Tag Archives: cryptid

DeerMan

JC is a student who grew up in Topanga Canyon, a town in the mountains of LA. The area is surrounded by dense woods and tons of wildlife.

JC- In like 2020 in COVID when my friends and I wanted to hang out but we couldn’t hang out inside together, we would camp in my backyard and set up tents and all sleep in the tents overnight. I live in kinda a rural area and my backyard backs up to a hill that’s pretty wild, a type of woods. My friends and I developed this legend about this creature called the DeerMan, that comes out at night and terrorizes us while we’re sleeping. He’s half man half deer. I would mess with my friends by going out at night and tapping on their tents and stuff and then in the morning when we all woke up I’d be like ‘guys, did you hear the DeerMan last night?”. The lore extended and eventually, there became this second character. There used to be this owl that would hang out in a tree by my house and we all started calling him Skeekee the Wise and we built up this lore that Skeekee the Wise and DeerMan were mortal enemies and Skeekee the Wise is the defender of all things good and DeerMan is the perpetrator of evil, and the two of them are at a constant clash for power. Skeekee the wise was our protector.

Analysis: 

2020 has already been historically categorized as a very crazy and strenuous year. For the groups of graduating high schoolers across the country, it posed an even harder challenge. All of the things people had worked their whole lives to achieve suddenly didn’t matter in the blink of an eye. COVID was a mass trauma event, almost everyone alive was affected by it and is still dealing with the effects. It was a time that taught people the importance of having a support system and community, especially once those moments of connection are taken away. JC and his friends were lucky to have a way to still see and support each other through this hard time. DeerMan was a completely fictionalized character that existed only within the confines of this group of friends. Creating this character and having an evil figure to jokingly mess around with was a good way for the group to distract themselves from the problems they were facing. When they were hanging out, the only thing they had to worry about was DeerMan, all of the other things going on around them didn’t matter as much. This creature helped them release tension by pranking one another and distracting themsleves with its lore and details. Furthermore, Skeekee the Wise also served a similar, but opposite role, being the character that represented their hope and the promise that one is always protected and that good will always prevail. Having these characters with these themes to connect with was a healthy way for the friends to process what they were going through. From just being an owl that lives in a nearby tree to suddenly transforming into a figure of all that is good in the universe, Skeekee the Wise also perfectly shows the way that myths and cryptids are created all the time by everyone around us. Everything imagined has truth and reality instilled within it. 

El Chupacabra

Text: El Chupacabra 

My informant is the mother of a friend.

She said that El Chupacabra is a Latin American folktale about an unknown creature that sucks the blood out of living animals. El Chupacabra is mostly known for targeting the livestock of farmers, especially goats, hence the english translation of “the goat sucker”. There are different speculations of what it looks like, but the most common tends to be a sort of demented dog.

She also said the tale itself is at least a hundred years old, but became popular around 40 years ago when farmers began losing their livestock in a similar manner to that of a Chupacabra. People, mainly farmers, likely still tell this story as a warning of what to watch out for. El Chupacabra was used as something to scare children with in order to behave or else the Chupacabra would come after them. She thinks the Chupacabra whether real or not demonstrates the highly superstitious culture of Latin America as people quickly speculated the Chupacabra to be of an almost otherworldly nature rather than some animal. She personally believes el Chupacabra is likely just some animal that had perhaps gone undiscovered.

Analysis:

Upon analyzing the Chupacabra, it is a legendary creature or cryptid. The story of the Chupacabra is that it is mainly a monster that goes after farmers’ livestock. Although the Chupacabra is something that is not scientifically proven, people still speculate its existence.

I see this creature as a way to explain the unknown or the fear of something larger and powerful outside. While livestock could have been eaten by wolves or a large animal, the thought of the Chupacabra or a creature in place of a more rational explanation shows a part of the superstitious culture in Mexico that my informant mentions.

The Chupacabra is also used as a monster that parents or older people may use to scare their children, which diverts from it’s origins. Which show a development to its story on a surface level from a creature that is used to explain how livestock or farms get messed with to a monster that also want to potentially hurt humans, or in this case, children.

The Aswang/Tik Tik

Context:

My informant is a member of my family.

My informant said that the Aswang and the Tik Tik are stories about evil entities that live in the provinces in the Philippines. They are very rare that these stories of these entities are in Manila.

But her neighbors around would always talk about the aswang and the tik tik especially when there’s a pregnant woman in the neighborhood. Neighbors would speculate that this person or somebody in the household is pregnant because they saw the Tiktik/aswang lurking on the rooftop. Though they are similar because they can be both seen as Filipino vampires. The difference between them mostly come from the noise that the tik tik makes, which is the same as its name.

She said that when she was pregnant she would always kept a scissors under her pillow. “Because I wasn’t sure if l dreamt of it or if it was real, but I had a feeling that there was a tik tik Outside my window. The tik tik goes on the rooftop and is able to know if someone is pregnant or not. They will open their mouth and let their ling tongue penetrate the roofing until they reach the pregnant belly of the mom and eat/suck the baby out”. Which is why she is told to keep a pair of scissors with her during the night.

