Searching for Cryptids

You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Molenski. And this is James Domic, Jr. He is the host of the podcast, Alaska is the Center of the Universe. The title of the show is reaction against the fact that Alaska's official nickname is The Last Frontier. To the indigenous people of the state, to the native people of the state, it's not a frontier. It's not the last one.

It's our home, and we're very comfortable in this wild place. Our people have lived here for thousands and thousands of years. James is from the Inupiaq tribe. His great-grandfather was one of the last in a long line of Inupiaq storytellers. I always say that my people went through a time machine. We were the last indigenous people in the United States to have contact.

And that didn't happen until very recently, just because we were so isolated. That generation went through a time machine, and a lot of things got jumbled around. James says their traditional ways of life are still under threat. from assimilation to climate change. But they do have a natural resource that is within their power to preserve their stories.

There's something out there. The Inyakons have been here too. They're not human. They dwell in the human realm and the spirit realm, which is their home. Many of the episodes of his podcast are dedicated to cryptids. A cryptid is a word for a creature that people believe is out there, but it hasn't been scientifically verified yet. For instance, Bigfoot.

or the Loch Ness Monster, are examples of cryptids. And cryptids are having a moment now, from podcasts to festivals to merchandise. But in Native Alaskan cultures, cryptids are not for tabloids, reality tv or scientific study they're sacred stories although there is a range of stories and beliefs among the different alaskan tribes

James had to travel all over the state to find people to interview, which was not easy. One guy was so reticent, James had to give him seal meat and tech support to encourage him to tell his story. What really surprised me is there's a lot of Alaskans who have seen incredible, unbelievable things that will not talk about them publicly. They talk to me and they've told me because they know that I believe and that I am a keeper of stories and that they know that I am a seeker.

When it comes to stories about the fantastical, whether it's cryptids, ghosts, or UFOs, my mind often turns into an episode of the X-Files. There's a Mulder and Scully in my head. taking sides. My inner Scully usually wins. But then the debate starts all over again. Mulder, it's the same story I've heard since I was a kid. It's a folk tale, a myth. I heard the same story when I was a kid, too. Funny thing is, I believed it. I asked James where he stands on Cryptids.

I don't try to swing one way or the other. I'm not trying to make people believe one thing or the other about the stories that I tell. I like to tell people these are the stories that people talk about up north. Some of the people who have had encounters believe that they are spiritual beings that exist in a realm and in a frequency that our senses can't pick up. Other people believe they are flesh and blood.

And I believe that the sightings that have happened up north in my area of the world have been flesh and blood. James did an episode that I couldn't stop thinking about. It was about a creature called the Kushtaka. These tales originate from the southeastern tribes of Alaska. It still is a very real fearful part of the culture. There was people who wouldn't talk about it because the sun was down.

There were people who wouldn't talk about it just out of sheer, just out of just fright. And also just like it was it was a very real thing.

to not talk about and getting some of the people to talk about was very it was like pulling teeth but what i did find out about the kushtaka is a lot of other cultures around the world have a similar situation and the situation is you're out and about you're somewhere usually out in the country and you see someone that you know, a familiar person, whose face is exactly like someone you know.

They're usually at the tree line or at the edge of the water in these stories with the Kushtaka. And this person who is familiar to you ushers you in and says, come with me. If you go with them, you won't come back. And when I was doing my research on it, I realized that there was so many... other cultures around the world who have had, who have this similar, exactly similar story. But the Kushikas said it can change into anybody that it wants to.

They say that when it's not deceiving people and trying to take people, it rests as a land otter. When it's just chilling out, it's a land otter. But when it wants to... Take a soul, it turns into whoever it knows who you are familiar with. In that episode, James talked with a tribal elder who got emotional. when he told this story from his youth. The man was boating with his aunt and uncle. They got drunk. Things went haywire on the sea. His aunt and uncle...

couldn't or wouldn't save themselves. The nephew survived, but to this day he is haunted by that memory, partially because his aunt and uncle's behavior felt so out of character. This was one of the few moments in the show when James talked about cryptids as metaphors. He said the kushtika could be seen as a way to explain what happens when your loved ones are under the influence of alcohol.

which is a long-standing problem in tribal communities. The stories remind you that sometimes you need to be wary of people you might normally trust. They may not truly be themselves at that moment. There's a lot of changes that has happened with Indigenous people, but one of the things that hasn't changed, one of the things that never gets forgotten within the people is the fear.

