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Imperial Secrets: Vampires and Nationhood in Puerto Rico.: Discovery Service for The University of Alabama Libraries

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The Kraken is perhaps the largest monster ever imagined by mankind. In Nordic folklore, it was said to haunt the seas from Norway through Iceland and all the way to Greenland. The Kraken had a knack for harassing ships and many pseudoscientific reports (including official naval ones) said it would attack vessels with its strong arms. If this strategy failed, the beast would start swimming in circles around the ship, creating a fierce maelstrom to drag the vessel down.

Of course, to be worth its salt, a monster needs to have a taste for human flesh. Legends say that the Kraken could devour a ship's entire crew at once. But despite its fearsome reputation, the monster could also bring benefits: it swam accompanied by huge schools of fish that cascaded down its back when it emerged from the water. Brave fishermen could thus risk going near the beast to secure a bounteous catch.

The history of the Kraken goes back to an account written in 1180 by King Sverre of Norway. As with many legends, the Kraken started with something real, based on sightings of a real animal, the giant squid. For the ancient navigators, the sea was treacherous and dangerous, hiding a horde of monsters in its inconceivable depths. Any encounter with an unknown animal could gain a mythological edge from sailors' stories. After all, the tale grows in the telling.

Scientific legend

NTNU Museum of Natural History and Archaeology, 1954

The strength of the myth became so strong that the Kraken could still be found in Europe's first modern scientific surveys of the natural world in the 18th century. Not even Carl Linnaeus - father of modern biological classification - could avoid it and he included the Kraken among the cephalopod mollusks in the first edition of his groundbreaking Systema Naturae (1735).

But when, in 1853, a giant cephalopod was found stranded on a Danish beach, Norwegian naturalist Japetus Steenstrup recovered the animal's beak and used it to scientifically describe the giant squid, Architeuthis dux. And so what had become legend officially entered the annals of science, returning our image of the Kraken to the animal that originated the myths.

After 150 years of research into the giant squid that inhabits all the world's oceans, there is still much debate as to whether they represent a single species or as many as 20. The largest Architeuthis recorded reaches 18 metres in length, including the very long pair of tentacles, but the vast majority of specimens are much smaller. The giant squid's eyes are the largest in the animal kingdom and are crucial in the dark depths it inhabits (up to 1,100 metres deep, perhaps reaching 2,000 metres).

Like some other squid species, Architeuthis has pockets in its muscles containing an ammonium solution that is less dense than sea water. This allows the animal to float underwater, meaning that it can keep itself steady without actively swimming. The presence of unpalatable ammonium in their muscles is also probably the reason why giant squid have not yet been fished to near extinction.

Hunter or prey?

For many years, scientists debated whether the giant squid was a swift and agile hunter like the powerful predator of legends or an ambush hunter. After decades of discussion, a welcome answer came in 2005 with the unprecedented film footage from Japanese researchers T. Kubodera and K. Mori. They filmed a live Architeuthis in its natural habitat, 900m deep in the North Pacific, showing that it is in fact a fast and powerful swimmer, using its tentacles to capture prey.

American Museum of Natural History.

Despite its size and speed, Architeuthis has a predator: the sperm whale. The battles between these titans must be frequent, since it is common to find scars on whales' skins left by the squids' tentacles and arms, which have suckers lined with sharp chitinous tooth-like structures. But Architeuthis doesn't have the muscles in its tentacles to use them to constrict prey and it can never overcome a sperm whale in a "duel". Its only option is to flee, covering its escape with the usual cephalopod ink cloud.

Although we now know it is not just a legend, the giant squid remains perhaps the most elusive large animal in the world, which has greatly contributed to its aura of mystery. Many people today are still surprised in learning that it really exists. After all, even after so much scientific research, the Kraken is still alive in popular imagination thanks to films, books and computer games, even if it sometimes turns up in the wrong mythology, such as the 1981 (and 2010) ancient Greek epic Clash of the Titans. These representations have come to define it in the public mind: a beast lurking in sunken ships waiting for reckless divers.

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The real-life origins of the legendary Kraken

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The Kraken is perhaps the largest monster ever imagined by mankind. In Nordic folklore, it was said to haunt the seas from Norway through Iceland and all the way to Greenland.

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The traits of modern-day vampires are pretty well established. They have fangs, drink human blood, and can't see themselves in mirrors. They can be warded off with garlic, or killed with a stake through the heart. Some, like Dracula, are aristocrats who live in castles.

But vampires didn't start out so clearly defined. Scholars suspect that the modern conception of these Halloween monsters evolved from various traditional beliefs that were held throughout Europe. These beliefs centered around the fear that the dead, once buried, could still harm the living.

Often, these legends arose from a misunderstanding of how bodies decompose. As a corpse's skin shrinks, its teeth and fingernails can appear to have grown longer. And as internal organs break down, a dark "purge fluid" can leak out of the nose and mouth. People unfamiliar with this process would interpret this fluid to be blood and suspect that the corpse had been drinking it from the living. (Read "Archaeologists Suspect Vampire Burial; An Undead Primer.")

