260 Miles to...the Thing.

This morning, the letters of my Alpha-Bits breakfast cereal re-arranged themselves to spell out "D O O M." While I'm hardly the superstitious type, it did remind me that February had departed and it was time for another exciting Monster of the Month installment.

Between El Paso, Texas and Dragoon, Arizona, there are hundreds of billboards alongside Route I-10; advertising 24 hour gas stations, restaurants, music clubs, and tourist destinations. Among these are more than two hundred billboards, painted a distinctive yellow, that alert drivers to a particular attraction off of Exit 322. The attraction in question rests at a local gas station.

They call it...the Thing.

Referred to by various signs as the "What-is-it" or "The Mystery of the Desert," the Thing can viewed at the cost of only a single dollar (75 cents for those under eighteen). After paying at the register, visitors are lead to three shacks made of corrugated steel, connected by a path marked out with bright yellow monster footprints. The first shack contains various tableaus depicting scenes of torture. Carved wooden figures menace caged prisoners with hooks, branding irons, and lashes. Shack number two contains an odd assortment of dust-covered antiques on display, along with some peculiar folk-art and a 1937 Rolls Royce said to have been owned by Adolf Hitler.

The third shack is dominated by the final "What is it?" sign. Beneath it is a white coffin-like box with a large glass lid. Therein lies...the Thing: a shriveled, freakish figure that may or may not have once been human. Pictures can be found on the Internet, but we decided it was best to preserve the mystery of the Thing and not completely reveal its appearance.

The history of the Thing has some gaps, but it is commonly accepted that it was created in 1950 by Homer Tate, a lifelong builder of sideshow exhibits like shrunken heads, Fiji Mermaids, and alligator men. At some point, the Thing came into possession of attorney Thomas Prince, who established the exhibit in 1965. Since then,legions of tourists have been compelled to see the Thing for themselves; beckoned by hundreds of billboards.

And within its glass sarcophagus, the Thing silently waits for them.

Would you like to know more?
-Visit this Homer Tate tribute
-Read this article from Roadside America

It Came From Craftsbury

Holy Saint Martha! As impossible as it may seem, January is gone forever and it's time once again for another long over-due installment of our world famous Monster of the Month series. Today, we thought that we'd keep it local and focus on a creature that's straight out of the Green Mountain State. Just as Florida has the Skunk Ape, just as Illinois has the Mad Gasser, just as Idaho has whatever monster Idaho presumably has (possibly potato based)...so too must Vermont have a monster to call its own. However, since most everyone is familar with the lake dwelling Champ, we decided to showcase another unnatural beast. Submitted for your approval: the bloodthirsty Goonyak!


While there are a couple variations on the story of Goonyak, they all date back to 1976, and seem to have originated from the Craftsbury region. The physical description remains consistant, though. Goonyak stands out in the crowd of shaggy Bigfoot-types thanks to his sheer size and predatory ferocity. It was said to be eight feet tall, strong enough to rip barn doors from their hinges, and posessed six inch claws which it used to skin its prey. In one version of the story, Goonyak is killed by a farmer, but only after taking ten shots to the chest. In another version, it's a game warden who manages to slay the monster. Afterwards, pathologists at UVM dissect the enormous corpse in some clandestine laboratory. No one can say what terrifying secrets spilled forth from Goonyak's innards.


In researching the beast, Vermont author Joe Citro found no evidence to support the tall tale. Both the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department and UVM have denied Goonyak ever existed, but we like to think that UVM President Daniel Fogel keeps the remains inside a secret vault and (in between budget reviews and meetings with the alumni association) stares at the clawed hulk in mute horror.



But don't take my word for it!
You can read about it in a book.
Or you can read about it in this book.
Or, better still, read about it in both books. They're both excellent.

