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 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. 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. 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) (formally known as the Loch Ness monster, but that feels a bit too technical for my taste). At school, my friends and I were doing a group project in Spanish about Nessie. I can't tell you why Nessie was a good theme for a Spanish project or how we came up with it, but here we are. We spent a lot of time on the internet in the late '00s, looking at videos of alleged sightings, articles with questionable credibility, and random documentary clips that had been put on YouTube. I didn't care how good the research was, though. I was hooked. Nessie and cryptozoology are still very interesting to me, even though I don't spend as much time looking for them these days. I still get a lot of excitement when they come up.

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

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. 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 ZadaIt’s this movie from the 80s starring John Lithgow where this family in Seattle hits a Bigfoot and then takes them home and he becomes part of the family. It’s a comedy, and you can only do that movie with Bigfoot. If you tried to do The Enfield Horror and the Hendersons, which is a three legged monster-monster thing, or The Lizard Man of South Carolina and the Hendersons, it wouldn’t be a funny, family-friendly comedy. It’d be a horror show.

16 Hair-Raising Cryptid Books That Just Might Make You Believe

Thoughtful and well-researched...a worthy addition to any cryptid enthusiast’s library.”— AIPT Comics 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 ReviewBatsquatch of Washington, a winged bigfoot that is said to have emerged from the eruption of Mount Saint Helens Flatwoods Monster of West Virginia, a robotic extraterrestrial that crash-landed in rural Appalachia 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.