Cataloging cryptosleuths

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, monsters, investigations

We love our monsters (most of us). Whatever the nearby mystery, it has a large following, and a few more charismatic legends have a worldwide following, such as Nessie and UFO's. Writer Tea Krulos set out to learn about the whole range of monsters/demons/ghosts/UFO's and the people who hunt them. Doing so, he followed along with a group known as PIM (Paranormal Investogators of Milwaukee) on a number of such hunts, and as he relates in the last chapter, got a little more than he'd bargained for in one instance. He also tagged along with or interviewed members of other groups and researched the field among both scientist, skeptics and believers. The result is his book Monster Hunters: On the Trail with Ghost Hunters, Bigfooters, Ufologists, and Other Paranormal Investigators.

Other than "the boogieman", the only popular monsters I recall from childhood are the Loch Ness Monster ("Nessie") and the Abominable Snowman (Yeti). I find that each represents a category. I don't know if the book's span is all-inclusive, but it seems so:

• Cryptozoology, or the study of "cryptids", elusive creatures that include
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, the Skunk Ape and other man-apes.
• Two kinds of Chupacabra (sometimes written Chupacabras, following a Spanish idiom), whose name means "goat sucker". One variety is thought to be responsible for animals found drained of blood. The other looks like an extremely mange-afflicted dog.
• Lake monsters such as Nessie, "Champ" in Lake Champlain, and other large snake- or dinosaur-like swimming animals.
• Werewolves, but seldom of the shape-changing kind (no Vampires are mentioned, though, and Vampire Bats are all too real, if rather small).
• Demonology, including ghost hunting and activities of professional exorcists.
• Chimeras, such as MothMan. Nobody seems to hunt Griffins or the Basilisk these days.
• UFO's, and not all ufologists are convinced they are ET's.

The middle point above is a tricky one. The Roman Catholic Church employs an official Exorcist in each of the 50 U.S. states, and others stationed in provinces around the world. They take demon possession very seriously. Krulos interviewed one of them for his chapter on demon possession, and was given a reasoned account; also a scathing commentary on the flashy exorcist he describes in detail, a certain "reverend", whose activities I disdain at least as much as the Catholic exorcist does. A certain Bible verse about "making merchandise of the word of God" comes to mind.

A point to ponder: If the demons of the Bible actually exist, they are quite capable of impersonating the "ghosts" of the dear departed, which is the view the Bible takes. Their abilities and activities would explain all manner of occult manifestations, although the great majority of "spiritualist" activities are easily shown to be the work of charlatans. Some well respected theologians consider that demons are also behind the UFO activities that are not hoaxes or misunderstandings of natural phenomena.

Cryptozoology in particular dwells on the line between fact and fantasy. From time to time a new, largish species is discovered that nobody knew was there. A famous one is the Coelacanth, a rare fish that was thought to be extinct until some were caught near Indonesia in 1938. I remember as a boy the reports of the first Okapi, a kind of smallish zebra/giraffe. Finding a new mammals is rare. Though new species of many kinds are found every year, they are nearly all small or even tiny, and reclusive. Pretty much everything that isn't reclusive has already been discovered and described in journals. But some cryptozoologists do try to take a very scientific approach, and may study science so as to do it better. Maybe someday a living Yeti will show up in some indisputable way.

Tea Krulos became a kind of meta-hunter, hunting the hunters and bringing us glimpses of their lives. Not many are mild-mannered sorts, though a very few seem to be. It generally takes an outsize personality to go from being "interested" in various monsters or ghosts, or even fascinated with them, to being an active hunter, in an organization like PIM or on one's own. But considering the reputed powers of their prey, it seems safest to hunt in groups.

A pet to one, a monster to another

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, psychology, psychopaths, folklore, monsters

I don't know how a book that claims to be a comprehensive treatment of monsters (of all kinds) can go 300 pages and not even mention Mao TseDong or Josef Stalin. At least Adolf Hitler gets a cameo appearance, but he is 1/8 the murderer Mao was, and "only" half so bad as Stalin.

Entering "monster" into the Princeton WordNet search page, we find:

• an imaginary creature usually having various human and animal parts
• giant: someone or something that is abnormally large and powerful
• freak: a person or animal that is markedly unusual or deformed
• a cruel wicked and inhuman person
• (medicine) a grossly malformed and usually nonviable fetus

In On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears, Stephen T. Asma discusses all these kinds of monsters and more. He categorizes them into four larger areas:

• Ancient monsters (mostly chimeras and wild take-offs of human types such as headless men with faces in their chest)
• Medieval Monsters, seen as divine messages
• Scientific Monsters, including deformed fetuses and more-recently-produced chimeric creatures
• Inner Monsters, such as mass murderers, serial killers, and the monstrous impulses that can be found in any of us.

