Kinderhook Blob - [Cryptid]

• About this cryptid:

A whistling, floating, ghostly, amorphous creature that has been spotted periodically in Kinderhook New-York since 1962. - Descriptions vary: from a "gliding bell-shaped-blob with no eyes" to an incarnation of the "virgin mary" or other times simply as a "sheet ghost." - it peeks out from behind the treeline before quickly floating up & rushing its victims..

• History: First encountered by then 10-year-old "Bruce G. Hallenbeck" (who encountered it twice in his youth, later in life he would grow up to become New York State's Library genealogist, as well as a horror author and a regular contributor to the "Monsters of ___ series" & other books on that subject.) – His personal anecdote of the Kinderhook blob is also included in the Monsters of NewYork book [2013] it goes as follows:

“When I was nine or ten years old (1962) I was up in the woods behind our house with my cousin Chari. We both heard this really high-pitched whistle from somewhere near by” – he then turned and looked for the source of the sound, to his surprise he saw "a large white object peering at me from behind a nearby pine tree..." “I say ‘peering,’ but in fact it had no eyes that I could see.” The closest description he could come up with was that it looked something like "Casper the friendly ghost with a big round head and a blueish tint to it." their cousin didn't have time to look and the two scrambled back to their parents house. 

Bruce goes on to mention that two or three years later (1964) on his 12th birthday his friend also encountered the creature, it had glided down the hill towards him on his way to the party, the blob apparently frightened him so much that he jumped over a 6ft pond! – in yet another interview on that encounter Bruce was quoted as saying "We were about 12 years old, so we thought, "Oh yeah, we're gonna kick this things butt!" – and they had decided to try and go after the thing with pitchforks. - The encounter ended with them fleeing, screaming "MY GOSH, LETS GET OUT OF HERE!!"

One might shrug it off and say well, thats "simply the colourful childhood imagination of youngsters" – but similar creatures have been spotted in the area since: in fact, fifteen years later (1980?) Bruce's father saw something fly overhead whilst doing garden work he described it as a "large white shape" that hovered in the trees and described it as looking reminiscent of a "shmoo" from the Li'l Abner books... [Not gonna lie, it's pretty funny that they both compared them to cartoon characters but i guess its all they had to compare them to at the time.]

[various shmoo merch, shmoos 'live in the woods' and love to be eaten, they make for great steaks, if they where not directly from a comic, they'd be excellent fearsome critters!]

Allegedly, [And I do stress "allegedly" because sadly there's no reliable source for this last one aside from the "Cryptidz wiki" - which also couldn't even bother to spell 'Hallenbeck's name correctly half the time. (I personally went in and corrected it & added what source links I could find to the original article & stories.)] - The most recent encounter with a creature matching this description was apparently in 2017 by "locals, Owen Farley & Anthony Malanowski" who witnessed the blob on a late night stroll. According to them, "there was a loud, high-pitched screech. The figure was described as "a white blob, around 7 ft. tall" it floated toward them at high speeds, terrified, they ran." (searching their names online, sadly brings up nothing.)

Because It's often described as being "in flight" it could be considered an encounter with an ghost or a type of "atmospheric beast" I suppose…

if i where to compare this cryptid to a yokai [though to compare cryptids to yokai is ALWAYS a stretch.] - I'd definitely mention the "blob" from kanpo era's "怪奇談絵詞"(1741-1744) whos description shares the scroll with Kuchibeinu.) - The white blob seen there is described on the scroll as: “a white sheet that chased someone for 8km on a rainy evening near Karajin-machi - in the end; it turned out to be a tanuki.” – its also reminiscent of a few "ittan momen" encounters that i've read about in my research. – But... I digress, there are of course better modern/direct cryptozoological connections that could be made as well… My point in bringing this up is, it could very easily have been an animal (barn owls are white & fly.) but also that Humans have been encountering 'Floating white blobby monsters" for centuries around the world… So are encounters like this, really so strange? 🤔