Man Creates Dinosaurs @man-creates-dinosaurs - Tumblr Blog

Vampire movie being popular means I have to read things like “having to be invited in comes from that old vampire movie The Lost Boys”

talesfromthecrypts

We have to do something about the lack of vampire history taught in our schools

talesfromthecrypts

*extremely loud incorrect buzzer* wrong again

man-creates-dinosaurs

I wish I could get a job teaching vampire history in schools...

hapalopus

Please stop discrediting your ancestors' ability to tell stories by trying to find material/physical origins to their stories. Krampus isn't a cryptid, dragon stories weren't inspired by dinosaur fossils, every region has its own mythology and fae are only a thing in Celtic, English, and English-colonized regions, your ancestors were perfectly capable of doing things without help from aliens, and our world is weird enough that tales of mysterious strangers, mass disappearances, memories not lining up, and so on, are better explained as a product of OUR world than hypothetical other worlds/timelines. A lot of weird tales were spun by storytellers. Give some respect to their hard work.

man-creates-dinosaurs

While @hapalopus makes several points here which are undoubtedly true - the evidence for dragon legends being based on dinosaur fossils is actually extremely poor - it clearly hasn’t occured to them that euhemerism - the act of finding material/physical origins for old myths and legends - is a way to keep those stories alive by rooting them in the quotidian. Also folklore travels, so making essentialist claims like “fae only being a thing in Celtic, English, and English-colonized regions” is naive at best. Some of the most famous figures from world folklore originated in different countries than the ones they are associated with today (i.e., La Llorona is of German origin, Yuki-Onna is French). Moreover considering how much of the world the English colonized you might as well just say “fae are everywhere" at this point. Lastly tales of aliens, mysterious strangers, mass disappearances, the mandella effect, and hypothetical other worlds/timelines are all examples of modern myths. IDK what OP thinks they’re doing in this post but they’re essentially trying to gatekeep the way people do folklore.

majingojira

Cryptozoology is not quite folklore. it's gotten more folkloric over the last 20 years or so, for certain (Dogmen being a prime example of it), but it began as a pseudosciencem and for that, it had to try to be scientific. Part of it is a concept shift, part of it is a language shift.

Old school, proper, published cryptoozology (as oppose to any jerk editing a wiki) is mildly rigorous and has some semblance of standards.

For example, George M. Eberheart laid out 10 types of Cryptids for his encyclopedias of Cryptozoology:

Distribution Anomalies - Animals we know to exist but are living outside their normal range (Big Cats in Britain).

Underscribed, Unusual, or Outsized Variations of Known Species - Kraken, Giant Centipedes, Giant Snakes are all examples.

Survivals of Recently Extinct Species - "I'm not dead yet!" (IE: The Thylacine).

Survival of species known only from the fossil record - We know the animal family is real, but is only known via fossils. IE: Giant Ground Sloths, Dinosaurs, and Pterosaurs.

Lingerlings - Kind of a mix of the two above categories. Creatures from the fossil record who may have lasted a bit longer before going extinct properly.

Animals not known from the fossil record but related to known species - It appears like a regular animal, jut a bit different so it might be a new speices. Or it might not be. The King Cheetah is a good example of it. Some thought it was a new species, but it turned out to be a form of melanism.

Animals not known from the fossil record nor related to any known species - This is where things get weird and more folkloric. The Fresno Nightcrawler is a good example of this sort of thing.

Mythical Animals with a Zoological Basis - The monster isn't real, but it might be based on something real. A unicorn (Rhinoceros) or Manticore (Tiger) are examples of this.

Seemingly paranormal or supernatural entities with some animal-like characteristics - This is where you find the Mothman (some cryptozoologists think it was just a giant owl, while skeptics think it was just a regular owl)

Known Hoaxes or probable misidentifications.

Eberheart explicitly did not count:

Insignifigant creatures - an element of the spectacular is needed.

An element of controversy - it's got to have proponents and skeptics.

Erratics - One off or escapees aren't cryptids.

Bizarre Humans - Supernatural humanoids. Vampires, Zombies, and the like.

Angels/Demons - They are primarily supernatural beings.

Aliens - They are not permanent residence, so they are not counted.

