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 15^th, 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.

There! Up in the sky! It's a...I have no Idea what That Is

UFOs, in general, don’t really scare me.  This is probably because I have never been abducted and had weird tests performed on me.  I’ve loved UFOs ever since I was a little kid.  While other kids were dreaming about being kidnapped or being chased by scary aliens, I was having dreams where I willingly got into a UFO and I waved happily to my mom as I flew off.  There will be a time when I discuss the complexities of UFO sightings and the baggage that comes along with abductions.  For now, I’ll just stick to the basic definition of a UFO: something weird flying in the sky.

There are the fundamental shapes that everyone knows and sees; you’ve got the saucers, the triangles, the boomerangs, the balls of fire, and the cylinders.  There are other shapes, obviously, but those aforementioned styles are a good place to start.  I really don’t need to mention much about the common UFO shapes.  We’ve all heard the stories, and, if you haven’t, let me know and I can fill you in.  I just want to say that a true UFO is certainly odd looking, but it only becomes remarkable when it performs impossible maneuvers that no known earthly aircraft could possibly handle.  They switch direction at impossible speeds while sometime floating perfectly still in the air, you know, signature UFO stuff.  I would like to talk about all of this and pose some of my theories at a later date.  Then what the heck am I talking about if I keep postponing subjects, you may ask.  Today I am going to discuss a rather new aerial phenomenon.  It’s been caught on tape, it’s mostly seen in Mexico, it scares the living daylights out of me; I’m talking about the flying humanoid phenomenon. 

The proverbial swarm of flying humanoids seemed to swoop onto the scene around the year 2000.  A seasoned UFO hunter, Salvador Guerrero, was doing his normal sky watching thing in March of 2000 in Mexico City.  That evening, or morning, or whatever, he had a UFO encounter.  That in itself is pretty exciting, so Guerrero pulled out his video camera to tape the dark, flying object.  When he zoomed in, something was definitely different about this one.  The object seemed to have arms and legs.  The video is quite remarkable, it shows this thing dangling in the air for a few moments, spinning slowly, then moving, and finally disappearing behind a building.  What?  That sounds really spooky.  A guy twirling and flying around in the air?  I can’t even begin to conceive what that would be.  Okay, maybe I can.  But it doesn’t end there, not at all, apparently, this wasn’t the first flying humanoid to be caught on tape!  A friend of Guerrero, Amado Marquez, filmed a very similar thing in February of 2000.  He caught what he initially thought to be a routine UFO, but instead discovered a man type figure, with legs spread, flying horizontally.  Just skydivers, you say?  No parachutes were visible, and the movement patterns don’t look like a skydiver I’ve ever seen.  Most people who skydive don’t usually stand straight up, move in a steady horizontal position, and they don’t not have a parachute.  The saga continues; July 2000 in Cuernavaca, Morelos, another sky watcher witnessed a distinctly humanoid figure flying around before descending behind a hill.  In October that same year, a pilot saw a little guy with a back pack on flying at the same altitude as the plane.  This could have been a skydiver, except for the fact that it was “flying freely”, not falling.  The scariest one, in my opinion, occurred on February 14, 2004.  Three people filmed this one in Mexico City.  At first the object looked like a big, black mass, but as things became clearer, a noticeably humanoid object was seen, and above it seemed to be a vibrating structure.  They remained stationary for a while, and it was at first thought to be a strange helicopter.  That is, until a small object flew into view and appeared to be absorbed by the humanoid.  And then, the really crazy things started to happen; the whole contraption split apart.  The humanoid creature flew off while wearing what looked like a cloak.  And that vibrating thing it turned out to look like some kind of vibrating winged being.  I will discuss the possible implications of this later on.

I can’t talk about flying humanoids in Mexico without discussing the witch incident.  Very early in the morning on January 16^th, 2004, a very adorable policeman was making his rounds.  So he turns on this one street and he sees a large, black mass fall from a tree.  The strange thing was that this object stopped and hovered before hitting the ground.  The object revealed itself to be what seemed to be a female, dressed in all black, with big black eyes, and no discernable eyelids.  This thing was upset about being caught in the headlights and immediately flew at the police car, trying to break through the windshield and get at the poor, frightened policeman.  As this witch thing, with her leathery, dark brown skin and terrifying expression continued to try to get into the car, the police officer called for backup and passed out.  He woke up and the creature was still there, so he passed out again.  He was found by two other police officers, he was unconscious and unhurt.  This is due to the fact that the policeman never tried to exit his car.  When the officer came to, he was completely in shock as he rattled off his story.  He was later given drug and alcohol test, but they came back negative.  It doesn’t end there.  After this experience, it came to light that two other police officers saw the exact same creature a couple of days before the attack.

