We wholeheartedly agree with John Rimmer, who in a review in Magonia entitled “A Rather Fishy Business,” calls Merbeings: The True Story of Mermaids, Mermen, and Lizardfolk by Mark A. Hall, Loren Coleman, and David Goudsward, “a very strange book.” Justin Mullis, in AIPT Comics, explains why: “Undoubtedly among the boldest of cryptozoology’s speculative creature creators was the late Mark A. Hall (1946-2016), whose talent for cryptid conjecture is on full display in his posthumously published Merbeings…[The book] represents the culmination of Hall’s lifelong interest in the possibility of amphibious primates…Hall offers readers the cryptozoologist’s equivalent of Pascal’s Wager: believe in monsters and lose nothing if they turn out to not exist, OR doubt their existence and end up looking foolish when physical evidence for them eventually turns up…Observations such as these—supported by copious endnotes and a healthy bibliography of primary and secondary scholarly sources—makes Merbeings a worthwhile addition to any folklorist’s library, irrespective of if you agree with Hall’s wilder contentions about a supposed biological reality behind the mermaid myth.. but as an exercise in speculative creature-building, I’d propose that the mermaid—more than the Sasquatch, Nessie, or even Mothman—embodies the ultimate litmus test for cryptozoologists.”

A work that cyptozoologist and fortean Mark A. Hall started 18 years ago is now complete, thanks to the help of Loren Coleman, director of the International Cryptozoology Museum, and historian and author David Goudsward. That book, Merbeings: The True Story of Mermaids, Mermen, and Lizardfolk, is now available from Anomalist Books. We know what you’re thinking, but it’s not what you think. Put aside your notions of beings half-human and half-fish, for there are no such things. Also put aside your fears of things wet and strange, said to be reptilian in nature, which emerge from swamps and rivers and oceans to walk among us. But there are mysteries with an ancient ancestry here and what they are will surprise you.