Monday, April 4, 2011

What Makes a Man a Man?

            People are pretty complicated things, with their circulatory, digestive, reproductive, and other systems.  Our brains are complicated pieces of work.  Everything about a person, really, is quite extraordinary.  Just look at DNA and genes.  It takes a lot of work and seemingly good fortune to make a person; a regular functioning person.  If it takes that much to make a human being, how could there ever be a human-hybrid?  “A human-hybrid?” you ask.  Yes, that’s what I said.  What happens if, among all that miraculous DNA creation, something else gets mixed in with it all?  Well, then we have human-hybrids.  “Do such things exist?” you may ask.  No, not officially, but people are seeing things that are not quite human and not quite animal; something that shouldn’t exist, but seems to.  Something that comes in many varieties.  What is a human-hybrid?  For the purposes of my writing today, I will say that a human-hybrid is something with human characteristics and the qualities of something else.  I will discuss how this may have happened or how it came about.  Like I’ve said before, the paranormal does not fit into clearly defined parameters, so I doubt I will come to any real conclusions.  However, I do hope that we can come up with something we can dwell upon and perhaps discuss.
            I guess the most popular form of a human-hybrid is the monkey-man.  You can call him bigfoot if you like.  He fits into many paranormal categories, and there’s many explanations, and blah, blah, blah.  I’m sure I will be writing a lot about bigfoot in the future, but for now, it’s hypothetical hybrid time.  There is something very human about bigfoot.  The bi-pedal factor, the reported ability to use tools, the fact that they may sometimes make their own clothing.  There’s also something very ape-y about them: the hair, the stench, the dwelling in the wilderness, and tons of other things, I’m sure.  Does this mean that bigfoot is a combination between modern humans and modern apes?  Probably not, because, gross.  Yet it is interesting to note the similarity of the DNA of humans and apes.  The most common theory behind bigfoot is that it’s an offshoot of human evolution.  I, personally, think this is a very good example of a human-hybrid; there’s humanity in it, but it isn’t all the way there, some animal remains within.
            If you really want to talk about human-hybrids, it’s only natural to think of the infamous mothman, who terrorized residents of Point Pleasant, West Virginia for about a year in the 60s.  It liked to scare young people and kill dogs; but there is so much more to it than that.  It was described as a humanoid type creature with large wings; it was reported to be very tall, and, most strikingly, it had large red reflective or luminous eyes.  The mothman is very intriguing because it has scientific and supernatural lore.  The mothman was primarily seen around an old TNT factory.  TNT is great and all, but was that all that occurred there?  Could scientists have been working on something else?  Did an over exposure to chemicals create some sort of mega-human?  I don’t know, it all sounds like comic book superhero origin stories to me.  Even the name mothman was inspired by the Batman TV show that was popular at the time.  I really don’t think that mothman is actually part man and part moth.  If that were the case, wouldn’t it be fluttering around streetlamps instead of lurking in the dark, allowing people to only catch a glimpse of it?  The fact that it hung around the old TNT plant is quite interesting.  Was it created there?  I don’t know.  It probably just hung around that place because it was abandoned and mostly away from the public. That is, until word of the mothman got out, then that area swarmed with people in their cars looking for a thrill by seeking the beast.  However, mothman doesn’t seem to just be a freak of nature.  It had some very supernatural qualities about it, and in this aspect, it looks a lot more sinister.  Mothman is linked to mysterious strangers in black who appeared in the area after the first sightings.  Who they were and what they wanted still remains a mystery, but of course, there are theories.  The most common is that they were government agents trying to keep tabs on this flying anomaly.  However, I just read something, and it seems to make the most sense to me; the men in black were priests attempting to exorcise an evil entity.  Why do I think that this poor, lonely monster was evil?  The last time mothman was seen was on December 15th, 1967, when the Silver Bridge collapsed and 46 people died.  Some witnesses claimed to see the mothman around the bridge shortly before the tragedy.  This is why the mothman is thought to be a harbinger of doom.  That alone can lead us to all sorts of conclusions; let’s discuss a few.  If the men in black were in fact priests trying to oust the demonic mothman, they failed horribly; the bridge still collapsed.  Though a very logical explanation was found for the falling bridge, I still find it strange that the mothman disappeared after this catastrophe.  Maybe the mothman is a spirit who watches over Point Pleasant and only appears in times of danger to warn its citizens about the near future.  But again, I’m getting off track; I’m talking about human-hybrids here, so let’s stick with that.  When you boil it all down, the mothman is a humanoid with wings.  How much humanity does it possess?  Not much, I think.  If it was a result of genetic testing, I think the result was more monster than super-human.  Its face didn’t look like a human’s, according to witnesses.  Humans generally don’t have large, red eyes.  The legacy of the mothman is very short, so it’s hard to attempt to put all of the pieces together.  Some say the mothman was a misidentified owl.  I’ve never heard of a seven-foot tall owl, but that alone is pretty terrifying.  I just have one last question: where did the mothman go?  Owls still exist, and if the mothman was a misidentification, why did the sightings suddenly stop?  I think the mothman just moved on, to be where he is needed.
