Tornado Monsters and other Sky Creatures

In the month of August in the year 1165, King Henry II was sailing the English Channel with a large fleet of ships. Suddenly, the weather took a turn for the worse. Dark clouds rolled in, rain began to fall, and the winds got stronger and stronger. As the fleet struggled through the rough seas, many men swore they saw something strange on the shore. Several monster-like lakes appeared to descend from the cloud base near the hills of Scarborough. These monster-like lakes then began to destroy everything in their path. Cottages, monasteries were all turned to shreds by this horrifying sky monster. Many described the creature as a massive black horse in the clouds, stomping out anything on the ground. In fact, the monster was given the name the Accursed Horse. Finally, after several minutes of destruction, the horse leaped off the shoreline into the sea where it eventually ascended back into the stormy clouds above. Back on the shore, the destruction was immense. Several hundred lives had been taken, and according to eyewitnesses, the sky monster left massive permanent footprints on the shore. This event really did occur, with several historic documents referencing it. So what really happened? Was it a tornado? A group of tornadoes perhaps? And this isn't the only sky creature in recorded history. What about the Christ Church Dragon? What about the 1587 Augsburg, Germany Dragon's Tale? And what are some Native American legends tied to ancient tornadoes over the plains? Today we're going to go over several historic sky creatures slash monsters that may have actually been tornadoes or some other weather-like phenomena. Some of these stories have easy explanations, but many are still to this day shrouded in mystery. Let us actually go back to the 1165 Scarborough Accursed Horse. This event apparently really happened, with several historic documents referencing it. What likely happened is that these men witnessed a multi-vortex tornado. Perhaps they even witnessed triplet tornadoes in close proximity, a real natural phenomena that does occur on rare occasions. Look at this infamous image of the 1997 Gerald F. Five Tornado, the so-called dead man walking photo. By looking at this photo, we can get an idea of what these men may have witnessed back in 1165. In fact, I can see how these vortices may look similar to the legs of a sky creature horse thing. Back in 1165, these men had no idea what a tornado was, and they definitely did not know what a multi-vortex tornado was. I mean, we didn't know about that until like the 1970s. So this, to them, was like a real monster, a sky creature attacking humanity from above. Another thing you might be wondering is, what's up with the footprints? This supposed accursed horse left footprints on the shore. Well, you'd be, this is actually crazy, but Scarborough, England is known to have fossilized dinosaur footprints along the shore and in the wilderness. Like, look at these. These are real. And by the way, they didn't know dinosaurs existed back in medieval times, so it's possible that the footprints left by this sky monster were actually these dinosaur fossils. Now, I have said this before. I think I said it in my tornadoes are scary video, but tornadoes really are the closest thing to like a real life monster. Like, they're like the one thing that I was told about when I was a child that ended up being a real thing. That sounds unbelievable. So like with ghosts, for example, when I was a kid, people are like, oh, that place is haunted. Ooh. And then I grew up and found out, wait a second, maybe ghosts aren't actually real. UFOs. When I was a kid, I was like, I was worried I was going to be abducted almost every night. And then I grew up and found out, well, hold on a second. Maybe some of this stuff isn't real, but tornadoes. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if I grew up and found out, hey, tornadoes aren't real. Like, we just made up that story because they sound ridiculous. They sound so mythical. They sound like real monsters. And honestly, is there really a difference between a sky monster and a barely? I mean, they're both terrifying in appearance. They both destroy everything that they touch below. What's really the difference between a tornado and Cthulhu? What's really the difference between a multi-vortex tornado and the alien tripods from the war of the worlds? Okay. Tornadoes can't shoot lasers at people. Wait a second. Actually, yes, they can. Lightning. If tornadoes and monsters are essentially the same thing, what are some historic tornadoes that looked the most creature-like, the most horrifying and creepy? We already discussed the dead man walking tornado that occurred in Gerald, Texas in 1997. But another rather terrifying tornado is the 2011 Tuscaloosa-Birmingham EF4. This tornado occurred during the devastating 2011 tornado super outbreak that featured over 360 tornadoes that together took 324 lives. It's one of the worst tornado outbreaks on record. And while all the tornadoes in that outbreak were quite terrifying, one in particular, the EF4 tornado that struck Tuscaloosa through Birmingham, had a lot of creature-like characteristics. This is due to the several horizontal vortices that came shooting out the side of the tornado itself. They would shoot out and they would sway all around. These horizontal side vortices tentacles show up quite well in the Skycam footage from ABC 33-40's coverage of the event. One of the most insane moments ever captured on live TV. TV meteorologist James Spann, who's a legend by the way, can barely keep it together as he watches