The Exorcist: A Marriage of Spirit and Matter in the Style of William Peter Blatty

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

William Peter Blatty, the author of The Exorcist, has an eccentric style that is marked by his tendency to create similes and metaphors that unite concrete and abstract terms. This practice is so commonplace in his novel as to indicate that it is more than merely a technique; it is essential to his narrative voice and, therefore, part of both his novel’s point of view and its theme.

 
In just the prologue to his novel, he includes the following tropes, each of which combines the physical and the spiritual, the literal and the figurative, the concrete and the abstract:

• a “premonition clung to his [Father Merrin’s] back like chill wet leaves” (3);
• “[the] tell had been sifted, stratum by stratum, its entrails examined, tagged and shipped” (3);
•  “he dusted the thought like a clay-fresh find but could not tag it” 4);
• “slippers, [the] groaning backs [of which] pressed under his heels” (4);
• “shoes caked thick with debris of the pain of living” (4);
• “The Kurd stood waiting like an ancient debt” (4);
• “a splintered table the color of sadness” (5);
• “he waited, feeling at the stillness” (5);
• “the fractured rooftops of Erbil hovered far in the distance, poised in the clouds like a rubbled, mud-stained benediction” (5);
• “it [“safety” and “a sense of protection and deep well-being”] dwindled in the distance with the fast-moving jeep” (5);
• “some dry, tagged whisper of the past” (5-6);
• “its dominion was sickness and disease” (6); “the bloody dust of its predestination” (7-8);
• “icy conviction” (8). 
  

What, one may ask, does Blatty gain, as an artist, by mixing the sensual and the ideal, the real and the intangible, the concrete and the abstract? The author himself offers a clue, in his novel’s prologue:

The man in khaki shook his head, staring down at the laceless, crusted snows caked thick with debris of the pain of living. The stuff of the cosmos, he softly reflected: matter; yet somehow finally spirit. Spirit and the shoes were to him but aspects of a stuff more fundamental, a stuff that was primal and totally other (4).

This paragraph suggests that Father Merrin does not view reality in dualistic terms, as consisting of matter and of spirit, both of which are real. Rather, he is a monist, someone who believes that reality consists of only one essential element, although this element can appear to have two distinct expressions, that of matter and that of spirit. Truly understood, however, each is a mere shadow, as it were, of the one, true “stuff,” which is “more fundamental” and “totally other,” which is, in religious terms, God. According to Father Merrin's faith as a Catholic, God is omnipresent, or everywhere present at once; therefore, the Spirit of God penetrates, if it does not actually embody, all things, shoes and “spirit” alike. If matter and spirit, like matter and energy, are interchangeable with one another, the body which housed a human soul in the distant past may now be mere bones, an artifact among other artifacts, as Blatty’s inclusion of human bones in his catalogue of other relics at the outset of the novel’s prologue indicates:

The dig was over. The tell had been sifted, stratum by stratum, its entrails examined, tagged and shipped: the beads and pendants; glyptics and phalli; ground-stone mortars stained with ocher; burnished pots. Nothing exceptional. An Assyrian ivory toilet box. And man. The bones of man. The brittle remnants of cosmic torment that had once made him wonder if matter was Lucifer upward-groping back to his God. And yet now he knew better. . . (3-4).

The “he” in the final sentence of this paragraph might seem ambiguous: does it refer to Father Merrin or to humanity? Is it an individual or a universal perspective, the understanding that human skeletal remains do not signify a Luciferian “upward-groping back to. . . God?” The ambiguity is resolved almost as soon as it arises, if it does, in fact, arise at all, by the context of the paragraph in which the personal pronoun appears, for the paragraph speaks not of the priest, but of humanity: “he,” therefore, refers to “man,” not to Father Merrin, whose own point of view is very different, as one may already have discerned, than the worldview implied by metaphysical dualism, which sees both matter and spirit as opposite, if not opposing, realities, whereas Father Merrin sees them as both but “aspects of a stuff more fundamental, a stuff that was primal and totally other,” or as expressions or, perhaps, indications, of a transcendent divinity.
 
