In search of the Linwood Woolly Beast: part II

In the wake of this week’s earlier, serious-er post – My obscure cryptid sighting: the goblin / devil / mothman / gargoyle. – I feel the need to be a little irreverant. (It is Friday, after all.) May you spot a fabulous cryptid of your own, if you are so inclined, this weekend.

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Not long ago, Mark Petruska of Mark My Words, blogged about the weird search terms people have used to end up at his place. (Circus Monkey With Guitar was my personal favorite.)

Because I keep a blog about the paranormal, ALL my search engine matches are pretty weird. The most embarrassing search to lead someone to me was “my first time with a prostitute” … but that’s what you get when you blog something titled: I met two prostitutes on my first day of work at the new hotel. (I’m a little surprised I haven’t gotten more strange hits thanks to my post: Sex and zombies. Where is my head these days?)

In truth, I was pretty dejected at the lack of craziness in my stats. When I was looking for search terms that stood out, however, I came across something interesting.

When I was just getting started on The Paranormalist, I  spent a lot of time  browsing the web, looking for potential topics to write about. I waded DEEP into the results Google returned for “Minnesota Paranormal.” Somewhere about the 10th or 11th page of results, I came across a brief reference to a cryptid I’d never heard of; one that supposedly prowled near my town. In a short, throw-away post at my baby-blog, I speculated on the nature of this obscure, absurd beast.

Since then, the following search terms have brought readers to my blog:

• “linwood wooly beast” = 45 times
• “linwood wooley beast” = 8 times
• “linwood woolly beast” = 8 times
• “woolly beast minnesota” = 3 times
• “linwood wolly beast” = 3 times
• “woolly beast linwood” = 2 times
• “linwood wooly” = 2 times
• “linwood mn paranormal” = 2 times
• “lonwood wooley beast” = 2 times
• “linwood wooley beast.” = 2 times
• “haunted mn wooly beast” = 1 time
• “the linwood wooley beast” = 1 time

That’s 79 searches, if you weren’t keeping count, for a creature that I had never heard of, and for which there are *were no real search results available.

*Wait! I just checked again and found the folks over at Camp Crypto have done a piece on The Linwood Wooly Beast since my initial search. How awesome is that?!? I think their theory on the creature’s actual identity is probably correct, but for the purposes of the remainder of this post, I’m going to ignore it. It’s more fun for me that way.

UPDATE 07/26/13: It seems Camp Crypto has gone belly up since I wrote this. A moment of silence, please, for another fallen paranormal blog.

For the record, they believed the beast was a misidentification of an albino deer.

An-y-way, today I went for a ride and took a couple of photographs of the beast’s supposed territory.

I’m afraid, once again, I failed to obtain any photographic evidence.

Sigh.

By the way, I’m still looking for a special someone to do an “artist’s conception” of the creature.

What we know so far:

• it is white
• it is moose-sized
• it has the head of a goat

Do I have any takers? Now I’ve even provided you with an accurate habitat in which to situate the beast.

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So, what is the best / worst search term that led someone to YOUR blog?

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July 2013 WriMoProg: 64+ 38.5= 102.5/145
[X + Y = Z / total-hours goal, where X = writing/editing time, Y= other writerly tasks.]

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