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The Science of Monsters: Tracking the Real-Life Creatures
Joe Nickell, the world's only professional paranormal investigator and true "detective of the impossible," explores the real-life creatures behind legendary monsters in this fascinating and informative book.
From the Kraken to the Yeti, Nickell takes readers on a journey through the world of cryptozoology. The search takes readers from the depths of the seas to the heights of the Himaylayas, using science and skepticism to separate fact from fiction.
With his background in stage-magic and forensic investigation, Nickell has solved countless cases of alleged paranormal phenomena and monstrous sightings, often identifying real world creatures that might very well confirm the unusual stories from witnesses which otherwise seem impossible.
In The Science of Monsters, Nickell shares his investigative techniques and reveals the surprising truth behind some of the world's most mysterious creatures.
From the Kraken to the Yeti, Nickell takes readers on a journey through the world of cryptozoology. The search takes readers from the depths of the seas to the heights of the Himaylayas, using science and skepticism to separate fact from fiction.
With his background in stage-magic and forensic investigation, Nickell has solved countless cases of alleged paranormal phenomena and monstrous sightings, often identifying real world creatures that might very well confirm the unusual stories from witnesses which otherwise seem impossible.
In The Science of Monsters, Nickell shares his investigative techniques and reveals the surprising truth behind some of the world's most mysterious creatures.
265 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 8, 2024
13 people are currently reading
11 people want to read
About the author
Joe Nickell
66 books51 followersJoe Nickell was an American skeptic and investigator of the paranormal.
Nickell was a senior research fellow for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and wrote regularly for their journal, Skeptical Inquirer. He was also an associate dean of the Center for Inquiry Institute. He was the author or editor of over 30 books.
Among his career highlights, Nickell helped expose the James Maybrick "Jack the Ripper Diary" as a hoax. In 2002, Nickell was one of a number of experts asked by scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. to evaluate the authenticity of the manuscript of Hannah Crafts' The Bondwoman's Narrative (1853–1860), possibly the first novel by an African-American woman. At the request of document dealer and historian Seth Keller, Nickell analyzed documentation in the dispute over the authorship of "The Night Before Christmas", ultimately supporting the Clement Clarke Moore claim.
Nickell was a senior research fellow for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and wrote regularly for their journal, Skeptical Inquirer. He was also an associate dean of the Center for Inquiry Institute. He was the author or editor of over 30 books.
Among his career highlights, Nickell helped expose the James Maybrick "Jack the Ripper Diary" as a hoax. In 2002, Nickell was one of a number of experts asked by scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. to evaluate the authenticity of the manuscript of Hannah Crafts' The Bondwoman's Narrative (1853–1860), possibly the first novel by an African-American woman. At the request of document dealer and historian Seth Keller, Nickell analyzed documentation in the dispute over the authorship of "The Night Before Christmas", ultimately supporting the Clement Clarke Moore claim.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 7, 2024
I dreamed for years for a new Nickell book and had almost given up on seeing another one published. With a new book I had hoped that the repetition, bad editing, and other problems would be fixed but no. He still recycles information and cases from his older books and from his Skeptical Inquiry articles that goes back decades.
If you've read tons of these articles over the years or trying to read through his book list this book isn't for you. You'll already know these cases and could summarize it to someone and get the details the details right. It's like pulling out old cases to look at them with fresh eyes with everything new we've learned over the years. Luckily with the way I read Nickell's books and articles I found a bunch of new information on certain ideas. This will ruin any cryptid things for me because my mind will automatically go to this book. If someone were to talk to me about Bigfoot I can now tell them it's a bear and why.
The book is a mess but I can deal with that because I understand how important books like this one actually is. If this was on a bookstore shelf it would be lost among handfuls of books by cryptid believers. That's why we need more books like this at libraries and on our bookshelves.
If you've read tons of these articles over the years or trying to read through his book list this book isn't for you. You'll already know these cases and could summarize it to someone and get the details the details right. It's like pulling out old cases to look at them with fresh eyes with everything new we've learned over the years. Luckily with the way I read Nickell's books and articles I found a bunch of new information on certain ideas. This will ruin any cryptid things for me because my mind will automatically go to this book. If someone were to talk to me about Bigfoot I can now tell them it's a bear and why.
