#almasti

[mistersamshearon]

'ON THE BEATEN PATH' Now available as a signed print measuring 12" x 18". (Store link in bio!). All prints are shipped in batches on a monthly basis. *Be sure to sign up to my Patreon.com/MisterSamShearon at 'The offering' level to receive a certain % off everything in this store! 'On The Beaten Path' - As featured on the cover of 'World Explorer' Magazine from David Hatcher Childress. Vol.9 No.4 #bigfoot #sasquatch #yeti #yowie #almasti #almas #yeren #orangpendek #cryptid #cryptozoolgyart #cryptidart #bigfootart #explorer #worldexplorer #hiker #hiking #adventure #greatoutdoors #worldexplorers #willowcreek #hike #outdoor #wild #giants #camping #cryptozoolgy #fantasyart #redwoods #missing #MisterSamShearon (at Los Angeles, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/CjlGgqHrHfc/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[bizarreauhavre]

???

[starlightshadowsworld]

It's important that we recognise and humanise the Palestinians as they are often dehumanised by Israel and the western media.

Make no mistake these are people like you and I.

And with the upcoming prisoner exchange, here's information on some of the Palestinian prisoners.

[Video transcript:

This is 22 year old freed prisoner Ida Almasty of Nablus. She spent 7 months in Zionist prisons where she encountered the legendary resilience of her fellow women prisoners.

As the dawn of their freedom approaches with the upcoming prisoner exchange, she wrote about them, their aspirations and their dreams.

I'm gonna share them with you.

This is Marah Bakir.

Marah always wished to be released as part of a prisoner exchange deal, rather than alone, leaving behind the responsibility of the girls.

She was pregnant at a young age and longed to feel the freedom despite the jailer. Marah will move from solitary confinement to freedom and contunue her studies.

Marah had been imprisoned since she was 15 in 2015 and has been held in solitary confinement for 40 days.

She is the representative of the female prisoners movement.

This is Shorouq Duwaiat.

Shorouq was very afraid of the idea that she would have to keep saying goodbye to her fellow prisoners.

After getting used to them and being the lady one left. Today Shorouq won't have to wait any longer than the others; in a few days she will be among us.

Shorouq, 25 has one of the longest sentences among women. She was sentenced to 16 years in 2014, accused of a stabbing operation.

This is Makal Suleiman.

Malak wants to go back and start economic projects that she has thought about for her mother. We once talked about the Maldives, she know what it looked like.

Soon she will see it and perhaps even visit.

Malak is 24 has been imprisoned since 2016 when she was 17.

This is Noorhan Awad.

Noorhan loves the stars and the night sky. She was always happy during nightly cell searches to go out to the yard quickly.

Noorhan will soon spend her nights under the sky without bars.

Noorhan entered prison in 2015 at 15, sentenced to 10.5 years in 2015. She was wounded by IOF gunfire after the IOF executed her cousin Hadeel. Accusing them of a stabbing operation.

That's all for tonight, this will be part one. I got the rest of the parts from resistance news networks Prisoners Telegram.

They give updates on all of the prisoners in occupied Palestine. I highly recommend that you follow them on Telegram.

You wanna type this link below into your browser (https://t.me/RNN Prisoners) to find the page, very very informative.

End Transcript]

[ffxivxd]

Like its cousin, the yeti, the almasty is vicious and opportunistic. Some hunters say that it's built like a brick shitehouse. On top of that descriptor, they say it smells like a slaughterhouse on a hot day.

[winterdeepelegy]

The Grumpus

Glace hadn't been looking for an excuse to visit Ciel, or that's what he told himself, but he arrived at her door nonetheless and was invited in for coffee. Something about her home matched the atmosphere outside. Although it was cozy, her parlor fairly shimmered with Starlight Celebration finery. A large tree, as well, stood decked out in shiny bits and bobs, and strands of gleaming silver. Surrounding its base was a pile of plush dolls and toys nearly as wide as it was deep.

"You're just in time," chirped the songstress upon returning with said coffee, cups, and adornments therefore.

She too dressed for the festivities in a mint green dress trimmed with fur, stockings adorned with snowflakes, and a red silk ribbon in her hair which bore golden charms at the end.

It would be a lie to say he didn't find the look at all adorable but this was a thought to which he would never lend voice. "In time for what? And what's with all the toys? I never would have assumed you the sort to collect dolls." Ciel filled his cup and presented it with her explanation. "Oh, they're not for me. I do collect them every winter, but they're for children in orphanages and less fortunate situations. I could use some help delivering them." He clasped his hands around the cup of coffee and lifted it to inhale the rich aroma. Neither coffee nor cream would find their way into it. It had to remain pure... bitter and dark like his heart.

"You know, I've never paid Starlight much mind," he said. "Never really had time or interest to get into it, and it wasn't so much a thing in Garlemald. Most of the holidays revolved around the Emperor's nameday,  or the date of a historic conquest..." "But there's nothing to stop you, hm? Do you know aught of the holiday's history?" He took a slow sip of his drink while considering the possibility, lowered it a few ilms and looked in her direction. "No, now that you mention it. I mean, I know the history, I had to learn it for immersion... but you're right, there's nothing to stop me now and I like kids well enough. I'm just... not the jolly type."

"But do it for them!" Ciel dropped a sugar cube and a dribble of cream into her cup, followed by a stream of coffee. "And the more the merrier, as they say. They'd love you for it." He turned his eyes downward to stare into his cup. "Gods, I've done enough pretending for a lifetime. You want me to pretend more?"

She feigned a pout, "I'm not asking you to pretend to be joyful, I'm just asking you to help bring joy to people who need it. Did they truly have nothing like this in Garlemald?" "Well... not while I was there. Something like it but not like it, a very long time ago, before it ever became the Empire." "Oh?" "They had a Grumpus." He said this much and lapsed into silence, again taking from his cup while Ciel waited moments for more details. "Well, out with it, Glace. You can't just drop something like that and not tell me what a 'Grumpus' is," the woman prodded. He grumbled in response, "I'm thinking... Like I said it's old history, fell out of favor after the military evolution began." Another brief pause for consideration, but he did piece together an explanation.

"I don't know how much you know about Reapers and their origin... the Grumpus comes from that. Supposedly, anyroad, it was the result of a farmer who was tired of his sons not helping around the farmstead... so to instill some fear and respect into them, he made a pact with a Voidsent and let it take over his body temporarily. When that happened, he sprouted aldgoat-like horns, his feet turned to hooves, his hands turned into claws..." Ciel lofted an eyebrow, "Well that hardly sounds joyful..."

