Long before the hunt for cryptids became a reality TV phenomena, sightings of strange creatures were commonly found in the travel logs of famous explorers. Due to their interesting nature, the tales of these creatures have been well preserved, and many of the accounts are still available to us today. As such, this list will countdown 15 Explorers Who Claimed They Found Monsters. Throughout this list, you will find men who claimed to have found the strangest of creatures in areas which had previously been unexplored by the western world. Stretching across 5 continents, I feel that this list provides some insight into the minds of the men who would spend years away from their homes and families in order to explore lands which the “civilized” world knew almost nothing about. Due to their isolated nature, it is unsurprising that these men would return home with fantastic stories of the land they had just traversed. While none of these accounts have ever been substantiated, there is evidence to suggest that each of these stories was more than a mere fabrication. Either way, these accounts are often the first examples of creature sightings, many of which have continued into the modern day. All facts discussed in this article are taken from the first-hand accounts of the explorers discussed.

15. Frank Welland – Kongamato

Our list begins with a creature supposedly sighted by explorers in 1932. According to explorer Frank Welland, during an exhibition to central Africa he spotted this large, reddish creature with leathery wings, devoid of feathers. Welland would publish his sightings in his book, In Witchbound Africa, causing quite a stir in the western world. To supplement the findings of Welland are numerous reports of the Kaonde people of Zambia, who used to carry charms called “muchi wa Kongamato” to protect them from the Kongamato at certain river crossings. Kongamato’s name, in fact, literally means “overwhelmer of boats”, the result of several incidences that the natives attribute to the winged creature.

14. Laurence Waddell – Yeti

This legendary creature first gained widespread attention because of an account published in James Prinsep’s Journal of the Asiatic Society. This account, written by explorer Laurence Waddell, detailed an exhibition that he took in 1899 into Northern Nepal. On this exhibition, his local guides spotted a tall, bipedal creature covered with long dark hair, which seemed to flee in fear. While Waddell did not see the creature himself, he did claim to see the large humanoid footprints that the creature left. During his time in Nepal, Waddell claims that several natives told him stories of bipedal apelike creatures, but that none ever gave him an “authentic case”. Late into his life, Waddell himself was convinced that the footprints he spotted were from some strange species of bear, but this did not stop him from publishing the strange incident in several popular journals. Since Waddell’s journal, rumors of a Yeti in the mountainous areas of Asia have become very popular.

13. Paul du Chaillu – Koolakamba

With the regularity that Paul du Chaillu claimed to have seen this creature (and the fact that it was also reported by Franquet), the Koolakamba of West-Central Africa is one of the most discussed cryptids in the entire world. Though no empirical evidence has ever been provided to prove the existence of the species, various ape experts have attested that such a creature surviving in the African jungle is certainly possible. Chaillu described the creature he found as a large skulled, more erect, chimpanzee. This was interpreted by scientific journals at the time as being a cross between a chimp and a gorilla. Despite there being limited sightings of the creature in modern times, the debate over whether such a creature exists continues to rage among zoologist.

12. Henry McCooey – Yowie

Our next tale comes from the account of an Australian explorer who claimed to see a large ape on the coast of the continent. In 1882 Henry McCooey, an amateur naturalist, was touring the coast between Bateman’s Bay and Ulladulla when he reported seeing a strange creature. McCooey described the creature as “standing perfectly upright it would be nearly 5 feet high. It was tailless and covered with very long black hair, which was of a dirty red or snuff-colour about the throat and breast. Its eyes, which were small and restless, were partly hidden by matted hair that covered its head”. McCooey claimed that he threw a rock at the creature, at which point it ran off leaving no trace. McCooey tried to collect a fee from the Australian Museum for the capture of the creature but was unsuccessful. Following further sightings in the 20th century, McCooey’s ape gained a renewed popularity under the name Yowie. This will not be the final time that we discuss an explorer who claimed to have found a strange creature in the Australian outback.

