# Cave Being of Ras el Khaima **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 7, 2002, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104 "2002-12-07T06:54:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![TridCloudwalker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@TridCloudwalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TridCloudwalker)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2002, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/1 "2002-12-07T06:54:49Z")
I found an incredibly fascinating website call Anomalies Unlimited. In it they have a picture and a loosely translated story of an unexplained “creature.” Has anyone heard of this before, and is it a legit story? I’m not asking if the creature is real, only if the story is. Or is it some prank turned urban legend, Or could it be a hoax perpetrated by the Uninted Arab Emerates to create more interest (tourist, scientific, etc) in their lands? Here’s the link to the story: [http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/CaveBeing.html](http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/CaveBeing.html) ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2002, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/2 "2002-12-07T07:50:51Z")
Looks like some of the drawings I’ve seen of the chupacabra. Somebody alert Art Bell! He’ll get to the bottom of this! ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2002, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/3 "2002-12-07T16:26:49Z")
The picture and story are posted word-for-word on a number of “weird stuff” and paranormal websites. It just looks like mummified human remains to me. No doubt someone got hold of the picture and made up a story to go with it. ---
**Author:** ![TridCloudwalker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@TridCloudwalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TridCloudwalker)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2002, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/4 "2002-12-07T18:24:03Z")
Mummified remains of what? It’s not human. Look at the feet and legs. And the coloring is all wrong for mummified flesh. Believe me, I’m one of the most skeptical person when it comes to these things, but this one I really can’t explain. All I know is what ever the “beast” is it’s not human. It could in fact be a cave gremlin, or it might just be a sculpted piece of latex, but it cant be a mummified human or ape. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2002, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/5 "2002-12-07T20:03:34Z")
Well, okay, then, it’s a rubber doll. \<\< shrug \>\> I can tell you what it isn’t–it isn’t a “cave gremlin”. 😉 Because there is no such thing as a “cave gremlin”. Have you ever heard the word “cryptozoology”? Want some links? ---
**Author:** ![Hrdygrdymn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/77aa72/32.png) [@Hrdygrdymn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hrdygrdymn)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2002, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/6 "2002-12-07T21:47:43Z")
I think we can rule out cave gremlin. They bury their dead in another dimension. Proportionately it could be the body of a child that has been mummified either naturally or by humans. It isn’t black like Egyptian mummies because much of their blackness is due to the resins used during the mummification and wrapping processes. My suggestion is that either: 1. A fair bit of calcification has taken place. In limestone or halite caves, as water percolates from above, calcium or other mineral salts dissolve from the overlying rock, then precipitate and crystalize when they contact the air (as with stalactites). Human objects left in old mines and caves are sometimes found with a whitish rock casing after several decades. Calcification may also account for the perculiar shape of the hands and feet. 2. Its a hoax. The red eyes look suspicious. ---
**Author:** ![voltaire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voltaire/32/313_2.png) [@voltaire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voltaire)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2002, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/7 "2002-12-07T21:56:25Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Hrdygrdymn \* > \*\*I think we can rule out cave gremlin. They bury their dead in another dimension. Proportionately it could be the body of a child that has been mummified either naturally or by humans. > > It isn’t black like Egyptian mummies because much of their blackness is due to the resins used during the mummification and wrapping processes. > > My suggestion is that either: > > 1. A fair bit of calcification has taken place. In limestone or halite caves, as water percolates from above, calcium or other mineral salts dissolve from the overlying rock, then precipitate and crystalize when they contact the air (as with stalactites). Human objects left in old mines and caves are sometimes found with a whitish rock casing after several decades. Calcification may also account for the perculiar shape of the hands and feet. > > 2. Its a hoax. The red eyes look suspicious. \*\* Now that’s just a great post for someone on their third post at SDMB. Welcome to the board! ---
**Author:** ![voltaire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voltaire/32/313_2.png) [@voltaire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voltaire)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2002, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/8 "2002-12-07T22:44:09Z")
Wait, has anyone actually read the text under the picture? The story behind how the picture was taken is ridiculous… > [@](#): > > This picture has been released as a police report evidence in the UAE. The story is that a young man went in the caves in Ras el Khaimah to take pictures in caves known to be deserted, with a friend. He had been warned not to go. The person who had been with him called the police saying he had seen his friend’s flash go off and then his friend screamed. He called his friend but never got an answer and got scared that he’d fallen so went to the police. A few hours later they found the man in the cave dead and the single picture found in his camera is this one. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2002, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/9 "2002-12-07T22:48:31Z")