He continued, "But it worked. The Grumpus, as it was called, threatened to drag them off into the snows and feed them to the Almastys if they didn't stop shirking their chores. And for every instance of disobedience, it would steal something they enjoyed - including the love of family. They never disrespected their father again after that, and the family was happier for it." She stared. Perhaps she had missed the part where there might have been anything truly joyful beyond terrified obedience. "Alright then..." She slowly sipped her coffee but inquired no further, figuring it better to leave the tale alone.

"Now what of your siblings? Do you think some of them might wish to help, too? It might be good to have them meet people this way."

Something in the Duskwight's expression brightened at that. He could think of several who might have loved the idea. "You're right, Plum. Let me finish this cup and I'll see how quickly I can gather them."

[kemetic-dreams]

        Was Russian 'Bigfoot' actually an African slave?

A leading British geneticist, who recently found the DNA key that could answer the mystery of the ‘Yeti’, has now solved the riddle of Russia’s own Bigfoot, ‘Zana’.

Bryan Sykes, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford, has carried out DNA tests on saliva samples taken from descendants of Zana - a so-called ‘wild woman’ captured in the late 19th century in southern Russia, who local people believe was an ‘Almasty’.

Professor Sykes’ research (part of a worldwide analysis of alleged Bigfoot samples), has yielded a remarkable result: that Zana's ancestry was 100% Sub-Saharan African and that she was most probably a slave brought to the region by the ruling Ottomans.

His findings feature in a new Channel 4 documentary series, Bigfoot Files (November 3rd), presented by Mark Evans, who is on a global quest to unlock the real story of Bigfoot.

Zana’s story is extraordinary. She is said to have been captured in the forests of Abkhazia, a remote part of Russia’s Caucasus region, in the 1870s. Imprisoned, it's said, for two decades by a local landowner, she was described by eyewitnesses as being ‘very big, strong, her whole body covered with hair’. Chillingly, Zana had four children with local men.

Russia's 'Almasty Hunters' have been obsessed with her story for over half a century and have always believed that Zana could be a surviving Neanderthal, the human-like species that is thought to have died out tens of thousands of years ago.

To answer the riddle and establish what species she belonged to, Professor Sykes has tested samples from six of Zana's living descendants. He has also recovered DNA from a tooth taken from the skull of one of her sons, Khwit. Such work is highly specialized and Sykes was the first geneticist ever to extract DNA from ancient bone.

The results are complex and fascinating. First, they show that Zana was, in fact, no more Neanderthal than many of the rest of modern humans. When the Neanderthal genome was sequenced in 2010 it became clear that Europeans and Asians contain around 2 to 4% of Neanderthal DNA; almost certainly the result of interbreeding.

But the big surprise in Sykes' results was that Zana's DNA is not Caucasian at all, but African. Khwit's tooth sample confirms her maternal African ancestry and the saliva tests on the six living descendants show that they all contain African DNA in the right proportions for Zana to have been genetically 100% sub-Saharan African.

“The most obvious solution that springs to mind is that Zana or her ancestors were brought from Africa to Abkhazia as slaves, when it was part of the slave trading Ottoman Empire, to work as servants or labourers,” says Professor Sykes. “While the Russians ended slavery when they took over the region in the late 1850s, some Africans remained behind. Was Zana one of them, who was living wild in the forest when she was captured?“

But that theory would not explain her extraordinary features, described by reliable eyewitnesses. There is an even more intriguing alternative theory. Having carefully studied the skull of Zana's son, Khwit, Professor Sykes believes there are some unusual morphological skull features – such as very wide eye sockets, an elevated brow ridge and what appears to be an additional bone at the back of the skull – that could suggest ancient, as opposed to modern, human origins.

And Sykes has raised the bold theoretical possibility that Zana could be a remnant of an earlier human migration out of Africa, perhaps tens of thousands, of years ago. If correct, Zana could be evidence of a hitherto unknown human 'tribe', dating from a distant time when the human species was still evolving and whose ancestors were forced into remote regions, like the Caucasus mountains, by later waves of modern humans coming out of Africa.

One of the Russian Almasty hunters, Dr Igor Burtsev, offers testimony in the Channel 4 documentary that may back this theory up. He unearthed Khwit's skull in 1971 and a few years later, showed it to a group of anthropologists in Moscow. They were, he says 'amazed', and identified a mix of 'primitive' and 'progressive' (modern) features in the skull. Lacking the scientific tools at Sykes' disposal, they could take it no further.  Now Sykes is able to propose the theory with some confidence.

It is only a theory at this stage - and a bold and speculative one at that. But Professor Sykes intends to study it much further before reaching his final conclusions.

Zana’s story will feature in Bigfoot Files on Channel 4 on Sunday, November 3rd at 8.00pm. In the programme Mark Evans also meets former heavyweight boxing champion of the world, seven foot tall Nikolai Valuev, who admits to having a bit of a Neanderthal look himself. He is now Duma Deputy (the equivalent of an MP) for Kemerovo in Siberia and fascinated in Almasty. The programme also investigates some of the other claimed sightings of the creatures in Russia.

The series, made by Icon Films, examines the stories behind famous Bigfoot sightings and Mark Evans meets people who believe passionately that other species of hominid exist. A book by Professor Sykes about his research The Yeti Enigma: A DNA Detective Story will be published by Coronet in Spring 2014.

[legend-collection]

Yeti

The Yeti is an ape-like creature purported to inhabit the Himalayan mountain range in Asia. In western popular culture, the creature is commonly referred to as the Abominable Snowman. Many dubious articles have been offered in an attempt to prove the existence of the Yeti, including anecdotal visual sightings, disputed video recordings, photographs, and plaster casts of large footprints. Some of these are speculated or known to be hoaxes.

The Yeti is often described as being a large, bipedal ape-like creature that is covered with brown, gray, or white hair, and it is sometimes depicted as having large, sharp teeth.

This section contains Tibetan script. Without proper rendering support, you may see very small fonts, misplaced vowels or missing conjuncts instead of Tibetan characters.

