FANTASTIC BEASTS... AND WHERE I FIND THEM!
“I’ve hunted more mythical creatures than you’ve had hot dinners,” says freelance cryptozoologist.
ASK ANY MAN WHAT HIS DREAM JOB WOULD BE AND YOU WOULD EXPECT HIM TO SAY FOOTBALLER, TRAIN DRIVER OR ASTRONAUT. BUT YOU’D BE SURPRISED AT THE ANSWER YOU ARE MOST LIKELY TO HEAR… Cryptozoologist. THAT’S ACCORDING TO RON PUSTULES – A FREELANCE CRYPTOZOOLOGIST AND REGISTERED SEX OFFENDER, FROM TRAWDEN, JUST OUTSIDE BURNLEY.
PEOPLE ARE CONSTANTLY ASKING ME HOW I GOT INTO THE CRYPTOZOOLOGY GAME,” CHUCKLES 30-STONE RON. “THE TRUTH IS, I’VE BEEN FASCINATED BY MYTHICAL BEASTS EVER SINCE MY CHILDHOOD, AND IT’S ALWAYS BEEN MY AMBITION TO TRACK DOWN, UNEARTH AND – ULTIMATELY – TO UNDERSTAND THESE FANTASTICAL CRITTERS THAT LIVE UNDISCOVERED IN OUR FORESTS, LAKES, JUNGLES AND SKIES.”
Speaking to his local paper, The Trawden & Winewall Intruder, Pustules, 66, outlined the ins and outs of his unorthodox trade: “I’m sort of like the David Attenborough of animals that don’t exist,” the thrice-divorced father of ten explained. “These fabled creatures you might have read about in books – the Yeti, the Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster – are my bread and butter.”
“My aim is to build a cache of conclusive evidence for their existence via notes, photographs and video footage, in order to study their behaviour and anatomy, and then, hopefully, make a few bob by shooting them with a tranquiliser dar t and flogging them to a zoo.”
Incredibly, many of these legends of folklore have materialised at Pustule’s former place of work – the Lovecraft Leisure Centre & Gymnasium in Barrowford. He told the paper: “I was employed there technically as a drain cleaner, but rumoured sightings of all manner of mythological beasts soon began swirling among the leisure centre’s customers.”
“Before long, I was forced to put down my plunger and don my cryptozoological hat and binoculars in order to investigate.”
And a tearful Ron added: “What I uncovered was a conspiracy that went a ll the way to the top and, ultimately, cost me my job, my livelihood and my freedom.
SAS-QUATCH OUT... HE’S BEHIND YOU!
Ron’s first brush with a cryptozoological being occurred just a few days into his brand new career as a janitor’s assistant at the leisure centre.
Due to a few dozen misunderstandings, I’d been sacked from my previous twenty jobs and placed on the sex offenders’ register. But the manager at the Lovecraft Leisure Centre was kind enough to take a chance on me, possibly because I had accidentally forgotten to mention all the sex offender stuff on my CV.
I started the job, and to my surprise
I found that I enjoyed it. I would make my rounds every morning, my trusty plunger and an industrial-sized tub of caustic soda in my hand, giving a cheery wink to the Lycra-clad female clientele who I’d see squatting, jumping and stretching through the window blinds of the gym.
But before too long, things took a sinister turn. I began to overhear whispers among some of the lady customers about a ‘disgusting hairy beast’ who roamed the building’s corridors, and was occasionally caught leering in at the all-women yoga classes.
I felt my heart race. I’d read enough Wikipedia articles on cryptids to know exactly who… or rather what they were referring to: BIGFOOT.
Also known as the ‘Sasquatch’, Bigfoot is a hirsute, ape-like beast hailing originally from the American Pacific Northwest. How on earth the hairy fucker had found his way into an East Lancs leisure centre, I wasn’t sure.
But there was one thing I was sure of …I was going to catch him.
BEAST
I arrived at work early next morning with my camera poised and ready around my neck. For a cryptozoologist, there is no bigger fear than your equipment malfunctioning at the very moment you sight a folkloric beast.
suddenly“So to check my camera was working, I snapped a few practice shots through the gym window of the ladies limbering up before their spin class.