Bloody corpses weren't the only cause for suspicion. Before people understood how certain diseases spread, they sometimes imagined vampires were behind the unseen forces slowly ravaging their communities. "The one constant in the evolution of vampire legend has been its close association with disease," writes Mark Collins Jenkins in his book Vampire Forensics. Trying to kill vampires, or prevent them from feeding, was a way for people to feel as though they had some control over disease.

Vampires of Europe

Because of this, vampire scares tended to coincide with outbreaks of the plague. In 2006, archaeologists unearthed a 16th-century skull in Venice, Italy, that had been buried among plague victims with a brick in its mouth. The brick was likely a burial tactic to prevent strega-Italian vampires or witches-from leaving the grave to eat people. (Read "'Vampire of Venice' Unmasked: Plague Victim & Witch?")

Not all vampires were thought to physically leave their grave. In northern Germany, the Nachzehrer, or "after-devourers," stayed in the ground, chewing on their burial shrouds. Again, this belief likely has to do with purge fluid, which could cause the shroud to sag or tear, creating the illusion that a corpse had been chewing it.

These stationary masticators were still thought to cause trouble aboveground, and were also believed to be most active during outbreaks of the plague. In the 1679 tract "On the Chewing Dead," a Protestant theologian accused the Nachzehrer of harming their surviving family members through occult processes. He wrote that people could stop them by exhuming the body and stuffing its mouth with soil, and maybe a stone and a coin for good measure. Without the ability to chew, the tract claimed, the corpse would die of starvation.

Tales of vampires continued to flourish in southern and eastern European nations in the 17th and 18th centuries, to the chagrin of some leaders. By the mid-18th century, Pope Benedict XIV declared that vampires were "fallacious fictions of human fantasy," and the Hapsburg ruler Maria Theresa condemned vampire beliefs as "superstition and fraud."

Still, anti-vampire efforts continued. And, perhaps most surprisingly of all, one of the last big vampire scares occurred in 19th century New England, two centuries after the infamous Salem witch trials.

From the Old World to the New

In 1892, 19-year-old Mercy Brown of Exeter, Rhode Island, died of tuberculosis, then known as consumption. Her mother and sister were already dead, and her brother Edwin was sick. Concerned neighbors worried that one of the recently deceased Brown women might be harming Edwin from the grave.

When they opened Mercy Brown's grave, they found blood in her mouth and her heart and took this to be a sign of vampirism (though they didn't call it that). The neighbors burned Mercy's heart and mixed the ashes into a potion for Edwin to drink-a common anti-vampire tactic. The potion was meant to heal him; instead, he died a few months later.

This wasn't an isolated incident. Folklorist and Food for the Dead author Michael Bell estimates that there are 60 known examples of anti-vampire rituals in 18th- and 19th-century New England, and several others elsewhere in the country. These rituals were most common in eastern Connecticut and western Rhode Island, says Brian Carroll, a history professor at Central Washington University who is writing a book on the subject.

Carroll believes these anti-vampire rituals were "introduced as a medical procedure at the time of the American Revolution" by German doctors who worked for the Hessian forces. Because of this, he thinks the New England vampires were based on the German Nachzehrer. Unlike blood-sucking Romanian vampires, New England's vampires stayed in their grave, harming the living through "sympathetic magic" from afar, he argues.

Bell, however, believes anti-vampire practices in New England came from many places and that the suspected New England vampires were actually more akin to Romanian vampires than the Nachzehrer. Like Romanians, New Englanders "were looking for liquid blood in the vital organs, not evidence of shroud chewing," he says. The anti-vampire remedy of "cutting the heart out, burning it to ashes, and giving the ashes to the sick person or sick people" was also practiced in Romania.

Whatever the source of these beliefs in New England, they were driven by the same social concerns as those before them: a fear of disease and a desire to contain it.

Post-Vampire

During the vampire panic in New England, vampires were finding a new role in European books like The Vampyre (1819), Carmilla (1871-72), and Dracula (1897), as well as in vampire-themed plays. Though drawn from folk legends and past vampire scares, these aristocratic, sexual vampires were more like the vampires we know today.

Vampire panics died down in the 20th century as these fictional monsters replaced folk beliefs (and as medical knowledge improved); however, there was a strange resurgence in the late 1960s, when Seán Manchester, the president of the British Occult Society, said that a vampire was causing people to see strange things in London's Highgate Cemetery.

Newspapers had already covered reports of a tall figure with burning eyes and other spectral sights floating in the cemetery, and journalists quickly picked up Manchester's theory that these sightings were the work of an eastern European vampire. Newspapers even embellished his claims a bit, calling the figure a "king vampire," or writing that the vampire had practiced black magic in Romania before traveling to London in his coffin.

