Within months, the creature, which the family apparently hadn’t yet seen directly, began speaking increasingly fluent English, relating to the Irvings that it had been born in New Delhi, India on June 7, 1852. No explanation was given as to how the animal got to Britain. Other paranormal activity began happening around the house, such as objects flying across the room inexplicably. The voice of the creature began spying on the neighbors and reporting back to the Irvings, and shortly after the creature revealed itself to be a mongoose, or something similar and even allowed itself to be petted by Margaret Irving.

Other locals began hearing odd sounds that they attributed to the Irving’s mongoose, and the animal reportedly began ranging around the town, always reporting the local comings and goings of the day back to the Irving’s. The press became infatuated with the story of the talking mongoose, and soon Gef, which it claimed to be its name, became a celebrity in the British media.

An investigation done by paranormalist Harry Price in 1935 revealed little. Hairs thought to be from Gef turned out to belong to the family dog, and the few photographs Price was able to take were of poor quality, and one of them appeared to show a cat. The Irvings left the farmhouse, and Gef, in 1937. Sometime after, the new owner shot a large mongoose-like animal which may have been the creature. 

Mongooses normally do not speak, nor was Gef definitively determined to have been one. One theory is that Gef was a poltergeist that had the ability to appear as a mongoose, or trick the family into believing that he was one. He might have been some type of bizarre mongoose-like cryptid, or he may even have been a hoax. In any case, the tale of Gef the Talking Mongoose remains an unusual story that today is obscure, but in the 1930′s had delighted and gripped the British public.

In 1881 a magazine called the South Australian Register ran a story by a traveler called Carle Liche. He tells us that while travelling through Madagascar, he was horrified to watch the native Mdoko tribe sacrifice a woman to a man-eating tree. He stated that the places the woman near the tree, and after laying there for a few seconds, the tree’s tendrils took the woman by the neck and strangled her, before apparently engulfing the body. In his 1924 book “Madagascar, land of the man-eating tree” former Michigan Governor Chase Osborn recounted Liche’s tale, and mentioned that missionaries and locals in Madagascar all knew of the deadly tree. Unfortunately, Liche’s accounts may have been an exaggeration, as both the Mdoko tribe nor the man-eating tree have ever been found, and the governor may simply have been embellishing a little bit more to make for good reading.

 

From the steppes of Mongolia comes another type of creature that is particularly memorable by its rather disgusting appearance. The Mongolian Death Worm is a supposedly poisonous worm that has the appearance of a bright red bloody cow intestine. That’s right, a deadly cow intestine. Said to be about four feet long, the animal is said to spit a yellow substance when threatened that is deadly on contact with human skin, and is even claimed to be able to kill with electricity in a manner similar to the electric eel. Shocking, but does it really exist? Expeditions to Mongolia to find the creature haven’t been particularly fruitful, however the story is so wide-spread that there may well be truth to it. With new species of animal, even large ones, seemingly being found all the time in such places as the jungles of Vietnam, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to suspect that the same may be found under the earth in the extremely desolate Gobi desert.
 
Madagascar and Mongolia aren’t the only places where one finds man-eating trees and deadly worms. South America is also a fruitful land for stories of deadly trees, and even more amazing are the stories of the enormous Minhocao. This giant cryptic has been reported to live in the forests of South America and has been claimed to reach astonishing lengths of up to 75 feet. Old accounts tell of a huge tunnel digging worm with two appendages on its head, perhaps similar to those of a snail or slug. Unfortunately, no one has seen the Minhocao in over a century, suggesting that it has either gone extinct or may never have existed at all.
 
Often cryptids are misidentified known animals, sometimes they defy explanation. In any of the cases detailed in this article, there would be few animals with appearances close enough to be mistaken. It might be that the man-eating trees simply stem from exaggerated accounts of venus fly traps, but the worms are more difficult to dismiss. Slimy worms aren’t particularly scary, nor do they make good fodder to make up legends about. They are simply worms, and stories of 75 foot long docile giants and blood red disgusting-but-deadly creatures are not something that cultures would normally invent out of thin air. They probably have a grain of truth somewhere, hidden along with the animals themselves in the least explored places on planet earth.