It survived this whole colonization and forced assimilation that we've experienced from first the Russians and then the Americans. Things have changed. Languages have been lost. Stories have been lost. But one thing that hasn't been lost is this generational tribal fear. It gets passed down. And so these stories kind of reflect that. The Kushtakaz is a great example of that. And fear keeps you alive, too.

fear keeps you alive exactly uh fear has a way of keeping you alive for sure in alaska there's just a lot of ways to die in alaska it's just like just there's no two ways around it the land It wants to swallow you up. The water does not care. And so you have to have a healthy fear that you are not the biggest.

in the in the area is there's other things that call the shots speaking of big things in the area he also talks about bigfoot or their version of bigfoot In our culture, in the Inupia culture, we call them, the word we have for them is called Inukpesuk. I just find it fascinating if you just break that word down. Inuk in the word Inuk.

The first part of it, Inuk, it means person. The second part of the word, Pisuk, it means walk. And so my ancestors named this creature walks like a person. It's just well known that. If we see them, we are to leave them alone. They're going to leave us alone. Every culture in Alaska has these stories and has a name for this creature. And in Alaska up north.

The only description that differs from, say, a sighting in the Pacific Northwest, like British Columbia or Washington, is that the Inuk Bisuk up here has red hair. reddish hair and it has longer hair it flows in the wind they they the elders say that they don't waste anything that they drink the blood of animals that they kill There's every culture, every culture in Alaska has a story of the hairy man. And there's a word, every culture has a word name for it. We lived in such a hard place.

And it was very nomadic life. And you didn't have a lot of time to just sit around and think about the, it was a very on purpose type of life, hunting, hunting and gathering. And so if they had a word for it, chances are that it was actually a thing because there wasn't a lot of words for nonsense things. You just didn't really have time for it. It was like life and death all the time, I think. These sightings still happen to this day.

on all up in all over alaska and people now know that i like these stories i tell these stories i'm not afraid to tell stories of alaskan cryptids and i try to find credible truth incredible sources i'm looking for photos i'm looking for anything that's material and a lot of people look at our native stories and our indigenous stories and say that's just a lot of

That's just a lot of made-up stuff. That's a lot of woo-woo. Superstitious. But like I said, within every one of these stories, there's a sliver of truth.

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James has another show on Audible called Midnight Sun. It's categorized as an audiobook, although it sounds like a podcast. In fact, it sounds like a true crime podcast with supernatural elements mixed in. Midnight Sun was also turned into a documentary called Blood and Myth, which is on Hulu. It's about an indigenous actor named Teddy Kyle Smith. He is currently incarcerated for first-degree attempted murder.

But he claims that he was being harassed by cryptids called Inukins. He says the Inukins were trying to lure him to his doom, and they were messing with his mind when he shot these two brothers. Long ago, before the white people came to the Arctic, legend has it that we, the Inupiaq tribe of northern Alaska, lived alongside another tribe, the Inupiaq. The Inyakuns were similar to us in some ways, except they were very, very short.

And they were extremely strong. It was said one little Inukin man could carry a whole caribou all by himself. Teddy Kyle Smith's defense, that he was being influenced... by a long-lost race of humanoids, did not hold up in court. James investigated the story, and this is personal for him. He and Teddy Kyle Smith are from the same tribe. And as I mentioned earlier, James's great grandfather was one of the last official storytellers of their tribe. He and his stories would talk about these.

the Iñakluns multiple times. I always knew because I understood the way his stories were put together, I always understood that there was a sliver of truth in every one of these stories. With Midnight Sun, I wanted to see if I could validate some of these traditional stories of what we've been telling ourselves in Up North for thousands of years. Yeah, another thing I was going to mention is that...

For me, when I hear stories about different versions of sort of human-like figures, whether they're really small or whether they're very large or whatever, I've always been fascinated by the stories of how, not stories, but the science of how hundreds of thousands of years ago, half a million years ago, there were all these other types of humans on the Earth. It was almost like Middle Earth.

I always wonder if these stories, there's a part of us that want, you know, there's always this, when people talk about aliens, they say, you know, I want to know we're not alone in the universe. I feel there's a part of us that wants to know that we're not alone on this planet. And I wonder if that's part of it, too. I love Lord of the Rings. I think it's the greatest story ever told. I'm 100% obsessed with Lord of the Rings. I watched the extended versions.

I've often wondered that if a lot of this tribal, a lot of tribes, because I've studied them from all over the state of Alaska, like obsessively.

