Author Denver Michaels

A strange story was circulating around the Charleston, West Virginia area of two fishermen who landed a three-foot octopus in the Kanawha River in late-December 1933. Charleston residents Robert Trice and R.M. Saunders landed the creature while fishing on Christmas day. The  Charleston Daily Mail  ran a piece on December 26 titled “Three-Foot Octopus is Slain in Kanawha,” which recounted the tale. According to Trice, the octopus latched onto his boat with its tentacles. He and his fishing partner Saunders killed it several blows from an oar and by stabbing it with a knife. The one-of-a-kind catch was given to a local taxidermist for preservation.  How did an octopus find itself in the Kanawha River? There have been cases in which an octopus has wandered into brackish water from the sea, but it is a stretch to believe a wayward octopus could adapt to freshwater and be found all the way in West Virginia! That said, there have been a few other strange reports. On January 30, 1959, a gr

In Canada, there are numerous monsters lurking in the lakes —this almost goes without saying. Most know of Canada's Loch Ness Monster, the Ogopogo, but did you know there are several other lake monsters in Canada with the suffix "pogo"? The Igopogo, Winnipogo, and Manipogo are three of which and they are discussed in my book People are Seeing Something: A Survey of Lake Monsters in the United States and Canada . The following is an excerpt: Dwelling in another large, freshwater lake in North America, is yet another cryptid—the Manipogo. The Manipogo is described as being between 12 and 50 feet long with either a horse-like or a sheep-like head; and the creature’s skin is said to be “muddy-brown” in its color. 1 The Manipogo is another lake monster of the 'multi-humped' variety, much like the Ogopogo and the Loch Ness Monster. Eyewitnesses describe seeing several humps above the water as the creature moves 2 . Not surprisingly, the Manipogo is named after the Ogopo

I have long been fascinated by "gigantic bird" stories. There are numerous reports of enormous birds —larger than anything thought to be alive—flying the skies.  The reports come from all over, but in some cases, it seems large migratory birds have established several north-south flight paths that run through the United States. Might these enormous birds with their twenty-foot wingspans and dark-colored plumage be teratorns that have survived into the present day? Along with these “thunderbirds” there are reports of flying reptiles with leathery wings that also stretch twenty feet or more. Again, these reports come from all over, but seem to be entrenched in the lore of the American Southwest. While conducting some research for a project I’m working on, I ran across this description of a gigantic bird in Chile in the 1800s: A Strange Bird.—Copiapo, Chili, April, 1868.  Yesterday, at about five o’clock in the afternoon, when the daily labours in this mine were over, and a

The ethnologist James Mooney (1861–1921) wrote of ancient giants in his 1902 book, Myths of the Cherokee . The section titled "The Giants from the West" is an intriguing account. I have reprinted it below: THE GIANTS FROM THE WEST James Wafford, of the western Cherokee, who was born in Georgia in 1806, says that his grandmother, who must have been born about the middle of the last century, told him that she had heard from the old people that long before her time a party of giants had come once to visit the Cherokee. They were nearly twice as tall as common men, and had their eyes set slanting in their heads, so that the Cherokee called them Tsunil' kalu', "The Slant-eyed people," because they looked like the giant hunter Tsul'kalu' (see the story). They said that these giants lived very far away in the direction in which the sun goes down. The Cherokee received them as friends, and they stayed some time, and then returned to their home in the we

The Venetian merchant, explorer, and author Marco Polo (1254–1324) traveled the world and recorded many strange things he encountered along the way in his writings. This includes cryptid encounters. Maybe the most notable strange encounter that Polo had in his travels occurred in Asia when he saw the Great Serpents of Karazan. The enormous snakes were ten paces, or 25 feet in length and 10 spans, or 7.5 feet in girth. Did Polo witness some sort of prehistoric creature that had survived into his day? Especially in light of  the Chinese legends of dragons , this thought may be worthy of consideration.  Dragon legends exist not only in Asia, but all over the world. Could the Marco Polo dragons have been some sort of dinosaur that had survived extinction? Hard evidence is lacking, but there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence to draw from. Consider this strange creature resembling a dinosaur that is found at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Angkor Wat was built in the 12th century—not long before

Some call Florida Man the world’s worst superhero. And judging by the kooky headlines I've seen over the years, rightfully so. But there was a time when Florida Man at least had the physical makings of a superhero. In days gone by, there were giant Florida men. These fellows were tall and robust and stood over seven feet tall. If the stories are true, there may have been giant Florida men as tall as twelve feet. Newspaper stories from the 1800s and early 1900s told the story of giant skeletons in Florida. A piece in the Palm Beach Post from October 2, 1934, had this to say: The continual wash of the Atlantic Ocean cutting through a narrow coastal island about one mile south of the St Lucie Inlet has exposed the bones of men evidently laid to rest 100 years ago says the Fort Pierce News Tribune . Skeletons of nine individuals were discovered some in the shallow waters of the inlet and others beneath the nearby sand. All of the men were unusually tall and must have been sturdy gia

There is an interesting account of a dragon in the deuterocanonical text known as Bel and the Dragon. According to Wikipedia: The narrative of Bel and the Dragon is incorporated as chapter 14 of the  extended Book of Daniel . The original  Septuagint  text in Greek survives in a single manuscript,  Codex Chisianus , while the standard text is due to  Theodotion , the 2nd-century AD revisor.  This chapter, along with chapter 13, is considered  deuterocanonical : it was rejected by  Rabbinic Judaism , and while it is viewed as canonical by both  Catholic  and  Orthodox Christians , it is considered   apocryphal  by most  Protestants  and typically not found in modern Protestant Bibles. Many cryptozoologists believe that a dinosaur is what is meant by the word dragon in this text. Then of course, there are passages in the Bible, specifically in Job 40 and Job 41, the "behemoth" and "Leviathan," respectively, that some think point to dinosaurs as well. 15  Behold now

As I drove up and down the Ozark Mountains with a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel of my RV, hairpin turn after hairpin turn, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Ozark Howler was lurking somewhere in those woods. I had just spent several days in the Ozark Mountains in Missouri, and now I had crossed over into Arkansas. I knew I was deep in the Howler’s territory and wondered if it was out there somewhere. It has been spotted as far as Oklahoma and Texas. According to legend, the Ozark Howler is shaped like a bear and it is about the same size as a bear. It has a long, shaggy coat usually black in color. Some say the monster sports a set of horns and glowing red eyes. It lets out a cry that has been described as cross between a wolf howl and an elk bugle. Some even say a hyena’s laugh is mixed with the howl. Pretty weird, huh?  Thinking of the strange cry of the Howler, which some say is a bad omen, the first thing that comes to my mind are the Irish banshee legends. And I might b