#Sanderson fairly odd parents | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bae-in-maine · 6 years ago

Text

The Hocus To My Pocus

Notes: This is my addition to the Hocus Pocus theme for Clextober18! This story is loosely based on the 1993 Disney movie, Hocus Pocus. This is a multi-chapter story, and the first two chapters are posted here and on AO3 and FF. The rest of the story will be posted on AO3 and FF by 10/31/18 under my author name: Jude81.

Rating: Current rating is T+, but as the story continues, the rating might change.

Tags: Clexa, Clarke and Lexa, Raven, Echo, Nia, Anya, Madi, Aden, Salem, Hocus Pocus, Halloween hijinks, high school. More tags will be added on AO3 and FF.

@clextober

************************************ Chapter 1:

“Come on, Madi! We are going to be late if you don’t get a wiggle on!” Clarke stood at the bottom of the staircase, hand on the railing as she leaned forward in an attempt to project her voice so her nine year old sister would hurry up. She’d promised Madi she would take her trick or treating, and it was already 7:00 pm. If they hurried, she could be back in time at 9:00pm and make her way to the party at the Tri mansion being thrown by none other than her new highschool crush, one Lexa Tri, Captain of both the swim team and cross country team.

She tapped her fingers on the bannister, wincing when she noticed some flecks of dry paint still embedded around her fingernails. “Crap,” she muttered as she tried to pick away the paint. She was interrupted though by a loud yell, and she looked up just in time to catch the small body clad in a Wonder Woman costume.

She stumbled backwards, her feet desperately trying to regain their footing as she wrapped her arms tightly around her younger sister, but the sheer force of small body hurling through gravity propelled her backwards into a wall with a loud thump.

“Damn, Madi!” She yelped as she wheezed from getting the air partially knocked out of her. She let Madi slowly slide down her body, while she bent over, hands on her knees wheezing slightly.

“You shouldn’t swear, Clarke.”

“And you shouldn’t throw yourself down the stairs like that, Madi! What if I hadn’t caught you?!”

Madi cocked her head, looking up at her sister before smiling a little. “But you always catch me, Clarke. Always.”

Clarke stood slowly and looked down at her younger sister. Madi might have been nine, but she was the size of a six year old, a small six year old. She’d been sick most of her life, the doctors never really understanding the stomach pain and wild mood swings that plagued the young child. Her parents had abandoned her at the age of three in the hospital, deciding that the medical bills and a sickly child were simply too much for them.

Abby had been her doctor, specializing in diseases and pediatric care, but it had been Clarke who had fallen in love with Madi one day when she visited Abby at the hospital. It didn’t take much convincing, Jake and Abby had always wanted more children, but the time had never been right, and ten year old Clarke had convinced them that this child had been waiting for them, and they her.

The adoption had become official when she was five years old, and now they understood better Madi’s sensory issues and her dyslexia. Her stomach issues meant she was on a restricted, no dairy and no gluten diet, which made Halloween, her favorite holiday, particularly….tricky.

But Clarke was ready, her backpack stuffed with an extra Wonder Woman costume, wipes, underwear, water, noise-canceling headphones, and special gluten and dairy free candy. Candy she would sneak into Madi’s plastic, pumpkin head basket and exchange for the snickers and kit-kat bars when Madi was inevitably distracted by something else.

Madi’s stomach issues also usually meant Madi was prone to accidents, something that was often humiliating for Madi, but after years of this, they had a system in place, and Clarke was very good at helping minimize her sister’s shame, turning it into a game of costume changes.

She ruffled the top of Madi’s head, laughing at the way Madi jerked her head away. “Noooo! My hair, Clarke!”

She laughed again, “You hair is fine, Madi.” She leaned down so they were eye to eye and tapped Madi on the nose. “Hey…” she waited for Madi to look at her. “I will always catch you, Madi. Always.”

“I know.” Madi smiled happily, clutching her shield and grabbed Clarke’s hand. “Let’s go!” She pulled on Clarke’s hand, her small feet skipping along as Clarke chuckled and let herself be pulled out of the house, stopping only to turn and lock the door, before they stepped into the small crowds of children running about along the long sidewalks framed by tall trees and light posts every six feet.

***************************

Lexa stepped out of the house, shutting out most of the noise behind her. It was eight, and the party was supposed to start in another hour or so, although judging by the number of people in her parents’ home, they party was already well under way. The basement had been set up for her and her friends, while the ground floor was reserved for the adults to have their own Halloween party.

The adult theme this year was Unconventional Couples, and she shuddered at the thought of how many Jokers and Harley Quinns would probably show up at the party. But she supposed the theme was fitting, since her parents were considered fairly unconventional. Her mother, Indra Tri, was a four star general in the Marines, the only woman to ever achieve such a high rank, and she was technically retired, but she made a lot of trips from their home in Salem, Massachusetts to Washington DC, trips that she couldn’t speak about. And her father Gustus Tri was a great hulking man with more tattoos than he spoke languages, and he spoke seven. He taught Economics and Classical Literature at Salem State University.

