I’m going to blog
about a Southern legendary monster, the devil monkey. No, it's not some little
monkey you might see at the zoo, or with the organ grinder, tipping its hat for
you to deposit coins in. Devil monkeys are described as baboon-like creatures
able to leap like kangaroos. They have dark, “mean” eyes, pointed ears, short
to shaggy fur that varies from red to gray to black, and large flat feet.
Ranging in height from three to eight feet, it is said that they won’t back
down, even from dogs, and although thought to be vegetarians, there are stories
told of them killing livestock and small game. They exhibit a range of primate
hoots, calls, screeches, whistles, and unearthly screams, and have an odor so
bad, they have been also called Skunk Apes. It has been seen in the area of the
Appalachian Mountains to even in British
Columbia.
A cryptozoologist, Chad Arment,
investigated the sightings of these creatures that one Virginia family
and their friends had experiences with. This occurred from 1959 through the 1990s, in the
mountains that surround Saltville.
Paranormal investigators
Pauline and James Boyd’s parents were attacked in 1959 by a creature that left
three scratch marks on their car. Not long after, a couple of nurses were
driving home when an unknown animal attacked their vehicle, ripping the
convertible’s top off. Badly shaken, they escaped otherwise unharmed.
Friends of Pauline saw one of
these creatures trotting across the road in front of their car. It leaped over
a ditch, glided over a fence, and bounded through weeds along the road.
Other sightings have occurred
as recently as 2001, when a giant black monkey was seen nine different times
over the course of two weeks in rural New
Hampshire. It has even been told that a search party
was formed to track one of these they thought was a devil monkey, but that the
dogs refused to follow the trail.
Another beast, the "Belt
Road Booger” was encountered by several people
in Georgia in
the 1970s. It was thought this might have been a devil monkey. The Nalusa Flaya
of Choctaw legend bears a strong physical resemblance to the devil monkey,
though the devil monkey does not appear to have any of the supernatural abilities
attributed to this legendary monster.
What are these devil monkeys?
Some people think devil monkeys are feral monkeys released into the wild or
escaped from research facilities, such as the ones that broke free in Florida due
to Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Cryptozoologists believe they are a surviving
species once thought to be extinct, like a fruit-eating spider monkey
originating from Brazil,
or a large baboon that lived 650,000 years ago in East
Africa. Maybe
they could even be a sort of Sasquatch? Or could these beasties be nothing more
than an illusion? Whatever the devil monkeys are, they are a fascinating tale to
tell on Halloween around the hearth fire or around a campfire when you go camping in the mountains.
In 1996, a woman named
Barbara Mullins was driving down a stretch of road in Louisiana known
as Highway 12 when she noticed something odd on the side of the road. At first
Mullins through the carcass she had found was that of a dog, that was until she
saw its baboon like features. Mullins snapped several pictures of the carcass
with her camera; the resulting images have been the topic of much debate in the
cryptozoology world. The creature was described as about the size of a large
adult Saint Bernard and covered with a thick coat of dark woolly hair. The most
notable attribute was its decidedly simian found a website with the pictures
and concluded myself it was nothing more than some dog, maybe gone feral. To
me, there was nothing ape-like or monkey-like in the dead animal's appearance.
Was that a screech you heard
in the night? Beware, it just might be the. . .devil monkey!
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