I'm in the finishing touches stage of putting together a cryptid guidebook, a project that's been downright fun on a bun to put together. In this particular book I limited my focus to cryptids from Appalachia, an area with a high concentration of critters lurking high up in the mountains, deep in the woods, or down in the hollers. And as much as I knew about local cryptids before I started this research, there were still some surprises along the way. One of them, for me, was the number of serpentine or snake-like creatures, and not just down south where things stay tolerable for large reptiles all year. Even up in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, they have reptilian monsters with recurring sightings year after year.
Now, I know—reptiles can survive in northern Appalachia, which has plenty of snakes and turtles that call it home, along with amphibians like frogs and salamanders. But large reptilian predators tend to stick to warmer climates, especially the types of predators sometimes reported in northern Appalachia's lakes and rivers. Of course, that type of thing has never been a concern for mythological creatures. Norse mythology prominently features a serpent, after all, and that comes from another landscape where reptiles aren't exactly happy in the winter. Really, the prevalence of serpent-like monsters in Appalachia is refective of a much larger pattern. No matter the origin of the folklore or mythology, odds are, it has a snake.
There are some types of creatures that seem to pop up all over world mythology and folklore. I've written about a few of them before, like dragons and little folk. One of the most intriguing categories of pervasive monsters for me as a cryptid nerd is the hairy apeman archetype, exemplified in current pop culture most often as the enigmatic Bigfoot.
Even moreso than other well-known cryptids like Nessie or Mothman, Bigfoot exists in the liminal space between folklore and reality. The sheer number of reported encounters with Sasquatch/Yeti type creatures over the years is its own fascinating phenomenon, even for those who don't personally believe the creature could exist. It's also the cryptid that people are most likely to believe in. A 2022 poll from Civic Science showed that 13% of U.S. adults believe Sasquatch is a real, living creature, which is lower than the percentage who believe aliens have visited Earth (31%) but higher than those who believe in Nessie (9%). A poll from the Association of Religion Data Archives has slightly higher figures, with 13% responding that Bigfoot probably exists, and an additional 3% responding that it absolutely exists.
And these statistics are just within the United States. There are iterations of this creature archetype that go by various names in pretty much every corner of the world. In some places, it's seen as a purely fictional folklore monster, while in others it's accepted broadly as a real creature that lives in the more wild parts of the landscape.
I recently finished watching the second season of Andor. If you don't know it, it's a TV show prequel to the Star Wars movie Rogue One, which takes place right before the events of A New Hope and focuses on the less-heralded members of the rebellion who put the pieces in place for Luke, Leia, Han, and crew to have their big victory. One of those characters is Cassian Andor, whose complete backstory is revealed over the two seasons of the show.
It took me a little bit to get into Andor, but once I did it's shot up my list of favorite Star Wars stories. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't watched it—but this post isn't about Andor as a show. I'm about to get way more pedantic and nerdy, because the first thing I thought of when I heard the name Cassian Andor was a different series I've loved since childhood: the Wheel of Time. In that world, Andor is a country, in fact the largest nation in the Wetlands and where most of the series' main characters were raised.
One function of myth is as a cultural teaching tool. It demonstrates moral behavior and outlines the rules and standards applied to different members of society. Religion has often been a tool to reinforce prescribed societal roles, and this includes gender divisions. You can usually infer which activities, behaviors, and physical traits were most strongly coded male or female by looking at the culture's deities, culture heroes, and other legendary figures.
But the gender division in mythology isn't always a firm binary. There are a slew of deities from around the world who are both genders, or neither, or known to switch back and forth on a whim. I'm intrigued by these figures and their roles in their respective pantheons, and thought other folks might find them interesting to learn about, too.
