jupitersterrain four

a human face and burning piercing eyes that fixed themselves 
upon him as its wings stretched out over the mountainside, 
before sinking into the hillside and disappearing

build a beast or maybe look elsewhere  ... 

It’s not every day that you encounter a malevolent horse-man, 
a demonic horned cat, or a murderous vampire caterpillar 
in modern-day Britain, but as can be seen from the above accounts, 
it’s not beyond the realms of possibility

was abruptly immobilised by a beam of blue light, 
and then saw three decidedly futuristic robotic entities, who 
transported him inside the vessel. Here, he was subjected 
not only to the customary alien examination but also to a 
slide show of sorts, before being somewhat rudely 
ejected back into the street again, after which the craft disappeared

a featureless head shaped like a rugby ball standing erect on its tip, 
and equipped with a horizontal belt of blue mirror-like structures

terrors of the zoo form kind. Could it have been a pooka – Ireland’s evil supernatural goblin horse? beware of the big eyes. and was 
shocked to see a grotesque creature crouching on the floor 
to the left of her bed, glowing slightly in the darkness and gazing at her 
with what she considered to be an unblinking stare of outright evil and obscenity

its most striking feature were its huge eyes

She lay there, rendered immobile by its seemingly mocking, 
revolting stare for some time, before, with the onset 
of dawn, it slowly faded away, and the intense coldness that until 
then had filled the room vanished with it. Years later, she learned 
that her successor at the school also witnessed this entity, 
but in a different bedroom

this monstrous entity leaped down into the room below, 
but it vanished before it landed, so that only its 
spine-chilling yowl echoed in the shadows. He placed his finger on the house’s 
precise location on a map, only for his mind to be filled with swirling images of 
hate-filled cats and an image of a man about to hang himself. He made enquiries about this house, learning that others had seen the 
horned cat, and, significantly, that it had once been inhabited 
by a practitioner of black magic, who had sacrificed several cats 
during one foul ritual, but had become deranged, hanging himself 
from the top of the staircase. Pendragon concluded that the 
giant horned cat was an elemental, 
conjured into being by the restless, fury-fuelled ghosts of the slain cats

the phantasmal black dog, mirror of mnemosyne 
amarok witchy wolf waheela dog bear tiny ears and a  very thick tail 

‘tough-guy’ youths who have wept out loud when recalling their experiences there – telling of how they were knocked violently to the ground and assailed by what seemed to be an invisible wolf or dog snarling and snapping at their heads

wild, uninhabited area of swampland and scrubby pines
the ghost of a newborn or infant child who was murdered without ever having been christened. As a result, the child returns to earth as a niðagrísur, an apparition no bigger than a ball of yarn

They are not even very monstrous to look at, troll girls could even be exceptionally beautiful. However, they were magical, and "contrary" to humans. They lived under cliffs and mountains, they shunned steel, they feared thunder, were not Christian, and were cunning thieves. As shapeshifters they were most often seen as shadows, animals or balls of lightning perhaps
 and of course often they were invisible

It all sounds less like the grunge-associated trolls of yore that we all thought we knew, and more like the synopsis for a new slick fantasy movie

head of a badger, the limbs of a stag, a lion’s neck, breast, and tail as well as its bravery, a stature approaching that of a male ass coupled with the speed of a horse and the strength of a bull, plus an invulnerability to any weapon made of steel Most bizarre of all, however, was its extraordinarily wide mouth, which allegedly stretched right back to its ears in a thoroughly unnerving grin!

Just like the manticore, the leucrocuta was a man-eater, but was much more cunning, luring its victims out of their houses at night by calling their names in a 
perfect imitation of a human voice. Indeed, and again like the manticore, 
the leucrocuta was often claimed to be a shape-shifter, 
able to adopt human form in order to increase the success of its 
voice’s ability to draw its victims within reach of its deadly jaws

2.31am, 1.02.13.  misc notes/ © Lizarikk