Blatty’s mixing of the concrete and the abstract also has the effect of making the latter seem more substantial, even more sensual, than it might be if it were linked, in simile or metaphor, to other abstract, rather than with concrete, terms. A “premonition” that clings to one’s “back like chill wet leaves” can be felt: it is thick and wet, clammy and cold; a “tell” that has “entrails” is a living thing—or, perhaps, a once-living thing, murdered by the archaeologists as much as by time, in order that it might be dissected, and its ancient artifacts, including the “bones” of “man” examined and catalogued; “stillness” that can be felt is tangible, indeed.
 
By mixing the concrete and the abstract, Blatty breathes life, as it were, into dry and withered concepts and sensations, giving them the “flesh” of sensual qualities that can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched; at the same time, his marriage of matter and spirit suggests the monistic metaphysics that Father Merrin believes expresses the reality of a wholly “other” God who transcends both and yet, paradoxically, somehow also brings the two “aspects” of reality and, indeed, of divinity, together in himself, just as, in the same cosmic sense, Jesus Christ brings matter—the flesh—and spirit together as the incarnation of God.
 
It is the notion that God is not physical or spiritual, but other, that Father Karras has not yet understood. Therefore, for him, the physical and the fleshly aspects of human existence are grotesque and offensive, as is seen in Father Karras’s reaction to a homeless man, whom he sees as vile. Karras has come, of late, to doubt his faith, partly because of the concrete embodiment of sin in human flesh and partly because of the reality of evil, which is also often associated with the physical and corporeal aspects of existence. The priest sees the decadence of sin in the person of a homeless man who pleads with him for alms:

. . . He could not bear to search for Christ again in stench and hollow eyes; for the Christ of pus and bleeding excrement, the Christ who could not be. . . (51).

Father Karras seems to equate human existence, or its fleshly aspect, at least, with evil:

A harried man with many appointments, the Provincial had not pressed him for the reasons for his doubt. For which Karras was grateful. He knew that his answers would have sounded insane: The need to rend food with the teeth and then defecate. . . . Stinking socks. Thalidomide babies. An item in a paper about a young altar boy waiting at a bus stop: set on by strangers; sprayed with kerosene; ignited. . . (54).

He has not yet attained the revelation that Father Merrin has experienced. Once, like Father Karras, the older, in some ways worldlier, Father Merrin found it difficult to love his neighbor as himself and to see in the human face and form the image and likeness of God; he has since overcome this stumbling block to faith, just as he has come to understand that evil is an offense to the goodness of God, not a quality inherent in mere matter or fleshly existence:

. . . The old man in khaki looked up into eyes that were damply bleached as if the membrane of an eggshell had been pasted over the irises. Glaucoma. Once he could not have loved this man (3).

Indeed, it might be argued that Father Merrin has come to love the downtrodden and the oppressed because of their suffering, because of the evil in the world. Unlike Father Karras, who believes that demons are merely personifications of various evils, Father Merrin knows that the “Legion” of demons that claim to haunt Regan MacNeil are lying, that “there is only one,” the enemy of God, for Father Merrin has encountered—indeed, has fought—him before, in the guise of the demon Pazuzu, and knows that the true identity of the demon represented by the idol with the “ragged wings; taloned feet; bulbous, jutting, stubby penis and a mouth stretched taut in feral grin” is none other than Satan himself, the source and living embodiment of evil.
 
Father Karras is a materialist—or is in danger of becoming one. As such, he is obsessed with the physical, the fleshly, disease, and death; he is close to believing that only matter is real; and he has come to believe that evil is explainable in natural terms, as the effects of organic malformations of the brain or other physiological abnormalities.
 
Father Merrin, as a monist, accepts both the material, including the fleshly, and the spiritual as real, believing them to be but two aspects of a higher, unknowable “stuff” that is “totally other” than either of them and that evil is essentially nothing more than an offense to God. He is able to love Regan, despite the horrific onslaught of the demon—or the devil—who assaults her from within, often by the vilest and most corporeal means available to him—Regan’s own body.
 
