Zwaanendael Mermaid- Delaware

For a brief period in 1631, Dutch colonists in North America tried to establish a small settlement named Zwaanendael along the Delaware River. Unfortunately, the colony did not last more than a year before it was destroyed in a skirmish with local Native Americans.

Despite its brief existence, Zwaanendael is credited as the first known European settlement in the region that would become Delaware, and the 300th anniversary of its founding was commemorated with the creation of the Zwaanendael Museum. Despite its name, the Museum focuses not on the ill-fated colony, but on the entire history of southeastern Delaware as a whole. There are exhibits on the ecology of the river estuary, local history- particularly the British attack on the city of Lewes in the War of 1812- and the lighthouses of the region.

The Zwaanendael Museum, Modeled after the town hall in Hoorn, the Netherlands. Photo from WIkimedia Commons, uploaded by user Smallbones.

The Museum also houses a strange little curiosity: a mummified “mermaid” in its own blue velvet-lined glass case. The mermaid was given to the prominent Martin family in the city of Lewes (built on the site of the vanished Dutch colony) by a sea captain. In 1941, the mummy was permanently lent to the Museum until 1985 when locals bought the creature from the Martin’s estate to ensure that it remained a permanent fixture of the museum.

The Zwaanendael mermaid bears little resemble to the classic image of these aquatic beings as attractive women with fish tails. A wide toothy mouth and large, ridged eye sockets dominate its simian face. Its hands are clawed like a reptile’s. It’s torso is covered in bony ridges. Its skin and scales are an ashy gray-black  On top of all that, the creature is small- no more than a foot or so in length. It bears a much closer resemblance to its “cousin”, the Fiji Mermaid, made famous by P.T. Barnum. Both creatures are, of course, clever taxidermy specimens akin to jackalopes, jenny hanivers, or fur-bearing trouts. They are also part of a larger tradition of taxidermied monsters that have their roots in 18th century Japan.

Misemono were a popular type of carnival in Old Edo (modern-day Tokyo). They featured all manner of entertainments- actors, storytellers, exotic animals, local craftsmen- which were believed to bring good luck and fortune to attendees. One of the more unusual sights at the misemono were the bodies of mermaids or ningyo. Unlike the beautiful mermaids of Europe and the Mediterranean, ningyo were more monstrous and fish-like. In Japanese legends, eating the flesh of one of these creatures was said to grant renewed youth and immortality, though obtaining this delicacy often leads to dire consequences since ningyo could curse those who killed their kin. They could even destroy entire towns with hurricanes and tsunami.

Despite the risks, it was still popular to display mummified “ningyo” at carnivals in the hopes that at least a little of that coveted youth and longevity would rub off on attendees without requiring them to actually eat the creature’s flesh.  And if a mermaid was too hard to come by, a taxidermied substitute certainly wouldn’t hurt. Thus there developed a cottage industry of fishermen constructing ningyo out of the bodies of fish and small monkeys dressed up with paper-maché, wood and lacquer.

The ubiquity of fake ningyo meant that inevitably more than a few of them would make their way overseas, brought home as curiosities by sailors from America and Europe, where the folklore behind the creatures was lost, leaving them blank slants upon which others could write their own mythologies.

Ningyo are actually only one category of manufactured Japanese monsters. Mummified oni, kappa, tengu and other yokai were also common created as carnival attractions. Some of them even ended up at Buddhist temples, perhaps to add a bit of tangibility to the unseen supernatural world.

SOURCES

The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons: A Field Guide to Japanese Yokai, written and illustrated by Matthew Meyer

The State of Delaware's official website about the museum

Roadside America's article on the Zwaanendael mermaid (or merman in this case, I guess)

Pink Tentacles' article on mummified ningyo

Pink Tentacles' article on other monster mummies of Japan

Snallygaster- Maryland

In the early 1700s, German settlers moved into Maryland from Pennsylvania, bringing with them many of their myths and legends. Among these were tales of the schnelle geister or “quick spirits”, supernatural beings that could sometimes be merely annoying-- knocking things over and creating bad smells-- and sometimes malevolent-- stealing children or forming huge battalions of writhing specters to rain down on helpless and unsuspecting humans.

As the Germanic legends merged with the larger melting pot of beliefs in Maryland, schnelle geister became snollygoster, then finally snallygaster, a general term for any sort of boogieman or mysterious creature.

