Sea Serpents

Chinese Lake Monster Videos: Fake or Real?

Reports of “monsters” in Lake Kansai have issued from China since at least the 1980s. In recent weeks, via news reports rebroadcast on YouTube, we are beginning to see various videos that are apparently of different animate objects. Are any of these motion pictures of animals? Or merely mistakes and known animals posing as cryptids? Well, you don’t need a weatherman to tell you which way that thar distance Lake Monsters, but do we even need a cryptozoologist for this one? Legendary lake ‘monster’ is captured on camera China’s Loch Ness monster has been sighted. Or so Chinese state-run television [...]

One Way or the Otter, Radford/Nickell X-Files-Labeled

Don Getty, River Otters, Grand Tetons. Used with full permission of Mr. Getty. The photograph does not, however, appear in Ben’s and Joe’s book from last year. Would it have helped lessened the blow of this review against their flank? One would expect that the respected Journal of Folklore Reseach at Indiana University would come down on the side of Benjamin Radford’s and Joe Nickell’s recent skeptical book, Lake Monster Mysteries: Investigating the World’s Most Elusive Creatures. It turns out it didn’t work out that way, and the journal, instead, found the book had shortcomings. Did Ben and Joe receive [...]

Cryptofiction and Coelacanth Scales: Sterling E. Lanier Dies

Sterling Edmund Lanier, 79, who just died in Sarasota, Florida, harkens back to an era of early cryptozoologists and adventurers. Lanier worked as an editor at Chilton Books in the 1960s, alongside Ivan T. Sanderson, also an editor at Chilton. Chilton Books in 1961 published Sanderson’s famous book, Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life. Sanderson and Lanier moved in similar natural history and publishing circles for a few years. Lanier wrote the foreword for one of Sanderson’s friends, Roger A. Caras’ 1964 Chilton-published book, Dangerous to Man; Wild Animals A Definitive Study of Their Reputed Dangers to Man. Born in [...]