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Late one night many years ago, my sister was driving home through the leafy roads of South East England when a strange animal bounded into the headlights of her car and swiftly disappeared into a hedgerow. She was certain, she said, that it had been a wallaby—despite the fact that the kangaroo relative was native to Australia and Papua New Guinea and decidedly not native to Oxfordshire. Our reaction was about what you’d expect from a British family: politely skeptical. It had been dark, the encounter fleeting, and the human brain is decidedly fallible. Surely, then, she must have been mistaken.
My sister would eventually be vindicated when the existence of wild wallabies in the UK was confirmed and even captured on film. Yet, her experience isn’t too different from those who claim to have encountered cryptids, creatures whose existence remains a matter of debate. Yeti, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster are only the beginning; a small but committed community of cryptid hunters is dedicated to proving the existence of doubted beasts like the Mongolian Death Worm, the Honey Island Swamp Monster, and the Skunk Ape.
This is not a quest without victories. In the early 20th century, tales of a fearsome giant lizard living on an inhospitable island in Indonesia were dismissed as folklore until Jacques Karel Henri van Steyn van Hensbroek, an impressively named Dutch lieutenant stationed on nearby Flores Island, investigated and returned with a photograph of the now-famous Komodo Dragon. Other animals to make the switch from supposed myth to firm reality include the duck-billed platypus, the giant squid, and the okapi (or forest giraffe).
Nevertheless, although attitudes may be slowly changing, cryptozoology—to give the field its proper name—is still considered a pseudoscience. So why do cryptid hunters continue to put their reputations on the line, and what other legendary beasts might we discover to be not so legendary after all? In an age when species extinction has reached alarming proportions, perhaps this quest to discover new life carries extra poignancy. The articles collected below offer tantalizing insight into both questions.
Desperately Seeking Mothman (Tara Isabella Burton, The Hedgehog Review, May 2020)
There’s so much to enjoy in this wonderful piece by Tara Isabella Burton, which provides both a fascinating overview of the history of cryptozoology and an insightful exploration of the psychology that drives it. Burton writes with compelling flair, drawing links between our enduring desire to uncover the undiscoverable and the perceived decrease in mystery and magic that has accompanied the modern age. She argues convincingly that interest in cryptids ties into our innate, if often subjugated, wish to believe in something “other,” something beyond the confines of a rational, predictable world.
Burton also explores cryptozoology as reflected in what she describes as its “parallel and opposite”—the rise throughout the Renaissance of the Wunderkammern, a room kept in any learned gentleman’s house dedicated to the documentation and categorization of scientific specimens. I would go even further and argue that modern cryptozoology occupies a unique place between the realms of science and the magical. Ultimately, it’s a pursuit that hinges more on faith than logic. Yet, it also seeks to move a subject from imagination into reality. Would we be happier if Bigfoot were proven to exist? Or would it fade into the everyday, the commonplace, the explainable, to finally become something less than it ever was? Such are the questions that this excellent article engenders.
Like its Enlightenment-era forebears, contemporary cryptozoology is rooted in that same hunger for strangeness, and for an enchanted world. It’s telling that the contemporary iteration of the phenomenon saw its first major resurgence during the wider postwar optimism of 1950s—when Belgian zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans, often lauded as one of the forefathers of the field, published On the Track of Unknown Animals in 1955. (Heuvelmans also coined the terms cryptozoology and cryptid.) Featuring entries dedicated to the abominable snowman and Nandi bears alongside examinations of platypuses and gorillas, Heuvelmans’s book celebrates the potential of a world teeming with creatures the scientific record has not yet ossified into fact.
“The world is by no means thoroughly explored,” Heuvelmans writes in his introduction. “It is true that we know almost all its geography, there are no more large islands or continents to be discovered. But because a country is on the map it does not mean that we know all about its inhabitants. There are still more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Horatio’s philosophy.”1 Neither technological progress nor scientific expansion can expunge the delightful possibility that the abominable snowman (or Bigfoot, or the Mothman) might well be out there.
When Edmund Hillary Went in Search of the Yeti (Tom Ward, Atlas Obscura, February 2022)
This gripping tale takes us back to Nepal in 1960, and Tom Ward’s evocative prose does a splendid job of outlining the atmosphere that gripped a world still coming to terms with the repercussions of two devastating global wars. As Ward points out, one inadvertent result of the conflicts was that the public was used to hearing news from lands once considered intimidatingly remote, setting the stage for this first-class adventure story, which captured the imagination of people the world over. All such stories need a hero, a larger-than-life figure of courage and daring, and New Zealand mountaineer and philanthropist Sir Edmund Hillary fit the bill perfectly.
Seven years earlier, Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay had become the first climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest, a feat for which Hillary was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. (Coincidentally, news of the climber’s achievement reached England on the day of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation.) Prior to that, Hillary had served in the Royal New Zealand Air Force during World War II as a navigator on Catalina amphibious aircraft.
But in 1960, the mountaineer found himself on quite a different mission. Rumors of the existence of the Yeti (a.k.a. the Abominable Snowman) date back centuries, if not millennia, and Hillary was well aware of the Sherpas’ belief that such a creature truly existed. Nowadays, the Yeti has become a B-movie staple, slipping into the “enjoyable nonsense” category alongside the Loch Ness Monster. Not so in 1960; Hillary’s was a well-funded and highly skilled expedition that marked the passing of a more credulous and mysterious time.
When the race to conquer Everest heated up in the 1950s, so too did the number of alleged yeti sightings. Western audiences were hooked, eager for news of this evolutionary hangover halfway between man and beast. Perhaps it was comforting to think that there were beings beyond comprehension surviving at the ends of the wilderness and that, crucially, there were still enough wild places left to hold them.
