Book Review: The Historical Bigfoot by Chad Arment

Yesterday, I finished Chad Arment's 2006 book The Historical Bigfoot. This book is not about present day Bigfoot research and/or sightings, but is about old reports of "hairy giants," "wildmen," and "gorillas" in North America that may really be the big ape-man we all know today.

Chad starts off the book by talking a little about what it is about and some old stories that are known hoaxes. The rest of the book is divided by state/province. In his books, Chad re-prints the original article about the creatures, in this case, wildmen. I, for one, like reading old newspaper reports of "wildmen." Some states only have one report, while others have tons, like Ohio, California, and Pennsylvania. Some of these "wildmen" are known in the local area and have local names in the papers, like the Blue Man in Missouri, "Old Yellow Top" and the "Traverspine Gorilla" in Canada, the "Wild Woman of the Navidad" in Texas,  and the "Pennsylvania Gorilla" in, well, you can figure out where.

I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes Bigfoot or cryptozoology in general. Arment is great at collecting old reports of wildmen(and also giant snakes and ABCs) that make for great reads. Some people said they got tired of reading newspaper reports of the wildmen over and over, but I don't. For some reason I just love reading old accounts of "wildmen" sightings, and "wildman" hunts. Of course, the creatures are never captured. All of the accounts in The Historical Bigfoot are very important. If a skeptic ever comes up to you and says "Bigfoot isn't real because there are no reports of it before the 1950s" or something like that, show them this book.

The next book review on Tyler's Cryptozoo will be Monster Hunters by Tea Krulos.

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