In 1970, Manchester told a TV news team that he planned to exercise the vampire on Friday the 13th. That night, hundreds of young people turned up at Highgate Cemetery to see him perform an exorcism (which he ended up not doing).

The Highgate panic wasn't a case of vampires being scapegoated for disease but rather a media sensation and an instance of "legend tripping" (young people going to a supposedly haunted place to test their bravery).

In the history of vampire legends, the Highgate incident is a modern phenomenon. It has less to do with the desire to control a community's health and a lot more in common with modern scares, like the creepy clown sightings that went viral this year-even if people don't believe it, they're still drawn to the hype.

Want to know more about vampires, witches, and zombies? Check out our special issue, Strange but True: Secrets of the Supernatural Revealed.

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The traits of modern-day vampires are pretty well established. They have fangs, drink human blood, and can't see themselves in mirrors. They can be warded off with garlic, or killed with a stake through the heart. Some, like Dracula, are aristocrats who live in castles. But vampires didn't start out so clearly defined.

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Vampire History - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com

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Find out more about the history of Vampire History, including videos, interesting articles, pictures, historical features and more. Get all the facts on HISTORY.com

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Loch Ness monster, large marine creature believed by some people to inhabit Loch Ness, Scotland. However, much of the alleged evidence supporting its existence has been discredited, and it is widely thought that the monster is a myth.

Reports of a monster inhabiting Loch Ness date back to ancient times. Notably, local stone carvings by the Pict depict a mysterious beast with flippers. The first written account appears in a 7th-century biography of St. Columba. According to that work, in 565 ad the monster bit a swimmer and was prepared to attack another man when Columba intervened, ordering the beast to "go back." It obeyed, and over the centuries only occasional sightings were reported. Many of these alleged encounters seemed inspired by Scottish folklore, which abounds with mythical water creatures.

In 1933 the Loch Ness monster's legend began to grow. At the time, a road adjacent to Loch Ness was finished, offering an unobstructed view of the lake. In April a couple saw an enormous animal-which they compared to a "dragon or prehistoric monster"-and after it crossed their car's path, it disappeared into the water. The incident was reported in a Scottish newspaper, and numerous sightings followed. In December 1933 the commissioned Marmaduke Wetherell, a big-game hunter, to locate the sea serpent. Along the lake's shores, he found large footprints that he believed belonged to "a very powerful soft-footed animal about 20 feet [6 metres] long." However, upon closer inspection, zoologists at the Natural History Museum determined that the tracks were identical and made with an umbrella stand or ashtray that had a hippopotamus leg as a base; Wetherell's role in the hoax was unclear.

The news only seemed to spur efforts to prove the monster's existence. In 1934 English physician Robert Kenneth Wilson photographed the alleged creature. The iconic image-known as the "surgeon's photograph"-appeared to show the monster's small head and neck. The Daily Mail printed the photograph, sparking an international sensation. Many speculated that the creature was a plesiosaur, a marine reptile that went extinct some 65.5 million years ago.

The Loch Ness area attracted numerous monster hunters. Over the years, several sonar explorations (notably in 1987 and 2003) were undertaken to locate the creature, but none were successful. In addition, numerous photographs allegedly showed the beast, but most were discredited as fakes or as depicting other animals or objects. Notably, in 1994 it was revealed that Wilson's photograph was a hoax spearheaded by a revenge-seeking Wetherell; the "monster" was actually a plastic-and-wooden head attached to a toy submarine. In 2018 researchers conducted a DNA survey of Loch Ness to determine what organisms live in the waters. No signs of a plesiosaur or other such large animal were found, though the results indicated the presence of numerous eels. This finding left open the possibility that the monster is an oversized eel. Despite the lack of conclusive evidence, the Loch Ness monster remained popular-and profitable. In the early 21st century it was thought that it contributed nearly $80 million annually to Scotland's economy.

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Loch Ness monster | History, Sightings, & Facts

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Loch Ness monster, large marine creature believed by some people to inhabit Loch Ness, Scotland. However, much of the alleged evidence supporting its existence has been discredited, and it is widely thought that the monster is a myth. Learn more about the Loch Ness monster.

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Savannah is widely known as the most haunted city in America. Walk into any historic building or cemetery in Savannah and you may catch sight of ghostly presences surrounding you. Whether you're a ghost hunter or a lover of ghost stories, you need to visit these Savannah spots to experience some serious paranormal activity.

The Hamilton-Turner Inn was made famous by Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Paranormal activities inside the inn include the sounds of children laughing, billiard balls rolling around on the upper floors and sightings of a strange, cigar-smoking man sitting on the roof.

USA Today named the Marshall House one of the best haunted hotels in the U.S. Since 1851, this hotel has been used as a hospital three times - once for Union soldiers and twice for 19th century Yellow Fever epidemics. Guests have reported their fair share of paranormal experiences such as seeing ghosts in the hallways, hearing nonexistent children running down the halls and faucets turning on by themselves.