The word Yeti is derived from Tibetan: གཡའ་དྲེད་, Wylie: g.ya' dred, ZYPY: Yachê, a compound of the words Tibetan: གཡའ་, Wylie: g.ya', ZYPY: ya "rocky", "rocky place" and (Tibetan: དྲེད་, Wylie: dred, ZYPY: chê) "bear". Pranavananda states that the words "ti", "te" and "teh" are derived from the spoken word 'tre' (spelled "dred"), Tibetan for bear, with the 'r' so softly pronounced as to be almost inaudible, thus making it "te" or "teh".

Tibetan lore describes three main varieties of yetis—the Nyalmo, which has black fur and is the largest and fiercest, standing around fifteen feet tall; the Chuti, which stands around eight feet tall and lives 8000 to 10000 feet above sea level; and the Rang Shim Bombo, which has reddish-brown fur and is only three to five feet tall.

Other terms used by Himalayan peoples do not translate exactly the same, but refer to legendary and indigenous wildlife:

Michê (Tibetan: མི་དྲེད་, Wylie: mi dred, ZYPY: Michê) translates as "man-bear".

Dzu-teh – 'dzu' translates as "cattle" and the full meaning translates as "cattle bear", referring to the Himalayan brown bear.

Migoi or Mi-go (Tibetan: མི་རྒོད་, Wylie: mi rgod, ZYPY: Migö/Mirgö) translates as "wild man".

Bun Manchi – Nepali for "jungle man" that is used outside Sherpa communities where yeti is the common name.

Mirka – Another name for "wild-man". Local legend holds that "anyone who sees one dies or is killed". The latter is taken from a written statement by Frank Smythe's sherpas in 1937.

Kang Admi – "Snow Man".

Xueren (Chinese: 雪人) - "Snow Man"

In Russian folklore, the Chuchuna is an entity said to dwell in Siberia. It has been described as six to seven feet tall and covered with dark hair. According to the native accounts from the nomadic Yakut and Tungus tribes, it is a well built, Neanderthal-like man wearing pelts and bearing a white patch of fur on its forearms. It is said to occasionally consume human flesh, unlike their close cousins, the Almastis. Some witnesses reported seeing a tail on the creature's corpse. It is described as being roughly six to seven feet tall. There are additional tales of large, reclusive, bipedal creatures worldwide, notably including both "Bigfoot" and the "Abominable Snowman."

The name Abominable Snowman was coined in 1921, the year Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Howard-Bury led the 1921 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition, which he chronicled in Mount Everest The Reconnaissance, 1921. In the book, Howard-Bury includes an account of crossing the Lhagpa La at 21,000 ft (6,400 m) where he found footprints that he believed "were probably caused by a large 'loping' grey wolf, which in the soft snow formed double tracks rather like those of a bare-footed man". He adds that his Sherpa guides "at once volunteered that the tracks must be that of 'The Wild Man of the Snows', to which they gave the name 'metoh-kangmi'". "Metoh" translates as "man-bear" and "kang-mi" translates as "snowman".

Confusion exists between Howard-Bury's recitation of the term "metoh-kangmi" and the term used in Bill Tilman's book Mount Everest, 1938 where Tilman had used the words "metch", which does not exist in the Tibetan language, and "kangmi" when relating the coining of the term "Abominable Snowman". Further evidence of "metch" being a misnomer is provided by Tibetan language authority Professor David Snellgrove from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London (ca. 1956), who dismissed the word "metch" as impossible, because the consonants "t-c-h" cannot be conjoined in the Tibetan language. Documentation suggests that the term "metch-kangmi" is derived from one source (from the year 1921). It has been suggested that "metch" is simply a misspelling of "metoh".

The use of "Abominable Snowman" began when Henry Newman, a longtime contributor to The Statesman in Calcutta, writing under the pen name "Kim", interviewed the porters of the "Everest Reconnaissance expedition" on their return to Darjeeling. Newman mistranslated the word "metoh" as "filthy", substituting the term "abominable", perhaps out of artistic licence. As author Bill Tilman recounts, "[Newman] wrote long after in a letter to The Times: The whole story seemed such a joyous creation I sent it to one or two newspapers".

According to H. Siiger, the Yeti was a part of the pre-Buddhist beliefs of several Himalayan people. He was told that the Lepcha people worshipped a "Glacier Being" as a God of the Hunt. He also reported that followers of the Bön religion once believed the blood of the "mi rgod" or "wild man" had use in certain spiritual ceremonies. The being was depicted as an ape-like creature who carries a large stone as a weapon and makes a whistling swoosh sound.

Yeti was adopted into Tibetan Buddhism, where it is considered a nonhuman animal (tiragyoni) that is nonetheless human enough to sometimes be able to follow Dharma. Several stories feature Yetis becoming helpers and disciples to religious figures. In Tibet, images of Yetis are paraded and occasionally worshipped as guardians against evil spirits. However, because Yetis sometimes act as enforcers of Dharma, hearing or seeing one is often considered a bad omen, for which the witness must accumulate merit.

In 1832, James Prinsep's Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal published trekker B. H. Hodgson's account of his experiences in northern Nepal. His local guides spotted a tall bipedal creature covered with long dark hair, which seemed to flee in fear. Hodgson concluded it was an orangutan.

An early record of reported footprints appeared in 1899 in Laurence Waddell's Among the Himalayas. Waddell reported his guide's description of a large apelike creature that left the prints, which Waddell thought were made by a bear. Waddell heard stories of bipedal, apelike creatures but wrote that "none, however, of the many Tibetans I have interrogated on this subject could ever give me an authentic case. On the most superficial investigation, it always resolved into something that somebody heard tell of."

The frequency of reports increased during the early 20th century when Westerners began making determined attempts to scale the many mountains in the area and occasionally reported seeing odd creatures or strange tracks.

In 1925, N. A. Tombazi, a photographer and member of the Royal Geographical Society, writes that he saw a creature at about 15,000 ft (4,600 m) near Zemu Glacier. Tombazi later wrote that he observed the creature from about 200 to 300 yd (180 to 270 m), for about a minute. "Unquestionably, the figure in outline was exactly like a human being, walking upright and stopping occasionally to pull at some dwarf rhododendron bushes. It showed up dark against the snow, and as far as I could make out, wore no clothes." About two hours later, Tombazi and his companions descended the mountain and saw the creature's prints, described as "similar in shape to those of a man, but only six to seven inches long by four inches wide... The prints were undoubtedly those of a biped."