Father Karras, on the other hand, is reluctant to seek “Christ again in stench and hollow eyes; for the Christ of pus and bleeding excrement.” It is only after he understands that God is beyond good and evil but is himself the essence of love that Father Karras can love Regan, in all her humanity, the way that Father Merrin has come to love human beings, whether a Kurd or the daughter of an actress who is temporarily residing in Georgetown. It is then that Father Karras can be the exorcist he has been called upon to be and can deliver the child whose body has been both a source of demonic violation of a temple of the Holy Spirit and a stumbling block to his own faith.
 
By mixing the concrete with the abstract in the peculiar similes and metaphors that appear frequently throughout his novel, Blatty brings together the material and the spiritual, making the former seem as tangible as the latter and suggesting one of his novel’s themes, which is that both aspects of reality find resolution, if not synthesis, in a higher, “totally other” form of being.

Source of quotations: Blatty, William Peter. The Exorcist. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. Print.

Implications of Horror Fiction's Natural Antagonists

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

Bela Lugosi is Count Dracula. Source: Wikipedia.

In a previous post, we considered the ethical and metaphysical implications of supernatural villains. In this post, let's consider the implications of horror fiction's natural antagonists.

For those who subscribe to a metaphysical dualism, sources of evil are often divided into supernatural and natural. The latter are often animals or natural disasters. Since such entities and forces are not moral agents, they are not held responsible for the “evil” (destruction, injury, and death) they cause, so there is no ethical dimension to their behavior.

However, when a moral agent controls a natural force or being, a moral dimension does exist, but in regard to the human actors, since they, as moral agents, are responsible for the harm that they unleash through the agency of the natural forces or creatures they direct.

The creature from the Black Lagoon. Source: pri.org

Nevertheless, as anyone who has watched a movie such as King Kong (1933), The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), or Jaws (1975) is aware, wild animals can cause great havoc.

In The Creature, during an expedition to the Amazon, geologists investigate the fossilized remains of an organism intermediate between Earth's marine and terrestrial life forms. Thereafter, the team leader recruits an ichthyologist to assist them, but when they return to their campsite, they discover that the other team members have been killed, supposedly by a jaguar. (In the leader's absence, a surviving member of the species represented by the fossilized remains, curious about the scientists' camp, visits the site, where, frightened by the researchers, it attacks and kills the victims.)

Kay Lawrence and the creature. Source: reddit.com

The expedition then visits the black lagoon at the end of a tributary. When one of their members, Kay Lawrence, goes swimming, she is stalked by the creature, who loses a claw after becoming entangled in one of the drag lines of the crew's ship. Subsequently, the creature kills other members of the expedition until, caught, it is caged aboard the ship.

Escaping, it kills several more of the scientists and captures Kay, taking her to its lair in a cavern. The remaining scientists track the creature, rescue Kay, and kill the monstrous “Gil-man,” shooting it repeatedly.

Although the monster commits several murders, kidnaps Kay, and terrorizes the scientific team, it acts in self-defense, rather than with hostile intent, in an effort to protect itself and, in the case of Kay, perhaps as the result of its seeking a mate.

At no point does the creature intentionally harm anyone, other than in defense of its own life, and its self-defensive behavior is prompted by its instinct for survival, just as its abduction of Kay is an effect of its mating instinct. There is no malice aforethought. The creature does not plan; it does not act with conscious and deliberate intent; and most of its behavior is reactive, rather than causative. Therefore, the creature is not a moral agent.

King Kong meets Ann Darrow. Source: basementrejects.com

King Kong and the great white shark of Jaws are, like the creature from the Black Lagoon, merely animals that react to threats to their lives or, perhaps, with respect to Kong, the mating instinct (although, in his case, this possibility seems a stretch, given his size respective to that of his captive, Ann Darrow; it may be that Kong carries her off simply because he has been conditioned to do so by the natives' periodic practice of offering him a human female sacrifice.)

