Cryptozoology is full of examples ofcryptids that once their existence was finally confirmed officially by sciencewere shown to have been long since known to the world anyway, but had somehowbeen overlooked, veritably rendered invisible – in other words, they hadremained hidden in plain sight. So here are two recently-revealed additionalexamples.

MAPPINGA CRYPTO-SPECIMEN

Cryptozoological specimens are notorious for beingalmost as elusive as the cryptids themselves, with a worrying tendency tovanish out of sight, never to be recorded again. So it is always a pleasantalbeit rare surprise if such a specimen reappears somewhere, as was the caserecently with one that has apparently been hidden in plain sight for quite sometime.

On 26 August 2025, I was startled but delighted tolearn from Florida resident and longstanding Facebook friend Adam Naworal thathe had recently encountered a sample of tissue from the famous St Augustineglobster. The sample was preserved and on public yet wholly unpubliciseddisplay in the map room at the St Augustine Historical Society – Oldest HouseMuseum Complex – in Florida.

 

As revealed in the above photograph snapped of thisremarkable specimen by Adam's wife Aimee and included here with her and Adam'skind permission, it consists of several chunks of whitened flesh preserved influid (formalin?) inside a large vertical glass jar, labelled and firmlystoppered. The St Augustine globster is – or was – the huge rotting carcasethat washed ashore on a beach near St Augustine during November 1896. Eminentcephalopod (octopus/squid/cuttlefish) expert Prof. A.E. Verrill from YaleUniversity deemed it to be the remains of a hitherto-unknown species of trulygigantic octopus, but since then there has been a long-running dispute amongscientists as to whether this is indeed what it was or whether, alternatively,it was simply the partial, highly-decomposed carcase of a whale, composedlargely of blubber, and assuming an amorphous mass nowadays referred to as aglobster.

Samples were taken from it at the time, andanalysed, yielding contentious, contradictory results, but most of thesesamples were thought to have been lost or discarded. So this confirmed exampleat the St Augustine Historical Society is of special interest and scientificvalue, and now, thanks to keen-eyed Adam and Aimee, is duly documented here forcryptozoological posterity. Also, they have asked me to note here that they aremaking their photograph of this specimen freely available for all researchersto use at no charge, only a credit to Aimee is required – thanks guys! Incidentally,Adam has since informed me that the sample has now been taken off display, so itwas extremely fortuitous that he and Aimee were visiting during the time when itwas accessible for viewing by the public and were therefore able to place its existenceon record.

ANINFERNAL FIND!

And staying with crypto-discoveries hidden in plainsight: Just two days before I learnt from Adam and Aimee about the St Augustineglobster sample, another longstanding Facebook friend, Robert Schneck, haddrawn my attention to an illustration that he'd lately discovered and had nowuploaded to his Facebook page 'Historian of the Strange'. Prepared by Germanartist Hermann Wöhler (1897-1961) in c.1930, it was an exceedingly detailedline drawing entitled 'Inferno', depicting all manner of hideous monsters andother terrifying entities envisaged by him to be inhabiting Hell. But what hadattracted Robert's particular attention was the creature depicted almost at thevery centre of the illustration, because as he pointed out, it looked more thana little reminiscent of a certain alleged cryptid depicted in a notorious photographduring the early 1920s.

The cryptid in question was the so-called Loys'sape, reputedly encountered in the jungles on the border of Colombia andVenezuela by Swiss geologist Dr François de Loys while leading a party ofexplorers through this difficult, inhospitable terrain. The official narrativeas provided by Loys was that they'd encountered two such creatures walkingtogether on their hind legs and lacking tails. Threatened by them, theexplorers shot one, the female, causing the male to flee. Taking the creature'slifeless carcase back to camp, they sat it on a crate, propped it upright witha long stick placed vertically beneath its chin, and photographed it. Thecarcase did not survive but the photo did, and for decades led to suppositionthat it portrayed one of the mysterious bipedal ape-like entities long reportedfrom many different regions of South America, and inducing French/Swissanthropologist Prof. George Montandon to formally dub theirscientifically-undescribed species Ameranthropoidesloysi.

 

Ultimately, however, long after Loys himself haddied, one of his team's still-living members confessed that it had all been ahoax – the creature in the photo was nothing more than their pet spider monkey,which, after eventually dying, had been propped up and photographed (with its longtail either hidden or cut off) to yield the famous, but now infamous, Loys'sape picture. (The entire sordid saga of this hoax has already been documentedby me in full here, here, and here on ShukerNature, so check it out.)

Bearing in mind that Wöhler's illustration had beencreated no more than ten years after Loys's photograph had first been publishedand had duly hit the headlines, it does indeed seem likely that thiseyecatching image had directly inspired Wöhler to include a representation ofit within his line drawing. For there is no doubt that the facial expression ofLoys's ape as captured in the photo, with mouth agape and eyes staring widely,is certainly more than a little hellish, positively infernal, in fact! So, manythanks indeed to Robert for alerting me to a fascinating yet previously unrevealedand undocumented cryptozoological connection concealed within the art archives.

 

This ShukerNature article originally appearedin the form of one of my regular Alien Zoo columns for the famous long-running Britishmonthly magazine Fortean Times.