The Monster Book. Nick Redfern
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time for him to take a look for himself at what—possibly—was going on way below New York. To May’s amazement and terror, after descending into that darkened, mysterious, subterranean realm, he stumbled upon a number of significantly sized alligators swimming in the sewer waters. The stories, he instantly realized, were not just stories, after all. Not surprisingly, May beat a hasty retreat.
Then there is the story of Mark Cherry, a man who maintains that one night in 1966, he was the solitary passenger standing on the platform at 149th Street Grand Concourse, when he was forcefully grabbed by a pair of police officers who told him there had been a flooding in one of the tunnels and he had to leave immediately. The somewhat heavy-handed approach of the officers puzzled Cherry—that is, until he caught sight of something as he was being practically frog-marched away from the platform.
According to Cherry, what he saw was a group of subway employees hauling the body of a large, albino alligator out of one of the tunnels, along with a body bag of the type in which a human body would be placed. Significantly, said Cherry, the body bag was clearly not empty. The implication was that the unfortunate soul inside had been attacked and killed by the alligator—which, in turn, had been killed by the police. Realizing that Cherry now knew what really happened, the officers sternly warned him not to speak of what he had seen—which Cherry did not, until 2004. It is a good indication of the fear that was drilled into Cherry back in 1966 that he was still concerned, nearly forty years later, that someone in authority might pay him a visit and silence him again—but this time permanently. Fortunately, nothing so conspiratorial ever occurred. Indeed, taking any kind of retaliatory action against Cherry would only have validated his story.
While sightings and claims of alligators in the sewers of New York are nowhere near as prevalent as they were decades ago, the controversy still provokes intrigue and fascination. And, just maybe, if we are to believe Mark Cherry, more than a few New Yorkers may have become the victims—and the dinners—of huge, vicious alligators.
AVEBURY WORM
Malcolm Lees enlisted in the British Royal Air Force in the early 1950s and retired in the late 1960s. In 1962 he received a posting to an RAF station in the county of Wiltshire, which he declined to name, and worked in the prestigious and secretive world of intelligence gathering. Most of the work, Lees explained, was routine and even mundane and he laughed heartily at the idea, spouted by many, that intelligence work was a glamorous one full of James Bond-style escapades. Nevertheless, Lees said, there was one aspect of his career that really was stranger than fiction. Early one September morning in 1962, a call came into the base from someone who had seen a UFO hovering in the vicinity of the ancient standing-stones in the historic English village of Avebury, Wiltshire.
UFO reports reached the base from time to time, said Lees. They were always handled by the RAF’s Provost and Security Services. For the most part they were mind-numbingly mundane and related to little more than sightings of unidentified lights in the sky that could, in reality, have been anything or nothing. Invariably, he said, the reports were a week, or even more, old by the time they were received. And so, they were simply filed and passed up the chain of command—that was then at Government Buildings, Acton, and which relocated to Rudloe Manor in 1977. But this particular case was a little different, said Lees.
Dating back to about 2600 B.C.E., the Avebury stones in Wiltshire, England, are almost as well known as Stonehenge. They have also been the place where UFO sightings have occurred.
The witness was a middle-aged lady who had lived in Avebury all of her adult life and who was fascinated by archaeological history. A “spinster” (as the files describe her), she would often stroll among the Stonehenge-like formations at night, marveling at their creation and musing upon their history. It was on the night in question that she had been out walking at around 10:30 P.M. when she was both startled and amazed to see a small ball of light, perhaps two feet in diameter, gliding slowly through the stones. Transfixed and rooted to the spot, she watched as it closed in on her at a height of about twelve feet. The ball then stopped fifteen feet or so from her, and small amounts of what looked like liquid metal slowly and silently dripped from it to the ground. Then, in an instant, the ball exploded in a bright, white flash.
The creature, she said, was about five feet long, perhaps eight or nine inches thick, and its skin was milk-white.
For a moment she was blinded by its intensity and instinctively fell to her knees. When her eyes cleared, however, she was faced with a horrific sight. The ball of light had gone, but on the ground in front of her was what she could only describe as a monstrous, writhing worm.
The creature, she said, was about five feet long, perhaps eight or nine inches thick, and its skin was milk-white. As she slowly rose to her feet, the creature’s head turned suddenly in her direction and two bulging eyes opened. When it began to move unsteadily towards her in a caterpillar-like fashion, she emitted a hysterical scream and fled the scene. Rushing back home, she slammed the door shut and frantically called the air-base, after having been directed to it by the less-than-impressed local police.
The Provost and Security Services were used to dealing with UFO reports, said Lees, and a friend of his in the P&SS was dispatched early the next day to interview the woman—amid much hilarity on the part of his colleagues, all of whom thought that the story was someone’s idea of a joke. On returning, however, Lees’s friend and colleague had a very serious and grim look on his face, and informed him guardedly that whatever had taken place, it was definitely no hoax.
The woman, he said, had practically barricaded herself in her home, was almost incoherent with fear, and only agreed to return to the scene after lengthy coaxing. Lees’s colleague said that he found no evidence of the UFO. The worm, or whatever it was, was clearly long gone. On the ground near the standing stone, however, was a three-foot long trail of a slime-like substance, not unlike that left by a snail. Lees’s colleague quickly improvised and, after racing back to the woman’s house, scooped some of the material onto a spoon and into a drinking glass.
After assuring the woman that her case would be taken very seriously, and requesting that she discuss the events with no one, he headed back to the base, the slimy substance in hand. A report was duly prepared and dispatched up the chain of command—along with the unidentified slime. For more than a week, said Lees, plainclothes military personnel wandered casually among the stones, seeking out evidence of anything unusual. Nothing else was ever found, however.
Lees said that he was fascinated by this incident because it was one of the few UFO-related cases he heard about that was taken very seriously at an official level and that had some form of material evidence in support of it. He did not know the outcome of the investigation but he never forgot about it.
BASILISK
Anomalies researcher and writer Mike Dash says: “Few creatures have struck more terror into more hearts for longer than the basilisk, a monster feared for centuries throughout Europe and North Africa. Like many ancient marvels, it was a bizarre hybrid: a crested snake that hatched from an egg laid by a rooster and incubated by a toad.”
Tales of the Basilisk really came to the fore in 79 C.E., in the pages of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History. He said of the beast:
“It is produced in the province of Cyrene, being not more than twelve fingers in length. It has a white spot on the head, strongly resembling a sort of a diadem. When it hisses, all the other serpents fly from it: and it does not advance its body, like the others, by a succession of folds, but moves