THE MONTAUK MONSTER: FACT OR PHOTOSHOP?
It's not Bigfoot, but it's still pretty darned weird.

During the summer of 2008, an internet sensation was born: The Montauk Monster.

photo credit: Jenna Hewitt

Supposedly washed up on a beach in Montauk, NY, the Montauk Monster story was originally reported by Gawker as follows, with the above photo attached:

Dead Monster Washes Ashore in Montauk

No, Lizzie Grubman's still alive. This is an actual monster, some sort of rodent-like creature with a dinosaur beak. A tipster says that there is "a government animal testing facility very close by in Long Island," but unless the government is trying to design horrible Montauk monsters that will eat IEDs and fart fire at bad Iraqis, we're not sure why they would create such an unthinkable beast. Our guess is that it's viral marketing for something. Ali Lohan's new album perhaps. Click thru for larger dino-damage.

I was intrigues, but I didn't pay much attention. I was much too busy with the Bigfoot freezer hoax.

However, there was an immediate furor on blogs and forums. Everyone wanted to know: What the heck is it? The hind quarters are reminiscent of a pit bull. But is that a BEAK? What kind of monstrosity has both teeth AND a beak? Or is the facial bone simply broken off? Are those toe bones or flippers? Is it a turtle minus its shell? Or someone's idea of a Photoshopped joke?

The story was picked up by major news outlets across the country. Jenna Hewitt, the woman who claimed to have taken the photo was quoted as saying: "We were looking for a place to sit when we saw some people looking at something."
"We were kind of amazed," the 26-year-old added, "shocked and amazed."

Several witnesses subsequently came forward claiming to have seen the animal and, in some cases, described seeing it - or one of them - ALIVE.

Many initially suspected that the entire thing was dreamed up as an internet viral marketing hoax, but to what purpose?

It's not clear what happened to the corpse. Michael Meehan, a waiter at a beachside restaurant in Montauk who also claims to have seen the beast, said that animal control were called, but others say it was removed before they arrived.

"They say an old guy came and carted it away," Ms. Hewitt told New York Magazine. "He said, 'I'm going to mount it on my wall.'"

Apparently, local officials claimed it was nothing more than a raccoon, minus its lower jaw.

It didn't end there...

Shortly after the initial story broke, Loren Coleman over at Cryptomundo.com ran another series of photographs taken by a Christina Pampalone.

(Incidentally, according to Wikipedia, Loren coined the term "Montauk Monster". Thank God we have Loren out there taking the initiative to come up with catchy names for these crazy critters. If it were up to me, I probably would have chosen something along the lines of "Long-Island-bloated-dog-coon-turtle-corpse-thingy". *grin* Yeah, Loren, I'm messing with you.)

photo credit: Christina Pampalone

photo credit: Christina Pampalone

photo credit: Christina Pampalone

“I was telling people, all day (Wednesday), that I had better photos,” Pampalone said.

“Everybody I showed her pictures to said it looks like a dead dog,” her friend Ryan O’Shea, of Brooklyn, said.

“But looking at the claws, and at the teeth in the front, it looked like it could be something else, something vicious.”

It's interesting to note that the subject in these photos is lying in a slightly different position than in the original photo.

In Pampalone's photos, more of the underbelly is visible and the left foreleg(?) is covered with sand. The figure appears more sandy in the "original" photo above, as if the creature has been rolled over or moved.

Also interesting to note were the comments from local residents collected by Joye Brown at Newsday:

Joann Dileardo saw it at the end of Roe Avenue in Patchogue, a few weeks ago. “I didn’t know what that thing was,” she said. “It looked like a pig.”

Another reader, Pat, e-mailed that the ladies in his office saw it on an East Quogue beach — back in April.

Elizabeth Barbeiri said her family saw it about a mile east of Gurney’s Inn in Montauk, July 14. And Ryan Kelso, via iPhone, said he spotted it — alive! — in the Montauk dunes. “It looked about the size of an average fox, gray in color, eyes like a mole, hairless and was breathing quite heavily,” he wrote, “needless to say we were freaked out by this discovery and fled the area quickly.”

Lavey Fater saw a surfer bring one to shore, near Ditch Plains.

“It was hairless and gross,” Fater reported. “… The surfer said he had no idea what it was, but that he threw it in the dunes because he didn’t want to be surfing next to it.”

Keith found something last week in Greenport; Chris found one a month ago at Jones Beach east of Field 6. (”The one I saw had a longer snout or beak or whatever you want to call it.”) Sean said he buried one, 3 feet deep, in South Jamesport.

Hairless? Not according to the Pampalone photos released some time later.

The Pampalone photos bear much closer resemblance to a dead, bloated dog, perhaps a pit bull, washed up on shore. Note the "beak", which now more closely resembles a nasal bone with the nose (soft tissue) missing.

The ridiculousness soon reached a frenzy... Dr. Pepper/Snapple offered a bounty for the live capture of the Montauk Monster to promote their Venom energy drink, and silly Ebay listings for Montauk Monster-related paraphernalia soon followed: a latex sculpture and a painting of the creature were listed on Ebay and a guy was trying to sell a piece of toast on there that he claimed bore a striking resemblance to the Montauk Monster.

