There seems to have been a new paranormal creature for every historical period. Fairies were among the oldest, with notable references in Celtic lore. Werewolves and vampires were popular during Victorian Times. The twentieth century saw the advent of Superman—who was known to be fictional—and aliens, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness monster, which some cryptozoologists believe are nonfictional. A pattern to the invention of paranormal creatures¹ as they relate to the time periods in which they emerged can be seen by analyzing their strengths, weaknesses, and technological innovations.

Rare Materials Point to Weaknesses

A common element attributed to paranormal creatures is that they tend to have specific weaknesses, usually in the form of rare materials. Fairies are vulnerable to iron, according to Origins of Fairies (Briggs 1976, 320) and the ChemEurope blog, which states, “Iron, particularly Cold iron, was employed as a protective substance or charm against faeries. In Celtic Folklore, Fae are culturally held to hold an aversion to iron or even be harmed by the touch of iron” (“Iron in Mythology” n.d.).

During colonial times, iron was a high-value commodity. It was difficult to make iron with the technology of the 1700s, so it was reserved for the military and the wealthy. A commoner who possessed a small lump of iron would regard it as a treasure in a world where most of their belongings were made of wood and copper.

Mass production of iron became possible during the Industrial Revolution, according to the PBS documentary American Experience (“Iron and Steel” n.d.). It was during this time that werewolves in folklore began to develop an aversion to silver, a rare material of the time often used in wedding rings and family heirlooms.

The next wave of paranormal creatures emerged in the mid-twentieth century during World War II and the Cold War Era. It was then that radioactivity was becoming public knowledge due to J. Robert Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb and increased public knowledge of the quantum theory. In 1939, DC Comics debuted Superman, an extraterrestrial who was vulnerable to a green radioactive crystal called kryptonite. Radioactive materials were as undesirable back then as they are today (save for low-level radiation used in day-to-day equipment), but before Chernobyl, it would have been extremely unlikely for a common person to come across lethal levels of radiation.

Half a century after Superman, the Terminator first appeared on the silver screen. During the 1980s, personal computers were starting to change daily life, as were speculations that artificial intelligence might one day rule over humanity. Business could be conducted more quickly, and as a result, successful businessmen had far less time to conduct their business. For instance, FedEx’s innovative overnight shipping set new standards. Before FedEx, nothing had to be sent overnight; afterward, corporate commerce had to be conducted more rapidly, because consumers demanded everything immediately. The Terminator, being a killer robot that was sent back in time to retroactively eliminate the mother of the warrior who caused the Terminators’ destruction, was an appropriate symbol of the time. Its vulnerability was time itself, because the Terminator that was sent back in time then caused the warrior’s father to go back in time and conceive of the robots’ demise.

The 1994 Disney cartoon series Gargoyles combined legendary sorcery with modern science. In this cartoon, billionaire Xanatos revives a set of enchanted gargoyle warriors who live by night and become stone by day. Their vulnerability, the Sun, causes them to develop a skin of stone, but it cracks off their bodies when the night falls; they are revived. The stone skin fragments are a rare material used by Xanatos to cast technology-based magic spells that he subsequently uses to fight against the gargoyles.

The parallel between these seemingly unrelated monsters is that they can be banished by materials that were rare for their times. Fairies in Celtic lore were capricious, prone to mischief and bad behavior. Therefore, people protected themselves by using iron. Wood could not have done any good because it was so common. Their logic was that whatever could banish a fairy must have been precious.

Once iron became a household commonality, silver became the next most precious material. Prior to the 1900s, the lore that a silver bullet could kill a monster was unheard of. It was only during the early 1900s that werewolves suddenly became allergic to silver. Lycanthropes had existed as far back as Greek mythology, but they had never had a definitive set of rules. Silver was beautiful, did not corrode, did not chemically react, and was constantly shiny. It then naturally became the bane of the werewolf.

The same pattern fits Superman. Radiation was rare, therefore he would be killed by a green crystal from another world—his home planet of Krypton. The Terminator was produced when the computer age accelerated the timetable of business deals. Therefore, the Terminator was killed by its own time travel; time had become a rare commodity. Gargoyles had superhuman strength at night, so the only way to combat them would be to use their magical skin in combination with technology. In the 1990s, technology was becoming increasingly important, and an expensive new technology emerged: electronics. Therefore, gargoyles could be killed by electronics in combination with sorcery.

