The Monster Book. Nick Redfern

with zippers at both ends. Now, did you ever hear anything about that?”

      For a few moments, Bell was silent, seemingly musing on Phillips’s question. Then, he answered: “Mr. Phillips, I certainly have heard about that. I was the tail zipper man.”

      Finally, Phillips was convinced.

      As for what the snake actually was, there’s a distinct possibility it may have been a surviving relic of a massive snake that lived in what is now Colombia, but tens of millions of years ago. Its name was Titanoboa, and it has a lineage that connects it to both the boa constrictor and the anaconda of today. It could grow to lengths of fifty feet and weighed in at around a hefty ton. Certainly not a monster one would want to cross paths with. Did secret agents of the CIA, back in the 1950s, take out of circulation the very last of the Titanoboas? Possibly, yes!

      CRESTED SNAKE-CREATURE

      According to numerous accounts, there existed in the Caribbean of the nineteenth century a curious, crested, snake-like monster that instilled fear in all who encountered it. One such account came from an impeccable source: a Victorian naturalist named Philip Henry Gosse. He revealed how, during the course of his research, he uncovered details of the story. It all occurred when he spent time roaming the area, between 1845 and 1846. From a respected medical man, said Gosse, came a fascinating story. In Gosse’s words:

      “He had seen, in 1829, a serpent about four feet in length, but of unwonted thickness, dull ochre in color with well-defined dark spots, having on its head a sort of pyramidal helmet, somewhat lobed at the summit, of a pale red hue. The animal, however, was dead, and decomposition was already setting in. He informed me that the Negroes of the district were well acquainted with it; and that they represented it as making a noise, not unlike the crowing of a cock, and being addicted to preying on poultry.”

      Gosse had a friend named Richard Hill, who had also heard of this odd beast, from a Spanish acquaintance on Hispaniola. Those in the know said that it dwelled in the eastern regions of the island, in what is now the Dominican Republic. Gosse said of Hill:

      Philip Henry Gosse was an English naturalist especially noted for his knowledge of marine biology, but he was only nineteen when he came across the serpent in the Caribbean.

      “My friend’s Spanish informant had seen the serpent with mandibles like a bird, with a cock’s nest, with scarlet lobes or wattles; and he described its habits—perhaps from common fame rather than personal observation—as a frequenter of henroosts, into which it would thrust its head, and deceive the young chickens by its imitative physiognomy, and its attempts to crow.”

      A further account reached Gosse from a Jamaican man, Jasper Cargill. Gosse recorded of his meetings with Cargill that “…when visiting Skibo, in St. George, an estate of his father’s, in descending the mountain-road, his attention was drawn to a snake of dark hue, that erected itself from some fragments of limestone rock that lay about. It was about four feet long and unusually thick bodied. His surprise was greatly increased on perceiving that it was crested, and that from the far side of its cheeks depended some red colored flaps, like gills or wattles. After gazing at him intently for some time, with its head well erect, it drew itself in, and disappeared among the fragmentary rocks.”

      Rather notably, Cargill’s son managed to shoot and kill just such a beast a few years later. Back to Gosse, who noted of this development:

      “Some youngsters of the town came running to tell me of a curious snake, unlike any snake they had ever seen before, which young Cargill had shot, when out for a day’s sport in the woodlands of a neighbor. They described it as a serpent in all respects, but with a very curious shaped head, with wattles on each side of its jaws. After taking it in hand and looking at it, they placed it in a hollow tree, intending to return for it when they should be coming home, but they had strolled from the place so far that it was inconvenient to retrace their steps when wearied with rambling.”

      When the lads returned the following day, however, the snake-thing was gone, presumably taken by a hungry scavenger. The stories were far from over, however. Gosse also recorded the experience of a man named Ulick Ramsay, who “…had seen in the hand of the barrack-master at the barracks of a Spanish town, a curious snake, which he, too, had shot among the rocks of a little line of eminences near the railway, about two miles out, called Craigallechie. It was a serpent with a curious shaped head, and projections on each side, which he likened to the fins of an eel, but said were close up to the jaws.”

      Today, the true identity of the crested snake that apparently had the ability to mimic the cries of chickens, remains the downright enigma it was back then.

      FORTY-FOOT SNAKE

      In 1868, a Frenchman named Raud made a truly extraordinary statement regarding a monstrous, near-dragon-like snake seen in the California countryside, earlier in that very same year, and which was estimated to have an overall length of around forty feet. Despite the controversial nature of the story, it was supported by his friend and colleague, F. C. Buylick—both of whom were cutting wood and burning charcoal when the immense creature loomed into view. Raud, who broke off from the wood-cutting to pursue nothing more threatening than a hare, said the following of the beast, which appeared to dwell deep in the woods, swamps, and fields of the area:

      “I had proceeded twenty-five yards, perhaps, when I emerged into an open space not to exceed thirty feet in diameter. As I entered it the hare dragged itself into the brush on the opposite side, and I quickened my steps in pursuit. Almost at the same instant I was startled by a loud, shrill, prolonged hiss, a sound that closely resembled the escape of steam from the cylinder of a locomotive when starting a heavy train. I stopped as suddenly as if my progress had been arrested by a rifle bullet, and looking toward the upper end of the plat my eyes encountered an object the recollection of which even now makes me shiver with horror.

      “Coiled up not more than twenty feet from where I stood was an immense serpent—the most hideously frightful monster that ever confronted mortal man.”

      “Coiled up not more than twenty feet from where I stood was an immense serpent—the most hideously frightful monster that ever confronted mortal man. It was a moment before my dazed senses could comprehend the dreadful peril that threatened me. As the truth of my terrible situation dawned upon me, my first impulse was to fly; but not a limb or muscle moved in obedience to the effort of my will. I was as incapable of motion as if I had been hewn in marble: I essayed to cry for help but the effort at articulation died away in a gurgling sound upon my lips.

      “The serpent lay in three great coils, its head, and some ten feet of its body projecting above, swaying to and fro in undulatory [sic] sinuous, wavy convulsions, like the tentacles of an octopus in the swift current of an ebbing tide. The monster stared at me with its great, hateful, lidless eyes, ever and anon darting its head menacingly in my direction, thrusting out its forked tongue, and emitting hisses so vehemently that I felt its baleful breath upon my cheek. Arching its neck the serpent would dilate its immense jaws until its head would measure at least eighteen inches across, then dart toward me, dis-tending its mouth and exhibiting its great hooked fangs that looked like the talons of a vulture.

      “As I stood in momentary expectation of feeling the tusks and being crushed in the constricting fold of the scaly monster, my situation was appalling beyond description—beyond the conception of the most vivid imagination. The blood ran down my back cold as Greenland ice and congealed in my veins. Every pulse in my body seemed to stand still and my heart