The book is a mess but I can deal with that because I understand how important books like this one actually is. If this was on a bookstore shelf it would be lost among handfuls of books by cryptid believers. That's why we need more books like this at libraries and on our bookshelves.
July 22, 2024
This book suffers the same problems as Nickell's other works – very poor editing, repetition and the feeling that there is an excellent book struggling to escape the format.
You really do get the impression that it is a series of blog posts, all individually fascinating, but which read one after the other, becomes very samey. It opens with water monsters, Kraken, Nessie, etc and whilst Nickell is undoubtedly correct in his identification of otters as the cause, reading this in every single entry, complete with further notes, weakens the reading experience, as you could copy and paste much of each entry.
It is the same when it comes to hairy bipeds, only here it is misidentification of bears that is the culprit. Again, definitely correct – it's a convincing argument – but going into this using the same facts and notes in each entry does get tedious.
The strong point of this book is that it is overwhelmingly likely that Nickell is correct in all cases. This makes it an invaluable work of reference and an antidote to rubbish paranormal books.
However, it could be a much more interesting work.
You really do get the impression that it is a series of blog posts, all individually fascinating, but which read one after the other, becomes very samey. It opens with water monsters, Kraken, Nessie, etc and whilst Nickell is undoubtedly correct in his identification of otters as the cause, reading this in every single entry, complete with further notes, weakens the reading experience, as you could copy and paste much of each entry.
It is the same when it comes to hairy bipeds, only here it is misidentification of bears that is the culprit. Again, definitely correct – it's a convincing argument – but going into this using the same facts and notes in each entry does get tedious.
The strong point of this book is that it is overwhelmingly likely that Nickell is correct in all cases. This makes it an invaluable work of reference and an antidote to rubbish paranormal books.
However, it could be a much more interesting work.
September 12, 2024
***Actual Star Rating: 1.5 Stars***
This was a book that wasn't quite recommended to me but probably since the person who normally does so would know that I tear these books apart and eat them for breakfast.
The Science of Monsters basically explores a couple groups of cryptids through the eyes of renown Joe Nickell and hunts down the most likely explanation of what people may have been seeing at the time of their "encounters". As a result the reader will find out that Joe Nickell has basically a handful of reliant explanations that he likes to trot out for the majority of these cases and although most of them made sense I would have liked to have seen him build up to the unraveling instead of basically providing his cardboard answer then going over why he thinks it makes for the best response at the time.
The reason, though, I am being generous in providing this author a two stars instead of kicking his book down is that it does give readers a sight into being open-minded to the field of cryptozoology even if most of the time we can explain these cryptids away. He does a fairly good job in explaining that most cryptids fall into two categories - unknowns or those who were known but thought to be extinct, explains how we can tackle solving these mysteries with some research as well as in some cases time and also in providing details of the more modern animals. But that is about as far as my vouching for him goes.
The book starts off with a question about who the author is and provides to the reader willing to walk down that path glowing reviews from other famous people or entities. And when they aren't honking his horn, Joe Nickell does a great job himself throughout his writings even to the point of making mention that he did something or had a great honor bestowed on him that isn't even relatable to what you are reading. This can be vouched I am almost certain by the one major case for the chupacabra that he chose to include, which I promise according to Occam's theory, was not a case of mistaken identity but fraud to get the chance to meet the author in a quite clever way.
At the same time the author's entries are all seemingly articles that can be found online if you don't want to read them. And if you choose to do so each entry gives you some information followed by a brief page of note(s) and references for that particular entry to match with all the cited sources in the actual text thus allowing you to fact check if you will.
A few things that stood out to me as a reader is you can read the sections any way you want instead of how they are presented in the book for they don't heavily lean on one another to move onto the next section. Just be aware that no matter which section you choose to read there are basically spoilers in each so some of the cases you may not have read yet and if they are included will give you the answer before you are ready for it.