In 1909, the term Snallygaster took on a distinct, terrifying form when the Middletown Valley Register of Frederick County reported that a huge, dragon-like creature had flown out of a cave in South Mountain and snatched up a local man, Bill Gifferson. The monster carried Grifeerson to the top of a hill where it pierced his throat with its needle-sharp beak and drank his blood.

Sightings of the Snallygaster exploded after this incident. Suddenly newspapers all over Frederick County, and even into nearby West Virginia, were overflowing with reports of terrifying run-ins with this blood-drinking dragon. Drawing on local folklore, the beast was quickly dubbed Snallygaster, though a few papers briefly gave it alternative, equally colorful names such as “Go-devil”, “Bovulopus”, “Octollopus” and “Gigantiloeutus”.

Descriptions of the creature varied, but most claimed that it resembled a winged reptile with iron claws and a pointed beak for draining its victims of blood. It was also said to have a single, enormous eye in the center of its forehead. A few stories claimed that it even had tentacles like an octopus-- though where these were located on its body or what it used them for was never specified.

Some tales claimed that seven pointed stars would drive off the beast, which allegedly led many in Frederick County and surrounding areas to place these symbols on the outside walls of their barns and houses. It is worth noting, though, that stars with four, five or six points were already common folk motifs on the houses of many German settlers (seven-pointed stars were rarer, but not unheard of), so this detail may have just been an embellishment playing off an already prominent decoration in the South Mountain area.

Snallygaster reports continued throughout 1909, gradually fading away by the end of the year.  The frenzy was finally capped off by a tongue-in-cheek letter to Middletown Valley Register written by an “expert” who claimed that the beast was of a species of monsters that lived deep within the Earth. The beast terrorizing Frederick County, so the writer claimed, had come to the surface after an earthquake opened a chasm in the South Mountains leading to its subterranean home. The article concluded with a report of a fictitious scientific expedition that had seen the creature fly back into its cave, at which point another earthquake sealed it up.

The Snallygaster resurfaced again in 1932 in a new flurry of newspaper reports. This time, though, the beast appeared to meet its demise when the Register reported that local prohibition agents had busted into a bootlegger’s hideout only to find the place abandoned and the partially-dissolved corpse of the Snallygaster floating in the moonshine mash where it had apparently fallen after being overcome by the alcoholic fumes.

Despite its apparent death, the Snallygaster would continue to make sporadic appearances in local papers over the years, even inspiring a 1976 article about a fictitious Hemmingway-style safari to track it down once and for all.

Snallygaster at rest, standing on its mantle-foot and modified tentacles.

The bizarre appearance of the Snallygaster, along with its colorful, often outlandish history, bears more than a passing resemblance to many other tall tales of mysterious and deadly flying monsters heard throughout America- and indeed, throughout the world. This is no coincidence, for the Snallygaster began as a hoax created by the editors of the Middletown Valley Register to drum up sales for their paper. The story proved so popular that other papers picked it up, often embellishing the tale with their own details. Newspapers have a long history of punching up and sensationalizing stories-- or even creating stories whole cloth in the age before journalistic integrity- to attract and entertain readers.  Indeed, many old papers were more like the Weekly World News (or most internet message boards, to use a contemporary example) than a reputable source for information.

In more recent reports-particularly internet articles- the Snallygaster has developed an “archenemy” in the form of the Dwayyo, a black-furred biped sometimes described as being ape-like, sometimes said to be more like a werewolf or a dog walking on its hind legs. According to folklore, the Dwayyo will attack the Snallygaster on sight, though no explanation is given for this animosity. Nor is the mammalian beast itself given much of a backstory. The first reported sightings of the Dwayyo came in a series of 1965 articles in the Frederick News written by George May, which described a black, bigfoot-like monster terrorizing the county. 

May’s articles may actually be responsible for the rivalry between the Dwayyo and the Snallygaster. One of his last articles suggested that increased sightings of the furred beast signalled the eclipsing of interest in Maryland’s other, draconic monster. His prediction, though, did not bear out since the Snallygaster has proven to be the far more popular creature.

Mythical monsters often serve as a metaphor for aspects of humanity. Sea serpents and krakens can represent our awe and fear of the ocean. Wendigo personify the terror and loneliness of the boreal woods and the desperation that leads to cannibalism. Elves, trolls, huldra and other fey beings symbolize the mystery and danger of the deep forest. The Snallygaster, too, once held a dark and potent symbolism-- specifically the evils of racism. Many of the early reports claimed that the beast specifically targeted African-American victims.

