At about the same time that I was creating the characters for Thou Art Dead, it was decided that we would go ahead and start to mock-up the Encyclopedia of Monsters. It was planned to be used as a sort of promotional piece. Abbreviated versions of the book appeared for a short while on the Monster House web site, and saw print with the Art of Monster House book. After designing the cover, I began coming up with interior chapters. I thought it would be fun to include both real folk-monster stories and ficticious beasts. From that point, character designer Chris Appelhans and I started creating a slew of fake images and newspaper clippings to support the existence of our monsters.

Here's what we came up with:

-Domus Mactibilis was the name given to the Monster House by Skull in the film, and was our primary focus. We just explored the history of beast houses through illustrations and photographs.

-The Mushroom Man was something I made up for the book. I was really into the Japanese monster film Matango, and wanted to create something along those lines.

-The Reseda Scourge was an idea of Gil Kenan's. He wanted some kind of monster that lived in the LA river, and I came up with this giant half-naked rat.

-The Dover Demon is a real monster, a weird alien-like creature. I thought it would be fun to give it an ancient history by putting it in Tarot iconography.

-The Ghost of Edgar Pilchuck was another fabrication. I really wanted a good ghost story to be included in the Encyclopedia, and a hanging man terrorizing lone motorists felt like a great piece of believable folklore.

-The Dobhar-Chu is an Irish legend, along the lines of the Loch Ness Monster.

-The Nameless Thing was probably the creepiest, most Lovecraftian true story I came across in my research. People really did disappear at 50 Berkeley Way, and all of the descriptions of the monster included tentacles. Neat.