Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside. Brad SteigerЧитать онлайн книгу.
the perverse, demonic murderous doll from Child’s Play (1988).
7 Michael Myers, the masked murderer who is described in the film Halloween (1978) as the essence of pure evil.
8 Hannibal Lecter, the erudite, cannibalistic serial killer from The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
9 Jason, the unstoppable monster in the hockey mask from Friday the 13th (1980).
10 The multi-jawed, many-fanged extraterrestrial creature that terrorized the crew of a spaceship in Alien (1979).
Inspired by the Media Psychology Lab’s poll of movie monsters, I decided to survey a number of cryptozoologists, paranormalists, psychical researchers, Forteans, and ufologists and receive their nominations for the Top Ten List of Real-Life Monsters—and thus I planted the seed for this present book.
Tie for First Place: Bigfoot and Mothman
Large apelike creature in the United States and Canada are known in the oral traditions of native tribes by such names as Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Wauk-Wauk, Oh-Mah, or Saskehavis. These creatures have also been described in the journals of early settlers and in the columns of frontier newspapers, but wide public attention was not called to the mysterious beast until the late 1950s, when road-building crews in the Bluff Creek area north of Eureka, California, began to report a large number of sightings of North America’s own “abominable snowman.”
The humanlike creature—whether sighted in the more remote, wooded, or mountainous regions of North America, South America, Russia, China, Australia, or Africa—is believed by some anthropologists to be a bipedal mammal that constitutes a kind of missing link between humankind and the great apes, for its appearance is more primitive than that of Neanderthal. The descriptions given by witnesses around the world are amazingly similar: height between six and nine feet; weight anywhere from 400 to 1,000 pounds; black eyes. Dark fur or body hair from one to four inches in length is said to cover the creature’s entire body with the exception of the palms of its hands, the soles of its feet, and its upper facial area, nose, and eyelids.
In North America, the greatest number of sightings of Bigfoot have come from the Fraser River Valley, the Strait of Georgia, and Vancouver Island, British Columbia; the “Ape Canyon” region near Mt. St. Helens in southwestern Washington; the Three Sisters Wilderness west of Bend, Oregon; and the area around the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation, especially the Bluff Creek watershed northeast of Eureka, California. In recent years, extremely convincing sightings of Bigfoot-type creatures have also been made in areas of New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida.
Most scientists remain skeptical about Bigfoot’s existence, and the controversy rages on after 60 years.
The Mothman legend began in the 1960s. On November 15, 1966, two young married couples were driving through the marshy area near the Ohio River outside of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, when a winged monster, at least seven feet tall with glowing red eyes, loomed up in front of them near an abandoned TNT plant. Later, they told Deputy Sheriff Millard Halstead that the creature followed them toward Point Pleasant on Route 62 even when their speed approached one hundred miles per hour.
News of the mysterious encounter achieved local notoriety, and numerous other area residents added to the story with reports that they had also seen the giant birdlike creature near the same abandoned TNT plant. A few days later, Thomas Ury said that an enormous flying creature with a wingspan of 10 feet had chased his convertible into Point Pleasant at a speed of 70 miles per hour.
More witnesses came forward with accounts of their sightings, and the legend of Mothman was born. Although the majority of witnesses described the tall, red-eyed monster as appearing birdlike, the media dubbed the creature “Mothman” because, as writer John A. Keel noted, the Batman television series was very popular at the time.
Intrigued by the stories, Keel visited Point Pleasant on numerous occasions and learned about the bizarre occurrences associated with Mothman’s appearance, including the eerie forecast that the Silver Bridge in Point Pleasant would collapse and many people would be killed as a result.
Number Two: The Jersey Devil
Some witnesses have said that the Jersey Devil that haunts the Pine Barrens in southeastern New Jersey is a cross between a goat and a dog with cloven hoofs and the head of a collie. Others swear that it has a horse’s head with the body of a kangaroo. Most of the people who have sighted the creature also mention a long tail, and nearly all of the witnesses agree that the thing has wings.
People have been spotting the Jersey Devil in the rural area around southern New Jersey since 1735, which, according to local legend, is the year that it was born.
For well over 200 years, generations of terrified witnesses have claimed they have encountered the Jersey Devil. Although eye-witness accounts are reported every year, the most famous series of sightings occurred in January 1909, when hundreds of men and women claimed to have seen or heard the frightening creature. So many people refused to leave the safety of their homes that local mills were forced to shut down for lack of workers.
Number Three: Nessie-Type, Long-Necked Lake Monsters
Nessie, most often described as a long-necked monster resembling an aquatic dinosaur, has been seen in and near Loch Ness since St. Columba made the first recorded sighting in 565 C.E. Today, nearly two million tourists come to Scotland each year to see if they might obtain a glimpse and a photograph of the elusive beast.
Although Nessie is by far the most famous of all monsters inhabiting inland bodies of water, there are reports of equally large, equally strange aquatic creatures in lakes all over the world. In the United States and Canada, there are such familiar lake monsters as “Ogopogo” in the Okanogan Lake, British Columbia; “Champ” in Lake Champlain, New York; and “Memphre” in Lake Memphremagog, Vermont.
Number Four: Chupacabras
Named for its seeming penchant for attacking goats and sucking their blood, the chupacabras (“goat sucker”) both terrified and fascinated the public at large when it first burst upon the scene in Puerto Rico in the summer of 1995. From August 1995 to the present day, the monster has been credited with the deaths of thousands of animals, ranging from goats, rabbits, and birds to horses, cattle, and deer. While some argue that the creature is a new monster, others point out that such vampiric entities have always existed and been reported by farmers and villagers in Puerto Rico and Central and South America.
Number Five: Werewolves/Shapeshifters
Native American tribes tell of bear-people, wolf-people, fox-people, and so forth, and state that in the beginning of human history, people were like animals andanimals were more human-like. Stories of women who gave birth to were-creatures are common among the North American tribal myths.
Early cultures throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa formed totem clans and often worshipped minor deities that were half-human, half-animal. Norse legends tell about hairy, human-like beings that live in underworld caves and come out at night to feast on the flesh of unfortunate surface dwellers.
The prefix were in Old English means “man,” so coupled with wolf it designates a creature that can alter its appearance from human to beast and become a “man wolf.” In French, the werewolf is known as loup garou; in Spanish, hombre lobo; Italian, lupo manaro; Portuguese, lobizon or lobo home; Polish, wilkolak; Russian, olkolka or volkulaku; and in Greek, brukolakas.
In the Middle Ages, large bands of beggars and brigands roamed the European countryside at night, often dressing in wolf skins and howling like a pack of wolves on the hunt. In the rural areas of France, Germany, Lower Hungary, Estonia, and other countries, these nocturnal thieves were called, “werewolves.” The old Norwegian counterpart to werewolf is vargulf, literally translated