Browse Cryptids

The towering ape-man of the Pacific Northwest, glimpsed in fog and legend for centuries.

The legendary lake serpent of Scotland, photographed, sonar-scanned, and never found.

A winged humanoid with blazing red eyes, haunting Point Pleasant before disaster struck.

The ape-man of the Himalayas, tracked through snow but never confirmed.

A Navajo witch who wears the skins of animals and walks between worlds.

The largest shark that ever lived went extinct 3.6 million years ago, unless the deep ocean is hiding something.

The ship-swallowing sea beast of Norse legend, now partially explained by giant squid.

A gaunt, insatiable spirit of the frozen north that was once human.

The blood-draining predator that left livestock drained across Latin America.

Officially extinct since 1936, the Tasmanian tiger is the subject of more credible survival sightings than almost any other lost species.

A bat-winged, hoofed terror born from a colonial curse in the Pine Barrens.

A massive wolf-like predator terrorized rural France for three years, killing over 100 people before it was finally brought down.

An upright canine terror first reported in 1887, stalking Michigan's north woods ever since.

A colossal bird from indigenous legend with a wingspan that blots out the sun.

Florida's foul-smelling answer to Bigfoot, lurking in the Everglades heat.

Deep in the Congo Basin, local tribes describe a living dinosaur with total consistency across generations.

A cloaked figure with clawed hands and blazing eyes leapt over walls and breathed blue flame across Victorian England.

A pair of impossibly long legs walking through the night, captured on security cameras.

The antlered rabbit of the American West, born from taxidermy humor and frontier tall tales.

A red-eyed winged humanoid haunting the skies above Chicago since 2011.

Japan's mischievous water imp with a bowl of power on its head.

The original Romanian undead predates Dracula by centuries and is still feared enough that corpses are occasionally exhumed and staked in rural villages.

The Philippines' most feared shapeshifter hides as your neighbor by day and hunts as a beast by night.

The hairy hominid of Boggy Creek, Arkansas, that inspired one of horror's first docudramas.

A ghostly black dog with blazing red eyes has haunted the roads and churchyards of East Anglia for over a thousand years.

A fat, stumpy snake that supposedly jumps, speaks, and has a taste for alcohol.

A watermelon-headed creature spotted three times in two nights, then never again.

A shape-shifting water horse that lures riders to a watery grave in Scottish lochs.

A short, bipedal ape covered in golden-brown fur walks the jungles of Sumatra, and credible scientists have spent decades trying to prove it exists.

A towering skeleton formed from the bones of the unburied dead, rattling through the night to bite off heads.

A large black cat prowls the foggy moors of Cornwall, shredding livestock and vanishing into the granite landscape.

A skinless horse-rider hybrid rises from the ocean around Orkney, and its breath alone can wilt crops and sicken entire islands.

A divine chimera of dragon and deer that only appears to herald greatness or disaster.

A vampire that tears its own torso free and flies through the night on bat-like wings, trailing its entrails below.

Australia's lurking water spirit, feared by indigenous peoples for thousands of years.

Canada's answer to Nessie, coiling through the depths of Okanagan Lake.

A blood-red worm said to kill with electric shocks and acid venom from beneath the Gobi sands.

America's own lake monster, surfacing in the waters between Vermont and New York.

A six-legged panther-witch from Cherokee legend that screams through Appalachian hollows.

A small, troll-like trickster from Wampanoag legend that lures victims off cliffs.

Two fishermen claim robotic, claw-handed beings floated them aboard a craft in 1973.

Iceland's answer to the Loch Ness Monster lives in a glacial river-lake and may have been sighted on camera in 2012.

This shape-shifting water horse of Scottish lochs lures riders onto its back, then drags them to a watery death.

Climbers on Scotland's second-highest peak report a towering grey figure following them through the mist, accompanied by crunching footsteps and overwhelming dread.

A 400-year-old spider that takes the form of a beautiful woman to lure men to their death.

Australia's own Bigfoot has been reported for centuries, from Aboriginal Dreamtime stories to modern highway encounters.

A half-bird, half-reptile terror from Maryland with a taste for livestock and legend.

Something enormous has been surfacing in an Argentine lake for over a century.

A stubby, venomous dragon-cat with two front legs haunts the caves and cliffs of the European Alps.

China's Bigfoot roams the thick forests of Hubei Province, backed by thousands of reported sightings.

A towering, ace-of-spades-headed figure that appeared after a UFO streaked overhead.

A shaggy, upright canine prowling a rural Wisconsin road since the 1980s.

