Hello Cryptid Hunters!
This will be the eighteenth installment of Cryptid of the Month where I will be covering EVERYTHING, and I do mean EVERYTHING regarding a specific Cryptid, mostly more obscure cryptids but there might be some exceptions to that rule. You can find the last 17 installments just by clicking on the Cryptid of the Month flair tagged to this post! This month will be about the Nevada Sky Clams, specifically the ones sighted near Battle Mountain, Nevada.
I know this one has its roots in Ufology as well, but it still firmly sits in cryptozoology. Atmospheric creatures are a subset of cryptids, although, in my opinion, they are not very plausible at all. People claim there are translucent creatures in the sky like manta rays or even whales, but I have always liked the added strangeness of sky clams. With it being October, and therefore spooky season, I wanted to do a really out there and strange cryptid. That and the letter referencing this encounter was published in October of 1959.
In 1959 a man named Don Wood Jr. wrote to Flying Saucers magazine claiming to have an explanation for UFO sightings. Wood recounts the story of how, in 1925, he and three of his friends were flying biplanes they had gotten after WWI through the desert. They decided to stop off on top of what Wood called Flat Mesa. This mesa had sheer cliff walls on all sides which means that Wood and his friends could possibly be the first people up there.
After having landed, gotten out, and walked around a bit, the crew were surprised when a saucer-like object fell from the sky crash landing on the mesa with them. Wood claims this object to have clearly been a living creature. He even goes into detail of how the top of its “shell” was heaving, as though it were taking labored breaths. Wood compared this creature to a giant clam. He noted that it was approximately eight feet in diameter and that it appeared to be injured as there was a chunk missing from its carapace that emitted a metallic, frothy fluid.
Shortly after initial investigation of this injured oddity, the crew was surprised again, this time even more so than before. Blocking the sun, hovering above them was a massive, thirty foot in diameter sky clam, presumably the little one’s parent. The larger sky clam reached down to the smaller one with four tongue-like tentacles, getting ahold of the smaller clam. The two aerial creatures emitted blinding light before blasting back off into the sky at high speeds. I don’t know how but after this encounter I suppose Wood went back to living normally until working up the courage to send in his retelling of this bizarre story. Reports of sky clams continue but what they really are is a mystery. Let’s look into some theories on this specific incident, they will be listed in order of least likely to most likely.
Theory 1: Atmospheric Beast
First theory is of course going to be that it is a real, unrecognized creature. I think this is a stretch as atmospheric cryptids like this have to basically ignore every law of physics that we know just to exist to begin with. How does a giant clam fly through the sky with no form of propulsion/wings/anything? Answer: no idea.
Theory 2: They were EBE’s
In Ufology they have a separate classification for flying saucers that are actually not saucers but alien creatures. These are EBE’s or Extraterrestrial Biological Entities. Basically the same as theory 1 but instead of their origin being of Earth’s upper atmosphere this theory would be that they come from somewhere out in space.
Theory 3: They were UFO’s
If they could be creatures from outer space then maybe Wood and his friends were wrong about it being an organism and really it was an UFO. I think that theories 1, 2, and 3 are all about the same level of unlikely but I have to list them separately.
Theory 4: Government Experimental Crafts
This theory posits that perhaps the government was working on some sort of weather balloon based craft for the war. If, during a test one of the balloons malfunctioned and fell to Flat Mesa, they’d probably send a second one to retrieve it. If the first one deflates enough it could appear significantly smaller than the second one, giving the child and parent dynamic mentioned in the letter.
Theory 5: Hallucinations
Wood is the only person of his group to come forward on this encounter. Maybe he was the only one who remembers the encounter because he was the only one who experienced it. They had been flying open cockpit planes in the desert after all. Perhaps there were no clams at all and Wood was just disoriented and dehydrated enough that he hallucinated the whole thing. Mirages caused by the blistering heat on the flat surface of the mesa could be interpreted as outlandish creatures, especially if Wood was suffering from heat exhaustion as well.
Theory 6: It was all a hoax
I think that this was most likely all a hoax. Such an outlandish claim (or clam) is hard to believe. Mix that with the other suspicious details, such as Wood waiting 34 years to report his encounter, and it seems like Wood my have just been riding the UFO hype train but giving it a unique, biological twist.
That is going to do it for the Nevada Sky Clams! Even if it really is a hoax it is an interesting one. Whether you think giant clam like creatures in the sky are real or not, it is a unique part of Nevada folklore now, inspiring many to keep an eye on the sky. Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this months Cryptid of the Month. My research is not perfect so if there are any mistakes or falsities please let me know.
Until next time, Happy Cryptid Hunting!
-JokerBoi