Another part of the book that stood out was the inclusion of an excerpt by Kathy Ramsland about Mercy/Lena Brown. Given this is from another author and doesn't count against Joe Nickell, I would say I think he could have used a much clearer source. The excerpt states that Lena's mother and her oldest sister died but then after a vague comment on her brother returning but from who knows where the daughters along with their mother was dug-up might be a bit confusing if you don't know the story.
My only warning for these sections, though, will be for the man-apes since two-thirds of it is basically repeated from other entries within with a bit more nuggets for those interested in the topic.
Meanwhile the reader is provided with black-and-white photographs mixed with his own illustrative interpretations occasionally throughout the book with captions at the bottom of each. I am not sure whether it was the editor who made the coloring scale or the author but some of these photos are horrendous. There is suppose to be one of a "Viking death" of a raccoon that is basically a blurry mess that doesn't clearly provide the reader with the captioned easy view of a raccoon unless you actually go online to find the photo, which is a true shame when you take into account the brightly colored floatie it was on.
And although he may be a factual and science-based investigator there were a few spots that left me baffled. He mentions Ancient Greek siren victims as starving to death although that would have been a much rarer occurrence than drowning according to the original origins of that, Bigfoots are more analogous to zombies who capture peoples' souls (what zombie is known for soul-capture?) and that criminals sold to Venetians for galley-slaves were chained to the rudder (galley-slaves were to my knowledge on benches with oars), which I can find nothing to vouch for that even going with the referenced Wikipedia source he had. I did spend a while trying to tackle other sources to see if that was the case but nothing can seem to educate me on this fact. And although it doesn't discount him it does also show that he just like the rest of humans may not always be as factually updated as is given.
Finally Joe Nickell also does weirdly enough provide the reader with a more "popular" reference to Twilight instead of Dracula for his vampire section, which tells me he is trying to groom a much younger audience.
So in conclusion if you can overlook the egoism, the cardboard answers whether they be real or not, the horrible coloring of pictures, the repetitiveness of a few of the entries and the tediumness of the Bigfoot section then you may find this a book with some interesting takes on the world around us, a new insight into the field of cryptozoology and a better idea on how to fact check other encounters you may come across.
This was a book that wasn't quite recommended to me but probably since the person who normally does so would know that I tear these books apart and eat them for breakfast.
The Science of Monsters basically explores a couple groups of cryptids through the eyes of renown Joe Nickell and hunts down the most likely explanation of what people may have been seeing at the time of their "encounters". As a result the reader will find out that Joe Nickell has basically a handful of reliant explanations that he likes to trot out for the majority of these cases and although most of them made sense I would have liked to have seen him build up to the unraveling instead of basically providing his cardboard answer then going over why he thinks it makes for the best response at the time.
The reason, though, I am being generous in providing this author a two stars instead of kicking his book down is that it does give readers a sight into being open-minded to the field of cryptozoology even if most of the time we can explain these cryptids away. He does a fairly good job in explaining that most cryptids fall into two categories - unknowns or those who were known but thought to be extinct, explains how we can tackle solving these mysteries with some research as well as in some cases time and also in providing details of the more modern animals. But that is about as far as my vouching for him goes.
The book starts off with a question about who the author is and provides to the reader willing to walk down that path glowing reviews from other famous people or entities. And when they aren't honking his horn, Joe Nickell does a great job himself throughout his writings even to the point of making mention that he did something or had a great honor bestowed on him that isn't even relatable to what you are reading. This can be vouched I am almost certain by the one major case for the chupacabra that he chose to include, which I promise according to Occam's theory, was not a case of mistaken identity but fraud to get the chance to meet the author in a quite clever way.
At the same time the author's entries are all seemingly articles that can be found online if you don't want to read them. And if you choose to do so each entry gives you some information followed by a brief page of note(s) and references for that particular entry to match with all the cited sources in the actual text thus allowing you to fact check if you will.
