Steytlerville "monster" strikes again

Johannesburg - A "monster" plaguing the sleepy Karoo town of Steytlerville struck again over the Easter weekend, Eastern Cape police said on Monday.



Another two sightings of the "shape-shifting creature" were reported on Sunday evening, said Warrant Officer Zandisile Nelani .



“Two men were walking near a tavern when they saw another man wearing a black jacket. One of the men, identified only as Nozipho, went up to the stranger and asked him, “What is your problem?” said Nelani.



A dog or a cow?



When the stranger did not respond, Nozipho went closer and saw that the man had no head. The man then turned into a dog that was “very angry” and “as big as a cow”, Nelani said.



He said that as Nozipho and his friend ran away, the monster allegedly turned on another group of people in the same road. “They said it turned into a big monkey, and then it was gone,” Nelani said.



He said that since the monster was spotted near the tavern, people were afraid to go there at night.



Last week police were told by residents that the monster changed shape while one looked at it. One man had reported that it changed from a man wearing a suit into a pig and then into a bat.



There had also been rumours that the monster could fly. Previously, the monster had only been spotted near the church. It had even been seen peering through the windows during a service, but had vanished by the time the congregation came outside.



Nelani said that the community had dubbed the monster “Bawokozi”, meaning “brother-in-law”.



Photograph



Sightings of the monster began over a month ago when it was seen by mourners attending two separate funerals, Nelani said.



He said that the community requested a meeting with police because they were frightened of it. Police agreed to work with residents, but asked them to try to take a photograph of it as evidence.



Nelani said that a photograph had since been taken of the monster resting under a tree.



He said that when the photo was taken the monster had been in human form but when the photo was developed an unknown animal was visible in the picture.



“It is a very strange thing happening in Steytlerville, but no one has been hurt by it,” Nelani said.
 


- SAPA

News24.com, 25 April 2011
For a previous report on the Karoo monster, click here.

May unleashed

Karoo town plagued by "monster"

Steytlerville, a small Karoo town, is being plagued by rumours of a shape-shifting monster, Eastern Cape police said on Thursday.

“The community says that the monster changes shape while you are looking at it,” Warrant Officer Zandisile Nelani said.

He said one man had reported it changed from a man wearing a suit into a pig and then into a bat. The creature had been sighted on a number of occasions near a church and only appeared at night, Nelani said.

Local residents met with police last week to discuss the strange phenomenon.

Nelani said he had asked people to take a photograph of the alleged monster. Although some locals were frightened of it, it had not harmed any people or livestock. - Sapa

IOL News, 22 April 2011

Le cambrioleur était nu, une souris dans l'anus

Un homme a été interpellé en Caroline du Sud aux Etats-Unis. Il venait de cambrioler une maison de manière très surprenante.

En effet, en arrivant sur les lieux du cambriolage, un agent a découvert le bandit, Noah Smith (31 ans), qui se trouvait toujours dans la maison. L'homme était entièrement nu et une petit queue dépassait de son anus.

Violent, l'individu s'est mis à gifler l'agent avant de lui mener la vie dure allant même jusqu'à le mordre. Noah Smith a finalement été arrêté et après un examen approfondi, on s'est aperçu que la petite queue visible était en fait le reste d'une souris qu'il s'était placé dans le rectum. Smith était complètement drogué au moment des faits, il a été incarcéré. (CB)

- from 7sur7.be, 9 November 2010

Monk nabbed with nun's skeleton at airport

Traveler, 56, said he was transporting a saint's remains to his monastery

A Cypriot monk caught at a Greek airport with the skeletal remains of a nun in his baggage told authorities he was taking the relics of a saint back to his monastery.

The 56-year-old Cypriot was detained at Athens airport after security staff discovered a skull wrapped in cloth and skeletal remains in a sheet inside his baggage.

"They maintained it was a woman who was a saint," a Greek police official who declined to be named told Reuters.

He said the monk told authorities he was transferring her remains to a monastery in Cyprus.

The remains were those of a nun who died four years ago. She was not a saint in the Greek or Cypriot Orthodox Churches, but had once been a nun at a Cypriot convent, police said.

Revering the skeletal remains of saints is common in the Greek Orthodox tradition. A sect within the church may have venerated the nun even though she was not an official saint.

In many churches, venerated relics are put on display for the faithful to touch or kiss and a box for collecting donations from the faithful placed nearby.

"It appears to be the work of charlatans with a financial interest that is what I suspect," Cyprus's Archbishop Chrysostomos told journalists when asked about the monk's tale.

The monk was freed after being charged with theft and desecrating the dead, a misdemeanor in Greece. He was also suspended from his monastic duties for three months for going away without leave, Cypriot police said.

Renee Maltezou, Reuters, MSNBC, 18 January 2011

The underwater wax museum

Sunny slopes, shady stories

Below this place they call Heavenly, hell awaits those who double-cross the Mob.

Around here, urban legend has lake fishermen reeling in human ears and human hands. They say that far below all that fluffy powder snow and those perfectly spaced pine trees and all that sunshine; and way down below the surface of the huge alpine lake the Indians call Lake of the Sky, lies an underwater wax museum of perfectly preserved Mafia gangsters with bullet holes in the middle of their foreheads.

Locals say it's just part of the charm of South Lake Tahoe and Heavenly Ski Resort. […]

There are apres-ski huts perfect for catching the sunshine and the red and white fir trees give this place its reputation as having the best tree runs in North America. The runs are long and challenging, the snow is deep and dry and the mountain huts are solid log timber.

Then the sun sets and the night turns Heavenly into another kind of place altogether.

There's a gruesome side to Heavenly; it's as I walk by Lake Tahoe in the growing dark that I think of those bodies.

Steve, a ski instructor at Heavenly who shares some local legends with me over a beer, tells me famous marine explorer Jacques Cousteau once tried to bring a submarine into Lake Tahoe but local casino bosses of the day refused to allow it. Then there's the story Cousteau did go down with a film crew but Mob bosses confiscated his footage; and then there's the story that Cousteau decided himself that the world wasn't ready to see what lay beneath the waters of Lake Tahoe.

Geological surveys have so far failed to find any bodies, neither have modern fishermen with advanced fish-finding technology, but still the locals hold on to their legends. "They don't find bodies around here," Steve tells me. "They sink to the bottom; you go in there, you don't come out."

It's the near-freezing water, many say, that prevents the creation of gases that would otherwise bloat and float a corpse to the surface. Locals maintain there are hundreds of bodies down there, perfectly preserved. Fishermen even call an area of it The Grave. That's where, the story goes, a fisherman jagged something huge just offshore but whatever it was broke free. When he reeled in the line, a human ear was still on the hook. Then there's the story of renowned gangster Three-Fingered Tony who met an untimely demise nearby, his hand reeled in later by another unlucky fishermen.

Craig Tansley, Sydney Morning Herald travel section, 21 November 2010

The Gown Man

As recalled by Cyril Neville (of the Neville Brothers):

"If our mother wanted to keep us home, she'd tell us about the Gown Man. He was this big white guy in a hospital gown, and he'd snatch you off the street, put you under his arm, and take you over to the dissection room at Tulane University medical school. They'd pull off your skin and you'd get chopped up by medical students, practicing their autopsies."

And as recalled by his brother Aaron Neville:

"They had the Needle Man, too. Supposed to shove a six-inch needle in your eye, suck your brain out right from the socket."

Mark Jacobson, The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), p. 209