Her parents roots were deep in Salem, especially her mother’s. Her mother’s family had been here since the early 1600’s, one of the original families. Her grandfather back twelve or so generations had been one of the first black slaves brought to Salem in the 1630’s, only a couple of years after Salem had been founded. It had been his grandson who had earned his freedom, and the subsequent generations had been freemen despite slavery not being abolished until the 1790’s in Massachusetts.

Their roots were deep, and Lexa’s freed tenth generation grandfather had taken the last name Sangedakru, in honor of his African grandfather’s clan. But over the years it had been Anglicized and then Americanized until it was simply Sanderson. It was a seemingly simple, innocuous name, and most had forgotten it’s African origins, but it still caused people in Salem to pause when they heard it.

Because when people thought of Salem, they thought of the Salem Witch Trials, and those who visited Salem, quickly learned of another trial, the trial of the three Sanderson Sisters. Three sisters, all witches, accused of sucking the life of the children of the village, so the sisters could be immortal.

And on October 31, 1693, the three sisters were hanged in the dead of night by the light of dozens of torches from the townspeople. But before they died, with her last breath, Nia Sanderson cast a spell promising that when a virgin lit the candle on the night of Hallow’s Eve, the sisters would rise again.

Lexa stood on the front porch watching as witches and goblins, ghosts, and iron men, and captain americas, and zombies, and princesses, and winnie the poohs, and cowgirls littered the street, bustling about about, screaming excitedly to each other, pillowcases and pumpkin heads laden with candy.

She shivered and looked up at the full moon peeking behind the clouds. The sky was a dark slate, shadowed in blues and purples. The moon hung in the sky, a silvery white that simply glowed, pushing the shadows back. It was beautiful, but there was something chilling in the air, something more than the fall frost in the air. She pulled her sherpa fleece tighter around herself, trying to shake the feeling of...something...something big...impending...dark...something just around the corner.

She chuckled and glanced over, eyes widening slightly at the black cat that had jumped up on one of the thick marble railings. “Well, hello there, Raven.” She reached out and scratched behind the black cat’s ears. “I was wondering when I would see you.”

She smiled at the way Raven bumped her hand, clearly in the mood for more scratching behind her ears. Lexa smiled, enjoying the soft silk of her fur against her fingertips. She glanced down at the red collar, with the old, tarnished heart hanging from it. It simply said Raven. There was something about the old metal heart that always made her feel strange, almost cold. It was old, her father had said that it had been made by a blacksmith, you could see the hammer dings in it. This wasn’t a heart that was purchased on Amazon or at Petco.

But no one knew who the cat belonged to. She came and went. Lexa would go months without seeing her, and then she would suddenly pop up again. Lexa and her parents fed the cat every time. And when she was a child, she had tried to find the owners, hanging up flyers, even asking the local police if they knew who owned the cat, but no one knew. They only knew that the cat had just always...been. Even the old-timers who gathered down at The Witche’s Brewe swore they had seen the same cat with the red collar and tarnished heart when they were children.

But a cat couldn’t be sixty odd years old. Could it?

She glanced away, trying to shake the feeling. Raven never failed to show up on Halloween. Every single year as long as Lexa could remember, starting when she was four, Raven had appeared on the marble railing on Halloween night. She licked her dry lips and turned away again.

“Well, Raven, I think I’m going to take a walk. You coming?” She walked down the steps, knowing without seeing that Raven was a few steps behind her. They did this every year, walked down the streets, turned up the north alley, and kept walking until they reached the Sanderson Museum. It was the original Sanderson Cottage and had been passed down to her mother, and someday she supposed she would inherit it. She rarely went in. The cottage was...unsettling, especially on Halloween, but sometimes it felt like it was calling to her. And she knew Raven was intimately acquainted with the cottage. She had seen her around the cottage enough times to guess that maybe it was her home.

It had been her great-grandfather who had turned it into a museum in the very early 1900’s, after returning from the Great War. He had been like a man possessed, cleaning out the cottage, repairing parts of it, and then setting it up as a museum. It was popular in the summer, but nobody went near it on Halloween, the curse hanging over them like an avenging shadow. And no teenager wanted to admit they were a virgin anyway.

She scoffed and tucked her hands into her pockets and stepped out onto the small street, turning left and walking down the sidewalk away from the center of town. It was quieter here, along the neatly cobbled sidewalks, the tall trees swaying slightly in the light breeze. She pulled the beanie down over her ears, wishing she’d grabbed her gloves. She walked down the street, nodding at the children tumbling about, the crowds quickly thinning out, as most people were headed to the center of town. Little Salem. It was technically part of Salem, but functioned as it’s own small town of about 17,000 people. Big enough for a movie theater, golf course, boutiques and stores catering to the tourists, small police force and a ten man fire department, three healthcare clinics, and the hospital was only twenty minutes away in the heart of Salem. It was a good town, perfect for her. Not big enough to feel truly lost and alone, but still big enough to afford her a little bit of independence.

She turned crossed the street at the stop sign and turned the corner, Raven padding along behind her, only run into something or someone.

She yelped when their bodies collided, and she stumbled narrowly missing tripping over Wonder Woman.

“Damn!”

“Holy Hell Hannah!”

“You shouldn’t swear.”

She blinked and looked down, her eyes clashing with green that looked almost exactly like her own. “Oh..I...uh...sorry…” She muttered, pink blossoming across her cheeks.

