That Humanoid Monster Of The Caspian Sea

By James Donahue

December 2005

Stories have been floating about on the web this fall about sightings of a strange humanoid creature in the Caspian Sea. The story says the creature has been seen for the past two years by residents of coastal areas around the southern and southwestern parts of the sea, and quotes the crew of a vessel that watched it swimming in the water up close enough to give a good description.

“At the beginning we thought it was a big fish, but then we spotted hair on the head of the monster and his fins looked pretty strange . . . the front part of his body was equipped with arms,” the skipper said.

From there the story degenerates into a fable that gets so ridiculous it is hard to believe that anybody has taken it seriously.

So-called eye-witnesses say the creature has a large mouth, big round orbicular eyes, four webbed fingers on his hands, hair that is black and green, a nose like the beak of a dolphin and skin the color of moonlight. Locals believe this creature is part of a family of underwater humans on a mission to save the Caspian Sea from environmental destruction by gas and oil drilling and general world pollution.

Ah, if only it were that easy to have mysterious creatures appear from nowhere to fix the mess we have made on our planet. But we fear that this particular “savior,” dubbed the Iranian name Runan-shah by the story, is but another fabrication by the creative writers of the spoof web publication Pravda. Tracking it to its source, we found that the original story first appeared there.

The story also claims the trawler captain was interviewed by a reporter from an Iranian newspaper called Zindagi. We were unable to find that such a newspaper exists.

Thus we must conclude that the entire story is a hoax.

Yet strange stories of strange creatures, ranging from sea monsters to mermaids, have been told by sailors as long as men have sailed ships at sea. Legends of monsters seem to exist among natives living on most large inland lakes in the world.

There also have been stories of people observing UFOs flying directly into the sea, or emerging from it, as if the water were a hiding place for them when aliens visit our planet.

There is that strange legend of the Bermuda Triangle, where ships and aircraft mysteriously disappear without a trace.

And of course there is that always popular story of the Loc Ness Monster.

Do such things exist, are they no more than tall tales spun by the natives, or are they image projections from alien craft to make us aware that the neat and perfect world we think we see is but an illusion created by our minds?