A Cryptozoologist’s Bibliography: Matt Bille’s Of Books and Beasts

It’s been said that the present is a Golden Age for cryptozoology books, cryptozoology being the ostensible study of creatures known from legend, account or anecdote but not accepted as valid by science...

But while it might be that a great many new cryptozoology-themed books have appeared in print over recent years, it doesn’t follow that their existence makes this a ‘Golden Age’… I mean, some might say exactly the opposite, since many of the books concerned are neither good nor useful. Matt Bille’s Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist’s Library (Bille 2022) is unusual, potentially valuable, and very much relevant to this increase in the subject’s literature since it lists, reviews and critiques it. Bille is no newcomer, but a stalwart who has been involved and contributing for several decades. He’s previously published two books devoted to the subject – Rumors of Existence (Bille 1995) and Shadows of Existence (Bille 2006) – and for some years edited and compiled the cryptozoology-themed newsletter Exotic Zoology.

Caption: Bille’s previous books on cryptozoology include Rumors of Existence (1995) and Shadows of Existence (2006). The thylacine at left was illustrated by Karen Whitman; the Okapi and Saola at right by William M. Rebsamen.

Of Books and Beasts is an annotated bibliography, covering works devoted to the topic of cryptozoology as well as others deemed relevant to the subject by the author. Here’s your reminder that an interest in cryptozoology does not necessarily denote any link between the author and a personal belief in alleged mystery creatures, since said author may well be addressing the subject’s connection to folklore, social or pop-culture phenomena, or the history of thought, discovery and exploration more generally. For the record, Bille works from a sceptical perspective and I can confirm from statements he's made elsewhere that his inclusion of, say, books on bigfoot does not reflect a personal opinion that bigfoot is an undiscovered species.

The bulk of mystery animal research (wherever the researcher sits on the ‘flesh and blood’ vs ‘sociocultural phenomenon’ spectrum) relies on the interpretation and evaluation of reports that exist in the published record. Partly for that reason, many (most?) people who write about the field are collectors of the literature, a literature that’s arcane and involves rare, long out of print items that are often hugely expensive ‘collector’s items’ today. For these reasons combined, a few efforts to compile a cryptozoological bibliography have been produced in the past. Karl Shuker and Stephen Shipp published one, in instalments, in the 1990s (Shuker & Shipp 1995a, b, 1996) (an online version is here). How complete is Bille’s review, and how does it shape up?

Caption: a miscellany of cryptozoological books. This subject is sufficiently arcane, yet at the same time popular, that many of its older books are much sought after and increasingly valuable. A few of the books visible here are now impossible to get at what I consider to be affordable prices. Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: more cryptozoological books from my own collection, including a good number of works on sea and lake monsters. The books visible in the middle (on merfolk and dogmen) highlight the amorphous nature of the subject. Is cryptozoology only about ‘sensible’ alleged creatures, or does it also include those most often associated with myth and legend? Image: Darren Naish.

On completeness, an issue that has to be mentioned – Bille raises it in the Introduction – is that his coverage is limited to the English language. I’m no polyglot, but I’m firmly of the opinion that proper interest in a subject requires consultation of (or, at least, awareness of) works published in languages other than one’s own. This is especially obvious in cryptozoology given that its famous founder (Bernard Heuvelmans) wrote mostly in French, and that a number of his works only exist in that language. However, I appreciate that Bille had to draw the line somewhere. He also opted to exclude many books devoted to bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster since their inclusion would “overwhelm this entire book” (p. xi). I suppose that that’s a necessity, but I admit to being disappointed.

Caption: the foundational impact of author and researcher Bernard Heuvelmans – whatever you think of his output – is increasingly appreciated, but less well known is that many of his works only exist in French. Certain books about Heuvelmans – like Barloy’s Bernard Heuvelmans: Un Rebelle de la Science – also only exist in French.

