Moai

[poliphilo]

The Moai of Easter Island are huge statues, with elongated faces, jutting chins, heavy brows and ski jump noses. They look a bit like Richard Nixon and a bit like the Frankenstein monster.

There is nothing like them anywhere else in the world. These days we know something of the culture that produced them, but back in the 1950s no-one had a clue. I decided they were supernatural. Perhaps they came alive and stomped around their island when the sun went down.

They were just about the scariest thing I knew. As scary as ghosts. As scary as the very tall half-woman half-rabbit person I once saw in a dream.

I was afraid of them turning up in my bedroom. But that was bearable. I had a strategy all worked out. Obviously they could only appear on the left hand side of the bed. If I lay on my right I wouldn't see them.

Perhaps they were already there, looming up behind me. But that was bearable because it was seeing them that would do the damage. I didn't try to imagine what would happen after. Seeing them would be enough. One glimpse of those craggy, eyeless faces and I would dissolve in terror and cease to exist.

Comments

[archyena.livejournal.com]

I actually thought those were the coolest things I ever saw when I first caught a look of them in a National Geographic. I actually used my allowance to buy a little one at a garage sale and set it by my bed because I felt that they would keep a watch out for things that I was really afraid of.

Kinda funny how two people could have wildly different feelings about something so simple.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think my fear had less to do with the way they looked, than with the fact that nobody- back then- could explain them. This made me see them as uncanny.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

What do you mean by 'nobody could explain them'?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Europeans turned up at Easter Island, saw these statues and didn't know what to make of them. The locals chose to be tight-lipped. The Moai were products of an earlier phase of their culture and maybe they didn't really understand them either.

People were amazed that such huge statues could be cut and transported using stone age technology.

And then Erich Von Daniken came along and suggested that they were planted on Easter Island by spacemen.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I have to say, Von Daniken made the world fascinating and strange until the debunkers took him down.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There was a documentary film about him that went the round of the cinemas, playing as a second feature. I forget what the main feature was, but the Von Daniken movie hit me where I lived. I left the the cinema with my head in a cloud of what ifs.

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

You know, the statues were not eyeless. The eyes were only put onto them during rituals to help them communicate with their gods and ancestors and bring forth mana to their people. They say part of the reason that the culture fell apart was that they used so many palms and other resources for the construction of the Moai that they destroyed their ecosystem. By the time Cook got to Easter Island in 1774 (some fifty years after the first Europeans were there) the place was desolate.

It's strange to consider these amazing cultures. Easter Islanders, the Olmec, the Inca... such amazing works. Where in the world did they go?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It seems like the Easter Islanders pretty well destroyed themselves.

Yes I know about the eyes. Or I do now. I think the photos I saw as a kid were all of eyeless Moai.

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

They can be pretty scary.

Of course when I was little, I was afraid that a cow would come into my room.

Not a bull, mind you, because I had a red sheet for that.
I was scared of cows.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Um, yes.....

Well I guess cows are pretty large.....

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

Not that I ever had any experiences at all with the animal. I don't know. They just freaked me out. Not snakes, not scorpions: cows. Freaky.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I have always thought blank eyes were eerie.

What are they thinking? No clue.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There's a story by M.R. James where the spook has eye sockets full of spiders' webs.

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

Perhaps they were already there, looming up behind me. But that was bearable because it was seeing them that would do the damage.

You remind me of my brother. When he was a child he would stick his head under the covers and sleep, perfectly content that the blankets would effectively shield him from the boogey-man. Me, I could never do that, and had to keep my eye trained on the door until I dropped off. The thought of being under the covers with something sneaking up on me, until its face was inches from mine, staring and softing breathing on me...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I never stuck my head under the covers. That wouldn't have been safe. Mainly, like you, I watched the door. There was never any question of the Moai coming through it, but other things might. The rabbit-woman for instance. The Moai only posed a threat if I turned onto my left hand side. Otherwise they were powerless.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

When I came home from Forbidden Planet I was terrified of going to sleep. Without a doubt (and because I had learned via the movie about its existence) the Radar Monster would be in my closet, in invisible suspension until the lights were off.

I had a light in my closet, which I kept on, but I couldn't look at it, lest shadows flicker in the cracks, signifying the beast was On the Move.

--

My poor brother, aged 7 or so, actually crawled under the theater seat when giant spiders appeared on the theater screen.

I wanted to join him, but I was nine and too embarrassed.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

When television was very new the BBC entertained the kiddies with a cartoon series about a loveable, perky little cowboy called Hank. Hank used to drive me screaming from the room. He had these spiky black moustaches, see.....

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

When I was a little kid, we went to the movies to see...something. I don't know what, the movies were expensive and there were five of us (total. Probably paid less then than you do for one, now...) Anyway, one of the 'citing scences' was previews from "The House...on Haunted Hill" starring Vincent Price and Mary Roberts Rhineheart's "The Bat". I was pretty scared that night. But sleeping under the covers didn't work, because as soon as I got under there, I used to imagine the horrible creatures standing by the bed, ready to pounce on me.

We had cats when I was growing up, and I slept in the attic which was the reason my bedroom door was open. Open door, occupied bed = cat. The first time the cat jumped on my bed after that movie outting, I'm not sure who screamed louder....

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

When I first went to the cinema I was frightened by the size of the images on screen. There was a bronze Buddha in Around The World In 80 Days and they kept cutting to closeups of his head and I was absolutely terrified.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I was five or so when I saw on my grandparents' television a diver in a diving outfit. In those times, the mask looked like an astronaut's helmet, a fishbowl sort of helmet, and I didn't know what to make of what I saw.

I just thought "monster."

I went out into the side yard, and I remember standing there transfixed with horror: the world had changed, because that monster was in it somewhere--anywhere.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Did you ever see The Haunting of Hill House, based on the (truly terrifying) book by Shirley Jackson?

The movie was made in black and white in the 1960s, and it's all about psychological terror--much worse than ghosts floating around.

There's a moment--oh, even to think about it is horrible--when the heroine climbs a spiral staircase in the haunted library (and the music rises with her) and, just at the top, a FACE! And the music, of course, is going !!!!!!! at that heart-stopping moment.

I believe that movie is still around. It's worth seeing--but the book is even better, immensely creepy!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, a very fine movie. The director, Robert Wise, had worked with Orson Welles. It shows.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

I wasn't afraid of them - I thought they were magnificent and mysterious. Solemn, proud, they stood as a reminder that we don't know as much as we think we know.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"they stood as a reminder that we don't know as much as we think we know."

Yes indeed!

[craftyailz.livejournal.com]

I used to worry that the floor would have gone in the morning. I'd go to stand up and fall down, and down to who knows where.