While I don't agree with all of the not-counted (Non-controversies lets us skip the Wallabys in England, the Rheas in Germany, the Giraffes of Mexico, the Cocaine Hippos, Californian Zebras, and Texas Ibex), it's helps illustrate what I'm getting at.

There is some semblance of science around cryptozoology (hence why it is a psuedoscience), it focuses on organisms, and it is not looking at other sapients.

It's not just finding 'evidence' to reafirm a belief. There's a bit more 'ritual' to it.

But I have to ask: can you tell me more about the non-standards origins for La Llarona and the Yuki-Onna?

I mean, as far as I know, the Yuki-Onna story was first recorded by a Greek weeb in Kwaidan.

man-creates-dinosaurs

@majingojira, cryptozoology is the "scientification of folklore" to paraphrase cultural critics Roger Grimshaw and Paul Lester's The Meaning of the Loch Ness Monster (1976), and as expanded upon by French folklorist Michel Meurger in his Lake Monster Traditions: A Cross-cultural Analysis (1988), co-written by Claude Gagnon. You obviously have a serious interest, hence your citation of Eberheart, and so if you haven't read Grimshaw, Lester, and Meurger I would highly recommend it. "Scientification of folklore" is really just fancy way of saying euhemerism, which is true cornerstone of cryptozoology and most other Fortean topics. Naturalist Adrian Shine in his recently published A Natural History of Sea Serpents (2024) talks about this as the process of "rationalizing" folklore. It is, as you suggest, a fundamentally pseudoscientific endeavor. And it excludes very little. Some today want to argue that vampires and werewolves (or "Skinwalkers") aren't cryptids. But then what is the chupacabra? Or the Beast of Bray Road? Bernard Heuvelmans, the self-styled Father of Cryptozoology, considered mermaids, fairies, and djinn to all be cryptids as outlined in the third issue of Internation Society of Cryptozoology's official journal. As for La Llarona and the Yuki-Onna... You allude to Lafcadio Hearn's book Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904) whose version of the story of Yuki-Onna has become the canonical one, largely thanks to its presence in Masaki Kobayashi's acclaimed 1964 film Kwaidan, which has been parroted in both Japanese folklore collections and pop-culture (i.e. manga/anime) ever since. However scholar Yoko Makino, in her essay “Lafcadio Hearn's ‘Yuki-Onna’ and Baudelaire's ‘Les Bienfaits de la Lune’” (Comparative Literature Studies Vol. 28, no. 3 Summer 1991: 234-44), has shown that Hearn almost certainly "improved" upon the version of the tale of the Yuki-Onna found in his Kwaidan. The older versions of the Yuki-Onna story we have that pre-date Hearn are very rudimentary in comparison and contain none of the pathos found in Hearn's rendition. They basically just describe a ghostly woman seen during snowstorms; cf. folklorist Michael Dylan Foster's The Book of Yokai (2015/2024) for some examples. Makino speculates that Hearn - conversant in French weird fiction - likely appropriated the dramatic touches found in his rendition from Charles Baudelaire's “Les Bienfaits de la Lune” (The Moon's Blessings), essentially creating the narrative template for what today is thought of as an "authentic" Japanese folktale. La Llarona is a similar story. Though you'll see sources (*cough* wikipedia *cough*) claiming that her story goes back to the 16th-century and even Aztec mythology, there is really nothing in the written record prior to 1857 when a very rudimentary version of the story is first recorded by Mexican historian J.M. Escalante. Folklorist Bacil F. Kirtley, in his classic article "La Llorona" and Related Themes" (Western Folklore, Vol. 19, no. 3 Jul., 1960: 155-168), makes the compelling argument that Escalante was playing off of the German folktale "of 'Die Weisse Frau' (The White Lady)—which reproduces many of the features consistently recurring in the more developed versions of 'La Llorona.'" Mexico saw a massive influx of German immigrants in the mid to late 19th-century and today there are an estimated 1,200,000 Mexicans with partial German ancestry. These migrants left a notable impact on Mexican culture. The accordion, for example, synonymous with traditional Mexican music today, comes from Germany.

