A FIFTH TRUNKO IMAGE EMERGES, ALMOST 100 YEARS AFTER TRUNKO ITSELF DID!

Larger-resolution close-up
model of the fifth Trunko {photograph} to be made recognized to cryptozoologists (©
proprietor unknown, however picture dates from early Nineteen Twenties, so now prone to be in public
area – reproduced right here on a strictly non-commercial Truthful Use foundation for
academic/evaluation functions solely)

As ShukerNature readers will little question
already know, Trunko is the identify that inside my 1996 e-book The Unexplained I light-heartedly coined (however which to my nice
shock duly turned globally accepted) for the hitherto anonymous but very
enigmatic ‘sea monster’ carcase washed ashore on a seashore on the coastal city of
Margate, in what’s now Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa, throughout November 1924 (or 1922, based on sure doubtful claims), and
characterised by its coating of snow-white ‘fur’ plus a protracted elephantine
trunk-like projection.

Sadly, no tissue samples had been taken from
this unusual specimen for formal scientific evaluation earlier than it was washed again
out to sea and misplaced ceaselessly; nor, seemingly, had been any images snapped of
it. Consequently, Trunko appeared destined to stay perpetually unidentified,
eternally unexplained, however nonetheless inspiring all method of extremely
imaginative however usually extraordinarily eyecatching inventive representations of what it
could have regarded like in life – weird furry marine pachyderms bearing no
resemblance to something ever recognized to have existed on Earth.

William Asmussen’s vibrant illustration of a residing Trunko
battling two killer whales, impressed by numerous eyewitness claims again in 1922
(© William Asmussen)

Virtually 90 years later, nonetheless, in
September 2010, German cryptozoological co-researcher Markus Hemmler and I had been
very startled however delighted to find no fewer than three Trunko pictures,
which had been snapped by a Mr A.Okay. Jones whereas this curious carcase had lain
ashore.

One was featured on the Margate Enterprise
Affiliation (MBA) web site, the opposite two had been revealed in a Large World Journal article method again in
August 1925 (click on right here
and right here to
learn my two world-exclusive ShukerNature articles that documented these
extraordinary discoveries instantly after they’d been made).

A.Okay. Jones’s Trunko {photograph} that had appeared on the MBA
web site (initially © A.Okay. Jones, however picture
dates from 1922, so now prone to be in public area – reproduced right here on a strictly non-commercial Truthful Use
foundation for academic/evaluation functions solely)

But till now, all three had remained
solely unknown to the cryptozoological neighborhood.

Furthermore, these pictures had been of sufficiently
good high quality for me to have the ability to recognise that this entity was a globster,
i.e. a decomposed whale carcase from which the skeletal contents have fallen
away, abandoning a thick gelatinous matrix of collagen protein, nonetheless
encased contained in the whale’s pores and skin sac of rotting blubber, with the carcase’s
well-known ‘trunk’ almost definitely an enclosed rib lined in fibrous tissue, and the
carcase’s white ‘fur’ being uncovered connective tissue fibres.

A.Okay. Jones’s two Trunko {photograph} that had appeared on the Large World Journal article of August
1925 (initially © A.Okay. Jones, however picture
dates from 1922, so now prone to be in public area – reproduced right here
on a strictly non-commercial Truthful Use foundation for academic/evaluation functions
solely)

After greater than 80 years, the thriller of
Trunko had lastly been solved (for full particulars, see my in depth Might 2011 Fortean Occasions article – essentially the most
complete protection of Trunko’s convoluted historical past ever revealed, and
subsequently republished in ShukerNature E book 1).
However that was not all.

In March 2011, I learnt from Markus {that a}
fourth Trunko {photograph} had been found, by Margate-based South African
artist and Trunko researcher Bianca Baldi, within the archives of Margate Museum,
which confirmed an amorphous blob that once more confirmed Trunko’s id as a
globster (click on right here to
learn my ShukerNature account of this dramatic discover).

The fourth Trunko {photograph} (© proprietor unknown, however picture dates from 1922, so now prone to be in
public area – reproduced right here on a strictly non-commercial Truthful Use foundation for
academic/evaluation functions solely)

And now, most just lately of all, on 19 April
2022 and courtesy but once more of the indefatigable Markus, I used to be made conscious of a
fifth Trunko photograph. As with the earlier quartet, it had been hiding in plain public
sight for fairly some time.

Markus had found that on 4 March 2015,
Margate businessman Lencel Celliers had posted in a Fb group entitled
‘MARGATE, Natal, South Africa – NOSTALGIA’, a clickable hyperlink to a then-online
album of classic Margate-based images on the web site of a South African
information/Data channel known as eHowzit that included two Trunko images.
Certainly one of these is the Jones picture that had appeared on the MBA web site, however the
different is solely new to cryptozoologists.

Decrease-resolution full model
of the fifth Trunko {photograph} to be made recognized to cryptozoologists (© proprietor
unknown, however picture dates from early Nineteen Twenties, so now prone to be in public area
– reproduced right here on a strictly non-commercial Truthful Use foundation for
academic/evaluation functions solely)

The album offered no particulars regarding
who had snapped this latter photograph (it’s reproduced right here, on the opening to
this current ShukerNature article, on a strictly non-commercial Truthful Use foundation
for academic/evaluation functions solely). As might be seen, it depicts the by-now
acquainted Trunko type of an enormous white globster, however, curiously, it exhibits a
giant fan-shaped projection from the carcase that was not seen in earlier
Trunko pictures however which can clarify numerous previously-mystifying claims by
some unique Trunko eyewitnesses that the carcase had possessed a lobster-like
‘tail’ (lobster tails are certainly fan-shaped). As well as, the precise
location depicted on this photograph, the place Trunko was stranded, is revealed to have
been the principal Margate seashore at Tragedy Bay.

Markus subsequently contacted Mr Celliers
on FB for extra info relating to this extremely important photograph, and
Celliers replied that he had obtained each of them from the Margate Museum
“when it was nonetheless in existence in 2000”. (He additionally offered a hyperlink to
a Margate-themed YouTube video produced by him and uploaded on 21 July 2012
that features these identical two Trunko photos – click on right here
to view it.) Presently unable to establish with certainty which
institution Celliers was alluding to, nonetheless, Markus speculates that it could
in reality be the Margate Artwork Museum, but when so, it’s nonetheless in existence in the present day.

Consequently, Markus has now contacted this
museum within the hope that it’s certainly the proper one and may subsequently present
some info regarding this fifth Trunko picture.

My honest thanks as at all times to Markus
Hemmler for thus kindly bringing this newest unearthed Trunko photograph to my
consideration and for sharing with me his info regarding it.