She believes these are stories that has been passed down to generations and probably a reminder that we are not alone in this world and that dark entities really exist. It’s relevant because somehow these stories are unique to certain provinces/places in the Philippines and somehow represents culture. Finally, she said that lot of people think it’s real. It would even sometimes be reported in the news if a sighting was witnessed. But there is no actual scientific evidence or photographic evidence or videos.

Analysis:

The tik tik and the aswang are a part of Filipino mythological folklore. But these creatures can be categorized as cryptids.

Filipino vampires, such as the Aswang and the Tik Tik are deceiving creatures. Although my informant does not mention it, these creatures could take the form of animals and even beautiful women. They are widely accepted as female creatures. But with the added context, this story serves as a cautionary tale for those that are vulnerable. Since the Philippines has a lot of provinces and poorer areas, the fear of these vampires is heightened. As they live among smaller communities and prey on pregnant women. The type of tale seems to subvert from the expectation because the tik tik and the aswang are gendered as women that prey on other women. It may be a message directed to women that their fear should not focus on predatory men, but that women or anyone can hurt them.

My informant’s experience with the fear of the aswang and the tik tik comes from being pregnant herself. Pregnant women may naturally fear any harm or danger that could come after their babies and their health. And the fear that a scary monster will hurt them is an extension to this natural motherly fear.

Chupacabra

“The story of Chupacabra is pretty common in Mexican culture–my parents and friends and all would joke about it or tell stories about it. The name means “Goat Sucker,” and it’s like a cryptid kinda like Bigfoot, that sucks the blood out of farm animals, so a lot of farmers kinda are in on this legend too. Basically what would happen is that if a farmer would go to sleep and awaken to see a dead animal with two teeth marks at its side, it would know that the Chupcabra killed that animal. And so my parents would sometimes joke, “Oh, don’t stay out too late because otherwise the Chupacabra will come and get you” so there was an element of fear too.
I didn’t hear about this too much as a serious story, but the legend is mostly like in northern Mexico or the southern USA, since I guess there’s a lot more agriculture and farmers there. Although, one day I was watching a TV channel and I heard that one of the neighboring towns, Cuero, Texas, had a Chupacabra sighting, and they said they found part of the head (of a kinda wolf-like creature) that was found outside her home.”


Context:

This was an in-person interview with a friend of mine who told me about his experiences with this legend from his culture. The text was taken from and recorded during our conversation.


Interpretation:
While descriptions of the Chupacabra vary, the legend almost serves as a cultural manifestation of the fear of the unknown/supernatural. It can be a way to make younger ones obedient by instilling fear, and taps into the similar types of cryptid legends like Bigfoot in the American West.

The Goat Lady

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Houston, Texas
Performance Date: 3/30/23
Primary Language: English

Context

S, a 19-year-old from Houston, Texas, says her fourth grade teacher, Ms. Q, told her about the Urban Legend of the Goat Lady. Ms. Q detailed her own experiences with the Goat Lady, having encountered her in the woods with a couple of her friends during childhood. Ms. Q recalled seeing the Goat Lady stand on her hind legs and stare with lifeless eyes, before barreling rapidly forth towards Ms. Q and her friends. S remembers being absolutely horrified by the retelling of the Goat Lady encounter. S’s family planned a hike in the woods for Easter weekend, but having just heard the story of the Goat Lady, S was terrified to go on the hike with her family. For a while, she was extremely hesitant to go into the woods at all.

Text

According to legend, the Goat Lady is a woman resembling a goat-human hybrid that inhabits the woods of Eastern Texas and eats wandering children who trespass onto her territory. The legend is usually, as is in this example, shared by word of mouth.

Analysis

Notably, the Goat Lady is said to live in the woods and eat children, which is a common theme in cryptozoology. The woods are often viewed as a liminal space, where fear of the unknown easily takes hold and strange encounters are likely. Often, especially in many early American towns, the woods were viewed as the boundaries of civilization, and beyond civilization, is the perception of savagery. In many cultures, especially Native American cultures, the goat is viewed as a symbol of fertility and sexuality. Therefore, it would make sense for the figure of a woman to be crossed with a goat, given that women are primarily viewed as potential mothers and the bearers of offspring. Additionally, women tend to be inherently more sexualized for these abilities. The Goat Lady’s practice of eating young children could be an obscure depiction of backwards behavior, which juxtaposes the accepted norm of women mothering children in a civil society. The opposite of bearing children is eating them; therefore, the Goat Lady could represent the backwards and savage antithesis to the expected status of mothers in women. Given that the liminal space of the woods is often considered a backwards realm beyond civil society, the Goat Lady can viewed as an emblem of female dissent in opposition to societal norms.