Book Up-Date

Just a quick up-date as I try to finish off the new book that could appear in January, 2018 rather than April.  So far it runs to 216 pages and 65,861 words.  I will give a little idea what is in the book in a few days.

As the A4 regular format (for Black Tower Books) and a second smaller format version seems popular this book will follow High Strangeness/UFO Contact and its example.

Strange & Mysterious Beasts will be the A4 version

The preliminary cover for the smaller format is below and you will note the title is Mysterious & Strange Beasts since, unfortunately, two books with the same title but different formats cannot be done.

So hold your breaths.....or buy some of my other books....?

Thank Yous and Book Size

THANK YOU -again- to those who have been buying the books.  It is greatly appreciated.

I was asked about the size difference between UFO Contact? *which is in an A4 format) and High Strangeness which is in a more traditional format.

I don't have a camera any more but I hope these images show the size difference

And as for how dense a read they are....

Strange & Mysterious Beasts and a BIG Thank You

Firstly, for those few of you who have recently purchased copies of my older and new book - THANK YOU.  It really does help and I hope they are enjoyable reads for you.

As for the new book, well, it is half-way completed.  I'm taking a look at "mystery beasts" from France as well as up-dating the old Beast of Gevaudan work.  I also look at the "British Bigfoot" reports and even the "werewolf" reports of the last few years.  The rest I'm keeping quiet on.  I can assure you, however, that the book will be fully illustrated and fully referenced and I hope it will help inspire others  to carry out their own investigations and studies.

As far as I can predict, the book will be published around March 2018 but it all depends how things go in the meantime.

The one mystery I cannot solve is why posts here get zero response or why no one ever comments. Perhaps some mysteries should remain unsolved!

Norway temporarily bans wolf hunting after outcry

photo: (c) http://www.cosmosmith.com

I am quite a ways into writing Strange & Mysterious Beasts and wolves have cropped up quite a bit. Then I saw this item.  To state that there are 100 wolves left in Norway is saying that they are not going to survive long. Of course, Norway, like other countries, has the option of declaring the wolves extinct when they are gone and then re~introduce them to provide more 'sport'. 

It seems to work in the United States.  France, of course, suffers from "wolfaphobia" and the policy seems to be the same as centuries ago: if it's a wolf ~kill it.

European Union member states ~and I include the UK here~ have always seemed to turn a blind eye to legislation or come up with some excuse to get around whichever law it does not want to bother with.

This is the 21st century and people are still killing animals for fun.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/norway-bans-wolf-hunting-court-case-131526682.html

Conférence de cryptozoologie

https://www.facebook.com/events/128483277832133/permalink/128483461165448/

Jean-Louis Maurette, Hunter of... Yeti!

Interesting story via( Cryptozoologie -see blog roll)

It's not a joke. Jean-Louis Maurette, a Breton Adventurer, is preparing a new expedition to Russia. His hope: to be the first to discover the almasty, the yeti of the caucasus.

When Jean-Louis Maurette, 58, says he's looking for Bigfoot, he's having trouble being taken seriously. " people, it's fun for them, it's like aliens, it doesn't exist ", ",. But for this baroudeur writer of quimperlé (Finistère), a thousand leagues from the illuminated, it is an exciting and very thoughtful quest. He returned from a month-long expedition to Kazakhstan, after three more in Russia in recent years. He's hunting the almasty, or Sasquatch of the caucasus, which would look like a big, furry hairy primate. But, like his cousins from the Himalayas (the yeti of tintin) or North American forests (big football), he often remains a big joke in the eyes of the public. Yet, for decades, expeditions have been linked.

Explorers and seasoned scientists are trying to find a trace, producing solid work, some of which have been supported by Paléontologue Yves Coppens. Many have, in these remote mountains, collected testimonies of people who overlap. The lucky ones found fingerprints. But none of them brought back an indisputable reality: a dead or alive yeti. Result: this monkey of about 2 M, who moves like a man, is returned to the state of myth, feeding on la fantasy and videos.

Jean-Louis, he believes. " at first I was very skeptical, I had doubts. But the more I go to the field, the tighter it gets. What I'm passionate about is that there's a mystery ", ", that's the one who's also a hunter of wrecks. He's been interested in this puzzle for almost half a century.

On his travels to the east, he conducted the investigation. He questioned shepherds, hunters who saw "strange things", a natural reserve inspector, from the residents to ensure that their parents had told them to cross the beast...

