OLL LEWIS: 5 Questions on… Cryptozoology - Dr MIKE DASH

Our guest today is Dr Mike Dash. Mike earns his crust as a historian, author and editor and is the director of Deeper Media editing and publishing consultancy. He is best known to Forteans for his work with Fortean Times and his research into Spring-heeled Jack (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ter_XFaSWO4) as well as the search for Loch Ness’s Dr MacRae (http://www.youtube.com/user/cfztv#p/u/85/5IAKpNKhiRo). More information on Mike, his books and where to buy them (including his Spring-heeled Jack book, which will be published in 2010) can be found on his website: http://www.mikedash.com/.

So, Mike Dash, here are your 5 questions on… Cryptozoology:

1) How did you first become interested in cryptozoology?

Like many boys, I was completely obsessed with dinosaurs - I even built up a complete set of PG Tips dino cards. Then, aged 11, I stumbled across a copy of Tim Dinsdale's The Story of the Loch Ness Monster in a newsagent's shop in Bridgend. According to Dinsdale, the monster was a living dinosaur, so....

2) Have you ever personally seen a cryptid or secondary evidence of a cryptid, if so can you please describe your encounter?

The LNM is the only cryptid I have ever actively looked for (Loch Ness & Morar Project, 1983-87), and it was the negative evidence we turned up at Loch Ness (for instance anomalous sonar records progressively eliminated as we eliminated variables and introduced ever stricter controls) that set me on the path to my present scepticism. Well, that and the list of lakes with monster traditions in the Bords' Alien Animals.

Even when I was young and credulous it was hard to believe 260+ lakes could all be home to monsters, yet there was no obvious difference between the 'creatures' reported in the most and least likely locations. The results of Operation Deepscan in 1987 sealed it for me - you still read even now that the sweeps we did produced positive evidence, but the truth is that on the last day we sailed 25 boats all the way from Fort Augustus to Lochend and covered well over 60% of the loch's volume without recording a single trace.

3) Which cryptids do you think are the most likely to be scientifically discovered and described some day, and why?

I'm afraid very few of them. Perhaps the thylacine, which is only recently extinct - there have been quite convincing reports from Tasmania.

4) Which cryptids do you think are the least likely to exist?

I'm sorry to say that all the more exotic cryptids - Bigfoot, lake monsters, living dinosaurs and sea serpents – are highly unlikely to exist as physically real animals. Not that the numerous reports of them can't tell us a great deal. One can learn a lot about witness perception and psychology from them.

5) If you had to pick your favourite cryptozoological book (not including books you may have written yourself) what would you choose?

I have always loved Rupert Gould's The Case for the Sea Serpent, as much for its style as for its content. My favourite as a kid was Montgomery-Campbell and Solomon's The Search For Morag - even then I was drawn to the dustier recesses of the subject. And - though I don't now agree with a word of it – Holiday's The Dragon and the Disc was always a scary, thrilling read.