Tales of the Cryptids: Mysterious Creatures That May or May Not Exist (Darby Creek Publishing)

Product Information

Nain Rouge of Michigan, a fierce red goblin that has been spotted before every major city disaster in Detroit The Olgoï-Khorkhoï is said to be active during the months of June and July, and reportedly, you don’t even need to touch it to be taken down by the Death worm—it can kill by spitting its toxic, corrosive venom at you, or by hitting you with a bolt of electricity. Essential reading for anyone with an interest in unexplained mysteries, folklore, mythology, and the supernatural. An inherently fascinating, impressively informative, truly exceptional, and unreservedly recommended addition to community and academic library Cryptid collections.” —Midwest Book Review Kelly Milner Halls shares exciting information that, amidst all the fun fantasy, also manages to be both historically accurate and scientific. Cryptid Creatures will encourage kids to discover the world around them and explore the its many wonders”— Spokane Coeur d’Alene Living Magazine No one has ever photographed the creature, and most reports seem to be of the “I have a friend of a friend who saw it!” variety. But many believe that it’s real, and continue to search for it to this day. 2. Bigfoot

Right now, Hunting Monsters only exists as an ebook. If you’re at all like me, this might be something of a disappointment, since I don’t get much satisfaction from ebooks and think of them more as badly formatted word documents, not as books at all. Front cover of Naish(2016). I like it. In recent years, some apparently good evidence for bigfoot has dissolved under scrutiny. Alleged dermal ridges have proved to be artifacts of the plaster-pouring process, as demonstrated by Matt Crowley (image of plaster ridges by Matt Crowley, used with permission). And claims that the lustrous pelt and realistic muscle tone of 'Patty' can't be replicated by a suit are highly questionable - look at the realistic tone and texture of the obviously fake suit on the right (photo by Darren Naish). Essential reading for anyone with an interest in unexplained mysteries, folklore, mythology, and the supernatural. An inherently fascinating, impressively informative, truly exceptional, and unreservedly recommended addition to community and academic library Cryptid collections.”— Midwest Book Review The idea that cryptids are somehow surviving individuals from a prehistoric species is a well-known feature of cryptozoology, but cryptozoological writings are often rife with an additional layer of speculation. When imagined in detail as ‘real’ animals, cryptids often end up as radically novel members of their respective groups. At least, that’s the traditional definition of a cryptid. Since cryptozoology was established in its modern form in the fifties, the definition has widened to encompass even more fantastical creatures as more people grow interested in the topic. This includes extraterrestrial entities, creatures from folklore such as mermaids and gnomes, sentient non-humans like the Menehune of Hawaii, and even (possibly) robots. This expanding definition of cryptid isn’t just because cryptozoology fans are a welcoming lot. It’s because cryptid has become synonymous with monster, of any kind. Cryptid fans love monsters, and pop culture cryptozoology is basically Pok.mon: we want to collect all the monster stories, and we want the widest variety of them in our collection as possible.

How to Vote

This view was hardly novel. Folklorists such as Michel Meurger and Claude Gagnon emphasised in their 1988 book, Lake Monster Traditions: A Cross-Cultural Analysis, that a major part of belief in cryptids comes from the cultural setting of those observing and sharing their encounters. Big, deep lakes, for example, are imagined in several European cultures to be inhabited by monsters that combine the traits of monstrous fish and predatory ‘water horses’. Patricia Thang is an educator located in Los Angeles. Though a native Angeleno through and through, her heart also belongs to Tokyo, where much of her family is from. Besides books, she is an enthusiastic devourer of many things, including podcasts, television, and J-pop. She realizes there’s not enough time in the world to consume all of that content, but she’s trying anyway. Other endeavors to which she has dedicated herself include cuddling her dogs until they’re annoyed and taste-testing every vegan ice cream she can find. The Beast of Exmoor prowls the fields near Somerset and Devon in the UK and has been spotted numerous times since the 1970s. This is not the kind of cat you’d want to cuddle up with: The killings of hundreds of sheep have been pinned on the creature, which is said to be up to 6.5 feet long. Also known as “The Big Gray Man,” this creature is said to inhabit the summit of Ben Macdui, the second-highest mountain in Scotland. Supposedly you can hear its disembodied footsteps in the gravel on the mountain, and when the fog thins, you’ll see a hairy humanoid three times taller than a man. 7. and 8. Yowies and Habagon

