Thread with excerpts from Chasing American Monsters by Jason Offutt

The introduction is a couple of pages but I'll just jump right into it. The book is essentially a list of cryptids in the USA by state. Each one has a little paragraph or two-paragraph entry. I'll discuss some of them and maybe post links where I think they may help.

Starting with Alabama we have the White Thang. Seven feet tall makes you automatically think of bigfoot but other than that it doesn't really resemble it- running on all fours, a bushy tail, looks very therianthropic. It sounds more like a werewolf.

The Falkville Metal Man is an interesting one, there's photos of it. I'd bet money it was a black project aircraft that crashed. Some info wasn't provided here, like how the "alien" attacked him after he took the photos & how his life mysteriously fell to ruin after the incident.

Moving on to Alaska, we have an account of Inuit hunters killing mammoths in 1896. Sounds far-fetched but remember mammoths hung out on Wrangel Island until about 4,000 years ago. Some pleistocene horses may have survived until historic times as well in remote areas.

Frighteningly large sea monster off the coast of Kodiak Island.

Thunderbird. Thought about skipping this one bc it's rather well-known but the last line "You wouldn't want to have your children out" is chilling.

Mermaids?

I love this one. Cryptid weaknesses are always great- in this case copper, fire, pee, and dogs.

Moving on to Arizona we have the Mogollon Monster. It's a hominid for sure, wielding a club and drinking the blood of mountain lions.

There's some giants in Arizona too. Or at least there were once upon a time.

Let's go on to Arkansas. The Fouke Monster was an unusually aggressive sasquatch. Also it's hilarious that someone filed an FOIA request about it. Has anyone done this for other cryptids?

Not sure what to make of these. Is there enough room in Arkansas for hyenas?

Megalania in Arkansas would be awesome.

In California we have these guys. They're like shadow people but not malevolent, they just watch you.

I may get some flak for saying this but I don't believe Megalodon still exists. HOWEVER, the niche of "monstrously large apex predator shark" has been empty since Meg ceased to be, so there COULD be abnormally large great whites around, slowly beginning to refill that lost role.

Tammy got gnomed

This is the absolute WORST cryptid I've ever read about I pray to God it doesn't exist.

Colorado has some dinosaurs and some sort of wobbegong shark-like abomination inhabiting its mountains.

Connecticut was kinda boring, just some ghost dogs and sea serpents. The melonheads are always funny tho.

Delaware has a wendigo and a merman. The merman pic on the right wasn't included in the book but it's exactly as ridiculous as described.

Florida is almost not noteworthy. Everyone knows about the skunk ape and St Augustine globster. I'll include this dino encounter just so there's something here for the floridians. Sorry guys, you gotta get better cryptids.

(Skipping ahead to Louisiana bc a mutual requested it; the other states will be covered tho)
The French settlers who arrived in Louisiana didn't realize that, curled in a deep slumber in the rotting hold of one of their ships, they had a werewolf stowaway...

I like this one. It's like the chupacabra but less hispanic.

Press F for this "sea monster" that was obviously a manatee

Lizard men in the bayou. I love that last explanation about them being chimp-alligator hybrids. That... didn't happen, right??

Hawaii has its own native fae called the Menehune

They also have mer-vampires (epic) and a sort of water-dragon. Not a lot of paleontology has been done in Hawaii (nor is able to be done, due to the volcanic nature of the islands). I wonder if there were abnormally large geckos living there at one time...

For such a big state, Idaho is really boring, only 3 cryptids and 2 are lake monsters. This one was neat tho I guess.

This one's interesting because the sightings are VERY recent and in a major metropolitan area. What are these things?

Oh yeah we moved on to Illinois forgot to mention lol. I like this one because there's basically no information about it. It's just a big ole anteater.

Indiana has a giant turtle (epic) and apparently some sort of interdimensional sky-whale/jellyfish thing back in the late 1800s. I don't think whatever they saw was supposed to be in this dimension, based on their descriptions.