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Description
The 9th in a series comparing real cryptid reports with the creatures of the Cthulhu Mythos. In the Sothic Universe maybe they’re all true or maybe none of them are. They could just be theories of occultists in the know.

Oil Pit Squids
In 1996 it was reported that workers at General Motors Plant 9 found several small, squid-like creatures in a pit of oil and chemical runoff. Supposedly one was captured and placed in a jar for later study but it disappeared from the fridge before it could be passed on to any researchers. When the pit was next cleaned, no new specimens were discovered.

Carmel Walking Squid
In 2014 an ex-marine and his wife were driving through Carmel, Ohio on their way home when they witnessed something uncanny. They had just passed the Carmel church and crested a short incline when something ran across the road in front of them. Only the husband of the duo got a good look at the thing and was only able to describe it as asphalt grey, armless, featureless and running on a pair of muscular legs with backwards knees. However, his eyewitness sketch bears a certain resemblance to the mantle and fins of a squid balanced head down on a pair of digitigrade limbs.

Perhaps the Walking Squid is literally that, a squid-related species that somehow evolved it’s tentacles into limbs capable of supporting its weight on land.

Octosquatch
One summer night in 1961, near midnight, truck driver Arquimedes Sanchez was driving through the Basque mountains when he was forced to slam on the brakes for something in the road. To the astonishment of Sanchez and his unnamed passenger, the truck’s highbeams illuminated a hairy and tentacled creature standing in their path.

It seemed stunned by the lights and only moved to cover its glowing eyes with one of its four limbs. When it failed to get out of the way, Sanchez tried to get his passenger to take his jackhammer and hit the creature with it. When the other person refused to get out of the truck, Sanchez backed up and tried to play chicken with the thing but it still refused to leave. Eventually he just gave up and went around it.

Xeno Octopoid
John Mateu was just starting his morning chores one August day in 1968. He saw a flash of light in the distance and assumed it was a broken down car on the edge of his farm. However, as he approached the vehicle he saw that it was not a car, but a floating half-sphere of some self-illuminated material.

As he studied the strange craft a pair of beings raced past him. He described two “disgusting” beings that raced past on a blur of tentacular limbs before they hopped aboard the luminous craft. As the craft rose into the air, Mateu passed out and remained missing for most of the day. It is not known if this period of missing time represents an abduction or if he was simply knocked out by the ship’s takeoff and he remained in the field throughout the day.

This encounter left behind physical evidence in the form of burnt circular patches spread out across the Mateu farm. Although no scientific tests were performed on the patches, John and his brother both had their watches stop on multiple occasions when in proximity with the burnt fields.

One final thing of interest is that both this and the Octosquatch encounter happened in Spain. Just the year prior to Mateu’s encounter, an unidentified woman claimed to see a “cactus-like” being with four tentacles that left deep grooves in the ground as it moved. Paranormal investigators uncovered several more witnesses of pale and pulpy-headed tentacle beasts in the area of the Mateu farm. Investigator Julio Roca Muntañola came to believe the region was a nexus point and even claimed to have found a “magic cave” that led to another dimension.

Kitami Abductors
Yoshihiro Fujiwara was woken up at 3 in the morning one night in 1974 by his guard dog’s barking and a sharp rapping at the door. Throwing open the door to confront his inconsiderate caller, Fujiwara was confronted by a grinning creature with a small, starfish-like body!

The being on his doorstep was wreathed in a clear plastic suit with a small sparking antenna atop its peaked helmet. It pointed up and Fujiwara’s house was bathed in hot orange light. He tried to retreat deeper into the house but a scorching wind swept him off his feet and dragged him out the window. He rose into the air towards a small flying saucer. It was the source of the orange beams and pulled him directly into the ship’s unbroken hull. He felt as though the ship absorbed him before he found himself in a room with blue slanted walls.

Two beings that matched the one that knocked on his door approached him through a hatch in the wall. They held him down with surprising strength as he tried to struggle away. They promised him, “no danger… we promise to release you close to your house.” Fujiwara did not find that calming and managed to break away from the creatures, launching himself through the still-open hatch. Luckily for him the ship was only a few feet above the ground because he found himself falling.