Should, then, cryptozoology be denounced as pseudoscience? Some argue that it should and that its practitioners are only pretending to ‘do science’. Those in favour of this view argue that cryptozoology should be considered akin to belief in the paranormal and that it functions as the thin end of the wedge when it comes to an anti-scientific view of the world. An extremely random and little-known fact about me is that I am obsessed with Nessie (formally known as the Loch Ness monster, but that feels a bit too technical for my taste). My love began in high school, when my friends and I somehow found ourselves doing a group project in Spanish class on the topic of Nessie — I couldn’t tell you why Nessie was a viable theme for a Spanish project or how we came up with it to begin with, but here we are. We spent a weekend immersed in late-aughts internet search results: indiscernible footage of alleged sightings, various articles of questionable credibility, and random documentary clips that had made their way onto YouTube. Regardless of the quality of the research, though, I was hooked. And while I don’t necessarily spend a whole lot of my time deliberately seeking it out these days, I do still always experience a huge rush of excitement if Nessie, or cryptozoology in general, ever does come up.The name Ogopogo is thought to derive from a popular mid-'20s nonsense song that included the lyrics:

I love folklore, so naturally, I also love cryptids, since they’re basically the scary story versions of modern folklore. Which is precisely what I enjoyed about The United States of Cryptids.”—BoingBoing Sea monsters and other mystery beasts - the creature shown here is Heuvelmans' 'Yellow-belly' - have taken on a life of their own ever since cryptozoologists have devised morphological configurations and evolutionary histories for them. But isn't this all a house of cards? Compare 'Yellow-belly' with the eyewitness accounts Heuvelmans based it on. Spears’s ashy blue drawings have the impromptu feel of field sketches, while facts and alleged eyewitness accounts lend further credence to this fun handbook. Halls also provides a heartening message to readers: for any cryptid proven nonexistent, there are plenty of other weird and wonderful species to compensate.”— Publishers Weekly Hugh Gray's Loch Ness monster photo is not a swimming dog or a giant salamander or worm-like animal, but a swan with a submerged head. This explains why it's so white. Look carefully and you can see the wings, tail and ankle joint. Swan image by Peter Gray (no relation... I presume!), from Naish (2016). Which Loch Ness monster would you like to believe in? We most certainly do not see consistent descriptions of a single biological entity.There’s also the Hibagon, which lives in the mountains around Hiroshima in Japan. And there are many others. Experts say these apemen legends occurred independently across cultures. As Benjamin Radford, deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, told Live Science, “The idea of a wild, man-like 'other' creature co-existing with us but just beyond our understanding is heavily rooted in mythology.” 9. The Honey Island Swamp Monster We’re at an early stage in understanding this stuff. Or, at least, those of us who aren’t experts in it are at an early stage. What I’m saying – by now it’s probably clear – is that, while bigfoot and Nessie and so on might not be ‘real’, they’re likely ‘real’ enough, culturally and/or psychologically, to be significant to us. I think that that’s important. We’re calling this whole subject ‘post-cryptid cryptozoology’, and I hope that Hunting Monsters is perhaps epiphanic on this front to at least some of its readers. Nessie isn’t the only aquatic cryptid out there. One is Tahoe Tessie, which supposedly lives in California and Nevada’s Lake Tahoe. Another is Ogopogo, which lives in Okanagan Lake in British Columbia. This creature appears in Syilxand Secwepemc tales as the N’ha-a-itk, an evil entity that required natives to make a sacrifice to cross the lake. White people reportedly started seeing the creature in the 1870s. This is a solid addition for libraries serving elementary and middle school students.”— School Library Connection A cryptid is a creature or species whose existence is scientifically unproven. Maybe it’s been witnessed or rumored to exist, maybe it’s even been caught on video, but there is no definitive physical evidence to examine: no body to dissect, no remains to analyze. Scientists place those creatures in the category of fantasy instead of zoology. Cryptozoologists, though, who study and pursue cryptids, place them in the entirely separate category of cryptozoology. While the fantastical Mothman and the Jersey Devil may be the first cryptids you think of, a cryptid can be as comparatively mundane as a New England panther or an American lion; animals that once existed but are now believed by the scientific establishment to be extinct. Sometimes these animals are even discovered: the coelacanth, a fish thought to have gone extinct in the age of the dinosaurs, was discovered alive in 1938. A cryptid can even be an ordinary animal that is supposedly thriving where it couldn’t be, like a population of alligators in the Manhattan sewers, or freshwater octopuses.