Pursuing The Strange & Weird:A Naturalists Viewpoint

Terry Hooper-Scharf
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249 Pages

Highly illustrated

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2013 UP DATE -From Dead Aquatic (Humanoid) Creatures, the giant squid and yet undiscovered sea creatures; submarine and ships crews encountering true leviathans.

There is a fully expanded section which also refers to the so-called ‘Ningen’ sightings and video footage. 

Extinct animals at sea that have been re-discovered. The subject of Sasquatch and other mystery Hominids around the world is dealt with including a look at the “Sasquatch-killer”, Justin Smeja.

Dr. Bryan Sykes and his DNA test results for TVs The Bigfoot Files as well as the controversial Erickson Project and Dr. Melba Ketchum’s Even more controversial Sasquatch DNA test results.

Also included are two early French UFO entity cases that still baffle. Ghosts, strange creatures and the Star-Child hoax. All dealt with by the naturalist and pursuer of the strange and weird

Loch Ness Monster A Giant Eel?

I've been trying to get to the bottom of this but so far nothing in the way of replies  and trying to contact reporters these days is ridiculous -but it does sound interesting!

8 January, 2016 - 14:50 Mark Miller

Could Nessie the Loch Ness Monster be a giant, 15-foot Eel? (Probably not)

The Loch Ness Monster is again in the news, as a Scotsman says his 2007 footage probably was not of the famed sea monster, but actually shows a 10-15 foot (3- 4.5 meter) giant eel. This too is unlikely. There is only one type of eel in Loch Ness, and it grows at the very most to 5 feet (1.5 meters). There have been reports of 7- to 9-foot (2.1-2.7 meter) eels taken in Loch Ness, but these dimensions seem to defy science.


Loch Ness is long at 22.5 miles (32 kilometers) and deep at 755 feet (230 meters), so many people who’ve claimed to have sighted the monster have said it has plenty of places to hide. Loch Ness contains more fresh water than all the lakes and in England and Wales combined.

A view from the shores of Loch Ness, looking south. (Public Domain)

The Scottish press is reporting that the mystery of the latest footage of Nessie, from 2007, has been solved. The Scotsman writes:

“The man who filmed some of the most famous footage of Nessie has admitted it could have been a giant eel. Gordon Holmes, who filmed jet-black shapes moving in Loch Ness from the roadside in 2007, agrees a U.S. computer expert who analyzed the footage has likely solved the mystery. Mr. Holmes, of Shipley, in West Yorkshire, now believes the creatures are eels between 10ft and 15ft long. The retired university technician has visited Loch Ness six times in the past. His two-minute video, shot from a layby on the A82, showed a long black shape moving just under the surface of the water. It made headlines around the world, but many expressed doubt.”

But this too has to be taken with a grain of salt. The largest eels are moray eels that grow to 10 to 12 feet (2 to 3 meters). And moray eels are not freshwater fish. They live in the ocean. There is a type of eel that grows in Loch Ness—the European eel or Anguilla anguilla that grows to, at the utmost, 5 feet or 1.5 meters. However, it is usually much shorter than that, about half the size.


Bill Appleton, owner of a software company in the United States, stabilized the footage of the “eel” and sent it to a paranormal website. Holmes says the stabilized video proves he saw a giant eel.


The Press and Journal reported Holmes as saying: “After several estimations, I believe the creatures were approximately 12ft [3.7 meters] long. Since eels do appear strange, ancient, scary-like beasties that may explain several of the Loch Ness sightings over the centuries.”


Some people truly believe a monster inhabits Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. Popular interest and belief in the animal's existence has varied since it was first reported in 1933 and made famous by a photograph supposedly taken by Robert Kenneth Wilson in 1934, depicted below.

Photo of the ‘Loch Ness monster’ taken by Robert Wilson. (Fortean Pictures Library)

Evidence of its existence is anecdotal, with minimal and much-disputed photographic material and sonar readings. The most common speculation among believers is that the creature represents a line of long-surviving plesiosaurs, a Mesozoic marine reptile.

