Everyone loves an X-Files-type mystery, and the Montauk Monster is a Cryptozoologist’s wet nightmare.
The Montauk Monster tales come from the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, just off the coast of Long Island in New York State. The facility has been shrouded in controversy since it was established in 1954.
The centre was built to investigate foot and mouth disease, initially, but was also used during the Cold War to develop biological weapons that targeted livestock.
This is already shaping up to be pretty mysterious, right?
The facility contains a wealth of horrid stuff, like polio and hog cholera. Due to these contagious pathogens, every wild mammal seen on the island is killed on sight.
The Plum Island Animal Disease Center has experienced a number of disease outbreaks. And they were fined $111,000 in 1995 for keeping some evil concoctions that they shouldn’t have been keeping.
Then, one day, this thing rolls up, all dead and bloated on a beach in Montauk, NY in July 2008:
Of course, two and two were added together to make nine, and the Montauk Monster myth was born.
Officials have never inspected or dissected the creature in question, and it seems to have somehow been lost, possibly thrown in to the woods by someone. The details are misty.
So, we’ll never know what it was for sure. But by studying the photos alone, there have been a few explanations, many of which have consequently been poo-pooed by people who desperately want monsters to be real.
Explanations include a raccoon, but the legs are too long; a sea turtle, but you can’t rip off their shell without disemboweling them (and they don’t have teeth); a sheep, but the feet are all wrong; a canine, but the feet and brown ridge don’t match. None of the explanations quite line up.
It’s possible that it’s so decomposed from rocking around in the waves that we’ll never know exactly what it was.
The story slowly died away, until May 2009, when this fella joins the party:
All the Montauk Monster shenanigans quietened down eventually, but in January 2010, a human body washed up on the shore of Plum Island.
Officially, there was no evidence of foul play, but eye witness’ tales were a lot more interesting. The body was reported to be particularly tall, with startlingly long fingers and five holes drilled in to his head.
Alien? Yeah, probably.
Despite the body being carted off by guys in full bio-hazard suits, this story actually didn’t get that much coverage, so the Plum Island animal disease investigators dodged the heat… until….. July 2012, when this chap is washed up:
The official line was as follows:
“It was a pig left over from a cookout. We disposed of it.”
They buried it in the sand to rot in peace. The question is, why would you roast a pig and then dump it without even sampling the crackling? And do these look like pig trotters to you?:
Unfortunately, despite the secrecy, the creepy hairless freaks, and the human body with holes in its skull, it’s probably all boringly explainable.
That’s normally the case, any way. Personally, however, I reckon they are aliens and monsters, and I’m sticking to it, because it’s more fun than a rotten putrefying raccoon corpse.
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