I have recently discovered what is quite possibly the most terrifying monster that has ever existed. This is no mere mythical beast that has been relegated to the annals of the oral tradition. Every other supernatural demon of hell is dwarfed in the mere shadow of this creature. Yeti, gorgons, bunyips, even the Beast of Gevaudan can't hold a candle to it.
It hails from the untamed jungles of the Indian subcontinent. The first sightings go back thousands of years. Farmers reported seeing a creature about the size of a dog when on all fours and brown in color, looking vaguely like a combination of a wild jungle fowl and a monkey. It was covered in a coarse covering that resembled either heavy fur or thin feathers. The legs and feet are bare and end in long talons. Long, muscular arms allow it to swing through the thick jungle flora to create the illusion of flight. Dark glassy eyes meet your gaze as they rest above what can only be described as a toothy beak. The early people of India gave this abomination of nature a name, a name whose origins are lost with their early language, but it still casts a chill down your spine.
They called it Chunkhi.
The chunkhi is no mere legend though. Over the centuries, sightings of the chunkhi have continued. Once in a while, you can catch an article in New Delhi newpapers or Indian television reporting that children have gone missing, storefronts being damaged, or food getting stolen. Most of the time, these are commited by hoodlums or the occasional monkey, but don't be fooled, the chunkhi is responsible for at least some of these instances.
So far, these events have been contained to India, but last month, I found an obscure newspaper article from a few years ago that reported a strange creature found near the Nebraska/Missouri border. When questioned, the witness replied, "Well, it looked like a cross between a chicken and a monkey!" Poignant and terrifying words. Could the chunkhi have come to America somehow?
Now is the time to be afraid.
Showing posts with label scary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scary. Show all posts
Monday, October 13, 2008
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Send in Anyone BUT Them!
Alright now, it's October and I've been pussyfooting around this whole scary shit series long enough. It's time to get serious. We're going to deal with a truly contemptable plague of evil that is sweeping across our society and threatens to destroy us all...
...CLOWNS!
The irony of clowns is so sweet, I'm pretty sure it will give you diabetes. Here we have a universal class of human beings who have devoted themselves to the art of making people laugh, and yet they are one of the most feared and misunderstood images in our world today. Does anyone not know somebody who is afraid of clowns? Are you afraid of clowns? I'll bet you are. Yeah, you put on a brave face and pretend that you can take it, but as soon as one of those jolly white-faced fellows saunters in your direction, your heart starts to race, and you begin to wonder if he's going to hit you over the head with that balloon pump and drag you off into an alley where he'll do unspeakable acts to you. What exactly? Murder? Rape? Ritualistic sacrifice? All of the above? Don't ask me, it's your imagination, sicko.
What is the source of coulophobia, as it's called in clinical circles? The most basic reason it would seem is the makeup. The face of a clown is meant to exaggerate the existing features and contours of the clown's face. Now exaggeration is the cornerstone to comedy. I refuse to dissect humor, but funny is built upon blowing things out of proportion. This distorion of reality is not natural, humans with faces this grotesque would be shunned by mainstream society. Think of that hunchbacked dude from 300. That guy made week-old road kill look like a good lay. Clowns take that look and apply it in a brightly colored 2-D pattern on their faces. It's easy to see why this weirds people out, especially young kids who are still trying to conceptualize the world around them. You think you finally have a grasp on what other people should look like, and then all of a sudden in comes this clown to the schema. Holy-fuckin'-shit-balls-with-nuts-and-a-cherry-on-top!
So, this basic premise is in place. What happens next is that some of the more creative among us decide to run with the idea and make a caricature of it, creating a class of clowns that are freaky in their own right. It, Poltergeist, Spawn, Batman, and even Doctor Roxo the Rock and Roll Clown have all created pre-packaged images of scary clowns that require no thought of our own to understand how evil these bastards are. Add to that instances like John Wayne Gacy, a very real monster, and its no wonder why so many people today are terrified of clowns. It's a wonder I'm not; I was scared of everything as a kid. I was scared by my dad in clown makeup once as a very young lad, but that's the only instance I can recall.
What really unnerves me about clowns is none of these factors. What bugs me is the fact that there is an entire school of art that is devoted to clowning. Individuals who take this stuff so seriously that they have developed an entire craft to putting paint on your face and wearing giant shoes. This whole Commedia dell'Arte thing robs clowning of its basic principle, and if there is one thing that guides me in this plane of reality, it is that...say it with me now...
