Investigating the Montauk Monster: The Story Deepens!

[Nina]

Investigating the Montauk Monster: The Story Deepens!



Yesterday, Gawker ran what appeared to be a photo of a bloated, leathery animal corpse — only it was like no animal anyone had seen before. A stout, hairless creature with a beak, claws, and the almond-shaped eyes familiar from renderings of space aliens, it looked, in short, like a monster. Hence the headline: "Dead Monster Washes Ashore in Montauk." The photo had come over e-mail to Anna Holmes, the managing editor at Jezebel, from an employee at Evolutionary Media Group, in Los Angeles; Holmes passed it on to Gawker. Because it came from a marketing company, Gawker surmised, "our guess is that it's viral marketing for something." They later pointed to  a Cartoon Network show, Cryptids Are Real, which features similar-looking chubby monsters. We called Evolutionary, where a woman named Alanna Navitski, who claimed to be responsible for the tip, swore it was not a viral-marketing campaign. "This is what happened," she said.

"I got this e-mail and opened it from my girlfriend who works at Harris Publications, which has nothing to do with anything. Anyway, my girlfriend's sister was there with her friends and one of them took the picture. And we were like, 'This is the scariest s**t we've ever seen.' And so — I'm in marketing — were like, 'Maybe we should send it to a few blogs and see if anyone else is as freaked out as we are.' We had no idea that it would turn into this. Now it's literally a beast of its own. But it has nothing to do with any kind of campaign."

In fact, this turned out to be true. A number of eyewitnesses say they saw the monster with their own eyes. "I saw the monster," says Michael Meehan, a 22-year-old waiter at the Surfside Inn, which sits above the beach where the monster washed up. "I just came walking down the beach and everyone was looking at it. No one knew what it was. It kind of looked like a dog, but it had this crazy-looking beak. I mean, I would freak out if something like that popped up next to me in the water."

So did anyone there, you know, do anything about it?

"This woman kept calling animal control," said Meehan. "She wanted to name it after herself. I think they came and got it. The carcass. Whatever it was."

But did they? The East Hampton branch of animal control referred Daily Intel to a supervisor who did not return calls for comment. And Navitski, of Evolutionary Media Group, says her friend's sister (who doesn't want to talk to the press, though Plum TV will host another woman, Jenna Hewitt, who claims she took a photo, tomorrow) says animal control never came. "They say an old guy came and carted it away," she said. "He said, 'I'm going to mount it on my wall.'

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/07/the_monster_of_montauk.html

[Kadesh]

 Honestly... it looks like a cat. Same shape of skull. And the 'beak' could just be that the animal had a deformity. Or it's face was bashed against rocks and coral, shaving the bone down to what appears to be a beak. 

[TheTerror]

wow is it wearing a braclet

[TheTerror]

yes it is wearing a bracelet

[Kadesh]

 No... it's more likely a piece of seaweed. Or... to stretch it a bit... a leash or some other sort of restraint.

[TheTerror]

oh........dang.......told you it was that
'goes off wisteling so nobody knows he was wrong'

[Kadesh]

 No worries... I've been wrong plenty of times on here!

[TheTerror]

wat ev
ya I am too sometime

[Petling]

It looks like a broken restraint or something. Could be an ordinary animal someone tortured, then dumped. That would explain some stuff, any news of an autopsy yet?

[Kadesh]

 Like I said before... I think it's a cat.

[Petling]

The body shape is all wrong though, unless it got bloated in the sun before it was discovered?

[Kadesh]

 Being in the water bloats you as well. It said it was found on a beach... I'd assume it washed up...

[Petling]

Yeah, could the water have been why the fur came off? Or maybe it was removed by the pervert if it was, indeed, tortured?

[Kadesh]

 No... in order to remove the fur without hurting the skin, you'd have to leave it in the sun for a long time.. (tanning a hide) And if it was left in the sun and worked, the corpse would be even more damaged and rotted than it is now. It's just the way it is due to exposure. And the 'restraints' we're seeing could just be seaweed. (as I mentioned earlier.)

[Petling]

True, true. Not disputing anybodies claims, just throwing in my opinion.