The ghost of a woman scorned, a slave cook and a servant boy are said to hang around 17 Hundred 90 Inn and Restaurant, haunting guests and diners alike. While dining at the restaurant, you may hear the cook banging on pots in the kitchen or see a glimpse of a little servant boy. If you stay at the inn, you might spot Anna, one of the most famous ghost-girls in the city who haunts the upstairs guest rooms waiting for the return of her lost love. Learn more about hauntings at 17 Hundred 90 in this video.

Once a saloon and rest stop for seafarers from abroad, The Pirates' House still stands today as one of Savannah's most well-known restaurants. However, The Pirates' House can't escape its dark past. Many were brutishly shanghaied down in the boarding house basement and forced to serve in the sea. There are many secrets to be discovered at this world famous site - some you're sure to learn about over dinner. Learn more about hauntings at The Pirates' House in this video.

The Kehoe family consisted of 10 children, and rumor has it that two of them died in the house. Although the rumor is completely unsubstantiated, many guests say they encountered ghost children during their overnight stays. Also, before becoming a beautiful bed and breakfast, the Kehoe House was a funeral home. So is the Kehoe House haunted? We dare you to stay a night and see for yourself!

This beer house is considered by many to be the most haunted place in Savannah. Many guests have spotted a lady wearing white at the top of the restaurant's staircase. Ghosts have also been known to throw bottles, breeze by patrons and play tricks on staff members. Guests of Moon River River Brewing Co. have nothing to worry about as long as they stay away from the basement and upstairs, which are the two most active paranormal spots in the joint. Learn more about hauntings at Moon River Brewing Company in this video.

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The 6 Most Haunted Places in Savannah That You Can Actually Visit

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Savannah is widely known as the most haunted city in America. Walk into any historic building or cemetery in Savannah and you may catch sight of ghostly presences surrounding you. Whether you're a ghost hunter or a lover of ghost stories, you need to visit these Savannah spots to experience some serious paranormal activity.

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https://www.outsideonline.com/2095096/man-who-created-bigfoot

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For weeks in the fall of 1967 the cowboys rode from sunrise to sunset in search of the creature no one had ever captured on film. Two rodeo men from Washington's apple country, they'd traveled to Northern California's thick forest. They'd read headlines of unidentifiable footprints. The smaller cowboy was driven by a long obsession with the mythic beast known as Bigfoot; the other liked to see things for himself.

One late October afternoon near Bluff Creek, the men trundled on horseback, half a day's ride from the nearest signs of civilization. The sun shone bright, lighting the leaves all around them in a grand finale of orange and red and yellow. Roger Patterson rode in front, pausing his quarter horse to point his lens toward the leaves, the film chattering inside his rented 16mm Cine Kodak camera. When he finished, he tucked the camera into his saddlebag, leaving the leather flap open.

Bob Gimlin brought up the rear. He rode a quarter horse, leading a pony loaded with supplies behind him.* Patterson navigated around a bend where a large tree had fallen and jammed up the nearby creek-its root system upturned and exposed, like blind fingers reaching for an anchor.

The horses saw it first. Patterson's reared, kicking and protesting, then Gimlin's. Less than 100 feet away, the men saw why: a hulking gorilla-like figure covered in dark hair hurried on two legs along the creekbed. Its sloped head and torso were pushed forward, its upper back hunched, thigh muscles rippling, long arms swinging, breasts exposed.

Patterson scrambled off his spooked animal, holding its reins just long enough to reach inside his saddlebag for the camera. Gimlin, a cowboy famous through the Yakima Valley for taming wild colts and running in breakneck "suicide races" (in which riders careen down steep slopes), dropped the packhorse's rope and gripped the reins of his frightened pony to steady it.

Patterson scrambled across the uneven ground, waving the camera in one hand, the film blurry as he ran. He stopped to crouch and steady himself, then trained the lens on the strange figure, the camera shaking from his breathing. "Bob! Cover me!" he yelled over his shoulder to Gimlin, who rode toward the creek, dismounting his horse and drawing his rifle.

The picture steadied as the creature, mid-stride, turned to look over its right shoulder-just a glance-before it disappeared into the forest. A skunky, rank odor hung heavy in the air. The whole affair was over in less than a minute.

(Reddit/lunar_turd)

The final 59.5-second film, which the men would airmail back home to be developed, would soon become the world-famous Patterson-Gimlin film-arguably one of the most scrutinized pieces of video footage ever made. It is the cryptozoological equivalent to the Kennedy assassination's Zapruder film. The film met immediate criticisms accusing Patterson and Gimlin of being master pranksters who simply filmed a man in an ape suit and laid fake footprints in the mud.

