Everyones heard of vampires and werewolves and there isn’t a single country on earth that doesn’t have its own stories about some kind of demonic beast recking havoc on the local population.
The vast majority of these stories can be safely passed off as fiction, not only because they cant be proven, but because the creators of such fictional works are well known professionals in their fields who’s achievements, and creations are well documented. But every once in a while something comes along that not only doesn’t seem to have an original creator, but has something to convince enough people that it may be real, so here’s five creatures thought to be mythical that may just exist.
1) The Lochness Monster – Origin: 1993
(The first photo of the creature taken in 1933, now known to have been faked)
This aquatic dinosaur like creature was first thought to exist from 1933 onwards. There are a couple of mentions of a monster in the lake before this, with the earliest coming from 565 AD when someone was apparently eaten by it, but then again they also apparently spoke a little prayer when it came back to eat another one of them and god pulled it back with ropes, so, yeah.
The first popular report of the monster comes from 1933, which is when the first photo of the creature was taken. After 1933 reports of the monster started to pour in, with people making claims of everything from simple sightings to being chased down the road at the side of the loch by the creature. Most of these stories are probably just people wanting to jump on the band waggon, but there’s been enough of them to convince people it may actually be real.
What are the chances?
There is a creature called the Greenland shark which has very long life-span. They can live for over 200 years but some people theorise their lives could be over 500 years. The point is that there’s things living in the ocean that can live a very long time, and with the loch being connected to the sea by only 7 miles, there’s the very real chance something big could have entered it at one point and survived for decades or longer.
The loch is over 20 miles long and 200 metres deep, giving an ocean dwelling creature plenty of room to hide and grow. The chances of there being a monster in the lake would most likely turn out to be something like a large shark or other mammal that could survive fresh water, but if there ever was one it probably died a long time age.
2) Chupacabra – Origin: 1995
The name Chupacabra literally means goat sucker, a name given to it to describe its behaviour when feeding. The first sighting of the creature was back in March of 1995 in Puerto Rico when a woman found 8 of her sheep dead in the morning. She found each one with three puncture marks on their bodies and all were drained of blood.
Later that year around 150 farm animals were found dead in the town of Canóvanas under the same circumstances, with circular puntur marks and drained of blood. The next mass killing was in 1975 when the town of Moca saw several dozen farm animals killed in the same way, with many people in the area reporting their animals dying or going missing.
What are the chances?
The strange thing about this one is that the missing and dead animals were well documented, as people went after compensation and filed police reports, but the official story was that they were stolen or killed by some sort of cult.
Additionally a veterinarian that inspected some of the animals killed reported they were not drained of blood at all, and so it seems many of the claims were made up for whatever reason. On the other hand there’s the very real possibility of a large feral dog killing livestock, which could be easily mistaken for a mythical beast by a superstitious enough person.
3) Sasquatch – Origin: 1970’s
The creature that most people refer to as “Bigfoot” is thought to belong to a species that is known as the Sasquatch. This ape like creature is believed by many to live in the far northern wilderness of Canada, and has apparently been seen by hundreds of people over the years.
The creature was even mentioned at one time in a Canadian army survival guide as something to watch out for, and has been reported in various government documents as a subject of interest. The photo’s of the creature’s and claims of them are sketchy at best, with no one coming up with anything solid, but due to how rare the animal would be if it did indeed exist, along with its location there’s no surprise there aren’t more pictures of it.
What are the Chances?
At the end of the last ice age, animals that we now recognise as being hot weather creatures, such as the rhino and elephant, had shaggy furred winter ancestors. The woolly rhino and mastodon lived during the ice age and died due to climate change, but there’s the very real chance of a more adaptable animal surviving the temperature change, especially if they lived in a cold area that came out of the ice age much slower than the equator regions did.
If you can have an ice age version of the elephant and rhino, then why not the gorilla? The chances of an animal like this not only adapting to the new climate, but also surviving for so long are very small indeed, but not impossible.
4) Bunyip – Origin: early 1800’s
(A drawing of the Bunyip from 1890)
The bunyip is a large rat like creature that lives within the swamp regions of Australia. The tale is thought to have originated from one of the Aboriginal tribes of the land, but there are no written records of its creation, only documents about apparent sightings.
Apart from numerous people claiming to have actually seen it over the years, there is some rather interesting historical records of the findings of Bunyip bones, which start as far back as 1818.
Settlers from Europe reported find large mammal bones round the edges of old dried up bodies of water, which they described as being larger than those of an ox. These findings went on for some years and in 1847 a supposed Bunyip skull was even displayed in a museum in Sydney for 2 days. Hundreds of people flocked to see it and spoke about their own sightings of the creature. Records of sightings went on for the rest of the 1800’s but stopped coming at the start of the 20th century.
What are the Chances?
Since all of the bones that were found have been lost over the years its impossible to test them. What people thought were Bunyip bones were most likely the remains of dinosaurs or some other kind of large mammal.
There is the chance that the Bunyip was a type of large water mammal that was slowly dying out before people came to the continent, and was simply finished off after they arrived. The chance of this is higher than most would guess, as the animal known as the Dodo was very common in Australia before people wiped them out, and giant beavers were present during the ice age. There are many creatures in this world that people don’t realise existed, so why is it so strange to think that one of them could have survived much longer than the others.
5) Yeti – Origin: 1832
Roaming the peaks of the Himalayas is a creature that’s basically the mountain equivalent to the Bigfoot, its just that this one has many more reported sightings, and from more credible people.
Reports of the creature were low at first and didn’t start pouring in until the start of the 1900’s, when many westerners came to the area with more advanced hiking and exploration gear. There are hundreds of claims of sightings during the 20th century, with everyone from army officers and respected scientists claiming to have seen the creature.
Since most of the sightings took place in a time when it wasn’t practical to carry a huge camera up a mountain, there’s no photo’s of the beast. Sightings of the Yeti have declined massively since the 1970’s, with the creature seemingly having vanished from the mountains.
What are the Chances?
It seems that if anything was up there its long since died, but the question of if it was there in the first place seems to be unlikely. What people refer to as the yeti is most probably the Himalayan brown bear that sometimes roams the upper regions of the mountain range.
There could very well have been an ape like creature that adapted to life up the mountains, but since not a single bone has been found it looks like this is a case of people mistaking a snow covered standing bear for something more than it was.
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