10 Terrifying Monsters That (We Hope!) Don't Exist

The reasons we lock our doors at night...

By Chris Quicksilver /

Nature is replete with wonder and terror in equal measure. Our planet is a veritable Eden of biodiversity, with huge tracts of its surface only now being explored for the first time... As more and more of these last, heretofore undiscovered, havens are unearthed, charted and catalogued, before being relentlessly laid bare at the feet of Human curiosity, we have to imagine what wonders might still be unearthed. ...Equally, however, we should also worry about the terrors. The creatures that appear on this list, though fantastical and extremely unlikely to actually exist by all accounts, are all considered by significant numbers of people to be living, breathing animals. If these poor, fright-stricken souls are so certain that the monsters listed here actually do exist, how can you be so sure that they don€™t? ...And how genuinely terrifying would it be if they were really out there? Most of the accounts of these creatures are easily debunked or explained away. Every so often, though, there comes a tale that feels different. Somehow, those rare stories come across as more vivid, visceral and chillingly believable. Can we continue to ignore every single eyewitness? Even if they are held captive within the confines of Human imagination, these fantastic (and often vicious) beasts seem to possess the sinister potential to somehow break free of their conceptual constraints and burst out into the jungles, forests and unwary Human settlements of the real world. Allow us to present 10 terrifying creatures that (we hope!) don€™t actually exist...