Library of Cryptozoology

For the establishment of the soko’s individuality, however, there are teeth, skin, and skulls in existence, and the last have been declared by Professor Huxley to be human. They were brought from Africa as the fragments of a great ape which certain natives had lately eaten, and which they themselves called "meat of the forest." Nevertheless, the Professor declares that they are the vestiges of defunct humanity, male and female. After, such a verdict the soko at once takes rank as one of the most interesting mysteries of nature. Is it human or not? ls it the chief of monkeys or the lowest of men? Dr Livingstone was not quite certain, and Mr H. M. Stanley was only half-convinced. In reviewing the work of the latter explorer for a London journal I drew special attention to the soko, for though actually known only by report, the repeated references to it make this ape-man one of the features of the book. It is true that on one occasion Mr Stanley actually startled to its feet a g...

The most singular feature of Kampunzu village were two rows of skulls ten feet apart, running along the entire length of the village, imbedded about two inches deep in the ground, the "cerebral hemispheres" uppermost, bleached, and glistening white from weather. The skulls were 186 in number in this one village. To me they appeared to be human, though many had an extraordinary projection of the posterior lobes, others of the parietal bones, and the frontal bones were unusually low and retreating; yet the sutures and the general aspect of the greatest number of them were so similar to what I believed to be human, that it was almost with an indifferent air that I asked my chiefs and Arabs what these skulls were. They replied, "sokos"–chimpanzees (?). "Sokos from the forest?" "Certainly," they all replied. "Bring the chief of Kampunzu to me immediately," I said, much interested because of the wonderful reports of them that Livingstone had ...

The Hippopotamus, also exclusively consigned to Africa, has been met with in the portion of jungle which extends into the Bhil country ... I have been credibly informed of this, by several who witnessed the animals at a distance, and afterwards examined their foot-marks (their surmises being corroborated by the natives of the country.) ... A snake, which by the testimony (exaggerated doubtless) of the natives, must equal in dimensions the pythons of antiquity, inhabits the low marshy recesses of the jungle ... and lastly, from a casual glance I once caught of an animal, in the thick and high woods bordering the Gurum nala, near the valley of the Subonrika, it would be the corroboration of an anxious surmise, were after researchers to establish the fact, that the Orang Otang is an inhabitant of these forests.

YOU ask me about the wa'ab. Well you may, for though every small boy has heard of it, very few men of those now living here have seen it. In these modern days there are no wa'ab hereabouts; and even so late as thirty or forty years ago it was very rare. It has gone with the elephant and the buffalo and the teitel [hartebeest]. This is its description. It walks on two legs, and is shaped very much like a man, though it is somewhat shorter. Its body and limbs are covered with a soft, hairy coat, like a kid's; but its face is bare, save for the eyebrows. Its features are like a man's, except that its nose is short, with the nostrils near the eyes. It speaks like a man, either in Khasa or Hadendoa, according to the land in which it lives; and they say that in Abyssinia it speaks Abyssinian. It has legs like a man's, but it cannot bend them at the knees, so that it never lies down, but sleeps leaning against a rock. It has five toes, the big toe very much longer than the...