She glanced over to the older girl, swallowing harshly at the sight of a wild mane of blonde curls tumbling about the girl’s face, her snapback askew on her head, her blue eyes sparkling in peach cheeks.

“Sorry. Are you hurt?” She looked back down at Wonder Woman, “You ok?”

“Yup.” Madi nodded and shuffled her feet leaning into Clarke’s side, relaxing the moment she felt her sister’s arm fall across her shoulders.

“Yeah. Yeah...sorry. That was my fault. I was hurrying,” she laughed, pink now staining her own cheeks, as she scrubbed at her cheek with her other hand before grasping the brim of her hat, and turning it back so it was behind her head again.

Great. Her crush. Clarke had smacked right into Lexa, and damn if she hadn’t smelled good. Like vanilla and lavender. She licked her lips and looked away, too embarrassed to look her in the eye.

Lexa smiled a little, she had noticed the blonde in a couple of her classes, and she didn’t know much about her, a recent transfer from California. She knew the girl took a lot of art classes, including at least one class at the local college. She might have asked Octavia about Clarke. The two were in the same classes, both Juniors while Lexa was a Senior.

Clarke straightened her shoulders and stuck out her hand, grimacing a little when she remembered that she still had paint on her fingers, but it was too late, because Lexa grabbed it in shook it.

“I’m Clarke.”

“I know.” Lexa smiled and held her hand a little longer than necessary before finally releasing it.

“Oh. Right. We have some of the same classes,” Clarke ducked her head glancing down just in time to see Madi roll her eyes at her. Madi might have only been nine, but Clarke still shared almost all her secrets with Madi. And Madi was well aware of who Lexa was.

She bit her lip, hoping and praying that Madi wouldn’t...well be Madi. Just this once, her sweet sister with a corruptible streak might actually not out her in front of Lexa. Although she had an idea Lexa already knew she was bi, as she didn’t exactly hide it. No, she prayed Madi wouldn’t out her crush on Lexa.

“You’re Lexa.”

Clarke winced. Too late.

Lexa looked down at Wonder Woman, and then glanced up at Clarke, quirking her eyebrow at her, a small smile playing about her lips. It was clear that Wonder Woman knew who she was, despite Lexa not introducing herself.

“I am. And what is your name, Wonder Woman?” She held out her hand, smiling at the way Madi blinked owlishly up at her, chewing on her lower lip, before finally deciding to shake Lexa’s hand. Lexa was surprised by the firm grip, but it still made her smile.

“I’m Madi, Clarke’s younger sister. She talks about you. A lot. I like your cat. Our eyes are the same.” Lexa blinked, her mouth hanging open a little, her mind buzzing with all the words that had just tumbled past Madi’s lips.

Madi...Clarke...talks about you...cat...Cat? What cat? Oh! Raven!...eyes.

She nodded and chuckled looking up to meet the mortified face of Clarke, her peach skin now flaming red. She chuckled again and reached out, laying her hand on Clarke’s arm. “Really?”

Clarke closed her eyes briefly, debating between yelling at Madi or just keeping her eyes closed forever so she wouldn’t ever have to face Lexa again. But she was pulled out of her humiliating reverie by a squeeze to her arm, and the sudden warmth of a tall body almost pressing into her’s.

“Hey. It’s ok.”

She looked up, blinking at how closely Lexa was standing in front of her. The older girl was only a couple inches taller, and only a few inches away. Her eyes wandered across high cheekbones, dusky skin with a light smattering of golden freckles across her nose, to full coral colored lips. She licked her own, wishing she had the courage to close the space between them, but before she could even finish formulating the thought, Lexa stepped back.

Lexa blew out a shaky breath, her skin warm enough now that she unzipped her jacket a little. She glanced down at Madi. “Yes, we do have the same eyes don’t we.” She bent down a little until she was eye-level with Madi.

“You know, Madi. I’ve noticed your sister too. I know she likes to paint, and she is funny. I like hearing her laugh,” she whispered to Madi, pretending to ignore Clarke, but making sure Clarke could still hear her.

She heard Clarke gasp, and it made her smile again as she straightened. “Have you had fun trick or treating?”

Madi nodded and reached up grabbing Clarke’s hand, “Clarke? Are we going to do more trick or treating, or are we going home?”

Clarke nodded. They’d already hit the houses on the lower end where they lived and were on their way to the center of town.

“Do you want to come with us?” Madi handed her candy basket to Clarke and then held up her other hand for Lexa to take.

Lexa was tempted, but she needed to do something first. She had been heading to the Sanderson Cottage, her yearly pilgrimage. She wasn’t sure why, but the pull was even stronger this year, and by the way Raven was starting to rub against her legs, she knew the cat was anxious to get going also.

“I would love to, but I’m actually on my way somewhere. Unless you want to come with me?” She grabbed Madi’s hand and looked expectantly at Madi and then Clarke.

“Ok!” Madi grinned and swung their arms, deciding for them. She pulled on their arms, turning back the way they had come and then looked up at Lexa, waiting for direction.

“Oh look! Your cat!”

Lexa turned and saw Raven ten feet ahead of them, standing in the sidewalk, tail twitching, clearly waiting for them to follow her.