Indeed, it is often the human characters in such films who cause the reactions of the animals they encounter, hunt, or harass, which, of course, makes the human characters, as moral agents, morally responsible for the resulting destruction, injuries, and deaths their own behavior toward the “antagonists” sets in motion.

God questions Job. Source: wondersforoyarsa.blogspot,com

In Judaeo-Christian-Christian theology, God is a moral agent because he holds Himself morally responsible for the acts he performs. Although his behavior may be mysterious, at times, to human beings, since they lack his omniscience, He declares Himself “righteous” and “without sin,” and holds human beings, his creatures, morally responsible for their lack of faith and trust in Him and His self-characterization, expecting them to trust that He is the perfect moral agent he declares himself to be. It is a sin for them to characterize him as other than he has revealed Himself to them to be. Angels are also moral agents, with free will; some, rebelling against God, were cast into hell; those who remained faithful to Him reside in heaven with Him, as his messengers and servants.

From a Judaeo-Christian perspective, other supernatural agents are either evil in themselves (demons, the “fallen angels” who rebelled against God) or evil because they participate in evil (unrepentant sinners) or allow themselves to be empowered by evil supernatural agents (witches, vampires, werewolves).

From this point of view of this religious tradition, therefore, moral agents can be either supernatural or natural, although, among the latter category of such agents, only human beings, not animals or forces of nature, can be so classified.

An Essay on the Monstrous

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

Source: Public domain

What is “monstrous”? Does the concept change, thereby altering the understanding of the meaning of the term; do merely the specific instances, the incarnations, so to speak, of the monstrous change; or is there a modification of both the understanding and the incarnations?

 

Source: Public domain

Certainly, the idea of the origin of monsters has changed. Once, monsters were considered omens, or signs warning of divine displeasure, or anger, concerning various types of behavior. Later, monsters were regarded merely as mistakes, or “freaks,” of nature. The origin of monsters, once supernatural, became natural. The hermaphrodite became Frankenstein's creature; the Biblical behemoth became the great white shark of Jaws. (Between these extremes, perhaps, as the great white whale, Herman Melville's Moby Dick.)

 

 Source: Public domain

Prior to the shift from a supernatural to a natural cause of monsters, there had been a shift in the way in which the world, or the universe, was understood. When God had been in charge of the universe He'd created, the universe and everything in it had had been meaningful; in God's plan, there was a place for everything, and everything was expected to stay in its assigned place. The universe was an orderly and planned place, because it had been created according to God's plan, or a design, and existence was teleological. Monsters were beings or forces that disrupted the orderliness of the universe, sought to disrupt God's plan, or showed disobedience to God's will, either by tempting others to sin or by giving in to sin (and sin itself was, quite simply, disobedience to God's will). Anything that differed form God's plan was a monster or was monstrous.

Source: Public domain

When the idea of an accidental, mechanical universe replaced the concept of a divinely created and planned universe, only nature existed (or, if God were to be granted existence, He was seen, first, as indifferent to the universe, as the Deists viewed him, or as irrelevant.) Offenses became unnatural actions, behavior which was not grounded in nature. Anything that “went against nature” was a monster or monstrous. Indeed, a naturalistic understanding of the universe is seen in the change in viewing monsters and the monstrous that is indicated in the etymology, or history, of the word “monster,” which, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, originally referred to a “"divine omen (especially one indicating misfortune), portent, sign” and, only about the fourteenth century became understood as meaning “malformed animal or human, creature afflicted with a birth defect.”

 Source: Public domain

Although some continue to believe that God exists, that He created the world and human beings, the latter in his own “image and likeness,” according to a plan and that the universe is consequently not only orderly, but purposeful, teleological, and meaningful, many others believe that God either does not exist or, if He does, His existence is inconsequential and that human beings must chart their own courses. In the former conception of the universe, wrongdoing is evil, and it is evil because it involves intentional disobedience to God's will; in the latter conception of the universe, wrongdoing is immoral because it is counter to that which is natural. In the former universe, the monstrous takes the form of demons and unrepentant sinners. In the latter universe, evil takes the form of “freaks” of nature, such as maladapted mutants, victims of birth defects, or the psychologically defective: grotesques, cripples, and cannibals.

