DATE:  Various

TIME:  N/A

LOCATION:    Tennessee

TERRAIN:   Wooded

OBSERVED:
I'm sending this in regards to your interest in some other Southern Cryptids I've come acroos while doing
some of my research...If you want to post em that's fine,but I'm mainly sending them to see if you've ever
heard any similar stories in your "neck of the woods" so to speak...

1.)Thunderbird sighting?
Date-Mid to Late 80's
Number of Witnesses-3
Location-Boyscout camp near Cookeville Tennessee

Witnesses were doing volunteer work at this Campground,cleaning up trash left by other visitors...
Witness number one stated that he and witness number two decended a small embankment to retrieve what they thought to be a large garbage bag tied in a dead tree,when to their suprise,this "garbage bag" spread
it's wings and began flapping them...Witness number three(one of the ScoutMasters present and witness
number one's uncle) stated that this bird was like no other he had ever seen in his 40+ years..."Huge and
black" he replyed,"atleast twice as big as any eagle I've seen in zoos."...It then flapped it's wings and
took off towards the nearby mountains the witnesses said...
This Bird (at least to me) sounds alot like the same bird that was reported to have attacked a young boy in
Northern Illinois in the late 70s early 80s...This same bird (or atleast what was thought to be it) was
photographed on 8mm film by a native american elder and was (as he called it) a Thunderbird...

2.)Ghostcat/Phantom cat?
Date-Late 40s
Witness-2
Location-Briceville Tennessee in Anderson county(near Oakridge)

According to witness number one (it should be noted that witness number two died some years ago)
stated that her husband and herself where walking back from Lake City (the nearest town to Briceville) when
her husband grew quite uneasy...He demanded she walk faster so that they may reach home,for he feared they
were being stalked by what he called a "Ghost cat" or "Ghost Panther" (she said she couldn't remember which
one it was exactly)...Hurrying up their steps they reached their house and witness number one claims that
whatever this "Ghost cat" was it was heard shortly after their arrival home,walking on the roof,causing
the roof to creak...
When I asked her if she saw this "Ghost cat" she replyed "No,but I didn't have to for me to know it was
there."
Anyhow...as far as this one goes I haven't a clue as to what it could have been,except possibly a "phantom
mountain lion" that had managed to stay undetected in the rural area up until the 1940s...
Interestingly enough,after researching this case a little more,I've talked to a couple of area residents
that claim up until recently that you could hear "Screaming Jacks" up on top of the nearby mountains
"whaling away" as they put it...
I'm going to try and make a trip up there in the near future...My mother has some realitives in Anderson county and I'm gonna see if I can freeload off em for a weekend to check these stories out...I know from my relatives in the area that there are dozens of large deep abandonded mines in the surrounding mountains, and this seems to me to be a perfect place for G.Blacki to hang out in such a rural area...

3.)Giant Catfish and Giant Turtles

Now I don't have dates or exact locations for these sightings,but many of them come from people I've known
my entire life,and the people in question aren't the type to make up stories for attention...On the contrary...I have to work pretty hard to get them to talk about them sometimes...
The Giant Catfish reported is locally known to most...A few years ago we had a new bridge built at the entrance of Rock Island State Park here in Warren County Tenneessee...While they were surveying the bottom to find the best area to place the foundation,one diver (unknown name) came up and refused to go back down...When asked why,he energetically claimed to have swam up on a Catfish that was at least 10ft long sitting on the bottom where he was to survey...Now,Catfish in Tennessee do get big,but not 10ft big! Another diver went down a while later and claimed to have not seen anything where the first diver did,but think about this for a minute... The diver probably scared whatever fish where in the area as he made his frantic swim for the surface,and it's only logical to think that this Catfish (10ft or not) would have swam off scared...There have been a few more reported sightings of these giant catfish up the river a bit in an area known as the "Blue Hole"...This area is extremely deep (usually exceeding most bottom finders fishermen use) and a few times in the past people have drown in this Blue Hole and never been recovered...On a couple occassions divers came up talking about huge catfish just "sitting on the bottom" but to my knowledge none of these "Giant Catfish" have ever been caught, although there was a 160lb Catfish caught just 10 yrds from the State Parks swimming area...ya never know I guess...

Now as far as the Giant Turtles go I only have these two stories,one being my own- A friend of mine named Jaime Nunley (he said I could use his name) likes to "float the river"(basically just sprawling on an innertube and floating with the current of the river) here on the Collins River...He told me that he was floating the river one day when he felt something hit his leg in relativly shallow water and when he propped himself up to see what it was,it
was a Turtle walking along the bottom of the river...Now...Is this fact?...Jaime isn't the kind to say things like this...He's very down to earth and "common" if you will...
Now as for my own personal "giant turtle" sighting it went like this...
Myself,and two other close friends where at the same Rock Quarry here in Warren County that I had what
might have been a sasquatch encounter that I reported to Mary Green...All we saw was a very big turtle
walking along the Lake bottom...Now,I realize that water displacement makes things appear bigger than
they are,but to this day that turtle still looked huge to me...We had heard later on that someone had let an
Alligator Snapping Turtle loose in the Lake,and we just assumed that this was what we saw,and I'm sure it
was,but damn that Alligator Snapper was big!  We ironically named him Boscoe after an old crypto
tale of "the Beast of Boscoe" from Indiana where a farmer claimed to have a giant Alligator snapper in
his pond...so big he claimed that it had eaten two of his horses...

4.)Giant Lizard
Date-1930s-1940s
Witness-1
Location-either Anderson county Tennessee or Knox county Tennessee
Witness stated that she remembered as a young child,a newspaper clipping talking of a large lizard (she said
she though it was around 6ft long) that was captured in the foresaid county by a couple of hunters...There
are some very interesting things about this case-
1.) there is a newspaper clipping (which I'm busily trying to track down)
2.) The hunters were reported capturing it,not Killing it...which meant something was done with it later...
Now there are many Native American legends of Giant reptiles in North America,both in the water (such as
Ogopogo of canada) and on the land...I wonder if possibly,just possibly there may have been some sort
of large (monitor size) lizard that may have been native to North America and possibly have only been
rendered extinctint he last 60-70yrs or so...Now probablity would dictate that this was some form of
Monitor or Tegu lizard that escaped from a Zoo,but in the early 20th century there was no such place in this
part of the country...That and probability also would state that G.Blacki doesn't exist,but we're not
exactly the type of people to let that stop us now are we?...LOL

Special Thanks goes out to Randy Hutchings for sharing these stories with all of us.