Monsters

[poliphilo]

Almost every large body of water in the world has a monster. Nessie is only the most famous.

Evidence comes in by dribs and drabs. Plenty of sightings, but the photographs are always teasingly ambiguous (or faked.)

And then there are the sea monsters.

What are these things? I want them to be plesiosaurs, but the weight of probability is against it. Loren Coleman (and he's the man) suggests that they're a rare breed of long necked seal. That really does cut them down to size.

I have been fascinated by them all my life. When I was a very small kid I has scared of paddling out into the sea in case a monster came swimming by.

Actually, that fear has never gone away.

I was never scared of sharks or jelly-fish or things like that- real things that posed a real threat. Only of these hypothetical things that posed a hypothetical threat.

There are no cases on record- not recent cases anyway- of lake or sea monsters hurting anyone. The threat is purely metaphysical. I'm afraid of them (and love them) because they're uncanny.

Things half seen, of indeterminate size and shape, slip-sliding through the dark.

What do they symbolise? Is it something to do with sex? Is it something to do with God?

I can't quite grasp it.

There's a chap about to go down into Loch Ness with a state of the art submarine. Perhaps he'll come back with a long-necked seal on a leash.

I so hope he does.

I so hope he doesn't.

Comments

[silent-mouse.livejournal.com]

Makes me wonder what kind of monster lives in the depths of Dead Sea. A dead monster, maybe?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

LOL.

Am I right in thinking that nothing lives in the Dead Sea?

How sad.

[silent-mouse.livejournal.com]

Its water doesn't feel nice, to tell you the truth. It has that oily touch. (Not to mention that it stings you wherever it can.) So I wouldn't be surprised to learn that monsters moved out of it long time ago - to Scotland, maybe?

(Oops, I have just ruined a lot of tourism potential, haven't I?)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've seen pictures of bathers floating in the Dead Sea. They sort of lie on the surface; it's weird. Apparently it's almost impossible to sink.

Oily and stinging- yuk!

[silent-mouse.livejournal.com]

It's even more weird when you do it. :) It seems impossible and scary at first, and then you find yourself lying on the surface and still feeling very weird. But worth a try nevertheless, if only to tell people afterwards that you did it. :)

Apparently some bacteria do live in the Dead Sea. But they are not very monster-ish. I'm disappointed.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Hooray for the bacteria! We should take heart from their tenacity. Life is so wonderfully bloody-minded; it will establish itself anywhere.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

The threat is purely metaphysical. I'm afraid of them (and love them) because they're uncanny.

I was saddened by the confession of the man who apparently faked the famous Loch Ness photograph, and I was saddened to find out that the famous film of the Ape Man Walking was also a fake.

But stuff keeps showing up. In The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen's moving account of his journey to Nepal's Crystal Mountain (with George Schaller, who was funded by the National Geographic Society), Matthiessen speaks at length about the Yeti, which is apparently seen high in the snowy mountains by the Buddhist monks who dwell there.

Almost every community can come up with a story about a local monster. Back in the late 1800s, near Bull Run creek, a creature was seen (and smelled) on several occasions. It was very tall, shaggy, and stank.

I've often wondered if there are areas of fluidity that allow connection between other, maybe parallel worlds.

There's a famous story about a farmer who disappeared in a field in front of his family, and they kept hearing his weak cries for help near the place where he'd disappeared.

Tantalizing, all of this. And so little real information.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I believe there's serious doubt as to whether the famous Bigfoot film really is a fake. I've seen attempts to replicate it (using a man in a suit) that come nowhere near. There is also the argument that the creature's body measurements (length of arms etc) prove that it can't be a human being.

I'd love to know more about the disappearing farmer.

By the way, I got my copy of the Hanz Holzer ghost book in the post this morning. My, but it's huge!

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Oh, good!

I used my copy of Holzer to weight down a copper piece I was gluing onto a board for a Christmas present. The book is a tome, really!

I love it for its coziness--and its bleak 1950s photographs of stairways and hallways and weird old apartment buildings.

And the conversations with mediums: "I live here! Get OUT!"

And the mediums saying spectacular, thrilling things like "You must hold me back--I may feel that I simply must leap out through the window--"

A permanent bedside book. Guaranteed to be fresh reading for many, many, many years.

Here's a first link to some disappearance stories, which in my humble opinion add credence to my little theory that there are many dimensions and worlds and realms around us, but we can't see them (as in the Kingdom of Heaven, one hopes).

And, from the pen of Charles Fort himself:

"A field, somewhere near, Salem, Va., in the year 1885 -- and that in this field there was a suction. In the New York Sun, April 25, 1885, it is said that Isaac Martin, a young farmer, living near Salem, Va., had gone into a field, to work, and that he had disappeared.(3) It is said that in this region there had been other mysterious disappearances. In Montreal, in July and August, 1892, there were so many unaccountable disappearances that, in the newspapers, the headline "Another Missing Man" became common. In July, 1883, there was a similar series, in Montreal. London Evening Star, Nov. 2, 1926 -- "mysterious series of disappearances -- eight persons missing, in a few days."(4) It was in and near Southend. First went Mrs. Kathleen Munn, and her two small children. Then a girl aged 15 -- girl aged 16, girl aged 17, another girl aged 16. [207/208] Another girl, Alice Stevens, disappeared. "She was found in a state of collapse, and was taken to hospital."

Here's the link for that quote.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Those disappearance stories are worrying....

And a man who suddenly finds himself driving down a dirt track with weird lizards and humanoids on either side of it- what's that all about?

I'm reminded of stories about people who have stepped (apparently) into another time.

There was one that got recounted on TV recently. A couple of booksellers (man and wife, respectable folk) went for a walk and about half-way through it found themselves on a woodland path they'd never been on before. At the same time a crippling depression descended on them both. They emerged into an open space where they saw three men in Victorian costume talking together. They sat down on the grass and went to sleep.

When they woke the depression had lifted and they made their way home by another route.

They later discovered that the place they'd ended up was close to the spot where the Bishop of Salisbury, Samuel Wilberforce, had died in a riding accident in the mid 19th century.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Perhaps, in the same way we can't see ultraviolet or infrared with our eyes, we can't see these other realms that coexist with us.

There is so much evidence about hauntings--my own sister's house was haunted!--that it's impossible to discount it all.

The lizards! Yes! I must reread that...

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I knew I'd find a longer version of the disappearing farmer story--it's very well known, and it took place in Tennessee.

If you follow the links, you'll see several variations and speculation and some debunking.

I don't like debunking. Spoils the fun. Old fuddy duddies.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Oh, what a disappointment.....

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Bull Run creek is about ten miles from my house and meanders all around the county.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I so hope he does.

I so hope he doesn't.

let me see, if he did it would prove there is a guardian. If he didn't, I think people like you (and I) will still know that there is a Nessie.

Where I went to college, there was a BIG pond out back. Big enough to be a lake, I've never been sure what the criteria was for the difference between a pond and a lake. Anyway, a friend of mine wrote a story about the monster that guarded the pond...it was very tongue in cheek.

But how do we know there isn't one?

I occasionally *see* something I can't identify, when I look out on the waters of Lake Ontario from the beach of my family cottage. I'm pretty familiar with The Lake, I've gone there every summer of my life since I was 14 (that nearly 40 years!) so I made up a "Lake Monster" and that's how I explain the unexplainable to myself.

Only...maybe I didn't make it up.

Thanks for this! Great fodder for imaginings on a cold, snowy dark day here.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Hey, most big lakes have monsters and Ontario is no exception. Check out the info here- http://www.pararesearchers.org/Cryptozoology/crypto6/crypto6.html

Maybe your "monster" isn't just a product of your imagination.....

[thewayupward.livejournal.com]

I used to be quite convinced, as a child, that one day I would go to Scotland and come back having seen the Loch Ness monster. It all seemed so rational to me! Didn't make sense for the dinosaurs to all have been wiped out, and I liked diplodoci best so I used to imagine a big diplodocus just wading about in the Loch Ness quite happily, and poking its head out to breathe or peek at tourists.

I like the way the Nessie legend evolved into the urban legend about a crocodile grown enormous from living on rubbish thrown down the drain, living in the sewers. Isn't it nifty?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I just think water monsters are so much cooler and creepier than land monsters. I love plesiosaurs with their long snaky necks. And then there's Lipleurodon- the biggest predator ever on land or sea- much bigger than little ol' T Rex.

Did you see the BBC documentary Walking with Dinosaurs? My favourite moment was when we saw this big raptor stalking its prey along the shoreline and suddenly a huge Lipleurodon reared its head out of the water and gulped it down.

[aint2nuts.livejournal.com]

I saw that documentary just recently. It was on here about a week ago. The kids and I watched it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Pretty good, eh? There have been various sequels.