“Raven isn’t actually my cat. She only belongs to herself.” Lexa pointed towards her. “Every year we visit the Sanderson Cottage. She knows the way.”

“Oh I heard about the cottage, but don’t really know the history. I heard there is a curse involved?”

Lexa nodded slowly at Clarke and then looked down at Madi, wondering how much to tell them.

“The Sanderson Sisters were witches: Nia was the oldest and the meanest, and Anya and Echo were twins, but they didn’t look exactly alike. They say though that there were more children, children who died mister-mishteriously.”

“Mysteriously,” Lexa corrected as she stared down in surprise at Madi. “How did you know that?”

Madi shrugged, “I’m not good at reading. I don’t like it, but mama gets me the audible books from the library so I can listen to them. And I like misherteries.”

Clarke smiled, “She has almost perfect recall. She can quote back almost anything once she had heard it once or maybe twice. She likes mysteries. She was really excited to move here.”

“You are from…”

“Los Angeles. We moved here in August.”

They walked along slowly, the houses slowly falling away in the distance until they finally reached their destination. It was a medium sized cottage, only two, open rooms with a partially open loft that ran the entire area of the cottage.

The weeds had grown up around it, and Lexa frowned, wondering why the gardener hadn’t been out to clear out the dying shrubbery. She shivered a little, staring at the front door, her fingers itching to grasp it and open it.

Raven had settled on a windowsill waiting patiently for Lexa to decide.

“It’s a little spooky.”

Lexa glanced at Clarke watching the way the blonde fidgeted, biting her lip, before she straightened her shoulders and puffed her chest out a little.

“Let’s go in. It will be fun.”

She was surprised the blonde wanted to go in, sure the younger girl was a little scared of it. She looked down at Madi who was staring intently at Raven, her brows furrowed.

“Ok,” she heard herself say before she had even thought of it. She dug into her pocket for the key and dropped Madi’s hand, approaching the door. It took a minutes of jiggling the old iron skeleton key before it finally clicked and the door opened with a small squeak.

Chapter 2:

They stepped into the large room, Lexa frowning again at the cobwebs. The museum had been closed for repairs for the last two years, but Lexa had assumed someone was at least cleaning everything. But she could see the dust coating almost everything, cobwebs in the nooks and crannies. She flicked the lights on, and the lights pinged and flickered before finally settling.

Clarke stepped inside, pleased that the lights at least worked. The room was full of items, many of them books. A table and chairs, a large cauldron. She rolled her eyes at that, sure it had been placed there for the benefit of the tourists. Witches weren’t an actual thing.

But there was a large book on a pedestal, a glass box covering it. She glanced down at it, wrapping her fingers around the edges of the pedestal.

“Wow...so they actually put a spellbook in here?” She chuckled and laughed, “bet the tourists love that.”

Lexa grumbled a little and moved further into the room, trailing her fingers through the dust. “It’s real. The sisters are real, and so is the spellbook.”

Clarke looked up, surprised at the tone in Lexa’s voice. “Sorry,” she muttered.

Lexa shrugged and sighed a little, “No, I’m sorry. The Sanderson Sisters are actually part of my family history. They were my great-great-great-great...well, a lot of great aunts. My family owns the cottage and museum.”

Clarke nodded and walked around the room, checking briefly on Madi who was sitting in one of the old chairs at the table, patting Raven who was sitting on the table purring to her heart’s content.

She stopped in front of a tall, thin metal handle holder. In it sat a pristine, fat black candle, the wick unburnt. It was the only thing that didn’t have a layer of dust on it. She frowned and stared at it. There were numerous candles scattered around the room, most of them a whitish, yellow, wicks partially burnt. This was the only black one, never burnt.

“Lexa, what is this?”

Lexa glanced up from where she was reading one of the books written in the late 1800’s that spun the tale of the Sanderson Sisters.

She set the book down and walked up to Clarke, their shoulders brushing each other. “It is the curse.”

Raven stopped purring.

“How does it go?”

Lexa said nothing for a moment, before spinning the tale she had heard from her mother as a child. “The Sanderson Sisters were born in the mid 1600’s, witches. Real witches. Not women that were simply independent and used herbs and such to heal people. They weren’t like the innocent women in the Salem Witch Trials.”

She shook her head, reaching out as if to touch the candle before snatching her hand back away. “They were real,” she murmured. “Like Madi said, Nia was the oldest. By twelve years. Their parents were farmers, but Nia...Nia was different. She had a cruel streak. After Nia was born, legend has it that three boys were also born, and they all died mysteriously as babies. The oldest only living to be two or so. People whispered that Nia killed them.”

“B-but, that would have meant she was a child too.” Clarke gaped at Lexa and shook her head, sure it wasn’t true.

“Yeah. Exactly. But then Anya and Echo were born. Twins, and they say they never cried. And they didn’t look like each other, which was unusual. I mean it isn’t unusual now. We know they were fraternal twins, but back then I guess fraternal twins only happened when a boy and girl were born, not twin boys or twin girls.” She shrugged again and crossed her arms looking around the room.

“Anyway, the girls were born and were inseparable. Echo almost drowned twice, but each time, Anya saved her. And they said that Anya was badly burned once on her hands, like..really bad. But somehow Echo healed her? I don’t really know. That part of the story isn’t well known, and there aren’t a lot of sources. Just a few diaries really.”