A few things that stood out to me as a reader is you can read the sections any way you want instead of how they are presented in the book for they don't heavily lean on one another to move onto the next section. Just be aware that no matter which section you choose to read there are basically spoilers in each so some of the cases you may not have read yet and if they are included will give you the answer before you are ready for it.
Another part of the book that stood out was the inclusion of an excerpt by Kathy Ramsland about Mercy/Lena Brown. Given this is from another author and doesn't count against Joe Nickell, I would say I think he could have used a much clearer source. The excerpt states that Lena's mother and her oldest sister died but then after a vague comment on her brother returning but from who knows where the daughters along with their mother was dug-up might be a bit confusing if you don't know the story.
My only warning for these sections, though, will be for the man-apes since two-thirds of it is basically repeated from other entries within with a bit more nuggets for those interested in the topic.
Meanwhile the reader is provided with black-and-white photographs mixed with his own illustrative interpretations occasionally throughout the book with captions at the bottom of each. I am not sure whether it was the editor who made the coloring scale or the author but some of these photos are horrendous. There is suppose to be one of a "Viking death" of a raccoon that is basically a blurry mess that doesn't clearly provide the reader with the captioned easy view of a raccoon unless you actually go online to find the photo, which is a true shame when you take into account the brightly colored floatie it was on.
And although he may be a factual and science-based investigator there were a few spots that left me baffled. He mentions Ancient Greek siren victims as starving to death although that would have been a much rarer occurrence than drowning according to the original origins of that, Bigfoots are more analogous to zombies who capture peoples' souls (what zombie is known for soul-capture?) and that criminals sold to Venetians for galley-slaves were chained to the rudder (galley-slaves were to my knowledge on benches with oars), which I can find nothing to vouch for that even going with the referenced Wikipedia source he had. I did spend a while trying to tackle other sources to see if that was the case but nothing can seem to educate me on this fact. And although it doesn't discount him it does also show that he just like the rest of humans may not always be as factually updated as is given.
Finally Joe Nickell also does weirdly enough provide the reader with a more "popular" reference to Twilight instead of Dracula for his vampire section, which tells me he is trying to groom a much younger audience.
So in conclusion if you can overlook the egoism, the cardboard answers whether they be real or not, the horrible coloring of pictures, the repetitiveness of a few of the entries and the tediumness of the Bigfoot section then you may find this a book with some interesting takes on the world around us, a new insight into the field of cryptozoology and a better idea on how to fact check other encounters you may come across.
November 11, 2024
This is a collection of short essays by Joe Nickell detailing his investigations into various cryptids. These were all previously published elsewhere.
Joe Nickell's entire thing is that most cryptid sightings can be explained as misidentified mundane animals. I'd agree. I'm not arguing at all with the conclusions drawn and some of the essays like the one where the history of bigfoot sightings is laid out are very interesting. A few of these would benefit from having been expanded into something much longer and more detailed, like the chupacabra which has significantly evolved from an initial description that was heavily influenced by recent scifi to basically dogs with mange. He focused only on the dogs with mange.
The book is a little repetitive. Sea monsters are identified as rows of otters. Big foot are bears. Almost all terrestrial cyrptids that aren't bears are owls. I don't disagree but by the time you're reading the fifth essay about how bigfoot is a bear you lose the will to live a little. It would have been better if instead of a group of essays, this had actuality been organised into coherent chapters to eliminate that repetition.
Joe Nickell's entire thing is that most cryptid sightings can be explained as misidentified mundane animals. I'd agree. I'm not arguing at all with the conclusions drawn and some of the essays like the one where the history of bigfoot sightings is laid out are very interesting. A few of these would benefit from having been expanded into something much longer and more detailed, like the chupacabra which has significantly evolved from an initial description that was heavily influenced by recent scifi to basically dogs with mange. He focused only on the dogs with mange.
The book is a little repetitive. Sea monsters are identified as rows of otters. Big foot are bears. Almost all terrestrial cyrptids that aren't bears are owls. I don't disagree but by the time you're reading the fifth essay about how bigfoot is a bear you lose the will to live a little. It would have been better if instead of a group of essays, this had actuality been organised into coherent chapters to eliminate that repetition.
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