SOURCES: "The Terror of Blue John Gap" by Arthur Conan Doyle (The Strand, August 1910)

DESCRIPTION: “In the blaze of the gun I caught a glimpse of a great shaggy mass, something with rough and bristling hair of a withered gray color, fading away to white in its lower parts, the huge body supported upon short, thick, curving legs...Its hair looked like coarse faded oakum, and hung down in long, dense masses which swayed as it moved. It was like an enormous unclipped sheep in its fleece, but in size it was larger than the largest elephant, and its breadth seemed to be nearly as great as its height...he reared up on his hind legs as a bear would do...if one could conceive a bear which was tenfold the bulk of any bear seen upon earth—in his whole pose and attitude, in his great crooked forelegs with their ivory-white claws, in his rugged skin, and in his red, gaping mouth, fringed with monstrous fangs...the eyes...were huge, projecting bulbs, white and sightless...”(“The Terror of Blue John Gap” by A. Conan Doyle)

NOTES: The Terror lives deep in a subterranean light-less world, possibly evolving from an ancient race of cave bears. Its only access to the outer world is through an old Roman mine called The Blue John Gap. Light is painful to the Terror’s eyes, even moonlight. The Terror due to its size moves very quickly but surprizingly with little sound.

HISTORY: This story is important because it is one of the first pieces of fiction to deal with sightings of weird creatures, something we have become blaize about in our age of Sasquatch and the Loch ness Monster.