The book is divided into five sections (1: Cryptozoology Books, 2: Related Sciences, 3: Crypto-Fiction, 4: A Marvelous Miscellany, and Afterwords). Bille’s entries feature mini-reviews of the contents, approach and usefulness of the books he covers. My bias (speaking as a sceptical and scientifically qualified author) means that I mostly find Bille’s evaluations valuable. I dislike his use of the present tense when discussing the contents of a book: he argues in the Introduction that its use improves readability but, when reading a book, you’re seeing an author’s words from the past; they’re not speaking to you in the present (and, yes, you will appreciate the irony that I just wrote that sentence in the present tense).

To qualify my use of the word ‘mostly’ in the above paragraph, there are a few cases where Bille fails to explain a given author’s approach or argument with sufficient clarify, nor is he sufficiently critical of their scholarship. Andy McGrath’s Beasts of Britain, for example, is not a good or reliable guide to the UK’s cryptids, but a deeply idiosyncratic work where an ‘anything goes’ approach is applied to the British crypto-fauna. Think British bigfoot 1 km outside of downtown Bristol and colour-changing plesiosaurs off the coast of Devon. Meanwhile, Bille’s review of Michael Woodley’s In the Wake of Bernard Heuvelmans doesn’t mention the book’s raison d’etre: that Woodley analyzed sea monster reports anew and came up with a list of new taxonomic proposals that are even more bizarre than those proposed by Heuvelmans.

Caption: the ‘British bigfoot’ crowd sure are a special bunch of individuals. Yes, there are authors and researchers who seriously argue that bigfoot lives in the UK. Several interesting phenomena are at play here, but I don’t think that any of them are zoological in basis.

I hope I can be forgiven for being interested in what readers and reviewers say about my 2016 Hunting Monsters (Naish 2016). I very much appreciate Bille’s kind and fair words about the book (he regards it as an important contribution that does a good job of laying out its primary thesis), but I admit frustration in being criticized for not saying more about select topics, or for outright excluding the coverage of others. I have never worked for a single publisher that gave me free rein on wordcount: vast amounts are always excised during the editorial process or disallowed because of space and mandate. Incidentally, plans are afoot for an enlarged second edition of Hunting Monsters.

Caption: cryptozoology is a divisive subject. A group of people who tend to share a set of other ideas relating to politics, religion, human rights, and the societal role of science and scientific knowledge are highly aggressive, sometimes comically so, when it comes to whether cryptids are ‘real’ or not. This is obvious when you look at reviews of books like my 2016 Hunting Monsters.

A problem one encounters in writing about cryptozoology is where the subject begins and ends. Are books on the scientific discovery of any and all animal species relevant? What about books on extinct animals that have been deemed (at one time or another) relevant to cryptozoology? What about books on folklore and indigenous knowledge that mention unusual animals, on belief systems and superstitions that involve the imagining of monsters and other weird creatures? It’s difficult. In deciding what to include and exclude, Bille has ultimately included any and all works that he regarded as consistent with or complimentary to the scientific, zoology-focused view of cryptozoology he endorses. His Section 2 therefore includes works on palaeontology, evolutionary theory, oceanography and exploration.

Caption: books on such matters as evolutionary history, zoological discovery, extinction and natural history are certainly relevant to cryptozoology at large, but where do you draw the line when including such books in an overview of mystery animal research?

I, personally, would have preferred it if the book didn’t include this section at all; I can appreciate that the featured works are relevant to cryptozoological research in its broadest sense, but their inclusion gives the volume a more random, potpourri flavour than the cryptozoology-focused one I would have preferred. That first section devoted to ‘pure’ cryptozoology, in fact, only occupies the first 123 pages of this 311 page book.

What about Section 3, on crypto-fiction? I’ve read a bit of crypto-fiction in my time and generally enjoyed it, and the weird netherworld that cryptozoology inhabits requires that investigators generally need to be aware of the coverage a given mystery beast has received in all genres. We’re all aware of cases where tales that originated as fiction later got retold or re-framed as if they were real, and fiction is also important in showing how a given cryptid is imagined, described or perceived in pop culture. And there’s now so much crypto-fiction out there that a compilation is welcome.