On the spot, people are not always talkative. " witnesses are afraid we're gonna take them for fools. But when they talk, it's believable. They know the fauna, they're not going to confuse the almasty with a bear ", thinks this former technician of laser tank sights. He himself observed a suspicious trace of not. But he did not come to his nose with the hominidé to " Dark hair with red sheen ". " it is an animal that is probably in the process of disappearing, which has a nocturnal life in regions that is. So, inevitably, encounters with man are difficult ", he analyzes. He is not afraid of this hypothetical face-to-face with an animal at the top of the chain of intelligence and evolution. What scares me is the bears, not the yeti ", he does.

He is already preparing his next summer hunt on the caucasus ridges, in Russia, currently on the lookout for sponsors to fund his three-month immersion. This time he would like to be able to "Mount a study station", set about photo-video traps and equip himself with a thermal vision camera to try and flush out the mysterious creature.

The Yeti, " the abominable snowman " of the Himalayas, popularisé by the adventures of " Tintin in tibet ", published in 1960, is not a pure invention of hergé. The Famous Belgian Cartoonist was inspired by his compatriot and friend, the scientist Bernard Heuvelmans. The two men met as early as 1942 in the premises of the daily "evening". the zoologue, who died in 2001, is one of the founding fathers of the cryptozoologie, the study of animals whose existence does not have Été proven by science. 

This is based on testimonies, fossils, hair, clichés... the doctor in zoology wrote the series of books "on the trail of ignored beasts", which sold to hundreds of thousands of Copies. This scholar provided hergé with documentation on the yeti for his 20th album. In L''s imagination, the monster of the peaks, which has been the subject of many expeditions in the th century, is not a cruel brute. He's even endowed with feelings, since he shows himself very human when he becomes the guardian angel of Chiang, who survived an air crash.
Source: Leparisien

The Beast Of Faudiere -The Investigation Continues -Un cas pour nos amis français

Frederic Remington "Moonlight Wolf", C. 1909

It is a very brief item.  Almost unnoticeable if you scan through faded print too quickly:

 “A Letter from Nantes, dated July 19, says,

                    “Yesterday evening about eight o’clock, a wild
                    beast devoured two girls,one about twelve, and
                    the other seven years of age, the daughters of a
                    farmer in the Commune of Chevroliere.  The
                    animal immediately after took shelter in the fo-
                    rest of Faudiere.  It appeared to be larger than
                    a wolf, had a snout about a foot long, and a very
                    formidable set of teeth.”

The account has no thrills or high drama.  Everything is stated precisely.  I have heard the line "ill educated French peasants" used too many times to explain such incidents away.  Peasant or of "higher standing" -all knew what a wolf looked like and the assumption here is that we are only reading about a small part of the incident. The locals knew where the animal had taken shelter and had quite obviously seen it -they were able to state that it was bigger than a wolf and that it had a long snout with a "formidable set of teeth" -indicating that someone got close enough.

What is bigger than a wolf with a long snout and took the time to kill and (partially?) devour two young girls?  Believe me, I would like to say a starving or, maybe, rabies infected wolf.  I covered the history of French wolf accounts in The Red Paper (I) Canids. Again and again there are accounts of people being very familiar with wolves so to say a French person at this time would see a wolf and not be able to identify it is like saying someone sees a fox and is dumb-founded.

Having proven beyond any real doubt just what The Beast of Gevaudan and the Girt Dog of Ennerdale (read Some Things Strange And Sinister) had been, I tried long and hard to identify or even get additional information on a French case of 1800.  If any existing or would-be investigator of the mysterious  could come up with more than a non-French speaking / reading English idiot (me) could then I would give a big cheer.

I have now continuously searched the internet since 2008, originally once a week and then once a month but all I came up with was my account of what happened.  I have scoured as many of the newspaper titles as I can from the United Kingdom at that time.  However, in the early days news was received in letter form from Englishmen or travellers abroad –everything from food shortages, crime and much more.    

It may well be that some other newspaper also published a piece on this but it is more than likely only one did!

However, things to consider: the news of the attack had reached Nantes and was obviously reported on if a correspondent considered it newsworthy enough to go through the rigmarole of sending a letter from France to inform the Caledonian Mercury about it.  One assumes (hopes) that there is some archival record in Chevroliere or, if not, then, hopefully in Nantes?

We even have the date of the attack -18th July, 1830.  So one assumes that anything in print appeared after the 18th, including news of any possible hunts or the burial of the victims.

This is where French researchers who know the newspaper / local record system can help. 

So, if not a wolf, just what was The Beast Of Faudiere?

    

Reference.

1.      The Caledonian Mercury,2^nd August,1800
2.       Some More Things Strange & Sinister http://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooper-scharf/some-more-things-strange-sinister/paperback/product-18763730.html