All posts by Bruce Priddy

(Author’s Note: Though the description for these beings is that used for Byakhee in the Call of Cthulhu rulebook and Malleus Monstrum, this author and others believe the creatures in Lovecraft’s “The Festival” are not Byakhee as envisioned by Derleth. This entry provides a distinction between the monsters.)

“There flopped rhythmically a horde of tame, trained, hybrid winged things that no sound eye could ever wholly grasp, or sound brain ever wholly remember. They were not altogether crows, nor moles, nor buzzards, nor ants, nor vampire bats, nor decomposed human beings; but something I cannot and must not recall. They flopped limply along, half with their webbed feet and half with their membranous wings…” – H.P. Lovecraft, “The Festival” Continue reading »

Source unknown

“At the foot of the bed, sitting and facing away from us, there was what appeared to be a naked man, or a large hairless dog of some sort…

In a flurry of motion, the creature scrambled around the side of the bed, and then crawled quickly in a flailing sort of motion right along the bed until it was less than a foot from my husband’s face. The creature was completely silent for about 30 seconds….just looking at my husband. The creature then placed its hand on his knee and ran into the hallway, leading to the kids’ rooms. I screamed and ran for the light switch, planning to stop him before he hurt my children. When I got to the hallway, the light from the bedroom was enough to see it crouching and hunched over about 20 feet away. He turned around and looked directly at me, covered in blood. I flipped the switch on the wall and saw my daughter Clara.

The creature ran down the stairs while my husband and I rushed to help our daughter. She was very badly injured and spoke only once more in her short life. She said ‘he is the Rake’” – Eyewitness testimony, 2006 Continue reading »

Witness sketch by Barbara Perry and Sally Chapman

“It was like a big owl with pointed ears, as big as a man. The eyes were red and glowing. At first, I thought that it was someone dressed up, playing a joke, trying to scare us. I laughed at it, we both did, then it went up in the air and we both screamed. When it went up you could see its feet were like pincers…It was horrible, a nasty owl-face with big ears and big red eyes. It was covered with grey feathers. The claws on its feet were black. It just flew up and disappeared in the trees.” – Witnesses Barbara Perry and Sally Chapman, 1976. Continue reading »

artist unknown,
From “Them and Us”

(Author’s Note: This is intended as an alternative from the Sasquatch found in Malleus Monstorum)

“I was laying in the tent trying to sleep when I kept hearing strange almost owl like high pitch noises at the bottom of the hill. After hearing my son and husband comment about hearing “an owl”, I decided that must be it. About 20 minutes later, my son had gone into his tent with his siblings, and my husband had come into our tent. He was trying to settle in and I was too, when we heard the most horrible, loud, blood curdling scream…and then a loud grunt. The scream…lasted about 3-5 seconds and then immediately was the loud grunt at the same pitch. It sounded like it was coming from the same area as the owl like sounds from a short time earlier. My husband sat up about the same time as me and we asked each other if we knew what it was. I told him, “I have NEVER heard anything like that!” He said he had never heard anything like that either. We could also hear something moving in the woods, and by that time after the scream, we were very freaked out. So we immediately got the kids up and in the car…” – Witness encounter, Taylorsville Lake State Park, Kentucky, August 2014. Continue reading »

The men in black

Sometimes their clothes are ill-fitting and their demeanor is very weird. Sometimes they themselves are hunchbacked, crippled or grotesquely malformed. They can speak in a mechanical-like voice or appear to have trouble breathing. In many cases, they have visited isolated farms in hard-to-reach places without any car in sight and walking through mud and goo without dirtying their pristine shoes…they try to pump you for information or they make disquieting remarks about your past or your future. They also have a startling way of simply disappearing after they speak with you. – John Keel, Introduction to The UFO Silencers by Timothy Green Beckley Continue reading »

Sketch drawn by an eye witness.

“As I looked at it… it kind of looked a minute like an ape. And then I looked at the head and the head was very big and it was a very weird head It had bright green eyes and the eyes just glowed like, they were just looking exactly at me.” – Abby Brabham, eyewitness, 1977. Continue reading »

The Popobawa
Artist Unknown

I woke up frightened. It’s if I knew to be afraid even before I saw the monster. It lopped from the shadows on all fours, planting its wings and swinging its back legs forward. Not like a bat moves, but like a gorilla, you know? But it was a bat, and a man, with one big gleaming eye in the center of its face, right on top of that disgusting grin. I just got sense it was happy I saw it, happy I was afraid, and when it took me, happy I was in pain. It forced me to keep eye-contact until I passed out. – anonymous Popobawa survivor, as told in John Leek Hansen’s Dark and Dangerous Entities from Around the World. Continue reading »

The Hook
Artist Unknown

A boy and girl park away from town, away from lights and judging adults. As windows steam and the couple loses themselves, something is coming for them. Something with a sharp hook, thirsty for their hot blood. Continue reading »

The Mothman
By Cathy Wilkins

“They all looked into the blackness and saw two red bright red circles…the startled foursome saw they were attached to some large animal. ‘It was shaped like a man, but bigger,’ Roger said later. ‘Maybe six and a half or seven feet tall. And it had big wings folded against its back.’ ‘But it was those eyes that got us,’ Linda declared. ‘They were hypnotic,’ Roger continued. ‘For a minute we could only scare at it. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.’” – John Keel, The Mothman Prophecies.

Continue reading »