[thewayupward.livejournal.com]

Deep down inside I'm still a little kid and like Maiasauras best. They looked so friendly in the pictures! Then I liked the Ankylosaurus, 'cause they had lumpy grumpy tails. Okay, this is ridiculous. When I was five I wanted to be an archaeologist so I could see dinosaurs. Anyway I kind of pretended Lipleurodon didn't exist ;_; 'cause I was a big wimp.

Yes, I did see Walking with Dinosaurs! I loved it! I particularly liked the Parasaurolophus (sp? Parasaurus?). Their funny honking noise!!!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

If I had my life to live again I'd be an archaeologist. Archaeologists are way cool. It's the only profession in which you're positively obliged to dress like a hippy or a punk!

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

My favourite Nessie theory - the one that makes most sense to me, though I don't necessarily subscribe to it, being something of a sceptic by nature - is that she is the ghost of a dinosaur. Occasionally seen, but never able to be detected by sonar etc.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Perhaps. Why not?

Another theory I like is that she's a demon who was conjured up by Aleister Crowley during his time as a loch-side resident.

[queen-in-autumn.livejournal.com]

Oh, my goodness!
Now *that* is a new one to me.

I was about to write that I find the dinosaur theory a bit more plausible. . . but it suddenly occurs to me that I hear we are discovering new species in the world all the time. What if Nessie and her ilk are simply one more? Wouldn't it be lovely if there are monsters, perhaps more sentient than our arrogance allows us to contemplate?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

And some of the "new" species are quite large. Deer and monkeys and the like.

There are still large tracts of wilderness we haven't explored properly- and then, of course, there's the sea....

[queen-in-autumn.livejournal.com]

I feel a shivery kind of excitement when I contemplate what could be living down there in the depths where we have not yet been able to go.

And, as has been expressed throughout the overall discussion on this topic, I find myself hoping that we don't discover all the marvels that are out there, so they can continue to exist without our interference.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Do you have to be sentient to be a ghost?

Maybe Nessie was a sentient dinosaur. What an interesting thought. Maybe they all were! For that matter, maybe everything is.

[aint2nuts.livejournal.com]

They have investigated the Lockness Monster, to the point where I believe, if anything were there, they would have found it.

Not.

You just never know.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well exactly.

And I don't see how it's possible to prove the non-existence of anything.

And there is evidence- sightings of course, but also things like anomalous echo soundings

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

There's a chap about to go down into Loch Ness with a state of the art submarine. Perhaps he'll come back with a long-necked seal on a leash.

I so hope he does.

I so hope he doesn't.

I hope he doesn't. I'm thinking of poor King Kong, who was brought to the New York stage in chains and who went mad.

What if he sent Nessie to Sea World, and attendents trained him to catch hoops with his long neck?

He'd go mad, too, and so would his mate and children, left alone in Loch Ness, hiding in their underwater cave...

And now I remember a long-ago visit to the Hutchinson, Kansas County Fair. My father paid a quarter, and we went inside a tent to see a Sea Monster.

It was lying in a box not two inches bigger than it was; the box was filled with water.

I looked at it with horror, not because it was a monster but because it couldn't even move!

Much later I recognized what I had seen: it was a sea lion, and it was slowly being tortured.

I hope Nessie is smart enough to take his family through the rift that will keep it safe in the other dimension--in their waterworld home.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's horrible.

Man is the worst monster of all.

There was a episode of the Simpsons where they captured Nessie and evil Mr Burns put him on exhibition just like King Kong. I forget what happened next.

I don't want Nessie captured. What I want is indisputable photographic evidence- and maybe a tooth or a whisker to provide back up.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I don't want Nessie captured. What I want is indisputable photographic evidence- and maybe a tooth or a whisker to provide back up.

Diana Gabaldon mentions Nessie in one of her books - I can't remember which one, but it seems like the *sighting* takes place in modern times rather than during the time traveling.

I can't imagine that anyone could capture Nessie. And, if there IS evidence, wouldn't that make it less fun? I believe.

I think you do as well.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

If Nessie turned out to be a real animal it would, I agree, be a little sad.

Unless, of course, she was proved to be a genuine survivor from the age of the dinosaurs. That would be the best outcome imaginable.

The naturalist Peter Scott was fuly convinced of Nessie's reality. He even proposed a scientific name for her- Nessiteras rhombopteryx.

[morrison-maiden.livejournal.com]

I also hope he doesn't. Nessie would be a fascinating find, but if they did find evidence of his existence, they'd never just leave him be.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I guess they'd have to declare Loch Ness a restricted zone or something, else tourists and thrill-seekers would worrit the poor beast to death. What a nightmare!