Why do people believe in monsters?

Now that is a good question and one that we are going to have to take a look at from many different angles. To begin with, believe in mythical creatures has been with us for as long as man has walked the earth. We see ghosts during the night when it is dark and the next day we might be thinking about a strange creature shambling through the swamp that is behind the house we live in. Fact of the matter is we have all kinds of creatures and the answer might be different for each one.

Man for example has been struggling with the darkness for millennia and even today in the neon lit urban jungle, with light pollution rampant, some of us still see a reason to fear the dark. The reason that we fear the darkness as put forth by scientists is when we were hunters and gatherers we sometimes became pray ourselves. Our ancient ancestors who lived in caves were often set upon by big cats and the danger was at its highest during the night, when darkness surrounded us. These made us humans connect the lack of light with fear.

This fear, despite the lack of big cats has perhaps through the ages made us wonder why we fear it and so we have started making up reasons for it. In some cases there might be good reason, someone might have seen something and perhaps attributed it to something of paranormal origins, or in other words: a monster.

Moonlit scenery John Erling Blad

This might be one possible explanation of why we believe in monsters but then again not all creatures live in darkness and thus we are going to have to take look at it from another angle.

Let‘s say for example ghosts and then to be more specific why there are ghosts. When someone dies and we humans are not sure where they go, we often try and make up an explanation that might make sense. Some of us believe that people go to heaven when they die and yet others believe in ghosts, most often when people die violent and unfortunate deaths. This might be a way for us to explain the sounds we hear during the night as we lay awake, trying to sleep. Again we arrive at the darkness and the effects it has on us.

Sometimes we see something that we don‘t know how to explain and this happened quite a lot before the maturity of science. People would travel to Africa for example and see an antelope in the setting sun of the savanna and mistake it in the poor light as a horse with one horn thus was born the unicorn or so some try to explain it.

Antelope or possible Unicorn

Some brave knight might also have come upon a Nile crocodile and not understanding what it was that he
was seeing might have dubbed it as a dragon. It is now common knowledge to scientists that Nile crocodiles would cross the Mediterranean many years ago when their territory was much more extensive then it is today.

Crocodile or possible Dragon

This does not merely pertain to monster it also extends to everything we just did not understand, for example something that we thought impossible might be explained away as magic.

Whether we believe in monsters or not the fact is that they do exist, what form they take is for each of us to decide!

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May 29th, 2012