Furthermore,  the Lumberwoods.com website points out:

"In Maryland: A Guide to the Old Line State, the author directly alludes to such attitudes by stating: 

“In the Middletown Valley section of western Maryland the fabulous ‘snallygaster’ flies into a little settlement of log cabins that served as slave quarters prior to the Civil War. The great bird preys upon Negro children out after dark, and on occasion has even been known to carry off a full-grown man to its lair in the near-by mountains.”

It is worth noting that these previous lines, specifically the phrases "preys upon," "after dark" and "carry off," are highly suggestive of the practice of lynching. In the contemporary period so-called "sunset towns" were declared wherein African Americans would be barred from entering after nightfall. Any "violators" would be sought out by lynch mobs, dragged to a secluded location and "dealt" with."

The symbolism behind a monster may change over time, of course. Vampires were once personifications of our fears of death, illness and, in the case of Stoker's Dracula, rape and sexually-transmitted diseases. Today they often symbolize a longing for immortality and the simultaneous fear of watching everyone and everything one loves crumble to dust around them.

The Snallygaster likewise has undergone an evolution in what it represents. Its association with racism and the evils of lynching has all but disappeared. Now the beast, like the Mothman, Thnuderbirds, Bigfoot and other cryptids, symbolizes the unexplored, a longing for mysteries and a fear and simultaneous desire for the unknown. 

For my interpretation of the Snallygaster, I drew inspiration from descriptions of it as a one-eyed, tentacled dragon. However, rather than make it a reptile with cephalopod arms, I made it a flying squid with wings formed from the fin around its mantle. The hind legs are also extensions of the body fin with fringe-like papillae serving as “toes”. The front limbs of my version are actually highly modified tentacles with hooks sprouting from the tips of the suckers forming the “claws”.

The majority of information for this post came from an excellent book by Patrick Boyton called Snallygaster: The Lost Legend of Frederick County. It’s short, but thorough and definitely worth checking out.

SOURCES

Snallygaster: The Lost Legend of Frederick County by Patrick Boyton

Mountain Monster: The Snallygaster

Lumberwoods: The Snallygaster

Falkville Metal Man- Alabama

On the evening of October 17, 1973, Falkville Alabama chief of police Jeff Greenhaw received a call from an anonymous woman claiming she had seen a UFO sail over her house and land in a nearby field. Though hesitant to go out when he was already off duty, Chief Greenhaw got in his car to have a look. When he arrived at the field no UFO could be found, so he decided to drive around the area to see if there was anything in the area.

While cruising down a dirt path, Greenhaw spotted a person standing on the side of the road. Thinking it might be someone in need of help, he got out and approached the figure. Up close, however, he discovered that the being was completely covered by some sort of metallic outfit. To quote Greenshaw himself:

“It looked like his head and neck were kind of made together... He was real bright, something like rubbing mercury on nickel, but just as smooth as glass. Different angles give different lighting.... When I saw him standing in the middle of the road I immediately stopped the car and asked if he was a foreigner, but no sound came out of his mouth.”

Thinking quickly, Greenshaw ran back to his truck, grabbed his camera and snapped several photographs of the creature before it ran off into the night at speeds supposedly faster than a normal human could go.

And what exactly do Greenshaw’s photos depict? Well....

source: http://obscurban-legend.wikia.com/wiki/Falkville_Metal_Man

It’s pretty clear from this photo that the “alien” is nothing more than someone in a metallic asbestos or radiation suit. It is worth noting that this sighting came only a few days after the more famous alien encounter along the Pascagoula River in Mississippi detailed in the previous entry. Perhaps this “encounter” was staged in an attempt to ride on the fame of the mummy-robot story.

The question, though, is whether Greenshaw was in on the hoax or just an innocent bystander.  If the former, his participation in the events brought him nothing but misfortune. His report on the encounter was widely ridiculed and eventually led to his job as chief of police being terminated. Whether or not Greenshaw knew the being was just a prank, that ending seems rather harsh.

Let’s imagine for a moment, though, that the Metal Man actually WAS a genuine extraterrestrial (or perhaps extradimensional) entity. Could the metallic exterior have been a space suit for an entity that was not used to Earth’s atmosphere? Or is the creature’s similarity to the Pascagoula mummy-robots more than superficial? Could it also have been some sort of synthetic being? Perhaps a slightly different model of the Pascagoula creatures? Maybe it was a probe sent out to explore an environment its creators could not? Greenshaw  does describe the being as having stiff, robot-like movements.

