CHAPTER ONE

Animals and Creatures

Why did people imagine so many strange creatures?

A long, long time ago, people didn't have books or the Internet to help them
understand their world. They told stories, often about animals. These stories
helped people understand their world.

Sometimes the animals in stories were different than in real life. People imagined
strange creatures that weren't real. We call them mythical creatures. The Ancient
Greeks, for example, imagined the Hydra. It killed people. It was like a giant
water snake with many heads. If you cut one head off, two came back in its place.

The Aztecs in Mexico believed in a mythical creature - a snake with feathers that
lived in the sky. It was a symbol of new life.

Real animals can be symbols, too. People are afraid of snakes because they're
dangerous. So adults often tell children stories about snakes. In the stories
snakes are a symbol of bad things, things that adults want children to be afraid
of.

In some places, people think some birds are symbols of bad luck. Tortoises in China
are good luck. Black cats are bad luck in some places and good luck in others. Why?
Maybe because people tell different stories in different places.

CHAPTER TWO

Wild Men

Strange creatures like us?

In 1924, a man called Albert Ostman is on vacation in a forest in Canada. One

night, he wakes up in his sleeping bag. He can't get out. Somebody's carrying him!
After two hours, they stop. Albert looks out of the bag.
He sees a family: father, mother, boy, and girl. They are very tall and hairy,
different from normal people! They do nothing bad to Albert, but he can't leave for
days. At last, when they aren't looking, he runs!

Is Albert's story true? Maybe not. Or maybe he really saw a family of bigfoot!

Albert only told his story 30 years later when he heard other stories like it. Many
people today say they saw a bigfoot. But nobody caught one to show to other people.
They say a bigfoot is very tall - two or three meters. It has a lot of hair on its
body.

In the west of the USA, there were other stories of "wild men" with long hair on
their bodies. Stiyaha were wild men that came at night and took children. Skoocooms
were cannibals - they ate other people! And there were other wild men that only
took people's fish.

Today, all these American wild men are called bigfoot.

There are stories of wild men in many countries.

In the Himalayas, they say there's a creature called the yeti or "the wild man of
the snows." Some people say they saw one, but other people think it was only a
bear. Fifty years ago, many people in the Himalayas believed in yetis, but not now.
But today, some people visit the Himalayas to try to find one.

In Japan, there are stories of a creature like a short man, called the Hibagon. It
has black hair on its body, but white hands and feet.

Why do people in very different places believe in the same kind of wild men? Maybe
it's because there are animals that are like people. For example, there are bears
in the mountains of North America and the Himalayas.

And in Borneo, there is the orangutan. This animal is sometimes called "the old man
of the forest." And gorillas in Africa are like big people with a lot of hair. So
maybe orangutans and other animals are behind the stories of wild men.

CHAPTER THREE

Monsters and Mermaids

There are lots of stories about strange sea creatures

Hundreds of years ago, people didn't know much about the world. They made maps of
the parts they knew. But on their maps, there were white, empty places. On those
places, they wrote, "Here, there are monsters."

People looked at the maps and said, "Monsters? It must be true. It's on the map."
But not everything on a map or in a book is true. Sailors always liked to tell
people interesting stories when they got home from the sea. Often, the stories
weren't true.

But sometimes, sailors really saw strange things and didn't understand them. Then
their stories were half true.

Sailors told stories about mermaids and people believed them. We all know mermaids
from books and movies. Mermaids are half woman, half fish. Today, we know mermaids
aren't real. The sailors saw sea animals called manatees and thought they were
mermaids.

There are stories about mermaids in many different countries. One of the most
famous is Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. She wants to be a woman
with legs because she loves a man.

A long time ago, sailors from Norway told stories of krakens. Krakens were giant
sea monsters with many arms. The sailors said krakens could eat men and even fight
big boats!

Today, we think krakens were really giant squids. These animals usually live at the
bottom of the sea, but they sometimes come up. Whales eat them - there are pictures
of this on the Internet. So giant squids fight whales. When they see a big boat,
they can think it's a whale - and fight it!

Some people today believe there's a real water monster - the Loch Ness Monster, or
Nessie.

The story began in 1933. Two people from London, Mr and Mrs Spicer, visited Loch
Ness, a lake in Scotland. They said they saw the monster.

After that, a lot of people came. Some wanted to kill the monster. Some took
pictures. You can see one here. Is it really a monster?

Today, some people believe Nessie is real, maybe a kind of dinosaur. Others don't.
What do you think?

CHAPTER FOUR

Dragons!

Mythical creatures or real dinosaurs

Dragon stories began in different places. The first came from China and Europe. But
Chinese and European dragons were very different.

In Europe, ancient dragons were like snakes with wings. But a few hundred years
ago, people started to imagine them with legs. European dragons usually did bad
things, like kill people.

Because kings wanted their people to be afraid of them, they used dragons as their
symbol. The national symbol of Wales is a red dragon.

People love stories about dragons. In many of these stories, people kill bad
dragons.

Beowulf is an English story from a thousand years ago. In the story, Beowulf wants
a dragon's gold. He and his men fight the dragon. Beowulf kills it, but then he
dies.

The Hobbit is a story from 1937. It also has a dragon, and the dragon also has
gold. Bilbo, the hobbit, takes a gold cup from the dragon. It gets angry and tries
to kill people in the town. Like Beowulf, someone kills the dragon to take its
gold.

The Chinese told stories about dragons a long time ago - 7,000 years! But in China,
dragons were good luck. The Chinese believed dragons helped people and could change
the weather. Some stories say dragons taught people to talk.

Like kings in Europe, the most important men in China used dragons as their symbol.
A story says that the first kings of China were from a dragon family. In the 1970s,
many Chinese people began to say they were "Children of the Dragon."

For the Chinese New Year, people make paper dragons and do a dragon dance in the
streets. They love dragons.

Why did people tell dragon stories? Maybe ancient people just enjoyed telling
stories to make their children afraid. Or maybe they found giant dinosaur bones

and thought they were from dragons. They didn't know dinosaurs died long ago. So
maybe they thought dragons were real animals.

There are animals that are a little like dragons. They're called monitor lizards.
Monitor lizards are usually big. The Komodo dragon from Indonesia, for example, can
be three meters long! They bite, fight, and eat other animals, sometimes farm
animals. Maybe farmers told stories about them, and, over time, these became dragon
stories.

CHAPTER FIVE

What Do You Think?

Are there really strange creatures like the ones in this book?
Bigfoot, yetis, mermaids, krakens, the Loch Ness Monster, dragons... Do you believe
they lived - or live - in our world? Do you believe in other strange creatures,
like the chupacabra, for example?

In 1995, the story of the chupacabra began in Puerto Rico. Eight sheep died. People
said that something drank their blood and killed them. Then more animals died in
other places. One woman said she had the answer. She saw a "strange creature," and
told people what it looked like. Did it drink the animals' blood?

What do you think? Are there really chupacabras? Some animals drink blood - for
example, the vampire bat - but not all the blood in a sheep!

Many people studied the chupacabra story. One man said the woman's "strange
creature" was from a movie she saw, called Species. Her story was the same as the
movie. Scientists said the creatures were sick wild dogs with little or no hair.

But now there are chupacabra stories in the USA, Russia, and other places. Are they
all wrong?

Do you have stories of strange creatures in your country? What are they? Do you
believe them? Why or why not?

Maybe all the stories in this book are true. The world can be a strange place!

- THE END -

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