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

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But then, there’s another twist where Phil Nichols, who’s a famous skeptic—he’s always like, you know, bursting everybody’s balloons, proving things aren’t as cool as you think they are—he actually has an interesting twist. He says he thinks the hoax never happened. He goes through all these newspapers and says, “You know what, there’s no record of a hotel fire, no record of this person who admitted to faking it.” So it’s a real reversal—the hoaxnever happened. So what about the monster? Is it real or somebody else’s hoax? 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. 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. I’ve seen many of these places personally. If you tell me there’s a hodag statue in Wisconsin, I want to see it with my own eyes, same as if you told me there was an actual hodag in Wisconsin. In South Dakota, I took selfies with the world’s largest chainsaw bigfoot sculpture. In Vermont, I hiked an icy mountaintop to find Wampahoofus Trail. In Ohio, I climbed an ancient mound shaped like an underwater panther. I have been to many cryptid museums and gift shops, and I have a shelf full of souvenirs to prove it. I sometimes joke that when I say I’m hunting cryptids, what I mean is that I’m driving to a town to drink a craft beer named after one. But I did also venture into their territories. After dark, I entered the old cement bunkers in the West Virginia forest that are the lair of the Mothman. I boated from New York to Vermont across Lake Champlain looking for sinuous humps in the water. I walked through an Arizona canyon that skinwalkers are known to haunt—but only after I drove to town to see if they had any craft beers named after them. This picture book is sweet and heartwarming. It tells the story of two young hikers who go into the woods in search of a Yeti. Yeti is afraid and doesn't want to show himself, so they write letters to him to try to get him to come out of the woods. During the hike, a snowstorm is coming, and the hikers aren't ready. Yeti, on the other hand, proves to be a good friend and comes up with a way to help the hikers while still being hidden. The Cryptid Files series by Jean Flitcroft

Cryptids | J. W. Ocker | 9781683693222 The United States of Cryptids | J. W. Ocker | 9781683693222

Flatwoods Monster of West Virginia, a robotic extraterrestrial that crash-landed in rural Appalachia

Devolution by Max Brooks

There are a couple of things. There’s a weird relationship between science and belief in America. We go through periods of extreme belief in religion, then we’ll go through periods that are more secular, then we’re trying to do both at the same time. Other cultures are better at embracing the spiritual side, so monsters to them are kind of like, of course there’s monsters. Batsquatch of Washington, a winged bigfoot that is said to have emerged from the eruption of Mount Saint Helens I think the favorite thing I learned about was the Silver Lake Serpent in New York. This is a pretty typical story: People see a creature in their local lake, it’s reptilian, serpentine. There’s a few twists where the witnesses sign affidavits to say they saw something, and then people come in with spear guns to try to catch it. But then, the end of that story is, a few years later, a local hotel burns down, and in the hotel, they find the ruins of a sea serpent—metal wires and bladders and stuff. So it was a hoax. Which again, is pretty typical. Here's a book series for young people, but this time it's broken down into deeper dives into one animal at a time. In each book in the Behind the Legend series, we look at a different creature or monster from history through a scientific lens and think about whether or not they could be real based on accounts of sightings and other evidence. Nessie and Bigfoot are two of the subjects of this book series, which also talks about mythical creatures that aren't just cryptids. Fiction Books About Cryptids Dear Yeti by James Kwan

Cryptids for a Living - VICE What It’s Like to Hunt Cryptids for a Living - VICE

Here are some books about or about cryptids and cryptozoology to help you satisfy your desire to look into the unknown. Who hasn't watched a "Bigfoot" show on the History Channel? This list isn't complete, but it does try to show how many different kinds of books there are out there, from fiction to nonfiction, and for people of all ages. Nonfiction Books About Cryptids Cryptozoology A to Z: The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature by Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark But the big reason that he’s the most popular cryptid is that we’re narcissists. Bigfoot looks like us. Have you seen Harry and the Hendersons?Loren Coleman is a well-known American cryptozoologist who has written many books about the subject and even built a museum in Portland, Maine, called the International Cryptozoology Museum. This encyclopedia, which was written with Jerome Clark, a writer who likes to write about the mysteries of the universe, gives an overview of cryptids, animals that haven't been found yet, and the people who study them. In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond: In Search of Sasquatch by John Zada A lot of times, you hear somebody say, “I saw Bigfoot.” You immediately think, “Oh, this guy’s a little bit off right here. They think they saw this creature that probably doesn’t exist.” But when I hear somebody say that, besides thinking, “Oh, I want to hang out with this guy,” I hear a sense of wonder. What he means is, “I’m hoping that the world has more surprises for us.” If we’ve already cataloged everything on this planet, that’s a sad day, right? That’s a sad day when the world has no more new wonders for us. So really, the pursuit of cryptids is just the pursuit of wonder. We’re hoping for something new. And even if those things never come to pass, and you never find a pukwudgieor you never find these other cryptids, you still spend time hoping and really relying on wonder. I think it’s kind of a beautiful thing. This illustrated guide is aimed at kids in middle school. It has information on 50 cryptids for people to think about. Each entry has eyewitness accounts or other possible evidence for the creatures, which is sure to pique the interest of young people who want to be scientists. Behind the Legend: The Loch Ness Monster by Erin Peabody and Victor Rivas Ts'ür'i and Aghay are protectors who use language revitalization to save the Earth from bad settlers and cyborg sasquatches in this fun YA comic book about colonialism. Cole Pauls is an artist from the Tahltan First Nation. He wrote this comic in English and Southern Tutchone to help keep the ancestral language alive. City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende