Mysteries

Beasts

• CaseVärend, Småland, Sweden, 1883 to 1889

  The lindworm reward in Småland was never claimed

  In May 1884 a former chargé d'affaires in Småland offered up to 1,000 crowns for a dead lindworm. A Växjö paper joked it had been found; nobody brought a snake.

  

• CaseEsquel and Epuyén, Chubut, Argentina, 1922

  How the Patagonian plesiosaur of 1922 got its name

  A hunter's letter to the Buenos Aires zoo never says plesiosaur. A headline did, and a party from the zoo went to his lagoon in April 1922 and found him gone.

  

• TaleEdam and Haarlem, Holland, Netherlands, 1403 to 1786

  Before the Edam mermaid had a tail

  Edam says a mermaid named Minne was caught in 1403 and taught to spin. The chronicles name no one and give no tail; the tail first shows in a print of 1645.

  

• TaleUasin Gishu and the Nandi forest, Kenya, 1909 to 1927

  The Nandi bear and the devil called Chemosit

  The first detailed account of the Nandi bear, printed in 1912, gives no year for the sighting. A 1909 book on the Nandi calls Chemosit a one-legged devil.

  

• TalePars and Kerman, Iran, Sasanian era to 1010

  Haftvad and the worm in the Kārnāmag, Tabari and the Shahnameh

  In the Pahlavi Book of Ardashir the worm of Haftānbōxt drinks blood and dies of molten brass; the girl with the apple appears only in Ferdowsi.

  

• TaleVrhnika (Ober-Laybach), Slovenia, 1684 to 1689

  Vrhnika's baby dragons: Valvasor's lizard and the olm

  A tourism page says Valvasor wrote of a dragon that spews out its young. His 1689 chapter has one dead, lizard-shaped animal a postmaster hung up for weeks.

  

• CaseLucerne, Switzerland, 1420 to 2006

  The Lucerne dragon stone: a pledge, a charter and a CT scan

  In 1523 Lucerne's council certified a dragon's stone as a cure for plague. In 2006 a CT scan showed a painted clay ball.

  

• TaleHigo (Kumamoto), Japan, 1843 to 1882

  Amabie, from a single news sheet of 1846

  In 1846 a news sheet drew a long-haired sea creature from Higo and named it Amabie. Every other known paper about the creature calls it amabiko.

  

• CaseGévaudan, France, 1764 to 1767

  The Beast of Gévaudan outlived the king’s wolf

  In 1765 the king's gunbearer shot a wolf, and the Gazette declared the Beast of Gévaudan dead. Five months later a new beast was killing in the same hills.

  

• TalePine Barrens, New Jersey, 1687 to 1939

  The Jersey Devil was first called Leeds’s devil

  In 1700 a Quaker writer called the almanac maker Daniel Leeds “Satan’s Harbinger”. By 1859 a devil born to a woman named Leeds was a tale of the Pine Barrens.

  

• TaleLikouala, Republic of the Congo, 1776 to 1997

  Mokele-mbembe, report by report, since 1776

  The oldest text behind Mokele-mbembe is a 1776 note on claw prints. The name reached print in 1929, in a report that kept the animal out of the Likuala rivers.

  

• TaleChina; the earliest texts are from Shanghai, 1933 to 2009

  The earliest Nian beast we could find dates from 1933

  The Nian, the beast driven off with red paper and firecrackers, is said to be thousands of years old. The oldest text naming it that we found is from 1933.

  

• CaseTsavo River, Kenya, 1898

  The Tsavo man-eaters: 28 counted in 1907, 135 by 1925

  In 1907 Patterson wrote that the Tsavo lions ate 28 Indian workers. In 1925, when they went on show in Chicago, his figure was 135.

  

• CaseBedburg, near Cologne, Germany, 1589 to 1590

  The werewolf of Bedburg in the Cologne papers of 1589

  A London pamphlet of 1590 says the werewolf of Bedburg killed two pregnant women. No German text of 1589 mentions them, and no trial record has been found.