A half-man, half-goat said to roam the back roads of Maryland with an axe.

A ghostly white humanoid shape rising from Antarctic waters, seen by Japanese fishermen.

A web-footed, amber-eyed beast haunting one of America's most pristine swamps.

Hundreds of witnesses watched a giant serpent patrol Gloucester Harbor for weeks in 1817.

A fanged, winged rabbit with antlers sounds like a joke until you see the taxidermy specimens in Bavarian hunting lodges.

Nomadic herders across Mongolia and Central Asia have described encounters with a stocky, hairy humanoid that walks upright and avoids civilization.

A blood-stained, three-toed giant that terrorized a small Missouri town in the summer of 1972.

Zambian fishermen describe a flying reptile with leathery wings and teeth that capsizes their boats.

Sweden's most famous lake monster has been reported for centuries and was officially designated a protected species in 1986.

A legless or two-legged dragon slithers through Scandinavian and Germanic legends as a creature of both terror and strange wisdom.

The people of Flores Island describe small, hairy cave-dwellers who stole food and children, and the story gained credibility when Homo floresiensis fossils were found.

A dragon-bird painted on Mississippi River bluffs by the Illini, feared as a man-eater.

Small silver beings that besieged a Kentucky farmhouse for hours in 1955.

A 7-foot reptilian biped that attacked a teen's car in a South Carolina swamp.

A horned, shaggy beast whose eerie howl echoes through the Ozark hills at night.

A spiny, fire-born beast from the Wisconsin woods with a taste for white bulldogs.

Scotland's other lake monster lurks in the deepest freshwater loch in the British Isles, far from the tourist cameras of Loch Ness.

A scaly, long-necked dragon depicted on the Ishtar Gate of Babylon stands among real animals, leading some to argue it was drawn from life.

A towering horse-headed giant that leads travelers in circles through the Philippine wilderness.

Islanders in Papua New Guinea describe a glowing, long-tailed flying creature that matches no known bird or bat.

A winged, light-emitting creature that besieged a small Iowa town for three nights in 1903.

A purple-skinned, bat-winged ape seen near Mount St. Helens after the eruption.

A serpentine lake dweller hiding in the frigid depths of Lake Tahoe since Washoe legend.

In Central America, a glowing-eyed dog follows you home at night, but its color decides your fate.

In the Congo, locals describe a spider with a leg span wider than a grown man is tall.

A humped sea serpent has been spotted off the coast of Cornwall since the 1900s, sometimes close enough to shore that beachgoers scatter.

A colossal red octopus lurking in Funka Bay, revered by the Ainu as both healer and destroyer.

Something large, dark, and feline stalks the misty moorlands of Devon, leaving torn livestock and fleeting glimpses behind.

A bipedal frog-like humanoid spotted by police on an Ohio road at night.

A horse-headed sea serpent weaving through the waters of the Pacific Northwest.

A scaly, goat-like creature that charged a crowd of onlookers at a Texas lake in 1969.

A woolly, horned quadruped lurking in the hills of West Virginia since the 1990s.

Zanzibar's most feared entity attacks at night and demands that victims tell others, or it returns.

Millions of South Africans still raise their beds on bricks to stay out of reach of this invisible dwarf.

Norway's lake monster has been sighted over 500 times in a small mountain lake, making it one of the most reported freshwater cryptids in Europe.

A massive dark green hound the size of a bull roams the Scottish Highlands, and hearing its third bark means death.

A serpent with a woman's head that haunts riverbanks, cradling a phantom baby to paralyze its prey.

Sacred water guardians of Maori tradition that shape rivers, protect tribes, and sometimes drag the unwary to their doom.

Hunted to extinction just 27 years after Western science discovered it, some believe pockets of this gentle giant survive in remote Arctic waters.

Georgia's river serpent, a long-necked mystery lurking in the murky Altamaha.

Deep in the Amazon, locals say a snake longer than a river is wide guards the waterways.

South African legend says the gods made a creature so powerful they had to split it into elephants and snakes.

A bloated, frog-faced old man lurks at the bottom of Slavic rivers, drowning the careless and keeping their souls in teapots.

The largest Great Lake may harbor the largest Great Lake monster, a creature linked to Ojibwe legends of the underwater panther.

A foul-smelling ape-man stalking the misty slopes of Mount Hiba in rural Japan.

A massive white carcass with an elephant-like trunk that washed ashore in South Africa.

A half-man, half-goat lurking beneath a railway trestle in Louisville.

A stinking, one-eyed ground sloth still roaming the Amazon, if the locals are right.