I’d taken a few hundred or so of these test photos, when one of the women screamed and pointed a trembling finger in my direction.
My heart nearly burst out of my chest. The mighty Sasquatch was surely right behind me. I spun round, expecting to see the ferocious, missing-link-like figure towering over me. But there was no one there! The hominid brute must of scarpered.
The ladies were now sprinting towards me, clearly eager to get another sight of the nightmarish entity that has haunted American folklore for centuries. But I was one step ahead of them. I tore off down the corridor, ready to snap the photo that might make me a millionaire. Unfortunately, though, as I turned the corner, I slammed straight into my supervisor, Mr Dodder.
To cut a long story short, the ladies had got the wrong end of the stick and assumed I was trying to take pictures of them, rather than of a marauding Sasquatch. I laughed out loud at the preposterousness of the idea – but incredibly Mr Dodder took their side and hit me with a verbal warning.
It was the ladies’ word against mine, as well as some substantial CCTV evidence, so I took the slap on the wrist with good grace, and resolved to forget all about the Bigfoot rumours.
ANOTHER FINE NESS
Pustule knuckled back down and focused on his janitorial duties. But it wasn’t long before rumours began to circulate of another fabled beastie sighted at his place of work.
About two weeks after the Bigfoot sighting, I was unclogging some matted hair from the swimming pool drain, when I happened to catch my trousers and pants on the diving board and tumble half-naked into the water.
My stomach turned as I watched several unsuspecting female clients striding about absolutely Billy Bollocks in the communal showers. It was clear to me that this ‘loophole’ could very easily be exploited by any twisted pervert that
to check my camera It was an accident that could have was working, I happened to anyone. But as I snapped a few swam to the side of the pool to get out, practice shots of I noticed something strange. There were a couple of wooden the ladies limbering slats missing from the ladies’ changing up before their spin room window, which meant that class through the – at the right angle from in the pool, gym window. you could see directly inside.
and“got their sick kicks off watching nude ladies soap themselves, and I made a mental note to come back every day check that it wasn’t being misused.
GOVERNESS
Not long after, a fresh crop of strange rumours had begun circulating. During a four-hour stint cleaning a blocked cubicle in the women’s lavatory, I overheard whispers about a ‘grotesque, bloated creature’ that had been spotted gliding ominously through the swimming pool, its cold unblinking eyes staring right into the ladies’ locker rooms.
I gasped silently as I realised the truth: these ladies had caught a glimpse of THE LOCH NESS MONSTER!
An icon of cryptozoological folklore, ‘Nessie’ is an aquatic dinosaur – a living fossil that has somehow survived since the Jurassic era. She usually keeps to the Scottish Highland Loch named after her, so I can only think she got into the leisure centre swimming pool through the pipes.
I was wary that my last brush with a mythical monster had led to trouble, but a peek at Nessie herself is every red-blooded cryptozoologist’s dream. I simply couldn’t pass up the oppor tunity to capture concrete evidence of the beast’s existence.
VIXEN
The very next day, I snuck into the empty pool just after the ‘Yummy Mummies Water Aerobics Class’ had finished.
My trousers and pants had once again become ensnared on the diving board, but I was so excited about seeing Nessie that I barely noticed. I’d bought a waterproof case for my trusty camera, and I waited for the long-necked plesiosaur to appear. Whilst waiting, I took a few photographs of the missing changing room blinds to show to Mr Dodder. Once he saw the problem, he would surely give me the nod to repair them.
I quickly snapped a few hundred pictures of the absent slats and, unavoidably, the nude milfs behind them. And then suddenly I heard a blood-curdling shriek that turned my stomach to ice.
One of the slim, birthday-suited young mums was pointing at something behind me. ‘Oh my God!’ she screeched. ‘That disgusting beast!’
COMET
My heart was thundering. I knew I was about to come face to face with the most iconic creature in pseudoscientific history. But as I plunged down into the chlorinated depths and scanned around, Nessie was nowhere to be seen!
She must have heard the shapely milf’s scream and slithered down one of the pipes to the filter. I swam frantically and began clawing at the duct beneath the water, desperate to squeeze myself through and take chase. But before I could, I felt a hand grip my shoulder and pull me up to the surface.
