WELCOME TO THE CFZ BLOG NETWORK: COME AND JOIN THE FUN

Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Tuesday, April 16, 2013

BIGFOOT FORUMS: Did Bigfoot Once Have Wings?

The Bigfoot Forums Blog

Let me preface this article by saying that it is heavily credited to anonymous sources. All of them supplied screenshot evidence to substantiate their claims, although not all of them allowed the publication of the screenshots. All of the screenshots are from direct conversations with Dr. Melba Ketchum, so they aren’t speculation or hearsay. I will paraphrase the content from the screenshots I did not have permission to publish to protect the identity of the sources. 

MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES: A MAN-KILLING CENTIPEDE DOWN OLD MEXICO WAY (NOT FOR THE SQUEEMISH!)


This is a very sad story about an unfortunate French musician in Mexico killed by the grip or bite of a centipede. What the French army was doing in Mexico in 1867 I don`t know. (Anyone?) . This story was in the Clarence and Richmond Examiner and New England Advertiser ( Grafton, New South Wales) 23rd April 1867;


“ A musician belonging to one of the French regiments has just met with an extraordinary death at Vera Cruz. He was engaged to play at the ball, and being very thirsty went out into the garden, and finding a water-bottle on the terrace, took it up and drank freely. Suddenly he raised cries of agony, and upon assistance arriving it was found that an enormous centipede had fixed its mandibles in his throat. The animal had taken up its abode in the neck of the bottle, and  was washed into his mouth in the act of drinking. A surgeon who was called was obliged to cut it to pieces , but the poison from the bite caused death in a few hours.” (1)


Now I ain`t no expert on arthropods, but Wikipedia suggests that although poisonous, centipede poison is not thought to be potent enough to kill a human (“except those who are allergic to the toxins.” 2)  However, Dale Drinnon tells me that indeed,  giant centipedes could definetely kill a man and that Eberhart said that there were reports of giant centipedes in the S. U.S.A. What strikes me about this case is did the musician die of shock or did the poison kill him? Or both?. Or if there is something more than the usual giant centipede here was it that his windpipe was pierced?

Apparently in the Solomon Islands there is a species of centipede so deadly that victims have been known to plunge their hands into boiling water in order to aleviate the pain, the intended cure being worse than the bite!(3) Wood says (see ref 3 below) that bites are NOT inflicted by the jaws but by the curved horny claws of the front pairs of legs which serve as fangs.

In my magazine Flying Snake no. 1  I examined, with Mike Hardcastle,  giant centipedes in Hong Kong which can grow up to 60cm long according to anecdotal reports(4) Christopher Columbus`s gold assayer, the Spaniard Ulloa, saw centipedes 91.4 cm long apparently.(5)



  1. Clarence and Richmond Examiner and New England Advertiser April 23rd 1867.
  2. Wikipedia  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scolopendra_gigantea#Venom
  3. Wood`s Guiness Book of Animal Facts and Feats 3rd ed 1982 p. 134
  4. R.Muirhead and M.Hardcastle The Giant Centipedes of Hong Kong . Flying Snake 1 April 2011 pp 24-30
  5. Wood op cit p. 133

ANDREW MAY: Words from the Wild Frontier

News and stories from the remoter fringes of the CFZ blogosphere...

From Nick Redfern's World of Whatever:

TODAY IS KARL'S MUM'S FUNERAL



Remember them both in your prayers

You can shed tears that she is gone
Or you can smile because she has lived

You can close your eyes and pray that she will come back
Or you can open your eyes and see all that she has left

Your heart can be empty because you can't see her
Or you can be full of the love that you shared

You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday
Or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday

You can remember her and only that she is gone
Or you can cherish her memory and let it live on

You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back
Or you can do what she would want: smile, open your eyes, love and go on.

written 1981
David Harkins 1959 -
Silloth, Cumbria, UK

FORTEAN BIRD NEWS FROM THE WATCHER OF THE SKIES

In an article for the first edition of Cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans wrote that cryptozoology is the study of 'unexpected animals' and following on from that perfectly reasonable assertion, it seems to us that whereas the study of out of place birds may not have the glamour of the hunt for bigfoot or lake monsters, it is still a perfectly valid area for the Fortean zoologist to be interested in. So after about six months of regular postings on the main bloggo Corinna has taken the plunge and started a 'Watcher of the Skies' blog of her own as part of the CFZ Bloggo Network.





THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN GOES GREBE WATCHING

2013 looks set to be a promising year musically. Even forgetting David Bowie's magnificent return, there are new albums by The House of Love (the one track I have heard so far is magnificent) and The Flaming Lips to look forward to. As I type I am having my first listen to the latter which already appears to be uncompromisingly strange which is no bad thing. I am particularly impressed by the latest output from Galileo Records in Switzerland, and will be interviewing Andy from Zenit tomorrow evening.
 
In sadder news, today is Mary Shuker's funeral. It will be a very difficult time for Karl, and I would ask you to join me in remembering both in your prayers.
 
"You can shed tears that she is gone
Or you can smile because she has lived"
 
 
Today's Gonzo Track of the Day is from The Young Dubliners
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/04/gonzo-track-of-day-young-dubliners.html
 
 
 
 
 

*  The Gonzo Daily is a two way process. If you have any news or want to write for us, please contact me at  jon@eclipse.co.uk. If you are an artist and want to showcase your work, or even just say hello please write to me at gonzo@cfz.org.uk. Please copy, paste and spread the word about this magazine as widely as possible. We need people to read us in order to grow, and as soon as it is viable we shall be invading more traditional magaziney areas. Join in the fun, spread the word, and maybe if we all chant loud enough we CAN stop it raining. See you tomorrow...

*  The Gonzo Daily is - as the name implies - a daily online magazine (mostly) about artists connected to the Gonzo Multimedia group of companies. But it also has other stuff as and when the editor feels like it. The same team also do a weekly newsletter called - imaginatively - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about it at this link:
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/11/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit-to-print.html
 
* We should probably mention here, that some of our posts are links to things we have found on the internet that we think are of interest. We are not responsible for spelling or factual errors in other people's websites. Honest guv!

*  Jon Downes, the Editor of all these ventures (and several others) is an old hippy of 53 who - together with his orange cat (who is currently on sick leave in Staffordshire) and a not very small orange kitten (who isn't) puts it all together from a converted potato shed in a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon which he shares with various fish, and sometimes a small Indian frog. He is ably assisted by his lovely wife Corinna, his bulldog/boxer Prudence, his elderly mother-in-law, and a motley collection of social malcontents. Plus.. did we mention the orange cats?

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today


Yesterday’s News Today

On this day in 1958 Rosalind Franklin died. Franklin's X-ray diffraction images led Watson and Crick to conclude that DNA molecules had a double helix structure.
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