He landed hard but he was desperate to get away, so he limped his way to a nearby house. Pounding on the door, he was met by a couple he knew to live 2 miles from his own house. In addition, although he thought he had immediately escaped, more than an hour and a half had passed!

Fujiwaru would be telepathically contacted by the aliens several more times and invited aboard their saucers for flights to the moon, Jupiter and Saturn’s moon Titan. Unfortunately the piece of rock he claimed to have taken from Titan turned out to be a piece of a stalagmite from a local cave. He also claimed to have gained powerful psychic abilities and that he was Earth’s spokesman for the Samcall Space Union.

Was it all a hoax? Or did Fujiwara suffer from delusions in trying to come to terms with the trauma of his abduction?

One other cryptid I’d like to mention before going into the Mythos explanations is the Indescribable Octoman. Yet another cryptid of the Ohio river valley, the Octoman was witnessed by at least 5 people in the winter of 1959. The witnesses were never able to describe it very well, with the only real details being that it was bipedal and had multiple tentacles. Hence the name.

In the Mythos
Many of the nameless powers that flop and squirm through space and time have ropy tentacular limbs but few are on the scale that could remain secretive and unidentified if they spent any time on Earth. Nyarlathotep is the obvious exception, with its many forms that exist both physically and mentally on the human scale.

There are a few other things that could explain such sightings.

Star Seeds
The typical view of the star spawn is of towering things, walking mountains so vast the human mind can barely process them. That view is not always accurate.

The bodies we see are holograms of the true Spawn, represented in three dimensions through ectoplasmic tissue. The size and appearance of this hologram is a matter of the spawn’s core perspective from 3d space-time. Essentially the closer and more attentive a Star Spawn is, the larger and more “whole” it appears in our reality.

The Star Seed is one of the smallest Star Spawn manifestations, so named because the cosmic octopi frequently appear this way when falling between worlds.

Their presence outside of R’l-yeh would be a dark portent, as the minds of the Star Spawn wander as they wake. Perhaps even worse, they could be a part of a newly arrived and fully active rival colony, ready to try and take the planet from those who hibernate beneath the sea.

The Ny’ghan Grii
Things from outer space, who once attempted to colonize the Earth in the time of ancient Mu. The Muvians called upon one of the Thousand Young, Vorvadoss, who sealed their invading force outside of time with the aid of green flames from the Torch of Nug.

Their prison lies beyond the Akashic Record and they can sometimes use the weak points in subspace caused by those accessing the records to slip through their bindings. However, to truly pass through they need a Gate and will attempt to secure a body to use as a biological pathway to the host’s local space-time facet. This is quickly fatal to the gate, as they dissolve into tainted ichor.

While they are individually not very strong and their technology is long lost, their bodies radiate an icy cold mist and in numbers can cause severe weather disturbances.

Nioth-Korghai
There are many vampiric species in the void of space, drawing sothic energy and any other lifeforce they can from their victims. One of the most dangerous are the Nioth-Korghai.

The Nioth-Korghai are a fungoid species descended from an Ubbo-Sathla placed on the water world Karthis. The Progenitors abandoned the planet megaanna ago and left their creations there to their own devices. Being descendants of the shoggothim, the Nioth-Korghai have retained some of the shapeshifting capabilities in a limited manner. They tend to favour their natural forms, winged forms specialized in open predation and bodies to fit into a prey population. Their Twsha organs have developed into a direct subspace link they can use to possess anything with a soul. When they consume the energy of a victim, they leave some of their own animating energy behind and can use them as conduits for further feeding. The resultant husks don’t last long without a constant influx of energy.

The Nioth-Korghai are masters of sothic energy powered biotechnology. One of their massive Collector craft is hidden in the tail of Haley’s Comet and they have descended to Earth for a feast each time the comet draws near the Earth.

