8 Modern Mythological Creatures
By Joseph F. Nacino
To get you ready for Halloween, check out our list of 8 modern mythological creatures that scare and fascinate us.
There’s a saying that there’s nothing new under the sun. However, our imagination constantly filters our perception such that our history will always be marked by the strange and the unknown. That’s why for this October, we decided to look at the modern mythological creatures that have sprung up before and during the Age of the Internet. These creatures have their own stories about themselves—or even reinvented themselves with new stories—to achieve their own mythology.
1. Slender Man
In today’s Internet Age, the perfect example of the modern mythological creature is the Slender Man. Originally an internet meme by Eric Knudsen that exploded as a creepypasta in 2009, the Slender Man is a tall, thin man that haunts children. Unlike other creepypasta creations like Jeff the Killer or The Rake, the Slender Man has managed to make the transition to the real world when two pre-teen girls tried to murder their friend in Wisconsin in 2014 as a sacrifice to this creature.
2. Clowns
Though clowns have been present throughout human history, these funny-looking comic performers have both entertained and unsettled us with their white-painted skin and bulbous noses. The unsettling feeling is ratcheted up higher if one sees a clown in incongruous places like dark streets or in the woods, which could explain the current spate of threatening clown sightings in the US and the UK.
3. Infected
With movies like 28 Days Later, we now dread the spread of a sickness that would turn people into raving mad but still-living flesh-eaters (unlike zombies, which are undead). That’s why people started getting jittery in 2012 when a drug addict gnawed off a man’s face supposedly due to an illegal drug called ‘bath salts.’ Recently, a similar crime involving a drug called flakka happened again in Florida this year.
4. Black-Eyed Children
The urban legend of black-eyed children dates back to 1998 but stories have appeared sporadically. These children, with ages ranging from 6 to 16, usually appear from out of nowhere and ask people for help. When you get a closer look at them, the children have black eyes and you get an unnerving feeling of fear around them.
5. Kuchisake-Onna
Kuchisake-Onna is an urban legend from Japan. Its origin goes back to an unfaithful wife who cheated on her samurai husband, who retaliated by cutting her face with his sword. Later on, the story of a slit-mouthed woman wearing a surgical mask who slashed at people who answered her questions wrong surfaced in the ‘70s and started scaring the Japanese public. This legend soon jumped to South Korea, where the woman wore a red surgical mask.
6. The Annabelle Doll
The Annabelle doll is a Raggedy Ann doll that is supposedly demonically-possessed. According to demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, the doll’s name came from the spirit that haunted the doll—a dead girl named Annabelle Higgins—but this was actually a lie made by the demon in the doll. The doll became so popular when it was first seen in James Wan’s movie The Conjuring in 2013, it had its own spin-off movie the following year.
7. “The Hands Resist Him” Painting
Not a creature technically, this creepy painting has achieved a certain notoriety after it was traded on eBay. This painting actually has a mundane origin: created by the artist Bill Stoneham in 1974, he based it on an old photograph of him and his neighbour while they were children. The painting soon acquired its own legend when it was reported that the figures in the painting moved on its own. This object actually represents a number of supposedly haunted kitschy objects available on eBay.
8. The Flying Spaghetti Monster
Originally a satirical tool, the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is a deity of a full-blown social movement. First cited by Bobby Henderson in 2005 to protest the decision of the Kansas State Board of Education to allow the teaching of intelligent design in schools, the FSM is the god of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Pastafarianism, and has its own developing mythology (colanders, anyone)?
Know of any other modern mythological creatures we missed out on? Let us know below!
