There are creatures lurking in our world. Obscure creatures long relegated to myth and legend. They have been sighted by a lucky-or unlucky-few, some have even been photographed, but their existence remains unproven and unrecognized by the scientific community. These creatures, long thought gone, have somehow survived; creatures from our nightmares haunting the dark places. They swim in our lakes and bays, they soar the night skies, they hunt in the woods. Some are from our past, and some from other worlds, and others have always been with us-watching us, fearing us, hunting us. These are the cryptids, and Systema Paradoxa tells their tales. *** Cryptid investigators, Ben Keep and Annetta Maikels, left "normal" behind a long time ago. They've peeked behind the curtains of existence, glimpsed beneath the warp and weft of accepted reality. They don't fully understand all they've seen, but they've learned to keep an open mind-and that there's no point in hiding when strange beings tap you on the shoulder and ask for help. But what happens when something fundamental and essential goes wrong behind the veil? Following a string of reports of inexplicable, yet eerily similar, experiences around Long Island, Ben and Annetta find themselves exploring a frightening mystery. Something vital has broken... Can they figure out how to fix it before reality unravels?