The CFZ Bookshop

The Centre for Fortean Zoology is a professional and scientific organisation dedicated to cryptozoology: The study of unknown animals and allied disciplines.

Russia – or to be exact, the Soviet Union – was the first country to probe the snowman riddle on a scientific basis. In 1958, in the post-Stalinist political thaw, the Soviet Academy of Sciences diverted itself for a time with the exotic and sensational subject of the Himalayan yeti.

In July 2006, The J.T.Downes memorial Gambia Expedition 2006 – a six-person team – Chris Moiser, Richard Freeman, Chris Clarke, Oll Lewis, Lisa Dowley and Suzi Marsh went to the Gambia, West Africa. They went in search of a dragon-like creature, known to the natives as `Ninki Nanka`, which has terrorized the tiny African state for generations, and has reportedly killed people as recently as the 1990s.

Jonathan Downes is the director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology, and he is undeniably one of the best known cryptozoologists in the English-speaking world. Jon has dedicated his life to searching the world for mystery animals and trying to make sense of the mysteries of Mother Nature. These preoccupations started over half a century ago, in a place which – for all intents and purposes – no longer exists and which contemporary readers may struggle to comprehend.

The Centre For Fortean Zoology Yearbook is a collection of papers and essays too long and detailed for publication in the CFZ Journal Animals & Men. With contributions from both well-known researchers, and relative newcomers to the field, the Yearbook provides a forum where new theories can be expounded, and work on little-known cryptids discussed.

The original Argosy magazine, featuring short fiction, poetry and more, was around for nearly one hundred years until, we were told, that the market for short stories had died. Beaten to death by half hour shows on television, perhaps? However, for many of us the short story was the lubrication which so gently eased us into developing a taste for – or even an addiction to – literature in all its forms. Apart from resurrecting a love of the genre, the aim of this new magazine is to provide a platform from which unknown or little known Westcountry authors can display their wares to the wider world.

Since 1994, Animals & Men has been the world’s premier cryptozoological periodical, covering all aspects of the study of unknown animals. As of 2015, new issues of Animals & Men can be purchased in two formats, as a printed paperback and as a Kindle ebook. 

Richard Muirhead is probably the best researcher that I know. He has, what I am sure Charlie Fort would have called, a ‘Wild Talent’ in that you can let him loose in any library or archive, and with the innate powers of a truffle-hound he will extract all sorts of pieces of arcane knowledge that one would never have suspected to be there.

Have you ever wondered what lurks out there in the deep, dark woods of the North? This book presents a choice selection of monstrous beings and fabulous creatures from Greenland, across the North Atlantic to Scandinavia, and the Baltic States.

Three years ago, I wrote a book called The Song of Panne, which told the story of how my dear, long suffering wife Corinna and I ended up having a hairy humanoid forest Godling (to steal Kipling’s nomenclature) living in the airing cupboard in what used to be my father’s dressing room. You can take it as fiction if you like, or you can believe every word I say.

A mixture of editorials, some book reviews, and a few feature articles, which have been taken almost at random from stuff that I wrote between 2013 – 2016 in a magazine called Gonzo Weekly, of which I am the founding editor.

In this, his latest anthology of humorous short stories, Jim Jackson introduces us to such well drawn characters as: Three Fingers Bone, Breadknife Baker, Greasy Gregson, Knocker Norton, Sponge Bakewell and a host of other crepuscular characters.