What a wonderful world

What do Spider-Man, the Loch Ness Monster and German Opera have in common?

I have a large collection of hardback books which, when we finally have our much-discussed living room shelf unit built, will never be allowed to abide there.  And this isn't an issue of age-restricted material (unless you count the barely fettered decolletages of the Hammer ladies) but more one of minor embarrassment to my wonderful wife.  Yes, she'll watch any old tosh with me if I pick my moment, but to have shelves full of books devoted to horror, science fiction  and fantasy films and television in full view of visitors who might have otherwise thought we're normal, seems to be a bridge too far.

So solid, respectable tomes about gardening, travel, history, handicrafts and, if I'm lucky, astronomy will make the living room bookshelves creak instead, while my extensive but slightly worrying collection will remain fittingly hidden away from sunlight.

Like the creatures within their pages, these books might be sometimes shunned and misunderstood, but my Mum actually started this collection, buying me my first 'coffee table book' about monsters when I was still having single digit birthdays.
 

And what a book it was, becoming a treasured possession all through my life. Despite being a clumsy and often absent minded person I somehow manage to take incredibly good care of my books, and my copy of this particular volume: The Horrific World of Monsters, still looks as if it could have been bought yesterday.

I've been to Bran Castle, alleged by this book to be the birthplace of
Vlad Tepes, and it really is as pretty as it looks in this inset.

I've amassed many books on the same subject since but this one remains a curiosity, in the best possible way.  First of all, the creatures within are arranged alphabetically, an unusual move which you think might spell disaster when you reach less fertile letters.  But not this book. Not only did it cover the expected Universal and Hammer monsters but also creatures born of every old world mythology - from the British Isles, through Scandinavia, Europe and the ancient Mediterranean, Egypt and the Middle East, Asia and then into Russia. As an introduction to classical and medieval myth and legend alone (illustrated with art from the likes of Goya, Tibaldi and Bosch), this book was worth its weight in golden Fleece.

But this was just the beginning, true believers.  In my last post I 'came out' as someone who prefers to 'make mine Marvel', and that might stretch all the way back to this book.  Because also within its pages were Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk and numerous Stan Lee spawned super-villains. It seems insane, but page 86 for example gives us this bewildering spectrum of subjects: Redcap and the Roc from British and Islamic folklore respectively, The Reptile from Hammer, Spider-Man's minor nemesis the Rhino and Tolkien's Ringwraiths. How wonderfully bonkers is that?

The 'Horrific' Four (coming to a cinema near you soon), sharing a page with the Fly,
Frankenstein, a Wagnerian Opera and an Irish feathered cyclops.

Still want more? Well, dinosaurs obviously, all photographs of 'life-like' models, as many of the books from the mid-seventies liked to use. But possibly the best was still to come: Television wasn't to be neglected, with Quatermass and Star Trek touched upon, but Doctor Who's big three: the Daleks, Cybermen and Ice Warriors were  each given lavish picture spreads. This officially made The Horrific World of Monsters The Best Book Ever.

Good luck spotting this scene from the  Doctor Who story the caption says it's from. 
I think it might actually be a publicity shot from a BBC exhibition - but it's still brilliant.

From it's atmospheric cover painting, with 'likenesses' of Lee, Karloff and Chaney just the right side of copyright infringement and a devil tail on the bright yellow title lettering, to the distinctly '70s typography throughout, this book was patient zero of my life-long disorder regarding books, monsters and books about monsters.

I'll be disinterring many other volumes never to be seen in our Living Room in posts to come.

Why, I otter...

In mid-November last year, news of another New Zealand cryptid raised its whiskery head...

Invercargill-based author Lloyd Esler made the news as he carried out research into sightings of the elusive New Zealand otter for a chapter of his upcoming book.
"I have spoken with 11 people who are either adamant they have seen an otter or are puzzled by an otter-like animal" Esler remarked. Particularly intrigued by the number of sightings and their concentration in one area, he admitted that this suggests a mystery animal existed in Western Southland.

