When I was a kid, I totally believed in monsters. Monsters I’d read about, like Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monster and the Minotaur. Monsters I’d seen in movies, like Jaws and Leatherface and the birds from, you guessed it, The Birds.
All my friends believed in monsters, too. Even my future boyfriends (I later found out) believed in monsters. Case in point: I once dated a dude who admitted his dad used to tell him a bedtime story about a giant chicken that would sneak into his room at night and watch him sleep. If he’d been a good boy during the day, the Night Chicken would only watch. But if he’d been a bad boy, the Night Chicken would peck him to death.
His dad even put a little ceramic chicken in his room and told him “Don’t forget…the Night Chicken will be coming tonight!” As I think back on it now, this is pretty effed up.
But there’s a reason we believed in monsters when we were kids. It’s because we felt like anything was possible. Magic and make-believe were everywhere because we still let our imaginations run wild. I don’t think I could have reined in my imagination even if I’d tried. It had a mind of its own, and for that, I’m grateful.
To be honest, I think we should keep believing in monsters, because if you look at the world right now, you’ll see…reality sucks. So why not unleash your imaginative beasts and disappear into the world of make-believe?
I’m not alone in this. Haven’t you noticed the uptick in monster-related sightings in the last few months? Recently, there was a nationwide call to storm Area 51 and demand the government finally reveal that the truth is out there. Because what’s better than reality? Little green men, of course.
There’s even an online interactive map (https://liminal.earth) where you can report all your encounters with the unexplainable. As their site says, “Is there a specific place where you’ve seen fairies, ghosts, bigfoot, time travelers, extraterrestrials, ultraterrestrials, crow conferences, sentient lawn computers, lanyard’d ogres, or broccoli wizards?” Well, send them your story and they might include it on their map!
Who knows? Maybe you’ve had a run-in with the blood-drinking Snallygaster. Theodore Roosevelt swears he did, and even organized a hunting party!
Maybe you’ve been terrorized by the Pope Lick Monster…
…or the Jersey Devil…
Or maybe you’ve been haunted by Huggin’ Molly?
She likes to visit you after dark and squeeze you until you die. So you better not be up past your bedtime, kiddies! I heard she likes to party with the Night Chicken…
So embrace your monsters! Let them run wild though your imaginations. Because right now, the real world sucks big time. Of course, there’s one monster I’m still hoping to see a glimpse of in real life. I’m talking about the rarest monster of all, the political spine.
Few people have actually seen it. But I’m gonna keep imagining it exists. And I hope you do, too.