Encounters with other apparently mechanical alien beings have been reported on multiple occasions. These creatures come in a surprising variety of shapes.

For example, in 1977, Antonia La Rubia of Paciencia, Brazil reported being abducted on his way to work by beings with metallic scales and tentacle-like arms. Each entity stood upon a single leg with a flared base that La Rubia described as looking like the base of a barstool. Each creature also carried a belt of syringe-like instruments. One of the beings used a syringe to zap La Rubia with a blue light and carry him into a waiting space ship. Inside, the robots used a piano-like device to show him a series of images, some of them depicting himself being examined by blue lights from their instruments (though La Rubia’s account makes no mention of him actually being examined. Perhaps those memories were removed by the robots?).  They also drew some of his blood before returning him to Earth.

Another 1977 encounter with apparently robotic beings occurred in Prospect, Kentucky. While driving home one night Lee Parish spotted a rectangular craft hovering in the sky. When he finally arrived home he discovered a half hour gap missing from his memory. Under hypnosis Parish recalled being brought aboard the strange craft where he was confronted by three blocky, mechanical creatures. The largest being resembled a “tombstone” and had a single jointed arm jutting out of it. Another, shorter being was pure white with a rough “head” and arms that did not move. Though the beings never spoke, Parish got the impression that this one was somehow the leader. The smallest being was bright red and had a single, unjointed limb projecting from it.

The red and black machine-creatures examined Parish (the black one apparently causing a painful cold, burning feeling when it’s limb contacted him) while the white being observed. Once the machines were done with their examination they merged with one another and vanished, at which point Parish was returned to his car.

Yet another strange encounter with mechanical aliens occurred in 1951 over the skies of Georgia. Pilot Fred Reagan was flying his plane when he was sucked upwards by an unknown force and crashed into a lozenge-shaped UFO. Reagan immediately found himself teleported inside the craft, where he was met by three foot tall metal aliens that he described as looking like asparagus stalks.

The beings apologized for the crash and gave him a medical exam to make sure he was not injured.  During the procedure, so Reagan claims, they found cancer within his body and removed it as an apology for the trouble they had caused. The robots then deposited him safely in a field next to the wreckage of his plane. On an unnerving side note, Reagan died less than a year later due to brain tissue damage which was believed to have been caused by exposure to high levels of radiation.

This variety of unusual robotic beings raises some interesting speculative questions. Is each type sent out by a different alien species? Or is it possible that there is just one investigating alien species and each variety of robot is simply a different design used for a specific purposes that the humans do not comprehend?

SOURCES

Cryptopia article on the Metal Man

True Tales of the Unexplained article on the Metal Man

Bogleech article on the Asparagus rods, The Prospect Monoliths, La Rubia Barstool Robots and other obscure extraterrestrials.

A report on the Prospect Mechanical Monoliths

A report on the La Rubia Barstool Robots

Freshwater Octopus-- Oklahoma

The idea of a freshwater octopus isn’t too outlandish, especially compared to some of the cryptids on this blog. Other marine animals have made the jump to lakes and rivers, including mussels, clams, snails, bryozoans and jellyfish (though the biologist in me is compelled to note that the freshwater jellyfish, Craspedacusta sowerbii, is of the class Hydrozoa rather than Scyphozoa, which are the “true jellyfish” like moon jellies, lion’s mane, upside-down Cassiopeia jellies and others). The bull shark, Charcharhinus leucas, is infamous for its habit of swimming up estuaries into freshwater. There is even a rare group of poorly-understood, exclusively freshwater sharks in the genus Glyphis that inhabit the Ganges and Irrawaddy rivers. Taking all these into account, it isn’t a huge stretch to imagine an animal as intelligent and curious as the octopus  evolving to live in freshwater.

Perhaps this has, in fact, happened, if urban legends about gigantic octopi inhabiting lakes in Oklahoma are to be believed. According to rumor, Lake Thunderbird, Lake Oolagah and Lake Tenkiller are all home to red, truck-sized cephalopods that may be responsible for the upswing in drownings in recent decades.

