Batsquatch
With a name too hilarious to pass up, Batsquatch starts off our list. Indigenous to the Mount St. Helens area, these bat-like creatures have purple skin and burning red eyes.

First reported in 1994, some eyewitnesses claim Batsquatch stands at thirty feet tall, and has a wingspan of over forty. Comparatively, the Bismark flying fox, regarded as the world's largest living bat by science, is less than six feet, wingtip to wingtip.

Other countries claim to harbor giant bats, though none so large as Batsquatch. Africa is rife with tales of the sasabonsam, kongamato, fangalabolo, and the stinky Guiafairo of Senegal, which are also sometimes identified as pterosaurs. Java boasts the ahool, and the orang-bati hide out in volcanoes in Indonesia.

Alan
Another flying oddity is the Alan of the Philippine Islands. These half-human, half-avian deformities do not terrorize the local natives, but instead have been know to care for and even nurture lost children.

A strange but non-aggressive attribute of these creatures is their penchant for seeking out and stealing human waste and menstrual blood, which they use to feed their young.

Features described by nearly every witness are stubby, toe-like fingers on their wings and for talons. Alans use these to hang among the cool, dark tree canopies during the day.

Giant Goannas
The scant fossil remains of Megalania prisca indicate that these Australian monitor lizards (relatives of the infamous komodo dragon) attained lengths of 25 feet, but died out 40,000 - 3,000 years ago. Recent reports, however, may tell a different story...

In the 1890s, a 30 foot reptile terrorized a village in Victoria, leaving tracks behind for evidence. Observers described it as a "monstrous goanna."

In the late 1970s, Herpetologist Frank Gordon allegedly saw a 30 foot specimen in New South Wales. Around the same time, researcher Rex Gilroy was informed by a number of Western Australians that a man some years before had been ripped apart by two large goannas, 10 - 15 feet each.

Sightings and tracks continued to be reported throughout the 70s and 80s, though modern claims are quite rare.

Mokele-mbembe
Gigantic monitor lizards are sometimes blamed for the Mokele-mbembe of the African Congo, but the more romantic explanation is a Sauropod. Consistent reports and expeditions for these living fossils have been in the media for more than a century, though some date from the 1600s.

A Mokele-mbembe (or n'yamala) was supposedly killed in 1959 by natives, many of whom died of food poisoning after the creature was roasted during a victory feast.

This cryptid's popularity spiked in 1985, with the theatrical release of Disney's Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend. Other "dinos" that may be sneaking around The Dark Continent include the predatory Kasai rex, Emela-ntouka, Mbielu-Mbielu-Mbielu, Muhuru (like an ankylosaur) and Kongamato.

Inner Earth People
Hollow Earth enthusiasts often believe in three worlds, the Outer Surface, where we live, the Inner Surface some 800 miles down, and then the Inner Cities, built into the crust and with a heavier populace.

The Inner Surface is lit 24 hours a day by the Earth's core, an internal sun. The light leaking through the 1,400 mile wide hole at the North Pole is supposedly the real source of the Aurora Borealis. Intraterrestrials are said to be quite tall and the vegetation enormous.

Populating the Inner Cities ("pulsing with rainbow hues of color") are peoples variously claimed to be cryptid hominids, extraterrestrials, Mayans, Atlanteans or even Lemurians. There is a "secret diary" (quoted above) of Admiral Byrd, the Polar explorer, that describes the Arianni domain, which he found after blundering through the hole in top of the world.

Fans of the director's cut of The Abyss will suspect that James Cameron found inspiration among Byrd's alleged passages. The Admiral's plane was landed by tractor beam, then he was ushered to the Master, who explained that their people were growing concerned about atomic energy and the fact that "there are those among you who would destroy your very world rather than relinquish their power as they know it..."

Grinning Man
The Grinning Man is a cryptid that may be an alternate form of the Mothman, an alien, or even one of the Men in Black. Aside from the signature smile, these shady figures seem to like to dress in dazzling green suits.

The Mothman sightings of the 1960s produced a number of reports. Grinning Man Indrid Cold appeared to Woody Derenberger after cutting him off on a West Virginia interstate in a vehicle that looked like "an old fashioned kerosene lamp chimney."

While Cold was said to have communicated telepathically with his contact (and promised to return), most witnesses claim these typically-larger-than-average men simply stand silently and leer from the shadows.

Enfield Horror
Henry McDaniel of Enfield, Illinois, checked his door to see what was scratching at it from the outside. He says:

"It had three legs on it, a short body, two little short arms coming out of its breast area and two pink eyes as big as flashlights. It stood four and a half to five feet tall and was grayish-colored. It was trying to get into the house."

It bounded 75 feet in three leaps after McDaniel shot it and "it hissed like a wildcat." State Troopers found 6-toed tracks in the area, and learned that a young neighborhood boy had been attacked just half-an-hour before in a nearby yard.

Suddenly appearing in April of 1973, it disappeared just as quickly a few weeks later, leaving only its haunting cry on audiotape as "proof" of its existence.

Dover Demon
Another freaky looking critter, thought to be an extraterrestrial or an interdimensional being, is the Dover Demon. Seen over two nights around Dover, Massachusetts in April of 1977, its unusual stature has kept it a topic of debate since the first sighting.

