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Probably most children who take an interest in crypto­zoology will have been influenced by their reading of Arthur Conan Doyle’s great advent­ure The Lost World (replaced for modern kids, no doubt, by a viewing of Spielberg’s Jurassic Park!). I still vividly recall the scene where the Pterodactylus that Professor Chall­enger has brought from the Lost World is last seen at Start Point by the liner SS Friesland, which is “passed by something between a flying goat and a monstrous bat.”

In 1873, a similar story, actually reported as truth, appeared in many newspapers. The prehist­oric beast is called a “vampire”, assimilating the earlier legend of the bat-like bloodsucker with new palæontological discoveries.

The story, taken from the American newspaper Alta California concerns the adventures of the steamship Nevada in Micronesia:

“A VAMPIRE.