Continued from Terrible Monsters Baba Yaga

Series began in: Terrible Monsters: Loch Ness, Banshee, Chupacabra

 Overview:

Reclusive proto human? Gigantic hermit with a thrift shop fur coat? Mountain gorilla with a poor sense of direction and a commitment to walking upright? Bigfoot exists as more of a simian J.D. Salinger than a monster proper. A brief, immense, presence made significant by his refusal to be known.

Stalked by friendless A.V. Clubbers, like a pretty girl who once retrieved their inhaler from a of huddle mean jocks, the lore around Bigfoot is that of our pursuit, with little attention paid to his purpose or nature. He is what we need of him. The sum of our knowledge could serve as the tagline of a match.com profile:

Large, bipedal, creature enjoys long walks on the tundra, startling hikers, and thwarting the ambitions of fourth rate documentarians. Looking for fellow recluse to share lightly furnished cave and dour silences.

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Judge a society not by its heroes, but its monsters. A culture’s heroes speak to the best of its ambition, but it is the monster that teaches their children the hard lessons of caution, temperance, and tolerance that a parent might be too tired or drunk to articulate at the end of a long day. So why not have a monster teach it? I still can’t piss outside, such is my fear of “Sinjin The Cruel Moth what snatches up rude boy’s peepees”.

It is thus that we begin our series examining the history, menace, and broader cultural connotations of each nation’s monsters. Let us begin.

Loch Ness Monster

Overview

 A pile of old rags strewn across a log, or, a dirty Scottish plesiosaur too stupid to find the ocean? In the darkest of legends, if they can be believed, a guy was once down by the lake and saw it kind of swimming around…and then it left, only to be seen by another guy a few years later. Each time it was seen it did a little less, until those who were drawn by its antediluvian malice were condemned to stand by the shore, with not much going on, until they got bored and bought an over-priced souvenir.

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