Man-Monkey: In Search of the British Bigfoot

by Nick Redfern

In her 1883 book, Shropshire Folklore, Charlotte S. Burne wrote: 'A very weird story of an encounter with an animal ghost arose of late years within my knowledge. On the 21st of January 1879, a labouring man was employed to take a cart of luggage from Ranton in Staffordshire to Woodcock, beyond Newport in Shropshire, for the ease of a party of visitors who were going from one house to another. He was late in coming back; his horse was tired, and could only crawl along at a foot's pace, so that it was ten o'clock at night when he arrived at the place where the highroad crosses the Birmingham and Liverpool canal. 'Just before he reached the canal bridge, a strange black creature with great white eyes sprang out of the plantation by the roadside and alighted on his horse's back. He tried to push it off with his whip, but to his horror the whip went through the thing, and he dropped it on the ground in fright.' The creature duly became known to superstitious and frightened locals as the Man-Monkey. Between 1986 and early 2001, Nick Redfern delved deeply into the mystery of the strange creature of that dark stretch of canal. Now,published for the very first time, are Nick's original interview notes, his files and discoveries; as well as his theories pertaining to what lies at the heart of this diabolical legend. Is Britain really home to a Bigfoot-style entity? Does the creature have supernatural origins? Or is it something else entirely? Nick Redfern addresses all of these questions in Man-Monkey and reveals a story that is as bizarre as it is macabre.

Genres: Cryptozoology, Nonfiction, Cryptids, Monsters

164 pages, Paperback

First published July 24, 2007

About the author

Nick Redfern is a British best-selling author, Ufologist and Cryptozoologist who has been an active advocate of official disclosure, and has worked to uncover thousands of pages of previously-classified Royal Air Force, Air Ministry and Ministry of Defence files on UFOs dating from the Second World War from the Public Record Office.

He has has appeared on a variety of television programmes in the UK and works on the lecture circuit, both in the UK and overseas, and has appeared in internationally syndicated shows discussing the UFO phenomenon. He is also a regular on the History Channel programs Monster Quest and UFO Hunters as well as National Geographic Channels's Paranormal and the SyFY channel's Proof Positive.

Redfern now lives in Texas and is currently working as a full-time author and journalist specializing in a wide range of unsolved mysteries, including Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, UFO sightings, government conspiracies, alien abductions and paranormal phenomena, and also works as a feature writer and contributing editor for Phenomena magazine and writes regularly for other magazines and websites.

In 2007 Universal Studios bought the rights to Redfern's book: "Three Men Seeking Monsters: Six Weeks in Pursuit of Werewolves, Lake Monster, Giant Cats, Ghostly Devil Dogs and Ape-Men" in the hopes of making a movie from it.

Reviews

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Truth be told, this is an entertaining little book, even if Redfern's clunky style (a bit like a bright high schooler trying too hard to write like an urbane, but cool, man of the world) makes the going tough at times. There are some interesting excerpts from early folklore about a kind of hairy man-beast haunting a lonely bridge in Staffordshire. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence presented with little interest in verfiability. There are a series of successively less likely speculations about what it all really is. The real gems here are the glimpses of some of Redfern's informants, deeply weird and probably mentally unsound individuals who seem to have dedicated their lives to the most outlandish belief systems. There are some really bizarre characters in here, and reading about them is worth the price of admission in what is otherwise a sloppy attempt at Fortean investigation.

[Chris Healey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread this book prior to getting on to another more recent book on a similar subject. Redfern’s slightly gonzo, animated writing style is always fun to read. Id actually forgotten several details from this, so the reread was worthwhile. Funnily enough I’ve lived very close to almost all of the locations featured. Despite his colourful writing style Redfern is a solid investigator, and often has unique takes to offer.

[JAMES · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you enjoy the supernatural or the thought of there being something else out there, then this is a fun short read. Might go for a walk along the canal 😆

[Mark A Simmons · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don't bother : this is a thin tale of the weird people Redfern met when attempting to find out more about a strange encounter by a canal bridge in Staffordshire in 1879. Neither the informants or any discovery is interesting, and all I got was a rising sense of the author's self-centric view of his own cleverness.