When I found out that Dom Joly had written a book about his adventures as a monster hunter, I knew immediately I had to read it – I just wasn’t sure what I was signing up for. Would it make a cheap mockery of cryptozoology? Was Joly secretly a wide-eyed believer who accepts anything as evidence? I genuinely didn’t know.
The book, Scary Monsters & Super Creeps, turns out to be neither of those things. It’s essentially a comic travelogue with monsters: Joly wanders the world chasing famous cryptids – Yeti, Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster and more – and reports back in his usual dry, slightly chaotic style. There are no groundbreaking discoveries in its pages, and there are a few factual slips (poor Adrian Shine is renamed “Adrian Shiner”), so anyone looking for serious cryptozoological research won’t find it here. But as a funny, enthusiastic account of one man indulging his childhood fascinations, it really works.
Joly has been a big fan of Arthur C. Clarke since childhood, and that genuine affection for weird stories shines through. As he documents his trips as a “professional monster hunter” – a tongue-in-cheek title he trots out to impress people he meets – it quickly becomes clear he doesn’t have the deep background in cryptozoology that a researcher might. He’s occasionally impressed by “evidence” or anecdotes that seasoned monster-nerds would find hard to get excited about. But honestly, that’s part of the charm: you don’t have to be an expert to be interested in strange creatures, and this book leans into that.
There are moments that are properly laugh-out-loud funny. Without spoiling anything, there’s a skinny-dipping scene that made me cry with laughter on a packed train, to the point where I ended up reading it aloud to a stranger because I’d completely lost composure. That’s not something most cryptozoology books can claim.
If you want rigorous analysis, tight referencing and a skeptical deep dive, this isn’t the book for you. Think of it instead as hanging out with an excitable friend who’s decided to blow their budget on monster-hunting trips and then tell you what happened over a pint. It’s light, entertaining, occasionally daft, and powered by genuine curiosity.
It’s good to stay curious and to chase your strange little dreams; in this case, Joly’s dreams happen to be monsters, and chase them he does. Does he actually find the Yeti, Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster? You’ll have to read it yourself to find out – but the fun is really in the trying.
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