An Old London Basement Reveals Some Creepy Creatures, This Will Freak You Out!
By Dreamer
In 2006, an orphanage in London was slated for demolition. During the inspection, a sealed basement was uncovered with thousands of wooden crates inside filled with oddities, artifacts, rare specimens, and mysterious diaries. All of the items were very unusual.
The collection is now known as the Merrylin Cryptid Collection, named after the original collector, Thomas Theodore Merrylin, a British aristocrat and naturalist from the 1800s.
Merrylin had a passion for the strange and unusual and would travel across the world to collect specimens, many of which showed species previously considered only mythological. He was accused if being into black magic and dark arts because at the age of 80 he still looked like a 40 year old man. But suddenly he just disappeared from until 1942, when a man claiming to be Thomas Theodore Merrylin donated a sizeable London house to an orphanage, under the conditions that the house never be sold and the basement never be opened. Recently, the orphanage was dissolved and the basement were found by accident during the demolition process.
Even though the real Merrylin would have been over 160 years old in 1942, the donor appeared to be in his 40s. Most people at the time simply assumed he was simply a relative with the same name, but could it have been Merrylin himself?
Alex CF, the curator of the collection, certainly seems to think so. He says that Merrylin's diaries contain references to all kinds of advanced ideas such as quantum physics and theories on multiple universes - ideas that didn't even exist back then and that we are only just exploring now.
What's even more interesting is how Merrylin's diaries seem to establish a scientific basis for some of the mythological specimens in his collections.
For instance, he speculates that modern man's earliest ancestor, Australopithecus, may have encountered a symbiotic virus that led to the development of two subspecies of humans - Homo Lupus (aka werewolves) and Homo Vampyrus (vampires). Rather than mythical, supernatural beasts, he believes that certain characteristics of the virus mutated their physiologies in real ways.
They say that magic is just science we haven't understood yet, so could Merrylin have been on to something? Could the pervasiveness of these types of myths in nearly every culture around the world have had some foundation in truth?
Along with various hominid remains, the collection also has other specimens, such as this baby dragon. Merrylin believes dragons were merely offshoots of dinosaurs that managed to linger for a while.
While most of the specimens are cool to look at, some are definitely a little unsettling.
The remains of a tiny merman, aka Icthyosapien.
What is this?
The famed Jackalope, half jackrabbit, half antelope.
See more in the video below:
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