Europe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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