However, the scientific community regards the Loch Ness Monster, affectionately known as ‘Nessie’, as a modern-day myth, and often explains sightings as misidentifications of more mundane objects, outright hoaxes, and wishful thinking.

‘Loch Ness Monster, Seasnake, Seamonster, Seeschlange, Meeresungeheuer.’ By Hugo Heikenwaelder. (CC BY SA 2.5)

Featured image: A European eel with some fish in an aquarium; most European eels grow to 23 to 31 inches (60 to 80 centimeters). (CC BY SA 3.0) Insert: A representation of Nessie at the Loch Ness Exhibition Centre in Drumnadrochit. (Public Domain)

By: Mark Miller

Read more: http://www.ancient-origins.net/news/could-nessie-loch-ness-monster-be-giant-15-foot-eel-probably-not-005120#ixzz3whUnUH5K
Follow us: @ancientorigins on Twitter | ancientoriginsweb on Facebook

Idiots Obviously CANNOT Read...hence their being idiots...right.

A little aside before we get back to REAL things.

The moron who called me a jerk looking to find fakery in everything that Ghost Adventures does really ought to read my posts....I take it he can read because his spelling is awful.

He might do well to get in touch with the other jerk who mocks my credibility at having believed that the original Ghost Adventures documentary was real.  "Call yourself a paranormal investigator!"

Again, moron: R E A D my posts.  And, I have never claimed to be a "paranormal investigator" -I have investigated many things and neither do I call myself a "cryptozoologist" a "Ufologist" or any other fake "ology".

I am a scientific investigator. 

I was a wildlife consultant to UK and non-UK police forces on exotic fauna from 1977-2007 and did a lot more -IF you can work it out look at the "ABOUT" bit at the top of the page.

I know what this is all in aid of.  I've come across it more than a few times.  If you express an opinion based on provable fact and if your blog is getting a lot of views what happens is that "Tommy Envy" starts stamping his foot and hates it.  But then, as with these two idiots, the thought of starting an internet argument occurs to them -it might boost their own blog views.

Tough.

I have a policy of deleting offensive, name calling comments because the people making them obviously were not very well educated.

Yah-boo-sucks.

NASA's Kepler Comes Roaring Back

NASA's Kepler Comes Roaring Back with 100 New Exoplanet Finds

by Sarah Lewin, Staff Writer   

The artist's illustration shows NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft operating in its second-chance K2 mission. Credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T Pyle View full size image

KISSIMMEE, Fla. —
NASA's Kepler spacecraft has bounced back nicely from the malfunction that ended its original exoplanet hunt more than two years ago.

Kepler has now discovered more than 100 confirmed alien planets during its second-chance K2 mission, researchers announced today (Jan. 5) here at the 227th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS).

The $600 million Kepler mission launched in March 2009, tasked with determining how commonly Earth-like planets occur throughout the Milky Way galaxy. Kepler has been incredibly successful, finding more than 1,000 alien worlds to date, more than half of all exoplanets ever discovered.

The first five K2 campaigns, which each looked at a different part of the sky, "have produced over 100 validated planets," Ian Crossfield, an astronomer at University of Arizona, said today during a presentation at the AAS meeting. "This is a validation of the whole K2 program's ability to find large numbers of true, bona fide planets."

Crossfield said that Kepler observed more than 60,000 stars and found 7,000 transitlike signals during the first five 80-day observation campaigns. A validation process whittled some of these signals down to planet candidates, and then finally to validated planets, each of which has just a 1 percent chance of being a false positive, Crossfield added.

He also noted that K2 found more false positives among larger planets than small ones, and that more than half of the false positives were in multiplanet systems.

While planning K2, Kepler principal investigator Bill Borucki, who retired this past July after a 53-year NASA career, said the new mission could find "dozens, or maybe even hundreds" of exoplanets. Now, K2 has racked up more than 100, and lots of exciting extrasolar systems will likely be spotted in the future, Crossfield said.

"We're only a quarter or so of the way done, we hope," he said.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Originally published on Space.com.