She rubbed her hands across her face, needing something to do with them, unsure why re-telling the story she’d told her friends a hundred times, suddenly was hard to do. It felt different, telling the story on Halloween in the cottage. Different, because Clarke and Madi were there. Different because Raven was just a cat, and yet, she swore sometimes Raven stared at her so intently, that Lexa was sure she would open her mouth and speak.

“Stuff happened. The girl all grew up, and if people angered them, suddenly their hogs would die, their kids get sick, the rain wouldn’t come. So the townspeople started to pay them tribute. Like give them money when they had it, give them their sheep and cows. They sold potions and stuff, stuff to heal people, and I guess it worked.”

“And then the kids went missing.”

Lexa and Clarke both jumped, turning around to stare at Madi who was sitting at the table, sorting her candy not looking at either of them as she continued. “Kids started going missing, and the sisters never aged. They should have aged, but they didn’t. So people began to suspect that the sisters were somehow living off the children. Like sucking them up.”

Lexa nodded slowly, “Yeah. That’s it exactly. Every few years a child or two would disappear. Until they took the wrong child.” She turned back to the candle, staring at it, imagining what it would look like lit.

“Which child?”

She jumped and her laugh quivered in her throat. “Aden. Aden Walker. They took Aden when he was only five years old. Lured him from his father’s house. Aden was said to be a strange child. He never spoke,” she muttered. His father was Finn Walker, but he was also called Aden Woods.”

Lexa stopped, surprised at what she had just said. She didn’t remember where she had read that Aden had also been called Aden Woods. She’d been obsessed with her family history when she was younger, and she had spent hours reading and researching the Sanderson line. She vaguely recalled the name Aden Woods in the genealogy and wondered if she had confused the two. There had been an Aden Woods in the 1600’s, but he couldn’t have also been Aden Walker, because Aden Walker had died as a child.

“No one knew who the mother was. He was delivered to his father’s doorstep when he was about two years old. Or something like that.”

“Maybe he wasn’t Aden’s father. Maybe he was just supposed to protect Aden.”

Clarke turned and stared at Madi before walking over to her and resting her hand on her head. “Why would you say that, Madi?”

Madi shrugged and went back to sorting her candy. She knew she’d had kit kat bars, but now they were all gone. She wrinkled her nose and stared at the small candy bars in her hand. The wrapping was red, and they were nut and dairy and gluten and soy free, and egg free. But they actually tasted good. But she knew she’d had kit-kats! She sighed and went back to sorting.

Clarke looked around the room, noting the dust and cobwebs, the almost haphazard piles of what looked like blankets or clothes in one corner, dried lumber and a toolbox in another corner. Obviously someone had been working on the cottage.

She walked back towards Lexa, “So what happened then?”

“He disappeared. Dead they say. Someone saw him die, I guess and ran back to tell the townspeople. The came in the dead of the night and captured the sisters in the middle of doing a spell to gain their immortality. They hung them. Right outside the cottage from the tall sycamore tree.”

Lexa said nothing for long moments, staring at the candle, her mind tumbling. History hadn’t recorded who it was that had witnessed Aden’s death and then run and gathered the townspeople and brought them back here. And that was odd, because history had recorded the events of the night in detail, even recording the names of the townspeople. The Blakes and Kanes had been present that night, the Millers and Monroes. Even the rest of the Sandersons had been there that night. They had even recorded the strange spell and ritual the sisters had enacted to suck the life out of young Aden Woods, but still...no one recorded who it was that had witnessed it all.

Clarke waited, giving Lexa a few moments to think about it. Whatever had happened here obviously meant something to Lexa, her family was tied to it. But it was still all legend. The sisters had probably existed, but they had probably been three women, refusing to conform and bow to the patriarchy like most women accused of witches. And they’d been murdered by the men of the town.

She pressed her shoulder against Lexa’s gently, taking a deep breath and brushing her fingers against Lexa’s. “Lex? What happened then?”

Lexa jumped a little, her fingers wrapping around Clarke’s. She squeezed and intertwined their fingers together, smiling down at Clarke, suddenly feeling lighter. “With her dying breath, Nia cast a curse, claiming that any virgin who lit the black candle on Hallow’s Eve, or Halloween night when the moon is full, will resurrect them again.”

“And?”

Lexa shrugged. “That’s it.”

“Sooo...no one has ever tried to light the candle?” She nodded towards the candle. “This is a new candle, no way it is from the 1600’s.” She laughed and dug into her pants pocket, pulling out her lucky lighter, the one her grandfather had given her. He’d been a young pilot during World War II and had given her the lighter, claiming it had saved his life when he’d been shot down over Nazi-occupied France.

She flicked the lighter and smirked a little, hoping to dispel the gloom sitting heavily in the room. “Come on, let’s light it, and see if the curse is real,” she wiggled her eyebrows. “Stories are just stories, but we should light it anyway.”

She held out the lighter to Lexa who shook her head and smirked back at her. “Sorry, Clarke, but that ship sailed this summer.”