Science and Technology Point to Strengths

Weakness based on rare materials are not the only pattern that folklore follows. Paranormal creatures also seem to follow trends in scientific awareness and tech innovation.

Fairies and werewolves pervaded a world where people didn’t understand why livestock went missing or why there were strange rings of mushrooms in the meadow. By the 1900s, these monsters were considered silly and in the realm of children’s stories. Instead, they were replaced by Superman, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness monster. Widespread knowledge of evolution led the public to wonder if there were a missing link (whose only vulnerability appeared to be a film camera rather than a precious material). Widespread knowledge of dinosaur fossils led people to wonder if dinosaurs could still be swimming in a Scottish lake. Rather than pondering mushrooms in the field, people started pointing at odd lights in the sky and wondering about other planets.

Microsoft’s effect on modern life spawned a wave of fears about artificial intelligence. Because no one could catch a killer robot walking through the forest in a blurry video, theories about sentient machines had to be reserved for the future. The public seriously began to wonder if in the year 2000 evil robots would eventually come to be. In this sense, human beings were behaving much like Terminators do—wondering about an enemy from another time period. The killer robot was a monster that did not yet exist but might manifest if society did not handle technology responsibly. It was a futuristic boogeyman.

Legendary and folkloric monsters’ strengths also have common elements. Werewolves are affected by the Moon. Some scholars believe that this is because of the Moon’s relationship to silver, in that they share a similar color. This is according to the 2003 documentary Fang vs. Fiction—although it should be noted that this documentary appeared in the specials section of the Underworld DVD, so the cited scholars are questionable. It is more likely that wolf howls are more frequent during full moons because more moonlight allows for increased nighttime hunting (“January’s Full Moon” 2024).

Superman acquired strength from a yellow sun and was weakened by a red sun, in contrast to a vampire (which might survive a red sun because red light is often used in photography dark rooms). The Terminator was not affected by a heavenly body but by time itself. Time was its weakness, but also its strength. The robot’s ability to travel through time also resulted in its creation, as the Terminator’s destroyed CPU was used to manufacture all future Terminators. Time travel also allowed for mobility along another axis, other than three spatial dimensions.

These strengths are paralleled with historical models of the universe. In colonial times, the general public was aware of only two major celestial bodies, the Sun and the Moon. Therefore, werewolves and vampires had to be influenced by these two cosmic objects, which were important in determining how to sow crops and when the tides were going to rise. By 1939, people were aware that the Sun is not the only star and that stars come in a variety of shapes and colors. Hence, Superman would experience varying effects depending on the type of starlight he was under. In the 1980s, Einstein’s theories on spacetime were still being discussed, and the general public was aware that space and time were interlinked. Because cosmological objects had already been seen in folklore, the monster at the end of the second millennium had to be influenced by time itself, not space. Time was the Terminator’s “moon” to howl to, if Terminators were able to howl.

Predicting Future Creatures

Cryptozoologists will always find new imaginary monsters to add to their zoos. In viewing these historical trends, it is possible to speculate on what kinds of monsters they will devise in the future. These monsters will be based on current trends in science, technology, and culture. Relevant topics include digital technology (massive use of cell phones), immigration, global warming, the coronavirus, economic collapse, string theory, and world-weariness.

I will first mention that I already created a new series of fictional monsters meant for the third millennium. In my short film Wereshark: Neptunerise (Chan 2022a), I created an anthropomorphic shark beast that reacts to the planet Neptune and can only be killed by magnet bullets. In my short film Reinek: Marslight (Chan 2022b), I created an anthropomorphic deer monster called the reinek, which dances perfectly under the light of Mars. I also created a new monster called the Neodragon, which is a reptile monster that reacts to the planet Jupiter in the sky and can only be killed by gold bullets.

While I value my films, I also recognize that they are self-published and therefore have very few views on YouTube. Therefore, it is unlikely that the general public is aware of a Neodragon.

Nonetheless, I predict that cryptozoologists in the future will claim to have discovered a monster that is vulnerable to gold. Silver and iron have already been assigned to other paranormal entities, so the next cryptid must have a new weakness in the form of a precious metal. Gold is a logical next stage. Other potential weaknesses that might be implemented are platinum, Element 115, and other higher elements—yttrium, osmium, antimatter, taaffeite (a newly discovered gemstone)—as well as famous paintings/artwork, and fossil fuels.