The film tore Patterson's and Gimlin's friendship apart. Patterson partnered with his brother-in-law, Al DeAtley, to take the film on a national tour as a way to raise funds for a full-fledged expedition back at Bluff Creek. The three took equal shares in the film, but soon Gimlin felt edged out, and sold his share of the rights for less than $10 to another Bigfoot researcher.

After five years estranged, Patterson and Gimlin made amends in 1972 as Patterson lay on his deathbed, dying of cancer at age 38. Patterson apologized for ousting Gimlin, pleading with him that when he recovered that they would go back to California and catch Bigfoot. He died the next day.

More than 40 years later, the film has never been conclusively debunked. It has withstood scrutiny from scientists, forensic analysts, Hollywood special effects experts, and costume designers. No one can quite explain it-except those who believe in folklore. In that time, Bigfoot has evolved into a full-fledged American myth, propagated by a national congregation of believers who regard Gimlin as a kind of prophet.

"Meeting Bob Gimlin, to a Bigfooter, is like meeting the President of the United States to an American," says Cindy Rose Caddell, a researcher and author. "Or what meeting the Pope is to a Catholic."

The 84-year-old cowboy wore a black cattleman's hat and sunglasses, an off-white coat with "Bob" embroidered in blue thread at the chest. His boots stated their intentions across the tile entryway of a roadside diner in Union Gap, in central Washington, pausing as he held the door for an elderly woman in a pink jacket.

"Come on in, young lady," he said, his baritone voice all campfire smoke and truck engines. Bob Gimlin wears big hats and big belt buckles and drives a big pickup. He talks slow with a heavy drawl and seems to find a way to turn almost any conversation toward horses.

In a booth with vinyl seats, Gimlin ordered coffee and dumped in two creams, and told the waitress he wouldn't be eating. For the next six hours, he told his story: who he was before he saw Bigfoot, who he became after, and why he stayed quiet for four decades after the film's debut.

Before he had ever heard of Bigfoot, Gimlin had led the life of a man who feared nothing, who thrived on dares and several times cheated death. The first time was at age seven when his appendix burst. He missed a year of school as he recovered in the Ozark mountains cabin in Missouri where he was born.

In 1940, the promise of sprawling green ranchlands and orchards set against the towering Cascades pulled his farmer father and mother westward.** In Washington, Gimlin roped wild horses with native boys on the nearby Yakima Reservation, crawling onto their backs and hanging on for dear life. "I was ready to ride," he says. "Even at a very young age I wanted to ride anything that bucked, jumped, moved, run, or whatever." He became a natural rodeo man: quick to bounce back, never letting a cast or a sling keep him from a horse. He raced caravans and chariots through mountain passes, hurtled down cliffsides. He gained a reputation as a daredevil (though he declined Evel Knievel's offer to join him in for-profit "daredevilin'").

At age 18, Gimlin joined the Army reserves; later he enlisted in the Navy. After two tours in the Korean War, he and three other sailors were in a car accident that left one dead when the driver smashed into a power pole. His head slammed into the dash and the motor of the car pinned his body in the vehicle. "I lost half my face," he says. Gimlin underwent several plastic surgeries to repair his nose. He spent two years recovering in a hospital in California. Once he received his discharge papers, Gimlin headed back home to Yakima.

Life, for Gimlin, continued on a normal course: he married, had children, divorced, then married "the sassiest thing I'd ever met"-his wife of 52 years, Judy. In 1967, Gimlin, then 35, was scraping together a living driving trucks, roofing, and riding and taming horses. There was nothing significant about the day he pulled into a Union Gap service station and ran into his old rodeo pal, Roger Patterson.

Patterson was recovering from a bout with cancer. As they spoke, Patterson told Gimlin of his interest in supposed Bigfoot sightings. "He said, 'Let me show you something,'" Gimlin recalls. "He went over to the truck and brought out a plaster cast of a big foot." Patterson asked Gimlin if he would be interested in searching Mount St. Helens on horseback with him for evidence of a Bigfoot. "I said, 'Roger, I just don't have time.'"

By the late 1960s, Bigfoot had been tromping through Northwestern lore for hundreds of years. Several Native American tribes tell of looming, furry beasts reeking of scorched hair who stole trout from fishermen. In the early 20th century, newspaper articles reporting sightings read like spooky stories to tell around a campfire. In one such report, from 1924, a clan of rock-throwing ape-men ambushed a group of miners on Mt. St. Helens. The place is now called Ape Canyon. (Skeptics said the beasts were just YMCA campers playing a prank.) Ivan Sanderson's 1961 book, Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life, read like the stuff of a B movie.

But there were few opportunities for Patterson to commune with other believers. So he talked to Gimlin: the men formed a bond, riding horses through Washington's backcountry. Patterson continued to regale Gimlin with Bigfoot lore, playing him recorded testimonies of real-life encounters and lending him books on the topic, despite Gimlin's insistence that he did not care. (Patterson self-published a book in 1966, titled Do Abominable Snowmen of America Really Exist?)