Western interest in the Yeti peaked dramatically in the 1950s. While attempting to scale Mount Everest in 1951, Eric Shipton took photographs of a number of large prints in the snow, at about 6,000 m (20,000 ft) above sea level. These photos have been subject to intense scrutiny and debate. Some argue they are the best evidence of Yeti's existence, while others contend the prints are those of a mundane creature that have been distorted by the melting snow.

Peter Byrne reported finding a yeti footprint in 1948, in northern Sikkim, India near the Zemu Glacier, while on holiday from a Royal Air Force assignment in India.

In 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reported seeing large footprints while scaling Mount Everest. Hillary would later discount Yeti reports as unreliable. In his first autobiography Tenzing said that he believed the Yeti was a large ape, and although he had never seen it himself his father had seen one twice, but in his second autobiography he said he had become much more sceptical about its existence.

During the Daily Mail Snowman Expedition of 1954, the mountaineering leader John Angelo Jackson made the first trek from Everest to Kanchenjunga in the course of which he photographed symbolic paintings of the Yeti at Tengboche gompa. Jackson tracked and photographed many footprints in the snow, most of which were identifiable. However, there were many large footprints which could not be identified. These flattened footprint-like indentations were attributed to erosion and subsequent widening of the original footprint by wind and particles.

On 19 March 1954, the Daily Mail printed an article which described expedition teams obtaining hair specimens from what was alleged to be a Yeti scalp found in the Pangboche monastery. The hairs were black to dark brown in colour in dim light, and fox red in sunlight. The hair was analysed by Professor Frederic Wood Jones, an expert in human and comparative anatomy. During the study, the hairs were bleached, cut into sections and analysed microscopically. The research consisted of taking microphotographs of the hairs and comparing them with hairs from known animals such as bears and orangutans. Jones concluded that the hairs were not actually from a scalp. He contended that while some animals do have a ridge of hair extending from the pate to the back, no animals have a ridge (as in the Pangboche scalp) running from the base of the forehead across the pate and ending at the nape of the neck. Jones was unable to pinpoint exactly the animal from which the Pangboche hairs were taken. He was, however, convinced that the hairs were not from a bear or anthropoid ape, but instead from the shoulder of a coarse-haired hoofed animal.

Sławomir Rawicz claimed in his book The Long Walk, published in 1956, that as he and some others were crossing the Himalayas in the winter of 1940, their path was blocked for hours by two bipedal animals that were doing seemingly nothing but shuffling around in the snow.

Beginning in 1957, Tom Slick funded a few missions to investigate Yeti reports. In 1959, supposed Yeti feces were collected by one of Slick's expeditions; fecal analysis found a parasite which could not be classified. The United States government thought that finding the Yeti was likely enough to create three rules for American expeditions searching for it: obtain a Nepalese permit, do not harm the Yeti except in self-defense, and let the Nepalese government approve any news reporting on the animal's discovery. In 1959, actor James Stewart, while visiting India, reportedly smuggled the so-called Pangboche Hand, by concealing it in his luggage when he flew from India to London.

In 1960, Sir Edmund Hillary mounted the 1960–61 Silver Hut expedition to the Himalayas, which was to collect and analyse physical evidence of the Yeti. Hillary borrowed a supposed Yeti scalp from the Khumjung monastery then himself and Khumjo Chumbi (the village headman), brought the scalp back to London where a small sample was cut off for testing. Marca Burns made a detailed examination of the sample of skin and hair from the margin of the alleged Yeti scalp and compared it with similar samples from the serow, blue bear and black bear. Burns concluded the sample "was probably made from the skin of an animal closely resembling the sampled specimen of Serow, but definitely not identical with it: possibly a local variety or race of the same species, or a different but closely related species."

Up to the 1960s, belief in the yeti was relatively common in Bhutan and in 1966 a Bhutanese stamp was made to honour the creature. However, in the twenty-first century belief in the being has declined.

In 1970, British mountaineer Don Whillans claimed to have witnessed a creature when scaling Annapurna. He reported that he once saw it moving on all fours.

In 1983, Himalayan conservationist Daniel C. Taylor and Himalayan natural historian Robert L. Fleming Jr. led a yeti expedition into Nepal's Barun Valley (suggested by discovery in the Barun in 1972 of footprints alleged to be yeti by Cronin & McNeely). The Taylor-Fleming expedition also discovered similar yeti-like footprints (hominoid appearing with both a hallux and bipedal gait), intriguing large nests in trees, and vivid reports from local villagers of two bears, rukh bhalu ('tree bear', small, reclusive, weighing about 150 pounds (70 kg)) and bhui bhalu ('ground bear', aggressive, weighing up to 400 pounds (180 kg)). Further interviews across Nepal gave evidence of local belief in two different bears. Skulls were collected, these were compared to known skulls at the Smithsonian Institution, American Museum of Natural History, and British Museum, and confirmed identification of a single species, the Asiatic black bear, showing no morphological difference between 'tree bear' and 'ground bear.' (This despite an intriguing skull in the British Museum of a 'tree bear' collected in 1869 by Oldham and discussed in the Annals of the Royal Zoological Society.)

In 2004, Henry Gee, editor of the journal Nature, mentioned the Yeti as an example of folk belief deserving further study, writing, "The discovery that Homo floresiensis survived until so very recently, in geological terms, makes it more likely that stories of other mythical, human-like creatures such as Yetis are founded on grains of truth."

In early December 2007, American television presenter Joshua Gates and his team (Destination Truth) reported finding a series of footprints in the Everest region of Nepal resembling descriptions of Yeti. Each of the footprints measured 33 cm (13 in) in length with five toes that measured a total of 25 cm (9.8 in) across. Casts were made of the prints for further research. The footprints were examined by Jeffrey Meldrum of Idaho State University, who believed them to be too morphologically accurate to be fake or man-made, before changing his mind after making further investigations. Later in 2009, in a TV show, Gates presented hair samples with a forensic analyst concluding that the hair contained an unknown DNA sequence.

On 25 July 2008, the BBC reported that hairs collected in the remote Garo Hills area of North-East India by Dipu Marak had been analysed at Oxford Brookes University in the UK by primatologist Anna Nekaris and microscopy expert Jon Wells. These initial tests were inconclusive, and ape conservation expert Ian Redmond told the BBC that there was similarity between the cuticle pattern of these hairs and specimens collected by Edmund Hillary during Himalayan expeditions in the 1950s and donated to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, and announced planned DNA analysis. This analysis has since revealed that the hair came from the Himalayan goral.

