Most places with a cryptid try to make it make a little sense.
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Is that one of those creatures from the edges of old maps??
@futurebird super fits the vibe, but it's actually a fearsome critter, a product of the late 1800s north american logging industry! it shows up in some paul bunyan stories, and loggers in wisconsin & that area would warn newbies to look out for the hodag. there was even a hoax!
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I'm a huge fan of any cryptid that is simply a very large fish. Especially if it has a name.
@futurebird I'm still kinda hoping that there's a giant freshwater version of dunkleosteus somewhere… that'd make for some terrifying stories.
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@futurebird A large fish cryptic just seems lazy, like the locals aren’t even trying.
@michaelgemar @futurebird I heard some locals used to try but were eaten by some giant fish.
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Most places with a cryptid try to make it make a little sense. "Well, you see there are these primates from the last Ice Age and ... " or " ... this lake is very old and catfish never stop growing so you can't rule out that one is the size of bus..."
But not NJ. "There is a devil in the woods. It's gonna get you."
"so... how did it get there? what's the deal?"
"... it's the devil."
@futurebird I hear he’s busy playing guitar against Ralph Macchio at the crossroads.
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Most places with a cryptid try to make it make a little sense. "Well, you see there are these primates from the last Ice Age and ... " or " ... this lake is very old and catfish never stop growing so you can't rule out that one is the size of bus..."
But not NJ. "There is a devil in the woods. It's gonna get you."
"so... how did it get there? what's the deal?"
"... it's the devil."
@futurebird my dad used to go out there (where??? All the way to the Pine Barrens??? Unclear) and fill these field notebooks (the ones that look like tiny marble notebooks) with copious, mysterious notes. Then one day I asked him how things were going with his jersey devil "research" and he just hung his head sadly. And he never went back out there again
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@futurebird my dad used to go out there (where??? All the way to the Pine Barrens??? Unclear) and fill these field notebooks (the ones that look like tiny marble notebooks) with copious, mysterious notes. Then one day I asked him how things were going with his jersey devil "research" and he just hung his head sadly. And he never went back out there again
@futurebird he was following up on this theory that the jersey devil is actually a very lost kind of puma
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I'm a huge fan of any cryptid that is simply a very large fish. Especially if it has a name.
@futurebird what about exceptionally large versions tiny things. Roberta the water bear. She's barely macroscopic.
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I'm a huge fan of any cryptid that is simply a very large fish. Especially if it has a name.
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@futurebird what about exceptionally large versions tiny things. Roberta the water bear. She's barely macroscopic.
This would be more terrifying in a way. What does it mean if you can see a water bear with a simple magnifying glass? What else is larger and by how much?!?
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"Ol Jimmy Gum-Mouth, the school-bus sized catfish eats someone every summer. He eats you in one gulp. They say the water won't even ripple. Only comes out when the lake is still as glass and the fog is hanging low... But the town council has been covering up to not scare the tourists."
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"Ol Jimmy Gum-Mouth, the school-bus sized catfish eats someone every summer. He eats you in one gulp. They say the water won't even ripple. Only comes out when the lake is still as glass and the fog is hanging low... But the town council has been covering up to not scare the tourists."
@futurebird oh, sure, but really everyone loves Jim the Fish!
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@futurebird what about exceptionally large versions tiny things. Roberta the water bear. She's barely macroscopic.
@Jaicup @futurebird you can bearly see her with the naked eye!
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@futurebird what about exceptionally large versions tiny things. Roberta the water bear. She's barely macroscopic.
@Jaicup @futurebird ah, you say barely macroscopic, I say “she’s ten *thousand* times bigger than a normal water bear!” You may even get a bas SyFy movie made with that.
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This would be more terrifying in a way. What does it mean if you can see a water bear with a simple magnifying glass? What else is larger and by how much?!?
@futurebird @Jaicup
The ancient game "Crush Crumble and Chomp" had you play as a monster attacking a city.One of the playable monsters was the spider that bit Spiderman. It escaped into the NYC subway system where it grew huge and lived off subway passengers (the manual notes it took several months for anyone to notice). That was a fun scenario, and would make for a good movie.
Edit: ah, replied to the wrong comment in the chain. Sorry.
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This would be more terrifying in a way. What does it mean if you can see a water bear with a simple magnifying glass? What else is larger and by how much?!?
@futurebird maybe you could saddle a Little Black Ant.
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"Ol Jimmy Gum-Mouth, the school-bus sized catfish eats someone every summer. He eats you in one gulp. They say the water won't even ripple. Only comes out when the lake is still as glass and the fog is hanging low... But the town council has been covering up to not scare the tourists."
This is from "Fishead" by Irvin S. Cobb, published in 1913.
But the biggest of them all are the catfish. These are monstrous creatures, these catfish of Reelfoot—scaleless, slick things, with corpsy, dead eyes and poisonous fins like javelins and long whiskers dangling from the sides of their cavernous heads. Six and seven feet long they grow to be and to weigh two hundred pounds or more, and they have mouths wide enough to take in a man’s foot or a man’s fist and strong enough to break any hook save the strongest and greedy enough to eat anything, living or dead or putrid, that the horny jaws can master. Oh, but they are wicked things, and they tell wicked tales of them down there. They call them man-eaters and compare them, in certain of their habits, to sharks.
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@futurebird what about exceptionally large versions tiny things. Roberta the water bear. She's barely macroscopic.
@Jaicup @futurebird tiny versions of large things. Cryptid thats a pocket-sized elephant.
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@Jaicup @futurebird tiny versions of large things. Cryptid thats a pocket-sized elephant.
@Jaicup @futurebird really that makes them more elusive. a tiny elephant could be hiding anywhere
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@futurebird maybe you could saddle a Little Black Ant.
Ants can already ride other ants.
Ant size range is wild.
This is an "acron ant" (temnothorax) and a carpenter ant. These aren't even the largest and smallest ants, just two ants you can find in Eastern Europe who can meet like this in the wild.
Remarkable photo by Bakos Ádám
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This is from "Fishead" by Irvin S. Cobb, published in 1913.
But the biggest of them all are the catfish. These are monstrous creatures, these catfish of Reelfoot—scaleless, slick things, with corpsy, dead eyes and poisonous fins like javelins and long whiskers dangling from the sides of their cavernous heads. Six and seven feet long they grow to be and to weigh two hundred pounds or more, and they have mouths wide enough to take in a man’s foot or a man’s fist and strong enough to break any hook save the strongest and greedy enough to eat anything, living or dead or putrid, that the horny jaws can master. Oh, but they are wicked things, and they tell wicked tales of them down there. They call them man-eaters and compare them, in certain of their habits, to sharks.
I think my grandpa read me this book or something similar. I have this constant and unexplained worry at all times that a big catfish might eat me.