Whoosits
These creatures were pariahs on ancient earth, one of the species that had minor wars with the Progenitors in the early days. They were violent to the extreme and nearly unkillable, even for the mighty Shoggoths. When they were finally routed they were driven off into space rather than destroyed but some escaped even that fate. They retreated into the ancient peat bogs, burrowed into the earth and entered stasis, to wait out the Elder’s time on the planet. In doing so they hoped to reap the reward of an untouched biosphere once their time came again. This resulted in their occasional discovery in modern times, encased in coal seams and released by human mining operations.

Like many of the Old Ones, they can fly through space without any form of craft, although the method used by the Whoosits is particularly spectacular. When traveling their passage can excite the atmosphere enough to produce a temporary aurora bright enough to rival the polar lights.

Yog-Spawn
Them from Outside want into our universe, to seed their offspring in safe and fertile worlds. They offer magical secrets in exchange and sorcerers throughout the ages have taken them up on the offer, calling on the infinite genetic libraries of Yog-Sothoth to create hybrids suitable for the Outsider’s plans. The hybrid-spawn may have even freely bloomed across the surfaces of Venus, Earth and Mars at the dawn of Sol.

Due to their near infinite variability, the Yog-Spawn could explain nearly any tentacled abomination.

<コ:彡 <コ:彡 <コ:彡 <コ:彡 <コ:彡 <コ:彡 <コ:彡 <コ:彡 <コ:彡 <コ:彡

I think we're seeing the first ancestors of the Inklings here!

These ones are a bit more of a stretch than usual. There’s not that many tentacled cryptid/alien sightings and despite the cliche most individual Mythos species aren’t that tentacaly. At least not as a major feature anyway.

The cryptids that do fit the theme are pretty Mythos appropriate already too. Particularly the Octopoids, they'd serve as a good basis for a Call of Cthulhu adventure in 1960s Spain, leading up to a climax in the alien infested cave with a Gate leading to their home dimension.

The Ny’ghan Grii first appeared in Henry Kuttner’s “The Invaders”

Nioth-Korghai are from the book “The Space Vampires” and the movie “Lifeforce”. I’ve effectively fused the two somewhat different versions for my own universe.

The Whoosit is the titular monster from “The Oram County Whoosit”

Description
The 9th in a series comparing real cryptid reports with the creatures of the Cthulhu Mythos. In the Sothic Universe maybe they’re all true or maybe none of them are. They could just be theories of occultists in the know.

Oil Pit Squids
In 1996 it was reported that workers at General Motors Plant 9 found several small, squid-like creatures in a pit of oil and chemical runoff. Supposedly one was captured and placed in a jar for later study but it disappeared from the fridge before it could be passed on to any researchers. When the pit was next cleaned, no new specimens were discovered.

Carmel Walking Squid
In 2014 an ex-marine and his wife were driving through Carmel, Ohio on their way home when they witnessed something uncanny. They had just passed the Carmel church and crested a short incline when something ran across the road in front of them. Only the husband of the duo got a good look at the thing and was only able to describe it as asphalt grey, armless, featureless and running on a pair of muscular legs with backwards knees. However, his eyewitness sketch bears a certain resemblance to the mantle and fins of a squid balanced head down on a pair of digitigrade limbs.

Perhaps the Walking Squid is literally that, a squid-related species that somehow evolved it’s tentacles into limbs capable of supporting its weight on land.

Octosquatch
One summer night in 1961, near midnight, truck driver Arquimedes Sanchez was driving through the Basque mountains when he was forced to slam on the brakes for something in the road. To the astonishment of Sanchez and his unnamed passenger, the truck’s highbeams illuminated a hairy and tentacled creature standing in their path.

It seemed stunned by the lights and only moved to cover its glowing eyes with one of its four limbs. When it failed to get out of the way, Sanchez tried to get his passenger to take his jackhammer and hit the creature with it. When the other person refused to get out of the truck, Sanchez backed up and tried to play chicken with the thing but it still refused to leave. Eventually he just gave up and went around it.

Xeno Octopoid
John Mateu was just starting his morning chores one August day in 1968. He saw a flash of light in the distance and assumed it was a broken down car on the edge of his farm. However, as he approached the vehicle he saw that it was not a car, but a floating half-sphere of some self-illuminated material.