A group of Chinese scientists and explorers in 2010 proposed to renew searches in the Shennongjia Forestry District of Hubei province, which was the site of expeditions in the 1970s and 1980s.

At a 2011 conference in Russia, participating scientists and enthusiasts declared having "95% evidence" of the Yeti's existence. However, this claim was disputed later; American anthropologist and anatomist Jeffrey Meldrum, who was present during the Russian expedition, claimed the "evidence" found was simply an attempt by local officials to drum up publicity.

A yeti was reportedly captured in Russia in December 2011. Initially the story claimed that a hunter reported having seen a bear-like creature, trying to kill one of his sheep, but after he fired his gun, the creature ran into a forest on two legs. The story then claimed that border patrol soldiers captured a hairy two-legged female creature similar to a gorilla that ate meat and vegetation. This was later revealed as a hoax or possibly a publicity stunt for charity.

In April 2019, an Indian army mountaineering expedition team claimed to have spotted mysterious 'Yeti' footprints, measuring 81 by 38 centimetres (32 by 15 in), near the Makalu base camp.

The misidentification of Himalayan wildlife has been proposed as an explanation for some Yeti sightings, including the chu-teh, a langur monkey living at lower altitudes; the Tibetan blue bear; or the Himalayan brown bear or dzu-teh, also known as the Himalayan red bear.

A well publicized expedition to Bhutan initially reported that a hair sample had been obtained which by DNA analysis by Professor Bryan Sykes could not be matched to any known animal. Analysis completed after the media release, however, clearly showed the samples were from a brown bear (Ursus arctos) and an Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus).

In 1986, South Tyrolean mountaineer Reinhold Messner claimed in his autobiography My Quest for the Yeti that the Yeti is actually the endangered Himalayan brown bear, Ursus arctos isabellinus, or Tibetan blue bear, U. a. pruinosus, which can walk both upright or on all fours.

The 1983 Barun Valley discoveries prompted three years of research on the 'tree bear' possibility by Taylor, Fleming, John Craighead and Tirtha Shrestha. From that research the conclusion was that the Asiatic black bear, when about two years old, spends much time in trees to avoid attack by larger male bears on the ground ('ground bears'). During this tree period that may last two years, young bears train their inner claw outward, allowing an opposable grip. The imprint in the snow of a hind paw coming over the front paw that appears to have a hallux, especially when the bear is going slightly uphill so the hind paw print extends the overprint backward makes a hominoid-appearing track, both in that it is elongated like a human foot but with a "thumb" and in that a four-footed animal's gait now appears bipedal. This "yeti discovery", in the words of National Geographic Magazine editor Bill Garrett, "[by] on-site research sweeps away much of the 'smoke and mirrors' and gives us a believable yeti".

This fieldwork in Nepal's Barun Valley led directly to initiating in 1984 Makalu-Barun National Park that protected over half a million acres in 1991, and across the border with China the Qomolangma national nature preserve in the Tibet Autonomous Region that protected over six million acres. In the words of Honorary President of the American Alpine Club, Robert H. Bates, this yeti discovery "has apparently solved the mystery of the yeti, or at least part of it, and in so doing added to the world's great wildlife preserves" such that the shy animal that lives in trees (and not the high snows), and mysteries and myths of the Himalayas that it represents, can continue within a protected area nearly the size of Switzerland.

In 2003, Japanese researcher and mountaineer Dr. Makoto Nebuka published the results of his twelve-year linguistic study, postulating that the word "Yeti" is a corruption of the word "meti", a regional dialect term for a "bear". Nebuka claims that ethnic Tibetans fear and worship the bear as a supernatural being. Nebuka's claims were subject to almost immediate criticism, and he was accused of linguistic carelessness. Dr. Raj Kumar Pandey, who has researched both Yetis and mountain languages, said "it is not enough to blame tales of the mysterious beast of the Himalayas on words that rhyme but mean different things."

Some speculate these reported creatures could be present-day specimens of the extinct giant ape Gigantopithecus. However, the Yeti is generally described as bipedal, and most scientists believe Gigantopithecus to have been quadrupedal, and so massive that, unless it evolved specifically as a bipedal ape (like the hominids), walking upright would have been even more difficult for the now extinct primate than it is for its extant quadrupedal relative, the orangutan.

In 2013, a call was put out by scientists from the universities of Oxford and Lausanne for people claiming to have samples from these sorts of creatures. A mitochondrial DNA analysis of the 12S RNA gene was undertaken on samples of hair from an unidentified animal from Ladakh in northern India on the west of the Himalayas, and one from Bhutan. These samples were compared with those in GenBank, the international repository of gene sequences, and matched a sample from an ancient polar bear jawbone found in Svalbard, Norway, that dates back to between 40,000 and 120,000 years ago. The result suggests that, barring hoaxes of planted samples or contamination, bears in these regions may have been taken to be yeti. Professor of evolutionary genetics at the University of Cambridge Bill Amos doubted the samples were of polar bears in the Himalayas, but was "90% convinced that there is a bear in these regions that has been mistaken for a yeti". Professor Bryan Sykes whose team carried out the analysis of the samples at Oxford university has his own theory. He believes that the samples may have come from a hybrid species of bear produced from a mating between a brown bear and a polar bear. A research of 12S rRNA published in 2015 revealed that the hair samples collected are most likely those of brown bears. In 2017, a new analysis compared mtDNA sequences of bears from the region with DNA extracted from hair and other samples claimed to have come from yeti. It included hair thought to be from the same preserved specimen as the anomalous Sykes sample, and showed it to have been a Himalayan brown bear, while other purported yeti samples were actually from the Tibetan blue bear, Asiatic black bear and a domestic dog.

In 2017, Daniel C. Taylor published a comprehensive analysis of the century-long Yeti literature, giving added evidence to the (Ursus thibetanus) explanation building on the initial Barun Valley discoveries. Importantly, this book under the Oxford University imprint gave a meticulous explanation for the iconic Yeti footprint photographed by Eric Shipton in 1950, also the 1972 Cronin-McNeely print, as well all other unexplained Yeti footprints. To complete this explanation, Taylor also located a never-before published photograph in the archives of the Royal Geographical Society, taken in 1950 by Eric Shipton, that included scratches that are clearly bear nail marks.

[graha-stan-account]

Barbarous: Day 5

Barbarous: n. Savagely cruel; exceedingly brutal. 

Present. Set 6.0, immediately following "In From The Cold." J'napha is struggling to shake the whole ordeal. (Are any of us over it?)

FFXIVWrite 2023 Masterlist

---

"My skin still doesn't feel like my own. Like the insides are slick with something... something wrong." 

"You're all right," Y'shtola said, possibly for the fourth, fifth or even sixth time. "Your aether is same as it ever was. Well, in recent memory." 

"Perhaps my soul, then?" J'napha drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them, a dark patch on the snowy white ground. "Getting here took the last of my strength. I felt certain I'd die, and now I feel..."

"Yes, your aether includes your soul, too. Your mind may be addled, though." She poked at her head.

"Thanks." J'napha looked away, unsatisfied. 

Y'shtola frowned. "Rest." She waited a beat. "Heavens know you need it." 

Y'shtola found Alisaie huddled around a tin cup of hot tea under one of the large tents. "You should go talk to her. I keep telling her she's fine but sense seems beyond her. Take her a cup of that, wouldn’t you? Settle her stomach and perhaps whatever slime she seems convinced is clinging to her." 

"Hm?" Alisaie spun around, a bit of campfire bread between her lips. She pulled the bread from her mouth and spoke. "I thought she was still out? Gods, she was barely able to stand when she came-to." 

"It's not every day one of us gets body-snatched. Though," she sighed, "I suppose we're beginning to make a habit of it." She knocked her knuckles against her chin. "Talk to her, please. And have her meet us in the tent just there. Any undue time spent idle is a gift to the Telophoroi." 

Alisaie chirped in acknowledgement as she struggled to swallow down the food still in her mouth. She set down the remainder of her refreshment to pour another steaming cup into a tin mug. The brew was mostly water, but t'would be warming just the same.

"Here." She held out the mug to J'napha, who was yet wound in a ball in the powdery snow, looking so small from where Alisaie stood. "You'll catch a cold like that." J'napha looked up as if suddenly aware of her presence. "Hey." Alisaie knelt next to her, proffering the cup. "You are all right, aren't you? Just a bit.... shaken up?" 

"How are you sure.... it's really me...?" J'napha reached for the cup tentatively before pulling it in to breathe its warm steam. 

"Of course it's you! I know it is, and I don't need Y'shtola's eyes for that!" 

"But you could have all been killed, because you noticed nearly too late. And I... took the bait. I was being toyed with. And the two of you... who trust me the most..." 

"Hey, need I remind you of what happened with the Night's Blessed? Y'shtola nearly blew you to bits because she couldn't see you clearly. Isn't that how it went?" 

"So you're saying Y'shtola's wrong? That there is something wrong with me?" 

Alisaie paused, then let out a frustrated whine having seen the tangle she created. "Point made! I've made a mess of it. But listen: you can stay here." She paused, evidently still formulating the rest of her ultimatum. "You can stay here, or you can march into that tent where Lucia and the rest are planning our assault on the Tower of Babil. You'd rather know what's ahead, right? Of course, you can bide your time here too, freezing in the snow like a naked baby Almasty. 'Til the rest realize you're awake. Your choice, Warrior of Light." 

"Is this how Alphinaud feels?" J'napha grumbled, half in jest as she sipped at the steaming water. 

"Uplifted? Energized? Grateful? Every day, I'm sure." She brushed off her hands on her coat. "Now, will you be needing a hand getting up?" 

[connectparanormal]

For ages, the mysterious Almas or Almasti has been a part of the legend of the isolated and untamed mountains of western Mongolia and Central Asia. This cryptid, the origins of whose name are as mysterious as the creature itself, is reminiscent of the notorious Yeti of the Himalayas as well as the North American Bigfoot.

[ffxiv-swarm]

prompt 30: amity

“You know,” Rimelnaud muttered, “when I first came to Garlemald, I—never mind.”

Portia lowered her cigarette and cast a sidelong glance at the Ishgardian engineer. They didn’t work in the same areas—she was more concerned with raw manufacturing—but they’d gotten to be something like friends nevertheless. Neither of them minded lounging outside in the cold for a smoke, for one thing, and they both had little brothers they occasionally wanted to strangle. (Rimelnaud had two. Portia had shuddered heartily and wished him luck.) But for all their friendliness, well, he was still Eorzean in the land of his former enemies. And she was one of those former enemies.

Casually, she finished his sentence for him. “You thought we were all a pack of savages and you were walkin’ into—what is it, the Fifth Hell that’s the icy one?” Not that she could blame him—she was pretty sure half her countrymen had actually been raised by almasties with the way they acted—but still. He’d been downright bloody rude at first.

Now, though, he was pulling an embarrassed face. “I used to fall asleep in church. But...uh.” As she watched, he steadily turned red. “...Aye. To—to both, really. I’m glad to have been wrong.”

She eyed him for a moment. “Because you wouldn’t’ve gotten the thing you’ve got goin’ with Appius if you hadn’t unwedged your head from up your arse, yeah?”

Rimelnaud choked on his own spit, which on an Elezen was a spectacular event involving his ears flapping about like a dog’s in a high wind. Honestly, Portia was hard pressed to keep a straight face. When he could breathe again, he wheezed out, “What thing, there is no thing—”

She didn’t even bother to try hiding her grin. “Oh aye, so he’s just making up all the poetry he spouts about your hands, is he?”

If possible, Rimelnaud went even redder. “He talks about me?”

“Mate, he does not shut up about you.” It was cute. She wasn’t going to tell him that. “Just you wait until the flowers bloom again and then clear off space by your bunk, he’s gonna be sappy.”

“Garlemald has flowers?”

“Hey! We have seasons, unlike your bloody frozen hellscape—”

“Our bloody frozen hellscape was green and—well, alright, winters were rather drastic, but we had seasons! Before your people dropped the moon on us.”

“Aye, well, they also dropped th’ moon on th’ man I was gonna marry, so you’re not the only folk that suffered.”

Rimelnaud looked stricken, his ears drooping. “Ah—forgive me, I didn’t mean—”

She waved a hand. “Nael van Darnus was a nutjob. We can both agree on that. You’re really not having me on about Ishgard?”

“I swear by the Fury.” Rimelnaud sighed, turning away from her back out towards the expanse of snow. “It was...beautiful.”

