Hunting Monsters: Cryptozoology and the Reality Behind the Myths

by Darren Naish

The European colonists of North America saw horse-headed monsters and giant serpents in the enormous lakes of the United States and Canada and interpreted indigenous legends about horned water serpents, ‘water panthers’ and giant scaly fish-monsters as descriptions of the same creatures. A sort of cultural hybrid legend was the inevitable consequence. This cultural background exists regardless of any interpretation of monsters as real, flesh and blood animals. Whenever people visit lakes, lochs, pools and so on, it is therefore inevitable that this cultural background is there in their minds, functioning as a framework for the way in which the world is understood. It’s an inescapable consequence of being part of a human culture. Whether we ‘believe’ in water monsters or not, the fact is that we expect to see or experience monsters at such places.