Then, in August 1967, Patterson told Gimlin about a logging road construction crew spotting tracks and having their equipment inexplicably disassembled deep in the Six Rivers National Forest. He begged Gimlin to drive the two men and their horses to Northern California to search. Gimlin was skeptical that anything existed, but he was intrigued, and he wasn't the sort of man to turn away from a good adventure. "I wanted to see these footprints that these people talked about," he says.

The film the men produced gave the murky myth shape: suddenly, Bigfoot was manifested in flesh and blood. It had a loping gait and, with the twist of its torso, it looked over its shoulder before disappearing again into the wilderness. It even had a name: Patty.

Patty, arguably, created the Bigfoot industry. Today, the apelike figure-frozen in its signature turn-adorns car air fresheners and infant onesies that read, "Believe." It looks back from coffee cups, Christmas ornaments, guitar picks, and Band Aids. There's a Patty-shaped Chia Pet. Bigfoot even has a home on reality TV: Animal Planet launched Finding Bigfoot in 2011, starring Washington's Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO). BFRO members lead guided backwoods expeditions-with a price tag of up to $500-throughout the U.S. where participants scour the forests for a look at the fabled beast.

But looking back on the trip today, Gimlin wishes he'd said no. That he'd turned away from Patterson that day at the service station and never looked back.

That trip to California changed him.

"It ruined me."

By 1972, Patterson had died. Gimlin alone faced the scourge of detractors that were emerging around the country-some even confronted he and his wife in their hometown. Yakima was the place where Gimlin had become known for his fearlessness and strength, and suddenly he was a seen as crazy. His word, his handshake-currency around this part of the state-was in doubt.

"My wife was a teller at a savings and loan institution. Of course, she was sitting right there and the public would come in and make smart remarks," Gimlin says. "This went on and on and on until she come home crying. She'd say, 'I'm not tough enough.' A couple times we were going to split up over this."

Some nights, cars would screech by the Gimlins' house. "They'd come driving in my driveway all times of the night and go 'Bob! We want to go out Bigfoot hunting!'" he says. They'd speed away before he could run outside.

The couple felt isolated, and Gimlin found himself for the first time in the predicament that came to define his life for decades: if he acknowledged that he saw Bigfoot, he was the town loon; if he stayed quiet, people assumed he was lying.

"I can understand why they don't believe in it-because I didn't believe it either," Gimlin recalls telling John Green, a prominent Canadian Bigfoot researcher, on a phone call during this period. "But I saw one. And I know what I saw. And I know it wasn't a man in a suit. It couldn't have been!"

In 1968, the year after Patterson and Gimlin returned, the Gimlins swore to never speak of Bigfoot again. But the video was out, and Gimlin was-and remains-stuck to the center of the debate, anchored like the sun in a growing solar system with believers and skeptics orbiting around him.

Reports of sightings filtered in from all over the Northwest. Bigfoot was traipsing through lush coastal woods and rocky mountainsides in Oregon. Its glowing red eyes peered from the understory in Olympic National Forest in Washington. It stalked the Dark Divide, the massive roadless area between Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams. It ran across a road near Vancouver. It left footprints in the snow outside Walla Walla.

Believers cropped up in Texas and Ohio, then as far afield as New York, Georgia, and Florida. In the past 40 years, people have produced supposed Bigfoot hairs, DNA tests, footprints, and piles of scat-not to mention the countless photographs and video clips (most of which have turned out to be hoaxes)-as scientific evidence of the creature's existence. To many, the notion of "belief" is irrelevant among the myriad stories, sightings, and artifacts.

"No, I don't believe in Bigfoot," says Jeff Meldrum, an anthropology and anatomy professor at Idaho State University who is one of the foremost experts on foot morphology in the world. He was 11 years old in 1968 when he watched Patterson-Gimlin's Bigfoot walk across the screen at the Spokane Coliseum in Eastern Washington. Today, he's the keeper of the largest archive of Bigfoot footprint casts and author of the book Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science. "Belief usually connotes a position of faith, a conviction held in the absence of evidence," Meldrum says. "I, for one, am convinced by the evidence I have studied at length."

Cynics, however, don't just question the "evidence," they question Patterson's and Gimlin's credibility. In 2004, Greg Long, author of one of the most oft-cited pieces of skepticism about the Patterson-Gimlin Film-a book called The Making of Bigfoot -taunted Gimlin from the final pages of his book: "Will he ever confess?" Long wrote.

"I'm going to be blunt with you," Long said recently over the phone. "I consider Bob Gimlin a liar. I think he's a con artist."

But Long's arguments seem just as flimsy as believers' proof. His book is filled with circumstantial evidence: a costume maker named Philip Morris in the early 2000s said he sold Patterson the suit but couldn't provide any evidence of the sale; a Yakima man named Bob Hieronimus said he was the one that wore it. Neither claim is backed by concrete proof.

