Good evening. I'm a folklorist, and I specialize in Alpine cryptid traditions. I've spent the last eight years documenting Tatzelwurm encounters, and there's one case that I keep coming back to. It happened in the summer of 1921, near Rauris in the Salzburg region of Austria. Two local men encountered something that, to put it simply, shouldn't exist. I first came across this case in the Austrian folklore archives. I'd been in Vienna for a conference, ended up staying an extra week just to dig through the old records. My hotel had bedbugs, which was miserable, but I found this account and it made the whole trip worth it. The documentation was surprisingly detailed for that era. What struck me immediately was how straightforward the report was. No embellishment, no dramatic language. Just two men describing exactly what they saw.
So here's what the records say. Two witnesses, and I'm going to call them Friedrich and Josef, were hiking in the mountains above Rauris. This was high Alpine terrain, rocky slopes, somewhere between five and seven thousand feet elevation. The locals call these creatures different names depending on the region. Tatzelwurm in Bavaria. Stollenwurm in the Swiss Alps. In that part of Austria, they sometimes called it the Bergstutz, the mountain stump. The two men were resting near a rock outcropping when they noticed movement. About thirty feet away, something emerged from a crevice in the rocks. They described a creature roughly two to three feet in length. Gray in color. And here's the thing, the head looked like a cat. Wide face, large eyes, blunt snout. But the body was serpentine, like a thick snake or a stubby lizard. It had two short front legs with what they described as claw-like feet.
Now, what happened next is the part that really got my attention. The creature noticed them. And instead of retreating, it moved toward them. Then it jumped. According to both witnesses, it leaped nine feet into the air. Straight up. Nearly reached the height of their heads. cant jump like that - Robert' Friedrich, the older of the two, he froze. Said later he couldn't move, couldn't think. Josef grabbed him by the arm and they ran. They didn't stop until they reached the village. When they reported what happened, the locals didn't laugh at them. They nodded. Said others had seen the Bergstutz before. Said it was known to be aggressive. Said the old-timers believed its breath was poisonous.
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