“Oh.” She ducked her eyes, trying not to look as embarrassed as she could felt. Of course Lexa wouldn’t be a virgin, of course she was dating someone! She suddenly didn’t want to light the candle anymore, didn’t want to be in the cottage, and didn’t want to be near Lexa.

“She’s gone now. Costia. She and her parents moved away. We were better friends than girlfriends anyway.”

Clarke jerked up, color flooding her face again, but she couldn’t stop the smile that practically split her face in two. “So...no girlfriend?”

“Nope. You?”

“Nope. No boyfriend or girlfriend.”

Lexa nodded, already having suspected that Clarke was bisexual. The girl did have a patch on her backpack with the bisexual flag after all. And she had a rainbow sticker on her locker.

“You should kiss.”

Clarke choked on her saliva, face flaming, as she whirled around to gape at Madi who was staring intently at them both.

“Wh-what?”

“Isn’t that what people do when they like each other? It’s what you did with that boy Finn last year. That was a lot of kissy-face.” Madi wrinkled her nose. Finn had been ok, mostly. But she didn’t like the way that he always wanted to spend time with Clarke, demanding that Clarke stop spending time with her, and with him instead.

“Kissy-face eh?”

Clarke groaned a little under her breath. “Yeah, he was just a boy. I broke up with him before we moved.” She shrugged. “He was kind of annoying actually.” She laughed and looked over at Madi, well aware that Madi hadn’t really liked him.

“Yup. Annoying.” The girl unwrapped a piece of chocolate and popped it into her mouth, smiling as the sweet hit her tongue. She swung her legs back and forth looking around her.

“Are we going to get more candy?”

“Yeah, kiddo, we are,” answered Lexa as she turned towards Clarke. She shrugged, “light it if you want, but we should go.” She leaned in closer to Clarke, only inches away, her eyes searching Clarke’s.

“You know, part of the legend goes that when a virgin lights the candle, she should be kissed at the same time.”

Clarke bit her lip, looking up at Lexa from under her eyelashes. “Oh, really? Does it now?”

Lexa smiled and leaned in closer, daring Clarke. “Does it matter?”

“No.” Clarke flicked the lighter, the flame springing to life, and she reached over and lit the wick of the black candle, just as Lexa pressed her mouth to her’s.

***************************************

It was a moment before she realized that something had crashed loudly outside, the wind suddenly picking up and roaring through the trees. The house shook, and for a moment, she was sure it was because of their kiss.

But as she pulled back, she saw the cauldron lit with fire, the flame from the candle black as night and growing higher and higher. Raven was howling, and Madi screamed, jumping up and knocking over her chair with a loud crash, as she ran and threw herself at Clarke and Lexa.

Lexa scooped her up, Madi’s little legs fastening securely about her waist. She grabbed Clarke and pulled her back and behind her, stepping away from the candle. The light suddenly went out, and Raven howled again, the wind shaking the cottage. Books fell from the shelves, and the fire beneath the cauldron spit in angry time to the shaking of the house.

“Fuck! Fuck, Lexa! What is happening!?” Clarke grabbed at Lexa’s arm, pulling her with her, terror licking along her nerves. It was a myth, a legend, a stupid scary tale that they told to kids to scare them. But the lit candle’s flame was black, and it towered above them, almost reaching towards the ceiling now, but it gave off no heat, only a freezing cold slowly drifting through the air.

The lights were out, and they could barely see, and Clarke stumbled, her fingers gripping Lexa’s arm, refusing to let go, relieved that Lexa was carrying Madi, as she was the stronger of the two of them.

“Shit, Clarke! I don’t know. I don’t know! We have to get out now!” She pulled Clarke towards her and circled around the candle, staring in horror when she realized that the glass case covering the spellbook had been shattered, and the pages of the book were fluttering madly in the wind. Except…

“Lexa, how is that possible. There isn’t any wind in here?”

Lexa shook her head, her heart pounding in her ears, her skin hot to Clarke’s touch, but felt icy to her own. She could feel the temperature dropping. She tried to make her way to the wall, and with every step they took, a new candle suddenly flamed to life, blinding them only to suddenly burn out again.

“I can’t see, Clarke! Clarke!”

Clarke reached up, her hand scraping along Madi’s head, trying to soothe the wailing child. “It’s ok, Madi. It’s ok, we are getting it out.”

“Lexa, which way?” She was disoriented from the flashing candles, and the cold that was seeping into her bones, making her tired and dizzy. She fought to place one foot in front of the other, wondering why her movements were so sluggish.

“This way! Hurry! This way!” She heard the voice off to her left, and she tried to make her way towards the voice, pulling Lexa with her.

“Stop! No, move to your left, back! Back!”

She followed the voice, obeying their every direction, until she was able to get around the table, stumbling against the pile of lumber.

“The door. It’s right in front of you. Hurry!”

“Lex, this way!” She tightened her hold on Lexa and surged forward the remaining steps, her hand reaching out blindly for the handle. She closed her hand around it, and she pulled, struggling with the door as it refused to budge.

“Push it!” The voice hissed again. And Clarke threw her weight against the door, gasping as she and Lexa and Madi tumbled through the door, tripping down the wooden steps to land in a heap in front of the cottage.