11. Joseph C. Rich – Bear Lake Monster

One of our few entries from the United States, the Bear Lake Monster was originally referenced by Joseph C. Rich, a Mormon colonizer in the Utah-Idaho area. The creature Rich described was a serpent, but with legs about eighteen inches long on which it marauded along the shore. The creature was large (about 30ft) though there is some discrepancy as to whether its head was shaped like that of a cow, otter, crocodile, or walrus. Rich claimed to be reporting sightings of the creature which had been relayed to him by locals and other settlers, however, later pressure from his peers caused him to recant many of his stories. Despite this, sightings of the creature have continued into the present day, and the monster has become an instrumental part of the Bear Lake tourism industry.

10. George Wilhelm Steller – Steller’s Sea Ape

It was at one time common practice for sea captains to claim sightings of strange creatures on long journeys. In fact, many ornamental maps from the 17th and 18th centuries featured small portraits of sea monsters in areas where they were likely to have dwelt. One of the more detailed of these accounts comes to us from George Wilhelm Steller, who spotted a sea creature which would appropriately be called Steller’s Sea Ape. Steller described the animal as “about 5 ft long, with a head similar to that of a hog. It had large eyes, pointed erect ears, and long whiskers. Its tail resembled that of a shark, but it had no forefeet nor forefins. Its body was covered with thick grayish hair, but its abdomen was reddish-white.” According to Steller, the creature performed an amusing juggling trick with seaweed to the delight of the crew. Despite this, Steller aimed a shot at the creature, causing it to retreat back into the water. While this is the only animal described by Steller that has not been corroborated by physical evidence, or other witnesses, he did not record its sighting in the ships log or governmental reports. Other naturalists have hypothesized that the creature seen by Steller may simply have been a large Northern fur seal.

9. Captain Crum – Champ

Our next reported account comes from the water, but of a more freshwater variety. In 1819, the Plattsburgh Republican reported that a Captain Crum had sighted a gigantic, serpent type, creature within the depths of Lake Champlain. From a distance of about two hundred yards away, Crum estimated the creature to be about 187-feet long. Don’t ask me how someone “estimates” how long a creature is from that far away to the very foot. Despite the distance, Crum also claimed that the creature was being followed by “two large Sturgeons and a Bill-fish”. Of the creature itself, Crum described it as having a “belt of red” around its neck, a white star on its forehead, and three teeth and eyes the color of peeled onions. In the almost 200 years since Crum made his report, dozens of other purported sightings have made Champ one of the most famous cryptids purported to live in North America.

8. John Alfred Jordan – Dingonek

The majority of the sightings on this list are fairly credible in that they describe creatures which would have been at home in the areas where they were sighted. Several ape sightings took place in native rainforests, and sightings of sea creatures were reported around large bodies of water. This entry, however, is certainly one of the weirdest creature sightings to have ever been reported by explorers. John Alfred Jordan, an English explorer, claimed to have seen a “scale-covered creature which was as big as 5.5 m (18 ft) long and had reptilian claws, a spotted back, long tail, and a big head out of which grew large, curved, walrus-like tusks.” Jordan’s colorful description (of a creature he claimed to have shot) led to the Dingonek being nicknamed the “jungle walrus” by contemporary publications.

7. Viking Seafarers – Lagarfijot Worm

The oldest account to be featured on this list comes to us from a series of Viking explorers who landed in Iceland midway through the 14th century. These explorers claimed to have found a large, wormlike creature, living in the depths of an Icelandic lake. The Lagarfijot Worm has since been attributed to living in the lake Lagarfljót in the town of Egilsstaðir, though it is unclear if this was the body of water described by the Viking settlers. According to the Nordic explorers, the creature is serpentine in nature, though it does have a series of “humps” which discern it from other lake creatures like the Loch Ness Monster. Some evidence to support these ancient claims was provided in 1983, when contractors laying a telephone cable measured a large shifting mass near the eastern shore when performing preliminary depth measurement.

6. Hamilton Hume and James Meehanb – Bunyip

We travel back to Australia for our next entry, an 1818 account of Hamilton Hume and James Meehan. These young explorers stumbled upon a strange skull while traveling through what would become Bold Park near Perth. Locals, no doubt influenced by the mythological stories of aboriginals, attributed the skull to the legendary Bunyip creature. The explorer’s finding was at one time displayed at the Australian Museum, but recent searches have failed to locate the skull. Scientists at the time concluded that the skull was unlike anything they had ever seen, but modern scientific methods would have been more adept in determining whether the skull was from a truly novel species, or was simply the product of some deformed creature. Later accounts have described the Bunyip as having flippers, a horse-like tail, and tusks like a walrus. Whether you believe in the Bunyip or not, it is evident that the find of Hume and Meehan certainly caused quite the stir in regards to Australian urban legends.

