RICHARD HOLLAND'S SHAMELESS PLUG: Top tips for monster hunters

Once again we hand you over to guest blogger Richard Holland, editor of Paranormal Magazine, and all round good bloke. He is a regular visitor tho these pages, and I am sure that you will all agree with me that this is jolly good news for all of us.

This is a new service provided by the CFZ bloggo both to publications and to you, the reading public. We invite the editors of any magazine that is on topic to the admittedly broad remit of this bloggo, to send us a shameless plug for the contents of any issue of your mag that fits on these pages...

The latest edition of Paranormal Magazine (July / issue 37) has a strong cryptozoological flavour thanks to contributions by the CFZ’s zoological director Richard Freeman and crypto-star Dr Karl Shuker.

Richard has provided a highly readable guide to organizing a cryptozoological expedition, offering handy insider’s tips on such matters as equipment, clothing, travel arrangements, inoculations and choosing a guide. He also gives hints as to selecting the ‘best’ monsters to hunt.

Richard has led expeditions to all parts of the world and in a variety of challenging environments, including dense jungle, scorching deserts and treacherous icy mountains. I can think of no one better to write such a guide – let alone such an entertaining one.

Paranormal Magazine is the ideal platform to reach readers who may only have a vague interest in matters cryptozoological, so hopefully Richard’s article will galvanise that interest in more than a few and encourage them to approach the CFZ.

In addition, Karl has come up trumps again with a fascinating piece about the creatures of the Australian Dreamtime. Are they merely figments of Aboriginal imagination, he asks, or are the remote, trackless rainforests really home to a variety of undiscovered hairy hominids and other weirdies? Is the monstrous, vampiric Yara-ma-yha-who really just a race memory of the bizarre but harmless tarsier? And why is the Black Dog as prevalent in ancient aboriginal lore as it is in European?

It’s all good stuff and comes complete with the rudest picture we’ve ever published in Paranormal, which is a plus, I feel.

In addition, Paranormal 37 boasts articles on haunted theatres, screaming skulls, horrible coincidences and the history of alien abduction. And there is an in-depth feature on the new ‘daemon’ theory of life-after-death which is getting a lot of attention just now; together with an exclusive interview with the developer of the theory, Anthony Peake.

All that and possibly the worst pun even I have yet come up with (‘Fear and Lothian’) – but give me time! I hope you enjoy it.

Richard Holland, Editor of Paranormal Magazine (www.paranormalmagazine.co.uk) and Uncanny UK (www.uncannyuk.com).