I made a great choice when I decided to obtain my local library's copy of this book, and if the subject matter is one which you find of interest, then you too shall be making a good choice, if and when you decide to peruse this intriguing tome. This is more than a rehash of the same tired, old double handful of 1970s Bigfoot & Loch Ness Monster tales, and is well written, and thus far quite fascinating. This is not going to be an issue here, I feel well and truly assured. Many (most?) books on cryptozoology, and Forteana generally, tend to leave a good deal to be desired. I anticipate burning through its contents with great enthusiasm & rapidity (as well as employing it for various evidentiary citations at Wikipedia), despite the various other books I am already engaged in reading.

I'm still at the library (having just checked this book out), and only thus far having read Chapter Three ('Devil Names and Fortean Places'), plus some of the appendices (my favorite being 'Erratic Crocodilians and Teleporting 'Gators'), and yet I am quite confident in assigning this outstanding volume a five-star rating. He continues with a lot of standard 'weird' phenomena - alligators in sewers, lake monsters, bigfoot, and the Jersey Devil, amongst others, then caps it all off with a newer oddity, phantom clowns (yes, really!).Ĭoleman also includes some useful lists for those interested in doing their own monster hunting, and relates some of the insights he's had over the years.Īll in all, a wonderful, chilling, delightful read - kind of like a haunted house ride at the state fair, a little scary but loads of fun at the same time. An obvious passion, however, is cryptozoology, and this book is jam packed full of Coleman's analyses of these cases, as well as other odd phenomena.Ĭoleman starts this book off with an intriguing essay on American place names - the sheer number of places with devil or fairy references is truly astounding. Loren Coleman writes like a madman - I'm not sure how many books he's written, but it's an extensive (and surprisingly varied) list. It's one of my all-time favorites on my list of crazy books, and I re-read it frequently because it's just so much fun.

Mysterious America by Loren Coleman