Strange Creatures – Where Are They Coming From?

By James Donahue

We are familiar with the bigfoot sightings, the Lock Ness Monster and the reports of the Latin American chupacabra. But have you heard about the strange dog-headed pig monster attacking domestic animals in Africa? And then there is a creature in Australia that reportedly lives in a lagoon, looks like an elephant, and when it rises from the water, walks around on its hind legs.

Names haven’t been created for some of these creatures. They can’t be found in any school biology textbook or scientific journal. Yet local residents are reporting and describing these bazaar beasties after personal sightings.

Natives in northern Namibia on the southwest coast of Africa say some kind of beast with a head that looks like a dog and a body that resembles a giant warthog comes out of the brush to attack their goats and other domestic animals. The creature is white in color with a broad, round, nearly hairless body.

The locals who have spotted this creature say it is nothing like any animal they have ever seen before. Some believe it is the result of a black magical spell. One news report questioned whether the beast is the result of a bad genetic experiment that went awry.

Farther north in the Congo region of Africa, the natives share a legend of a monster known as the Mokele-mbembe." This creature, which has been reportedly sighted for hundreds of years, is described as brownish gray, about the size of an elephant, with a long neck and long muscular tail. It appears to be at home in the rivers and lives on vegetation. Natives say that it has been known to attack canoes what come near it and kill the humans in the boats, without eating the bodies.

A similar appearing water/land monster has been part of the mythology around Nirrabeen, Australia, ever since 1968. That is when Mabel Walsh and her nephew, John Walsh, reported sighting the creature rise from a dark lagoon and then waddle on its hind legs across open grassland before disappearing in nearby scrub brush.

The Walsh’s said the creature was gray, stood about four feet tall, had what appeared to be a tough, leathery skin, a snout like an anteater, long back legs and short forelimbs that dangled as it shuffled along the road.

After the Walsh story was made public, local authorities said they received numerous other reports from people also claiming to have seen this strange animal. It was never captured.

In Malaysia, residents of the Kampung district of Melaka talk perhaps jokingly about the orang minyak, which translated means "oily man." This is an alleged monster said to abduct young women from their homes in the night. One witness said the creature was seen "crawling up the stairs of the house just like Spider-man. When it reached the top it suddenly jumped onto the roof. Then it disappeared."

The orang minyak gets its name because it appears covered in shiny black grease that not only makes it look eerie, but catching it is like chasing a greased pig. Some of the natives think it is a human warlock. The villagers say they don't trust the police to protect them from this monster. They have formed a local vigilante patrol, armed with machetes, and walk the night streets in search of it.

In August, 2012, three men visiting Lake Hornindalsvatnet in Norway reported seeing what they called a sea serpent rise up out of the lake before their eyes. Two of the men captured pictures on their cell phones of something that appears to have a head and two arch-like sections of what looks like a long neck and body. The lake is believed to be the deepest inland lake in Europe at 514 meters.

Was it real? "We saw what we saw," one of the witnesses said.