He Asked the FBI to Analyze ‘Bigfoot’ Hair 40 Years Ago and Never Heard Back. Until Now. (Reis Thebault, The Washington Post, June 2019)
For all its reputation as a pseudoscience, cryptozoology relies on scientific methods to verify evidence, whether that be expert analysis of images and footprints or, as is the case in this story, DNA testing. This decades-spanning piece draws together two fascinating threads: the tantalizing possibility of uncovering undeniable proof, certified by the very gatekeepers who look down upon this field, and the stories of those who go to extraordinary lengths attempting to secure such a thing.
Bigfoot also figures prominently in “The Truth Is Out There,” a recent issue of our sister publication, The Atavist.
Our protagonist here is cryptid hunter Peter Byrne, a man whose tireless questing since the 1970s has earned him a special place in the Bigfoot research community. While Byrne first encountered the legendary creature via bedtime stories as a child, his awareness blossomed into passion while stationed in India at the end of WWII; that’s when he met Nepalese people for whom the existence of Bigfoot was a given. Over his lifetime, Byrne has undertaken five expeditions into the Himalayas, spending a total of 38 months in the mountains.
It would be churlish not to admire such dedication, but cryptid hunting is a high-stakes game: struggling for funding while working in a maligned field, all in hopes of one day vindicating your obsession and elevating your name to the history books. Back in 1977, Byrne rolled the dice, sending a sample of suspected Bigfoot hair to the FBI and urging them to test it. After four decades, the FBI wrote back. If you don’t want to know what happens yet, you’re made of sterner stuff than I.
When Byrne arrived, he noticed the trees stood close together — far too narrow a space for something with broad shoulders and big feet to make a clean egress. And there, between three and five feet off the ground, snagged in the bark, he spotted the tuft of hair and piece of skin he hoped would bring him one step closer to his idée fixe, the sasquatch itself, a towering hominid of North American lore.
Chasing the Chupacabras (Asher Elbein, Texas Observer, October 2016)
Like many mass social phenomena, widespread panic comes in waves and can often affect communities and individuals in surprising ways. A single sighting of something strange or disturbing often snowballs into many more, with the story growing and mutating via a feedback loop, one fed by sensational media reports and eyewitnesses who are primed and nervous. Such situations are common and stretch back into recorded history. In early Victorian London, a mysterious creature who came to be known as Spring-Heeled Jack terrorized the night-time streets. In medieval Alsace, a bizarre “dancing sickness” spread throughout the city. In possibly the most famous example, a strange being dubbed Mothman haunted 1960s Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Among followers of paranormal news, there’s even a name for such events: flaps.
At their heart, such events are more about human psychology than hard science, and are no less fascinating for it. For proof, let us turn to the mid-1990s flap around the Chupacabra, a doglike creature whose penchant for slaying cattle gave it a name rooted in the Spanish words chupar (suck) and cabra (goat). Stories of the Chupacabra persist, providing a fascinating example of how modern legends circulate and grow. Countless attempts have been made to document proof of this disturbing beast, and with many more surely to come. Asher Elbein’s excellent feature does a fine job of telling the tale.
But the chupacabra wasn’t always a resident of the Lone Star State, and it didn’t always look like a dog. In the 21 years since the first supposed sightings of the creature, it has been a spine-backed alien, a winged kangaroo or a goblin, a predatory monkey or an unusually ambitious mongoose. Only one facet of the tale has remained constant: The chupacabra is out there in dark thickets and empty deserts, and it wants your livestock.
The Devil Went Down To Jersey (Frank Lewis, Philadelphia City Paper, October 1997)
Journalist Frank Lewis has a rich tapestry of material to draw from in this piece about one of our most enduring cryptids. The Jersey Devil (sometimes known as the Leeds Devil) likely originates in the legends of the Lenape, an indigenous people whose historical territory ranges across the northeastern United States. The Lenape called “it” M’Sing—a mysterious deer-like creature with leathery wings. The beast owes its modern twist to pre-Revolutionary America, and a popular folktale concerning a woman named Jane Leeds (often referred to as Mother Leeds) who, after discovering she was pregnant for the 13th time, cursed the child, which transformed into a strange, twisted and winged creature following its birth. By the early 19th century, the legend was ubiquitous throughout New Jersey. In 1859, the Atlantic Monthly published a detailed and evocative account, and waves of sightings continue to this day. (As do pop-culture portrayals: like many of the other creatures on this list, the Jersey Devil became the focus of a popular X-Files episode.)
What fascinates here is that such tales persist, transmitted from generation to generation, despite the rise of scientific skepticism. Perhaps in part that’s due to our need for community, and therefore communal stories and myths, which have traditionally brought people together and fostered a sense of collective belonging. But can that explain why New Jersey residents continue to have close encounters with the Devil? Whatever you might believe, this splendid article is full of sumptuous detail and quotes drawn from across the long life of Jersey’s own cryptid, and will surely have you chasing down further articles in search of answers.
The nearly 6-foot-tall beast stood no more than 3 feet away from her front bumper; she couldn’t see its feet, that’s how close they were. Its fine coat was all one color, a light brown or beige, like a camel, but it had the forward-leaning shape, short front legs and long, thick tail of a kangaroo. Short, rounded horns sprouted from its head, small wings from its back. To this day, she can’t fully describe the face; the expression was almost human.
“It looked right at me,” she says. “He just looked like a sad little thing. I felt sorry for it, whatever it was.”
Chris Wheatley is a writer and journalist based in Oxford, UK. He has too many guitars, too many records, and not enough cats.
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