Atmospheric Beasts and the Crawfordsville Monster
Atmospheric beasts are the strangest of the flying monsters from cryptozoology. According to eyewitness reports, they are things that seem like living creatures, but they break all the usual rules that we apply to living things. They fly without the need for wings and their bodies are only semi-solid, often partially invisible to boot. Many atmospheric beast sightings were originally classified as really unusual UFO reports (in the sense of UFOs being defined as supposed alien spacecraft or machines of some other sort, not in the technical sense of being unidentified flying objects). Noted Bigfoot author Ivan T. Sanderson devoted an entire book to the theory that many UFOs are actually extremely low density animals native to the clouds.
Top Photo: Atmospheric sky jellyfish Bottom Photo: Strange, dragon-like object allegedly photographed from a plane over Tibet.
One of the most famous atmospheric beasts is the Crawfordsville Monster.
The Crawfordsville monster is the name given to an unidentified flying creature that was allegedly sighted in the skies of the small town of Crawfordsville, Indiana in 1891.
Some contemporary cryptid resources list the Crawfordsville monster as being a serpent or dragon, others label it an atmospheric beast.
The story of the Crawfordsville monster was first published in the Indianapolis Journal in September 1891, and was later picked up by the September 10 Issues of the Brooklyn Eagle. It has since become part of local folklore and has been investigated by prominent anomalous phenomena investigator Charles H. Fort.
Much of what is currently recorded about the creature comes from interviews conducted by Vincent P. Gaddis, a journalist working in Crawfordsville, and member of the Fortean Society. Gaddis contends that the monster was a living creature, and not a mechanical UFO.
âAll the reports refer to this object as a living thing â in other words, one of the hypothetical atmospheric life forms that would figure in early theories about unidentified flying objects.â Vincent Gaddis
Sightings
There have only been two reported sightings of the Crawfordsville monster, both during the 19th century. The first alleged sighting reportedly occurred at 2AM on 4 September 1891 when the creature was seen circling a local house before flying away to the east, returning some time later and then flying out of sight. It was witnessed by Methodist pastor Reverend G.W. Switzer, his wife, and two men working to hitch a wagon. It was this sighting that was initially reported by the press.
The second alleged sighting occurred on September 6, 1891, when the atmospheric creature reportedly flew over the town and was witnessed by over 100 people.
Descriptions of the creature vary, with some accounts suggesting that it had no head, and others describing it as having glowing red eyes and hot breath. Accounts generally agree that it is a large rectangular creature, possibly eel like in appearance, with several undulating fins down the sides of its body. It was estimated to be twenty feet long and eight feet wide. Witnesses at the second appearance described the creature as writhing and squirming, and as producing a wheezing sound, as if it were in pain.
The case of the Crawfordsville monster was investigated by Charles Fort, who first encountered the story in the September 10, 1891 issue of the Brooklyn Eagle. At first Fort believed witness Switzer to be fictitious, but ultimately Fort came to find him and correspond with him. Fort included references to the creature in his 1931 book Lo!.
For those who believe, atmospheric beasts are very fragile and lightweight creatures who are either native to Earth or are aliens that came from elsewhere. If the latter view is taken, then atmospheric beasts are sometimes thought to have originated in the atmosphere of some other planet, but they can also be thought of as originating in interstellar gas clouds so that they are, in effect, aliens without a native planet, able to âswimâ through space. Believers generally consider atmospheric beasts to be non-intelligent, so that even if these creatures did originate somewhere other than earth, they still donât count as sentient extraterrestrials. Theyâre just animals.
In various eyewitness accounts, atmospheric beasts can change their density, becoming smaller, harder masses that are usually metallic in color, or they can become larger and cloudlike, even to the point of invisibility. In some reports, they may glow. Atmospheric beasts may roughly resemble whales and are sometimes called air whales or cloud beasts. Believers think that the atmospheric beastsâ normal habitat is high in the air, and they might die if they ever touch the ground. Atmospheric beasts that resemble clouds may engage in behavior that is thought to be impossible for a real cloud, such as squirting a stream of horizontal water at people through âlipsâ or being far too mobile and animate for witnesses to believe it was just a patch of fog. The more solid kinds of atmospheric beasts may have mouths, eyes, flippers and other features, but these body parts are generally arranged and shaped in a fashion that looks utterly alien, more like an ocean invertebrateâs body plan than any animal we are used to seeing on a daily basis.
It is said that when atmospheric beasts die, they fall to earth as a gelatinous mass that may resemble a green, purple, gray or iridescent jelly that evaporates into nothing within minutes, hours, or, at the longest, a few days. This is supposed to explain a type of anomalous event, pwdre ser, that puzzled scientists for some time before they decided that pwdre ser did not exist. Pwdre ser is Welsh for ârot from the stars.â This phenomena is also known as gelatinous meteorites or star jelly, and reports of it come from around the world, not just from Wales. Gelatinous meteorites are not always connected with the atmospheric beast theory; they are actually easier to find among collections of Forteana that include reports of many different odd things falling from the sky.
Atmospheric beasts, or things that sound like them, are minor characters in the folklore of many regions. They are often given local names. The English variety is often named âBonelessâ or âShapelessâ and resembles a small patch of living, animate fog. Unlike fog, it can be felt as a semi-solid mass. One policeman described an encounter with this creature that had supposedly happened while bicycling. The thing felt like a soft blanket and smelled like mildew. After it rubbed against him, it floated away. It was one of the most terrifying experiences he had ever had. He was convinced that the thing was a living creature. In the Shetland Islands, atmospheric beasts are known as âItâ and are thought to be âcloud animalsâ of some sort. Just as the sea has its own life that is often hidden from view, it is thought that the clouds form a vast atmospheric âseaâ far above us, and that âItâ is merely an animal that is native to the clouds. Those who report being physically touched by atmospheric beasts often say they felt as if they were being licked by an enormously soft tongue.
In the later decades of the twentieth century, the atmospheric beast theory had been almost forgotten. Serious investigators usually stayed away from it. But, today, interest in atmospheric beasts has been growing, mainly because they now seem more plausible after the recent discovery of what might be a related cryptozoological animal: air rods. People have begun to comb through older reports of miscellaneous random unexplained stuff, a place where a few atmospheric beasts often lurk, and they have also re-examined some of the weirdest UFO reports, which sometimes sound a great deal like the witnesses are actually describing atmospheric beasts.
Cloud-like object photographed over Richmond, Virginia.
In October 2011, Brent Swancer posted an article at Cryptomundo regaurding atmospheric beasts:
On March 11, 2011, a huge earthquake occurred off Tohoku Japan, which in turn unleashed a massive tsunami that battered the Japanese coast. The ensuing devastation left thousands dead or homeless, and damaged the Fukushima nuclear power plant, leading to one of the worst nuclear disasters the world has seen since Chernobyl.
Almost immediately, a steady progression of images of carnage began to spread out to televisions all over the world. We saw the unstoppable wall of water obliterating all in its path, whole towns leveled, houses and ships thrown about like toys in a bathtub, nuclear reactors spewing ominous clouds of smoke, and unthinkable human suffering. Right there before our eyes was natureâs might laid bare in all its terrible splendor for all to look upon with shock and awe.
In the months after this tragic event, the country scrambled to repair the damage and lockdown nuclear reactors that threatened critical meltdown. As the world looked on with horror, a strange pattern of phenomena also began to emerge from the crisis, mostly hidden from the mainstream media eye. Some people were seeing not only the damage wrought by the tsunami, but also something strange that they could not explain.
The days after the Japanese tsunami disaster saw a deluge of various reports of strange, unexplained objects in the skies above the earthquake stricken areas. These reports of unidentified objects understandably caused quite a bit of buzz among UFO enthusiasts, and speculation abounded across the internet of aliens observing or by some estimates even causing the disaster.
However, were these accounts of anomalous flying objects truly caused by aliens, or did they derive from something else entirely? I find myself wondering, could the flood of UFO reports after the tsunami at least in part have its roots in something more cryptozoological in nature? Is there a biological answer to this strange flap of sightings? It seems to me that it is worth considering that perhaps it is not aliens we should be looking at, but rather what has proven to be one of the more bizarre and little discussed types of flying cryptids.
For centuries, reports have surfaced of strange creatures inhabiting the skies above us. Atmospheric beasts, or atmospheric life-forms, as they are often called, are said to be organisms that live their entire lives floating high in the atmosphere undetected by humans. These creatures are most often described as having bodies that are semi-solid, or almost insubstantial, with some reports even claiming that they are able to adjust their density from almost immaterial and invisible to more solid, depending on as yet unknown factors.
The appearance of these atmospheric beasts varies wildly. Accounts have variously described them as amorphous and cloud-like behemoths, finned squid-like creatures, floating jellyfish, translucent, vaporous blobs, amoeba-like organisms, and even dragons. The sizes of atmospheric beasts likewise run the gamut from tiny and bird-like, to gargantuan monsters hundreds of feet long.
Although these enigmatic creatures are said to typically lurk too high in the atmosphere or to be too insubstantial to see with the naked eye, there are instances when one might become observable for some reason. Indeed, sightings of atmospheric beasts, although rare, do pop up from time to time. There has been a substantial amount of reports over the years describing unusual flying monsters that do not fit into the typical mold of thunderbirds or other flying cryptids. These atmospheric life forms have even allegedly been photographed on occasion.
