Squidman

**Habitat** | Freshwater bodies, i.e. lakes, rivers; some sightings are in forests, albeit near bodies of water

The **Squidman**is a very popular cryptid that has been spotted all over the United States and England.

## Description

The Squidman is a very unusual cryptid that appears similar to a squid, just anthropomorphized. It typically stands between 5-10 feet tall and is typically reddish-brown, but it has been sighted in other colors as well, i.e. orange, white, blue, green, purple, one was even variegated and could change its palette. They have large ovalur eyes that sit on a conical head that ends in a sharp "fin", just like a squid's head. Instead of having arms, they have ten long tentacles rotating around their upper body. They have large suckers on the bottoms of their tentacles that they have been seen snatching up fish with; some people have even been attacked by their tentacles before! Their head typically has a sharp beak, but some sightings have no mouth at all. Many reports have shown that Squidmen have a total of six gills laying laterally along their torso. However, the fact that 72% of the sightings are on a terrestrial platform leads to the conclusion that Squidmen have lungs as well. They have typical human legs (although one sighting said they were more tentacle-like) except they are the same color as the rest of the creature and appear to have no phalanges. They have been seen emitting ink from their armpits as a defense mechanism. One odd note that should be mentioned is that Squidmen seem to have some sort of relation to UFOs and extraterrestrials. Many sightings that have taken place include strange lights in the sky either during the sighting or briefly afterwards. The first sighting even mentioned that the creature fled into a "giant metal can that shot into the sky". Whatever this relation to aliens is, it is definitely noteworthy.

## Sightings

The first sighting took place on a stormy night in June, 1959, when a man named Eric Cornwell (who ironically owned a corn farm) was awoken in the middle of the night by multicolored lights that "flashed like a disco ball". He got out of bed to go see what the disturbance was, only to discover that there were two purple squid-like creatures dressed in shiny green metallic suits with a "giant metal can"sitting in his corn crops. He grabbed a pitchfork and started shouting at the creatures to "get out of here!". The creatures simply looked at him and with a slight wave of the "slimy tentacle" the, presumably, male walked backwards into their alleged spaceship. After the supposed female had down the same, the "spaceship's" hatch closed, emitted the same disco colored lights seen earlier, then "shot into the sky, out of sight". Eric went on to say to a local newspaper: "I tell the truth, and I'll never forget the time I met the Squidmen." This was when the name was coined. The next sighting took place a year and a half later in 1961 when a woman named "Jane" (she wished to stay anonymous) was hiking along her own private forest outside of her backyard when she came along a little creek that had just swelled from the melting snow. She said she saw a hunched over reddish-brown creature feasting on some freshly caught crawdad from the creek. She said it was holding the poor animal up to its sharp beak using sticky tentacles. She said she watched it for four more minutes while the creature (who she said was "buck naked but had no signs of anything children couldn't see") delicately slurped up its meal. Afterwards it stood upward and she saw it had a pointy "fin" on its head. It turned around, supposedly saw her, and stared at her with "big, black, empty, eyes", until it seemed to "smile" with its beak and scrambled away into the forest.