It was my supervisor, Mr Dodder. I began telling him how I’d just had a brush with the planet’s most fabled aquatic reptile, but he’d already put two and two together to make five. He gabbled some ludicrous story about how I’d been caught ‘ogling customers in a state of undress’. I tried to prove my innocence by showing him my photos of the missing window blinds, but that only seemed to enrage him fur ther.
He docked my wages and hit me with a final warning – if I became embroiled in another cryptozoological caper I could well lose my job altogether…
CREATURE (DIS)COMFORTS
Unfortunately, the very next day, Pustule became embroiled in another cryptozoological caper and lost his job altogether.
I won’t go into the details, but I’d heard rumours that a Thylacine had been spotted in the ladies’ sauna and I decided to investigate. These doglike marsupials were believed to have become extinct a century ago, and I was keen to get a photograph of the first living specimen in 100 years. However, I was discovered taking photographs underneath the slatted benches, and I was sacked on the spot.
I left with my P45 in my hand, and as I drowned my sorrows with a few bottles of white cider in the precinct, I pondered why Mr Dodder had been so stubborn in his refusal to listen to the truth.
Many people are sceptical about the existence of these non-existent creatures, and rightly so, but why Mr Dodder should have been so closed-minded was baffling. And then suddenly, it hit me.
Dodder was a Bilderberg Group agent, working for the ‘Illuminati’, who had charged him with keeping the planet’s secret fauna of fantastical monsters hidden from human awareness. It was the only explanation.
This was a conspiracy that went all the way to the top of the East Lancashire leisure industry. And I was going to prove it.
CUPID
Later that night, after another litre or two of White Lightning to steady my nerves, I snuck back to the leisure centre. I’d forgotten to hand in a spare set of keys that I’d had cut, so I was able to gain access to the building and Mr Dodder’s office. I was on the lookout for documents that proved my former boss’s involvement with history’s biggest cryptozoological cover-up.
But what I found was something FAR more unsettling.
Stood behind Mr Dodder’s desk were three ungodly figures – a halfman-half-horse, a scaly dog with the head of a lizard and a vast panther-like creature, with glistening red eyes and sharp yellow fangs. I’d watched enough David Icke YouTube videos to know exactly what these monstrosities were... A CENTAUR, A CHUPACABRA and THE BEAST OF BODMIN MOOR!
Startled by my arrival, the beasts began rampaging wildly around the office. The centaur galloped about, scattering Mr Dodder’s neatly ordered papers, toppling his filing cabinets and smashing some framed photographs of his wife. The Beast of Bodmin Moor urinated and defecated freely across the carpet, presumably to mark its territory. And for some reason, the Chupacabra wrote ‘DODDER IS A BALD TWAT’ in marker pen on the wall.
SID
I pulled out my phone to film this brainboggling display, only later to discover that I had the camera switched to ‘selfie’ mode. Consequently, all I’d captured was my own face as I lurched around Mr Dodder’s office in what appeared to be a state of drunkenness, but was actually terror.
At some point I must of been kicked in the face by the centaur, because I can’t remember much of what happened. But I woke up a few hours later with a sore head to find the mythological beasts had disappeared and Mr Dodder was stood over me with a face like thunder.
He knew full well that I’d exposed him as the clandestine cryptozookeeper he really was. And I knew full well that he would pull every Illuminati trick in the book to keep me quiet. Sure enough, Dodder used his connections to have the coppers called, and I was soon in the back of a police car.
Fur thermore, his contacts in the police forensics department were able to ‘prove’ that the urine and faeces in his office matched my DNA.
I’m on bail at the minute, but I’m looking at a couple of years inside with another ten years on the sex offenders’ register when I get out. And all because I was brave enough to peek through the looking glass at the hidden world of myths, magic and monsters within.
NEXT WEEK: Ron is badly beaten by security staff after investigating rumours of a Kraken in the fitting room at Miss Selfridge.
My pants trousers had once and again become ensnared on the diving board, but I was so excited about seeing Nessie that I barely noticed.