“Heyy,

My name is Victoria and i am starting a report on the JD (Jersey Devil) also known as the MLD (The Mother Leeds Devil)…People say when you make the Jersey Devil Cake and put it in your yard the Jersey Devil might come..

Here is the recipe: THE JERSEY DEVIL CAKE

Cake
3/4 cup boiling water
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate
2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup margarine
3 eggs, well beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 cups brown sugar

Icing
1/4 pound margarine
3 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
3 squares unsweetened chocolate, melted
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 to 1/2 cup evaporated milk

To make cake: Pour boiling water over chocolate. Stir over low heat until smooth and thick. Cool. Sift together flour, soda, baking powder and salt. Cream shortening with sugar until fluffy. Add eggs and beat well. Blend in chocolate and vanilla. Add dry ingredients and milk alternately, beating after each addition. Pour into well-greased 9-inch pans. Bake in 350-degree oven 30 minutes.

To make icing: Blend butter, chocolate and vanilla. Add sugar alternately with evaporated milk until smooth. Add milk until spreadable.

The most famous tale of the origins of this cryptid is of Mother Leeds. In 1735, the story goes, the good mother had given birth to twelve children. Said to be a witch, Leeds said that if she had child number 13, it would be the devil himself. Variations of the story say that the Devil was the father, but in any case, the child was born completely normal. Within minutes, it killed the midwife, grew a horse’s head, forked tail, wings and hooves and escaped through the chimney and went directly toward the Pine Barrens.

But this may not be entirely true. The Native American Lenni Lenape tribes called the Pine Barrens “The place of the dragon”, and other name places and accounts may suggest an origin that predates Mother Leeds. The first well documented sighting dates from the early 19th century when the famous early American naval commodore Stephen Decatur visited a foundry in the barrens searching for a source for decent cannon balls. He related a story of seeing a white creature with huge wings flying overhead, and directed cannon fire at it. The story goes that the creature was entirely oblivious to the hole Decatur made in its wing.

Perhaps the most famous person to see the Devil was Joseph Bonaparte. Most people aren’t aware that this older brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, and former King of Spain, called Bordentown, New Jersey home for some years. Unwelcome – and perhaps wanted – in Europe he fled France before the capture of Napoleon and bought a lovely rural estate, not far as monster flies from the Pine Barrens. He is said to have seen the Jersey Devil in 1820.

In the 1840′s the Devil was blamed for numerous livestock killings (though one wonders how many of those were actually related to the UFO phenomena). But, unlike many cryptids and paranormal phenomena, the sightings of the devil increased. By 1909 thousands had claimed to see the Jersey Devil, most of them between the dates of January 16-23. Newspapers went wild with the story, Numerous accounts of the horse-faced, winged devil surfaced, and mass hysteria set in. The devil was said to attack a trolley car, schools closed, a local fire department claimed to stave off the monster with a hose, and the local economy screeched to a halt when business owners were too fearful to open their doors.

Sightings continued with regularity throughout the 20th century. But the range of the Devil seems to be increasing. 2008 has already seen two sightings, both well out of the Pine Barrens area, and well out of New Jersey in fact. The first was January in in Litchfield, Pennsylvania, where a farmer saw the creature in his barn. The second was in Rising Sun, Maryland just a few weeks ago on August 18th, where three people observed the creature flying past their car, landing in a field a short distance away. The Jersey Devil is still with us, unlike many cryptids, and seems to be increasing its range….

Deep in the mountains of southern and central China there is said to exist a hairy humanoid creature known as the Yeren. Sightings of the Yeren, or Chinese Wildman, date back more than 2,000 years and are still reported today. Described as being a red haired bipedal animal, rising over six feet tall with a peculiarly fat belly and similarly strange pronounced buttocks, the Yeren bears a striking resemblance to many humans found in modern developed countries.

A popular seventeenth-century account from Hubei province reads:

“In the remote mountains of Fangxian County, there are rock caves, in which live hairy men as tall as three meters. They often come down to hunt dogs and chickens in the villages. They fight with whoever resists.”

Most of the sightings are in the counties of Badong, Xingshan and Fangxian, and therefore the Yeren are thought by most to originate from Shennongjia Nature Reserve in Yichang, but none have actually been discovered there.. or anywhere else for that matter.

