We all love a nice X-Files type mystery to get our blood fizzing, and the Montauk Monster is a Cryptozoologist’s wet nightmare. The drama all unfolds surrounding an enchanting facility, lovingly named Plum Island Animal Disease Center, off the coast of Long Island in New York State. The facility has been shrouded in controversy since it was spewed on to the island in 1954. It was built to investigate foot and mouth disease at the time but was also used during the cold war to develop biological weapons that targeted livestock. See this is already shaping up to be mysterious yeah?
The facility holds a frig load of nasty shit in it too, like polio and hog cholera. Due to the severe contagious ability of some of it’s potions, every wild mammal seen on the island is killed on sight. Dark. They’ve had a number of disease outbreaks there and were fined $111,000 in 1995 for keeping some evil concoctions that they really shouldn’t have been mucking about with. You can probably already sense a pretty sweet sci-fi crescendo coming, and then this thingy rolls up, all dead and bloaty on the beach nearby in Montauk, NY in July 2008:
What a good looking chap! Of course two and two were added together to make four and the Montauk Monster myth was born. Officials have never inspected or dissected the critter, and it seems to have somehow been lost, possibly thrown in to the woods by someone apparently? So we’ll never know what it was for sure. But from sciencey types studying the photo there’s been a few explanations which have all consequently been poo pooed by people who want there to be monsters around (like me). Explanations include a raccoon, but the legs are too long; a sea turtle, but you can’t rip off their shell without disemboweling them and they don’t have gnashers; a sheep, but the feet are all wrong. None of the explanations quite line up…. it could just be so decomposed from rocking around in the waves that we’ll never know exactly what it was. The story slowly dies away, until May 2009 when this fella joins the party:
All the Montauk Monster shenanigans chilled out after a while, but then in January 2010, a human body washed up on the shore of Plum Island its self. Officially there seems to have been no evidence for foul play, but eye witness’ tale’s were a lot more interesting. He was reported as being particularly tall with particularly long fingers and five holes drilled in to his head! Alien? Yeah probably. Despite the body being carted off by guys in full bio-hazard suits, this story actually didn’t get that much coverage, so the Plum Island plums were probably pleased to have dodged that one… until….. last week, when this chap is washed up:
The official line this time went as follows: “It was a pig left over from a cookout. We disposed of it.” they buried it in the sand apparently to rot in peace… The question is, why would you roast a pig and then dump it without even sampling the crackling? And do these look like pig trotters to you?:
Unfortunately, however, despite the secrecy of the disease making cold war facility and the creepy hairless freaks and the human body with holes in it’s skull, it probably just boils down to something boring and normal. It’s often the way, but as I always say, I reckon they are all aliens and monsters and I’m sticking to it because it’s more fun than a rotten putrefying raccoon corpse. So there.
