OF COURSE MONSTERS DON'T EXIST...RIGHT?

 

I know Halloween is over, but I wanted to share something I find fascinating. 

In my journey to become a full-time author, I’ve indulged in finding my place on social media. After all, no one wants to listen to a sale (BUY MY BOOK!) all the time. Even I get bored if that was the only crap I talked about.

“Post whatever interest you” is the standard advice. Heck, a lot of things interest me. Classic rock, a glass of savory red wine, a variety of TV/movies, and, of course, finding my next favorite author. While I might occasionally post things about those subjects, I wanted to do something a little different with my posts. Something that’s a little odd for a romance writer to tackle.

My latest hobby is posting tidbits about little-known monsters. Oh, everyone knows who Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Werewolf are. But what about the folks we hardly ever hear of? And not just those legends prevalent in Western culture. I try my best to include legends from around the world. So, every Thursday, I highlight “Folklore Thursday” (believe it or not, there’s actually a hashtag for that) on my social media. Much to my surprise, my monster posts are the ones I get more responses from than any others.

To celebrate, I want to share some of the monsters I’ve talked about this summer. I’d love to hear any suggestions on monsters I could use in the future!

THE HATMAN

By far, I got the most responses I’ve gotten has been about THE HAT MAN. According to legend, The Hat Man is not an unknown phenomenon. For about as long as written words have existed, “people have described a frightening nighttime vision that paralyzes them with fear and seems to suck the breath right out of them.” On the Sinister blog, in June 2020, they had a challenge for folks to draw The Hat Man. In their article, they stated that verifying the reality of The Hat Man was hard to do since there wasn’t any hunting gear that could produce viable evidence.

The history of The Hat Man has several religious and legendary beliefs about shades, shadowy spiritual beings or supernatural entities. Some ufologists believe The Hat Man can be an alien species observing people. Some folks describe the entity watching either from a doorway, closet, or corner of a room. Others claim The Hat Man hovers above their bed in the middle of the night. Still others say they’ve seen him during the day, which disputes the claim that the vision of The Hat Man is nothing but a sleep paralysis.

Your thoughts? Have you had a visit from The Hat Man?

MICHIGAN DOGMAN

According to Wikipedia, witnesses sighted the Michigan Dogman in 1887 in Wexford County. They described the creature as a seven-foot tall, blue-eyed, or Amber eyed bipedal canine-like animal with the torso of a man the fearsome howl that somehow sounded like a human screaming.

It wasn’t until the late twentieth century when the creature became well known. There have been several sightings reported in several locations throughout the Northwestern quadrant of the Lower Peninsula in Michigan. Near where I live.

So far, I’ve seen nothing like that. Not that I want to…

LA CEGUA

This is a Nicaragua shapeshifter folklore. According to Nicaragua Community, there was once a beautiful woman of mixed Indian and Spanish blood also called La Segua. She waits by the roadside for unsuspecting men riding along on their horses after they had a long night of heavy drinking in town. Attracted to the beauty, they would offer her a ride on their horse. But as they turnaround, instead of beholding a beautiful woman, they came face-to-face with a horrendous monster with a skull of a horse and fiery red eyes.

She is also believed to have superhuman abilities and can walk through solid objects and gravitate above the ground. She can also fly at extreme speeds to lure men into her trap.

MOTHMAN

This one you may have heard about since the movie came out starring Richard Gere in 2002. This legend is about a large, winged creature called The Mothman near point Pleasant, West Virginia, during 1966 and 1967. The creature was first cited by two couples who told the police they saw a large gray creature whose eyes “glowed red” when the car’s headlights picked it up. They describe it as “a large flying man with ten-foot wings”, following their car while they drove an area outside of town. For the next couple of days, other people reported similar sightings. Two volunteer firefighters who saw it claim it was “a large bird with red eyes”. According to John Keel’s 1975 book, he claims that there were supernatural events that related to the sightings, such as a connection to the collapse of the Silver Bridge that killed forty-six people.

JOROGUMO

This creature, ghost, or goblin is of Japanese folklore. Japanese villagers stated a Jorogumo (or spider-woman) is mistress of a nearby waterfall. A local legend tells of a visiting woodcutter who fell in love with a woman he met at the waterfall. He visited her every day, but grew physically weaker each time. A priest from a nearby temple suspected the woodcutter had been taken in by the Jorogumo, mistress of the waterfall, and went with him. When they arrived where the woodcutter normally met the woman, a spider thread reached out to encircle the man’s leg. The priest let out a thunders yell, and the thread disappeared. The woodcutter argued with the priest that he wanted to be with the beautiful woman, but the priest denied him. As the argument grew, the woodcutter became entangled by a series of spider threads and was quickly yanked into the water and never seen again.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

As humans, we have a tendency to reflect on our basic universal human fears: big things, things that are hard to hurt, things that want to eat us… you get the picture. Throughout our history we have lots of stories about giants, shape shifters, serpents/dragons, and generally stories about people who suffered curses because of their bad behavior. These legends are a way for us to explain the unexplainable and in a tantalizing story we aren’t likely to forget. It’s also a way for us to play with our darker emotions from the safety of our home and find out how we might respond to those emotions.

That’s not to say that I’m discounting any of our legends or folklores as non-truths. I’d like to think I’m smart enough to admit I don’t know what I don’t know. There are as many explanations for the monsters in the world as there are people who came up with the stories.

After all, I firmly believe the scariest monster in the universe is well known.

It’s us.