Stories from the edge of explanation.
About 4 min readFor more than forty years, farmers and walkers on Bodmin Moor have reported a large black cat, four to six feet long, killing livestock and vanishing into the heather. The government investigated — and could neither prove it nor rule it out.
About 4 min readIn the summers of 1971 and 1972, a small Mississippi River town in Missouri was gripped by reports of a seven-foot, hair-covered creature with glowing eyes and a terrible smell. No photograph was ever taken, no specimen ever found — but the witnesses never backed down.
About 5 min readFor centuries, the misty forests of Shennongjia have been home to stories of the yeren — the ‘wild man’ of China. In the 1970s, Beijing sent scientists, soldiers and a cash reward to find it, and found nothing at all — so why do the reports keep coming?
About 4 min readIn April 1976, two young sisters on holiday in Cornwall said they saw a large winged figure hovering over a church tower. No photograph was ever taken, and almost every account came through one man — a stage magician with a book on how to hoax monster sightings.
About 5 min readFor more than a century, people in the rainforests of Sumatra have reported a small, upright, powerfully built ape that science has never confirmed — the orang pendek.
About 5 min readFor nearly a century, boaters on the Chesapeake Bay have reported a long, dark, serpentine creature — and in 1982, one couple even caught it on video.
About 5 min readIn May 1971, a family outside Fouke, Arkansas, reported a terrifying night-time encounter with a huge, hairy creature — and the Boggy Creek legend was born.
About 4 min readLong before Europeans reached Australia, Aboriginal oral traditions told of large, hairy, ape-like beings in the bush. Settlers called them yahoos; today they are known as the Yowie. Reports continue into the present day, but no specimen has ever been found.
About 4 min readMongolian herders say a sausage-shaped worm lives in the most desolate parts of the Gobi — so poisonous that to touch it is to die, and able to kill at a distance with venom or electricity. Expeditions have searched for a century. No one has found it.
About 4 min readFor centuries, Aboriginal peoples of south-eastern Australia have told of a creature in the billabongs and swamps — a devil of the water that drags the unwary under. European settlers reported it too. The stories may be older than the continent’s last giant marsupials.