Humans have always been fascinated with monsters. The most ancient of writings—5,000 year old cuneiform tablets from the Fertile Crescent—contain monster stories about the “wild man” Enkidu. The earliest text known in English, written 1,000 years ago, is Beowulf, a story about a hairy monster who lives in a swamp. Some of our best-selling books and movies are based on creatures and monsters: Vampires, Werewolves, Mummies. Our cable TV channels are filled with “in search of” stories about everything from space aliens to ghosts, Bigfoot to Nessie, Yeti to Chupacabra. Many people, of course, dismiss all of these stories, and perhaps giggle at the people who produce them. But there is also a large community of people who spend their time investigating and researching these reports, who accept them at face value, and who passionately believe in the existence of at least some of these “monsters”. They call themselves “cryptozoologists” (a word that means “student of hidden animals”), and the creatures and monsters they hunt are called “cryptids”. They form discussion groups on the Internet, and hold conventions and conferences, and wander the woods with cameras. And they gather eyewitness reports. Lots of reports, hundreds of them per year. This book is about some of those reports. They range across north and south, east and west, and from mountain to desert to swamp. They assert the existence of everything from giant frog-men to giant bats, from space aliens to lake monsters. Some are well-known among cryptozoologists, some are more obscure. Some are proven hoaxes, some have never been explained. Some were admitted to be fakes but are nevertheless still accepted as real by many. Some were obviously not meant to be taken seriously, some were, and some probably weren’t but are anyway. Illustrated.