The Monster of Mohrbach

There is a legend in the German town of Wittlich that a deserter from Napoleon's army came to this place and killed a local farmer and his wife there. Before she died, the farmer's wife cursed the deserter and turned him into a huge, terrible wolf. The beast went berserk, rampaged through the town, and was finally killed by the combined efforts of the local people. The beast became known as the Moorbach monster.

However, some eyewitness testimonies may indicate that the Mohrbach monster is more than just a legendary monster. During the Cold War, some American soldiers stationed at Hahn Air Base (near Wittlich) in Germany were patrolling the forest at the edge of the base when they spotted a black, huge dog or wolf-like mysterious animal.

If it were just a wolf or a dog, it would not be a surprise. But the mysterious animal was tall and had two red glowing eyes. Matthias Burgard, an anthropologist at the University of Mainz in Germany, has collected accounts from several American soldiers who witnessed the mysterious animal. One of them claimed that the creature growled at his dog when he took it on patrol and that he, who was hiding, had crept closer to the creature to make sure it wasn't a wolf or a dog. Some thought that the Americans might have been frightened by the large wild boar in the forest, but witnesses denied that it was a wild boar.

It's not just American soldiers who have seen the beast, but local police have occasionally been alerted by people in the area who have spotted a black "giant dog" standing at a distance watching them. It can stand on its hind legs, and it can also jump over high fences (fences taller than adults). He appears and disappears unexpectedly. When the police officers went to track it down with sniffer dogs, these sniffer dogs were crazy and refused to enter the forest.

To this day, it is uncertain what this mysterious animal is. But one American soldier's description may offer another explanation: "It always likes to scare people and then go around their feet to check if they are safe." This behavior resembles that of a police dog, and according to the description, the mystery animal bears several similarities to the black Flanders livestock dogs that can be bred to become police dogs.

In the 1990s, British zoologist John McKinnon became famous for discovering three new mammals in the remote Vu Quang Nature Reserve in Vietnam. He had been searching the jungles of Southeast Asia for a variety of exotic animals as early as the 1970s. In 1974, McKinnon documented the results of his expedition in a book, The Search for the Red Ape, in which he described some strange footprints he found while hiking in Sabah, Malaysia, that looked like human footprints, but with proportionally larger big toes and short, wide paws. McKinnon's guide told him that these footprints belonged to the "forest people" or "batatut". McKinnon believes that the rainforests of Southeast Asia may be hiding an even more unusual animal, but he was reluctant to investigate further because of fear: "When I found the footprints, I felt uneasy, and I didn't want to follow them to the last clue. I knew that no animal that we know of could have made those tracks."

McKinnon's experience brought widespread attention to the legend of the batatut, also known as the "smallfoot" because of the unknown creature's relatively small footprints. Legend has it that the creatures are hiding in the jungles of the Central South Peninsula and Borneo.

A similar creature was mentioned by American war correspondent Craig Jorgensen in his book "Strange and True Stories of the Vietnam War": six American soldiers found a strange ape-like creature deep in the jungles of Vietnam. It was about 150 centimeters tall, had red hair on its head, and could walk upright. At first, the soldiers speculated that it might be an orangutan, but there are no orangutans in Vietnam. The animal then quickly disappeared.

The small-footed monsters are best known in Indonesia, and their footprints are said to look like those of a human child, only wider. They are clad in black fur and hide in the rainforest. Some zoologists have found their footprints before and left models and photos of the footprints. But they have never found a living or dead specimen, so they remain as enigmatic as ever.

Lake Brosno is located about 400 kilometers south of Moscow, Russia. Legend has it that after sacking the city of Novgorod, the cavalry of a fierce Tatar tribe came to the edge of this lake to rest. Just as everyone was enjoying the sun and the breeze, a huge creature swooped out of the water and rushed towards the men and horses. It was a dragon that lived in the water, and being attacked by a dragon was not a good sign, so the Tatars decided to leave Novgorod and return to their homeland.

This is just a myth, but stories abound about the monster of Lake Bruno, which is the Russian equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster. It is said that during World War II, a German plane flew low over the lake when a huge creature leaped out of the water and bit the plane with its mouth open. But does this creature exist?

In 2002, a Russian UFO investigation group organized an expedition to sonar the lake and reported a "giant jelly-like object" lying on the lake bed. They immediately dropped a bomb into the lake, hoping that it would surface. But the explosion did not appear after the monster.

There is also speculation about the identity of the so-called monster. For example, large amounts of hydrogen sulfide occasionally rise to the surface from the bottom of the lake, creating bubbles that may give the illusion of a creature in the water. In addition, some of the sightings may have been of elk swimming across the lake. However, it is unlikely that either the gas in the water or the elk would have bitten the plane off.