5. Pierre Belon and Guillaume Rondelet – Sea Monks

Next up on our list of ancient explorers who reported fantastic creatures, is the report which shocked much of Renaissance Europe. The sea monk was first described by a French naturalist and ichthyologist, Pierre Belon, in 1553, and again by a French colleague, Guillaume Rondelet, in 1554. The accounts of these two men were published in a 1558 volume of the widely-read and respected Renaissance natural history encyclopedia, Historiae Animalium. A publication nearly 200 years later drew upon these reports, describing the monk as having “a human head and face, resembling in appearance the men with shorn heads, whom we call monks because of their solitary life; but the appearance of its lower parts, bearing a coating of scales, barely indicated the torn and severed limbs and joints of the human body.” The relationship between scholars and the clergy at the time of these sightings was very turbulent, thus making these accounts of the sea monk interesting not only for our purposes, but also for understanding the climate of Europe  at the time.

4. Francois de Loys –  De Loys Ape

De Loys Ape was named for the explorer who first claimed to have discovered it, a Swiss oil geologist Francois de Loys. De Loys claimed that his party stumbled upon two large, erect-walking primates. According to De Loys, they shot one of them dead, allowing them to prop up its body on a wooden crate to take what would become an extremely famous photograph. The creature was “1.5 meters tall, had a human-like tooth count, and was tailless.“ De Loys portrayed the creature as a convergently evolved South American ‘ape’. Initially causing widespread speculation, the De Loys Ape has since been heavily debunked.

3. Pliny the Elder – Giant Octopus

Of those creatures reportedly sighted by ancient explorers, perhaps none were more often named in the ledgers of old ships than the giant octopus. Despite the prevalence of these ancient sightings, the best–known reference in classical times is the one described in the Historia Naturalis of Pliny the Elder. Pliny reported that “more than a century ago, a gigantic cuttlefish was caught in the strait between the Pillars of Hercules”. The Historia Naturalis is roughly dated to 200 B.C., so this “century ago” would have been around 100 B.C. Pliny describes the octopus as such; “its head was as large as a keg holding fifteen amphorae of wine, and the arms were 30 feet long and so thick that a man had difficulties to reach around them.” The prevalence of giant octopus reports in the writings of ancient explorers, combined with the relative reliability of Pliny’s account, makes the giant octopus one of the more interesting entries on our list.

2. Lievin-Bonaventure – Mokele-mbembe

The details of explorers sighting Mokele-mbembe date all the way back to the 18th century. In 1776, a French missionary in the Congo River basin published a book titled History of Loango, Kakonga, and Other Kingdoms in Africa. The writer of this book, Liévin-Bonaventure Proyart, claimed to have seen evidence of an enormous creature in the region. Specifically, the presence of large footprints stuck in the mud of a swampy area led Bonaventure to believe a large reptilian creature lived in the region. The creature that left the prints was not witnessed, but Bonaventure wrote that it “must have been monstrous: the marks of the claws were noted on the ground, and these formed a print about three feet in circumference.” This, combined with the hundreds of sightings by natives have made Mokele-mbembe worthy of the top spot on our list of ancient explorers who “discovered” monsters.

1. Dr. Ernest Bartels – Ahool

Not all the explorers on this list are coarse sailors or isolated naturalist. The person who first provided detailed accounts of the legendary Ahool was Dr. Ernest Bartels, a noted scholar and gentlemen. The creature he claimed to have found in his explorations of the Salak Mountains on the island of Java is certainly something of nightmares. According to Bartels, the Ahool is a large, hairy, mammal-like creature. While many have assumed that the creature Bartels described was a giant variety of bat, it is unclear from his own description whether this is the case, or if the Ahool is something far more sinister. Due to the immensity and thickness of the rainforests on Java, no hard evidence of the creature has ever been found. Multiple accounts by tourists and natives, however, have kept the legend created by Dr. Bartels alive well into the modern day.