Showing posts with label Mountain Lion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mountain Lion. Show all posts

Monday, May 21, 2018

Twin Peaks, Deaths, and A Deadly Puma Attack


It's that Twin Peak's time of year...



It kicks off every year on Twin Peaks Day.



On April 16, 2018, American actress Pamela Gidley, best known for her role as Teresa Banks, the murder victim in the Twin Peaks prequel Fire Walk With Me (1992), died at the age of 52. She passed away "peacefully" at her home in Seabrook, New Hampshire. A cause of death was not been made public.

Gidley, a former child model, was named the "Most Beautiful Girl in the World" by Wilhelmina Modeling Agency in 1985. She transitioned into acting a year later, appearing alongside Josh Brolin and future Twin Peaks co-star Sherilyn Fenn in Thrashin'.

Gidley was born in Methuen, Massachusetts, and raised in Salem, New Hampshire.  Salem, New Hampshire is known as the site of America's Stonehenge (also called Mystery Hill), a mysterious megalith structure. Allegedly, H. P. Lovecraft visited Mystery Hill in Salem, New Hampshire, and then wrote The Dunwich Horror. Seabrook, New Hampshire, is the location of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Station.




May 21, 2018, is the first anniversary of the rebooting of the David Lynch television series Twin Peaks from 25 years. Series 3, as it was called, premiered on May 21, 2017.



The towns of Snoqualmie, North Bend and Fall City – which became the primary filming locations for stock Twin Peaks exterior footage – are about an hour's drive from the town of Roslyn, Washington, the town used for the series Northern Exposure. Many exterior scenes were filmed in wooded areas of Malibu, California.

One man was killed and another seriously injured when they encountered a cougar on May 19, 2018, while mountain biking in the general area where Twin Peaks was filmed in Washington State.


The area of the cougar attack, which left one human dead, and the cat tracked down & killed was near Snoqualmie Falls, Washington State, the site of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks series.



Authorities said the two men were on a morning bike ride in the foothills near North Bend when the attack occurred. The town is about 30 miles east of Seattle.

The mountain lion ran into the woods and officers with the Washington Department of Fish and Game later tracked it down and shot and killed it, said Capt. Alan Myers of the state’s Fish & Wildlife Police.

The 31-year-old survivor was taken to a hospital in Seattle. He was initially listed in serious condition in the emergency room but was alert and talking; his condition was later upgraded to satisfactory, The Seattle Times reported.

A search and rescue team was dispatched to recover the body of the deceased man.

KIRO-TV reported that the injured man called 911 shortly before 11 a.m. and shouted, “Can you hear me? Help!” and then the call hung up.





Authorities found the cougar standing over the body of the dead biker, the station reported. The first man attacked said the cougar had his entire head in the cat's mouth. The second man jumped off his bike, and ran into the forest. The mountain lion, a 3-year-old thin male, chased him down and killed him.

Reporter Andrew W. Griffin reminds us that in the Series 3 opener, "two young people are killed in that first episode by an entity - their heads torn off."
In the last 100 years in North America, roughly 25 fatalities and 95 nonfatal cougar attacks have been reported, the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife said, but there was only one other fatal attack in the state. However, more attacks have been reported in the western United States and Canada over the past 20 years than in the previous 80 years.

The area of the cougar attack and the Twin Peaks locations are known for weird crimes.



(1) On that same road nine years after Twin Peaks premiered, then 39-year-old Dayva Cross stabbed his wife and two of his stepdaughters to death in their rambling brown ranch house. He kept a third stepdaughter captive in his bedroom for hours, dragging her out occasionally so he could refill his wine glass.
The 13-year-old escaped. Police later found Cross slumped on his bed, smoking a cigarette. The crime rattled Snoqualmie, which was already on edge. Because two weeks before Cross’s killing spree, a family dog in the area had brought home a grisly trophy: part of a human hand that police later traced to a woman’s remains.

(2) In the decade before Twin Peaks, the Green River Killer began his deadly rampage throughout the Pacific Northwest. Gary L Ridgway, described as America’s most prolific serial killer, was a commercial truck painter who preyed on women at the margins of society.
In 2003, he led investigators to the remains of April Buttram, 17, one of at least five victims he buried in and around Snoqualmie and North Bend. The teenager had disappeared 20 years earlier.

(3) In 2014, a tiny body was discovered along a lonely stretch of country road between Snoqualmie and North Bend. Her umbilical cord was still attached. She was wrapped in a towel. Local authorities in rural Washington state named  her Baby Kimball, after the creek near where she was found. Three years have passed. Her life and death remain a mystery. But Valley residents have since erected a small shrine on Southeast North Bend Way to mark where the newborn was discarded. Its sides are rough wood; its roof, pale green metal siding. Inside, there’s a white cross with Baby Kimball written in black marker.


Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and h/t to AWG for 2018 anniversary reminder.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Fayette Factor: New Mystery Felid Sightings


The Fayette Factor is alive and well on the cryptozoological front. The Summer of 2016 in the USA has experienced an intriguing run of Giant Snake reports (Wessie in Maine), animal attacks, and more.