And part of me wonders if some of these stories that involve these little people or these big, tall, hairy people, if these are genetic memories of Denisovans or Hobbit Floriensis type people, if these... our genetic memories of neanderthals it's like we don't we can't forget that there was others and i believe that our own species our own type is we we are the only ones left

today, these days, because we're so adversarial in our nature. I think these other versions of humans, like the Denisovans or the Neanderthals, I'm not quite as sure as they were. as territorial or adversarial i think i think that's one of the reasons why we are still here today because we fight but yeah i've often wondered if that is the case that we are remembering some of these stories and some of these different types of people

What do you think of a lot of these other towns, usually in the lower 48, where... If there is a cryptid mothman or something like that, they go all out with the merchandising, the tourism, the festivals. Do you just think that's kind of amusing? That's just another part of American culture? I don't know. I was wondering if you have any opinions about those. I mean, it's the way it is. America is a capitalist state.

society and that's it's the american way to try to make a buck off of anything so i i imagine the last thing you want is to create some kind of big marketing festival to get a lot of people from outside alaska to come to look for no i don't want any of that yeah um i've had people ask me very specifically where the coordinates are for certain things that i've talked about in my stories and i i don't tell people

Number one, I don't want people going out there who don't know what they're doing, and I don't want them getting hurt on account of a story that I've told. That's not the point with these stories. I think it would be frowned upon, actually. with, from the people around here, but that's not even something I would even consider. It's, it's more about just preserving the oral tradition of native storytelling, you know, the winter time.

is the time we tell stories. You know, it helps pass along the long winter months. So it's part of the culture up here. It's funny because, I mean, you're talking about how you don't... Like the Alaska being called the last frontier, but part of the idea of the frontier is the idea that there's still some mystery out there that we haven't, quote unquote, conquered at all. But it sounds like part of...

You feel like part of your culture is that that is the whole point, you know? Yeah, I think that we have a very interesting relationship with the land because we live off of it so much. And we understand that it's such a big place. the western mindset is we know it all and the indigenous mindset is there's we don't we don't fully understand some of these things i've lived here my whole life i've never lived anywhere else and i i understand and i was

Part of respecting the land is letting, letting the land know we don't fully understand you and you will, you do have your secrets and we will never know all of them. And that's okay. I wanted to travel beyond Alaska to figure out why so many people are fascinated by cryptids. So I contacted J.W. Ocker. He wrote a book called The United States of Cryptids.

a tour of American myths and monsters. To research the book, he visited dozens of states. In fact, he's been to every state in the country except Alaska. So I told him about James's podcast.

And he was intrigued. I love that because one of the biggest problems cryptid people do have is they don't feel their cryptid is legitimate until they tie it to Native American belief. So if they don't have a history, it goes back to Native Americans. They believed in this. And by doing that, they often twist the beliefs and the mythologies to fit their narrative. But it's validation to them. If they can say, oh, this creature was here before we were. Because again, cryptids can't just appear.

Bigfoot's around. It hasn't been around for a very long time, even before, you know, the colonial era of Americas. But there's a danger in that where you're using somebody else's stories, mythologies as true history.

to connect to your story right to make your story valid that's so interesting that there's a form of like cultural appropriation that happens that thank you that's the word that's literally it's happening a lot of a lot of cryptids and it's like you see why it's happening like there's a logical reason practical reason why it's happening but

you also have to be super careful about that. In his book, JW talked with people who like cryptids just because they think they're a fun and quirky part of pop culture. And he talked with other people who think that cryptids are real. or potentially real. They call themselves cryptozoologists.

So the beautiful thing about the word cryptid is it is a legit scientific phenomenon, right? We have discovered creatures that we thought didn't exist anymore. We've discovered creatures that were only rumors from locals before, right? The coelacanth, the okapi.

uh platypus right the platypus nobody believed the platypus was a real animal and even when they had like taxidermy creatures in their hands they'd be like you made this yourself you put a duck on a beaver obviously it's what you did so they had to have live specimens there so the idea of a cryptid is completely 100 legitimate um

some of the more extravagant cryptids however there's a whole spectrum of how believable they are right so some i some there's some cryptids that no even like the most ardent cryptid believer would would say no no that's kind of a fable or that never happened or it's a hoax

there are some that are more biologically plausible right that you know bigfoot is one of those where not too hard on the imagination to be like oh it's me but like two feet taller and hairier right that kind of doesn't strain the imagination you know

anything in the water because we're not in the water right it's very mysterious thing water uh giant bodies of water so it's easy to say it doesn't strain the imagination like there's something in there that we haven't discovered yet right so it's just it is a spectrum i hate that answer usually but like it is there's a one in there's the okapi and there's the coelacanth and the other end there is you know laser shooting pterodactyls whichever there is on out in iowa

So for those people who go to those conventions where they do believe this is all just, these are just fables, these are myth, this is folklore, why did they love cryptids so much? Why do they still think this is the funnest thing to be into? I didn't know the answer going into the project, but I think I... I have an answer that satisfies me coming out of it. And that is, it's just an exercise of wonder is what it is at the end of the day, right? It's people saying.

