Perhaps our own biases toward the humanoid shape cause us to pay more attention to cases involving the more manlike entities and ignoring others which are equally important. These would be the creatures described as feline or canine, walking on four legs and sometimes on two, and clearly different from anything known in our world. One of the earliest reports involving these paranormal creatures, known as the Beast of Bungay, has been cited in a number of books and magazines. Elizabethan printer Abraham Fleming consigned the account in a black-letter brochure, describing the incident occurred in the month of August, 1577: "The parish church at Bongie (Bungay) did quake and stagger under the violence of a storm, such as never before hath been seen [...]. Immediately thereupon, there appeared in the most horrible shape and similitude to the congregation...a thing like a black dog...This black dog, or devil in such a likeness, running all along down the body of the Church with great swiftness...". Perhaps Mr. Fleming would be surprised to learn that such events are still occurring five centuries later.

According to Brazilian researcher and author Carlos Machado, director of the CIPEX group, the city of Sumaré in the state of Sao Paulo was visited by a number of bizarre entities between April 27 and May 10, 1997. One case involved a manicurist named María Vera, who was returning home at around 11:50 p.m. afer a having spent the evening at her sister's house. As she crossed an empty field to reach her house, she ran into a "horrible monster" described as an enormous, swift-moving ape that moved on all fours with large red eyes. Despite the initial simian description, María Vera likened it to a colossal dog that reeked of carrion. It towered over the woman when it stood before her on two legs. "It was a great work of evil. I didn't faint only because my faith is so strong," referring to her pentecostal beliefs.

Confirmation for María Vera's sighting came from Irene Rodrigues do Mata, a fellow churchgoer who would also describe the entity as "a giant dog". Even the local night watchman, Luis Carlos, claimed having seen the aberration five times during the same night. "The critter's already killed two cows," he told reporters. "Dead dogs have been turning up in the wilderness, and the living ones are making such a racket like I'd never heard before."

On April 29, 1997, Sr. Alirio, the gardener for the Prefecture of Sumaré, would be treated to a sighting at five o'clock in the morning as he headed for work. Again, the description offered was that of a "very large dog" with a slender body.

But the strangest of these reports from the Sao Paulo vicinity involves one such monster dog followed by a horde of normal dogs. According to eyewitness Anisio Cacheta, whose sighting occurred on May 17, 1997, the creature was black and hairy and had simian rather than canine features with spine-like formations running down the length its body.

The suggestion that whatever force is at work in these animal mutilations has a "protean" quality that allows it to change shape has also been debated, and there have been more than several cases in which such transformations have been reported. Perhaps none of them is quite so vivid as the event involving Mr. and Mrs Lew Lister of Point Isabel, Ohio, retold by the late Leonard H. Stringfield in his classic Situation Red, The UFO Siege (Doubleday, 1977).

In 1964, the Listers had been sitting in their car talking around 11:00 p.m. with the headlights off when a figure took "large hops or leaps" over to their vehicle. Passing with uncanny ease through a barbed wire fence, the entity lunged toward the car's windshield as the frightened couple tried to roll up the windows and make their escape. Retelling the story to Stringfield in 1975, Mrs. Lister had been hesitant to disclose what happened next: the attacking creature had changed shape, its hands transforming into paws and running away, vanishing into thin air.

Dennis Pilichis, author of Night Siege, a monograph about northern Ohio's rash of Bigfoot sightings in 1981, cites a case from Lewiston, NY, involving police efforts at finding the party responsible for killing a horse by snapping its neck and leaving a deep gash along its side. A police officer allegedly interviewed a man who reported seen a creature squatting, "sitting [in the snow] on its haunches as if it was eating." Feline footprints were also found along a ditch: the cat tracks suddenly vanished when they approached the ones made by the strange entities. "What happened to the cat?" asks Pilichis. "Was it eaten by the critter? Did it change into the creature? Who knows..."

Click on the 'NEXT' arrow for page 3

Share this article with: