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Linda S. Godfrey

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Monsters Among Us: An Exploration of Otherworldly Bigfoots, Wolfmen, Portals, Phantoms, and Odd Phenomena Kindle Edition

by Linda S. Godfrey (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.5 358 ratings

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Have you ever seen something you couldn’t explain?

This meticulously researched and thrilling exploration of the otherworldly will challenge your idea of reality. Mysterious wolf-people, sentient mists, and UFOs…if you've ever heard a curious bump in the night, caught a glimpse of a strange-looking someone (or something) out of the corner of your eye, or seen an unusual craft dart across the sky before it vanishes without a trace, there's only one person to call: Linda S. Godfrey. An expert in strange creatures and lore, she has offered reporting on bigfoots, werewolves, strange energy forms, and other bizarre beings for years.

Godfrey will enthrall even skeptics as she leads you through the mystical, legendary, and scientific angles of these creatures and the myths that surround them. Within these pages, you will encounter:

- First-hand testimony of a terrifying transformation from woman to beast (during a church service, no less)
- The Lost Lizard People of Los Angeles
- A growling, phantomlike home invader
- Wolfmen who walk on two legs
- People stalked by invisible predators

Delivering a broad mix of modern-day and historical sightings, and supported by Godfrey's interviews with eyewitnesses, Monsters Among Us is essential reading for anyone hunting for the real accounts behind their childhood campfire stories.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Keeps the reader captivated and skilfully plunges them deep into the heart of the mystery."

-- "Nick Redfern, author of Bloodline of the Gods"

"Godfrey frequently draws from myth and folklore and cites cases from history and pop culture, demonstrating extensive knowledge of her subject matter. The book will prove a handy encyclopedia for enthusiastic cryptozoologists of all ages."

-- "Publishers Weekly"

About the Author

Emily Durante has been narrating audiobooks for over ten years and is also an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning audiobook director. She has been acting since the age of seven and has performed in a number of stage productions at the professional, collegiate, and regional levels.

Linda S. Godfrey is one of America's foremost authorities on modern-day monsters. She is the author of over a dozen books on werewolves, hauntings, and the paranormal, including Real Wolfmen, American Monsters, and Weird Michigan. Linda has appeared on Inside Edition and the History Channel's Monster Quest.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

chapter one

Things from Way Down Under

To the people of most ancient civilizations, there were two main places from which strange creatures or godlike beings could hail: the deep belly of the earth-or the sky. Portals, wormholes, and space-time tunnels are most often depicted in today's religious and pop culture art as hovering in the clouds, but in fact are just as likely to be found lying beneath our feet. Caves, underground worlds, the Christian concept of hell, underground military installations, and even alien bases-all of these imply mysterious subterranean passageways of some kind, whether they are known physical constructs like elevators or sewers, or the more nebulous method of transport to a less-than-happy afterlife.

As above, so below is an ancient mantra that can be interpreted many ways. Many cultures have believed that, like the images in a reflecting pool, if there are portals in the sky that open for beings from heaven or the stars, then there must also be entrances in the ground from which darker beings climb or slither. And according to many mythic and legendary traditions, holes in the earth and hollowed-out mountains or caves have traditionally been considered entrances to hell, or, as Buffy of Joss Whedon's classic sci-fi TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, called them, hellmouths.

Hellmouths and Other Gates to the Underworld

When it comes to tunnels and other openings to the underworld, I've noticed something of a turnaround in their traffic patterns over the centuries. Modern myth and legends seem to be all about monsters, demons, and the like taking advantage of hellmouths to escape from disagreeable underworlds. Many episodes of Buffy, for instance, deal with a giant hellmouth deep beneath the local high school that's crammed chockablock with demons plotting to spill upward and wreak havoc on humanity. Underworld myths of earlier civilizations, however, focused more on heroic figures struggling to get into these abodes of monsters and dead people, and then, mission accomplished, returning to our world while the horrible entities stayed put where they belonged.

I think I like the old ways better.

The Gates of Mashu

A good example of the latter can be found in some of humanity's earliest written mythic accounts, in the journey of the ancient Sumerian hero king Gilgamesh. Many scholars believe the character is based on an actual ruler of the southern Mesopotamian kingdom of Uruk, once located in present-day Iraq. He would have lived between 2700 and 2500 BCE. In this epic and iconic tale, Gilgamesh seeks to enter the underworld in hope of finding something still sought by humanity today: everlasting life. But before he enters, this king must become a bit monstrous himself, by growing his hair long and dressing in animal skins.

Once he makes it to the twin-peaked mountain called Mashu, which marks the entrance to heaven and the underworld alike, he encounters savage guardians-an army of scorpion people, no less-at the mountain's gateway. Gilgamesh, always quite the socially adept schmoozer, manages to avoid a fight and talk his way past them and on into the mountain's interior. He must then hike down a thirty-six-mile tunnel in total darkness in order to complete his quest and learn how to become immortal.

I had to stop at this point to wonder at the fact that at least five thousand years or so ago, people had already formed the notion of other worlds beyond our own that were inhabited not only by our dead but by gods and monsters, all reachable by traversing long passageways extending deep underground. Today, many world religions also believe that humans may end up stuck permanently in a (usually) ghastly world below when they die. But Gilgamesh is different. In true heroic fashion, he discovers the magical flower of eternal youth and returns with it from the underworld-only to lose it to a serpent who gives the precious bloom to its reptilian kin and thereby cheats humanity of its chance at earthly immortality.

We all hate it when that happens. And the motif of the clever, deceptive serpent recurs often in the religious literature of the world. Readers familiar with the Bible, for instance, are doubtlessly right now picturing forbidden fruit, one persuasive reptile, and a couple who suddenly find themselves naked, afraid, and unemployed as well. But that's another book. The thing that's pertinent in the tale of Gilgamesh, the thing that our modern stories share with these older traditions, is that idea of humans and monsters coming and going from mysterious underground worlds.

Contemporary Hellmouths

I've often stated that I don't believe in the idea of actual, traditional werewolves-humans changing their flesh-and-blood bodies for those of flesh-and-blood canines in an unholy and unsociable union. Sometimes, however, I do receive a compelling report that makes me wonder if something like that is possible in certain situations. And I've always been willing to allow for some sort of spirit-generated facsimile or illusion of a wolfoid that at least looks like a werewolf.

If there were such a thing, it seems fitting that they should be said to lurk in the nether regions-in caves, mines, or even sewer systems. I have heard a rumor, for instance, that people have claimed to see werewolves in the sewers of Minot, North Dakota. I've never been able to verify it and haven't even found a single witness, but I've since received some other reports that make it a bit more likely than I thought.

The Phantom Wolf of Wolfsegg

Few things would sound more classically spooky than strange moans and howls emanating from a deep, dark cave in the heart of Germany's Bavarian Forest. Add a famous floating ghost known as the "woman in white," and then pile on the sighting of a phantom wolf reported by a soldier with Canadian forces stationed near there in 1987-all the ingredients for a vaunted passage to an underground world are present and accounted for.

The intriguingly named village of Wolfsegg in southern Germany is most famous for its eight-hundred-year-old castle, a must-see for many tourists. The soldier's wife, "S," wrote me to relate that his troop was stationed that year at a US military garrison facility called the Hohenfels Training Area, not far from Wolfsegg. He and his comrades were camping overnight in a farm field nearby the training facility, and on one particular evening he had chosen to bunk inside his M458 military track vehicle. He was awakened during the night by a strange scratching sound at the vehicle's window.

His wife wrote, "Suddenly a large canine head appeared in the window. It looked dog- or wolflike but had glowing red eyes (the eyes frightened my husband the most). It made bold eye contact for a couple of seconds, then disappeared from view. It would have had to have been six to seven feet tall [standing] on its hind legs to reach the window of the track vehicle from the ground.

"The next morning my husband tried to tell himself that he must have dreamed the whole thing, but he found tracks and paw prints all over the muddy ground outside his vehicle. He told his fellow soldiers about the spooky creature, but nobody knew what to make of it."

The thought of a huge, possibly phantom wolf roaming a military training ground and window-peeping at slumbering soldiers does sound a bit fantastic. I call it a "possibly phantom wolf" partly because of its red eyes. Canid eye shine is normally light yellow to greenish or golden yellow, although sometimes physical eye conditions or illness can change any animal's eyeshine hue. But as wolves were once very numerous throughout Europe, so were legends of large, black, red-eyed phantom wolves or dogs, believed by most clergy of the Middle Ages to be demonic. The noted German scholar Dr. Johann Keiler von Kaiserberg, for instance, preached a sermon on that subject in Strassburg in 1508. A local cleric published the good doctor's words, including this interesting sentence: "He certainly says that the Demon often appears in the shape of a wolf, and in his sermon on wild men of the woods he speaks of lycanthropes in Spain."

Synchronistically, S added that Wolfsegg's coat of arms features a wolf, actually the head of a black, shaggy wolf with a protruding red tongue.

The Wolfsegg Hole

But there's more than just history to link the Wolfsegg area to possible phantom creatures. As mentioned earlier, there's a well-known legend of a "woman in white" said to appear around the castle grounds. The apparition is thought to be the ghost of a woman killed in 1485 for marital transgressions.

Wolfsegg also is famed for a deep cave located about a hundred yards into the forest just outside the village. Residents nicknamed the cave "The Hole" due to its steep drop into a black, seeming abyss. It is at least thirty-five meters deep, and despite a few expeditions meant to discover its outlet, local tourism publications say it has never been fully explored.

A site called Travel Creepster claims, "There is a strange noise coming from the darkness of the Hole, sometimes just breathing, and sometimes grunts or growling, but the last thing witnesses would describe it as is human. The locals will tell you that the sounds are not natural of any creature they have ever heard, and they tell the story of travelers that got too close and were never seen again."

According to the site, one expedition led by scientists in 1920 entered the cave on the premise that the opening shaft was too steep to be used as a regular entrance by whatever animals were heard breathing in there and that therefore another, more horizontal level must exist. They did find horizontal tunnels, but they were much deeper than expected, and they were filled with animal bones that they judged had been left in the cave over a very long period of time by unknown carnivores. There are numerous other caves and old mines in the area as well, since this was once a very active iron mine region. And while I don't want to give the impression that tunnels to possible netherworlds are absolute requirements for sightings of werewolves-in-progress, people have sent me some stunning examples of cases where underground access seems to have played a part.

Encounter case summary: Phantom Wolf of Wolfsegg

Reported creature(s): Large, wolflike creature that left paw prints and also mud prints on vehicle.

Location, date: Hohenfels Training Area near Wolfsegg, Germany, 1987.

Conditions: Nighttime, clear weather.

Associated phenomena: Ghost apparition, extremely deep sinkhole with horizontal tunnels filled with animal bones and the site of unidentified grunts and growling.

Unexplained actions/appearance of creature: Height of six to seven feet, glowing red eyes (unlike yellowish, reflective canid eyes), and stood upright to peer into military truck window.

Witness(es): A Canadian soldier on training duty.

Environmental factors: Combination of woods and farms to provide possible small livestock as prey, and close proximity to a legendary deep sinkhole with a tunnel system near a military base.

chapter two

Liminal Los Angeles

Zooming back to the United States, we can explore a better-documented tale-first person, with two witnesses and a pinpoint geographical location-sent to me several years ago by a woman who had a close encounter with an apparent shape-shifter as it tried to hoist itself out of a manhole. It happened in Torrance, California, when she was just seven and her brother was fourteen. He won't talk publicly about it to this day, she says, but she remembers it clearly. I've left it in mostly her own words, edited slightly for spelling, brevity, and punctuation, with only a few added interjections of my own.

The Torrance Werewolf

"Well, it was a sunny afternoon in 1985, and I was with my brother and my mother at a Laundromat in Torrance, California, that we occasionally went to. We had just came from a store where my mom bought my brother and I our first Nerf ball to share. We were very excited and anxious to play with it. Well, we were helping mom put the clothes in the washer and getting change, etc. Then my brother and I started begging our mom to let us play with the Nerf ball in the parking lot. She of course said no, because it was too dangerous, so my brother said that he would be right back. He went looking around for a spot to play, and came back quickly. He said to my mom that he found a safe spot right behind the Laundromat, and it was an apartment-type complex with a long driveway where we would be safe from cars. She finally accepted.

"We ran as fast as we could to the back of the Laundromat. I remember my brother saying to me that he wanted me to go to the middle of the driveway and that he would be toward the front, just in case cars would drive in. That way he could be seen better, because he was taller. We started to play catch back and forth, throwing the ball different ways with spins and twirls and such. I remember we got pretty loud because we were having such fun. We were running and jumping, and we kept hitting the sides of the wall to this property and the open carports that were underneath the complex.

"After about thirty minutes or so my brother threw it so high and far that I had to fetch the ball from the last carport. The ball flew in all the way back to the carport wall, just beneath the storage compartment that each carport had. So I ran to go get it. I got the Nerf ball in my hands and turned around. Right there was a large, metal rectangular door on the ground that looked like it opened to an underground area.

"Well, there was a man that lifted the door and popped a little out from underneath this heavy thick metal door, and it was propped sort of on his back neck and shoulders . . . to where I could only see his upper body. I was at that moment freaked out and afraid. I was told to never talk to strangers. I was told constantly to never trust anyone by my mother, brother, and grandma. I wasn't allowed to go anywhere alone. So I was very frightened and stood still, looking at this man.

"The door was heavy, so it seemed as if he couldn't get enough strength to get all the way out of it. My only way to get past him was from the sides, because this door was directly in the middle of the end of the carport, facing outward. He looked at me, and said in a [rough] voice, 'What's all this noise, why are you making so much noise? What are you doing? Why are you here?' I didn't say anything. I just stared.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01BD1SUEW
Publisher ‏ : ‎ TarcherPerigee (October 11, 2016)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 11, 2016
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 22205 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 358 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #477,432 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #377 in Occult Ghosts & Haunted Houses
- #379 in Occult UFOs
- #845 in Occult Unexplained Mysteries

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4.5 358 ratings

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Linda S. Godfrey

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For almost a quarter of a century, ever since breaking the original story of the Beast of Bray Road as a small town Wisconsin newspaper reporter, I've been chasing the elusive upright canine some folks call werewolves. People from around North and South America and even Europe and Australia have contacted me with reports of their encounters. Sometimes their stories describe Bigfoot, giant birds or water monsters, as well. There's a world o'weirdness out there! The fact that people keep seeing these things is what drives me to keep searching, investigating, speculating and writing about them. And after 25 years and 17 published books, I'm still tracking those unknown trails.

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William R. Hancock

A new Godfrey Fortean Home Run.

Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2017

Verified Purchase

Back in 1976 I bought a slender paperback book entitled "Bigfoot" by B. Ann Slate and Alan Berry. It was out at the same time as another paperback, "Sasquatch", by Don Hunter and Rene Dahinden. Reading them both, I was at the time struck by the conflict of mindsets involved. The book by Hunter and Dahinden was very naturalist oriented, very "boots on the ground". It looked upon the bigfoot/sasquatch mystery as being something naturally zoological and anthropological; a situation where pre-historic survivals of the human backstory seemed to possibly still exist in our modern world; cagey and illusive, and hard as the devil to lay hands on to prove to the world at large that these things were real. Maybe they were relic australopithecines (paranthropus boisei , perhaps), maybe relic Neanderthals, maybe survivals of gigantopithecus blacki...or homo erectus...or an unknown relative of one of these. Whoever or
Whatever they were, they were obviously relic "somethings" because creatures with similar skeletal structures and morphologies had been

found in paleoanthropological "digs" in Africa by the Leakeys and others.

This all gave the bigfoot mystery an onus of scientific grounding, whether Establishment Science wanted to pay any serious attention to it or not.

And I could accommodate that outlook. I'd done well enough in science classes in school, and watched some Bill Nye, the Science Guy in my time.

This other book, though, had things in it that were jarring to me; things that almost smacked of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone. IT hinted at possible telepathic abilities by sasquatches...and perhaps an ability to even appear and disappear at will...to go invisible at times...perhaps even to teleport.

Do Whaaaat? I was confounded by the book and began to become somewhat annoyed with it. Invisible and teleporting sasquatches struck me as just "Too Much" and I came to regard Slate-Berry as being something of a kookfest in the same vein as the "Weekly World News", "The Sun", "The Globe" and any of the other crackpot tabloid "newspapers" that lined the news stands or grocery store check-out lanes every week. Shades of Bat Boy !

Because of this I tossed the Slate-Berry book into a box, stuck the box away in the attic....and forgot about it.

Fool that I was.

Time marched on, though, and over months and years thereafter I began to read and hear more and more stories of sasquatches that could vanish on you; not into the brush, mind you, but...seemingly...into thin air. Right IN FRONT of you! I also came to learn of bigfoot prints that just seemed to APPEAR in a certain spot, track along for some distance, and then just...cease...as though Alexander Scott had just beamed

the track maker up to the Enterprise. Whoa. Tim Beckley even uncovered a story of a Florida man smoking a cigarette outside a truckstop diner in a parking lot full of 18-wheelers. This fellow saw a huge, skulking "something" prowling about and it struck him that he just might be looking at a "skunk ape". Keeping tabs on the skulker, the witness saw it open the back of one semi trailer (that didn't seem secured and locked), look in, and then CLIMB INSIDE THE TRAILER. The watcher quickly ran forward, slammed the trailer door and bolted it. He figured he HAD him a "booger"! He boogied into the diner, raised himself a "posse", and returned to the parked, still locked trailer with a group of guys armed with guns and tire irons. The monster HAD to be inside. There was no way it could NOT be.

It wasn't, though. When the "posse" members steeled themselves for a fight with an "ape man" and opened the door they found NOTHING inside. A couple of crates still due for delivery but nothing else. No ape-man AT ALL. Just an overpowering, nauseating STENCH that proved one had BEEN there. But...how'd he get GONE? Dematerialization? Teleportation? How weird was THAT?

And there was plenty more weirdness to mull through. Year after year.

I also came to learn of a closer association in times and localities of bigfoot and UFOs, of bigfoots and ghostlights, and still MORE reported

bigfoot materializations and de-materializations.

And these reports did not come from cranks, cuckoos, and crackpots; they came from "just plain regular folks" who encountered something truly bizarre and who were flabberghasted by their experiences. Many of these had "sat on" their experiences for years because they figured telling them would open the tellers up to significant ridicule. So many of these high strangeness reports started turning up that one actually started HAVING to listen. John Keel was telling them; Frank Edwards was telling them, Brad Steiger, the aforementioned Beckley, and numerous others; so many others that I was forced to stop and re-think my blow-off of the Slate-Berry book years before. Suddenly the claims in the Slate-Berry volume WEREN'T so cuckoo-sounding after all. They began to totally dovetail with a LOT of new experiencer
reports. Result? I had an attic trip to make and a dig through some junk boxes to relocate that old tome. Did that. Got it back. Re-read it...realized the thing was a milestone in cryptid research; and have agitated ever since for SOMEBODY to RE-PRINT THE DAD-BLASTED THING! With, to this date, no takers. How stupid.

Point is, over time my view of the nature of cryptid beings has undergone some drastic revision. It has come very much "out of the box" and
out of synch with the natural tendency to want to compartmentalize and "pigeonhole" anomalous interactions in our world into outlooks of "this is this" and "that is that". Seems like things are a LOT more complicated than that.

Linda Godfrey has also come to accommodate this view. When she started writing news-item stories of local color back in the 1990s for "The Week" newspaper in Wisconsin, and was assigned some write-ups on a mysterious "something" seen on Bray Road in Elkhorn, she
took it on with casual interest and with the idea that it sounded like fun. The more she investigated these "Beast of Bray Road" stories, though, the more fascinated she became by them. She ended up writing her book of that name and that launched her into a whole new sphere of activity; she became a chronicler of werewolfery (or, at least, of bipedal doggery) for the long haul. If one re-reads "The Beast of Bray Road", one will notice that early Godfrey tends to be a "just the facts" kind of gal. She records the recounted incidents in an objective,

professionally reportorial manner. There is very little speculative input to be found.

Then.

However, as time progresses, and new books appear from her, it becomes evident that she is interviewing more and more, getting out in the field (literally) more and more, getting "boots on the ground" more and more, and...as she is a very clever and savvy little rascal...becoming more and more aware that there is more sheer , unadulterated WEIRDNESS going on with this stuff than the doubter mind wants to
accommodate. Her cognitive horizons have kept expanding. She has become less reticent about hiding away personally-held notions about

