From November 29, 2005, this “Name The Mystery Fish” blog image remains the readers’ favorite. (You can click on it to make the postcard image above bigger.) But who remembers blogs or mystery fish, without awards? LOL. ‘Tis the season…let the voting begin; let the year-end awards drumbeat start. Web awards, of course, are all over the place. There are the Webby, the Golden Web, and the Zorgy Awards, to name a few, for websites and more. It looks like Cryptomundo has been shut out of those for yet another year, and remains as hidden (to award givers) as most [...]
James Bond and Cryptozoology
Did you know there are links between actual people, some real-life characters, who have searched for cryptids and the stories surrounding and linked to "James Bond"? Ask any spy trivia or "Jeopardy" buff, what was the inspiration for the name "James Bond"? The answer: Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels, got the idea for his title character’s name from the author name of one of Fleming’s favorite tropical books, The Birds of the West Indies. Birdwatchers, Cryptozoologists, and Spies As I mention in my Tom Slick biography, there are in-depth links between cryptozoology, ornithology and the "Old [...]
Ozark Howler: Faux Cryptozoologie
During the last decade, several attempts have occurred to promote the "Ozark Howler" as a real cryptid. After the first round of efforts, I gathered the specifics of the story, discovered the identity of the original hoaxer, and submitted the overview of what happened in a draft manuscript written with Jerome Clark in 1998. The draft would eventually become a published book. A photograph of a real howler, the black howler monkey (Alouatta caraya) of South America. Photographer Jessie Cohen, Smithsonian. The editors at Simon and Schuster, deciding to delete about 25% of the content of the draft mostly due [...]
Update: Keel, Kolchak, and Garuda
Here is a little more news to add to what I said earlier about Keel’s health. Keel’s fictional alter-ego Kolchak makes an appearance (interesting timing that), Skinner pops in on Keel, and a winged spirit coincidentally turns up. Beware of the ides of Mothman, November 15, 2006, forty years back to the future. John A. Keel during the 1970s, in the midst of writing about Mothman. Darren McGavin in the 1970s as "Carl Kolchak". Is he searching the skies for a winged weirdie? As I mentioned when Darren McGavin died at the age of 83 on February 25, 2006, it [...]
El Reno’s Dermals
Click on image for full-size version Dr. Grover Krantz did not bring to the attention of hominology the possible importance of dermal ridges found in unknown hominoid footprint casts until 1982. Could there be a photographic record of dermals from a dozen years before then? "Handprints" resembling those of a gorilla-like man or man-like gorilla are part of the question of unknown anthropoid cryptids in the southern United States. Near El Reno, Oklahoma, in December 1970, something which moved on all fours raided a chicken coop, leaving a handprint on the door. Local media called it the "El Reno Chicken [...]
Bigfoot Media Mania Continues
It is not your imagination. Bigfoot news is all over the map. New sightings and stories are popping up about them. Old cases discussed in recent newspaper items are being published about 1970s’ Illinois reports and Missouri flaps. Exhibition news is coming out of Kansas City, and plans for Jefferson, Texas, Bigfoot museum continues onward. A Skunk Ape is allegedly photographed in Florida, maybe a “chimpanzee” one too (above), and now debates are getting new fire under them. The pot is heating up in Malaysia again. Yowies now come into play too. Then, of course, there’s that Idaho professor friend [...]
Wamsley’s Mothman Interview
Let the anniversary articles begin. Let the 40th anniversary parties commence. Above: Mothman Museum director Jeff Wamsley holds his most recent book, Mothman: Behind the Red Eyes. With him is museum co-worker Todd Wiseman, an Ohio University film student making a documentary about Mothman. I earlier today posted on the question of whether the 12th, not the 15th, might be more correctly the “first” date of the “first” multiple sighting of Mothman. That aside, historically, the Scarberry-Mallette encounter will be remembered as the “first,” and here’s the local media’s kickoff to the 40th year celebration. In the The Herald-Dispatch of [...]
KC’s Kids CZ Book List
Looking for some suggestions for your holiday gift-giving to add to the book shelves of cryptozoologists-in-training? Trying to come up with colorful presents for those stockings? Here’s some book ideas that are being put out there for kids who are visiting the activities and the current Missouri home of the traveling exhibition that left Bates College only a few weeks ago. The Kansas City Library’s children’s services are recommending various kid-friendly books to go with the new exhibition at the H & R Artspace, the show that is entitled “Cryptozoology: Out of Time Place Scale.” One section of the traveling [...]
Shocking New Book: The Yowie
Click on the cover above to make the Yowie larger. The Yowie: In Search of Australia’s Bigfoot Wow! What a beautiful cover. If a book’s cover is a window to the content, you will not be disappointed. This is an earthshaking book. It’s big, it’s monumental, and it will surprise many people. I am an American, and as such, I have to admit that North Americans, specifically the general population and the media more than the readers here, tend to think egoistically that our Sasquatch was here first. The sense is that the files and legends of the rest of [...]
Creature From the Black Lagoon Again
Boing Boing has a good new posting on the just-released Creature From the Black Lagoon novel. Cory Doctorow writes: "If you’re looking for a fun little paperback to take you away from your life for a couple hours, you need look no further." Perhaps we all will need this after the election is over today… As I’ve mentioned at Cryptomundo before, the original concept for the movie developed from the excitement in the early 1950s that surrounded the Comoros Islands (near Madagascar) discovery of a "living fossil," the coelacanth. After its initial find in 1938, and the eventual acceptance that [...]
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