Siri, play "Renegade."
Look. Listen. Look.
Listen.
Look.
Look. Sometimes we at the Ghosthole get tired of executing our literal only stated goal. Sometimes we really wanted to carefully curate between three and seven yummy ghosty tales for your reading pleasure, but then, for whatever reason, we get extremely sidetracked into cryptids* instead. It's no one's fault.
Look, the point is that for just this week only we are a CryptidLetter and not a GhostLetter. It was honestly pretty unavoidable, so please everyone be cool as we take you on a brief but extremely enjoyable detour through Cryptid Country.
*cryptid (ˈkrip-tid) noun: A creature whose existence or survival is disputed or unsubstantiated, such as the yeti.
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From WM. T. Cox's "Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods," 1910 via Weird California
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Cactus Cat: Go Home, You're Drunk
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The scourge of the frontierman and terror of the American West, the Cactus Cat is a large cat who, shocker, resembles a cactus, sporting coarse, spiny fur and a hard, barbed tail. The cat also has long, sharp spurs on its forearms which it uses to violently slash cacti open. Cactus Cats are known for just murdering cacti and then returning to the scene of the crime hours later when the cactus juices have had a chance to ferment in the hot hot sun. The Cactus Cats will then suck down the fermented cactus juice and become belligerently drunk, stumbling around and loudly yowling. Cactus Cats in this state are known to drunkenly stumble into campsites and instigate fights with sleeping frontiersmen, often spiking them with their sharp tails and leaving large welts behind. W. Haden Blackman, author of The Field Guide to North American Monsters, states that the marks from a Cactus Cat attack can often mimic symptoms of bug bites or heat stroke, and posits that people often conflate the two. Absurd!
Cactus cats are also immune to scorpions and are known to enjoy them as a crunchy midnight snack.
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The Squonk: So Ugly It Could Literally Die
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It may sound mean, because it is, but the defining attribute of the Squonk (found in the Hemlock forest of northern Pennsylvania) is that it is just so incredibly fucking ugly. We know it, and it knows it. The Squonk is described as a warty, wrinkly, blemished creature who looks constantly on the verge of crying (in fact, the easiest way to track a Squonk is to listen for crying or simply follow the actual dramatic trail of tears). It avoids coming out during the day and even stays away from bodies of water out of fear that it will see its own reflection. When captured, Squonks are known to literally dissolve into tears, crying so much that their bodies are reduced to puddle form. That's what I'd call a big mood.
The Squonk is also notable for being the only cryptid on this list who is explicitly referenced in a Steely Dan song. Cheer up, Squonks! At least Steely Dan likes you!
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Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus: 2 Tired 2 Make A Doc Oc Joke
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Octopus paxarbolis may have entered the mainstream a bit later than the other entrants in this letter (1998), but that doesn't make this marvelous cephalopod's cryptid status any less valid. The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus (or PaNoTrOcto,if you will) is a cousin of the more traditionally ocean-bound octopus which dwells in the rivers and trees of the Olympic National Forest in Washington.
Tree Octopi are known as somewhat of a nuisance to lumber workers due to their tendency to hide among felled trees and gum up logging equipment with their ink. Conservationists also blame negative public sentiment toward the creatures on mid-century pulp magazines which sensationalized tree octopuses as vicious creatures with a tendency toward "nipping and suckering" humans.
Though not officially on the Endangered Species List, Friends of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus founder Lyle Zapato insists that Tree Octopus numbers are dangerously low due to habitat destruction, illegal tree octopus trading, and natural predators such as the bald eagle and the Sasquatch.
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Thunderbirds: What Sun Sign Is It When You Hate Kids And You Also Hate Planes?
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I'm not going to sugarcoat it. This one is basically just a big bird. But, in its defense, it is a very very big bird.
On April 26th, 1890 theTombstone Epitaph reported that two ranchers had managed to shoot down a tremendous bird "with a face like an alligator." The wingspan for the beast came in at a very cool and not at all terrifying 160 feet. Many people from the area also stated that they remembered a photograph being circulated along with the article, showing the men standing next to the bird nailed to a barn. However, that photograph is either long gone or never existed at all. A few years later two cowhands reportedly shot down another smaller Thunderbird just outside of Tombstone and cut a piece of its wing off, but this artifact is also lost to time.
Thunderbird sighting stories (and there are a fair amount) are rather consistent. Historically, the birds have been included in the lores of several Native groups including the Cahokian and Lakotan tribes. The giant birds seem to stick to the South-and-Midwest with a preference for open plains. Their biggest passion seems to be snacking; author Mark A. Hall references Quinalt Indian reports of talon-marked whale corpses found high in the mountains. Thunderbirds also enjoy livestock, but they have a particular passion for grabbing kids. In 1868 a Missouri schoolteacher made a harrowed report after seeing one of his students snatched off the ground by a "big bothersome eagle" that had been going after pigs and sheep in the area. In 1977 a family living in Lawndale, Arizona reported that a pair of "giant birds" (these were only 10 ft wide each, which is barely even a story) made an attempt to tandem lift their seven-year-old son Marlon Lowe. The birds only made it 35 feet before Marlon wriggled free and the birds had to leave without any kids to snack on at all.
Near the banks of the Mississippi River in Alton, Illinois stands a famous ancient Cahokian cave painting of a gigantic bird called the Piasa. The painting's impressive appearance was recorded in the journal of a Jesiut missionary named Jaques Marquett dating it back to at least 1673. Of course, the painting that stands there now is a replica, as the original Piasa painting was destroyed in the 1870s because the Mississippi Lime Company wanted some stupid limestone that was also there. Anyway that's probably in no way related to the rash of angry Thunderbird attacks over Alton in the 1940s. On April 4th, 1948, a US Colonel got buzzed by what he what he first thought was a jet but was astonished to find was actually a humongous bird. A week later, more birds returned to do more menacing, frightening two cops, a salesman, and a few families before stunning flight instructors at the local airport. A few days later it was spotted by a chiropractor in St. Louis who witnessed it playing a game of chicken with an airplane.
This wouldn't be the end of Thunderbirds' beeves with airplanes. Some theorists even blame a Thunderbird for the crash of a United plane in 1962; the plane's stabilizer was found to be almost severed in half and covered with feathers and unidentified bird flesh. Fun!
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The Hodag: Basically The Governor of Wisconsin
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In 1893 a Wisconsin timber cruiser named Eugene Shepard reported that while in the woods he had encountered a spiny creature with an elephant's body, a frog's face and thick, short legs with long claws. He assembled a crew and demanded dynamite to try and capture it. This mission resulted in one charred Hodag carcass, a photo of which was widely circulated in the press. Six years later Shepard claimed to have come across another Hodag, and this time he had captured it alive. He displayed his Hodag at the Oneida county fair, reportedly jiggling its case when visitors drew too close to give them a fright.
News of the Hodag spread around the country, at which point a small group of Smithsonian scientists declared their intentions to come study the creature. This announcement happened to roughly exactly coincide with Shepard's Hodag permanently disappearing from the area.
Nonetheless, the Hodag has become more or less the official symbol of Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Hodags are often to blame when possessions go missing and children are warned away from the wooded areas they're said to inhabit. The Hodag is the mascot of Rhinelander High, a Hodag statue sits in front of the Rhinelander Chamber of Commerce, and probably dozens (or whatever size this town is) of Rhinelanders attend the Hodag Country Festival every year. Because, after all. This is Hodag Country.
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The citizens of Rhinelander so love this creature that in 1959 they presented then Senator John F Kennedy and his wife Jackie with a tiny Hodag sculpture during their visit to the town.
I am not remotely kidding this is a real thing that really happened! JFK loved Hodags! He called his tiny Hodag a "provocative conversation piece!"
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I have to go lie down, but in the meantime I am just *begging* you to check out Rhinelander's official website which includes more good Hodag content than any one of us could use in a lifetime. Please. Do this one thing for me.
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Fur Bearing Trout Display from the Royal Museum Of Scotland
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Fur Bearing Trout: The Fuzzy Sweetheart Of The Yukon
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Okay. We've all had a lot of fun here today. Let's bring things down a bit.
The Fur Bearing Trout is a species of trout that dwells in the coldest mountain rivers of the United States, Canada, Iceland and Scotland. To cope with the extreme temperatures these creatures have developed a thick, glossy coat of white fur that makes them not only the cuddliest fishes but also the most fashionable. A more "whimsical" theory for the trouts' appearance is that a Colorado salesman once poured two to three bottles of hair tonic into the Arkansas River, causing some unsuspecting trouts down below to start sprouting hair uncontrollably.
The history of Fur Bearing Trouts in North America dates back to the 17th Century, when Scottish settlers in Canada began writing home to their loved ones about the plentiful "furried animals and fish" in the region. One settler even reportedly mailed a furry trout back home to prove the creature's existence.
As with most of the cryptids on this list, sightings have markedly declined in recent years. Experts suggest that climate change has made most waters too warm to be inhabitable for this furry fish, and Author W. Haden Blackman has noted that the trouts have been all but hunted to extinction due to the fact that they make incredible hats.
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We at the GhostHole would like to offer our sincerest gratitude for allowing us to go on a humongous fake animal tangent and we promise that we will soon return with a drove of proper ghost stories, unless of course anything else interesting at all comes up in the meantime.
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend, or someone else whose time you don't view as particularly valuable.
Happy Hauntings,
G. Host
Editor-In-Chief
The Cryptid Hole
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Looking For Ghosts?
If our Extreme Cryptid Zag threw you for a loop and left you starving for ghosty content, might we direct you toward an entire Hole full of Ghosts? A... Ghost Hole, if you will? Click the pic for our main site or right here for our previous letters!
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Listen!
We at the Ghost Hole also just released a second (mini) episode of our podcast (The GhostCast), and have several more on the way! Click over there on that bad bad photo of me to listen to us read Google Reviews of haunted places!
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References for Issue 4: The CryptidLetter
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Appendix A: Sick Hodag Merch
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