061 – 2012—THE YEAR IN MONSTERS
🦶 Bigfoot 2012: The Year of the Rumor Mill
Sharon identifies Bigfoot as the dominant cryptid story of 2012, driven less by evidence than by a media ecosystem of ad-supported Bigfoot blogs recycling unattributed rumors for page views. The two biggest intertwined threads:
The Ketchum Project. Melba Ketchum‘s long-running Bigfoot DNA study (ongoing since 2008) generated enormous speculation but no published peer-reviewed results as 2012 closed. Sharon had tracked the project’s soap-opera arc — business disputes, shifting alliances, leaks, and a Coast to Coast AM interview in which Ketchum admitted things had not gone as planned. One proposed outcome: publishing the paper in Russia, where Igor Burtsev and colleagues had already welcomed the American Bigfoot community with open arms. (For deeper coverage of the Ketchum study, see MonsterTalk #60.)
The Sierra Kills. A bear hunter’s account of shooting a large bipedal creature in a remote California area — and then a smaller one — became one of the year’s most dramatic Bigfoot stories. A tissue sample recovered two weeks later (dubbed “the Bigfoot steak”) was reportedly submitted to Ketchum’s study. An independent test returned a result described as partly bear, partly “unknown” — a word the panel treats with well-earned suspicion after previous conversations with Todd Disotell. The hunter subsequently began changing his story, apparently worried about the legal implications of having possibly shot something humanoid.
Separately, Bryan Sykes of Oxford was quietly running his own open-submission Bigfoot DNA project — with results expected in early 2013. The panel notes approvingly that Sykes was behaving like an actual scientist: not leaking results on Facebook.
Also discussed: the continued popularity of Finding Bigfoot on Animal Planet, the Jeff Meldrum-attended Russian Yeti conference that devolved into a media event (complete with a scientist rolling in a purported Yeti nest), and a Michigan woman who believed Bigfoot was eating blueberry bagels in her backyard — a saliva sample from said bagel reportedly finding its way into the Ketchum study.
🦣 The Siberian Mammoth Hoax and the Icelandic Worm
Two viral videos dominated the “mystery creature on film” category. MonsterTalk covered the Siberian Mammoth video in real time, with Blake doing frame-by-frame analysis to demonstrate the creature had been digitally composited into the footage — not, as many skeptics initially suggested via Occam’s razor, a bear carrying a fish. As of recording, the debunked video remained live and uncorrected on The Sun‘s website.
The Lagarfljótsormurinn (the Icelandic “worm” or wyrm of Lake Lagarfljót) appeared in a video showing a sinuous, snake-like object moving through icy glacial water. A MonsterTalk listener pointed out the object wasn’t actually propelling itself — it was stationary, animated entirely by the river current. It was eventually identified as a net or similar material. The panel distinguishes between hoax (intent to deceive) and misidentification: the man who filmed it likely just submitted something genuinely weird, and sensationalist labeling by media outlets did the rest.
🧟 Zombies, Mermaids, and Government Reassurances
The “zombie” panic of summer 2012 grew from a single horrific incident in Florida — a man attacking and biting another man on a causeway — which was immediately linked in media reports to a synthetic drug called bath salts. Subsequent toxicology found only marijuana in the attacker’s system. The bath salts narrative had already saturated news coverage by the time the correction emerged, and, as the panel notes, corrections rarely catch up to the original headline. The CDC was moved to publicly clarify that there was no zombie apocalypse underway.
Mermaids had an unlikely moment via Animal Planet’s mockumentary Mermaids: The Body Found, which presented actors as scientists and leaned heavily on the aquatic ape hypothesis — a thoroughly discredited fringe theory — to give the production a veneer of scientific plausibility. Enough viewers believed it that NOAA issued an official statement confirming mermaids do not exist.
🦈 Unidentified Carcasses: The Year of the Raccoon
Sharon’s category of “real monsters washing up on shores” produced two standouts. The San Diego Demonoid — a hairless, bloated carcass that washed up in California and looked so strange that Sharon assumed hoax — was identified by Darren Naish as an opossum. Later in the summer, the East River Monster attracted far more media attention; the photographer even visited Sharon’s site to describe the experience. It was a raccoon. Naish had previously identified the famous Montauk Monster — also a raccoon — though that identification has never fully penetrated public memory. Practical tip from the panel: always photograph unidentified carcasses with a size reference, and try to get the teeth and feet in frame.
Also briefly noted: a giant eyeball that washed up on Pompano Beach, Florida, sparking speculation about giant squid or unknown deep-sea creatures. Analysts quickly identified features consistent with a large fish rather than a cephalopod, and it was ultimately confirmed as a swordfish eye, apparently cut out with a knife and discarded at sea.