This [Jeff Rense](http://www.rense.com/general25/chups.htm) site provides a closeup of the face, as well as a debunking. Of course, the debunking is not well documented. An interested reader provides a detailed debunk of the debunk. Art Bell _is_ aware of the creature. 🙂 With regard to the “photograph”: I’ve found it at several sources, and it appears to be identical in each case. The color is bad enough that it might actually be a colorized B&W picture. Surprisingly, the image appears to be a directly scanned photograph, as opposed to a picture from a magazine. There’s no dot pattern visible, but close examination, particulary of the enlargement, shows digitization artifacts. Whoever first put this out on the internet seems to have had access to the original image, or a photographic copy thereof. The question is, where’d they get it ? ---
**Author:** ![Hrdygrdymn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/77aa72/32.png) [@Hrdygrdymn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hrdygrdymn)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2002, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/10 "2002-12-07T23:43:47Z")
Voltaire, Thanks for the compliment. They are a rare commodity these days. For the record, I’ve only recently begun posting because I’ve spent the last 15 years (since I got the first Straight Dope) working on the omniscience thing and well… …it’s taking longer than I thought. ---
**Author:** ![Podkayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Podkayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Podkayne)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2002, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/11 "2002-12-08T00:11:01Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Duck Duck Goose \* > \*\*The picture and story are posted word-for-word on a number of “weird stuff” and paranormal websites. This is a complete and utter tangent, but doesn’t this phenomenon–the propagation of (nearly) identical copies of webpages, articles, etc.–seem to be characteristic of fringey websites? Maybe it’s because the devotees of these subjects don’t tend to have long-term stable web hosting (like academic institutions for example) so, after losing some “valuable” references, the paranormal enthusiasts start copying and displaying stuff on their own webpages to safeguard their sources. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2002, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/12 "2002-12-08T00:17:48Z")
Oh, yeah, absolutely, they copy off each other’s test papers all the time, even right down to the typos. None of them would _dream_ of searching out an original source–they just Copy and Paste whatever “Joe Blow’s UFOs” has on _his_ website right into their own website. I don’t think you can blame it on lack of long-term web hosting, I think it’s just sheer laziness. ---
**Author:** ![Podkayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Podkayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Podkayne)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2002, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/13 "2002-12-08T00:37:30Z")
Oh, you know me, **DDG** , I’ll buy that explanation, too. 🙂 I was just trying to be charitable. The greater crime, IMHO, is that one frequently sees news stories where, _even if_ at some point in the past the article had a legitimate attribution, after a few generations of cuts ‘n’ pastes, it gets scrambled, lost, reinvented, rescrambled, translated to Finnish, then Tagalog, then Swahili, and then lost again, so you’ll find the same article on nine different web pages with bylines from the New York Times (on five different dates), and also from Scientific American, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and the Ladies Home Journal. If you’re trying to track down the original source, these random attributions are maddening. To the casual reader who only sees one copy, I’m afraid, the bylines are simply convincing. ---
**Author:** ![Truth\_Seeker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5fc32e/32.png) [@Truth\_Seeker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Truth_Seeker)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2002, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/14 "2002-12-08T01:02:24Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Duck Duck Goose \* > \*\*I don’t think you can blame it on lack of long-term web hosting, I think it’s just sheer laziness. \*\* I think it’s more fundamental than that. The way these people copy and post things verbatim is symptomatic of the very reason they believe in these things in the first place. These people are unable to critically differentiate between different kinds of evidence and their reliability. When they read something like this, it never occurs to most of them to do an independent investigation. Rather, they simply assume that since they read it, it must be true. ---
**Author:** ![Bren\_Cameron\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@Bren\_Cameron\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bren_Cameron_1)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2002, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/15 "2002-12-08T01:30:00Z")
When in doubt, search Snopes. [http://www.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get\_topic;f=25;t=000506](http://www.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=25;t=000506) The photo is apparently from Cheddar Showcaves & Gorge, the thing is part of a display there. ---
**Author:** ![Bren\_Cameron\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@Bren\_Cameron\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bren_Cameron_1)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2002, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/16 "2002-12-08T01:37:20Z")
I should add, for people who don’t feel like reading the whole thread, someone emailed Cheddar Showcaves & Gorge (which is a tourist attraction in Somerset, England) and they responded, confirming that it is, indeed, a sculpture that’s part of a display of theirs. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2002, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/17 "2002-12-08T02:44:26Z")
> [@](#): > > 1. Its a hoax. The red eyes look suspicious. Yeah, that face, especially in the second link, looks photoshopped on. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2002, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/18 "2002-12-08T03:36:48Z")
So, in the Jeff Rense page linked by **Squink** , Kate Walton is quoted as follows: > [@](#): > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: \<[mailto:caves@visitcheddar.co.uk](mailto:caves@visitcheddar.co.uk)\>Cheddar Caves > To: Rick- > Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2002 3:39 AM > Subject: Re: A QUESTION ON THE CAVE > > Dear Rick > Unfortunately, this particular plaster goblin is not one of our exhibits. However we do have plaster goblins, but perhaps not as evil looking as the picture you sent! > If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to e-mail me. > Many thanks > Kate Walton > Personal Assistant > Cheddar Caves and Gorge whereas on snopes, two emails from her (sometime in late October 02) are quoted as follows: > [@](#): > > Yes, the sculpture featured in the attachment does exist in Crystal > Quest. Crystal Quest is a Fantasy Adventure in Cox’s Cave. There is a > storyline running throughout the Quest which consists of Dungeons and > Dragons. To add atmosphere to the quest we also installed mannequins, > lighting, sound and special effects. Some people can find the quest > rather scary, however other people are not bothered at all, it really > depends on your disposition. > > I hope this has answered your question. > > Many thanks > > Kate Walton > Cheddar Caves & Gorge and > [@](#): > > * * * > > Yes, this evil looking monster does certainly exist in Crystal Quest. > However I must admit that it looks far scarier in the picture than it > does in real life. > > I hope this has solved this ongoing internet debate ! > > ## Many thanks > > Kate Walton > Cheddar Caves I fear “they” have got to Kate Walton. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2002, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/19 "2002-12-08T03:44:19Z")
> [@](#): > > The photo is apparently from Cheddar Showcaves & Gorge, the thing is part of a display there. So now we have dueling claims for what Kate Walton at Cheddar caves said about the photo. From alleged ‘Walton’ email on Rense site: “Unfortunately, this particular plaster goblin is not one of our exhibits.” From alleged ‘Walton’ email at Snopes: “Yes, the sculpture featured in the attachment does exist in Crystal Quest.” The email address for Walton at cheddar cave ([http://www.visitcheddar.co.uk/](http://www.visitcheddar.co.uk/)) is given correctly in the Rense article. The thread in snopes fails to provide an email address for Walton. That puts us back where we were before checking snopes. The Crystal Quest ‘dark walk’ was designed by a company called “Scenic Route”. Here’s one of the [statues they created](http://www.scenic-route.co.uk/projects/crystal.htm) for the display. The style is drastically different from that of our goblin boy. [This site](http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/monster.htm) contains a picture of the Aug/Sep 1995 (issue #52) article in the Fortean Times, which claimed that the goblin picture was from Cheddar. The site also reproduces an email from Kate Walton, in which she claims “this particular plaster goblin is not one of our exhibits.” It bears the same timestamp and is _almost_ identical to the email displayed on the Rense site. -Must be a form letter. 😉 As Asterion mentioned, the eyes look funny, but the debunking still seems to rest on little better ground than the original story. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2002, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104/20 "2002-12-08T23:53:54Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Hrdygrdymn \* > **…It isn’t black like Egyptian mummies because much of their blackness is due to the resins used during the mummification and wrapping processes…** I believe that this isn’t actually correct (although it was once thought to be the case and appears to be in wide circulation - the modern word _mummy_ derives from the word _mumi(y)a_ - a kind of tar, which the bodies do resemble, but the preserved remains are black and glossy because they were dehydrated by burying in a mound of salts, making a sort of human jerky). [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cave-being-of-ras-el-khaima/141104.md?page=2)