La Fayette, Walker County, Georgia, of course, receives its name from the Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834) and inherits all the "little enchantments" due it from that moniker.

This summer a series of mystery cat encounters have visited themselves upon La Fayette, Georgia. Above is the North LaFayette Elementary School, where the felid was seen.

[Small town, small county newspapers tend to not archive their content. Therefore, large parts of the sighting data is archived here for research purposes.]

The July 2016 article places this newest Georgia cryptid sighting in La Fayette.
Wildlife official investigating possible mountain lion sightings in LaFayette
Posted on Jul 27, 2016
by Josh O'Bryant
A LaFayette school teacher on Tuesday [July 26, 2016] told police he saw two large mountain lions off the city’s four-lane bypass.
According to police reports, high school teacher Cody Lee said he spotted the mountain lions near the intersection of Warthen Street, Round Pond Road and the bypass (U.S. Highway 27 Business) about 6 p.m. on Tuesday, July 26.
Lee said he was stopped at the red light on Round Pond Road when he saw them emerge from the woods and cross Warthen Street to another patch of woods from Oak Park subdivision toward North LaFayette Elementary. At this point, he said, he recognized they were mountain lions because they had long thick tails that arched upward. He said the animals then crossed Warthen and reentered the woods, heading north.
Lee posted about it on his Facebook page...Police searched the area and plan to place trail cameras in the area.
Since the news broke about a mountain lion sighting in the Dogwood Circle subdivision, several residents have contacted the Messenger reporting seeing mountain lions recently and in the past.
Lee said he was taking food to his mother when the incident occurred.
Lee said he called animal control, which took the call very seriously.
He said the situation was frightening as the two animals were heading toward the playground where his daughter goes to school.
The sighting lasted 3-4 seconds, he said.
“They were moving pretty good, right into the woods,” he said.
Lee said he initially thought the animals were deer, then maybe two dogs, but they were rather large with long thick tails.
Lee said it happened so fast, he did not have time to reach for his phone to take a picture and he probably would not have thought to call animal control about the situation if he had not been seeing he reports of mountain lions in the area.


Josh O'Bryant ran an update recently, on August 5, 2016..

A state wildlife official is continuing the investigation into possible mountain lion sightings in LaFayette.
Josh Aldridge, a wildlife technician with the Department of Natural Resources, met with North LaFayette Elementary School principal Sandra Morrison early Thursday morning, Aug. 4, at the school.
Early Wednesday morning, Aug. 4, [2016] Morrison reported seeing a wild animal she believed to be a mountain lion walking in front of the school, in the vehicle lane where students are dropped off and picked up.
Morrison told police the animal was a yellowish-tan color and bigger than a house cat, but smaller than a German shepherd and described the tail of the animal to be as long as her forearm.
Aldridge said he investigated the area Thursday morning, but the ground was too dry to find any evidence of a paw print.
“We are trying to stay on top of this,” Aldridge said. “We are working on trying to figure this out. We would love to give a definitive answer, but cannot at this time.”
Aldridge said he believes Morrison did in fact see something, but isn’t convinced it was a mountain lion based on the description she gave.
There was no surveillance footage available, as the cameras at the school were not fixed on the car lane where Morrison spotted the animal.
Aldridge said this could be a case of mistaken identity, as these sightings occur throughout the United States. But that doesn’t mean DNR isn’t taking the matter seriously, he said.
Aldridge also investigated the area where LaFayette High School teacher Cody Lee said he spotted two mountain lions at Warthen Street in LaFayette .
Lee said he spotted the mountain lions near the intersection of Warthen Street, Round Pond Road and the bypass (U.S. Highway 27 Business) about 6 p.m. on Tuesday, July 26.
Aldridge said he was unable to find any solid paw prints around the area of Lee’s sighting as well due to the dry conditions of the ground.
Aldridge said DNR has received various trail camera pictures of what people feel might be the elusive animal, but none of the photographs are tangible enough evidence to determine if it is in fact a mountain lion rather than a large cat or a bobcat.
Morrison told Aldridge she is using this incident to educate the students at North LaFayette Elementary on wildlife and how to approach wildlife in general, including domesticated animals as well.
Aldridge does not discount what Morrison or Lee witnessed, but isn’t 100 percent certain on what the two educators saw.
DNR regional supervisor and game manager Chuck Waters said DNR is taking the matter seriously and working with local law enforcement, especially LaFayette police Capt. Stacey Meeks, on any and all reported sightings.
Waters said DNR is in regular contact with Meeks, who is keeping DNR informed of each sighting reported to law enforcement.
Later on Thursday, August 6, 2016, the animal was spotted again, out a window of the same school. A teacher says she and at least one student saw a big cat on the school grounds Thursday, heading down Indiana Street.
Thanks to Paul Cropper of Australia for alerting us to this bit of name-creature news.