When it comes to Mesoamerican cosmology, the Aztec tend to get the most press—largely because more Aztec history survived the Spanish than was preserved from many other cultures. When it comes to the Maya, the majority of their codices were destroyed, forcing modern scholars to reconstruct their beliefs from depictions on the structures and artifacts that avoided similar destruction. These efforts are aided by the one mythological text that was preserved by a uniquely forward-thinking Spanish monk named Francisco Ximenez: The Popol Wuj (or Popol Vuj), a name that roughly translates to “Book of the Community”. This text includes the Maya creation story, which flows into the tale of their culture heroes, the twins Hunahpu (or Junajpu) and Xbalanque.
If any place could be said to be the modern day domain of the Maya, it’s Guatemala. Of the 17.6 million people who live in Guatemala, nearly half (43.75%) belong to the Maya peoples. Maya culture lives on in the country’s food and customs, while the empire’s history can be traced through a slew of archaeological sites and the artifacts recovered from them.
Harvest deities are recurring figures in world mythologies—which makes sense. Food is kind of important for a civilization’s survival, for one thing. As a mediocre gardener, I can also understand why ancient people would have assumed the success and failure of crops happened at the whim of some capricious spirit, because the whole thing really does seem inexplicable sometimes.
I’ve been going back through my mythology research for a couple of projects. I always find it interesting to track the ways different cultures viewed similar figures in their pantheon—the relative importance given to one area compared to others, or what other areas of responsibility were under that same deity’s domain. With that in mind, here’s a round-up of some of the harvest gods I’ve taken notes on in my research.
I’m currently reading Muraski Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji—or the first volume of it, at least, which I think is probably where I’ll stop for the time being, considering the burgeoning height of my TBR stack.
For those unfamiliar with it, The Tale of Genji is often cited as the world’s first novel, written in the 11th century by a Japanese noblewoman. Its main value for modern historians is its depiction of court life during the Heian period of Japan, as the events in the book are thought to have been based very closely on Murasaki’s real-life experiences as a lady-in-waiting.
While it’s called the first novel, The Tale of Genji doesn’t completely hold to what modern readers would expect from the form. It does have characters who recur throughout, and the primary protagonist (Hikaru Genji, son of Emperor Kiritsubo) does age, grow, and change over the course of the plot. I’m using the term “plot” loosely here, though, because the book doesn’t have the tight cause-and-effect type of forward momentum we expect from novels today. Instead, it has more the feel of an episodic TV show—there are threads that run across multiple chapters, but the arc is more a series of humps than an overarching narrative. Other essential features of storytelling today are used, but in a way that modern novelists (and readers) would look askance at, like its cast of roughly 400 characters. Comparing it to modern novels is an intriguing study in how the form has developed over the centuries.
Yesterday, I went to the second annual Squonkapalooza in Johnstown, PA. Similar to events like the Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant or the Flatwoods Monster Convention in Flatwoods, Squonkapalooza is a celebration of a regional cryptid—the squonk, in this case, which is one of my favorite critters and one I highly recommend checking out if you’re not already aware of it.
One of the things I went to at Squonkapalooza was a talk by Ronald L. Murphy, Jr. on the meaning of the squonk. During the talk he mentioned some of the animals that used to live in Pennsylvania and are now extinct, like the woodland bison and wolverine. There are others that are officially extinct in PA but are still occasionally sighted, like the mountain lion and wolf. As he said it, if you see a wolf in Pennsylvania in 2024, then you’ve seen a cryptid: a creature that shouldn’t exist in a given place, time, or understanding of reality, and whose existence has not officially been proven.
Brownies have always been one of my favorite mythical creatures. Part of this comes from being a natural night owl and introvert; I feel a certain kinship for beings that only work at night and unseen. But they also intrigue me from a metaphorical standpoint. They work selflessly, never demanding credit for doing chores—but that doesn’t mean they’re creatures you can take advantage of. Ignore them too long, or treat them poorly, and brownies turn into bogarts: malevolent tricksters that steal and make milk go sour.
Brownies are just one of the many little people in world myths and folktales. I’m in the beginning stages of a new novel project that will use a variety of little folk. I’ve been reviewing my folklore research in preparation and thought other writers might also find inspiration in some of these lesser-known little people from around the world.