            Maybe he went to England.  About ten years after the mothman incidents, 1970s England played host to a very similar creature in Cornwall.  This creature was known as the owlman.  The creature was first seen in 1976 by a family near a church.  The family was on vacation at the time, but the owlman scared them so badly, they went home three days early.  Two months later, two girls were camping near that very same church, when they heard a very bizarre hissing noise.  They turned and saw a human sized owl thing, it had, not surprisingly, red eyes.  Sightings continued very sparsely for two years, and they all took place in near proximity to the Mawnan church.  Things picked up again in 1989, when a young man saw a 5 foot tall owl creature.  In 1995, an American tourist saw the man-bird, she claimed it had pointed ears and glowing eyes.  Has the mothman indeed crossed the ocean and made its home in a church?  The reports sound very similar, and the scientific explanations both involve large owls.  The owlman, however, doesn’t seem to bring destruction with it.  The owlman is much more likely a misidentification than the mothman, but do owls really ever get that big?
            What if that giant meteor didn’t kill all the dinosaurs?  What if a few survived?  What if they evolved right along with humans?  If something like that happened, I think you’d wind up with a lizard man.  Apparently, the lizard man has been seen worldwide and in several different varieties.  I think the best example of a reptilian humanoid lives in South Carolina.  In 1988 a 17 year old driving home from work at around 2 am near a place called Scape Ore Swamp was attacked by a green, scaly creature.  It tried to get into the car by grabbing the door handle.  Very intriguing, if you ask me, how did it know to do that?  Anyway, after its unsuccessful attempts at the door handle, it jumped on the roof, where the kid could see it had three fingers on each hand and three clawed toes on each foot.  So this guy starts driving and swerving to try to knock the creature off.  He finally accomplishes this and the lizard man is flung to the side of the road.  Upon later assessment, the young man finds quite a bit of damage to his car.  Whatever this thing was, you couldn’t deny its strength.  In South Carolina, other sightings began to trickle in, as well as three-toed footprints being discovered near the swamp.  One thing can be said of it: it’s aggressive.  In New Jersey there is a Native American legend about a man-sized fish that can never be caught.  Now, in modern times, aka, 1973, the legend has returned, but this time the creature is a humanoid alligator.  What a humanoid alligator is, I’m not exactly sure.  Maybe the top looks like a human and its lower half is alligator like.  Not a lot is known about this creature, since it has left no evidence of itself behind.  Unlike South Carolina’s lizard man, the gator man doesn’t seem to be a product of parallel evolution.  I lack the scientific and zoological knowledge to even hypothesize about what this thing is.  It’s probably not even around anymore.  It appears to have last been seen in 1973.  Maybe something that freaky was too frail to live for very long.  The weirdest (if things could get any weirder) account of a reptilian/amphibian-hybrid are the Loveland frogmen.  They are 3-4 feet tall, bipedal, and have webbed hands and feet.  Their heads are distinctly frog-like, thus, the name frogmen.  When I say “they,” it’s because in 1955 a business man saw three of these things on the side of the road.  Right here is where this story differs from any other I’ve heard before; one of the frogmen pulled out a wand looking thing and, according to the business man, sparks began to fly from the object, which, naturally, caused the man to flee in terror.  Are frogmen some sort of wizards?  What are they doing with sparking sticks?  Is it dynamite?  Well, probably not.  Fast forward to 1972 when a Loveland, Ohio policeman was cruising along at one in the morning when an unknown creature darted in front of his car.  The policeman had to slam on his breaks to avoid hitting what revealed itself to be a crouching frogman.  Two weeks later, another policeman actually shot a frogman when he saw one on the side of the road.  The 1970s sightings are standard cryptid encounters; yet I keep getting drawn back to what happened in 1955.  Hoping beyond hope that this account isn’t a lie, it has to be one of the most intriguing human-hybrid stories I’ve ever heard.  I have no idea where to even start with this one.  All I can think of are poor, cursed souls, turned into frogmen because of jealousy, or perhaps their own pride.  Now I’m entering into the magic realm.  I have no time for that today.  The thing about the reptile men is that there are very few sightings of them, and they don’t span a long period of time.  Are they that incredibly elusive?  Have they all died off?  Have they simply left the planet?  We’ll just have to wait, and see if any more turn up.
            The ultimate human-hybrid is the skin-walker, because you know there is a human element there.  In certain Native American legends, a skin-walker is someone who can turn into an animal or a human with very animal-like characteristics.  The Navajo keep the best records and stories of skin-walkers.  In Navajo culture, skin-walkers are people who have attained the highest level of magic and then committed an evil act.  This means that skin-walkers are not very good company.  Though it is said that skin-walkers can transform into an animal, it seems that the skin-walker turns out to be a grotesque and vaguely human-like version of the creature.  There are tons of stories out there about skin-walkers, but not many of them come straight from a Navajo tribe member.  Just talking about them is a bad idea.  It’s a very serious and sensitive topic among Native Americans.  So that’s probably all I should say about that.
            There are countless human-hybrids in mythology: deer women, mermaids, satyrs, centaurs, and the list goes on.  I have decided to stick with the hybrids that actually have had recent sightings. I’m not really sure where these hybrids come from or how they are created.  I’m a creationist, but I believe in evolution.  Could human-hybrids be evolutionary mistakes?  Offshoots of your average evolution?  They could be results of hideous genetic experiments.  And if they are, I’m never going near a geneticist or a government that funds this type of genetic research.  I don’t want to be captured and end up with an elephant’s trunk or something.  I just hope those human-hybrids are doing alright, wherever they are.

No comments:

Post a Comment