They lay there breathing heavily, their hearts racing and limbs trembling. The cottage was suddenly quiet, all of the lights off, the candles blown out. The wind outside had died down, and they could hear mice rustling through the leaves under the trees.

“Wh-what was that?!”

“Madi! Madi, are you ok?”

“I’m ok.”

“Clarke?”

“Yeah.”

Lexa sat up, pulling herself to her knees and then to her feet. She swayed slightly, relieved when Clarke wrapped her hands around her waist to steady her, before leaning forward and sliding her arms fully around Lexa’s waist. She leaned her head against the back of Lexa’s shoulders, trying to regain control of her breathing.

Madi scrambled to her feet, lifting her arms to Lexa, who immediately picked her up again. She was probably too old to be held like this, but she didn’t care. She was afraid. They had done something. Something bad. Something was awake.

Clarke loosened her grip around Lexa’s waist and slid her hands up Madi’s legs, squeezing them gently.

“You sure, you ok, Madi?”

“Yeah.”

“Ok.” She nodded and pulled away, stepping around them both to look at the cottage, before turning back towards Lexa.

“Lexa…”

“Who were you talking to?”

“Wait. What?” Clarke looked at Lexa, surprise on her face. ‘What do you mean who was I talking to?”

“In the cottage. Who led you out?”

Clarke stared at her for a full minute, her heart dropping to her feet. “Lexa,” She stepped closer, her words somber and heavy. “You. Lexa, you led me out.”

“No, Clarke,” Lexa shook her head and wiggled her arms, readjusting Madi who still clung to her. “No, I was to your right, and that voice came from your left. I followed you, Clarke.”

“L-Lexa, I...I don’t...I followed…”

“Me. You followed me.”

They both froze and turned slowly to face the cottage again.

Raven sat on the front step calmly licking her front paw, before gracefully jumping down the few steps to pad over to them and sit a couple of feet in front of them. She tilted her head back and stared at the three of them. It had been done. Finally. She had waited centuries for this night.

She had always known that the Griffins would return to Salem, having fled it the same night that young Aden Walker had supposedly met his end. Salem had a way of drawing the original families back, especially those with magic in their blood.

And nowhere was the more magic in Salem than in the three who stood before her: a Griffin and the true Sangedakru. Except...She peered over her shoulder, her body tense, the cottage was quiet, too quiet. She knew they were in there, waiting like the predators they were. They didn’t have much time.

“Listen, I realize this is a lot to take in…”

“Oh my god! The cat is talking! The cat is talking! Why is the cat talking!?” Clare turned to Lexa who simply stood there, looking more than a little bewildered, her jaw hanging open, her eyes wide.

“Cool! A talking cat!”

Clarke focused her attention on the squealing Madi. “No, not cool! This is bad, Madi! Oh..god...it’s the candy!”

Clarke grabbed Lexa jerking her around, terror coloring each word as she grabbed at Madi, trying to pull her into her arms. “It’s the candy, Lexa! It’s been poisoned, by...by...I...a...hallucogenic! Oh my god! Shit! Shit! We have to get her to my mom, she will know!”

Lexa simply stared at Raven, her mind buzzing. “C-candy?”

“Yes, I ate the kit kats!”

“I knew it!” crowed Madi, earning a wild glare from Clarke, who had finally managed to pull Madi from Lexa’s arms. She wrapped both her arms around Madi and turned headed towards the long paved road back to town.

“It’s ok, Madi. It will be fine, don’t be scared.” But the words felt useless, and she could feel her own panic bubbling up about to spill over.

“I didn’t eat the candy,” whispered Lexa, before finally turning and jumping after Clarke. It only took a couple of steps before she caught her, grabbing her gently by her arms and pulling her back into her own body. She turned her, unprepared for the sobs that suddenly jerked Clarke’s entire body, or the way the blonde almost entirely collapsed into her arms.

Madi wiggled, unable to slip out of Clarke’s hold, now squashed between two bigger bodies. She tried to crane her head around Clarke’s so she could see Raven. Raven who talked, when she shouldn’t. She always knew magic was real.

“It’s ok, Clarke. It’s ok,” murmured Lexa as she ran her hands up and down Clarke’s back. “I didn’t eat the candy, and I hear Raven to. It’s ok. We aren’t hallucinating.” She sighed and gulped. “This is real.”

Clarke sniffed, Lexa’s words finally piercing her growing panic. Her sobs slowly subsided, and she finally stepped back a little, and Lexa carefully prided Madi from her arms, setting her on her feet, keeping one arm around her tightly.

Clarke laughed, tears drying on her cheeks. “Better? Oh god, Lex. How is that better? Could it be real?”

All three of them turned to Raven who hadn’t moved, but was clearly unimpressed. “Are you three done? Because we are almost out of time.” She stalked forward, her eyes intent upon Clarke, her tail flicking with every step.

“Listen. My name is Raven Birch. I was born in 1667, here in Salem. And I was turned into a cat on the night the townspeople of Salem hung the three Sanderson Sisters. With her dying breath, Nia Sanderson cast a curse promising that they would rise again when a virgin lit the black candle under a full moon on Halloween. The sisters have risen, and we have go. Now.”

“B-but...you can talk,” sputtered Clarke.

“Yes, oh smart one, I can.”