You know, wouldn't it be awesome if there are more discoveries left in this world, right? Sometimes, especially in the modern world and us having access to every single channel of communication, it seems like we've kind of figured all out. We've seen everything. Every square inch has been GPSed and satelliteed and all those things.

and also there's also this because they are a category of monster like we call cryptids monsters all the time you know there's a there's a whole category of people that love monsters whether it's you know universal studios monsters horror monsters so this is a brand new category of monsters

where it is giant furry things flying reptiles lizard men all kinds of things that are conventional monsters in movies but they might be real or there are stories in real life about them it's another way to another way to phrase it They're also a great fit for merchandise. Unlike King Kong or the Creature from the Black Lagoon, there is no official version of these cryptids that you need to reference or get permission from a company. artists can use their imaginations fully. And they do.

It's a bit insane. Everyone in? He knows where we are. Watch out! Get ready for one last adventure. We stay true to ourselves. Stay true to our friends, no matter the cost. found you. Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 2 begins December 25th only on Netflix. As I mentioned earlier

J.W. Auker traveled across the country to visit towns where there are cryptid sightings. And I was surprised to learn how many towns have made their local cryptids into part of their identity. Probably the biggest trek I did was the Dakotas because it's middle of nowhere. It was, it was COVID. It was middle of COVID. And I'm here in the Dakotas driving between North Dakota and South Dakota. Nothing around. Snowing.

um and i'm looking for bigfoot statues and thunderbird sites and it's just like you know that that's where the closest i felt to actually journeying the rest of these times because i'm looking for towns that celebrate cryptids it's mostly me just bellying up to the bar right and ordering

whatever cryptid theme local brewery beers on tap that's kind of how i explore so when you go to one of these towns like what qualifies as a great visit because i imagine myself going to these towns and being like so i hear this cryptid exists here and they're like yep yep it does You want to buy the beer with a cryptid name on it? What qualifies as a great visit that you made it out there?

That's a really good question that nobody's asked me. I'm glad you did. It is, you need a centerpiece. And that centerpiece ideally would be a museum. You have a museum dedicated to your cryptid or cryptids in general.

that's enough for me that's enough right even folk arkansas which is literally the middle of nowhere you would never go there on purpose or an accident you had to like bigfoot to go to folk arkansas and they have a museum and it's beautiful and they have like recreations and like it's really cool so you need a museum barring that

the the best time to see these towns is festival time like when when they all the vendors are out and there's tons of stuff to do and they're celebrating those are the best times because otherwise usually if a town is celebrating at cryptid it's because

They're in their last phase of existence. They've already lost their industry. People are moving out. The economy of the town is collapsing. So they have to find a way to pull people in. And there's always many ways you pull people in, right? Geography and history and stuff.

Everybody has that one soldier statue in the middle of the town green, right? Come see our lakes, come see our mountains, come see our shores. But if you have like a giant turtle in your past, a 50 foot long turtle in 1952, you're probably the only one to have that.

so then you know in marketing terms you have a differentiator so now in order for people to have that experience they have to come to your town point pleasant west virginia kind of set up this model of we're a tiny town you would never come to our town ever uh we lost industry a million years ago

However, we have this one year in our past that is strange enough for us to build statues and museums and plaques to. And now, you know, 10,000 people come every September to that festival. What is this festival about? The Mothman. The Mothman allegedly looks like a giant moth-human hybrid with red eyes. It was first sighted in 1966 near a former munitions plant that locals called the TNT area. The sightings increased for almost a year, and then they tapered off after a tragic bridge collapse.

But the story picked up again in the 1970s with a popular book called The Mothman Prophecies. The book was turned into a movie starring Richard Gere. And today... The Mothman appears in video games like Fallout and Fortnite. I asked JW if Point Pleasant, West Virginia was the first town to figure out how to turn their local creature.

into a cash cow. If it wasn't the first town, it is the most influential town. Multiple, multiple times I was told we started this festival because the Mothman Festival was so successful. If you can do it there. you can do it anywhere and it's true to a point i mean the mothman is pretty special

Wait, why is the Mothman special? I don't get why this is... Of all the cryptids that are... It's weird, he's like up there. There's like the pantheon of like Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster. And Mothman is like the most... I know he's like the equivalent of like a musician's musician or an artist's artist. Like most people don't know who he is, but the people who know cryptids all know who he is. Like, how did he end up there?