As he studied the strange craft a pair of beings raced past him. He described two “disgusting” beings that raced past on a blur of tentacular limbs before they hopped aboard the luminous craft. As the craft rose into the air, Mateu passed out and remained missing for most of the day. It is not known if this period of missing time represents an abduction or if he was simply knocked out by the ship’s takeoff and he remained in the field throughout the day.

This encounter left behind physical evidence in the form of burnt circular patches spread out across the Mateu farm. Although no scientific tests were performed on the patches, John and his brother both had their watches stop on multiple occasions when in proximity with the burnt fields.

One final thing of interest is that both this and the Octosquatch encounter happened in Spain. Just the year prior to Mateu’s encounter, an unidentified woman claimed to see a “cactus-like” being with four tentacles that left deep grooves in the ground as it moved. Paranormal investigators uncovered several more witnesses of pale and pulpy-headed tentacle beasts in the area of the Mateu farm. Investigator Julio Roca Muntañola came to believe the region was a nexus point and even claimed to have found a “magic cave” that led to another dimension.

Kitami Abductors
Yoshihiro Fujiwara was woken up at 3 in the morning one night in 1974 by his guard dog’s barking and a sharp rapping at the door. Throwing open the door to confront his inconsiderate caller, Fujiwara was confronted by a grinning creature with a small, starfish-like body!

The being on his doorstep was wreathed in a clear plastic suit with a small sparking antenna atop its peaked helmet. It pointed up and Fujiwara’s house was bathed in hot orange light. He tried to retreat deeper into the house but a scorching wind swept him off his feet and dragged him out the window. He rose into the air towards a small flying saucer. It was the source of the orange beams and pulled him directly into the ship’s unbroken hull. He felt as though the ship absorbed him before he found himself in a room with blue slanted walls.

Two beings that matched the one that knocked on his door approached him through a hatch in the wall. They held him down with surprising strength as he tried to struggle away. They promised him, “no danger… we promise to release you close to your house.” Fujiwara did not find that calming and managed to break away from the creatures, launching himself through the still-open hatch. Luckily for him the ship was only a few feet above the ground because he found himself falling.

He landed hard but he was desperate to get away, so he limped his way to a nearby house. Pounding on the door, he was met by a couple he knew to live 2 miles from his own house. In addition, although he thought he had immediately escaped, more than an hour and a half had passed!

Fujiwaru would be telepathically contacted by the aliens several more times and invited aboard their saucers for flights to the moon, Jupiter and Saturn’s moon Titan. Unfortunately the piece of rock he claimed to have taken from Titan turned out to be a piece of a stalagmite from a local cave. He also claimed to have gained powerful psychic abilities and that he was Earth’s spokesman for the Samcall Space Union.

Was it all a hoax? Or did Fujiwara suffer from delusions in trying to come to terms with the trauma of his abduction?

One other cryptid I’d like to mention before going into the Mythos explanations is the Indescribable Octoman. Yet another cryptid of the Ohio river valley, the Octoman was witnessed by at least 5 people in the winter of 1959. The witnesses were never able to describe it very well, with the only real details being that it was bipedal and had multiple tentacles. Hence the name.

In the Mythos
Many of the nameless powers that flop and squirm through space and time have ropy tentacular limbs but few are on the scale that could remain secretive and unidentified if they spent any time on Earth. Nyarlathotep is the obvious exception, with its many forms that exist both physically and mentally on the human scale.

There are a few other things that could explain such sightings.

Star Seeds
The typical view of the star spawn is of towering things, walking mountains so vast the human mind can barely process them. That view is not always accurate.

The bodies we see are holograms of the true Spawn, represented in three dimensions through ectoplasmic tissue. The size and appearance of this hologram is a matter of the spawn’s core perspective from 3d space-time. Essentially the closer and more attentive a Star Spawn is, the larger and more “whole” it appears in our reality.

The Star Seed is one of the smallest Star Spawn manifestations, so named because the cosmic octopi frequently appear this way when falling between worlds.

