Discover the Science of (not so) Imaginary Creatures "The sheer depth of material covered in its pages is amazing"...." Fortean Times Magazine #1 Bestseller in the Occult and Unexplained Mysteries This is a book about monsters. From an early age we are taught that monsters do not exist. The reality is that monsters walk the earth today. Explore the world through its most unlikely creatures. Cryptozoology, the study of hidden, monstrous, and legendary animals, is truly the art of discovering the unknown. Richard Freeman, Zoological Director of Centre for Fortean Zoology, has explored the corners of the five continents on the search for creatures that many people believe are non-existent. In this book, he shares the exciting stories of his investigations of the Yeti, Mongolian Deathworm, Loch Ness Monster, Orang-Pendak, Ninki-Naka, and more. The line between myth and reality may be more narrow than you think. Cryptozoologists throughout the years have studied unknown species of reptiles, lake and sea creatures, apes, and hominins. The science and history of this field of study includes examples of creatures that were once thought to be mythological, but that have since been proven to exist. Our monsters and ourselves. The history of fabulous beasts and our searches for them is a history of the cultures of the world and the secrets we keep. If you're ready to begin your search for Sasquatch and learn to hunt monsters, Adventures in Cryptozoology is your guide. In these pages you'll find: Tales of mythical, extinct, and out-of-place creatures Hints about Bigfoot and other ape-men Tips for equipping your own cryptozoology adventure, including all the gear, field craft, and resources you'll need to record your findings You've read Cryptozoology A to Z, Expedition Unknown, or Chasing American Monsters? Then you'll want to read Adventures in Cryptozoology

With the explosion of knowledge taking place in recent decades, scientists are constantly discovering that things they have been certain about are wrong: the continents they thought had been in place forever actually drift around; the cells we are made of are not simple but infinitely complex; our genus has been on Earth many times longer than they thought. And increasingly, there is compelling evidence that scientists are wrong about our living relatives. One thing considered certain was that the giants and wild men in stories from all over the world are entirely imaginary. Now that belief is under serious challenge. Forty-five years ago, giant footprints found in northern California brought Bigfoot to the attention of many revived interest in Canada's Sasquatch. Every year since then additional evidence has accumulated, and now that witnesses can submit information via the internet, the trickle of reports has become a flood. John Green has been in the thick of things from the beginning. In "Sasquatch, The Apes Among Us", first published in 1978, he sampled the evidence from the earliest records up the late 1970s and from all around the world, then concentrated on two aspects of the subject: the nature of the animal described and the wealth of reports from parts of North America outside the Pacific Northwest. When it came out, "The Apes Among Us" was acclaimed as the definitive work on the fascinating subject of whether humans share North America with a giant bipedal primate that is unknown to science. Since then, evidence for the existence of that unknown primate has grown exponentially, and individual scientists have written books about aspects of it. Remarkably, however, to most of the scientific world, the evidence remains unknown and unexplored, and for those who do follow the subject this is still the definitive book.

What should have been an ordinary morning is about to spiral into a day of unrelenting terror.

As a reporter for his high school newspaper, Tom is always on the lookout for an offbeat story. But from the moment he woke up this morning, his own life has been more bizarre than any headline could ever tell.

The streets of his town are suddenly empty and silent. A strange fog has drifted in from the sea and hangs over everything. And something is moving in that fog. Something evil. Something hungry. Closing in on Tom.

Tom's terrified girlfriend Marie says the answers lie at the Santa Maria Monastery, a haunted ruin standing amidst a forest blackened by wildfire. But can he trust her? A voice that seems to be coming from beyond the grave is warning him that nothing is what it seems.

Only one thing is certain: with his world collapsing around him, Tom has only a few hours to recover the life he knew--before he, too, is lost forever in this nightmare city.

Vampires: The 100% Bona Fide Totally Real And Not Made Up At All Truth

In this day and age, the belief in vampires has been dwindling at an exponential rate. Those who still believe in them are often wildly misinformed. So what do you think will happen when Johnny McNormalpants finds himself face to face with a bloodthirsty vampire? Probably crap his pants, but then what? An informed citizen would know exactly what to do in this situation. If only there was some way to enlighten the public about this often forgotten subject, preferably in the form of a mock informative guide or something.

From Matt Melvin, one of the creators of Explosm.net and the hit online comic Cyanide & Happiness, comes"Dracula Is A Racist, " the definitive guide to vampires, answering those gravely important questions that keep you up at night. . .

• Was Dracula really a racist?
• How do vampires do their hair if they don't have any reflection?
• Is it gross for immortals to be attracted to high school girls if they're stuck in a 17-year-old body?
• Was Sesame Street ever truly safe from The Count?
• Is dressing in all black and acting snobby toward everyone enough to fake being a vampire?
• Just how much more badass are vampires than zombies?

" Dracula Is A Racist" is the essential vampire handbook that digs up all the dirt and backs it up with hard vampirical evidence. That's totally true. Really.