Yeah, I have a crasser analogy than that one. He's Wendy's, right? It's Burger King versus McDonald's, but every once in a while you just want to go to Wendy's, right? Is that cool, like you said, the cool band nobody's listening to yet?

I think it's a few things. I think one is it is a unique design that's very important. If it was too Bigfoot-ish, if it was too pterodactyl-ish, it wouldn't be as unique. And the second one of that is it's the only cryptid with an arc, an actual story arc, right?

Every single cryptid starts the same way. It's drunk or high teens in the back roads of town in the dark, red eyes. That's kind of every single cryptid story starts. And that's how the Mothman story starts. In this case, though, every single cryptid story ends with...

no proof no pelts no body uh it just gets away in this case though because the the tragedy of the silver bridge collapse the story kind of stops there it doesn't really if you like dig and dig into the sightings it doesn't really but as far as cultural narratives it goes

For one year, this creature was all over the place. And it was more than him, actually. But this creature was all over the place. And then tragedy happened, and he disappeared. So I think that's one of the... And then the third thing is, point plus, it has embraced that myth like no other cryptotown has.

They have that giant, unique, stainless steel statue. If that thing was made of stone or wood, it probably wouldn't be as cool. Stainless steel, they have the museum. And, very unique, you can go explore the area where the Mothman was first found, the TNT area, and it feels like you're there.

normally you go to a town and you're like where was this bigfoot scene across that road there or it's out in the woods somewhere just a vague site that's not interesting the tnt area has these giant house-sized concrete igloos that that house munitions that house chemicals about all these things over the years

And now they're all empty in the middle of this park, overgrown, and it feels like you're actually exploring. And then you can see the Mothman any second, even though it's, whatever, 60, 70 years later.

Is there something uniquely American about this? Like, are there other towns around the world where they do the same thing? Or is it just very American to just merchandise the hell out of your cryptids? That's what it is. So there is cryptids all over the world, right? And even in our, like... even our definition of cryptid as a monster that science hasn't doesn't believe in all over the place right but we are the best at marketing we invented marketing like we're so

The way I always talk about this, and this isn't obviously a crypto town, but Salem, Massachusetts. It's witch city. However, it wasn't the first city in America to hang witches. It wasn't the last city. The biggest witch trials happened over in Europe. It is not unique in most ways, and yet...

of all the places on the entire planet it is which city because it grabbed marketing first so it is marketing again bigfoot is being marketed constantly that's why he's on in commercials that's why his festivals are the most exciting that's why you know all the stickers you see on cars are shaped like that bigfoot walking or whatever so it's exactly that we market like no other person like no other people on the planet market

So you've mentioned as well that you're disappointed that Bigfoot was everywhere. I was surprised. Again, to me, Bigfoot is like in the 1980s or 90s, there's a supermarket tabloid Bigfoot citing, ha ha, this rag is a joke. Or it's even ironic. Why is he so popular? I don't understand. Is it the missing link idea?

so i the joke i always do when i'm doing talks is that um i asked lauren coleman he's like the the founder of the international mythology museum has been doing it for decades and he believes we love

bigfoot so much because we're narcissists because he looks like us like a reptile creature a flying creature doesn't we you know we are our biases our prejudices our work our work at all times we're always oh you look like me even the superficial differences you look like me you're on my team you don't like me you're not on my team

but practically something happened at some point we all realized oh to look for bigfoot you just walk in the woods that's all you do you don't mount the expedition to the bat you don't learn how to do side scan sonar and locks in scotland

all you do is walk out in the woods and you hit trees the sticks and you're looking for bigfoot it's kind of like the ghost hunting craze right when those shows came out back in the early 2000s were like oh that's all you do look for ghosts you just take a tape recorder and you wander around an empty house in the dark suddenly everybody was doing that right suddenly everybody was a ghost hunter because the tools were accessible and the process was easy unfortunately

That's why you know it's not science because it's an easy process. Same with cryptids. Bigfoot. You just wander around the woods. And even though you don't find a Bigfoot, it's still Bigfoot hunting, right? So you mentioned, too, before that in some of these towns, some people are not happy that, you know, of all that our last ditch effort or Hail Mary attempt to save this town is like celebrating a monster. How often did you find that to be the case?

