A report of a massive monster crab that haunted the Hilbre Island region has now once again begun to make the rounds as several look into the reports of the strange case dating back to 1954. The events elicited a bit of fear and a great amount of curiosity as locals scrambled in an attempt to figure out what exactly was haunting their island.
It all started when Susan Rogers and Tina Jones got into an argument and Susan ran off on her own. Tina, the older of the two started looking for her small cousin in what would soon become a frantic hunt as she realized the tide would be coming in isolating her from the rest of the island. As she wandered the sands, Susan found refuge in a cave as the sky opened up in a torrential rainstorm. As she waited, Susan watched the mouth of the cave hoping to catch sight of her cousin, their argument since long forgotten. Just then she felt something nudge her leg and discovered it looked almost like a crab’s leg, but was larger than any crab’s leg she had ever seen. As she looked over to see what the leg belonged to, she was confronted with a pair of large red eyes. Altogether the creature was around four feet tall and six feet wide. Susan says that as the creature approached her, she leaped from the entrance of the cave and landed on the rocks below where she sprained her ankle. Still she was driven away from the cave as she heard the chattering of the creature above. Her cousin eventually found her and together they went home where they told their parents.
But this wasn’t the only report that would suggest there was something unusual in the area around Hilbre Island. Several accounts came over the wire dating back to the 1940’s and leading up even into 1968 when the last documented sighting occurred. There are many species of creature, particularly in and around the sea, that find their ways into legends that suggest they were merely a normal creature that somehow, by some fluke of nature, grew to incredible size. Stories about massive creatures range from turtles, snakes, and whales, to even humans that lived feral on islands and the sea. And there are some species of Crab that would suggest even a slight mutation could result in something that could be perceived as truly monstrous. The Alaskan King Crab is one of the largest species, around which an unlikely industry grew out of a previously feared ecological and economic problem. They are now so prolific that an entire industry has developed from their harvesting.
But could a King Crab really grow to the size described by witnesses who observed the creatures over the forty years they were seen? The six foot suggestion of size is a close estimate to the actual leg-span of the King Crab. Furthermore it can be heard from a distance chirping. And after observing the species for only a few decades, it seems likely that mutations could occur beyond the scope of what we normally would see. While it seems a likely candidate, however, are we sure it’s the only possibility? Even in populated areas creatures can exist for weeks or even years without being noticed.