Story About Turner’s Mystery Beast Has Legs
Posted by: Loren Coleman on August 19th, 2006
TURNER, Maine –Whether or not tests prove that a "mystery beast" is a dog or something else, the story that has captured headlines from coast to coast won’t go away any time soon, according to an expert in human behavior.
The Sun Journal newspaper obtained samples of the creature and shipped them to a University of Maine professor and to HealthGen in Toronto for genetic tests to determine the type of animal, said Judith Meyer, managing editor.
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For the rest of the article, please do a search via your favorite Google news or Yahoo news service, or see:
Story About Turner’s ‘Mystery Beast’ Has Legs
Boston Globe
Boston, Massachusetts
August 18, 2006
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Photograph by Michelle O’Donnell. Used by permission.
Click on image for full-size version
Photograph by Michelle O’Donnell. Used by permission.
Click on image for full-size version
Photograph by Michelle O’Donnell. Used by permission.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
I still think it is nothing more than a mix breed dog gone wild.
Agreed…Black
A perfect example of why folks should spay and neuter their pets…JMHO
seeing is believing…
ole bub and the dawgs
Wait, I know it’s a doodlechow! Fact is always stranger than fiction and in this case it seems a bit of both. It will be fun to see what exactly it was.
You wonder what it will take to convince people that this is just a dog. Will results of a DNA test do it? Or will some insist that it’s all part of an elaborate coverup by the press and the government?
I too think it looks like a dog. However, my husband and I live in So. Auburn and have heard the blood curling scream that others have reported. I have lived in Maine all of my life in the country. And I have spent much time in the north remote woods of Maine. I believe I can identify most wild animal sounds but I can honestly say that I have never heard such a terrifying and loud scream from any animal in Maine. We heard this in early summer of 2005. The other peculiar thing we noticed at this time is that our two dogs would not venture out in the yard unless we were with them. This lasted a couple of weeks. Now, I know that dogs don’t scream like that. So if this mystery creature is only a dog, then what made that horrible sound?
DNA will equal, Woof-woof!
I may be no expert, but that is a dog. exactly what kind of dog still remains to be seen. this looks more like just a dog than the elmendorf beast. there’s no mystery here, go home, the show’s over.
Hi Loren
When I heard about this story, I was excited that this might be a shunka warak’in. After looking at the photo carefully, I am inclined to agree with the folks here, that it is a poor messed-up hybrid dog of some kind. But it doesn’t look like a wolf, and defnitely not a coyote to these eyes. We never had a wolf, but we did have two coyotes. However a couple of things did strike me.
The shunka warak’in was said to cry and make screaming noises like a human being. Didn’t someone say a woman said it made odd noises unlike a dog? It came into the camps at night, not to get at people, but to kill dogs and carry them off as prey to be eaten. It was said to be difficult to kill because of its thick hide, and cried like a human being when it died. Not like a dog’s whining or whimpering, but rather like a human being’s cries.
Anyway, someone should do a DNA test. Also, it may be that a veterinarian (or vet student) could tell from the skeletal remains, especially the skull. Better yet, an archaeologist skilled in faunal analysis– they are practiced with variability in canids.
I feel compelled to remind everyone not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because this is just a plain, old, normal dog doesn’t mean that there’s NOT a mystery Canid lurking in the Maine woods making odd cries and killing pets.
That’s the trouble with things like this. People who believe there is something pin their beliefs to any possible tangible evidence, so much so, that if the evidence is false, then in their minds the belief must be false. Ergo, because they believe that their belief is sound (Which indeed it may be), they will maintain unto their dying breath that the evidence, however flimsy and laughable, must therefore also be true.
Of course, the opposite is also true. Those who believe it must be false find possible tangible evidence that they can disprove and conclude that the entire phenomena must therefore equally be false. “Biscardi fakes Bigfoot” equals “Bigfoot is a fake” in their minds.
I’m beginning to think that we learn much more about human nature than zoological nature in examining all these cases…
It is a Chow mix – end of story.
Its head and facial features look to me like a cross between those of a dog and a cat. Impossible in nature, of course. Does anyone know if there is a Monsanto research laboratory in the area?
Boggles the mind
One things for sure,the neck on that thing is longer looking than a regular dog’s.It’s definetely not just a “dog”.
I agree the screams they mention are surely cant be from a dog or can they? who really knows ? they say the cries are eerie sounding. maybe someone will get a recording. So it seems Maine has some cryptid activity.
Anyone who thinks that a “real dog” cannot make weird noses should listen to a Siberian Husky or a Malamute when it gets really excited. Or a coonhound. Or a Basenji. Some dogs can all but talk and they can make some really loud, really strange sounds.
re: #11 Pygar
Ha Ha HAAAAAA!