In addition, the possibility of these denizens of the sky has caused speculation that they may in fact even be the direct cause of many UFO sightings. Large ones, it is hypothesized, could be seen and reported as UFOS. There has even been some conjecture that what appear to be artificial lights reported on some UFOs could in reality be a form of bioluminescence.
The idea of these hypothetical atmospheric life forms as an explanation for at least some UFO reports is not new. The famed cryptozoologist Ivan T. Sanderson himself was fascinated by the idea of giant animals swimming through the air above us, and wrote a good deal about them. Among Sandersonâs various hypotheses and musings concerning atmospheric beasts was the notion that many UFO reports may be in fact attributable to these sky dwelling creatures.
Indeed, when one looks at some of the photos taken of mysterious objects in the sky, it is easy to get a sense that we are perhaps looking at something biological in nature rather than artificial.
UFO author Trevor James Constable also noted in his 1975 book The Cosmic Pulse of Life, that the UFO phenomena may well be caused by the presence of some kind of goliath beasts inhabiting the skies. He further speculated that 20th century radar might disturb such creatures, causing them to become more solid and visible to the naked eye, or to drop down to lower altitudes where they would be more readily sighted.
This bit of speculation leads to the interesting notion that these creatures, if they do indeed exist, may perhaps use some sort of navigation system to maintain their bearings and find their way. This is not such a far out possibility, as many known organisms utilize such systems. If such atmospheric organisms did in fact use some sort of navigation system, then they would possibly become disoriented when this system was disrupted, much as sonar does to some whales. If this is the case, then it would in turn lead us directly back to the tsunami disaster in Japan.
The thing is that earthquakes and tsunamis influence more than just the Earth and the seas. When the powerful earthquake hit Japan on March 11, it not only jolted the Earth, but also shook the skies above. When earthquakes and tsunamis occur, they generate surface motion that in turn can trigger waves that can shoot up all the way to one of the highest parts of the upper atmosphere, to what is known as the ionosphere. These events are known as seismotravelling ionospheric disturbances.
Recent research done in Japan has shown that the March 11 earthquake generated the largest such atmospheric disturbance ever recorded. It was an estimated three times more powerful than the next largest, which was recorded during the 2004 Sumatran earthquake. The March 11 disturbance created waves of large amounts of electrically charged particles travelling 720 to 800 kph (450 to 500 mph) that reached up to around 350km (220 miles) above the Earth.
One effect of these disturbances is their ability to disrupt radio and other signals, which is in fact one of the ways scientists use to measure them. Â If atmospheric beasts do exist high above us, and if in fact they do use some sort of navigation system that can be disrupted by things such as radar, then what might such a large, earthquake induced atmospheric disturbance do to them?
It should be noted that the March 11 Japanese earthquake and tsunami was not the only such disaster to be accompanied by a rash of sightings of strange things in the sky. The second largest such atmospheric disturbance, the Sumatran earthquake and tsunami of 2004, also was accompanied by a large amount of  UFO sightings. Is there the possibility that the earthquake induced atmospheric waves deriving from these disasters are somehow disrupting sensitive navigation systems of some sort of atmospheric life-form and thus bringing them down from their typical habitats?Â
For now we do not know if these creatures exist, so it is hard to say what is going on. One might even marvel at how something as seemingly farfetched as these proposed atmospheric organisms could even fit into our current understanding of biology. Yet the same could have once been said of other unique organisms and ecosystems we have discovered that did not fit into any known model at the time.
There was a time when the idea of thriving organisms in the cold, black, crushing pressure of the deep sea seemed just as weird. Sulphur loving deep sea vent organisms that thrive in an extreme ecosystem almost completely independent of sunlight and photosynthesis seemed at one time just as outlandish and bizarre. Indeed sometimes truth can be as strange as fiction, if not stranger.
At this point, this is of course all speculation, but whenever I read something about the apparent spike in UFO sightings following the March 11 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, I find it interesting to speculate on these possible cryptozoological implications. I cannot help but think that in this case, perhaps we donât need to look at strange, otherworldly explanations for these phenomena, but rather the strange things that we might find right here on our own planet.
It may be worth looking at the possibility of unknown animals that in this instance lurk not within far away, unexplored forests and swamps, or the remote, murky depths of the lakes and oceans of the world, but rather in the vast skies above our heads right at this very moment.
Sources: creativespirits.net/definitions/types-ufos/crawfordsville-monster, newanimal.org/a-beasts.htm, cryptomundo.com/cryptotourism/sky-beasts/
Cryptid Chronicles readers, what do YOU think??Â
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