The Devil's Lake Monster

This is actually not the only time freshwater cephalopods have appeared in legend. Devil’s Lake in Wisconsin is said to be haunted by two distinct types of monsters. One is a classic Nessie-style plesiosaur. The other is a tentacled beast that was said to have attacked a canoe of Native American men paddling across the lake to more fertile hunting grounds. The origin of this particular story is hard to trace. It’s unclear if it genuinely originated with the Nakota Sioux who call the land around Devil’s Lake home, if it was an invention of European settlers, or if perhaps it was even a modern invention given a precolonial setting to try to create more legitimacy.

The Berkeley Square Horror

Another, more ambiguously cephalopodic cryptid comes from London. The house at 50 Berkeley Square in the West End was infamous in the 18th and 19th centuries for being haunted by a shapeless gray Thing. Though the bottom floor of the house has been consistently occupied, the second floor rooms have long been left empty because anyone who sleeps in them will, according to the legend, will literally be frightened to death by a visit from the Thing in the middle of the night. Calling the Berkeley Square Horror an octopus is, admittedly, a bit of a stretch. Descriptions of the entity are vague and contradictory. Some witnesses said it looked like a collection of shadows or an amorphous blob.  Others claimed it was  a twisted, man-like specter. At least one witness, though, did describe the Horror as a bizarre, tentacled creature like a deformed octopus. Assuming the Horror was not something supernatural, perhaps it was indeed a species of freshwater octopus that found its way up the Thames and into London’s vast sewer system, where it eventually emerged in the Berkely Square house.

While the marine ancestors of the Berkely octopus may have migrated into the Thames via it’s link to the North Sea, it is more difficult to imagine how cephalopods could have moved deep into the land-locked interior of North America. This is further compounded by the fact that none of the lakes inhabited by America’s supposed freshwater octopi have outlets to the sea. Devil’s Lake lies at the bottom of a closed drainage basin-- a glacially-created valley that does not link to any rivers with links tot he sea.  Lakes Thunderbird, Oolagah and Tenkiller, furthermore, are reservoirs created in the 1940s and 50s. How then could octopi even get into any of these bodies of water?

Octosquatch

Well, maybe they just walked. Terrestrial, octopus-like cryptids have been occasionally sighted around the world.  In 1961, two Spanish truck drivers reported encountering an odd creature covered in rust-colored fur that stood upon four tentacle-like limbs.  Octopi are actually known to venture out of the water for short periods of time, usually when they are moving between tide pools in search of prey. Perhaps some evolved an even more amphibious existence and took to venturing farther and farther inland in search of food. 

Hairy Octopus from www.nad-lembeh.com

Even the unusual “fur” on this Octosquatch is not unprecedented. A small species of taxonomically undescribed  hairy octopus is known to inhabit the waters around Indonesia. The filaments covering this creature’s body-- which are extensions of its skin rather than the genuine fur of mammals-- are believed to provide camouflage in the furry red algae common to the creature’s habitat. Perhaps the land-walking cephalopod also developed a similar covering, though in its case the filaments may have been used to provide insulation and possibly to hold water against its body during terrestrial excursions.

Perhaps an Octosquatch-like species gradually made its way into North America, using freshwater lakes as stepping stones. Over time, this creature may have lost its terrestrial abilities and become fully aquatic again, eventually becoming the enigmatic monsters terrorizing swimmers and Native exploration parties in the Midwest.

SOURCES

Mysterious Universe article on the Oklahoma Octopus

Octosquatch

Devil's Lake Monster

Berkeley Square Horror

Geology of Devil's Lake

Hairy Octopus

The Solid Muldoon-- Colorado

In 1877, an amateur fossil hunter named William Conant was poking around a hill in Beulah, Colorado when he noticed a stone shaped like a foot sticking out of the ground. Digging around the odd find, he discovered an entire man made of stone; a petrified human being over seven feet tall and with a nub of a tail at the base of his spine.  The thing was soon dubbed “The Solid Muldoon”, likely in reference to then-famous wrestler William “The Solid Man” Muldoon, and put on display for curious onlookers. Some speculated that the petrified man was one of the giants of the Bible said to have drowned in Noah’s flood.  Others thought it had never been a living being, but was in fact a statue from a forgotten race.

Eventually the Solid Muldoon was revealed to be a hoax made out of rock flour, plaster, pulverized bones, blood and meat. However this revelation did little to diminish people’s interest in seeing it. Only now they were coming to see the “petrified man” precisely because he WAS a hoax. Fake he may have been, but he still made a good story to tell folks back home.