Jokes are not funny if you have to explain them!
Of course there are also Ute myths of a race of cannibalisitic clowns known as the Siats, so maybe there is something to this scary clown thing.
I will leave you with the supposed eerie words of one of the masters of horror, Lon Cheny: "There is nothing funny about seeing a clown in the moonlight."
If you do see this, run like hell, if you haven't shit yourself first.
This Post Dedicated to Larry Harmon, the King of TV Clowns
...CLOWNS!
The irony of clowns is so sweet, I'm pretty sure it will give you diabetes. Here we have a universal class of human beings who have devoted themselves to the art of making people laugh, and yet they are one of the most feared and misunderstood images in our world today. Does anyone not know somebody who is afraid of clowns? Are you afraid of clowns? I'll bet you are. Yeah, you put on a brave face and pretend that you can take it, but as soon as one of those jolly white-faced fellows saunters in your direction, your heart starts to race, and you begin to wonder if he's going to hit you over the head with that balloon pump and drag you off into an alley where he'll do unspeakable acts to you. What exactly? Murder? Rape? Ritualistic sacrifice? All of the above? Don't ask me, it's your imagination, sicko.
What is the source of coulophobia, as it's called in clinical circles? The most basic reason it would seem is the makeup. The face of a clown is meant to exaggerate the existing features and contours of the clown's face. Now exaggeration is the cornerstone to comedy. I refuse to dissect humor, but funny is built upon blowing things out of proportion. This distorion of reality is not natural, humans with faces this grotesque would be shunned by mainstream society. Think of that hunchbacked dude from 300. That guy made week-old road kill look like a good lay. Clowns take that look and apply it in a brightly colored 2-D pattern on their faces. It's easy to see why this weirds people out, especially young kids who are still trying to conceptualize the world around them. You think you finally have a grasp on what other people should look like, and then all of a sudden in comes this clown to the schema. Holy-fuckin'-shit-balls-with-nuts-and-a-cherry-on-top!
So, this basic premise is in place. What happens next is that some of the more creative among us decide to run with the idea and make a caricature of it, creating a class of clowns that are freaky in their own right. It, Poltergeist, Spawn, Batman, and even Doctor Roxo the Rock and Roll Clown have all created pre-packaged images of scary clowns that require no thought of our own to understand how evil these bastards are. Add to that instances like John Wayne Gacy, a very real monster, and its no wonder why so many people today are terrified of clowns. It's a wonder I'm not; I was scared of everything as a kid. I was scared by my dad in clown makeup once as a very young lad, but that's the only instance I can recall.
What really unnerves me about clowns is none of these factors. What bugs me is the fact that there is an entire school of art that is devoted to clowning. Individuals who take this stuff so seriously that they have developed an entire craft to putting paint on your face and wearing giant shoes. This whole Commedia dell'Arte thing robs clowning of its basic principle, and if there is one thing that guides me in this plane of reality, it is that...say it with me now...
Jokes are not funny if you have to explain them!
Of course there are also Ute myths of a race of cannibalisitic clowns known as the Siats, so maybe there is something to this scary clown thing.
I will leave you with the supposed eerie words of one of the masters of horror, Lon Cheny: "There is nothing funny about seeing a clown in the moonlight."
If you do see this, run like hell, if you haven't shit yourself first.
This Post Dedicated to Larry Harmon, the King of TV Clowns
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Frankly Speaking
Brief short answer test question: which classic monster has been misrepresented more than any other?
Answer: Frankenstein's Monster
Aside from the obvious nomenclature issues (Frankenstein is his creator's name, not his name), for the most part, this poor guy has been reduced to a green zombie. This is not of course a slam on zombies; they'll get theirs in due time. Let's start with the source: Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley, then 19 year old lover of Percy Bysshe Shelley, one night in 1816 after the two of them and Lord Byron had spent the evening drinking and reading ghost stories. They then resolved to see who could write the scariest story. Mary wrote Frankenstien, and Lord Byron gained the inspriation for The Vampyre, the forerunner of the gay Victorian vampire. Clearly Mary was the winner.
So the creature was designed to be frightening from the beginning, and indeed he was. Imagine a man sewn together from various exhumed bodies. Now, take all of those Hollywood images of a green skinned gargantuan with the giant flat top and bolts in the neck, and throw them out the f-ing window. Keep the height, but give him long, black hair and an eerie tranluscent yellowish skin that allows you to see his blood vessals and such underneath. Eeeeeew!