🏴 Nessie, the Journal of Cryptozoology, and Alien Big Cats
Loch Ness Monster sightings were reportedly down in 2012, causing anxiety among the local tourism economy. Boatman George Edwards attempted to remedy this with a photograph of what he claimed was a genuine hump in the loch. Researcher Steve Feltham recognized it as a fiberglass prop built a decade earlier for a documentary — and which Edwards himself had worked with. Edwards had apparently been selling postcards of the image for months before the story broke. His public response — that people who make their living from the loch should be happy when it’s in the news — was, as Sharon notes, about as clear a statement of motive as one could ask for.
On a more constructive note, Dr. Karl Shuker launched the first new Journal of Cryptozoology in years. Blake had a copy in hand but not yet read; Sharon had. The review board included MonsterTalk alumni Darren Naish and David Waldron.
Alien big cats made their perennial appearance: two independent witnesses reported a Bengal tiger on a rural road in Puyallup, Washington; a reported lion in Essex, UK generated zoological search teams, fake Daily Mail photographs, and eventual identification as a domestic cat. The panel discusses how size misjudgment, cropped photography, and the structural similarity between domestic and large wild cats conspire to generate these reports repeatedly.
🌍 Monsters Around the World
Sharon’s “local terrors” roundup covered a geographically diverse collection of creature panics and folklore-driven incidents:
– A man-eating leopard in Nepal that killed 15 people — a reminder that real animal attacks exist alongside invented ones.
– A chupacabra scare in Mexico blamed for sheep deaths; on inspection, the evidence amounted to approximately one dead sheep.
– A black magic creature terrorizing a village in Namibia.
– The Aswang — a vampire-like creature from Philippine folklore — causing sufficient panic that the archbishop intervened to reassure the public.
– Mumbai reports of supernatural beings roaming at night, possibly masking ordinary criminal activity.
– Zimbabwe goblins — malevolent creatures blamed for house fires, food contamination, and stone-throwing — in a case the panel describes as strongly poltergeist-like, centered on a 16-year-old family member.
– Zimbabwe mermaids halting dam construction until workers’ concerns were addressed with a traditional beer ceremony.
– A Mokele-mbembe expedition to the Congo, crowdfunded via Kickstarter to the tune of $29,000. The group arrived in Africa, encountered logistical reality, had equipment possibly stolen, ran out of budget, and returned home. The website subsequently went dark. Sharon followed up specifically because she was worried the kids might be dead.
🧛 Serbian Vampire: Sava Savanović
The episode closes on a folkloric note. The collapse of an old water mill in Serbia associated with the legendary vampire Sava Savanović — said to have inhabited the mill and preyed on those who came to grind grain — prompted genuine or performative alarm in nearby villages that the vampire was now homeless and seeking new shelter. The story had its own Twitter account and was apparently photobombing local imagery. The panel debates whether the belief was sincere or a tourism play, noting that the Balkans have some of the world’s oldest and most historically documented vampire traditions — including the Arnold Paole case from 18th-century Serbia. Sharon suspects tourism. Ben raises the Popobawa as a parallel: folklore strategically amplified for economic reasons.
📚 Further Reading
– MonsterTalk #60 – Sasquatch: Ketchum If You Can (Ketchum DNA study deep-dive)
– MonsterTalk #100 (additional Bigfoot DNA coverage)
– MonsterTalk #191 (further Bigfoot DNA coverage)
– 📚 Monster Hunters 💵 — for broader context on the investigator community discussed throughout
🔗 Related Links
– Melba Ketchum – Wikipedia
– Bryan Sykes – Wikipedia
– Lagarfljótsormurinn (Icelandic Lake Worm) – Wikipedia
– Aquatic Ape Hypothesis – Wikipedia
– Montauk Monster – Wikipedia
– Mokele-mbembe – Wikipedia
– Sava Savanović – Wikipedia
– Arnold Paole – Wikipedia
– Journal of Cryptozoology – Wikipedia
– Aswang – Wikipedia
Note: ads inserted into the distributed audio alter the timestamps in unpredictable ways, so timing references in these notes are approximate.
TO WIND UP 2012, MonsterTalk welcomes back Sharon Hill, founder of the Doubtful News website, to talk us through a year’s worth of monstrous topics.
Topics in this episode
Most of the links in this episode have been compiled into a companion PDF file attached to this episode. The original Doubtful News site is now defunct but with the permission of Sharon Hill I’ve compiled those articles in this attachment:
- Bigfoot DNA (see Sasquatch: Ketchum If You Can (MonsterTalk # 60) )
also MonsterTalk #100 and MonsterTalk #191 for more detail. - Sierra Kills episode
- Hoaxer killed in Montana
- Russian yeti claims
- Chinese expedition for Yeren
- Prize money offered by Spike
- Continued popularity of Finding Bigfoot
- Mammoth Hoax Video
- Icelandic Wyrm
- Unidentified Carcasses
- Mermaids
- Zombies
- Nessie
- Alien Big Cats
- Vampires
- Monsters from Around the World
Music
- Monstertalk Theme: Monster by Peach Stealing Monkeys
- Excerpt from Auld Lang Syne by JELLI
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