To me it all boils down to this: we most fear what we can neither predict nor control. Lesser fears are reserved for controllable but unpredictable things, but we reserve some of our greatest dread for that which we can predict but not control, as witness all the people who shout (or whisper) "Don't go in there!" at key moments of a horror film.

I don't really have much more to say about the book. Though well enough written, it is a bit more scholarly than I'd have expected for a popular treatment. It took longer to read as a result. I already know that the real monster is in me, and under which circumstances I'd conclude "there is a fellow I'd cheerfully bump off." Those who really need such insight, however, never seem to find it.

Dante would roll over

kw: book reviews, fantasy, monsters

It is the Hell of your childhood imagination, the Hell you grew up with. The Hell of demons that look like gargoyles (and worse), of sulfury smells and tentacles and pitchforks and bogeymen and things under your bed that'll get you if you set foot on the floor. It is, like Milton's Hell, a place where Satan rules, but this Hell is locked behind Gates, which keep the human world safe…at least for the time being. It is the Hell of The Gates by John Connolly, and the issue here is not whether you might go there, but whether Hell will come here.

The full title on the cover of the book is The Gates of Hell are About to Open: Want to Peek?. It is a genre new to me, that I call Supernatural Faux-Horror Comedy. There are two story lines here. One is the aforementioned part-Medieval part-childhood fantasy Hell and the desire of its denizens to come here and, well, ruin things. The other is the still-pending restart of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and its possible power to create a small black hole or wormhole or … something…

The author begins with the beginning of the Universe, so he can explain the Singularity from which everything is supposed to have emerged. Actually (and as he explains), the Singularity becomes everything, not expanding into anything but being the everything that is expanding. Yes, that is a bit confusing to me also, and I've been a Physics major (not a very good one, perhaps). It also sets the tone for the book, a tone of classic British understated humor.

Thus the CERN/LHC thread begins with bored technicians playing Battleship while the collider gets cranking up, when something gets loose and goes zinging away. Then, as they watch, the computer system seems to rewrite its memory to cover evidence thereof. At the same time, just a time zone away in Biddlecombe, four half-serious students of the occult are met in a basement about a pentagram, attempting to contact the "other side". They do so, in spades, and the game is afoot.

Peeking through the window is young (age 11) Samuel Johnson and his dog Boswell. Samuel (and, we suppose, Boswell), sees the Portal open, and the Gates beyond, and the things that shortly transpire as the four are replaced by shape-shifting demons.

If this and the rest of the book were narrated in any straightforward manner, the result would be unendingly horrible. It is not; instead we are treated to a hilarious Keystone Kops-ish attempt by the demons to prepare for a takeover by "The Great Malevolence" (TGM), Satan himself, just as soon as enough power can be stolen from the LHC to melt away the Gates and open the Portal quite a bit wider. Samuel can't get anyone to believe his stories, and he has just four days (until November 1, which we know as All Saints' Day) to thwart TGM's plans.

I don't know if real demons, whatever they may be, are capable of being clobbered by rakes or cricket bats. But this is childhood fantasy writ large. The demons don't fare too well, except for a couple of unusually friendly ones. One of these, named Nurd (unless you pronounce it "Noord" it'll come out "nerd") actually befriends Samuel instead of eating him as instructed (or as it would have been instructed had TGM or his lieutenant though to inform it). This gives Samuel and a couple of his young friends a way to close the Portal, if they are in time (you know the answer to that "if" there, so why am I being coy?).

If only our real demons (existential or not) were so easy to overcome…

A monstrous taxonomy

kw: book reviews, folklore, monsters

Stephen Krensky writes mainly for the children's market. Watchers in the Woods, part of his "Monster Chronicles" series that now numbers eleven slim volumes, wound up on the New Books table in the grownups' section of the library, and I couldn't pass it up.

The book's 48 pages share the format shown here, with plenty of sidebar material to supplement the explanatory text. The tone is matter-of-fact, and there is a substantial bibliography and index. This isn't a "monster book", but a book that explains the mythology of forest monsters and others, such as dwarves and gnomes, that watch us, or so we imagine. He explains not just the folkloric "watchers" of many cultures, but those found in more contemporary fare, including Disney films and the Harry Potter books.

I infer that the tone of the entire series is the same; probably intended to reduce a youngster's fears of whatever might dwell among the dust bunnies under the bed. An entertaining summary.