Going  on to speculate about escaped imported otters giving rise to a small population, Esler surprisingly made no mention of the long history of the Waitoreke, or Kaukere, a supposed native mammal resembling an otter, (or in some cases, beaver) first mentioned by Captain Cook.

The infographic below gives a more detailed history of this intriguing, but admittedly unlikely, creature. It is interesting to note that in many cases sightings were made by people very capable of discerning an unknown creature from more common introduced species.
 

 

The Abominable Bushman

Another famous mystery has been making the news, so it’s time to visit its local cousin.

Earlier this month Doctor Who fans received a special fiftieth anniversary gift when two stories long assumed lost were recovered in Nigeria.  One of these was a tale long-coveted: Web of Fear, which not only introduced Alistair Gordon Lethbridge Stewart for the first time, but brought back Doctor Who’s terrifying interpretation of the Yeti.  This was one of the very first target novelisations I ever read back in the late ‘70s (all but the first episode were believed gone forever even then), so I’m very much looking forward to finally seeing it.

  Then a couple of days ago Oxford University Geneticist Bryan Sykes announced that DNA tests on unidentified hair samples from the Himalayas have brought us closer to identifying the Yeti.  In a strange case of life imitating art, Sykes doesn’t present the familiar image of the man-beast most immediately identified with the mysterious creature, but, like the Doctor Who story mentioned above*, speculates that it could be a “more aggressive, more dangerous…bipedal” bear-like creature!

http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/9299444/DNA-clue-links-Yeti-to-bear

I’ve been fortunate enough to spend some time in the Himalayas, including a memorable night in a valley infamous for a ‘yeti attack’, and was also able to speak to a close friend of Sir Edmund Hillary about his 1960 Yeti expedition, while researching the graphic below.  Although Tenzing was convinced, Sir Ed remained sceptical, and in respect to Professor Sykes’ recent discovery, it seems to me that Himalayan people have always spoken of more than one type of creature.

 However, the New Zealand equivalent, the Maeroero, or Moehau, makes for a wonderful camp fire story.  Regrettably, I had to rely on some reports of a decidedly ‘tall’ nature for my timeline, and would have preferred to focus on pre-European Maori myths of ‘other races’ living in these islands.  Alas the time to give this subject the respect and detail it deserved wasn’t available to me.  One day, hopefully!  

*Yes, of course I know they were really fur-covered robots!

Harbouring hidden felines

Godzone mysterious big cat has made the news again.

Michael O'Neill

Last week newspapers reported a sighting of what was described as a large cat-like animal feeding on road kill, in the early hours of the morning, in south Canterbury.  This persistently newsworthy mystery previously made the news in August last year when photographer Michael O'Neill took this image of  what seems to be a large feline crossing the frozen surface of Lake Clearwater.

But these reports are merely the tip of a long history of big cat sightings in the central South Island. I had the opportunity to produce a number of graphics last holiday season which highlighted New Zealand’s own ‘mysterious animals’: The South Island panther, the native otter,  moose still existing in Fiordland, the giant gecko, surviving moas and even our own version of ‘big foot’: the Maeroero.  And if you wonder why you haven’t seen or heard of all of these, the label Cryptozoology might explain this: it literally means ‘hidden animals’.

Do they exist?  History gives us many examples of previously undiscovered or assumed extinct creatures resurfacing throughout the world. Certainly other countries have their own mysterious big cat sightings, and New Zealand is blessed with large tracts of land uninhabited by humans.  Personally, I love the fact that there is still room for some mystery in this age of google earth and and GPS.  Cat of headline tales: long may you continue to evade any kind of capture except as a tantalising dark shape in photographs, you and your kind make the world a more wondrous place.

I hope to eventually revisit the Aotearoa Cryptids in this blog, but first up, here is our beautiful cat who walks alone (all text is legible once you zoom in):