In every culture from the North American continent to South America, from the Ural Mountains of Russia, to the jungles of darkest Africa and beyond, there are the monsters that haunt the dreams of children and the hearts of adult humans as well. In the Pacific Northwest there are a hundred ancient Indian tribes and every one of them have a name for their nemesis. Such names as Nantinaq, Hairy Man, Sasquatch, Shampe, Skookum, Skunk Ape, Bekee Nitsaw, and the Yeti. These names come from Native American Indians, Intuit peoples, Himalayan Sherpas, and many more all over the earth! Throughout history it seems the human psyche has been stalked by the unknown and as a substitute for what we don’t understand comes the human imagination. Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychiatry, separated different aspects of the psychological condition labeling them the “Ego” “Super Ego” and the “ID” the level of the subconscious where fears, anxiety, and murder manifested themselves.

According to Freud, the ID possessed the dark side of human nature where the monster in our subconscious came out to play. Dating back to the very beginning of the first species of upright walking primates that would eventually evolve into Cro-Magnons, Neanderthal, and finally Homo Sapiens, our ancestors knew fear and at night experienced terror and death at the claws of the sabre toothed tiger, the huge short faced bear, Mastodons, and gigantic timber wolves who hunted our ancestors in the darkness of the nocturne. Is this where all of our primal fears originate from?

No wonder we still hear terms like “Fireside stories” “Campfire tales” “Wives tales”, all referencing those times in the distant past when our ancestors used fire to drive away nocturnal predators. However, there seems to be more than enough real creatures today out in the woods that would justify just why people still have fears of the paranormal, fear of the unknown, and fear of the darkness! Superstitions of werewolves and vampires are based in actual incidents that could only be explained according to witness accounts! This is why archaeologists are unearthing pioneer gravesites where skeletons have been dismembered and even impaled by a stake or knife in order to keep the undead from disturbing the living.

Man faces not only his own demons and deeply held fears, but it seems that the unknown is more than just a figment of his imagination as almost every culture on the face of the earth has its own monsters! From Mokele mbembe, a gigantic river dinosaur, in the Congo, that some believe may still exist, to the Yeti of the Himalayan Mountains where the distinction between Gods and actual physical beings is a very thin line. It seems superstitions and real live monsters share a very close relationship. This aspect of our perception of reality is entrenched deeply in our consciousness.

In the US where there are persistent stories of terrifying Sasquatch encounters between campers, hikers, hunters, and fishermen, and even disturbing disappearances of people in the forests, it would appear there’s more than enough evidence to justify official recognition of an unknown species related to man that somewhere in the distant past became genetically separated from the human genome. Is our world full of mysterious visitors that we simply don’t know the origin of? Apparitions, lost souls, those who come back from the dead to haunt a particular location or those people they once knew in life? These are the restless spirits that make unholy visitations in the lonely hours before dawn.

Could it be that man’s fears are a product of his psychic instincts reminding him of long lost knowledge that the ancients were well aware of? One witness reported while visiting Roman ruins that he was suddenly stunned by the appearance of a Roman legion of soldiers marching along in images that appeared on the walls! Some scientists think that historic events may leave a calling card, a memory like a tape recording of dramatic and even deadly encounters to extreme that they re-emerge as ghostly visitors from the ethereal realm. Case in point, at the battlegrounds of Gettysburg where actual Civil War solder’s spirits have been filmed, their translucent figures melting back into the surrounding woods, while some tourists report hearing the cries of fighting men, the report of rifles, and the rustling of foliage as soldiers march though the wooded graveyard.

The boogeyman that every child ever heard about during the course of a ghost story or threat made by Mom and Dad if the child didn’t go to sleep or got out of bed in the night is deeply embedded in the back of our minds. For some people with mental disorders like paranoid schizophrenia, the ride into the darkness of the nether world never ends! For some people it’s a fascination to either explore or solve! One thing is for sure whether it all comes from the same common source and is the trickery of Satan himself, or if we are experiencing extraterrestrial visitations, ultra-dimensional travelers, or time bandits, it would seem that our technically advanced and ever shifting awareness still lacks all the answers to explain the realm where fear and rational explanation are at odds!

In the words of one man who sat upon his buckboard with his horses in front of him at the reigns when a huge humanoid bipedal creature strode alongside him, he asked what and who he was. The Bigfoot creature replied to him that he was the enemy of man. The old pioneer was stunned and feared for his life even though all the creature did was walk alongside his horse drawn wagon. So, he prayed to Jesus Christ, the Lord, and when he owned his eyes, the hairy monster was gone. This same situation in a number of reported modern day encounters with Sasquatch has been corroborated by those scared out of their wits, who prayed desperately to the Lord, and their antagonist simply disappeared! If praying to our savior vanquishes our monsters are they not demonic in origin?