Most Famous Cryptids

Known by several names, this up to nine-foot-tall muscular, hairy, ape-like hominid that roams the woodlands of America’s Pacific Northwest is the most popular cryptid of them all. Sightings have inevitably spread across all of North America, and every Native American tribe has a version of this creature. Few on this list have been exploited more at the hands of hoaxers and Hollywood.

The world’s 2nd most famous cryptid lives in Scotland's largest lake by volume. Its famously deep waters have helped this creature avoid capture since it first rose to fame in 1933 when Hugh Gray’s infamous photo caught the attention of the world. Though the photo has been proven to be a hoax, that hasn’t stopped thousands of people from visiting the lake every year hoping to spot that long neck breaking through the chilly waters.

This ubiquitous creature has long strolled the plateaus and forests of the mighty Himalaya across Nepal, India, China, Bhutan, Tibet and Mongolia. Long part of Asian folklore, this legend first gained notoriety in Western culture during the 19th century when mountaineers started finding tracks that resembled something between a large wolf and a barefoot man.

This strange creature's name literally translates as goat-sucker, named for their penchant for attacking and drinking the blood of livestock across Central and South America. In particular, Puerto Rico is a favored home of this beast described as a heavy creature around the size of a small bear. it is adorned with a row of spines along its back from neck to tail.

The United States and the United Kingdom share this cryptid although the free-roaming big cat prowling the moors and wild places of Britain is known as the Beast of Exmoor and the Beast of Bodmin. In the U.S., most sightings are made in the woods of Appalachia and the southeast.

This winged cryptid thought by some to be a giant bat and by others to be a flying primate, was first reported by Dr Ernest Bartels in 1925, it’s been sighted in Java and across Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines. A close cryptid relative, the Orang-bati, is also believed to inhabit Seram in Indonesia.

One of the more fantastical cryptids, this New Jersey native is a vast concoction of body parts from a range of creatures. While there’s no definitive description, sightings describe a kangaroo-like body with a goat’s head, leathery bat-like wings, horns, clawed hands on small arms, cloven hooves and a forked tail. Seen across the New Jersey Pineland forest for more than 260 years, they’re also famed for their blood-curdling scream.

It may be easier to refer to this cryptid by its name’s meaning – ‘the one who stops the flow of rivers’. Descriptions claim them to be gigantic water-dwelling sauropods, sometimes living creatures, sometimes spirits, that roam deep in the Congo River Basin. From the early 20th century, these descriptions sounded more and more like those of dinosaurs and perhaps reflected the global fascination with them at the time.

This werewolf or werewolf type creature was first reported in 1887 in Wexford County, Michigan. Sightings have been reported in several locations throughout Michigan, primarily in the northwestern quadrant of the Lower Peninsula. Across the lake in Wisconsin the creature is known as the Bray Road Beast.

In Indonesian folklore, this creature's name translates 'short person', and bones have been found given the name Flores Man or Hobbit. Said to inhabit remote, mountainous forests on the island of Sumatra, the crerature has allegedly been seen and documented for at least 100 years by forest tribes, local villagers, Dutch colonists, and Western scientists and travelers.

A mythological creature or evil spirit which originates from the folklore of First Nations based in and around the East Coast forests of Canada, the Great Plains region of the United States, and the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, this creature is otherworldly. Said to be a malevolent spirit, this creature is sometimes depicted with human-like characteristics, which possesses human beings, and is known to invoke feelings of insatiable greed/hunger, the desire to cannibalize other humans, as well as the propensity to commit murder in those that fall under its influence.

A reddish semi-bipedal creature claimed to reside in the remote forested mountains of western Hubei in China has many names. Over recent decades there have been hundreds of claimed sightings of these bear-like men by everyone from rural locals to government officials.

In West Virginia folklore, this creature is a humanoid beast reportedly seen in the Point Pleasant area from November 15, 1966, to December 15, 1967. The first newspaper report was published in the Point Pleasant Register, dated November 16, 1966, titled "Couples See Man-Sized Bird ... Creature ... Something".