The Inhumanoids

by Barton M Nunnelly

  In 1944, an Alaskan fisherman named Frank Read, reported that he’d came upon a frightening human-like creature attacking one of his fish traps. He described it as having a human head, narrow shoulders, long, sharp looking claws and a long tail. The account was briefly mentioned in Alaska Life magazine which reported that, after the aquatic nightmare’s efforts were disturbed by Mr. Read, the thing quickly swam away and was never seen again.

  On Saturday, November 8th, 1958, an unusual accident occurred in

  Riverside, California. A nightmarish creature reportedly leaped in front of a car driven by a Mr. Charles Wetzel near the point where North Main Street crosses the Santa Ana River.

  “It had a round, scare-crowish head,” Wetzel said of the creature, “like something out of Halloween. It wasn’t human. It had a longer arm than anything I’d ever seen. When it saw me in the car it reached all the way back to the windshield and began clawing at me. It didn’t have any ears. The face was all round. The eyes were shining like something fluorescent, and it had a protuberant mouth. It was scaly, like leaves.”

  Terrified, Wetzel reached for his pistol and stomped on the gas.

  “The thing fell back from the car and it gurgled,” he said. “The noise it made didn’t sound human. I think I hit it. I heard something hit the pan under the car.” Wetzel made it out of the encounter with nothing more than some scratches on his windshield and a case of raw nerves.

  Fortean investigator and author Loren Coleman was able to interview Wetzel in 1982, during which a more detailed account of the encounter, and the creature itself, emerged. I present it here, with permission from the author, as it appeared in his phenomenal 1983 work; ‘Mysterious America:’

  “Charles Wetzel, born July 8, 1934, was driving his green, two-door 1952 Buick Super near Riverside, California, when he saw “it.” Saturday, November 8, 1958, is a night Charlie told me he would not soon forget. He even remembers the radio station (KFI in Los Angeles) he had tuned in. Wetzel neared that part of North Main Street where the Santa Ana River infrequently overflows its banks, and sure enough, at a spot where the road dips, water was rushing across the pavement. So, Charles slowed down.

  Within moments he was struck by two sensory events which caught him off guard. First, his car radio started to transmit lots of static. He changed stations, he told me, but to no avail. Next, he saw what he thought was a temporary danger sign near the flooded site. Before he could think twice about any of this, Charles Wetzel saw a six-foot-tall creature bound across his field of vision and stop and stop in front of his Buick. The creature had a “round, scarecrowish head like something out of Halloween,” Wetzel told reporters at the time.

  He described it then, and to me later, as having no ears; no nose; a beak-like, protuberant mouth; and fluorescent, shining eyes. The skin was “scaly like leaves but definitely not feathers,” Wetzel recalled during our 1982 talk.

  The creature was waving “sort of funny” with its incredibly long arms, and seemed to be walking from the hips, almost as if it had no knees. Wetzel then remembered another detail not noted at the time: the legs stuck out from the side of the torso, not from the bottom. The gurgling sounds it made were mixed with high-pitched screams. When it saw Wetzel, it reached across the hood and began clawing at the windshield.

  Terrified, Wetzel grabbed a .22 High Standard pistol he kept in the car because he was often on the road at night. Clutching the gun, but not wanting to break the one barrier he saw between himself and the beast. the frightened Californian stepped on the gas.

  “Screeching like a f----r,” as Wetzel graphically put it, the creature tumbled forward off the hood and was run over by the car. Wetzel could hear it scrape the pan under engine, and later police lab tests revealed that something had indeed scrubbed the grease from the Buick’s underside.

  The police used bloodhounds to search the area, but the dogs found nothing and the officers were left with only the sweeping claw marks on Wetzel’s windshield to ponder. Then, the very next night, a black something jumped out of the underbrush near the same site and frightened another motorist.”

  Since nothing was later found at the site it might be presumed that the scaly Inhumanoid survived the incident as well, especially considering the fact that a similar creature, if not the same one, was seen in the foothills of Corona just a few years later.