majingojira

Thank you for the reply! Very detailed! Definitely adding Grimshaw, Lester, and Meurger to my reading list. Though it does spark me to ask if you have Collin Dickey's The Unidientied. It covers the nuances of folklore in modern times -- how it developed, and weird offroads of various psuedosciences that are more interesting than the mainstream ones in their cultural reflectivity. If only for categorization purposes, I'd argue that a lack of any (pseudo)scientification of a subjected entity would exclude it from classification as a cryptid. Like with the Navajo Spirit Whose Name You Shouldn't Say But People Do So Anyway, they go looking for it but never bother to explain what, biologically, it is. The same with the biologically improbable Dogmen. The best I've seen on Dogmen so far is a speculative evolution design. From what you describe about the Yuki-Onna, it sounds like Lafcadio Hearn crafted a narrative around an explaination monster, drawing in from the animal/monster bride stories primarily (though there are a few in East Asia, IIRC). Again, thank you for the thurough answer!

man-creates-dinosaurs

No problem! I like and agree with your distinction between cryptids and non-cryptids. If there is no "(pseudo)scientification" of a subject, then it's not a cryptid. Of course, as I mentioned earlier the difficulty there is that euhemerism as a hermeneutic excludes nothing. See, as per your suggestion, Skinwalkers. They are discussed by Eberhart who gives the earliest source on them as cryptids as an article by International Cryptozoology Museum proprietor Loren Coleman titled “The Abominable Werewolves of the Southwest” from Strange Magazine no. 7 (April 1991): 40–41.

For those who don't know, Strange Magazine was a short-lived but important paranormal periodical started in 1987 by Maryland magician and filmmaker Mark Chorvinsky and intended as an American counterpart to the UK's Fortean Times. In the same way that FT has a regular cryptozoology column by Karl Shuker, SM had one by Coleman. However the magazine ceased physical publication in 1998 with Iss. 20, though it did produce three online ezine issues.

Anyway, Coleman's article is a classic bit of cryptozoological euhemerism with Coleman assembling a collection of accounts of Hairy Bipeds (some more ape-like and others more canid-like) seen in New Mexico between 1965 to 1970. Coleman then speculates if such creatures might be the basis for the Skinwalker/yee naaldlooshii of Navajo/Diné folklore and cites William Morgan's Human-Wolves Among the Navaho (1936) and Patrick Walsh's “The Skinwalker,” Affword 4, no. 1 (Spring 1974): 20–22 as his two sources on the folklore.

This then would appear to be the exact moment that the Skinwalker entered mainstream cryptozoology, though Coleman has noted that he did discuss Skinwalkers as cryptids earlier in his Creatures of the Outer Edge (1978), co-authored with Jerome Clarke, pages 109-112.

It is peculiar how controversial these figures have become recently, at least on Reddit where r/Cryptids banned discussion of them as cryptids and has begun deleting posts which make reference to the monsters (including posts I made there, which is annoying). Concurrently r/Skinwalkers has also banned discussion of Skinwalkers as cryptids. Moreover, someone showed up on r/Cryptids saying that they were banned from r/Werewolves for asking about cryptid Dogmen. I don't think I realized how big on censorship Reddit was... I understand that this is being done in the name of cultural sensitivity towards North American indigenous peoples, but sooner or later these same misguided crusaders are going to realize that most NA cryptids are connected to indigenous traditions in some way: Bigfoot/Sasquatch, Ogopogo, Thunderbirds, etc... hell even Mothman gets linked up with the so-called "Curse of Chief Cornstalk." It's an unavoidable aspect of American culture. As for Collin Dickey's The Unidentified... funny you should bring that up. I was actually one of the reviewers that Penguin sent a copy of that book to back when it first came out. I... didn't love it. You can read my review here if you want. As a Fortean primer it's not bad. My main issue with it was Dickey's overdependency on the outdated ideas of German sociologist Max Weber regarding the notion of "disenchantment." A lot of Skeptics - like Dickey - love this idea, not because it's an accurate representation of the modern world but rather because it's how they wish the world was. I will say, the one part of The Unidentified I do find myself going back to repeatedly is the part where Dickey discusses the history of conspiracy theories surrounding FEMA. When Hurricane Helene hit Western NC and the people most in need of help were chasing FEMA agents off with shotguns and yelling about how the hurricane was sent by the DOD, I found that it helped to remind people that FEMA were the villains in the original The X-Files movie (1998).

#folklore #mythology #legends #conspiracy theories #skinwalker #cryptids #cryptozoology