The Complete Guide To Mysterious Beings - Galaksija

his dorsal parts.” Their heads were a ”bottle-green,” according to Wilkins' account in his book
Strange Mysteries of Time and Space.
A year earlier, beginning in February 1948, Florida was in an uproar over the sudden presence of a
giant Unbelievable which traipsed around the beaches near Clearwater and left big three-toed tracks
in its wake. The largest toe measured thirteen and a half inches, and it was possible to estimate the
weight from the indentations, according to excited engineers who studied the imprints. They
calculated the critter had to weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of three tons.
Mr. Ivan Sanderson was doing a television series for NBC at the time (he was a pioneer in
television), and he flew to Florida with a camera crew to make measurements and plaster casts and
to interview the many witnesses. Fishermen and residents of the area told of seeing something
fifteen or twenty feet tall waddling around the marshes and beaches on two legs. Four different
pilots operating in the area claimed they had seen something huge and black thrashing around the
riverbanks of the Suwannee:
One aviator lowered his voice and explained in embarrassed tones, ”Maybe I'm crazy... but that
damned thing looked like a giant penguin to me!”
Sanderson meticulously collected the many newspaper stories and grilled all the witnesses.
Scientists and engineers who examined all his data said that if the prints were a hoax, they had to
have been made by a huge machine weighing many tons. It was easier to believe in a giant penguin,
they noted, than in the existence of such a machine. So Ivan did his broadcasts and later wrote
authoritative articles on how giant penguins had swum up from the antarctic regions to frolic on
Florida beaches.
Forty years later, in June 1988, an elderly resident named Tony Signorini gave an interview to the
St. Petersburg Times, claiming that he and his old buddy Al Williams had faked the footprints using
iron feet attached to boots. They had preserved the feet and Tony demonstrated them for reporters.
”I would just swing my leg back and forth like this,” he explained, ”and give a big hop. The weight
of the feet would carry me about six feet. They were heavy enough to sink down in the sand. I'd put
the shoes on in the water and then walk a long way up the beach, maybe two miles, and then get
back in the boat.”
The local Chief of Police, Frank Daniels, told reporter Jan Kirby: ”We always suspected Williams
because he usually called in with reports of the monster.” Williams also had a reputation as the local
practical joker. He died in 1969, and the aging Signorini wanted to set the record straight. Ivan
Sanderson passed away in 1973, never knowing that one of his favorite monster cases was the
product of a couple of rambunctious Hugh Troy imitators.
Even a trained professional like Ivan Sanderson can be fooled occasionally. A very fine line
sometimes separates the Incomprehensibles and Unbelievables from the totally Inconsequential.
This funny little island in space seems to harbor all kinds of incomprehensible beasts still unknown
to science. But next week or next year Australia's mysterious cat may get himself caught. Then
some scientist will write a learned paper about it and brand it with a fancy Latin name. There may
even come a time when the Florida ”three-toes” will be cornered. Three-toed tracks almost identical
to those found in 1948 have reappeared in other places in recent years. A set of these tracks were
discovered along the banks of the Monongahela River in Pennsylvania in 1966.
The Unbelievables are more rare and less peripatetic. Sometimes they are seen only once and never
heard from again. But they can pop up almost anywhere – in Central Park or Disneyland, or in your
own backyard.
Consider the ”walking fir-cone” of Kent, England.
”The thing was covered with quills, had a long snout and a short tail. It was as big as an Alsatian
dog and had large claws. You might have thought it was a walking fir-cone.”
The witness who offered this incredible description was a policeman named S. Bishop. The thing
had meandered past him in Dumpton Park, Ramsgate, Kent, England, on April 16, 1954. He did
what anyone else would have done. He called the cops. Other police descended on the area and
searched every bush but the ”walking fir-cone” was gone. Constable Bishop had seen something
that does not exist.