  On a warm spring night, teenagers Dave Wilson and Tom McKelvy had decided to take a shortcut through the lemon groves above Corona. They were late for an engagement, there was a full moon out, and they were going along at a pretty good clip when Dave thought he saw something ahead of them and brought the truck to a stop. The two climbed out as the dust settled around them, flashing the spotlight in a wide arc through the trees. They noticed movement and aimed the light in an area about 75 feet in front of them. Then, to their utter shock, a huge figure covered with shaggy, gray hair emerged from the trees.

  “It must have been nine feet tall,” Dave later said. “It had a scarecrow head; really round. It had no neck and really gaping (bulging) eyes. Its front teeth pointed outward and it had what looked like claws.” The creature made a “metallic screech,” seemed to lurch to one side, then came straight at them. The teenagers scrambled back into the vehicle and rammed it into reverse and peeled out, coming to a spinning stop some seventy yards away.

  Glancing in the rearview mirror, Dave saw the creature, eyes bulging, still coming fast. It extended a long arm and reached for the tailgate of the pickup. Dave yelled; “It’s on us! It’s on us!” and slammed down the gas pedal, disappearing into the night at breakneck speed. The next day Dave, Tom and another friend returned to the scene to look around. They knew that without any evidence to support their outrageous claims no one would believe their story. The three then found a single large footprint pressed an inch deep into the ground. It was 18 inches long by 7 inches wide and showed very clearly three large, slightly pointed toes.

  Then the boys, fearing for the safety of the general public, took their story to the police. Two officers accompanied the youths back to the site a short time later and studied the track. They told the teens that it was fake, that they’d been the victims of a practical joker, and to go home and forget about it.

  This they did, until about a year later when Dave, along with another friend, saw the same creature on a dirt road just south of Chase Drive, in the lemon groves. It had a “pushed-in nose and clawed hands,” Dave immediately reported to the authorities. It had also left the area permeated with a pungent odor like dead animals. The vicinity seemed to be a hotbed of both UFO and creature activity, and Henry Leppard, a reporter for the Corona Daily Independent, began running a string of articles about the high strangeness going on in the lemon groves. This continued until, one day, two policemen had paid him a visit. Afterward he was “down” on the whole business and wrote no more about any of it. But the activity continued.

  One family awoke to find all their rabbits once kept in a backyard cage, slaughtered. There was a perfectly round hole in the locked door of the rabbit cage, with fine hair about six inches long sticking from the wire. There was no blood to be found, dried or otherwise, but a large print was found in the soft dirt by the back door of the house. It was 15 inches long and showed four toes. He had noticed a foul odor, he said, like rotten eggs, while he was in the yard.

  Also in 1958, 14-year-old, Priscilla Garduno Wolf and two other girls, had a frightening experience in the San Luis Valley in New Mexico. The three had gone to play basketball at a friend’s home in Sanford, in the San Luis Valley and stayed a little too long. It was getting late in the afternoon and, as they said their goodbye’s, their friend’s mother warned them to go straight home without delay. For the last few nights, she claimed, she’d seen a tall man-like figure standing on the other side of the fence across the road from their home. The figure just stood there, never moving, by the ditch, she said, which was full of water for irrigation purposes. The thing unnerved the dogs, causing them to bark
furiously at it.

  On the way home, one of the girls suggested they wade in the water of the irrigation ditch for a while to relieve some of the summer heat, so they took off their shoes and stepped in. They had made it less than a block away from their friend’s home when they spotted a man-like shadow standing on the other side of the fence by the ditch.

  It just stood there in the shadows, watching them as they warily passed it. Then it ran and dove into the water and began moving toward them beneath the surface at high speed. All three girls wasted no time in getting out of the water and running the rest of the way home. They returned the next day, Wolf said, and found strange, three-toed footprints beside the ditch left by the creature she refers to as the ‘lizard man.’

