Beast of Hackney Marshes Photos: What Is It?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on May 24th, 2012
A mysterious Beast of Hackney Marshes has been terrifying East London, UK, residents while prowling through the woodland. One woman came up with photographs. Here they are. What do you see here?
For now, let’s overlook the “wipe” that appeared in the Mail today trying to explain these away as merely images of a Newfoundland dog. The woman who saw the creature and took the photos said this thing did not walk like a dog.
What does the Beast of Hackney Marshes appear to be to you?
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.
LOL a black dog? Sounds like something mythic is in store for the eyewitness who talked about it….
But seriously, not sure what it is. But saying it is a black dog won’t quell the worry it will induce, especially if the folks around there have grown up with hell hound or black dog myths.
the third pic really looks like a bear to me. but i dont know what the first two are
A warthog??
! person with photos that show no detail other than what appears to be a dog isn’t reliable. Plus considering there haven’t been any reports of bigfoot in the UK until recent years, seems more likely it is just people looking for their 5 mins of fame rather than actually reporting something real.
It looks like someone crouching in a bad gorilla suit.
It lools like black lamb fur….
She needs to take better pictures.
That, my friends, looks very much like a monster of the known kind, a Russian boar from the first angle. It would be shedding its winter coat right about now. It also looks very much like a bear from the 2nd angle.
It’s a Newfie.
looks like a bears butt
Pleeeeeze, its a hoax. I clearly see a person in a cheap Gorilla outfit. The fur doesn’t even look remotely real.
I’m voting wild hog. They have thick wooly coats over there.
Just a bear….
tis the child eating witch….she has cleverly entranced this photographic device to record her image as a bear or boar….either way….the difference is only in one letter. Leading one to conclude that while the child eating witch be deft in the casting of spells….it be poor in the spelling of words.
Hackney? As in Hackney, London? A city of 8 million people? Yeah, definately a bear or furry hippo or something… I find myself in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with The Daily Mail; it’s a fake or a dog.
My first thought was Newfoundland, second was wild boar. I doubt the UK has any Sasquatch since they are isolated by water. So unless someone smuggled in a breeding population let’s just put that one to rest.
I actually hope it’s a Newfie, because I’ve seen the damage boars and hogs can do to their living environs. If Crgintex is correct about it being a Russian boar I hope someone traps it quickly and gets it out of the area so it doesn’t reproduce.
Without a clearly defined shape, it is really impossible to tell. If the first photo shows the creature’s hindquarter, as it appears, it would rule out a dog. Shape of the back is wrong for a dog, and no tail.
The second photo is even worse. I can’t tell if I am looking at a shoulder or a head.
I don’t know if there are any bears or wild hogs in the UK, but my guess would be a black boar pig.
the only reason I was going to say “dog” was because the front and rear seam to be “level”. Usually the dogs that have a sloping back have been bred for that. I’m not sure
if boars slope or not, but most other herbivores that size with hair (to my recollection) slope some. Also, the fur is consistent with most wolf hounds.
A fuzzy chair someone tossed out?
Wiv a ladder and some glasses,
You could see to ’Ackney Marshes,
If it wasn’t for the ’ouses in between.
Edgar Bateman and George Le Brunn.
I think it is a bad hoax made with an old fuzzy carpet!. No details to see, nothing. Bad fake in my eyes! manticora
Hackney Marshes can barely support a decent number of squirrels!
flame821 and Desertdweller : Wild Boar were reintroduced to the U.K. a few years ago and are now breeding heavily, there are a lot of them in Kent and Sussex and no doubt other parts of the country too, they were a native species and were hunted back in the day of King Henry the Eighth. Hackney marshes has a long standing history of supposed bear sightings but my guess for this one would be either a shaggy dog or indeed the previously mentioned Wild Boar.
Bad pictures.
As a side note, there are most certainly wild boars in the UK, do a search and you will come up with plenty of info and even a whole website devoted to them.
A furry boulder.
This is an odd one because firstly, I was walking in my local woods the other day and saw a Newfoundland dog with it’s owners, and thought at the time that if you saw it without people, you’d think it was a bear or something – it was huge, and hairy, and shuffled about, very undoglike… In fact, it looked exactly the same as these photos show.
…Secondly, I went to college with that guy from Kula Shaker who says he owns that dog 🙂
(i didn’t know him though – I’m no name-dropper or nuffink)
A black horta?
I think it’s the Beast of Acme Carpets.
Easy…………… Chupacabra !
Next !.
It doesn’t look like a dog to me, newfie or otherwise. In the third picture down particularly, the head carriage on the shoulders and the broadness of the shoulders does not look canine. I have worked professionally with dogs, so while I would not hold myself up as an expert, I like to think I can tell what’s a dog and what isn’t.
What it does look like to me, again particularly in the third shot, is a human being on all fours wearing a shaggy costume.
I got it. Its an amusing picture of a thing that has been photographed in a way to apparently conceal what it actually is!
Behold–The new and improved blobsquatch! With new smart camera technology its getting harder and harder to create out-of-focus blurry images of creatures that grunt in the night. Today’s audience of believers need a clearer image to work their imaginations.
The new and improved bobsquatch image lacks the fuzzy shadow and obscure profile that frustrated millions. Now when your friends conclude “its just a shadow” or “its a blotch on the lens” you can say “ahh…but look, you can see details. It could be a squatch”
I propose a new catagory to match this emerging trend in photography. Clearly with the sharper imaging of today’s cameras “blob” should be removed from the term blobsquatch. I propose we replace blob with “diddly” in such cases. Now when someone takes a picture of an object at apparent close range that still imparts no information about whether it has a head, tail, feet, legs or any other anatomical feature of earthly animate objects, we have a name for it–its diddly squatch.
I would say bear… It looks mammal to me. Could be someone new? Unknown boar breed that’s living in the UK? Possible yes. After all, United States used to have Lions.
Looks like someone in a cheap black gorilla suit down on all fours…look at the head…it’s someone in a costume.
Looks like a bear. Not Bigfoot…
I have some 30-gallon Glad Forceflex trash bags that have a textured surface. Fill one up with trash and dump it in the woods and it would look a lot like this, unless you happened to see the red drawstrings.
Looks kinda like a fur draped over something.
Could be a crouched Bigfoot looking for food in the litter, a wild boar, or a hoax. Naaa is a hoax.
Looking at it again, it looks to me like the “creature” hasn’t actually moved between shots, only the photographer has moved.