Caption: books classed as ‘crypto-fiction’ range from ‘serious’ thrillers, horror novels and adventure stories – some very much written for adults – to graphic novels and annotated picture books. I don’t own any of Hawthorne’s Kronos Rising books (nor do I ever intend to), but I’ve enjoyed the crypto-fiction works I’ve read. I may or may not have a pseudonymous connection to certain of these books.

Section 4 (A Marvelous Miscellany) is not as miscellaneous as I was expecting (which is a good thing), but mostly covers monster-themed books whose inclusion is totally appropriate for this work. In fact, I’m not sure why the entries here weren’t crowbarred into Section 1. The Afterwords section contains brief comments on Bille’s own books (mentioned above) and thoughts on how he selected the books he did. Of Books and Beasts ends with lists of all the books included, and their authors, but these don’t function as indices, unfortunately, since they’re not cross-referenced with page numbers. While there isn’t an index, I should add that the books included in each section are listed alphabetically.

Caption: another motley of cryptozoological works which can again be used to make the point that many of these books are today considered highly collectible. Works like Heuvelmans’s On the Track saw several editions, and dedicated researchers and collectors tend to have more than one. I own three at the moment. I don’t own a first edition of Gould’s The Loch Ness Monster of 1934, the first book ever published on the Loch Ness monster (copies of which are currently available at around £400). The 1969 reprint is easy to get and remains affordable.

Finally, some words on design. Of Books and Beasts is ergonomic and functional. It’s a book of text and that text is presented in no-nonsense fashion. I would have preferred a more attractive layout, with the book titles in a different font, a denser, less spaced-out text format, and some illustrations here and there (such as the covers of seminal or noteworthy books). The CG cover art (by Doug Hajicek of MonsterQuest fame) is a curious choice. I like the theme but not the execution. I get that the book’s look and layout were likely a consequence of budget, but it was released by an actual publisher and is not self-published. The lack of a publication date is also a bit irksome (though, as you’ll have guessed from the citation provided in this article, I found it online). I make these constructive criticisms in the hope that they might be useful for future editions.

Overall, Of Books and Beasts is good, and does what it was meant to. Veteran researchers will find it useful as a summary, including of works that they might not have seen or obtained themselves. Meanwhile, those who might not know the literature so well will leave with a clear idea of what’s considered valuable and worthy of consultation. The caveat is that the book is very much written for those who share Bille’s view that cryptozoology is a ‘flesh-and-blood’ field closely allied to conventional zoology. That might make it less appealing to some.

Bille, M. 2022. Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist’s Library. Hangar 1 Publishing. ISBN 9781955471275, softback, no illustrations, pp. 311. Here at Amazon. £19.70/$23.99.

For previous Tet Zoo articles on cryptozoology, see…

Articles like this are possible because of the support I receive at patreon. Please consider supporting my research and writing if you don’t already, thank you so much. 

Refs - -

Bille, M. 1995. Rumors of Existence: Newly Discovered, Supposedly Extinct, and Unconfirmed Inhabitants of the Animal Kingdom. Hancock House Publishers.

Bille, M. 2006. Shadows of Existence: Discoveries and Speculations in Zoology. Hancock House Publishers.

Bille, M. 2022. Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist’s Library. Hangar 1 Publishing.

Naish, D. 2016. Hunting Monsters: Cryptozoology and the Reality Behind the Myths. Arcturus, London.

Shuker, K. P. N. & Shipp, S. 1995a. A bibliography of cryptozoological and zoomythological books, part one. Animals & Men 6, 26-29.

Shuker, K. P. N. & Shipp, S. 1995b. A bibliography of cryptozoological and zoomythological books, part two. Animals & Men 7, 30-35.

Shuker, K. P. N. & Shipp, S. 1996. A bibliography of cryptozoological and zoomythological books (part three). Zoomythology. Animals & Men 8, 17-21, 30.