  Like so many others, a vast array of paranormal experiences seemed to follow Wolf throughout her life, including UFO and spectral phenomena, but the lizard man was not quite through with her either. Another encounter, again there in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, was yet to come. She later stated;

  “My grandfather had a small guest cabin room for guests and travelers who would walk by there on their way to Taos, NM. So, nobody used it after grandpa died, but one night I slept in there with my husband and late at night we heard someone trying to open the door. We also had our gun with us. It was real weird because we could see a big shadow of someone outside, but we were too chicken to go outside.

  Suddenly we heard the heavy footsteps on top of the roof, back and forth, and heavy breathing. It sounded like the small cabin was going to cave in. I screamed and the noise stopped. We didn’t sleep at all that night but we never went outside until daylight. We told my dad and he said it was the devil! Dad burned the cabin down. Claimed it had an evil spirit there. But my father’s mom had a cabin that was possessed and it was real haunted. My brother burned it down.”

  The area around Lake Wilson, Hawaii was also busy during the 1950s when several students from the Wahiawa Elementary School reported seeing a horrible ‘green lady,’ with scaly skin, long green claws and hair that looked like seaweed, and in the early Fall of 1966 in Breckinridge, Kentucky, a nine-year-old boy named Joseph saw a very unusual creature, sketched at left by author, one night at around 1 a.m. while at his Stephensport home.

  Joseph wrote:

  “When I was around 9 years old living in Breckenridge County I had the most hair-raising experience of my life!

  Sketch by author based on witness description.

  One night while fast asleep in my bed I woke (up) to a loud commotion outside my bedroom window, as if something (had) hit the side of my house. I sprang to the window and looked out but saw nothing. So, I ran to the living room and pulled back the curtains to the window of the front door and came face to face with the; strangest creature! I can only describe it as a “lizard-man,” although the only “human” thing about it was the fact that it stood on two legs and was about 5’6” to 6’ tall!

  As you could imagine we really startled each other! It quickly turned and ran for the creek next to my house and I jumped back from the window! I then ran to an adjacent window to catch a glimpse of it as it ran away on two legs towards the creek which was about 75 yards from my house. I lost sight of it as it disappeared into the darkness.”

  When further questioned about the strange creature’s appearance, Joseph added:

  “It was very amphibious looking with scales covering its entire body. I could definitely see that this creature had webbed feet and webbed hands. Its color was a dark, brownish green. What I remember the most about its face were these huge rows of gills which flared out on both side of the face. Its face was very “hard” looking with little dark eyes, similar to a snake or lizard. I can’t recall a nose or lips as the face to face encounter only lasted a second or two. There was this ridge-like feature which started on the forehead and ran back over the top of its head, kind of peaked at the top.”

  Joseph also provided details about the area in which the encounter took place. The house was located on an acre where Sinking Creek meets the Ohio River. Sinking Creek originates 15 miles upstream in Big Springs, Ky. An interesting fact, Joseph said, was this creek is the only natural trout/spring fed creek in the entire state. Just past the town of Sample, it disappears 12 miles underground (thus the name “Sinking Creek”), and then resurfaces in an area further upstream in an explosion of bubbling water.

  As far as he was aware, nobody has ever dared to dive far enough down into the creek to determine an accurate depth of point of origin. The creek is believed to be part of the vast underground water system which connects the many caverns and caves of Western Ky., including the vast and mysterious Mammoth Cave; the largest known network of subterranean tunnels and passageways in the world. Joseph was interviewed in 2005, by Bigfoot investigator, Charlie Raymond who writes:

  “Joseph appears to be very credible. He is now 49 years old, married, with two children in college. The details of his encounter remain true to his report. He kept stressing how “amphibious looking” the creature was and that it definitely ran on two feet. He added that its body was proportionate to a man’s but neither muscles nor genitalia were noticed. What struck him the most was how quick it was! Still to this day he can’t even imagine someone having a costume “that life-like,” not today, not 40 years ago, especially in the remote parts of Breckinridge, Kentucky!”