A towering owl-humanoid haunting the woods around a Cornish church.

An enormous gray creature that churned the White River and earned state legal protection.

A serpentine terror of Bear Lake, first reported by Mormon settlers and Shoshone alike.

The Amazon's pink river dolphin comes ashore at night disguised as a handsome stranger.

Something in the Congo swamps kills elephants with a single horn and has no interest in eating them.

Russia's lake monster reportedly swallowed a Mongol war party's horses whole and has been spotted by modern fishermen with sonar equipment.

Lake Manitoba's serpentine lake monster has been reported by Indigenous communities for centuries and photographed at least twice.

Japan's answer to Nessie lives in a volcanic crater lake on the southern tip of Kyushu.

Massive, fleshy, unidentifiable masses that wash ashore worldwide, defying easy explanation until the lab results come in.

Nine bodies pulled from a South African river in 1997 were all missing their faces and brains.

A lake monster lurks in the cross-border waters of Lake Memphremagog, spotted from both the Quebec and Vermont shores.

A headless, pale giant spotted lumbering through a West Virginia town in 1964.

Something massive moves beneath Alaska's largest lake, and the locals know to stay clear.

West African elders say that anyone who sees this swamp dragon dies shortly after.

A foul-smelling ape-man reportedly abducts women and kills livestock in the remote mountain passes of northern Pakistan.

A three-legged, gray-skinned creature that terrorized an Illinois town for three nights.

A giant bat with a 10-foot wingspan, screaming through the jungles of Java.

A giant snapping turtle the size of a dining table, spotted in an Indiana farm pond.

Entire sections of Brazilian forest have collapsed into tunnels dug by something impossibly large.

When devastating storms hit KwaZulu-Natal, the Zulu say a giant winged serpent is rising from the falls.

In the forests of Ghana, something with iron teeth and bat wings sits in the treetops, legs dangling like bait.

This mountain goat with legs shorter on one side than the other can only walk in circles around Alpine peaks.

A Bigfoot-like creature with a distinctive blonde mane has been spotted near mining towns in northern Ontario since the 1900s.

A segmented, armored sea creature with dozens of lateral fins, washed ashore in Vietnam in 1883.

A slippery, oil-coated humanoid that terrorizes Malaysian towns at night, impossible to catch or hold.

A blood-drinking creature from the Philippines that walks backward and hides in the shadows of its owner.

Brazilian hunters know this forest spirit punishes anyone who takes more than they need.

Kenyan tribes fear a nocturnal beast that kills for one thing only: the brain.

A Finnish forest spirit that spreads disease and madness to anyone who catches a glimpse of her moving through the trees.

A bipedal ape spotted by both Vietnamese villagers and American soldiers during the war.

A gray, brindled cat the size of a donkey has been mauling people in Tanzania since the 1900s.

A tiny red tree creature that swallows you whole, then spits you out slightly shorter.

A whale-shaped mountain predator that slides down Colorado slopes to swallow hikers whole.

In Togo, a vampire disguised as a glowing firefly slips through locked doors to feed on the sleeping.

A tiny, wizened mummy-like figure found across Indonesia, said to be alive and fed with human blood.

Across East Africa, multiple credible witnesses have reported small, rust-colored ape-men walking upright.

It lies flat on the water like a discarded cowhide, until something steps on it.

A saber-toothed, armored aquatic predator was reported in a Kenyan river by a big-game hunter in 1907.

A giant aquatic lizard once said to inhabit remote Himalayan valleys before being deliberately exterminated.

Deep in Vietnam's jungles, soldiers and scientists have reported a powerfully built ape that walks like a man.

Inside Chilean volcanoes lives a molten humanoid that demands human sacrifice to stay dormant.

A hairy, rock-throwing giant reported in New Zealand's Coromandel Range long before the Bigfoot craze.

In the forests of Honduras, a backward-footed ape-man kidnaps anyone who makes eye contact.

In a remote Kenyan river valley, locals describe an armored, club-tailed reptile that has no business still existing.

A marine humanoid reported by fishermen in New Ireland, with a woman's upper body and a fish-like lower half.

Chilean rivers hide a fox-tailed serpent that creates deadly whirlpools to drown the unwary.

In Zambian lakes, a massive horned beast surfaces with enough force to capsize fishing boats.

In the Australian outback, a malevolent spirit stalks those who practice sorcery and kills them in their sleep.

An enormous, tapir-like beast reported by a colonial officer in the unexplored highlands of Papua New Guinea.

A cow-headed amphibian haunts Chilean marshes, and seeing one means birth defects for the unborn.