Their presence outside of R’l-yeh would be a dark portent, as the minds of the Star Spawn wander as they wake. Perhaps even worse, they could be a part of a newly arrived and fully active rival colony, ready to try and take the planet from those who hibernate beneath the sea.

The Ny’ghan Grii
Things from outer space, who once attempted to colonize the Earth in the time of ancient Mu. The Muvians called upon one of the Thousand Young, Vorvadoss, who sealed their invading force outside of time with the aid of green flames from the Torch of Nug.

Their prison lies beyond the Akashic Record and they can sometimes use the weak points in subspace caused by those accessing the records to slip through their bindings. However, to truly pass through they need a Gate and will attempt to secure a body to use as a biological pathway to the host’s local space-time facet. This is quickly fatal to the gate, as they dissolve into tainted ichor.

While they are individually not very strong and their technology is long lost, their bodies radiate an icy cold mist and in numbers can cause severe weather disturbances.

Nioth-Korghai
There are many vampiric species in the void of space, drawing sothic energy and any other lifeforce they can from their victims. One of the most dangerous are the Nioth-Korghai.

The Nioth-Korghai are a fungoid species descended from an Ubbo-Sathla placed on the water world Karthis. The Progenitors abandoned the planet megaanna ago and left their creations there to their own devices. Being descendants of the shoggothim, the Nioth-Korghai have retained some of the shapeshifting capabilities in a limited manner. They tend to favour their natural forms, winged forms specialized in open predation and bodies to fit into a prey population. Their Twsha organs have developed into a direct subspace link they can use to possess anything with a soul. When they consume the energy of a victim, they leave some of their own animating energy behind and can use them as conduits for further feeding. The resultant husks don’t last long without a constant influx of energy.

The Nioth-Korghai are masters of sothic energy powered biotechnology. One of their massive Collector craft is hidden in the tail of Haley’s Comet and they have descended to Earth for a feast each time the comet draws near the Earth.

Whoosits
These creatures were pariahs on ancient earth, one of the species that had minor wars with the Progenitors in the early days. They were violent to the extreme and nearly unkillable, even for the mighty Shoggoths. When they were finally routed they were driven off into space rather than destroyed but some escaped even that fate. They retreated into the ancient peat bogs, burrowed into the earth and entered stasis, to wait out the Elder’s time on the planet. In doing so they hoped to reap the reward of an untouched biosphere once their time came again. This resulted in their occasional discovery in modern times, encased in coal seams and released by human mining operations.

Like many of the Old Ones, they can fly through space without any form of craft, although the method used by the Whoosits is particularly spectacular. When traveling their passage can excite the atmosphere enough to produce a temporary aurora bright enough to rival the polar lights.

Yog-Spawn
Them from Outside want into our universe, to seed their offspring in safe and fertile worlds. They offer magical secrets in exchange and sorcerers throughout the ages have taken them up on the offer, calling on the infinite genetic libraries of Yog-Sothoth to create hybrids suitable for the Outsider’s plans. The hybrid-spawn may have even freely bloomed across the surfaces of Venus, Earth and Mars at the dawn of Sol.

Due to their near infinite variability, the Yog-Spawn could explain nearly any tentacled abomination.

<コ:彡 <コ:彡 <コ:彡 <コ:彡 <コ:彡 <コ:彡 <コ:彡 <コ:彡 <コ:彡 <コ:彡

I think we're seeing the first ancestors of the Inklings here!

These ones are a bit more of a stretch than usual. There’s not that many tentacled cryptid/alien sightings and despite the cliche most individual Mythos species aren’t that tentacaly. At least not as a major feature anyway.

The cryptids that do fit the theme are pretty Mythos appropriate already too. Particularly the Octopoids, they'd serve as a good basis for a Call of Cthulhu adventure in 1960s Spain, leading up to a climax in the alien infested cave with a Gate leading to their home dimension.

The Ny’ghan Grii first appeared in Henry Kuttner’s “The Invaders”

Nioth-Korghai are from the book “The Space Vampires” and the movie “Lifeforce”. I’ve effectively fused the two somewhat different versions for my own universe.

The Whoosit is the titular monster from “The Oram County Whoosit”