the nature of the things that "go bump in the night" that she researches. She is now looking seriously at Djinn (as does Rosemary Ellen Guiley), demons, Ultra-terrestrials (as did John Keel), Interdimensionals (essentially the same thing), and other more esoteric explanatory possibilities than "mutant canid/lycan adaptations" and such. A highlight of "Monsters Among Us" is the story that some 225 churchgoers in
the Midwest a few decades ago witnessed the SEEMINGLY physical transformation of a woman worshipper into a werewolf-like "something" in the midst of a Baptist assembly. VERY interestingly, the CREATURE appeared naked and fully furred after the transformation, while the woman had been fully DRESSED beforehand. Later, after a "banishing" of the evil beast spirit from the woman, she was SEEN TO BE FULLY CLOTHED AGAIN. This is highly interesting because shamanic teachings (as well as those of ceremonial magicians; druids, kabbalists) hold that many "creatures" are "MASKS" (cast illusions) projected by adepts and are, in fact, "worn" like a suit or costume.
monster isn't real. It SEEMS to be. But isn't. Skinwalkers? Bearwalkers? Skin Changers? Dogmen? Even bigfoots or sasquatch? Are they really what they APPEAR to be? Or are they something else? A well-known paranormalist investigator friend of mine (who I am not allowed, by promise, to name) had shamanistic training as a youth and became quite good at "masking". Once he was at the house of friends, playing cards, and was challenged to "turn into a bear". He DID. There was suddenly a huge grizzly sitting at the breakfast table in these peoples' kitchen...a grizzly holding a paw full of cards...and the sight cleared the room. Yet my friend is adamant that he did NOT physically turn into a grizzly bear that night; he just projected that illusion ("Mandrake gestures hypnotically"?). Incidentally, ceremonial magicians also claim that many "monsters" are mentally/magically created THOUGHT-forms ( of ectoplasm solidified) and then INHABITED by the astral body/spirit of their creator (the "transmigration of souls") and go about doing things while the physical body of the creator is protectively hidden away. This, these "Magickals" tell us, is what is really MEANT by the CODE-term of "shedding the (human) skin" and hiding it away (the witch or warlock hiding her/his skin). This means secreting away the living body while the astral "double" goes out in the "animal body of transformation" to prowl , growl, and howl.

Godfrey also covers strange mists in this new book; mists that go out and about as though intelligent themselves. And some show up on mounted trail cameras. And MAY move objects (or maybe even mutilate cattle). And bigfoots and other creatures CAN seem to appear OUT of such mists...like the werewolf-like creature that materialized out of a thick, swirling green mist in the home library of a folklorist-historian in the UK in the 1970s in the famous British "Hexham Heads" mystery ( OR the enlarging "werewolf" emerging from ANOTHER green mist by a fishing hole, in front of two freaked out boys, in Depression-era Texas, as researched by Nick Redfern). And many other things that are equally bizarre. This is a great book. Well worth
reading; over and over again. There is much intellectual "chew food" here. Very much "out of the box"....and highly recommended.

13 people found this helpful

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Human Action

With whom do we share this earth?

Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2021

Verified Purchase

This is a fascinating collection of unusual and disturbing narratives concentrating mostly on what people commonly consider to be "monsters."

The term “monster” covers a lot of ground, to be sure, and so does this book. I could have purchased any one of Linda's many books, but I chose this one for its unusually wide-ranging coverage. I wanted a general treatment of the subject, and that is what I got.

There is a something for nearly every paranormal enthusiast here, everything from demons to dogmen, shapeshifters to skinwalkers, and trolls to terrorizing and sometimes invisible predators. There are also UFOs, geophysical, atmospheric, electromagnetic, and interdimensional phenomena, and overtones of unseen intelligences lurking in the background like so many puppet masters working on a cosmic stage in front of a childlike audience. If I had to compare this book to another, that would be Jacques Vallee’s Passport to Magonia (1969).

Who are they, really? What are they? Are they what they appear to be? Where do they come from? Are they simply unusual but earthly neighbors, or are they interdimensional beings who occasionally trespass on our turf for reasons unknown? Are they figments of sick or silly people’s imaginations, or are they projections from some unseen intelligence which plays the trickster with poor, helpless humans? Perhaps they are products of some sort of meta-phenomenon, like images from a movie projector. Find the projector, and you solve the mystery!

Some will, no doubt, say that books like this are mere clever creations of a huckster out to make a fast buck. Just judging from the title of this book, the average reader might be tempted to dismiss Linda’s material on this basis.