Once again, Portia couldn’t help but smile. He sounds like he’s talking about Locus Amoenus. I wonder how it compares. Affectionately, she reached out and knuckled his shoulder.

“Well, don’t just stand there sighing. Tell me about it!”

[bizarreauhavre]

[ezribex]

FFXIV Write Day 14

Upon arrival at the Sapphire Avenue Exchange, Ezri immediately went to the lockers where the retainer service held her items. She grabbed a few clear prisms and a couple bolts of almasty serge, and then sat down on a bench near the market board with her needle and thread. Out of her own bag, she grabbed a few wind clusters and lightning clusters. 

Her task today was to sew the serge around the clear prisms and infuse it with a little magick so that she could place glamours of some outdoor furnishings she’d picked up while adventuring onto the island sanctuary. She didn't quite understand why the mammets didn’t want her to just place the items themselves on the island. (“This is a place of business and not your personal dumping ground…” the Felicitous Furball had said when she asked. Ezri didn't see a big difference between glamours of the items and the items themselves.) 

She carefully measured and cut the serge and sewed it around the prisms, then applied the lightning and wind incantations. It was quick work, something she’d studied in her master weaver’s guide that she’d ordered from the Studium in Sharlayan. She enjoyed crafting out in the open air of the Exchange, where her fellow artisans would also grab materials stored by the Retainers Guild. She liked looking at people’s weapons and armor and wondering where they shopped or what they’d done to get the materials to craft them. 

She ended up with six Island Prisms. She only needed three, so she stuffed the leftovers into the Free Company chest, conveniently located near the retainer lockers on the Exchange. Maybe Ocean would want to place outdoor furnishings on the Island as well. She then grabbed the items she wanted to display, stuffed them in her bag of holding, and teleported to the Moraby Drydocks.

[etruatcaelum]

On Salem’s Religion.

Her practice is a highly syncretic form of Ruakhian polytheism (although it would also not be inaccurate to say that Ruakhian polytheism evolved from her practice).

The underlying cosmology imagines a tripartite cosmos: there are three primordial realms, one of water, one of fire, and one of earth, whose confluences give rise to the younger realms, Remnant among them. At the center—the soul of all things—is the place-that-is, which is also called the river or the forge.

(It is a key tenet of this belief system that there is only one soul, and it is fractal; some beings have smaller souls than others, but all are the same soul because they are self-similar parts of the soul, which is the place-that-is.)

The historical Ruakhian pantheon was arranged loosely into five houses: the gods of fire, of earth, of water, of the soul, and of the world. (Sometimes seven, with dark and light, but Salem does not hold to this view.) On top of this core, Salem has adopted many new gods over the centuries.

These are the major deities she worships:

Gods of the Soul.

These are not the rulers per se, but they’re the eldest of the gods and given special deference accordingly. As they dwell in the place-that-is, the gods of the soul are reached from within; offerings made to them are ritually consumed.

Lombe, the Artisan, is primarily a god of craft: spinning and weaving, pottery-making, wickerwork, metallurgy, musical instruments. Salem also regards her as a hearth-god.

Shrithe, the Walker, is a god of stillness and motion: he is associated with the winter and with way-finding. He is also the death-god of chief importance in the Ruakhian afterlife, as the dead rested with him and received his guidance before beginning the long ascent through the primordial realms back to the waking (living) world.

Kané, the Singer, is a god of secret knowledge, song, poetry, and the written word. Alone of the elder gods, it touches the waking world as the breath of life and wind that moves the stars; many of its rites pertain to augury and haruspicy.

Margh, the Sleeper, most enigmatic of the elders, is a god of magic, selfhood, memory, dreams, and emotion.

Gods of Water.

The realm of primordial water is called the Wending Sea. It is the lowest realm, flowing beneath the skin of the world—Salem locates her realm, the one formed by her semblance, in the Wending Sea. These gods receive libations of saltwater, blood, atrum, or dark wine, and all have associations with grimm.

Striga, the Witch of the Wilds, is a god of witchcraft and war, storms and wildfires, rot and rebirth. She is the herald of the moon-god and associated with bloodshed of all kinds, including childbirth. Salem has fully divorced her own worship from the historical identification of Striga as herself. But this is why her emblem is called the Sigillum Strigis.

Ictifex, the Night Wyrm, is a god of darkness and underground things: caverns and sinkholes and the like, but also worms and burrowing creatures. He is formed from the cast-off skin of the serpentine Shrithe, and his is the death of water. When the dead traverse the Wending Sea, Ictifex hunts for them, and if he finds them and bites them, they will return to the waking world as grimm.

There are eight minor gods of water; the eight most common grimm morphs of the Taiyin Steppe are named for them: Ursai the Bear, Matagot the Lion, Khorkhoi the Viper, Almasty the Ape, Tulpar the Wind-Horse, Corocotta the Hyena, and the winged dog Chamrosh.

Gods of Earth.

The realm of primordial earth is called the Garden of Thorns. Its position relative to the others is somewhat vague—historically, it was often placed below the Wending Sea, but Salem thinks of it as a sort of cosmic membrane: the skin of the world and the skin of the sky. Whether these gods receive libations or burnt offerings varies; the libations are mostly of wine or blood, the offerings mainly in the form of animal sacrifice.

Omadios, the Vulture, is a god of wild things and wild places, of the hunt, and of hunger. She is the wilderness; hers is the death of earth. If the dead rising from the Wending Sea are unmarked by Ictifex, she will call out to them, inviting them to join her revelries; should they choose to partake, they will return to the waking world as faunus. Ruakhian tradition held that your animal patron was the thing you ate in the Garden.

Shiqmá, the Shrike, is a god of herds and the slaughter—the domestic counterpart of Omadios, in a sense. She was sung into being by Kané, and shares its association with poetry and language.

Erlik, the Wolf, is a war-god and a god of wrath, vengeance, horsemanship, and destruction. He is a companion of Striga and the mountain-smith; earthquakes are the reverberations of his hammer, and volcanoes are his forge.

There are ten minor gods of earth: the Crow, the Sparrow, the Hawk, and the Pheasant; the Hare, the Ferret, the Horse, and the Fox; the Snake and the Spider.

Gods of Fire.

The realm of primordial fire is called the Wailing Sea. It is the uppermost realm, burning white and gold above the skin of the sky. These gods receive burnt offerings, primarily of herbs, flowers, or wood.