Shadow over Antwerp

The cryptozoological specimen to the right is known as a Jenny Haniver. While it may look like it washed up out of some nightmare, it's actually just a skate-fish (modified through a little creative taxidermy). Hanivers have been traced back to 16th century Antwerp, where sailors would carve up skates into little monstrosities and sell them to visitors from abroad. Some were made to look like tiny dragons and others resembled terrifying aquatic angels. Some were even billed as the preserved bodies of demons. The most common, however, looked like grotesque little people. They were all passed off as genuine creatures; strange fish from the deepest depths of the ocean.

Today, Hanivers are valued for their connection to sailing folklore and for their novelty value. Along with the Jackalope and the Fiji Mermaid, they belong to a proud tradition of creature-making.

Would you like to know more?
-Read this article about Jenny Haniver and other aquatic creatures
-Purchase your very own Jenny Haniver for a mere $75.

Larger Than Life

There were giants in the earth in those days;...
-Genesis 6:4

It was that line from the Bible that led to creation of the Cardiff Giant. Standing at ten feet tall and weighing around 3000 pounds, the impossible man of stone is the subject of April's Monster of the Month.

Are you ready? Then we shall begin.

On October 16th, 1869, Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols of Cardiff, New York, were hired to dig a well by farmer William Newell. When their shovels struck something hard beneath the soil, they unearthed an enormous human figure, seemingly fossilized. Newell was quick to put the thing up for display, claiming that it was a petrified corpse belonging to the last of a lost tribe of giants. He charged twenty-five cents for people to take a look. The following day, business was so good that he raised the price to fifty.

Geologists and archaeologists cried foul, convinced that no such man could've once wandered the hills of Cardiff. Several evangelical ministers leaped to it's defense. The Giant drew such crowds that it was eventually moved to Syracuse under the new ownership of a group of New York investors. Famed circus proprietor P.T. Barnum leased the giant for three months. It cost him sixty-thousand dollars, but Barnum made sure he got more than his money's worth by secretly having a plaster duplicate made while it was in his possession. Upon returning the original, Barnum began displaying his copy, insisting that the copy was the genuine Cardiff Giant and that he one resting in Syracuse was a brazen sham.

Outraged by the sheer chutzpah of Barnum's claims, the owners of the true Cardiff Giant sued.The courts, firmly convinced that both giants had been fabricated, were unsympathetic to owners of the original. Meanwhile the newspapers had a field day, and P.T. Barnum was famously misquoted as saying "There's a sucker born every minute." From out of the blue emerged George Hull, a tobacconist with a story to tell. Hull proceeded to bust the Cardiff Giant secret wide open, with the explosive revelation that he was the giant's creator. It turned out to all be a practical joke.

Hull was a life-long atheist, and in 1868 he had an especially fiery argument with a fundamentalist preacher concerning the line from Genesis that spoke of giants. Hull bought a block of gypsum from Fort Dodge, Iowa, claiming that it would be used to create a commemorative statue of Abraham Lincoln. The block was shipped to a German stonecutter in Chicago. Sworn to secrecy, the stonecutter carved the block into the giant. The illusion of ancient age was accomplished by staining the stone and wearing it down with acids. Pore-like pock marks were chipped into the stone using knitting needles. The completed giant was sent to Hull's cousin, William Newell, who buried it in his farm. The entire process cost Hull two-thousand six-hundred dollars, but Hull was delighted when it was dug up a year later and caused such a commotion.

In 1870, the Cardiff Giant and it's plaster twin were legally declared hoaxes by New York courts, and the lawsuit was dismissed. That year, Mark Twain wrote "A Ghost Story" featuring the phantom of the Cardiff Giant haunting the plaster replica of his petrified body. L. Frank Baum wrote a poem about the giant the following year. These two Cardiff Giant themed works assured it's place in history. After an ignoble stint as a novelty coffee-table for an Iowa businessman, the Giant was sold to the The Farmers' Museum of Cooperstown, New York, where it resides today. Barnum's plaster copy is currently displayed by in an arcade/oddity collection called Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum.