books about ancient civilizations and alternative spirituality. His latest title is Gods of the Runes, Their Stone Age Roots and Original Meanings, from Bear & Company. He was the editor-in-chief of Ancient American magazine for 15 years from its inception in 1993. Today, Joseph lives with his wife, Laura, and Mystical Norwegian Forest Cat, Sammy, near the widest stretch of the Mississippi River in Lake Pepin, Minnesota. His website is www.InnerTraditions.com.
Sandy Nichols
An alien abductee himself, Sandy Nichols is founder and president of ARG (Alien Research Group). A Brentwood, Tennessee-based organization for the study of alien abductions, ARG specializes in helping the abductee through all phases of the abduction phenomenon, especially in locating licensed counselors and certified hypnotherapist in their specific locale.
Sandy Nichols
Nichols is also past coordinator for the Tenn Files website and magazine for the Memphis, Tennessee-based “Night Search” organization, and former update host for its radio program on WWOW 1430AM; a member of the “Night Search” X-Files coalition of Paranormal Researchers; and past contributing writer for the “Night Search” newsletter, Nichols has conducted numerous radio interviews with organizations such as the Heritage Radio Network and the “X-Zone,” hosted by Rob McConnell.
Brent Raynes
Brent Raynes has been active in the UFO and paranormal fields since the early 1970s. He has written for Fate and other magazines, and in 1970 established Alternate Perceptions Magazine. Raynes is also the author of the book Visitors from Hidden Realms and the Edge of Reality. Learn more about him at www.mysterious-america.net.
Brent Raynes
INTRODUCTION: MONSTERS, CREEPY CREATURES, AND NIGHTMARISH BEINGS
In 2001, the Media Psychology Lab at California State in Los Angeles polled people across the United States from ages 6 to 90 in all ethnic groups to determine which movie monsters ranked as the favorites. According to the survey, the most frightening motion picture of all time for all groups was The Exorcist (1973), in which a demon possesses a young girl.
The favorite top ten monsters after The Exorcist were the following:
1 Dracula, with the majority of respondents favoring the 1931 version with Bela Lugosi as the blood-sucking count.
2 Freddy Krueger who uses razor-sharp metal talons on his fingers to attack teens in their dreams in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).
3 The Frankenstein monster, especially the original version in the Boris Karloff film (1931).
4 Godzilla, the prehistoric giant reptile that spews radioactive rays and stomps cities to rubble, who first appeared in the Japanese film Godzilla of the Monsters (1954).
5 King Kong, the giant ape from the original that features the Willis O’Brien stop-action figures (1933).
6 Chucky, 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