In my opinion, it is not. Although I was a bit on the skeptical side when I first got my hands on the book, I was willing to give her a chance to make her case. Linda’s hard work is evident on every page. She tracked down witnesses, gained their trust, interviewed them, checked out their character, circumstances, and veracity, and compiled considerable evidence. She argues skillfully and persuasively with an array of facts, analysis, and testimony, and makes a compelling case that humans share this earth with intelligences and related phenomena that we don’t yet understand, and which do not fit into our ordinary sense of reality or yield easily to standard scientific viewpoints.

I can’t say that I would blame people if they just dismissed all this as the stuff of nightmares, hoaxes, and overactive imaginations. It is very disturbing. But is this fact alone enough to ignore the evidence which Linda presents? Is it better to live in blissful darkness, or astonishing light?

Linda has contributed admirably and courageously to the advancement of knowledge of our world in challenging areas fraught with danger to the reputation of anyone who would put his or her name to them. I submit that she has made a good case for the theory that we do not know nearly as much about our world as we think we do.

Therefore, let us keep our minds open, and continue this search for knowledge. An open and unchained mind is far better than a closed and chained mind. Surely the human race was made for the former rather than the latter!

4 people found this helpful

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James Harvey

An important book

Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2017

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Linda Godfrey has delivered a pretty cool book here. First of all, this is not an armchair book- Godfrey is an investigator in a time when real investigation of any kind is getting to be harder to find, and she writes well. "Monsters Among Us" would get the final star if I didn't feel that a more rigorous approach- or a more expansive view- would bring her into the first rank of writers on the paranormal. Considering the time and expense of doing the footwork and the discretion necessary to work in smaller communities, maybe it's quibbling to ask for more detail or more color in the personalities. Maybe it's just me.
I believe that those of us who view the paranormal as a political domain (apart from the more mysterious elements) need to put our differences aside and unite to support individual investigators. The bureaucracy can't release anything and wouldn't dare if it could. The media and the Internet are flooding us with trash. If we want real information, investigators in the mold of Raymond Fowler, Ted Bloecher, Jacques Vallee and the rest are what we need. Every so often we get sandbagged in this field. People like Linda Godfrey are needed to keep it real and keep real data coming. Colm Kelleher is another who comes to mind.
This stuff is fascinating when it's done right. "Monsters Among Us" is well done.

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Rien

Linda Godfrey does a great job in bringing together all of these stories and ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 18, 2017

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I've always been into the paranormal and I thought I knew most things, but Dogmen was a new area for me. Linda Godfrey does a great job in bringing together all of these stories and relating them to Bigfoot and other mysterious phenomena. From reading books on anything strange over the years it's obvious we are not the only intelligent life on this planet, but what this other 'life' is seems inexplicable given their behaviour. I highly recommend this book if you are both new and experienced in Fortean phenomena and if you're buying two books, get something by John Keel while you're at: you won't be disappointed.

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Eva

Reviewed in Spain on December 30, 2016

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Como siempre recomendable. Linda Godfrey realiza un estudio pormenorizado sobre las diferentes y misteriosas criaturas legendarias que a través de multitud de testimonios y pruebas salen a la luz, en un entretenido y autentico libro.

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TW

There are no answers, only questions

Reviewed in Australia on December 28, 2019

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Linda S. Godfrey provides a matter of fact look at personal accounts of paranormal encounters ranging from UFOs to dog men, bigfoot and portals.
I found it an interesting read and there is no push from the author to any foregone conclusion as to what the encounters actually are or could be. Probably one of the best unbiased appraisals of high strangeness I've come across, with the summaries at the end of each encounter as interesting as the stories themselves.
If you're looking for definitive answers on what paranatural beings are or aren't, this book isn't for you.
If you are curious what people have encountered, whether real or imagined, are skeptical or open minded, then I'd say to have a look through Godfrey's very well written assemblage of accounts.

kaz

Fascinating

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 4, 2019

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The author 's passionate about the subject matter and it's reflected in her research and her writing. The story about the werewolf creature behind the strip mall knocked my socks off.

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Terrific

Reviewed in Australia on November 22, 2016

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Great read. Eye-opening. My first book from this author and I couldn't be happier. Would recommend to everyone I know, and have.

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Monsters Among Us: An Exploration of Otherworldly Bigfoots, Wolfmen, Portals, Phantoms, and Odd Phenomena Kindle Edition

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