Monsters, Demons & Cryptids

Of the demons, Saint Antony told his monks that they "are cowards, and greatly fear the sign of the Lord's Cross."

Long before anyone went looking for Bigfoot with a camera, Christians were writing down what they met in the dark and what they did about it. In 858 priests rode out from Mainz with relics and holy water because stones were flying at a farm near Bingen. In 1691 a Scottish minister wrote a field report on the fairies of his parish, and the next spring he died on their hill. In 1765 a bishop had a letter read from every pulpit in his diocese while something on the hills was eating children.

Monsters, Demons & Cryptids gathers a hundred of these creatures in one field guide. For each one it goes back to the earliest Christian writer who mentions it and follows the record forward through Augustine, Aquinas, King James, Cotton Mather and the missionaries, to show what the old books said, how the faithful fought it, and what the Church finally decided it was.

Inside the hundred entries:

• The Visitors: the Greys, Reptilians, the Men in Black, the sky ships of Magonia
• The Cryptids: Bigfoot, Mothman, the Chupacabra, the Jersey Devil, the Kraken, the Beast of Gévaudan
• The Shapeshifters: Skinwalkers, werewolves, the Wendigo, the Rougarou, Dogman
• The Others: fairies, the Banshee, black dogs and hellhounds, the Wild Hunt
• The Haunters: Shadow People, the Hat Man, black-eyed children, poltergeists, the Djinn
• The Revenants: vampires, zombies, ghosts, the Golem, La Llorona
• The Beasts: Leviathan, Behemoth, dragons, the basilisk, the Hydra
• The Corruptors: the Nephilim, Goliath, Og of Bashan, the giants' bones in the churches
• The Powers: the Prince of Persia, the Watchers, Legion, Lilith, the Jezebel spirit
• The Princes: Beelzebub, Mammon, Asmodeus, Moloch, Azazel, and Satan himself

Every entry opens with a field card and ends with a verdict, and every source is named, so you can check it for yourself. A guide to the old books, a full bibliography and a glossary close the volume.

Keith Jason makes documentary films on biblical history and the supernatural.