Pop Cryptid Spectator #2
In this edition:
News: Two deaths dubiously linked to Bigfoot hunting
Cryptid Media See This - Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal
Cryptid Media Skip This - Lost Monster Files
Update on naming taboo cryptids
AI cryptid carnival
Google Earth cryptids
Hood cryptids meme
[Originally posted on SharonAHill.com on 9-January-2025]
Hello and welcome to the 2nd Pop Cryptid Spectator - my chronicle of observing the changing appearance of and attitudes towards “cryptids” in popular culture. My intent with this project is to highlight the fun ways legendary or dubious animals are showing up in modern media, to share interesting news bits about them, and to explore the expansion of cryptozoology into a mass cultural phenomenon - a cornucopia of strange entities that are labeled as "cryptids".
News
Two men die searching for Bigfoot
Cryptid-related headlines appeared just after Christmas as two Oregon men were found dead in Gifford Pinchot Forest in Washington after they "failed to return from a trip to look for Sasquatch," authorities said. This area is known for many Sasquatch sightings. However, I could find no report directly linking the outing to a Bigfoot excursion. In the subsequent days, I have not been able to find out much more about the intentions of the two hikers. Some commenters to news posts said they knew the men and expressed that it was not Bigfoot hunt but just a regular hike. I certainly can't tell if this was true either, but the men appeared unequipped for camping outdoors, and that they perished from exposure in the cold and wet weather. Hikes in the woods here in the winter is not recommended. Rescuers spent Christmas facing dangerous conditions during the search.
It's possible to assume a more gracious explanation - that the men were Bigfoot enthusiasts who hoped to see the creature. The ultimately unfortunate outcome was subsequently linked with the cryptid, which seemed to be out of proportion, as if belief in Bigfoot was the cause of death. Several commenters on the news stories, unsurprisingly, were cruel and mocked the men based on speculation about their behavior. Worse than that, some people took the tragedy even farther by saying that the men didn't die from exposure, but from some other cause that officials are covering up. This is nonsense propelled by irrational and contrived ideas under the umbrella of a book series called "Missing 411" by Bigfoot writer David Paulides. Promotion of a sensationalistic cause for the tragedy works as clickbait for attention mongers. It's unfair and ghoulish, and should be dismissed as such.
At least one news piece noted that certain tourism efforts in this area encourage hikes to look for Bigfoot, tacitly suggesting that local officials are promoting this type of potentially dangerous activity to outsiders.
Many people each year get lost in the woods and some perish. Many more people take forest excursions with the notion that they might have their own personal encounter with the unknown. It's not "crazy" or worthy of scorn, but a sober lesson about safety and taking precautions when hiking.
Cryptid media
See This - Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal
A paranormal-themed docu-series streaming on Hulu from September 2024 surprised me by being well-written and produced, as well as captivating. That's a rarity! But Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal, while sounding atrocious and potentially exploitative, was not only jammed packed with good content but also featured some truly heartbreaking stories directly related to cryptids or cryptid-adjacent.
I was impressed by the first episode on "Lizard People" which mainly centered on the paranoid conspiratorial belief about Reptilians which played into a Christmas 2020 suicide bombing in Nashville, Tennessee. The episode also touched on the legend of Lizard Man of Bishopville.
Episode 3 covered the growth of the legend of the Goat Man of Pope Lick, Kentucky. The town has a love/hate relationship with the Goat Man as legend tripping by young people results in deaths by attempting to traverse the active train trestle bridge. A festival to celebrate the Goat Man legend/cryptid feels, to some, disrespectful to the memory of several who died and perhaps increases the odds that more people visit and venture into harms way.
The content of all 8 episodes consists of interviewees, some of whom are telling their own story for the first time. The complex details of each episode topic are well-managed by the editing. Each succeeds in distilling a full narrative into an understandable and fascinating piece. The show also uses bits of animation to reconstruct scenes. To me, this is preferable over acted reconstructions. I recommend this show, produced by the Duplass Bros., at least as an example of how nonfiction TV about paranormal subjects can be smart and done well, contrary to the majority of examples.
Skip This - The Lost Monster Files
As one of the contrary examples, do not bother with the awful run of The Lost Monster Files, a cryptid show on Discovery channel based on the files of Ivan T. Sanderson. It’s not low budget, but it’s low on originality and almost insultingly dumb. I watched all the episodes (so you don't have to). They did chop jobs on the chupacabra, the abominable snowman of North America, the Thunderbird, the Minnesota Iceman, the Kodiak sea monster, and the Gowrow of Arkansas. You can read my reviews to see the details regarding each episode, including the obvious oversimplifications, lack of experience from the cast, fabricated process of inquiry and staged investigation, and the extreme speculation and lack of reasoning found in their conclusions. It was a total bust in that it misinformed and conflated ideas without being at all entertaining. I'd rather not see the likes of it again.
Update on taboo "cryptids"
In the Spectator #1, I talked about the attempt to remove mention of two certain spirit/magical creatures based on Native lore from the cryptid subreddit. As I explained last post, I'll call them the "W" and "SW" to avoid mentioning the names since that is seen as potentially dangerous or at least disrespectful, and perpetuates misconceptions about Native beliefs.
The renaming contest stalled quickly. People have suggested some names for the entities but none are helpful. Neither entity is referred to on the forum as representing what the "W" and "SW" actually represented in Native lore, and some posters have expressed their disgust, attempting to state the authentic origins of the SW as humans using witchcraft or the W as a spirit.
For the "W", the names are meant to distinguish the skeletal "antlered" entity, depicted as huge and horrific, whose horns are not part of the indigenous lore. The leading contender for the alternate name is "Stag Man". This version is seen everywhere due to popular art and a Hollywood movie.