"'They can't exist, therefore they don't exist,'" is the message Meldrum has received from skeptics, he says. "That was the actual retort hurled at me by an anthropology colleague."

With Bigfoot having grown into an industry, Long says there's no reason to believe anyone invested in the debate is telling the truth. "They need it to be real," he says. The people who truly believe and search, he adds, "are driven emotionally, I believe, to find Bigfoot."

In the face of skepticism and mockery, a large community of believers views Gimlin as the original seer: the man who witnessed the unthinkable, who lived to tell the tale, and who has been harassed for what he swore was real. These people congregate at Bigfoot conventions around the world to swap stories, trade evidence-gathering techniques and commune with kinfolk. Together they can be "out" about their beliefs.

Gimlin first appeared at a convention in California in 2003. Through his years of silence, Gimlin maintained contact with several prominent Bigfoot aficionados, including Swiss researcher Rene Dahinden and a Russian author named Dmitri Bayonov. After years of urging Gimlin to come to Russia to speak about the film, Bayonov arranged to come to America. With Green's help, the pair convinced Gimlin to attend the Willow Creek International Bigfoot Symposium: an event that promised to bring all the biggest scientific names into one room (including Jane Goodall, a primatologist and Bigfoot believer, who canceled her appearance last minute) in the very same area where Patterson and Gimlin made their film decades before.

To Gimlin, walking into the conference was like entering a church. "It's not a fairy tale to them. It's serious business," he says. "When I met those people down there, they accepted me with what you call open arms."

There, Gimlin spoke of Bigfoot for the first time in years. "There wasn't a sound in the room while I was talking," he says. "I thought, 'I can't really believe this. This is almost like seeing Bigfoot.' God, I felt like I was 10 feet tall."

When he finished, the room rose to its feet.

"They just stood up and applauded and applauded," Gimlin says. "I thought, 'Why have I gone 35 years through a bunch of ridicule?'"

Gimlin appears at conventions across the country. He signs shirts and plaster foot casts, tells and retells the story of he and Patterson's encounter. He is no stranger to standing ovations.

"They want to talk to me, they want to tell me about their experience," he says. "This turned my whole life around."

At home in Central Washington, however, Gimlin is no celebrity. When I visited him this past spring, we took a drive through Wapato, just south of Yakima, to see the house where he grew up, only to find a field of weeds where it once stood. His high school is gone, too. Panaderias and taquerias dot the streets he once knew. As he idled on one street, people on the sidewalk turned to look at the cowboy in his truck, staring at him as if he'd just dropped in from outer space.

Gimlin's days are typical retired-rancher stuff: he wakes at 5 a.m. every morning on his modest 1,500-square-foot home that sits on two acres in town. He leases land around the Yakima area where he grazes his seven horses. He mows his pastures on a riding mower and tends to his garden of cucumbers and tomatoes. At night he watches UFC fights. He's a member of several local equestrian clubs.

Three days a week, Gimlin drives his black pickup-one with a Bigfoot sticker in a tinted back window and Bigfoot air freshener tucked into a cup holder-into town for physical therapy. In the 1990s, Gimlin was bucked off a horse and told by a doctor he'd never ride again. "I proved I could do it," he says. But then, in the early 2000s, he went sailing off another horse. He had his bicep removed from his left arm and nearly lost all ability to use it. He lifts light dumbbells now, an attempt to regain some feeling.

Every couple of months, he travels to address another congregation of the faithful. People of every age and shape packed inside a Portland beerhall on a Friday night this past January to see Gimlin speak. He told the story he's told a hundred times before, from the beginning: bumping into Patterson at the service station; the bright fall leaves; the creature glancing over its shoulder; the conversation at Patterson's bedside hours before he died.

Afterwards, Gimlin stuck around to take pictures and sign autographs. A boy in a red plaid shirt and a cowboy hat holding a 16mm Cine Kodak camera-like the one used to shoot the Patterson-Gimlin film-and a plaster footprint cast approached him for a photo.

A few months later, while doing research for this article, I absentmindedly search "#pattersongimlin" on Instagram. A familiar face pops up on my screen. It's that boy in the cowboy hat from January who got a photo with his hero, Bob Gimlin.

The boy's account is practically devoted to Bigfoot. There are photos from the Portland event, old pictures of Roger Patterson, shots of book covers adorned with furry beasts and more of giant foot casts on his bedroom carpet.

It's just one small example of Gimlin's outsized impact on American lore. The Internet has exposed people to the Patterson's and Gimlin's journey in ways unimaginable to Gimlin, and continues to enchant new generations of believers. Whether or not any of the stories are true, Bigfoot is alive and well. In large part, that's because Gimlin, the non-believer, an unlikely champion of the myth, helped catch a glimpse of it on film.

In one post, the boy splits the frame in thirds, filling each with photos of Roger Patterson's gravestone. "We never forget he was our Bigfoot hunter," he writes. A portion of another caption reads: "I met Bob Gimlin...it was a best day ever #bobgimlin."

*CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Gimlin rode a pony while on the Bigfoot hunt in Northern California.

**CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Gimlin's mother was part Apache.

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Bob Gimlin was a small town cowboy when his friend coaxed him into hunting the famous mythical creature 50 years ago. Today, as the legend of Bigfoot has grown, Gimlin is viewed by the community of believers around the country as something of a prophet.

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Cryptozoology -- the study of hidden animals -- is gaining attention thanks to a startling number of zoological discoveries. Karl P.N. Shuker has collected evidence of these mysterious, somewhat mythical creatures in THE BEASTS THAT HIDE FROM MAN. Shuker provides entertaining, solidly researched tales about extraordinary animals.

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the new jersey historical society history collections njhs

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This site includes info on: The New Jersey Historical Society

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The Kraken is perhaps the largest monster ever imagined by mankind. In Nordic folklore, it was said to haunt the seas from Norway through Iceland and all the way to Greenland. The Kraken had a knack for harassing ships and many pseudoscientific reports (including official naval ones) said it would attack vessels with its strong arms. If this strategy failed, the beast would start swimming in circles around the ship, creating a fierce maelstrom to drag the vessel down.

Of course, to be worth its salt, a monster needs to have a taste for human flesh. Legends say that the Kraken could devour a ship's entire crew at once. But despite its fearsome reputation, the monster could also bring benefits: it swam accompanied by huge schools of fish that cascaded down its back when it emerged from the water. Brave fishermen could thus risk going near the beast to secure a bounteous catch.

The history of the Kraken goes back to an account written in 1180 by King Sverre of Norway. As with many legends, the Kraken started with something real, based on sightings of a real animal, the giant squid. For the ancient navigators, the sea was treacherous and dangerous, hiding a horde of monsters in its inconceivable depths. Any encounter with an unknown animal could gain a mythological edge from sailors' stories. After all, the tale grows in the telling.

Scientific legend

NTNU Museum of Natural History and Archaeology, 1954

The strength of the myth became so strong that the Kraken could still be found in Europe's first modern scientific surveys of the natural world in the 18th century. Not even Carl Linnaeus - father of modern biological classification - could avoid it and he included the Kraken among the cephalopod mollusks in the first edition of his groundbreaking Systema Naturae (1735).

But when, in 1853, a giant cephalopod was found stranded on a Danish beach, Norwegian naturalist Japetus Steenstrup recovered the animal's beak and used it to scientifically describe the giant squid, Architeuthis dux. And so what had become legend officially entered the annals of science, returning our image of the Kraken to the animal that originated the myths.

After 150 years of research into the giant squid that inhabits all the world's oceans, there is still much debate as to whether they represent a single species or as many as 20. The largest Architeuthis recorded reaches 18 metres in length, including the very long pair of tentacles, but the vast majority of specimens are much smaller. The giant squid's eyes are the largest in the animal kingdom and are crucial in the dark depths it inhabits (up to 1,100 metres deep, perhaps reaching 2,000 metres).

Like some other squid species, Architeuthis has pockets in its muscles containing an ammonium solution that is less dense than sea water. This allows the animal to float underwater, meaning that it can keep itself steady without actively swimming. The presence of unpalatable ammonium in their muscles is also probably the reason why giant squid have not yet been fished to near extinction.

Hunter or prey?

For many years, scientists debated whether the giant squid was a swift and agile hunter like the powerful predator of legends or an ambush hunter. After decades of discussion, a welcome answer came in 2005 with the unprecedented film footage from Japanese researchers T. Kubodera and K. Mori. They filmed a live Architeuthis in its natural habitat, 900m deep in the North Pacific, showing that it is in fact a fast and powerful swimmer, using its tentacles to capture prey.

American Museum of Natural History.

Despite its size and speed, Architeuthis has a predator: the sperm whale. The battles between these titans must be frequent, since it is common to find scars on whales' skins left by the squids' tentacles and arms, which have suckers lined with sharp chitinous tooth-like structures. But Architeuthis doesn't have the muscles in its tentacles to use them to constrict prey and it can never overcome a sperm whale in a "duel". Its only option is to flee, covering its escape with the usual cephalopod ink cloud.

Although we now know it is not just a legend, the giant squid remains perhaps the most elusive large animal in the world, which has greatly contributed to its aura of mystery. Many people today are still surprised in learning that it really exists. After all, even after so much scientific research, the Kraken is still alive in popular imagination thanks to films, books and computer games, even if it sometimes turns up in the wrong mythology, such as the 1981 (and 2010) ancient Greek epic Clash of the Titans. These representations have come to define it in the public mind: a beast lurking in sunken ships waiting for reckless divers.

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The real-life origins of the legendary Kraken

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The Kraken is perhaps the largest monster ever imagined by mankind. In Nordic folklore, it was said to haunt the seas from Norway through Iceland and all the way to Greenland.