Mysterious Creatures : A Guide to Cryptozoology

(April 7, 2001), pp. 30–33, at http://www.
strangeark.com/crypto/Cryptohominids.pdf;
Jean Roche, “Bigfoot-Like Beings Sighted in
Western Europe,” Crypto Hominology Special,
no. 1 (April 7, 2001), pp. 41–43, http://
www.strangeark.com/crypto/Cryptohominids.
pdf; Western Europe, http:/perso.wanadoo.
fr/daruc/westeur.htm.
Wurrum
FRESHWATER MONSTER of Ireland.
Etymology: Dialectical form of the English
“worm.”
Physical description: Length, 14 feet. Black.
Head like a dog’s or colt’s. Two humps, 2 feet
long and 2 feet high, 12 feet apart. Four short
legs.
Distribution: Lough Brin (Bran), County
Kerry.
Significant sightings: Timothy O’Sullivan saw
a Wurrum on December 24, 1954, as he took in
his cattle for milking.
Two farmers saw a black, reptilian animal,
about 10 feet long, swimming the length of the
loch in the summer of 1979.
Sources: William Richard Le Fanu, Seventy
Years of Irish Life (New York: Macmillan,
1893), pp. 115–116; Peter Costello, In Search
of Lake Monsters (New York: Coward, McCann
and Geoghegan, 1974), pp. 160–162; Janet
and Colin Bord, “Creatures of the Irish Lakes,”
in Peter Brookesmith, ed., Creatures from
Elsewhere (London: Orbis, 1984), p. 83.
Wyoming Mummy
SMALL HOMINID of western North America.
Variant name: Pedro.
Physical description: Height, 6.5 inches sitting;
14 inches estimated total. Weight, 0.75
pound. Dark-brown, wrinkled skin. Gray headhair.
Flat head. Flat nose. Wide mouth with full
lips. Pointed teeth. Thick arm-hair. Spatular
fingernails.
Distribution: Pedro Mountains, Wyoming.
Significant sighting: In October 1932, two
prospectors, C. Main and F. Carr, came across a
small cave in the Pedro Mountains, Carbon
County, Wyoming, in which a little, mummi-
596 WURRUM
fied man was sitting on a ledge. They kept it
with them for two years, wrapped in a sack; after
that, it was obtained by Floyd Jones of Casper,
Wyoming, who exhibited it in the 1930s, and
then Ivan P. Goodman, who exhibited it in the
1940s. At some point, it was allegedly brought
to anthropologist Harry L. Shapiro at the American
Museum of Natural History, who examined
it for a month. X rays proved it had a
human skeleton, and there was a suggestion of
undigested food in the stomach. The bones of
the right shoulder apparently were broken, and
the spine had been injured. Goodman died in
1950, and the mummy passed into the hands of
Leonard Waller, after which it was lost sometime
in the 1970s.
Probable explanation: An infant or fetus with
anencephaly, a congenital anomaly producing
an absence of all or part of the brain, suggested
by Rainer Zangerl and D. Dwight Davis, who
examined the mummy in March 1950. They
suspected it had been buried no more than
twenty-five years. It may also have been “enhanced”
for exhibition.
Sources: “Mummified Dwarf Is Found near
Pathfinder Reservoir,” Casper (Wyo.) Tribune
Herald, October 22, 1932; “Wyoming
‘Mummy’ Mystery Solved,” Bulletin of the
Chicago Natural History Museum 21, no. 4
(April 1950): 5; Ray Palmer, “Mystery of the
Midget Mummy,” Fate 4 (September 1950):
74–76; Elvina Colburn (letter), “The Midget
Mummy,” Fate 5 (April 1951): 96–97; Lance
Robbins, “Wyoming’s Mystery Mummy,”
Exploring the Unknown, May 1965; Duane
Valentry, “Mystery of the Missing Mummy,”
Popular Archaeology 4 (March-April 1975):
57–58; Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune, July 22
and July 24, 1979; Mark Chorvinsky,
“Wyoming’s Mystery Mummy,” Fate 48
(November 1995): 22–24.
Wyvern
DRAGON of Wales and England.
Etymology: From the Old French guivre and
the Latin vipera (“snake”).
Physical description: Two-legged dragonlike
animal. Single pair of wings. Barbed tail.