uh regulate and usually again it depends on the timeline right like right when they first start doing it there's always kind of people pushing back at it like we're gonna be a laughing stock you know we don't we don't want to be known for this we're gonna be known across the country as the town that has a python running around it it's whatever

do we want that that to be our world but i think over time they they eventually lose they almost never win the people that are more conservative about that because a there's no other option like they're not bringing some other option to replace that and

in the end it is a lot of fun like once you go to a bigfoot convention it you realize oh it doesn't matter that i'm there's certain conventions that you should they're giving papers and talks and it's really all about that but most town celebrations are just fair right

themed fairs so once you go to those like oh this is a lot of fun and it's good for the town look who all is here look at all these stores so you start really once you start seeing it work usually the curmudgeons come around i think

I've also read that there are also people, creationists, who are really into cryptids because they want to believe, like, oh, look, we found living dinosaurs. Darwin was wrong. So I grew up Christian. I grew up in this world where... but yeah it's very if they can if they can have a live dinosaur in their minds again i say this just from my personal experience back when i used to be that way

then it tears up the entire timeline of evolution, right? It's not 600 million years ago, 200 million years ago, whatever it is it is. No, no, no. These creatures were all built or created at the same time. And so obviously they're sharing the same space.

You just said you used to be that way. Was there a time that you also believed that the Earth was 5,000, 6,000 years old and dinosaurs and humans? Oh, yeah. Can we make a connection between those beliefs and then your interest in the beliefs in cryptids now?

we could there's an anti there's an anti-connection right where i always joke i'm kind of i'm not a skeptic in the sense that i'm out to disprove anything i could care less what people believe but i don't believe a lot of things i don't really believe in these more extravagant cryptids i don't believe in ghosts i don't believe in true love i don't believe in predestination ghosts and true love are two very different things i'm i'm an all-around cynic of all things right

But when I was a Christian, I believed in everything. I believed in witches and ghosts and demons and gods inside of hearts and like creators of the universe. I believed in some extravagant things. And that's one of the reasons why I think my belief.

mechanism broke you know one day believed it and the next day i didn't and if i can be if my beliefs can be that elastic and if i can be that wrong whichever direction i was wrong who knows then i can never trust myself again about anything right so I think it is I think my fascination with belief it comes down to belief right I think that's what you nailed right now cryptids

most cryptids it's a belief we don't have hard evidence of all the most extravagant ones you know it's been 75 years since we named bigfoot and we haven't found a body right that's very important to the point where some cryptic cryptozoologists the non-biology biology ones

they're switching ideas like what if what is a ghost what if he's ultra terrestrial what if he's anything to make him not with the thought form anything to make him still exist without leaving a body behind or anything like that so The elasticity of human belief is my biggest fascination in life, right? Just because I don't understand how we trust ourselves. Like, it's, it's that, like, that, um, Charles Dick and Ebenezer Scrooge line was like, you're just a bit of undigested mustard. Like.

Half the time, I can't trust my eyes. How can I have such firm beliefs about very, very important things in life? So I have to do it in a way that I make sure I'm not making fun of people that believe differently than me or being condescending because...

That's not the point. The point is, these beliefs exist. Like we were talking about earlier, these beliefs exist, and that means something. In some fantasy books, comics, movies, TV shows, or games, When there are mythical, godlike beings living among us, the explanation is often that these beings have come into existence only because people believe in them.

Even their appearance is shaped by the collective imagination of the believers. And if people believe in them less, these beings become less powerful. I think this spills over into real life. because if people believe in cryptids or just celebrate them to the point where it affects the way they think behave or feel then these cryptids are a part of our reality does that make them real

Or is that just a matter of semantics? We'll explore this idea further in the next episode, my annual holiday audio drama.

That is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to James Domick Jr. and J.W. Ocker. James's podcast and audiobook are both available on Audible. I included links to those. and JW's book in the show notes. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. We have another podcast called Between Imaginary Worlds. It's a more casual chat show that's only available to listeners who pledge on Patreon.

In one of the recent episodes, I talked with the podcaster Baudelaire about his show, The Voodoo Project. We discussed why pop culture tropes around voodoo, like pin dolls and witch doctors, are damaging to the real religion of voodoo between imaginary worlds comes included with the ad-free version of the show that you can get on patreon you can also buy an ad-free subscription on apple podcasts if you support the show on patreon

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