Reports were remarkably consistent among teenage witnesses--who had supposedly never met--of a large, skull-shaped head, skinny appendages and long digits on its extremities. The only detail in dispute was whether the eyes glowed orange or green in car headlights.

This case was well reported upon in the media and documented by a number of ufological "experts" shortly after the sightings. Nevertheless, the Dover Demon remains a mystery.

Cameron Village Sewer Blob
While the existence of most of the creatures on this list is questionable, these weird little globs are verifiably there. The debate is over what they are: Alien blobs? A new mutation? Bryozoans? Tubifex worms? The awakened nightmares of HR Giger?

Click here (http://gizmodo.com/5305380/disgusting-sewer-creature-update-its-fing-real) to check out the video and decide for yourself. Do yourself a favor and watch this with all the lights off in the dead of night, preferably alone while the house is groaning and settling around you.

Regardless of the glob's nature or the environment in which you choose to watch this, the video is just plain creepy. What's even more creepy is the fact that these things are living beneath someone's house in North Carolina...and maybe under yours... Paranoid yet?

Nameless Thing of Berkeley Square
Often cited as a haunting or poltergeist, there is some supporting evidence that The Nameless Thing of Berkeley Square could be a rogue cephalopod that made its way into the sewers of London, and from there, into the pipes of 50 Berkeley Square.

Sir Robert Warboys apparently died of fright after accepting a challenge to spend the night in the supposedly haunted room. He rang a summoning bell and fired a single shot, but by the time his friends and the distraught landlord reached the room, he was dead with no sign of an assailant.

The building was abandoned during World War II, but that didn't stop a couple of drunk sailors from shacking up for the night. They awoke to find a shapeless shadow with tentacles in the room with them. One escaped, while the other met an horrible fate (the modus operandi varies depending on the source, but one story finds him in the basement, beheaded and mutilated, while the other has him going out the window, to be impaled and further mutilated on a wrought iron fence outside).

Hoade's Monster/Trunko
In an 1883 article in the (Australian) Adelaide Observer, a Mr. Hoade gave details of a bizarre carcass he encountered on the banks of Brungle Creek. This beast shared few traits with the more common mystery "globsters," which are often misidentified whales, sharks and perhaps giant squid in advanced stages of decomposition.

This body was approximately 30 feet long, without a head but with a serpentine trunk extending from the front. A lobster-like tail adorned the other end. Unconfirmed reports also describe a dark fur covering the animal. Similar creatures have appeared in the United States (the Glacier Island Carcass) and on South African coasts.

Nicknamed Trunko, this 47 foot aquatic creature washed ashore in Margate, ZA, after it was killed in a three hour battle with two orcas, a spectacle witnessed by many people. By-standers' descriptions match Hoade's to an uncanny degree, with the exception of Trunko's fur being white. Despite the fact that it remained beached for more than a week, no photos were taken, nor was a scientific inquiry launched.

Other Sea Monsters
During World War I, in an event known as the U-28 Abomination, Germany's U-28 Schmidt sunk the British steamer Iberian. Half a minute after the Iberian sank off the Irish coast, it exploded, hurling a 60 foot creature than resembled "an aquatic crocodile" into the air and onto the debris, where it struggled for a brief time before slipping beneath the waves.

Less than three years later, the German's fell victim to a sea monster in the UB-85 Atrocity. British patrol boat Coreopsis easily captured the crew of UB-85 after it was unable to submerge, damaged by a "strange Beast" with "large eyes set in a horny sort of skull." The U-boat began listing under the thing's weight, so the officers fired upon the stubborn animal, which eventually let go after taking many, many shots.

As the 60s came to a close, the fishing vessel know as the M.V. Mylark had been fitted with a state-of-the-art line sonar device, the Simrad EH2A. This detected a 200 foot long plesiosaur-like creature swimming some 55 fathoms below, and the quick-witted operator was able to capture an image; unfortunately, it has since been lost to time. Skeptics like to claim faulty equipment or a mistaken whale, but the experience crewmen felt otherwise.

Carcharodon megalodon
Another known monster that cruised the world's oceans is Carcharodon megalodon, perhaps the largest predator ever next to the Sperm Whale. Conventional science dictates that these sharks died out more than 1 million years ago, though teeth found during a deep sea dredging exploration were dated to be a mere 10,000 years old. This and the recent confirmation of living Giant Squid (and even coelacanths, "living fossils" redicovered in the 30s), have enthusiasts convinced that these gargantuans may still roam the deep trenches.

If so, they occasionally surface. Just off Broughton Island, Australian seamen refused to go asea in 1918, after many of them were menaced by an enormous shark. These old tars were normally regarded to be quite sober and experienced, rather secretive and not braggadocios of their catches and business. However (but perhaps truly indicative of their panic), some fishermen claimed absurdly that uber-Jaws was more than 300 feet in length; others contended that it was longer than a particular wharf they were familiar with, which was 115 feet in length.

In the 60s, near Great Barrier Reef, an 85 foot ship was passed by a shark as long as or longer than the vessel. The crewmen refused to report it officially for fear of ridicule, but did recount the experience to their friends and family.

C. megalodon is thought to have regularly reached 30 - 50 feet, with some reaching 100 feet and 65 tons. The biggest whole tooth ever found measures more than 7 inches long. Boy, just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...