With the Bigfoot world consumed by debate over a documentary supposedly proving the Patterson-Gimlin film to be a hoax, we at the Explorer's Club retire to a gentler place: a look back at one of my favourite Bigfoot books, and the one that makes your host keep the door of belief open just a crack: it's the natural history book that just happens to feature the big guy: Where Bigfoot Walks.

Get ready to bro out with Peter Byrne and sigh at Ray Wallace in this back-to-the-90s classic.

*Oh, and there is a film version of this book from 2020, but as far as I can tell, Bigfoot is completely excised from it!

In this episode, we cover several of H.G. Wells' stories which contain mysterious animals, or other links to the world of cryptozoology.

These stories include underwater civilisations of fish-people, murderous octopus species of octopus, extinct elephant birds, and highly-evolved ants!

Wells' fertile brain and immense talents often used science fiction ideas to comment on social issues, but he was equally capable of creating convincing fictional wonders purely as an exercise in imagination - grounded by his training in zoology.

The stories covered are:

-In The Abyss (1896)

-The Sea Raiders (1896)

-Aepyornis Island (1894)

-The Empire Of The Ants (1905)

Dennis Wheatley is better known for his occult novels. But he wrote several 'lost race' novels as well. 'The Man Who Missed The War' from 1946 is by far the daftest of them all, though of course it has that Wheatley charm. Take a seat at the Explorer's Club for a tale of Atlanteans and leprechauns (with extra giant crabs).

'There are jungles of the upper air, and there are worse things than tigers which inhabit them ...'

Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a few stories, other than The Lost World , which might be considered important to the history of Cryptozoology. In this episode, we examine 'The Terror of Blue John Gap' and 'The Horror Of The Heights.'

The lost 'Spider-Pit Sequence' from the original 1933 King Kong has long been the subject of much lore and myth-making. Was it truly a scene so disturbing it had to be cut? Were audiences terrified by the sight of stop-motion spiders, crabs and octopus-armed critters devouring the crew of the Venture?

Was this scene even filmed around all?

You're invited to the Explorer's Club as Cian seeks out varying versions of the tale from his many books on King Kong.

ERRATA: I mistakenly state that the Arsinotherium was an Ice Age mammal - it is, of course, much much older - 30 to 60 million years, in fact. Apologies to my better-informed listeners.

For your first trip to the Explorer's Club, crack open a copy of James Hilton's 1933 classic 'Lost Horizon.' Journey to Shangri-La, where sensitive types from many countries wait out the turbulent 1930s, recovering from the last War and hiding out from the inevitable Next War. And just what does 'Glory' Conway and his visitors think of the place? And just what do they think of the colonial powers? Surprises abound in this somewhat ambiguous example of Lost World / Lost Race fiction.