(10-10-2024, 10:26 AM)Gordi Wrote: ...
The closest match that I could find, in a quick search of "known" cryptids, were "Devil Monkeys".
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BigG
I agree, it does sound like the descriptions of "Devil Monkeys".
The size, shape, gait, and canine teeth sounds like the descriptions of the Devil Monkeys from around here. Some witnesses describe them as "baboon-looking", probably because of the large canine teeth.
I'm not sure what to think of the reports of Devil Monkeys here. The reports started in the 1950's,meaning that, like "chupacabras", they have no real history going back in time. That would seem to me to indicate a fabrication, but there are many people who swear otherwise, and that they've seen them with their own beady little eyes, so I dunno. Could be an invasive species that just moved in around the 50's, I suppose.
There is a county road here that intersects with Rt. 460 at Witten's Fort in Tazewell County, VA (between Tazewell and Claypool Hill), right at the blockhouse of the fort, that is known as a haunt of the Devil Monkeys. Quite few people have claimed sightings of Devil Monkeys on and around that road. It might be worth mentioning that there is an ancient Indian village complete with a burial ground right across that road from the fort, on the same side of the highway. It was excavated in the 1960's and 1970's, around the time the Devil Monkey reports started. I recall that when I was in high school, a kid whose brother was helping with the excavations brought an Indian skull from the grave yard to school one day in a paper bag. I recall thinking how disrespectful that was to the Indian in question, and how illegal it was to remove it from the excavation without paper work and permissions.
There was an incident on the other side of the Clinch Mountain ridge from there, somewhere around Meadowview I think, of a Devil Monkey pursuing a car down the road one night with that peculiar bounding motion mentioned. It left claw marks in the paint of the car as it tried to catch it, but the car got away.
I've never seen a Devil Money, but there ARE "things" in the woods here that defy explanation in a conventional sense. Once I thought I'd seen a troop of them in North Carolina, but it turned out to be an even stranger tale than Devil Monkeys. I was walking the perimeter fence at High Point Chemicals in High Point, NC on patrol one morning about 6 am, when I heard the damndest bunch of screeching and tree shaking going on on the other side of the hurricane fence near some rail tracks. it got my attention, and I looked and beheld a whole troop of monkeys jumping and thrashing around in the tree tops and making a hell of a racket.
I stopped and rubbed my eyes, thinking I must be asleep or near it and hallucinating, because there are no monkeys in North Carolina roaming free in the woods. The monkeys were still there, loud and rowdy as ever. I moved on, getting away from them, because monkeys are generally not know for blowing up tankers of explosives, so hallucination or not, I didn't consider them a threat. 40,000 gallon tankers of some explosive chemical were what I was guarding, and I didn't figure monkeys, imaginary or real, to be a problem with them.
I wasn't about to put the incident in my reports, however. Whether I needed a "vacation": or not, I didn't want one!
As it turned out, I found out later that day from a radio news report as I was heading home that a bunch of eco-terrorists had attacked a research facility and "liberated" a bunch of test monkeys from it. In their words they "released the comrade monkeys back into their natural habitat to be free again". Dumbasses. North Carolina HAS no "natural habitat" for monkeys. The ones that weren't caught and recovered most likely starved to death or froze to death over the following winter. So much for monkeys in North Carolina.
I also recall an incident in the 1990's that made the news back then of a troop of "apes" or "big monkeys" that were reported by several motorists on Rt. 52 which runs across the state of Virginia from coast to mountains near the southern border. The monkeys were reported to be "throwing things" at passing cars along that motorway by several people. No actual monkeys were ever retrieved, however, despite diligent searches by the Sheriff's Department.
So, traveling in groups, 4 or 5 feet tall, bounding movements and large canine fangs along with a simian appearance does seem to fit the description of our "Devil Monkeys".
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