this sky monster destroy Tuscaloosa. That's coming over near Interstate 359 in Skyland. Nobody should be out there. This thing is going to be coming basically right down Skyland Boulevard. This is an extremely violent situation. Notice the power flashes. Just past the Tuscaloosa County or the Tuscaloosa City Police Department. The police department is down there. It's crossing over the industrial area in South Tuscaloosa near all the places where they... Many other tornadoes have also featured tentacle-like features like this one in Albion, Illinois in 1991. The idea of one of these reaching out and then like grabbing you or destroying your home, it's kind of freaky. Now even though tornadoes still remain quite enigmatic, we have the luxury of knowing quite a bit about tornadoes. Thanks to modern scientific research, the folks at the National Weather Service, NOAA, and the National Severe Storms Laboratory have discovered so much about tornado genesis and their strange characteristics. But if something like this occurred 500 years ago over a random village in Europe without the knowledge we have, people are obviously going to be terrified and they're going to blame it on some sky monster. For example, in the summer of 1587, the citizens of Augsburg, Germany looked up to the sky and saw something they could barely describe. At that time, they described it as a great threatening cloud that formed like a dragon's tail, twisting across the horizon for more than half an hour. To those watching, it was a living monster suspended in the heavens. The historians noted its shape, its duration, and its terror, but they lacked the vocabulary of modern meteorology. To them, it was not a column of rotating air, it was a dragon's tail, a celestial beast threatening the city. There's actually a depiction of this dragon's tail, a woodcut depiction. And yes, that's totally a tornado. Without a doubt, it's a tornado. But these people had no idea. And tornadoes do occur quite a bit. I mean, not nearly as much as they do in the US, but they do occur quite a bit in parts of Germany. This was at a time where even a simple thunderstorm could be a bad omen. So to see something like this, I mean, to these people, they needed to repent of their ASAP. This account offers one of the earliest European depictions of a tornado. And it's a clear window into how people once blurred the line between storm and monster, science and myth. Of course, not every sky creature slash monster can be explained by a tornado. One example comes from Christchurch, England in the year 1112, plus or minus five years. So here's how the story goes. Apparently, a couple of Catholic canons from France, specifically from the Cathedral of Notre Dame, perhaps you've heard of it, were traveling through southern England. As they were traveling through southern England, it started to storm. It got really bad. There was flashes of lightning all around, the rain was pouring on them, and they needed a place to stay. They went to all the different inns in town, they went to all the hotels, and they were all booked because this was the Saturday after Pentecost. So there was a little, there was a religious holiday, everyone was booked up. But then they were like, well, hold on a second, we're Catholic canons. Let's just stay at the Catholic Church. There's gotta be room on a pew for something somewhere. So they go to the Catholic Church, but they were turned away at the door. The priest at said Catholic Church was like, uh-uh, you're not staying here. He didn't trust them. He thought that they were gonna steal something on an altar or something. So he said, nope, you can't stay at the Catholic Church. The canons were very upset. They didn't know where to stay. Thankfully, they did end up finding a merchant who owned a local business, and he was like, hey, you can stay at our tavern, it's fine. So they did find a place to stay eventually. As they were at that merchant's house, they decided to hold a little mass and to shun the Catholic Church. That turned them away. You're like, okay, where's the sky monster? Okay, the next morning, they left the town. They left Christchurch. As they were traveling through the wilderness, suddenly some guy ran and caught up to them and was like, yo, there's a dragon over the town destroying everything. And the canons were like, what, are you serious? So they came back to the town, and they were shocked to see a five-headed dragon-like creature flying above the town, destroying everything with fire, you know, the classic, whatever, what's it called? Breathing fire. Eventually, the five-headed dragon got bored, left the town, and miraculously, the merchant who gave them a place to stay that night, his tavern was perfectly fine. It was in great condition. Nothing was wrong. However, the Catholic Church that turned them away was completely burnt down. Anyway, this Christchurch dragon creature in the sky was kind of a big deal, actually. For centuries after the event, different people talked about how, oh, remember that one time this crazy monster dragon came to our town and destroyed everything? You guys remember that? They wrote it in manuscripts, in different literature. And if you look at actual church documents, there are things that say, hey, a church burnt down in Christchurch. We need to raise money. There's actual evidence that they needed to raise money to rebuild a church. However, interestingly, a lot of these official Catholic historic, what am I thinking of? What's the word? Documents, I don't know what the word is, stated it burnt down due to lightning. Okay, so you have this situation where