A Wisconsin city is the latest to embrace the world of cryptozoology by way of their new mascot: Sam the Sasquatch. According to a local media report, the community of South Milwaukee unveiled the character last week with a rather elaborate rollout featuring an interactive website, an extensive social media presence, and a video wherein the faux Bigfoot shared his origin story. “I’ve always just wanted to find a place to settle down, a place where I can be accepted for who I really am,” the proverbial spokesquatch mused before declaring “then I found South Milwaukee” and extolling all of the virtues of the community.

The mascot is the brainchild of the ad agency Savage Solutions, which was enlisted by the city to develop a new marketing campaign for the community. Initially inspired by longstanding reports of mysterious mountain lions said to roam around the area, their brainstorming sessions ultimately led them to Bigfoot and, shortly thereafter, the concept of Sam the Sasquatch was born. Since his debut last week, the mascot has made multiple public appearances throughout the community and visited a variety of small businesses as part of a future promotional projects centered around the character.

South Milwaukee is no stranger to outside-the-box ideas aimed at attracting tourists as it also boasts a statue dedicated to legendary pro wrestler and beloved native son Reggie ‘Da Crusher’ Lisowski. By virtue of their new mascot, the city joins a growing number of communities and institutions that have adopted the iconic cryptid as their own, including a new public school in Florida, towns in North Carolina and New York, and the NBA’s Portland Trailblazers. The most similar character to South Milwaukee’s Sam is undoubtedly the Utah City Yeti, another costumed ‘creature’ serving as the spokesquatch for their community, leading us to hope for a future collaboration between the two.

The latest intriguing sighting by way of a Loch Ness webcam features a pair of peculiar humps that emerged from the waters of the famed Scottish site. The possible glimpse of Nessie was reportedly captured earlier this month by Eoin O’Faodhagain, a diligent livestream viewer who has amassed a staggering number of virtual sightings from his home in Ireland. In this instance, he was watching one of the Visit Inverness Loch Ness webcams when he spotted two odd shapes seemingly belonging to the same creature breaking the surface of Loch Ness.

“My heart jumped,” he recalled, “and I was astonished at the length of what was coming into view.” The pair of anomalous forms were rather eyebrow-raising to the seasoned webcam watcher because of how they moved across the water. “They maintain the same distance between them throughout the video,” he observed, “the only way this is possible is that both shapes belong to one living creature.” To that end, O’Faodhagain theorized that the smaller “front object” in the footage is likely the creature’s head looking for fish to eat or possible threats. The virtual monster hunter estimated that the suspected creature lurking beneath the surface of the water was a staggering 17 feet long, which he argued precludes any species known to live at the location.

So far in 2024, O’Faodhagain has documented at least a half dozen instances wherein he spotted something weird on one of the various webcams watching over the legendary home of Nessie. While some skeptics may scoff at his sometimes hard-to-decipher screen captures, one cannot help but appreciate the livestream viewer’s indefatigable effort, especially since this year has been somewhat worryingly bereft of on-site sightings with the famed Loch Ness Sightings Register only recognizing one official report so far in 2024.

Fishermen from a village in Senegal are living in fear as attacks by ‘killer hippos’ have risen dramatically in recent years.

An astounding 25 people from the village of Gouloumbou have been mauled to death by the voracious creatures lurking in a nearby river tributary over the last decade.

Many others have been attacked by the hippos, sometimes on multiple occasions, but managed to survive albeit with gruesome injuries and truly terrifying tales.

The unsettling encounters have grown so frequent that many villagers have stopped fishing altogether for fear of falling victim to the hippos.

“They are evil monsters who attack us night and day,” lamented one Senegalese fisherman to the AFP, “because of them, we haven’t been fishing.”

The situation has had a devastating effect as fishing is one of the few sources of income for the impoverished village.

Their chief has pleaded with authorities to help them cope with the outbreak of angry hippos, but so far has only received the promise of a handful of motorized boats for the fishermen.

However the ostensibly safer fishing vessels may not be enough to quell the bloodthirsty hippos, which have been known to attack boats as well as villagers making use of the waters for drinking and cleaning.

According to the chief, the villagers once had an friendly relationship with the hippos that resided in the river, but clearly something has happened in recent years to disrupt that harmony.

Hopefully some kind of solution to the disruption can be found and the fishermen of Gouloumbou can go back to working on their river without concern for the monstrous creatures ‘fishing’ for them.

Lily Munster, Countess of Shroudshire (née Dracula), is a fictional character in the CBS sitcom, The Munsters, originally played by Yvonne De Carlo. The matriarch of the Munster household, Lily is a vampire.

Lily was born in 1827 to Sam Dracula (Grandpa) and his 166th wife (referred to only as “Grandma”). She lived with Grandpa for some time in Transylvania (a region in Romania) before meeting Herman Munster and marrying him in 1865. She, Grandpa, and Herman moved to America sometime before the mid-1940s and adopted her sister’s child, Marilyn. In the mid-1950s, she gave birth to Eddie, her and Herman’s only child.

Her name is presumably derived from the tradition of the lily as a flower of death, or a vague reference to Lilith, a female demon of Jewish mythology.

Lily is the matriarch of the Munster family. She is very close with her niece, Marilyn. She has a werewolf for a brother, who appears in one episode, and a sister who is mentioned a few times who is Marilyn’s mother. Lily is the voice of reason in the Munster household, often relied upon to set problems right, and typically mediates when Herman and Grandpa squabble.

Lily and Herman

Lily also has a fiery temper. While she is deeply in love with Herman (“Pussycat,” as she calls him), she also frequently gets very angry at him (due to his frequent stupidity and occasional selfishness), and Herman often meekly discloses his fear (to others) of being on the receiving end of her wrath. She also has reprimanded her own father (Grandpa) on several occasions for his own foolish actions and stubborn self-righteousness.

Lily is a beautiful and slender woman who appears to be in her middle age years, although she is actually hundreds of years old. A white streak in her hair recalls the monster’s mate from Bride of Frankenstein. Lily usually dresses in an ankle-length pale pink gown that appears faded and old, and she sometimes also wears a scarf. Her necklace features a bat-shaped medallion. When away from the Munster house, she sometimes wears a long silver cape with a hood. In the episode “Munsters Masquerade”, Lily demonstrates the ability to float in the air while dancing.

Gothic Underwear

Herman loves it

An orc in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth fantasy fiction, is a race of humanoid monsters, which he also calls “goblin”.

Especially in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, orcs appear as a brutish, aggressive, ugly, and malevolent race of monsters, contrasting with the benevolent Elves. They are a corrupted race of elves, either bred that way by the Dark Lord Morgoth, or turned savage in that manner, according to the Silmarillion.

Orcs are of human shape, and of varying size. They are depicted as ugly and filthy, with a taste for human flesh. They are fanged, bow-legged and long-armed. Most are small and avoid daylight.

By the Third Age, a new breed of orc had emerged, the Uruk-hai, larger and more powerful, and no longer afraid of daylight. Orcs eat meat, including the flesh of Men, and may indulge in cannibalism: in The Two Towers, Grishnákh, an orc from Mordor, claims that the Isengard orcs eat orc-flesh. Whether that is true or spoken in malice is uncertain: an orc flings Peregrin Took stale bread and a “strip of raw dried flesh… the flesh of he dared not guess what creature”.