The Solid Muldoon wasn’t the only “petrified man” dug up in the 1800s. In 1869, his more famous cousin, the Cardiff Giant, was discovered on a farm in Cardiff, New York by two men digging a well. Like the Solid Muldoon, this ten-foot tall figure was believed by many to be the fossil remains of a Biblical giant.

"Cardiff Giant" by Unknown - New York State Historical Association Library. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cardiff_Giant.png#/media/File:Cardiff_Giant.png

Both the Cardiff Giant and the Solid Muldoon were actually the creations of New York tobacconist George Hull. Hull, an atheist, once got into an argument with an Iowan Methodist revivalist about the literalness of passages in the Bible, particularly stories of giants once having roamed the world. Hull, realizing that some people would believe anything,  got the idea to create his own stone giant and pass it off as a Biblical fossil. He hired a group of Iowa men to quarry a huge block of gypsum, then shipped it to Chicago where a German stonecutter carved it into the shape of a huge, recumbent man. From there Hull had the giant brought to New York (wrapped in tarps to keep it secret, of course), where he buried it on the farm of his relative, William Newell. Several weeks later, the Giant was dug  up “by chance” by a couple of Newell’s men.

The Cardiff Giant quickly attracted enormous crowds, who paid 50 cents apiece to see it. His popularity become so great that eventually P.T. Barnum offered to buy him. When the showman was turned down, he made his own exact replica for display in his Manhattan museum.

As more and more skeptics examined the original Cardiff Giant and declared it to be fake, Hull grew nervous and sold his creation. Later, though, he would try the giant-crafting business again in Colorado with the Solid Muldoon.  To this new creation he added a short tail, perhaps as a reference to Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution which was just starting to gain ground at the time.

Petrified men became a bit of a cottage industry in the late 1800s. In 1879 another giant, also eventually proved to be a hoax, was dug up near Taughannock Falls, NY.  In 1892, infamous conman Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith commissioned McGinty, a fossilized mummy, for display at one of his establishments in Creede, Colorado. Many more petrified men were crafted and dug up all over the country. 

The Taughannock Giant, photo from www.lifeinthefingerlakes.com. Original provided by Mrs. Pearl Holman

There are several reasons for Americans’ brief obsession with buried stone men. For many, these giants provided confirmation of the Bible, particularly tales of giants killed in Noah’s flood. This belief in giants’ remains actually has a long history in America. Over a century before the Solid Muldoon and his cousins,  colonists all across the eastern United States were digging up what Cotton Mather and other Puritans believed to be the bones of enormous human beings in their fields. These bones, however, would eventually prove to be those of American mastodons.

Beyond those looking for a confirmation of Biblical passages, there were also plenty of people just curious to see the latest unusual attraction, even if they knew it was a fake. It’s the same curiosity that led folks to seek out carnivals and sideshows and oddities such as the ones Mr. Barnum displayed in his museum.

Sources:

When Giants Roamed the Earth-- Archaeology Magazine

Visit the Solid Muldoon

The Cardiff Giant

McGinty

The Taughannock Giant-- Life in the Finger Lakes

The Raleigh Sewer Creature-- North Carolina

In 2009, sanitation workers running a camera through a private sewage system came across a colony of strange, red blobs that throbbed and shuddered like living things.  Video of the sewer things got pretty huge on Youtube, with all the usual wild guessing. 

So what were these things, exactly?  It turns out they were nothing more than colonies of Tubifex worms.  These worms normally live in sediment at the bottoms of lakes or, as happened here, in sewers.  Since there was no soil for the worms to burrow into, they were simply coiled around each other, forming the odd, lumpy balls.  When the hot camera lights got too close, the worms would collectively retract, creating the illusion of a single large moving being.  Apparently these colonies are fairly well known to sewer workers, who have given themt he delightful nickname "ass urchins".

Tubifex are pretty interesting animals.  They're annelids, a large, successful group that includes earthworms and leeches.  Tubifex often live in polluted, or low-oxygen sediments-- such as the aforementioned lake bottoms and sewers.  To get oxygen in such inhospitable environments, they have tons of hemoglobin in their bodies, which gives them their bright red color.  You can learn everything you'd ever want to know about Tubifex worms here. 

For this drawing, I added a couple of large "queen tubifex" heads coming out of the mound like hydra heads.  There's no report of the ass urchins sprouting giant heads, but then again there aren't any reports that say they DON'T sprout giant heads.  Besides, how could I not include a depiction of a tubifex's adorably doofy face