there's actual evidence that points towards some strange lightning event that burnt down a church. And then you have all these people that said a dragon came and blew up the town around the same time. So, modern researchers think that a big thing of ball lightning may have exploded over the city and caught the church on fire. Ball lightning is one of the strangest natural phenomena ever recorded. Unlike a normal bolt of lightning, which splits in the sky in an instant, ball lightning appears as glowing spheres of elongated shapes of plasma. They can hover, twist, or dart unexpectedly all around the air, sometimes glowing red or orange like fire and sometimes crackling white blue like a living flame. We know of a famous case a few hundred years later in 1638 in Wycombe and the Moor in Devon, England. During a violent thunderstorm, a glowing fiery ball crashed right into the church and then split into several smaller orbs and killed several people while injuring many more. The survivors described it in many ways that sound eerily similar to the Christ Church dragon. Blazing lights, serpent-like motions, and a terrifying sense of the supernatural. My personal theory was that it was just a normal lightning strike that caught the church on fire, but since, you know, you know those crawlers, those like lightning crawlers that like branch out like crazy and they look insane above you in the sky? I'm thinking it was just a crazy lightning storm and a lot of people saw flashes of lightning and they thought, oh, there's a monster in the sky. I don't know. People, it's the middle ages, people. Like, they, they don't know. I mean, they're, they're, they're afraid of everything. Can you guys see this? I might be in the way. Of course, we cannot forget about Native American myths and legends. I mean, Europe, the weather in Europe is nothing compared to North America, no offense people in Europe, but you guys don't get hurricanes, you guys don't get tornadoes, you guys don't get dust storms. You guys don't, I mean, what, what do you get? Rainy, overcast days. I love Europe. I've never been. Okay. Anyway, sorry. I don't mean to like upset half of my audience here. Um, I've heard great things about Europe. Uh, anyway, the plains, North America has some pretty insane weather and the natives have lived there for a long time. So surely they have some strange myths that involve sky creatures, sky monsters associated with tornadoes and other weather phenomena. And they definitely do. One example being the Dagwana Weint, I think I pronounced that correctly, Dagwana Weint, also known as the daughter of the wind, also known as the wind witch. That's spooky, wind witch. Can you imagine being a little kid in like a Native American tribe and be like, go to bed, the wind witch might come out tonight. That's scary. Within the Seneca tribe, Dagwana Weint is an evil spirit that can take a couple different forms. One form is a flying head. This seems to be the most popular form. If you look up Dagwana Weint on the internet, you see a lot of photos of creepy flying heads through the woods, but another form that Dagwana Weint can take is of a whirlwind. When tornadoes swept down from the hills, twisting trees and tearing off roofs, people didn't just see a tornado, what they saw was Dagwana Weint rushing past. Legends describe her as being a force that could never be killed, a force that can randomly pick up anyone and throw them across the plains. Some stories would talk about how warriors would try to find ways to keep her from reviving herself. But of course, they were never quite successful. And every time a storm showed up, so too could Dagwana Weint. She embodied the idea that tornadoes were not natural forces, but that they were actual spirits slash creatures slash monsters, an evil entity. But not always, actually, because there is one tale, one Seneca tale of two brothers who were out in the woods one day. And as they were out in the woods, apparently it started getting a little stormy, and Dagwana Weint made herself known. But she spared them instead of, you know, destroying the forest and throwing them across the plains. She actually gave them three hairs plucked from her head. And then she was like, yo, if you ever need rain or anything like that, just dry these hairs in the mud. And then I'll summon some rain for you. So that's pretty helpful. Scholars see Dagwana Weint as part of a broader pattern in indigenous North American traditions, where tornadoes and whirlwinds are personified as spirits that not only carry the destructive force of the sky, but also carry knowledge and cultural meaning. Dagwana Weint stands at the crossroads of meteorology and mythology, an ancient attempt to grapple with the terror of a tornado. She shows us how people can transform the violence of the wind into a mythical sky creature. I think the idea of a tornado sky creature would make a really good movie. You know what I mean? Like it's a tornado movie, but like it's also like, like it's more than a tornado, you know, it's like a sky monster, make it like a tornado that like purposely chases like an individual like the star of the movie, get like Brad Pitt or something in on that. You know what I'm talking about? It's just in, we have reports of a large tornado just west of Los Angeles. However, this isn't your typical tornado appears to be self-aware and is going out of its way to attack people. But anyway, I do hope that you enjoyed this video. Thank you so much for watching. Please like the video, it really helps out the algorithm and helps the channel. Thank you so much for watching, and we'll see you next time.