Alternatively, in a naturalistic universe, monsters may be social misfits. Not only serial killers, sadists, and psychopaths, but also any group that is unconventional, or “other,” or is vilified or ostracized by the dominant social group (e. g., a community or a nation), examples of whom, historically, include homosexuals, Romani people, “savage” “Indians,” current or former martial enemies, cult members, and so forth.

 

Source: Public domain

Our line of inquiry leads, at last, a question and a conclusion. First, what happens when we run out of monsters? As our ideas of the monstrous change, monsters lose their monstrosity: homosexuals, Romani people, Native Americans, the nations that joined together as World War II's Axis powers, members of religious organizations once condemned as “cults” and “sects” have, today, become acceptable. Their members are no longer monsters. As the pool of candidates for monstrosity shrinks, what shall become of the very idea of monstrosity itself? Who will become the monsters of the future, when all the monsters of the present and the past are no longer considered monstrous?

 

Source: Public domain

 The answer to this question, it seems, is that we shall be left with the few actions that are universally condemned, that are unacceptable in all lands, everywhere. We might list among such behaviors incest, rape, premeditated murder that is unsanctioned by the state (that is not, in effect, condoned as a necessary wartime activity), child abuse, and, perhaps, cannibalism, which leaves, as monsters, the incestuous lover, the rapist, the murderer, the child abuser, and the cannibal. These could be the only monsters that remain in the future.

Source: Public domain

But they won't be. Here's why: horror is a type of fantasy fiction. As such, it includes characters, actions, places, causes, motives, and purposes that are unacceptable in more realistic fiction or drama. There is room for demons and witches, alongside werewolves and vampires, as well as the monsters embodying truly universally condemned behaviors and the people (or characters) who perform them. For this reason, horror fiction will never be without the monsters of old, even if, metaphysically, epistemologically, scientifically, and otherwise, they have long ago worn out their welcome. Fantasy has had, has, and always will have a home for them.

Meanwhile, however, the history of horror fiction has provided a way to identify threats that, rightly or wrongly, dominant societies have considered dangerous to their welfare or survival, and these threats, once they are seen as no longer threatening, have likewise shown what perceived menaces, in the final analysis, are not dangerous to social welfare, just as they identify the true menaces, the true monsters, that are condemned not just her or there for a time, but everywhere, at all times.

10 People Mistaken for Imaginary Creatures

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

10 Andrew Swofford

Apparently, some spirits of the dead are transvestites. Perhaps too embarrassed to buy clothes of their own (or too poor—most ghosts, it seems, have little or no need, as a rule, for cash, checks, credit cards, or bank accounts), one apparition decided to raid the closet Maddie, of a University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Maddie and her roommates live off-campus, in the Edge Apartments on Oakland Avenue, but it was Maddie whose shirts and pants went missing. The ghost proved more tangible than most, leaving its handprints on the apartment's bathroom wall.

 

When she heard “rattling” in her closet on February 4, 2019, Maddie went to investigate, thinking maybe a raccoon had been trapped inside. That's when she caught the ghost red-handed (so to speak). He was wearing her socks and shoes and had heisted a bag of her clothes. He tried on one of Maddie's hats, before inspecting himself in her bathroom mirror and, after complimenting her appearance, asked for a hug, but never touched her.

The ghost turned out to be 30-year-old Andrew Swofford. He was arrested on fourteen felony counts, including larceny and identity theft, and held on a $26,000 bond. Maddie and her roomies have since moved out of the apartment, having found their flesh-and-blood intruder more unnerving than the ghost they'd believed was haunting their abode.

9 Krushna Chandra Nayak

In August, 2018, forty-five-year-old Nakula Nayak and his brother Shyam Nayak, both of whom lived out of town, in Chhelianala, India, came to the village of Angikala to notify a relative, Sahadev Nayak, that their mother had died. Due to the lateness of the hour, the brothers stayed overnight with Sahadev.

