Synopsis: “Dom Joly sets off round the world, but this time he’s not looking to holiday in a danger zone—he’s monster hunting. Ever since he was given a copy of Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World for his ninth birthday, Dom has been obsessed with the world of cryptozoology—monster hunting—and in Scary Monsters and Super Creeps, he heads to six completely different destinations to investigate local monster sightings. He explores the Redwood Curtain in Northern California in search of Sasquatch; in Canada, he visits Lake Okanagan hoping to catch a glimpse of a 30-foot snake-like creature called Ogopogo and near Lake Tele in Congo, he risks his life tracking the vegetarian sauropod Mokele-mbembe. Naturally he heads to Loch Ness—but for this hunt, he has his family in tow; he treks across the Khumbu Valley in Nepal looking for Yeti and in the hills above Hiroshima in Japan, he enlists the help of a local man to find the Hibagon, a terribly smelly ‘caveman ape’. Are the monsters all the product of fevered minds, or is there a sliver of truth somewhere in the madness? Either way, the search gives Dom an excuse to dive into six fascinating destinations on a gloriously nutty adventure. In typically hilarious and irreverent fashion, Dom explores the cultures that gave rise to these monster myths and ends up in some pretty hairy situations with people even stranger than the monsters they are hunting.”

My Review

This was a interesting audiobook, and my final book for the 20 Books of Summer 2026 challenge!

I’ve had this in my audible library for such a long time,’d that they’ve re-issued it with a new cover. In fact at one point it had disappeared from my library altogether. When I spotted it the other day I thought I better listen to it before it disappeared again. Unfortunately I could only play it via the my web browser and not through the app on my devices!

It was an amusing listen at times, definitely more about the people he met along the way, than about any of the monsters he was looking for.

The memorable parts were when switching trains at the insistence a fellow Japanese traveller, feigning illness and running away from an irritating volunteer at a museum in Hiroshima, being the ‘wrong fellow’ in Delhi, when he was mistaken for another passenger at the airport, and riding a farting horse whilst trekking in Nepal. He also had a nightmare of a time in Congo, whilst trying to get to Lake Tele to find out more about the Ogopogo lived.

Unfortunately I did find him quite rude when describing people, he’s a comedian, but it wasn’t funny! Or when he was with locals who were racist towards the Native Americans. My copy was published in 2012 so I’m hoping that the more recent edition has dealt with these issues, as it made for very uncomfortable listening.

It was interesting though, as I’m not into any of these monster myths, so it was good to hear about his monster theories, and whether he thought any of them were true, especially at the end of his trip.

Book 20 0f 20 Books of Summer 2026