Hunting Utah’s Giant Beavers and Loch Ness Otters

Okay, you can’t watch wall-to-wall pre-game coverage of the Super Bowl, can you? You shouldn’t take in too many replays of every debate spark that flew last week, should you? Tired of the nonstop football and election articles, internet highlights, and television analysis ~ not to mention what’s up with Britney lately?

Take some time to revisit the lake monsters, folks. They miss you.

It is always encouraging to read intelligent critiques written by someone that actually reads the entire book and then takes some time to think about what the authors were trying to do in, for example, this field guide. That makes the effort worth it all.

Please find the whole review here. The following are the last two paragraphs.

[The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep] goes through the sea serpents, waterhorses, mystery whales, monster sharks, unknown manta rays, giant “sea centipedes” (possibly some kind of armored prehistoric whale), titanic turtles, colossal octopi, dinosaurs, and other fauna reported from nearly every corner of the globe. Instead of trying to throw in every sighting committed to paper, the authors zero in on a few of the more convincing and remarkable cases that have crossed their radar (with helpful maps that show exactly where each occurred). Strange carcasses and beached globs are also addressed, as is the “ridicule factor” that you’re likely to experience should you run to the nearest newsman with tales of your own monster sighting. For those determined to encounter these creatures, there are also lists of the places where you’re most likely to encounter sea serpents and lake monsters (try Cadboro Bay in Canada and just about any lake in northern Europe, respectively), not to mention an awesome collection of lakes and rivers around the world that boast some kind of beastie or another. I’d be willing to bet that most of you live within two hundred miles of a supposed water monster lair, and probably didn’t even know it.

If you’re into the kind of weirdness that attracts the attention of this demented reviewer, then you should snap up The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep. There’s not a lot in here that devoted readers of the field haven’t seen before (that said, I’d never heard of the giant beavers, possibly man-eating ones, that are alleged to inhabit the lakes of Utah), but that doesn’t prevent one from getting that creepy feeling when reading about encounters with prehistoric sharks off the coast of Australia or run-ins with horse-headed serpentine forms in the fjords of Scandinavia. Coleman and Huyghe came up with a sensible, highly readable, and well-organized overview of what is admittedly a difficult subject to take seriously. ~ Bryan Shultz, epinions.com, February 1, 2008.

I also appreciate it when a news service actually follows through on their promise to show a cover of one of my books, as CNN did last summer. Beavers didn’t come up in the conversation, but, well, otters did:

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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