Cryptozoologists will likely start discussing the existence of creatures from parallel universes. Of course, many Fortean researchers have been suggesting this for decades, i.e., rods and even Bigfoot, but I predict that parallel universes will factor into cryptozoology far more frequently because space and time have already been discussed. The only other degree of speculative freedom will be alternate realities. Creatures from parallel universes will have different laws of physics, allowing the conspiracy theorist to state that the monster is able to vanish into thin air because the parallel reality gives it the ability to do so. In this sense, the parallel universe is a strength similar to how the Moon is the werewolf’s strength.

Alternatively, the superstring might be the strength or “moonlight” of another imaginary monster. Maybe it will be a monster that gains strength from a superstring and is able to harness a full understanding of the theory of everything, the unification of quantum mechanics and relativity. This monster might have godlike abilities, similar to the Strangers from the 1998 film Dark City, who could tune physical reality through will alone. Advances in string theory and M-Theory might generate paranoia that a godlike monster is causing mass misfortune and pulling divine puppet strings.

They might also invent a new monster that inhabits the world of the cell phone. YouTube is populated by countless videos of the “unexplained,” showing grim creatures in the woods and mysterious entities prowling in people’s driveways. The next logical step would be to imagine a monster that lives entirely in the realm of Wi-Fi, harnessing people’s paranoia as a strength. It will probably have a set of rules wherein if someone uses a cell phone incorrectly, a monster’s wrath will follow.

People who promote conspiracy theories tend to lose interest in subject matter when no new information becomes available. Chemtrails, which were hotly debated in the year 2014 on the Alex Jones show, have waned in popularity. In the same way, aliens are starting to become old hat. Because of this, cryptozoologists will probably stop looking up and start looking down, resurrecting the hollow earth hypothesis. Perhaps they will claim that creatures from the inside of earth are trying to migrate to the surface, meshing their theories with immigration politics. These creatures might have opposite-gravitational abilities from having to live on the underside of the hollow planet. Of course, this violates the laws of physics; negative matter cannot be produced on an efficient scale, according to physicist Michio Kaku (Kaku n.d.).

Due to global warming, there might be a flood of new monsters that are able to withstand intense heat and ultraviolet radiation. For example, one of my unpublished screenplays features a creature called the unicothe, which is the opposite of the vampire in that it gains strength from sunlight and dies when exposed to darkness. Conspiracy theorists will probably postulate a similar monster.

The coronavirus is often compared to science fiction scenarios involving zombies and infectious mutations (i.e., the T-virus from Resident Evil). I predict that the next logical step is for people to imagine a virus that not only takes control of a host’s body but is itself intelligent—that is, a sentient bacterium. They might state that the bacterium is able to target people specifically, thereby mind-controlling major politicians and military leaders. They would fear a world where germs are literally intending to kill people.

In times of a weak economy and suffering job market, unemployed people will have a lot of free time. During this time, some of them might envision a monster that hunts down the wealthy. World-weariness is evident in the amount of time people spend on social media. A new monster might be invented that torments people through boredom or that lulls people with the promise of fun, similar to how mermaids were thought to lull sailors with song.

 

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No one can know the future; they can only predict possible outcomes based on patterns. It remains to be seen how the third millennium will shape the world of cryptozoology and conspiracy theory and, accordingly, the study of skepticism. Nevertheless, history shows us that the human mind will always sculpt new creatures of the night, even in a serene evening.

 

 

References

Briggs, K. 1976. Origins of Fairies. London, UK: Penguin Books.

Chan, Larry. 2022a. Wereshark: Neptunerise. Larry Chan’s YouTube Channel (January 12). Online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJJreoPuSx4&t=8s.

———. 2022b. Reinek: Marslight. Larry Chan’s YouTube Channel (December 30). Online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGCFGn1G16k&t=182s.

Iron and steel. N.d. PBS’s American Experience. Online at https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/streamliners-iron-steel/.

Iron in mythology. N.d.. ChemEurope. Online at https://www.chemeurope.com/en/encyclopedia/Iron_in_mythology.html.

January’s full moon is known as the wolf moon. Do wolves really howl at a full moon? 2024. NPR (January 8). Online at https://www.npr.org/2024/01/08/1222600850/januarys-full-moon-is-known-as-the-wolf-moon-do-wolves-really-howl-at-a-full-moo.

Kaku, Michio. N.d. The physics of interstellar travel. Dr. Michio Kaku Official Website. Available at https://mkaku.org/home/articles/the-physics-of-interstellar-travel/.

Note

1. By “paranormal,” this author refers to fauna that the scientific community considers fantasy.