Alright, now that we have all of that out of the way, let’s take a breather, and absorb these utterly bizarre stories.  So flying people, eh?  Seems pretty farfetched and something that could be easily mistaken for something else.  However, what out there looks like flying people?  Why are they primarily seen in Mexico?  Do they have flying people technology that the world doesn’t know about?  Do a lot of jet packs exist in Mexico, and if so, how do those ones work when no one else in the world can make a really good one?  And why, why are they so freaking scary?

I guess I find them scary because they aren’t the good old UFOs I grew up with and came to know and love.  They’re different and much more personal.  Instead of just a mysterious, flying object, you’ve got a being, that you can see, and look into the eyes of.  That’s creepy!  And while aliens in spaceships have to do a little work to abduct you, what stops flying humanoids from simply scooping you up and flying off with you?

The freaky thing to me is their flying methods.  While some seem to be relying on mechanical devices to fly, others seem to be doing so on their own accord.  Maybe they’re wearing anti-gravity suits or something.  That, or we have supermen among us.  This makes me wonder, is it technology or magic?  Technology is definitely the clear choice.  There is a lot more evidence of technology than of magic.  You can learn about technology in college courses, but they don’t yet teach magic.  So if it is technology, it’s well beyond the scope of everyday human technology.  Oh yes, we have jet packs now, but in all reality, they totally suck.  No real longevity, no towering heights, they’re bulky, noisy, and obviously jet packs.  They are usually tethered to the ground to keep them from spinning out of control.  Very few people actually own jet packs, and not all of them are in Mexico.  To be fair, yes, some are in Mexico.  So now we are left with three kinds of technology; secret government technology, alien technology, and government technology stolen from aliens.  Now, I believe that most UFO sightings are of secret government test aircraft.  So, flying humanoids could very well be a product of this.  Imagine a war where soldiers could fly, and mow down those poor suckers on the ground with like, a machine gun or something.  The first army with that capability would have a huge advantage over other armies.  So obviously, the public wouldn’t know about it yet.  It’s a secret!  Or it might just be aliens.  Perhaps flying around without spacecraft is supposed to be more covert.  Well, maybe, as many flying humanoid sighting as there are, think about how many flying humanoids that might be out there that we aren’t seeing.  Maybe flying around is a better way to get, you know, like soil samples or something.  It could be a better way to observe weather conditions, wind directions, and those frightened little people scurrying about on the ground.  If these things are alien technology, they may be some form of flying probe that just happens to look like a humanoid.  The human race is so conceited that it mistakes antennae on probes for arms and legs.  Or, just maybe, it’s a more cost effective way to get to Earth.  Just send one flying alien out here instead of an entire spaceship.  And finally, there is the stolen alien technology by the government theory.  That really explains itself.  It’s a mix between government technology and alien technology.  This means that our governments are reverse engineering captured or crashed alien spacecraft, or the world governments are in cahoots with aliens and they’re all working together to get people to fly and freak out civilians in Mexico.

What if there is something darker and more sinister going on?  I’m not going to say magic.  Because though I see the world as a magical place; I don’t light candles, pray to Gaia, try to cast love or revenge spells, listen to dark and brooding music, think the world is out to get me, or practice free love in magic circles.  I do, however, believe in high strangeness.  Saying that, there is something witch-like about these flying humanoids.  In medieval up to colonial times, witches roamed the earth, summoning the devil, hanging around with black cats, and being old and owning property that someone else wanted.  You know, usual witch stuff.  Many have suffered and died during these witch crazes.  You know how it is, it takes one witch to ruin things for the rest of us.  I used to think that people thought witches flew on broomsticks because it was a very sexist world back then, and even the freest witch woman in the world was still tied to her household duties via her broom.  I am not one to ever discount human ingenuity or imagination; but what it, during these crazy witch hunting times, a few flying humanoids showed up and further enforced the whole evil thing.  Just imagine, you’re about to burn a woman for being a witch, and a flying person just happens to buzz overhead, well, wouldn’t that confirm your beliefs?  Okay, so there may have been flying humanoids way back when, and then they went away for a long time and then reemerged in 2000?  Have the witches returned?  That poor police officer certainly thought he was attacked by a witch.  But what is a witch?  In modern times they’re angry young women with damaged hair, black fingernails, and will someday show those jerks who teased them who has the real power.  A few hundred years ago, they were older women who usually lived alone and practiced natural medicine.  But I wouldn’t really call either of those kinds of people a real witch.  There’s no real magic there, I’m pretty sure.  Is there real magic anywhere?  Or is it all just something we don’t understand?  You know what I think?  Monsters.  There have been sightings all over the world of winged monsters.  The mothman, the birdman, Batman.  So maybe there are no aliens, no technology, just monsters.  That would tie up things nicely, wouldn’t it?  But everything in the paranormal realm has fuzzy boundaries.  One explanation does not make a rule.  That creature that attacked that cop, by the descriptions could be categorized as an alien, monster, or a demon.  I certainly don’t think it was any kind of human. 

So, once again, what have we learned?  Nothing?  Probably.  I just know that if some flying humanoid comes near me, I’m running, and I won’t be ashamed to push others out of the way.