A 1976 encounter witnessed by several local bureaucrats brought the Yeren into the international spotlight for the first time. It is reported that early in the morning of May 14, while on their way home they encountered a “strange, tailless creature with reddish fur” on a rural highway in the Hubei province. The driver pursued the creature with his car, forcing him to scramble up a hill. Roughly halfway up the hill he slipped and came to rest in front of the car, after which the passengers left the vehicle and approached the creature for a closer look.

They described the creature as being over six feet tall, covered in thick brown and purple-red wavy hair, having a fat belly and pronounced buttocks. The eyes were human-like, but the face bearing much more resemblance to that of an ape.

Artists Concept of a Yeren

Interest in the Yeren had increased and the first official inquiry was launched in 1961, but was inconclusive as the body, (reported as being slain by road workers) was unavailable to inspectors and formally declared to have been a Gibbon. Later, another formal investigation by the Chinese Academy of Sciences put 110 investigators into the forests of Fang county and the Shennongjia area. No sightings were reported but local witnesses were interviewed and alleged Yeren footprints, hair, and feces were collected.

Over the years investigators have collected dozens of alleged Yeren hairs from all around China and through laboratory examination have found that “the wild man is in the middle between bears or apes and human beings.” Physicists at Fudan University, studying samples from all over China, found that the proportion of iron to zinc was 50 times that found in human hair and seven times that in the hair of recognized primates. Other studies of note have concluded that the hair was neither human nor known primate hair but from an unrecognized primate with a morphological affinity to humans, which seems to be congruent with witness descriptions of the creature.
Zhou Guoxing, one of the expedition leaders, believed there seemed to be two types of Yeren: “a larger one of about two meters in height, and a smaller one, about one meter in height.” He also reported two types of footprints: “One is large, 30-40 cm, remarkably similar to that of man, with the four small toes held together and the largest one pointing slightly outwards. The other type is smaller, about 20 cm, and more similar to the footprint of an ape or monkey, with the largest toe evidently pointing outwards.”??Zhou, believes that both living and dead specimens of the smaller Yeren are already in scientists’ hands.

According to this source:

“One was killed on May 23, 1957, near the village of Zhuanxian in Zhejiang province. A biology teacher had the presence of mind to preserve the hands and feet. When Zhou learned of this in 1981, he went to the site and collected the specimens. After some considerable study he concluded that they “belonged to a kind of large stump-tailed monkey unknown to science.” Subsequently he identified the animal as a stumptailed macaque. Not long afterwards just such an animal was captured in the Huang Mountain region and taken to the Hefei Zoo. Zhou wrote that this specimen is mainly ground-dwelling…. The body is large, about 70-90 cm in standing height. A tall individual could reach one meter. Its extremities are strongly built. It weighs more than 20 kilograms. A large male could weigh over 33 kilograms, while females would be smaller. The back hair is brown in color. The adult male has whiskers, and has a reddish color on the face.”

Anthropologist Frank Poirier of Ohio State University has suggested that many Yeren reports are probably sightings of the rare Golden Monkey, which is believed to inhabit the same region. An ironic anecdote tells us that Poirier himself was once mistaken for a Yeren, after villagers who had never seen a Westerner encountered a near-nude Poirier napping by a river.

Even with all of the reports (some claim over 400 reports in the last 20 years), scientists haven’t definitively proven what the creature is, or even the concrete existence of the Yeren. When theorizing about what the Yeren could be, many zoologists believe the creature is a surviving Gigantopitliccus, a giant bipedal primate believed to have gone extinct roughly 300,000 years ago, and today would share the same habitat.

Another popular theory is that the Yeren are in fact, a small pack of evolved orangutans. A source points out:

“Bipedalism has evolved independently in the ape family at least two times, so it is at least slightly possible that this has happened yet again with an isolated population of orangutans.”

However plausible either of these theories may be, isn’t it likely that there’s yet another, less colorful explanation invoked by the ironic tale of Mr. Poirier? To us, the tale of an ape-man so closely resembling our friends and family coupled with the cultural ignorance of the locals greatly increases the chance of the recent sightings being an embarrassing tale of a remote vacation gone wrong.