Around midnight, Nakula went outside, to a field close by, to relieve himself. Coincidentally, Sahadev's cousin, Krushna Nayak, was working outdoors. The night was quite dark, and when Krushna saw  Nakula, Krushna mistook the visitor for a ghost.

 

Terrified, Krushna began beating Nakula with a lathi, a heavy, iron-bound bamboo stick. During the struggle, Nakula managed to wrest the weapon from Krushna and began to strike his assailant, believing his attacker to be a ghost, just as Krushna had mistaken Nakula for a spirit. Nakula's assault on Krushna proved fatal, and Nakula was arrested by the Turumunga police after Krushna's family lodged a complaint against him.

8 Unidentified Helena, Montana, Man

Was the shooter's reason for shooting at a 27-year-old Helena man nothing more than a lame excuse, or did the gunman really believe that his quarry, who was setting up targets on public land, a Bigfoot?

The victim told police bullets came flying at him, left and right, as he positioned the targets. When additional rounds were fired at him, he sought cover among trees. Later, he emerged to “confront” the shooter, who drove a black Ford F-150 full-size pickup truck.

The Helena man said the man who targeted him in December, 2018, had mistaken him for Bigfoot. “I don’t target practice,” he explained, “but if I see something that looks like Bigfoot, I just shoot at it.” To prevent others from making a similar mistake, the shooter suggested that his victim wear an orange vest.

Initially, police were skeptical of the man's report, because he was unable to describe the alleged shooter, did not want to file charges, and was reluctant to speak to deputies. Authorities were unable to locate a truck in the area that fit the description of the Ford F-150 pickup.

Then, a woman reported a similar incident involving a man who drove a vehicle of the same color, make, and model and had shot at her. She was able to provide a solid description of her assailant.

“We’re working to find this person,” Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton said. “It is of great concern that this individual might think it’s okay to shoot at anything he thinks is Bigfoot.” If apprehended, the shooter could be charged with attempted negligent homicide.

7 Wendy Thinnamay Masuka

In April, 2018, thirty-seven-year-old Zimbabwe pastor Masimba Chirayi killed Wendy Thinnamay Masuka while baptizing her. The adult congregant had reacted violently to the baptism, he said.

 

Her violence indicated to him that she was a “vampire possessed by demons,” and he believed that she might “kill people.” To prevent this possibility, Chirayi deliberately “kept her submerged in water until [he] overpowered her.”

Following his appearance in a magistrate's court in Zimbabwe, the pastor was granted bail.

6 Helaria Montepon Gumilid

Mistaking Helaria Montepon Gumilid, a 79-year-old widow, for an aswang (a carnivorous shape-shifter that may appear to be an ordinary person, despite “reclusive habits or magical abilities,” Helaria's daughter-in-law, Myrna Damason Gumilid, age 49, and Myrna's two sons, Rene Boy Gumilid, age 28, and Joseph Damason Gumilid, age 23, hacked her to death.

 In April, 2014, the victim had been visiting her mentally-ill grandson in Zamboanga City, Philippines, when she was attacked and killed.  Myrna, Rene Boy, and Joseph bound Helaria, “slit her armpits,” hacked her to death, and removed one of her organs to prevent her from “regenerating.”

Authorities arrested the suspects, whom they planned to charge in the horrific crime.

5 African Man

In October, 2010, firefighters responding to a report that people had jumped from the third-story balcony of a housing unit in the village of La Verriere, France, discovered seriously injured relatives among the eleven family members who'd made the leap. They also found a two-year-old survivor, a baby, and a nude African man with a knife wound to his hand. The baby later died at a hospital in Paris. (La Verriere is located on the edge of the city.)

Thirteen people were watching television in the apartment when the naked man, hearing the baby cry, rose to prepare a bottle for the child. His wife screamed, “It's the devil! It's the devil!” His sister-in-law stabbed him in the hand, and he was thrown out of the apartment.

 

When he tried to return, the others panicked, leaping from through the window, one man with the two-year-old girl in his arms. The man crawled away, hiding in bushes tow blocks away. “I had to defend myself,” he screamed. Seven of the jumpers required medical treatment for multiple injuries.

