Hollowfield Institute
Cryptid Field Guide & Camera
Only for iPhone
Free · In‑App Purchases
iPhone
Not a quiz and not a filter. Real folklore, sources named, hoaxes and all. From 1 October the archive opens a case file every week, each adding a creature to photograph.
Put a cryptid in your photograph.
Take a picture anywhere. A trailhead, a car park, your back garden. The Hollowfield Institute will develop it with something standing in the background
that was not there when you pressed the shutter. You stay exactly as you are. The Institute only adds what was already out there.
HOW A SIGHTING IS MADE
Choose the creature, then choose how it appears.
Three tones.
FUNNY, for a Jackalope photobombing with its tongue out.
CRYPTIC,for something half lost in the treeline, grainy and deniable.
TERRIFYING, for a Wendigo closing in behind you with its hand stopping just short.
Four framings.
LURKING at the edge of the scene.
POSED, plainly, as though it knew.
DISTANT, small and hard to argue about.
LOOMING, close and above you.
Twelve combinations for every creature, and the same photograph gives a different picture each time.
THE FIELD GUIDE
Catalogued entries of genuine folklore. Mothman at PointPleasant. The Jersey Devil in the Pine Barrens. The Fouke Monster, the Flatwoods
Monster, the Beast of Bray Road, the Michigan Dogman, the Snallygaster, Champ, the Skunk Ape, Sasquatch.
Each entry cites where the story actually comes from, including the several that turn out to be documented hoaxes. The Hodag was invented outright in 1893. The man who broke the Bear Lake Monster story later admitted he made it up. The guide says so, because a field guide that cannot admit a hoax is not a field guide.
THE ARCHIVE
Six hundred filed reports dating back to 1947, released a few a day as the Institute digitises them. Most are unresolved. A fair number were eventually put
down to a bear. Each one carries a date, a place and a disposition, and they are plotted on a map you can walk into.
FIELD CONDITIONS
A daily bulletin for your county, worked out from moon phase, hour and season, and it tells you which creatures are catalogued nearest you. Nothing scientific. It is a folk model and it says so.
ACCOUNTS
Not every photograph needs something added to it. File one exactly as you took it, with nothing composited in, and it enters the record as an account rather than a sighting. The Institute began with a schoolteacher collecting other people's accounts in an exercise book, so this is the older half of the work.
THE REVIEW DESK
Enter a filing and other members can back it. The most backed filing for each entry becomes that entry's plate for the week. Optional, and the app is complete without ever signing in.
THE RECORD BOOK
A seal for every entry you document. Forty to collect, and no shortcuts.
ABOUT THE INSTITUTE
Eleven people met above a hardware store in Washington State in the winter of 1953. Most of them had seen something they could not explain, and every one of them had been told to stop talking about it. So they built somewhere to write it down.
Photographs stay on your device unless you choose to share them. People in your photographs are never altered. A creature is added to the scene around them and nothing else changes.
The app includes three exposures, which is enough to try three creatures or one creature three ways. Further film is available as an in app purchase and never expires. A failed exposure is always refunded.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
1.0.2 app changes, review prompt, the wallet no longer inventing a balance, comment and fixture cleanup
The developer, Guillermo Gonzalez Jimenez, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Guillermo Gonzalez Jimenez
- Size
- 5.7 MB
- Category
- Entertainment
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 26.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 26.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
13+
- 13+
- This app is rated 13+ with content restrictions.
Some content may be rated higher, and may therefore be restricted and managed by the developer through in-app controls. - In-App Controls
Age Assurance
Frequent
Horror/Fear Themes
Contains
User-Generated Content
Social Media
Social Media (Age Restricted)
- In-App Purchases
Yes
- 45 exposures $14.99
- 20 exposures $6.99
- 8 exposures $2.99
- Copyright
- © Hollowfield Collective LLC