Mar, the Moon, is a god of truth, justice, atonement, oaths, and mourning. They are the creation or offspring or a dream of Margh, and theirs is the death of fire. When the dead climb up from the skin of the sky to travers the Wailing Sea, Mar sees them through the sundered gate—the maw of the broken moon—and, to those for whom they weep, they offer the secret of silver.

Caleb, the Sun-Holder, is a hearth-god and god of familial bonds and healing. The sun itself is a clay lantern shaped by Lombe, which holds the life-giving fire. Salem regards him as a god of plantings and the harvest as well—agriculture featured very little in Ruakhian culture, but she gardens.

Iskra, the Vermilion Witch, is a god of mirrors, firelight, aura, and falling stars. She is a companion of Striga, and something of a stricter counterpart to her: scorched earth to the wildfire, dust-conjured lightning to the thunderstorm.

There are twelve minor gods of fire, represented by the constellations of the ecliptic.

Gods of the World.

Remnant is the waking world, the land of the living, the place without. Most of its gods are small: spirits of a mountain or a river or a household, culture heroes, ancient grimm, tutelaries, and the like. The roster of Salem’s big gods hasn’t expanded very much—when she does adopt new deities as gods of water, earth, or fire, she more often approaches them as new aspects of her own gods—but she has, by now, literally thousands of small gods. Some of them are very small indeed. Those that follow are only the most important to her.

Samandar Khan was her son and the founder of Ruakh; he began to receive cult after his death. Salem doesn’t worship him exactly, but she keeps a shrine and practices his rituals as a way to, at least symbolically, keep him alive. She calls him Irem when she is feeling sentimental.

Sykites was the tutelary deity of Irem’s deme before their decimation and continued to be his patron and that of his family, Salem included.

Kultarinta the Bear is a culture hero of the Glass Folk of northwestern Sanus, a warrior variously attested as an ursine faunus or a shape-changing turnskin. (She was both: Salem taught her shapeshifting.) At the end of the Third Era, she killed Patricius Eternus, put the Circle, his fanatical cult, to the sword, and became the second summer maiden in the process. Worship of her as a bear-god persists into the modern day among the Glass Folk as well.

Valravne is the leviathan of the Evernight horde: an ancient nevermore as massive as the wyvern of Mountain Glenn. Grimm of such size are invariably hollowed out into living hives by their hordes, and they are to grimm hordes somewhat akin to what culture heroes are to people. All of them are very, very old. (Monstra, incidentally, was not a leviathan: Salem hauled the corpse of an actual dead whale out of the Tarth Sea, marinated it in an atrum reservoir for several months until the meat was all mostly grimmified, and then started sculpting. Monstra was a battleship.)

Vangtand, Knaggli, Náttfari, and Turibriga are four of the five tallest peaks in the world: Evernight perches on an escarpment between Náttfari and Knaggli, with Turibriga accessible through the pass to the north and Vangtand—the highest of all—piercing the sky beyond that. Salem’s horde nests in all four mountains and has excavated a vast labyrinth beneath (and pushing up into) these mountains; the peaks have become more or less equivalent to household gods—horde gods, as it were.

Balfyr is an important deity in the folk religion of the Vitrine Peninsula: a god of the ghastly ‘witchfire’ often seen at night in the marshes and bogs that dominate the region, traditionally held to be the lost souls of the newly-dead; Balfyr is a psychopomp who gathers these wandering spirits and guides them home. Salem has adopted them as a guardian of Alukah’s wetlands.

Tarth is the name of both the cold sea to the east of Alukah and the monstrous grimm that makes its home in the depths. Tarth is, by a wide margin, the biggest grimm in the the world: an eel-like behemoth massive enough to swallow an Atlesian dreadnought whole. Salem reveres her as a living manifestation of the sea and its dangers.

& On Belief and Realness.

Salem takes all of this very seriously. While she’s perfectly aware that little of it is accurate in the strict factual sense—and she’ll never shy away from factually discussing the Brother Gods and her ‘Elder Gods’ (which, being aspects of the Tree, do exist)—she feels it is all real in every way that matters.

Namely: she finds meaning and spiritual fulfillment in her beliefs, and her rituals work, and it feels true in some essential way that ancient worship of the God of Light (and Darkness, from a distance) didn’t. Ipso facto, it is true in some essential way that is deeper and more important than factual correctness.

Outside of contexts where factual accuracy is of crucial importance, i.e. recounting what the Brothers did and/or discussing Ozma’s mandate, she makes not the slightest distinction between gods who exist and gods who don’t. It does not matter to her.

She is going to start worshipping the spirits in the relics as soon as they’re freed and integrate the Ever After and the Tree into her cosmology, as parts of the Garden of Thorns, once she learns about them. None of this remotely fazes her; she merely slots new information or new gods wherever they fit best into her existing belief system.

Her actual praxis is exactingly methodical and constructed around reciprocity—do ut des. The purpose of every act of propitiation, every prayer, every vow, and every ritual is to either receive something in return or repay a favor in kind. Broadly speaking, her rituals do work even when her gods do not actually exist because she’s had thousands upon thousands of years to figure out how to make things happen, whether by creating the conditions that will cause it or by magic; that knowledge undergirds her religious praxis.

(Salem’s absolute disdain for the God of Light is less a response to his cruelty in and of itself than it is his violation of that reciprocity, not by refusing but by brutally punishing her for asking at all; likewise, although her feelings about him are complicated, she made her peace with what Darkness did to her long ago and began to worship him in memoriam because he did act reciprocally before his brother intervened.)

[audiblybored]

Almasty - 8 8% DIPA [@almastybrewingco] #almastybrewingco #almastybrewing #almastybrewery #almasty8 #DIPA #IPA #veganbeer #vegancraftbeer #craftbeer #craftbeerlife #craftbeerporn #beer #bier #birra #cerveza #biere #beersofinstagram #beerstagram #beerporn #beerlover #cheers #craftnotcrap #instabeer #beeroftheday https://www.instagram.com/p/CoSzuJEte6B/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[lpbestiary]

In Iranian and Central Asian folklore, als are the demons of childbirth. Said to combine the features of males and females, they are described as having fiery eyes, sharp fangs and copper claws.

Als will interfere with human reproduction, often stealing the heart, lungs and liver of pregnant women, as well women in childbirth and those who have just given birth. It is said that if the al crosses water after stealing these organs, the mother cannot be saved.

Image source.

Monster master list.

Suggest a spook.