No hallucinogenics and no indication of the practice of any occult rituals were found. The assistant prosecutor from Versailles, Odile Faivre, admitted, “A number of points remain to be cleared up.”

4 James Velasco

Hacked, bitten, and beaten, James Velasco was killed by his grandfather, Orak Mantawil, during a December, 2015, power outage at their family-owned residence in Bliss, Barangay Nituran, Parang, Maguindanao.

Mantawil was carrying his four-year-old grandson in his arms when he mistook James for a tiyana, a vampire who assumes the form of a child or a newborn infant. He apologized to his family and the boy's parents, saying that he was drunk and cannot recall what happened after he saw James as a tiyana. He told investigators that he does not “use drugs.”

 James's parents brought charges of parricide against Mantawil. “He could no longer bring back my child’s life even though he asked forgiveness,” said Fatima Velasco, James's mother and Mantawil's daughter. She also said, “My child sustained human bites. It appeared like his blood was sucked.”

Mantawil has been arrested and will be subjected to a psychological examination and a drug test.

3 Stella

After Stella was caught tiptoeing on graves at Luveve Cemetery in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, in 2018, a crowd meted out vigilante justice, beating the woman, who they regarded as a witch searching for corpses she could cannibalize.

A Luveve resident said, “I was on my way to work when I saw a woman with torn, dirty clothes talking to herself while tiptoeing on the graves. I quickly called out to other people passing by.” When asked her name, the woman repeatedly replied “Stella.”

 The crowd set upon her, whipping her until she wailed in pain. Police rescued her when they arrived on the scene, and Stella was taken to the police station, where, Bulawayo police spokesperson Inspector Abednico Ncube said, she was found to be “mentally unstable” and to be guilty of nothing more than of having been “at the wrong place at the wrong time.” A family who'd reported the woman missing identified her as a relative.

2 Zana

Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics at the University of Oxford, said a West African DNA strain might belong to a human subspecies.

The DNA sample was taken from a hirsute, auburn-haired, 6'6”-tall, mid-19-century African slave named Zana who lived in mid-19th-century Russia proves she was 100-percent African, despite the fact that she didn't look like any modern African group of people.

In fact, according to a Russian zoologist, “her expression . . . was pure animal.”

 

 Sykes suggests that she and her ancestors left Africa 100,000 years ago to dwell in the region of the Caucasus Mountains. His most astonishing claim, however, is that Zana might have been a yeti, or so-called abominable snowman.

Several critics are more than a bit skeptical of Sykes's claims. For example, Jason Colavito points out that, by Sykes's own admission, the geneticist “has found no genetic evidence that yet points conclusively to a pre-modern origin for Zana” and suggests that the characterization of her as being more “animal” than human might have a racist origin: “As best I can tell, there are no nineteenth century primary sources related to Zana, and all of the accounts of her large, apelike appearance derive from local lore recorded more than a hundred years after the fact, and during a time when Black Africans were routinely described as apelike, particularly by isolated rural populations with little or no contact with other races.”

It seems possible that Sykes has mistaken Zana for a yeti, when, in fact, she was actually a 19th-century African slave.

1 Horseman (Centaur)

Ancient people also sometimes mistook people for imaginary creatures.

Imagine the shock that ancient Greeks and other Mediterranean peoples experienced when they first witnessed mounted Eurasian soldiers invading their lands. The cavalry was unknown to them. The horsemen must have seemed a perfect union of man and horse, a hybrid fusion of the human and the equine. Such warriors would have been terrifying, and warriors wielding shields and striking with swords must have seemed invincible.

As Bjarke Rink observes in his book, The Rise of the Centaurs, “The impact of cavalry action upon farming societies was shattering”—and this sight was the origin of the mythical creature known as the centaur, a presumed hybrid of man and beast that the ancient Greeks mistook for true monsters: “The weird creature that captured the world's imagination for thousands of years was not a myth at all, but the first sighting of fighting horsemen by the peasant farmers of Greece.”