The grotesqueness is key to the scariness, but there is more at work here than pure pug fugliness. What is truly scary about the creature is that despite his outward appearance and superhuman strength and endurance, he is a man; a man with feelings, a mind, and all of the trappings of humanity. He feels loneliness, fear, anger, and vengeance, and is fundamentally weak enough to succumb to them as we all are, and though he is capable of murder, he still suffers from remorse after the act. He is as complex a character as any other, and by complex, I mean more than,
"Meeeeeh, I'm a horrible misunderstood monster who is hated by others, but you are the one person who sees beyond the mask, but you still don't know if I'll suck your blood, so let's make out."
This idea was translated in an excellent manner by Boris Karloff in the classic Universal film. You could see the pain and confusion in his eyes, you felt it as much as he did. It broke your heart when he accidentally drowned the little girl, because you knew that he was still a danger and had to be stopped. This model was only charactured in subsequent portrayals, adopting the "Herman Munster Model". I will note that for all of its problems, Van Helsing did a decent job at restoring at least some of the creature's nobility, even if it was at the loss of its scariness.
So why is he scary? It's not just that he is a hulking brute with an unnatural visage. Frankenstein's monster scares us because he was created by a mortal. He is man-made, and he is largely a failure at the attempt to create life. We fancy ourselves as the most talented beasts to walk the planet and are capable of anything, and yet we are not. The sky is not the limit, and there are some things that we simply cannot do, or should not. We possess the potential to create our own destruction, and not as a faceless disease or other abstract means, but in a grossly twisted reflectionof ourselves. We fear him because he reflects our own shortcomings as individuals, and as a species. We look in the mirror and are horrified at what looks back at us.
Answer: Frankenstein's Monster
Aside from the obvious nomenclature issues (Frankenstein is his creator's name, not his name), for the most part, this poor guy has been reduced to a green zombie. This is not of course a slam on zombies; they'll get theirs in due time. Let's start with the source: Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley, then 19 year old lover of Percy Bysshe Shelley, one night in 1816 after the two of them and Lord Byron had spent the evening drinking and reading ghost stories. They then resolved to see who could write the scariest story. Mary wrote Frankenstien, and Lord Byron gained the inspriation for The Vampyre, the forerunner of the gay Victorian vampire. Clearly Mary was the winner.
So the creature was designed to be frightening from the beginning, and indeed he was. Imagine a man sewn together from various exhumed bodies. Now, take all of those Hollywood images of a green skinned gargantuan with the giant flat top and bolts in the neck, and throw them out the f-ing window. Keep the height, but give him long, black hair and an eerie tranluscent yellowish skin that allows you to see his blood vessals and such underneath. Eeeeeew!
The grotesqueness is key to the scariness, but there is more at work here than pure pug fugliness. What is truly scary about the creature is that despite his outward appearance and superhuman strength and endurance, he is a man; a man with feelings, a mind, and all of the trappings of humanity. He feels loneliness, fear, anger, and vengeance, and is fundamentally weak enough to succumb to them as we all are, and though he is capable of murder, he still suffers from remorse after the act. He is as complex a character as any other, and by complex, I mean more than,
"Meeeeeh, I'm a horrible misunderstood monster who is hated by others, but you are the one person who sees beyond the mask, but you still don't know if I'll suck your blood, so let's make out."
This idea was translated in an excellent manner by Boris Karloff in the classic Universal film. You could see the pain and confusion in his eyes, you felt it as much as he did. It broke your heart when he accidentally drowned the little girl, because you knew that he was still a danger and had to be stopped. This model was only charactured in subsequent portrayals, adopting the "Herman Munster Model". I will note that for all of its problems, Van Helsing did a decent job at restoring at least some of the creature's nobility, even if it was at the loss of its scariness.
So why is he scary? It's not just that he is a hulking brute with an unnatural visage. Frankenstein's monster scares us because he was created by a mortal. He is man-made, and he is largely a failure at the attempt to create life. We fancy ourselves as the most talented beasts to walk the planet and are capable of anything, and yet we are not. The sky is not the limit, and there are some things that we simply cannot do, or should not. We possess the potential to create our own destruction, and not as a faceless disease or other abstract means, but in a grossly twisted reflectionof ourselves. We fear him because he reflects our own shortcomings as individuals, and as a species. We look in the mirror and are horrified at what looks back at us.
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