Hairy Monster Kills Whales 1923
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 15th, 2006
Republican Press Salamang, New York April 10, 1923
Whales are Slain by Hairy Monster
Strange Battle Witnessed on the Coast of Africa.
Durban, South Africa. — H. C. Ballance of the Margate estate here was walking along the seacoast when he saw two whales battling for life against a strange sea monster whose head reared up 20 feet above the surface of the sea.
Ballance watched while the monster killed both whales and, exhausted, floated ashore on its back. Ballance remembered an appointment and went home, but returned to the beach next morning and found the monster stranded and unconscious.
He measured it and found it was 47 feet long with a tail 10 feet long and 2 feet wide and, instead of a head, a trunk like an elephant’s, 5 feet long and 14 inches in diameter, but resembling a pig’s snout at the end. The monster was entirely covered with snow-white hair 10 inches long.
For ten days it remained on the beach, apparently resting. Then natives saw it refloat itself and swim off in a southeasterly direction.
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Thanks to Jerome Clark.
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.
remembered an appointment?
Oh look a monster! Well I must be toddling along then…
I know. Isn’t that incredible?
Goes to show, I guess, that some people just don’t have their priorities properly aligned.
🙂
As Researchers, what can we learn from today’s stories about poorly-described “wolves”, “whale-killers” and “dodus”?
IMAGERY.
What if Mr. Fowler had taken the time, during his night at the hotel, to sketch the animal he had encountered in the road? What if Mr. Ballance had attached detailed drawings to the measurements he took from the recuperating “white-haired monster”?
See how much more successful all our efforts can be when locals can compare sketches, drawings and now, photographs?
SO? So, encourage a witness to immediately sit down and draw whatever image he or she can recall, to add as many details and notes and side inserts and comments as possible! Even if the encounter or sighting occurred many years ago, just discussing the event can create marvelous recall!
Also, keep film or chips IN the camera until they can be “downloaded” in a safe and controllable environment!
Add to the graphic data-base, and always carry a camera ~ always!
A bizzare description, although from the details, I have a hard time imagining what this headless thing would look like. Too bad there is no indication how something with no head and possibly no arms (does it have flippers or something?) could kill two whales or for what reason.
Sounds like some sort of mutant jellyfish or something to me. Far-fetched, possibly, but definitely possible and plausible. The fur and snout indicate mammalian origins, although, to have escaped detection up to that point, and after that point, it would have to be able to hide underwater longer than sperm whales, as well as dive deeper (which is quite long and deep), or live in the deep sea. The former is more likely, I think.
That is an interesting variation on the Trunko story. I understood The whales did the killing although the description of the strange animal is very close to what I have heard
Haven’t there been some very similar sightings, one in south Australia I think, then one by a scientist in the artic (I think Alaska?) who found a one frozen in a glacier?
I had always found this incident quite amazing and fantastical, and although it always retained a certain fascination for me, I could never bring myself to quite believe it…that is, until I heard the other reports. That even one other person would report a beast as implausable as this lends weight to its existence. I haven’t a clue as to what it is, nor how it could hide from man as well as it does, but I am much more confident now that such a thing may be lurking in the depths even now…
I’ve never understood why anyone in cryptozoology took this story seriously. The “other reports” of hairy things washed ashore, when they could be checked at all, have turned out to be identifable (if decomposing) sea creatures. Charles Fort, writing much closer to the time of the newspaper story, was unable to verify anything about it.
Well, I’m naturally suspicious of “Globsters”, but I seem to recall some reports that placed the creature in the sea and swimming about, maybe I was wrong, as I was with the Mays Landing Kangaroo source…Looks like I have to check my resources again…