Yes. Toast. Of course, people had questions about the listing.

"Hello, what is the shipping for this etched piece of toast? Will it be hot with butter on it? And does it come with jam?"

The seller responded:"Shipping is a dollar and it was not etched. This is the way it came outta the toaster as seen in the picture. No butter or jam. Sorry."

The story continues... again... some more...

Eventually, with the Presidential Election heating up, the Montauk Monster faded into infamy. Until recently.

The following was just posted at Montauk-Monster.com:

On Wednesday May 5th 2009, I was contacted by a couple that sent a message to the general e-mail box on this website claiming they think they’ve found what appears to be the Montauk Monster. Naturally, I questioned it thinking it was BS, but they seemed credible enough (after a phone conversation of course) to take an hour drive to Southhold and see it for myself up close and personal.

Upon discovery, it resembled what everyone saw last summer. This monster was located in Southold, NY on the Bay Area. For those who are unfamiliar with the area, this is the North Fork of Long Island. The beast smelled like a mix of low-tide and rotten garbage. It really smelled horrific. I couldn’t help but take numerous pictures of it and video clips.

Here is the video, posted on Youtube.com, along with the following information:

On May 6th 2009 a montauk monster washed ashore upon the coast of Long Island, NY. We were immediately notified by an anonymous source who had spotted this beast. This is a real video interview taken with the monster on the night it washed shore. The video was taken by Nicky Papers while on the beach with the monster.

Warning: This video contains graphic content, and may not be suitable for younger viewers.

Now, interestingly, the Montauk Monster website appears to be down at the moment. Perhaps because of the amount of web traffic with this new, erm, discovery?

Or is there a more sinister explanation?

(OK, that last was totally tongue in cheek, but I had to get you in the mood for all of the crazy stuff that comes next...)

Montauk. Land of a thousand conspiracy theories!

Are you ready? Here's where it gets really fun.

I first heard about Montauk about 16 years ago. Creepy things had happened there, they said. And were still happening.

Do the names "Preston Nichols" and "Al Bielek" mean anything to you? No? Well, read on, fearless traveler. Things are about to get very weird.

According to Preston Nichols, the Philadelphia Experiment didn't end... it was converted into something called "Project Rainbow" and moved to a defunct base at Montauk, NY.

Among Nichols' claims: He read the final report of Project Rainbow (a.k.a. The Philadelphia Experiment) and was brought into a mind-control experiment at Montauk. An enormous Tesla coil (similar to that which was purportedly used in the experiments on the USS Eldridge to make the ship "invisible" to radar and instead made it "disappear") was used in conjuction with something called the Montauk Chair.

They were working on interfacing a person's mind to the computer. Preston worked with Al Bielek on the psychic aspects of the Montauk Chair and the Montauk Boys program. Preston trained the Montauk Boys to be “PSI Warriors.” The Montauk Chair used subtle quantum fields to read a person's thoughts. A psychic would lie down in the chair, go into a trance, and a group of coils pick the emanations. A bank of radio receivers designed by Tesla would pick up and digitize the thought. In other words, thought could be turned into computer code. The radar tower was used to turn thought into reality. This chair was used for many purposes. One was to open up a vortex for time travel. Another was to collect and amplify the energy of fear generated from the Montauk Boys. Many Montauk boys were lost forever to this program.

Sounds a bit far fetched, huh?

Well, it gets weirder. And weirder.

Many years ago, I was shown a bit of video footage from the Montauk base. The footage was rather poor quality, obviously amateur. It showed a central "courtyard" area of the base during winter - a bleak, still scene. Suddenly, near the middle of the screen, a HUGE, apparently hair-covered, hulking figure appears literally out of nowhere... and soon disappears just as readily.

Huh?

Don't ask me, and kindly don't shoot the messenger. *grin* I just saw the damned thing. I didn't film it.

I spent a lot of time reading up on the Montauk Project, simply because I love a good mystery, especially when it involves technology from the likes of Nicola Tesla or Wilhelm Reich.

What was my final reaction? I don't really know. A lot of it was entirely too far-reaching for my tastes. But it was consistently intriguing.

For those of you, like me,who are fascinated with covert government operations and the technology we may be developing, you might get a kick out of the following:

The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time chronicles the most amazing and secretive research project in recorded history. Starting with the Philadelphia Experiment of 1943, invisibility experiments were conducted aboard the USS Eldridge that resulted in full-scale teleportation of the ship and crew. Forty years of massive research ensued, culminating in bizarre experiments at Montauk Point that actually manipulated time itself. The controversial lectures by Al Bielek on the Montauk Project and the Philadelphia Experiment are similar to the information in this book. The book includes diagrams and photos of the time-travel devices themselves, plus photocopies of documents and schematic diagrams.

The Montauk Monster: Final Verdict

Um... There isn't one.

Are the "Montauk Monsters" an unknown species? A true cryptozoological chimera? Are they some sort of mutated monstrosity caused by the craziness being conducted beneath the earth at a not-really-defunct military base?

Or do bloated pit bulls corpses simply keep washing up on the beach because a particularly sadistic someone in New York REALLY dislikes them and has a penchant for drowning dogs?

Only time will tell.

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