The "SW" entity stories made popular by a book and TV show based on the paranormal ranch tales, depicts encounters outside the context of Navajo lore. The story has morphed into a being that is pale and spindly, absorbing the look and behaviors of the creepypasta creature, the Rake. (Confusingly, some depictions of the W also resemble an emaciated, pale creature.) It's difficult to roll back that misinformation and correct the labeling when it becomes ingrained in popular culture.
The conversation at r/cryptids came right back around to enforcing contrived boundaries on the word "cryptid" and how neither entity should be mentioned at all - either in the the original or the popularly modified version. It's not clear anything was accomplished by the effort to fix confusion except to highlight it.
I did wonder how both indigenous terms got into the common lists of pop cryptids. I had suspected that the umbrella of "cryptid" (as any thing of dubious existence) just organically encompassed them at some point in the 2000s. However, I've since discovered that both terms are included in in Eberhart's renowned encyclopedia, Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology (2002). In it, "SW" is said to resemble a werewolf or bigfoot. "W" is in the cannibal giant category, which overlaps with several other creatures that are lumped into Bigfoot/Sasquatch discussions by some modern speculators.
Things are, therefore, quite messy, because the SW and W are based on culture, stories, and legends. We're not dealing with zoological samples here; tales evolve far faster than animals. Cryptids are defined by the stories told about them. It will be hard to put these now well-known monsters back into their original contexts.
AI cryptid carnival
Social media is lousy with AI generated videos of extreme cryptids and manufactured images of fake creatures. It's not clear if people think these are real, even though they are obviously not. It's possible the audiences just play along because it's fun to imagine, though some may lose the ability to distinguish the boundaries between fact and fiction. Examples I found this week illustrate the widespread problem caused by AI creating cryptid material.
In the Xmas issue of Fortean Times (No. 452), Dr. Karl Shuker pointed out the growing problem of AI generated videos and images circulated as real cryptids. Correspondents sent him images, in this instance, of giant owls, though Bigfoot is the most common subject seen in manufactured images. Any semi-expert eye can spot the flaws in these "too good to be true" images.
In Episode 99 of The Cryptid Factor podcast (October 2024) - the long running show featuring actor and comedian Rhys Darby - Buttons, the producer, asked Chat GPT to suggest cryptid news. He discovered that the algorithm manufactures fake news stories regarding cryptids based on conspiracy ideas and other associated themes.
According to the Unexplained Mysteries web site, the top cryptid story of 2024 was Bristol zoo creating a faked photo to drum up business. This was a clear fake, but again, I'm just not sure who believes this was a real mystery.
These examples show how cryptozoology is one of the prime news areas for manufactured claims, a well worn path for decades. Fiction is often mixed in alongside facts making it more difficult to tease out what may be real. At this point, every cryptid image, video or report online should be considered fiction, by default, unless multiple legitimate sources can confirm it (not just repeat it).
Google earth cryptids
Sticking with the explosion in fake content posing as genuine, here is an example of a fake that got quite a bit of traction - an image showing Godzilla appearing on Google Earth. There ought to be a name for movie creatures that get reported in real life - and there IS! They have been dubbed "scryptids" by Monster Talk host and cryptid historian Blake Smith.
The idea of Godzilla being a real creature is absurd but someone could not resist manufacturing an image that shows the kaiju swimming alongside a boat full of shocked tourists off Japan. The video of the reveal shows the person zooming in from the Google Earth platform. However, after a cut you aren't supposed to notice, the manufactured imagery appears. Snopes.com reports that the video was seen across social media platforms and websites. It was particularly popular on TikTok, MSN (which syndicates news stories from other outlets), the UK Express, YouTube, and Instagram. As if seeing Godzilla in the ocean wasn't enough of a clue, the clear giveaway that this is nonsense is that there are no "street views" of the ocean on Google Earth. Obviously. In the moment of seeing a fun and surprisingly reveal, people forget that.
There have been several other cryptid hoaxes that used Google Earth/Maps and we certainly will see more.
Sail Rock, north of Antarctica, was said to be a giant squid or "kraken" by some speculative web sites. Uh, it's a rock.
People have claimed to have found other sea or lake monsters including a boat wake as Nessie.
Who can forget Crabzilla! In 2014, a satellite view was said to show a gigantic crab off the pier in Whitstable, Kent. It was quickly debunked.
Hood cryptids
What are "hood cryptids"? This is a meme from December 2024 that serves as yet another in a parade of endless example of the extended use of the word "cryptid" to mean any weird creature whose existence has been suggested, but regarded as highly unlikely. "Cryptid" is used to describe photos that are distorted so that the subject looks unnatural or unsettling. (See also r/cryptiddogs for more hilarious examples.)
"Hood cryptids" is a TikTok trend of sharing photos of a younger person with some phrasing such as "When I grow up I want to be a…" followed by an altered, exaggerated, ridiculous image with the caption "Forgive me Mother". The origin appears to be an Instagram account that would post freaky images of rap artists. As happens with social media, others copy the actions and they evolve into memes.
That’s a wrap for the second Pop Cryptid Spectator. I did not do a video for this version as I did for the first one because the ratio of effort vs return was low. I'd also love to do a podcast but I'd need some help with that becasue it's a ton of work. Though, it seems like this is a pretty niche topic that many people who are already immersed in cryptozoology seem primed to reject. They would rather hang on tightly to their existing view and not embrace the inevitable wider scope. So, I'll keep plugging away at this. If you like it, share this with your cryptid-loving friends. I know there are millions of people out there who are interested in cryptids because I see them everywhere. I'd like to reach them and hear their views!
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