  From one end of North America to the other, the entire continent is home to these bizarre aquatic oddities. A pale pink-colored reptilian inhumanoid was sighted by an anonymous witness in British Columbia in 1967. He claimed that the creature he saw was over seven feet tall. Another giant, lizard-like creature reportedly terrorized the vicinity of Lafayette, New Jersey in 1973. And lest we forget, the most well-known case of amphibious inhumanoid activity, the Ohio “Frogman.”

  The Loveland Frogman

  The first, and by far the strangest, appearance of the Ohio Frogman occurred at Branch Hill, Ohio one early morning in March of 1955. At about 4:00 a.m. businessman Robert Hunnicutt was driving and sighted three strange humanoids as they knelt by the side of the road. He later described them as about 3 feet-tall with slender arms, “frog faces” with normal, human eyes without eye-brows. They held dark objects in their hands which emitted blue flashes. Intrigued, Hunnicutt pulled over to investigate. The next thing he knew, he said, he was driving towards the local police station with no memory at all of anything after he’d pulled over. The entities were wearing gray-colored, tight-fitting clothes, he further recalled, with the exposed skin also being gray.

  A similar creature, though a somewhat smaller version, was seen several times by a number of credible witnesses including two police officers during the early 1970s in Loveland, Ohio. On March 3rd, 1972, a Loveland police officer was driving down Riverside Road around 1 a.m. when he noticed in his headlights what he thought was an injured dog lying at the side of the road. As the location was a rural one, there were no streetlights to help illuminate the road, but the night was chilly and clear and with the aid of the cruiser’s headlights he could see quite clearly. He pulled the vehicle over and parked, thinking he could perhaps give some aid to the injured animal. Then, to his complete amazement, the ‘dog’ stood erect on its hind legs; and it definitely was no dog! The officer later described the strange thing as standing between three and four feet-tall, seventy pounds, with leathery skin and looking like a giant lizard or frog.

  On being seen by the witness, the entity leapt easily over a guardrail and disappeared into the dense undergrowth that grew along the banks of the Miami River. Shaken somewhat, a short time later he convinced a fellow officer to return with him to the scene of the encounter. The two followed the creature’s trail to the muddy river where they discovered unusual spoor in the form of scrape marks on the bank that led down into the water.

  Two weeks later, another Loveland police officer had an eerily similar experience when he also saw in his headlights what he took to be an injured animal lying alongside the road near a
guardrail overlooking the Miami River. When he stopped his car to inspect the carcass, it suddenly rose up onto its haunches into a squatting position. It limped over to the guardrail as the officer drew his service revolver and fired a shot, but missed. Then it stepped over the rail and descended the bank into the river. Interestingly, this officer later recanted his story to researchers, saying that the animal in question was nothing more than someone’s pet lizard which had escaped its aquarium.

  Despite the officer’s explanation, no citizen came forward to report that their four-foot tall, seventy pound, bipedal, reptilian pet had gone missing. Perhaps he’d grown tired of the local infamy that inevitably comes when things of this nature are made public. In any event, a sketch of the Loveland Frogman was produced which seems to show a diminutive bipedal, frog-like entity with a short, ribbed fin running down its back. The entity apparently grew tired of sleeping on the roadways.

  It is interesting to note that the aboriginal folklore of Australia contains mention of such frog-like inhumanoids. The Yara-ma-yha-who or, “The little laughing boy who never dies,” is known as a sinister frog-like humanoid, diminutive in stature, but very evil. It does not live in the water, however, but is described as a tree-dwelling vampiric entity that springs upon its victims, clasping them with its sucker-like hands and draining them of blood.

  Another bipedal lizard-man appeared in Milford, Kentucky, a typical little river town sitting along the banks of the mighty Ohio in northern Trimble County. In October of 1975, frightened residents reported what they described as a giant, tailless lizard that walked upright like a man. The actual identity of these aquatic anomalies may never be discovered, but one thing is sure; of the nearly two-hundred varieties of fish which are known to inhabit Ohio’s and Kentucky’s rivers and streams; these creatures are not among them.