged—was it a giant rat or a secret lab experiment? The Parks Department dismissed the bizarre find as a roasted pig, which it vaguely resembled. However, a closer look at the photo reveals the creature’s feet had five claw-like digits, unlike a pig’s cloven, four-toed hooves. Its teeth also showed no resemblance to a pig’s. Soon, Gothamist resolved the mystery by consulting a Cornell naturalist, who identified the remains as a small dog that had been decomposing in the water for an extended period.