Matt Melvin is a 25-year-old T-shirt aficionado and sideburn enthusiast. Along with three other dudes, he runs Explosm.net, a pretty awesome website full of awesome things. When not adding even more filth to the Internet, he enjoys criticizing and complaining about movies, listening to music and inventing obscure types of niche sexual acts. He currently lives in San Diego. He is very tall.

Part history, part road trip, and part biography, this is the true story of a remarkable group of men whose obsession with Bigfoot turned the giant hominid into an American icon. Award-winning journalist Michael McLeod tells of Bigfoot's rise to tabloid stardom in a fast-paced account that begins with his own journey to investigate a famous 1967 film clip of a Bigfoot in a California forest. McLeod proceeds to uncover a trail of clues reaching from the late nineteenth century, when a few ambitious, imaginative naturalists and explorers synthesized historical and indigenous folklore with Darwinian ideas and speculated that a proto-hominid 'missing link' might still be alive in remote areas. That speculation would eventually inspire a colorful cast of loggers, hunters, con artists, and businessmen in the twentieth century to create the modern myth of Bigfoot, all of them angling for a piece of a monster that the media and the public still can't get enough of. Told through vividly narrated interviews and anecdotes, "Anatomy of a Beast" offers a unique perspective on the deep roots of counterfactual thinking - and how obsession and myth are created out of it.

Now that millions have read and seen "Twilight," where do they turn for vampire advice? This wry, witty, fully illustrated, and bloody essential guide.
Vampires are all around-books, movies, TV, comics- infiltrating our culture like never before. But what happens if one should run into a real vamp on the street? "Vampire Taxonomy" is the best defense against a fatal encounter in the dark. For the reader's protection, Meredith Woerner reveals the truth about:
?Sunlight sensitivity-Do vamps venture out in the day or stick solely to the evening hours?
?Physiology-When ready to feed, do they change appearance or simply lure with the seductive flash of a fang?
?Dress-Are they decked out in leather with aspirations of becoming the first vampire rock stars or do they cling to Gothic robes and ruffled collars?
?Diet-Are they waging a never-ending struggle against the temptation of human blood or do they view the world as their personal blood buffet?

" While vampire stories have been part of popular culture since the beginning of the nineteenth century, it has been in recent decades that they have become a central part of American culture. Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture looks at how vampire stories -- from Bram Stoker's Dracula to Blacula, from Bela Lugosi's films to Love at First Bite -- have become part of our ongoing debate about what it means to be human. William Patrick Day looks at how writers and filmmakers as diverse as Anne Rice and Andy Warhol present the vampire as an archetype of human identity, as well as how many post-modern vampire stories reflect our fear and attraction to stories of addiction and violence. He argues that contemporary stories use the character of Dracula to explore modern values, and that stories of vampire slayers, such as the popular television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, integrate current feminist ideas and the image of the Vietnam veteran into a new heroic version of the vampire story.

Arm yourself with garlic, stake and crucifix, for the vampires are back in force - at the top of the best-seller lists, on your TV, on the web and lurking in darkened cinemas. But, where did they come from? Why have they come back now? And how can you tell if you are one? Beginning with the first sightings of bats and blood-sucking in the Romantic period, "Bite" will follow the undead's progress through the ages, right up to the present. Alongside mini essays, anecdotes, facts and figures, each section will be punctuated with lists, such as the best places around the world for vamp tourism; rock songs with vampire allusions; box-office revenues for vamp movies; and, the top 10 Vampire clubs, video-games, vampire brides, as well as reliable and unreliable methods of killing a vampire.

The mere mention of vampires used to be enough to make people think of a nocturnal predator. But over the centuries the vampire has changed from monstrous villain to sexual object, for both men and women alike. Allure of the Vampire examines our intimate attraction to these beings in a detailed manner. Now, join occult author Corvis Nocturnum as he reveals the fascinating evolution of this icon as it has lured and enticed us in folklore, film and books from the days of ancient civilization to the living breathing inhabitants of our modern subculture, the vampire community.

Zooform Phenomena are the most elusive, and least understood, mystery animals. Indeed, they are not animals at all, and are not even animate in the accepted terms of the word, but entities or apparitions which adopt, or seem to have (quasi) animal form. These arcane and contentious entities have plagued cryptozoology - the study of unknown animals - since its inception, and tend to be dismissed by mainstream science as thoroughly unworthy of consideration. But they continue to be seen, and Jonathan Downes - the Director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology - who first coined the term in 1990, maintains that many zooforms result from a synergy of complex psychosocial and sociological issues, and suggests that to classify all such phenomena as "paranormal" in origin is counterproductive, and for researchers to dismiss them out of hand is thoroughly unscientific. Author and researcher Neil Arnold is to be commended for a groundbreaking piece of work, and has provided the world's first alphabetical listing of zooforms from around the world.

In her 1883 book, Shropshire Folklore, Charlotte S. Burne wrote: 'A very weird story of an encounter with an animal ghost arose of late years within my knowledge. On the 21st of January 1879, a labouring man was employed to take a cart of luggage from Ranton in Staffordshire to Woodcock, beyond Newport in Shropshire, for the ease of a party of visitors who were going from one house to another. He was late in coming back; his horse was tired, and could only crawl along at a foot's pace, so that it was ten o'clock at night when he arrived at the place where the highroad crosses the Birmingham and Liverpool canal. 'Just before he reached the canal bridge, a strange black creature with great white eyes sprang out of the plantation by the roadside and alighted on his horse's back. He tried to push it off with his whip, but to his horror the whip went through the thing, and he dropped it on the ground in fright.' The creature duly became known to superstitious and frightened locals as the Man-Monkey. Between 1986 and early 2001, Nick Redfern delved deeply into the mystery of the strange creature of that dark stretch of canal. Now,published for the very first time, are Nick's original interview notes, his files and discoveries; as well as his theories pertaining to what lies at the heart of this diabolical legend. Is Britain really home to a Bigfoot-style entity? Does the creature have supernatural origins? Or is it something else entirely? Nick Redfern addresses all of these questions in Man-Monkey and reveals a story that is as bizarre as it is macabre.

Pre-historic Native American legends tell of white men with beards landing on the shores of the New World, bringing knowledge of science, engineering, and laws, and more. In the legends, they arrived in huge ships with swan wings, and the strange fair-skinned, blue-eyed, men wore black gowns. In the Yucatan jungle, elders call these legendary men Quetzalcoatl, Viracocha, Kukulkan, and other ancient men. And who were these men? Where did they come from, and when did they arrive? These are the questions Pierre Honore poses and answers in for his absorbing quest into the mysterious heritage of South and Central American civilisation. In part an account of the Indian civilisations of Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Yucatan and Honduras, and in part an absorbing piece of historical detection, Honore maintains that the legendary gods of the Indians once existed in reality, and suggests a solution to the mystery of who they were.

A LEGEND ON LEATHER WINGS The Indians called it the Thunderbird, a winged monster so vast that the beating of its mighty pinions sounded like thunder. But this ancient beast is not to be held in the cage of mythology. Today, from all over the dusty U.S. / Mexican border come hair-raising stories of modern day encounters with winged monsters of immense size and terrifying appearance. Further field sightings of similar creatures are recorded from all around the globe. The Kongamato of Africa, the Ropen of New Guinea and many others. What lies behind these weird tales? Ken Gerhard is in pole position to find out. A native Texan, he lives in the homeland of the monster some call 'Big Bird'. Cryptozoologist, author, adventurer, and gothic musician Ken is a larger than life character as amazing as the Big Bird itself. Ken's scholarly work is the first of its kind. The research and fieldwork involved are indeed impressive. On the track of the monster, Ken uncovers cases of animal mutilations, attacks on humans and mounting evidence of a stunning zoological discovery ignored by mainstream science. Something incredible awaits us on the broad desert horizon. Keep watching the skies

For centuries, eyewitnesses around the world -- from America to Africa, Argentina to Scotland -- have reported sightings of dark, mysterious creatures in area lakes that surface briefly, only to quickly disappear. While the most famous lake monsters of Loch Ness and Lake Champlain have gained international notoriety, hundreds of lakes around the world are said to shelter these shadowy creatures. Lake Monster Mysteries is the first book to examine these widespread mysteries from a scientific perspective. By using exhaustive research and results from firsthand investigations to help separate truth from myth, the authors foster our understanding of what really lurks in the cold, murky depths. Benjamin Radford and Joe Nickell are considered to be among the top lake monster authorities in the world. Here they share unique insights into many of the world's best-known lake monsters. They interview witnesses and local experts and discuss the different types of lake monster sightings, delve into possible explanations for those sightings, and examine hoaxes, evidence claims, and legends surrounding the monsters. The authors have also conducted groundbreaking fieldwork and experiments at the lakes and have examined recent photographic and sonar evidence. Incorporating newly-revealed information and up-to-date developments in the cases they present, professional monster hunters Radford and Nickell plunge into both the cultural histories of these creatures and the scientific inquiries that may hold the key to these mysteries.

The age of zoological discovery has not passed. Every year, spectacular and exciting new species are being located and classified, adding to our knowledge of the animal kingdom. New whales, deer, snakes, sharks, and birds are just some of the creatures we have learned about in the past decade. Moreover, the seas and forests continue to conceal unsolved mysteries of zoology. Are there undiscovered big cats and unclassified apes hidden in the world's forests? Do large animals of unknown type lurk in deep lakes or in the oceans? The discoveries, rediscoveries, controversies, and mysteries of modern zoology are collected here in "Shadows of Existence", a thoroughly researched and up to date guide to the wonders of nature.