I’ll admit it. I like scary movies. A good werewolf movie is the best.
About 6 years ago, I went to purchase some beer at the local little town liquor store. We aren’t talking 7-11 or Mug and Jug or anything like that. This building is 100 years old. The lighting inside would make Thomas Edison sad. Many people would call it a shack.
The proprietors had a VERY large German Shepard. Long hair. More black than brown. I’m a big guy. 6’4". When I call something big, I have a good measure to go by. Biggest German Shepard I had ever seen. I knew the dog and had met it.
But I digress. I walked in the dark store out of the bright Colorado sunshine. My eyes did not adjust quickly. I still had my sunglasses on.
I did not expect a werewolf.
The Shepard was standing on his rear feat, with his front feat on the sales counter right inside the door. He was quite as could be. Did not move a muscle. It was the very first thing I saw in the dim light. Right where I would expect the sales person.
Sucker was tall, very big and hairy and, well, just about what a werewolf would look like (if they existed).
I did not scream. I’m a guy (it was close though). It was more than a double take though. And then after I realized it’s not a werewolf. I felt I may as be just as shit out of luck with this huge dog. It was sort of a double wammy.
This was in the middle of the day, but in shade. So, you are probably right. I do know that there were pictures in the newspaper several times a year showing a BIG black cat in the same area that I was in.
So, now that you have myth bustered my black puma sighting…can I start telling folks that I saw a flying saucer getting shot down by the non-existent black helicopters? After all, how could I see a black helicopter at night? :smack:
My seven year old son and I were camping at Fort Davis State Park in west Texas, about 30 years ago, and late in the afternoon, i went out to the back lot behind the campground for some final birdwatching for the day. Concentrating on a small flock of birds in a bush, I heard the sound of a large animal suddenly stir about 20 feet to my right, and heard the footsteps running away. I assumed it was a deer, and didn’t turn to look, keeping my attention on the birds. After I put my glasses down, my son said “Dad, did you see the mountain lion?” I asked at the rangers office, they said no mountain lions had been seen there in at least a decade, but I still trusted my son to not call it that unless he was pretty sure that was what it was. A couple of years later, I heard that again there were reports of mountain lions around the park, and now they are listed as regular species in the area.
So I’m pretty sure my son got it right, and it is exciting to think that he was maybe the first person in decades to get a good look up close at that species in that area.
I was walking through the Chinatown section of Toronto one time and I walked past a local meat store. As is the custom, they put the carcasses on display in the front window so you can check them out before going in to place your order. The carcasses are whole but dressed - skinned, gutted, and beheaded.
And there was this thing hanging in the window display and I have no idea what it was. I’ve worked on a farm and I would recognize most carcasses. And this didn’t look like any animal I had ever seen, even taking the lack of skin and head into account. I think maybe it was some kind of sea creature but it didn’t look like anything I knew.
I guess about 1980 or so I was in Orange county Ca. I was browsing around a rain pond in a vacant lot and saw some odd looking tadpoles. I could see thier skeletons and they appeared to have claws. I rememebered reding about some pregnancy tests some San diego students had been performing on some african clawed frogs and wondered if they couldn’t have somehow made it 70 miles north. I reported them and it turned out the entire water system was infested with them.
On the road to the ice rink is a complex of some sort. No name but it is huge, probably 100 acres or so of mostly woods and is all surrounded by this very impressive and expensive looking wrought iron fence which is maintained and the vegetation near it is always mowed back which probably is nearly a mile of fence line to maintain. The front has this big gate with a guard shack. In the winter you can see a large barn in the distance and so I assume its an exclusive horse club. I never have though, ever seen anyone drive in or out of it.
I worked 2nd shift in the warehouse of a manufacturing company. One night my co-worker and I were sitting in the little break area outside the shipping office waiting the few minutes for the shift to end. All the lights in the warehouse were off except for over the break area. There were still people working in the other end of the plant, and there was a large dark room between them and us. I start to put on my motorcycle helmet when I see the lights of a forklift coming up one of the aisles between the pallet racks. Figuring it to be someone from the other end of the plant I walk over to the end of the aisle to see what they want, and when I get there there was nothing there. I laughted about it at the time, but then it really started to bug me.
It didn’t look mangy. Its hair was fine and long, and the critter looked healthy. It resembled someone with thinning hair, in that you can see both the hair and the skin underneath, but it wasn’t patchy. The hair was uniform in length and coverage. I thought it was a fox at first, because it looked reddish. Maybe the sun was shining directly on it or something.
You might be right. I looked at coyote pictures just now, and the front face shots do resemble what I saw, but I don’t recall the critter being dual toned. It could also have been a red wolf. They were repopulated in NC a few years ago when they were in danger of going extinct, so it could have been one of the new arrivals. It sure *moved *like a cat, though.
I’ve had a few cases of strange animal sightings. Mostly they resolve to some wild creature I didn’t know about. For example, I once saw a Fisherin Yellowstone park. They’re fairly rare, so it took a lot of asking park rangers until I found a description that made sense. A lot of people kept trying to me it was an otter or a beaver.
But going from the subject line of the OP, I often see strange things that can’t be identified. I have good vision in one eye, and lousy vision in the other, with poor depth perception. So my brain often takes one far-away object and tries to combine it with a close-up object into some bizarre hybrid that makes no sense.
“How did they get a full-size cedar tree into the back of that pickup?” :smack:
Another fun effect of my vision: when I’m sitting in a crowd and someone’s head is right in front of me, there’s a small area of my vision blocked for the good eye, but not for the bad eye. Usually my eyes just tie themselves into knots trying to focus on something that can’t be focused on… but sometimes, this also produces some very strange perceptions.
It could be I’m going through a similar dilemma. Maybe what I thought was flesh under the hair was actually fur that looked fleshlike. Another detail I left out is that I was mainly looking at the critter’s face. I didn’t see its body until it left. The “flesh” I saw was prevalent at skin folds, around the eyes and mouth. Other posters in this thread perceived from my description that I was describing its whole body.
Maybe I should just say it was a red wolf and move on with my life. :o
According to the Constructivists, we learn mainly by building on and reshaping what we already know. That is presumably why automobiles were first called “horseless carriages” and the first settlers in Australia talked about Koala bears and Kangaroo rats.
In other words, identifying something means to see it as an example of an already known category.
Just before dawn one morning, I once saw a falling piece of space junk that produced a rotating spiral of light. I had no way of recognising it as a falling mass of metal but I certainly saw it as a rotatiing spiral of light.
I suspect that anything too strange will not even be recognised as an object or substance by our mind.
A penis … a floating severed penis … a swimming penis … now munching on weeds on the hull of a boat. Let me tell you - that thing gave me the willies. Locally known as a ‘sea sex’ and I have no idea what other name it might have. Freak-E :eek:
