My good friend Micah Hanks (on the left of this photo, with me on the right, taken last October) of Asheville, NC has a new article online right now titled Facing Our Deepest Fears: Monsters Below The Earth.As Micah says:
"While driving around one day I ended up playing a 'thought game' with myself where, in an effort to brainstorm ideas for short horror stories, I considered what things scared me most. The first things that come to mind for many of us involve sickness and disease, as evidenced by the growing number of films today which revolve around humankind being introduced to foreign strains of bacteria and infections, often leading to bizarre malformations and eventual death like in Danny Boyle’s film 28 Days Later, as well as the Resident Evil series based on the popular video game. But as I began to consider what really scares me deep down, I was able to relate my fears to my long-time interest in cryptozoology, and touch on something that I find both truly strange and fascinating, yet nonetheless terrifying. My own greatest fear, at least along the lines of a 'what if' basis, would have to be strange creatures living deep within the earth."
In many ways, it kind of reminds me of a number of stories I heard about ten years ago in England about wild animals roaming the darkened depths of the London Underground rail network.
In fact, I think I'm now gonna dig out my files and work on a posting on these London Underground stories for sometime next week.
Great post, Nick!!!
ReplyDeleteI tend to to agree with Micah Hanks. The scariest things are often underground.
One caveat regarding his article:
I think I read somewhere (or saw on TV) that the legendary Green Children may have actually been Cathars (from what I remember) that emigrated from France and somehow got separated from their village---apparently their green skin came from either their ceremonies or their diet. Their lack of knowledge of English may have contributed to their behavior. The fact that they supposedly came from an underground kingdom yet worshipped Christianity lends credence to the theory. To be honest I haven't found the source of the theory but I DID read it somewhere. I'm not saying it is the truth. Just saying it is one of many "explanations" that are floating around.
Regarding undergroud dwellers---
I don't know if you saw it, but DESTINATION TRUTH had an episode partially dedicated to searching in the Gobi Desert of MOngolia for the MONGOLIAN DEATH WORM, the ULTIMATE underground scary creature. Supposedly can spit poison AND electrocute someone. I would not want anything like that burrowing anywhere NEAR a subway station or any other kind of populated area.
I get images of the movie TREMORS and Fred Ward and Kevin Bacon in my head. SCARY.
Cheers cryptidsrus.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the Mongolian Death Worm is a very weird one! A friend of mine (Richard Freeman, of the British-based Center for Fortean Zoology) traveled to Mongolia a couple of years ago in search of the worm and uncovered a lot of notable testimomy from the locals etc.
It's definitely a bit Tremors-like! Not as big though...
I was searching any information onthis, since my childhood, always heard stories of the "creatures of the Dessert," in Morocco, where my family comes from, it is weel known never to travel the Dessert at night, because the underground creatures come out at night, and they hurt people. THey can run as fast as your car will travel, and anyone riding is told not to look at them. They knock on the windows, but there is something I hear about their eyes, that you should just look down, away from them. I can't get much info, since a lot of people refuse to talk about it, but there are times that someone will bring it up. I also heard a silly story that G-d forgot to finish them (I doubt that G-d forgets anything), and that out of respect, when we run boiling water in a sink, we should also run cold water, not to harm the underground people. Although some of it is silly, I believe that these sightings seem to match some of the information I am googling now.
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