“Oh my god. Did she just sass me?” Clarke turned towards Lexa, her mouth open, hands on her hips, only to see Lexa trying not to laugh. “Really? You think it’s funny that a talking cat just sassed me?!”

Madi laughed and grabbed Clarke’s hand, pulling on it. “Come on, Clarke. It is kind of funny.”

Clarke huffed and rolled her eyes before turning her attention back to Raven. “Fine. You can talk. Look…”

But Lexa interrupted her, stepping forward and crouching down near Raven, “Could you always talk? And I just didn’t hear you?”

Raven smiled as only a cat can and stepped closer, rubbing against Lexa’s knee. “No, Lexa. I was always aware of who I was, but I couldn’t speak until the candle was lit.” She sat down and peered up at Lexa, her voice soft and gravelly, breaking a little “I’ve waited so long for this night, but we do have to go now, I will tell you the rest of what happened that night.”

“Well, well, well. And what do we have here.”

All three of them froze at the sound of the voice, before Raven turned quickly, crouching slightly, tail flicking wildly. She hissed and bared her fangs at the three figures standing in front of them.

“Well, well, Raven. It has been a long time. But how long exactly? Hmmmm?”

Lexa grabbed Clarke, who had already grabbed Madi, pulling them behind her. This was bad, very bad, because she recognized them from the sketches and paintings that had been done.

“It’s the sisters,” she whispered, throat tight with fear.

“Oh very good! Very good!”

The woman with reddish brown hair stepped forward and off the stoop, advancing on them slowly before stopping five feet from them. Her face was heavily scarred, but Lexa quickly realized that the scars were symbols and not random, and they were almost beautiful in a twisted way. The woman was thin, wearing a dark gray cloak, over a blue dress that obviously had gone out of fashion hundreds of years ago. Her eyes were ice blue and her chin sharp and haughty. She was clearly the one with the most power.

The woman to her left was taller with dark eyes and long brown hair tumbling about her shoulders in waves. She too wore a dress, long out of fashion, and leather shoes with buckles. Her cloak was dark green and clasped at the neck with, a large copper button. She grinned, her lips twisting, making her beautiful face all the more chilling.

And the last woman was taller than the rest, lithe and almost gangly. She wore what looked like a crown of interwoven branches upon her head, and her hair was long and brown with flashes of yellow in it. But it was her eyes, rimmed in what looked like charcoal with streaks spreading partly down her face that were the most startling. She wore trousers and leather boots, with a long coat studded with what looked like metal pieces.

“The sisters,” croaked Lexa.

Nia laughed and waved her hand and the woman to her left stepped forward giving a little curtsey, before smiling and licking her lips and stepping further away from Nia, circling closer to Lexa and Clarke.

Raven hissed when the woman moved, and she hissed back, her lips twisting into a sneer. “We meet again, Raven. You were always annoying.” She raised her hand, fingers extended towards Raven who backed up a step, just as the third woman stepped forward.

“Enough! We don’t have time for this,” She cast a quick glance down at the cat who was still staring at her sisters, but she knew Raven was watching her out of the corner of her eye. “Leave Raven be, we have no quarrel with this cat.”

“No, quarrel??” snarled Nia, “she is the one who brought them to our door!”

“Yes, and you cursed her and she paid her debt to you. It is finished.”

Nia stepped back and eyed her younger sister, her brows pulled low, her lips pursed slightly. It would appear that time had not brought her sister to her senses.

She stepped towards Lexa, smiling and holding out her hand. “So, you apparently know of us? Hmmm?”

Lexa swallowed harshly and nodded. “You are Nia,” she jerked her head towards the woman in the green cloak, “that would make you Echo, the youngest twin.” She pointed towards the last woman, the one with the crown. “And I guess that makes you Anya, the first twin.”

Nia laughed and nodded her head, while Echo clapped her hands and twirled in place. “So you recognize us!” She flicked her hand in the air, “We are rather unforgettable. But enough of that,” she flicked her hand in the air again, slowly letting her gaze roam over the three of them. “Tell me, what exactly are you wearing? Is it common for girls to wear pants? You are girls? Right?”

“Not that it matters, and gender is a social construct anyway, but yes,” hugged Clarke in annoyance.

“A gender..what?” Nia cocked her head, confusion wrinkling her face and making the scars jump slightly. “Oh never mind. That isn’t important. What year is it? How long have we been gone?”

“It is 2018,” chirped Madi, as she shifted out from behind Clarke, her curiosity getting the best of her.

“It’s...it’s...2018?!” sputtered Nia as she raised a hand and rubbed at her forehead, sighing deeply. “Well no matter.” She turned her attention to Madi, a slow smile breaking across her face, twisting her lips and highlighting her scars. She leaned down a little, while Raven spit at her.

“Aren’t you a beautiful, little thing.” She reached out towards Madi, as Echo stepped closer, her gaze intent upon Madi also.

“Look at her, Nia! So small and delicate! So...yummy,” Echo murmured, excitement spilling from her mouth as she licked her lips.

Clarke and Lexa both grabbed at Madi just as Nia and Echo suddenly rushed forward. Raven yowled and threw herself at Echo, who had managed to beat Nia to Madi, claws extended. Raven yowled again when her claws dug into Echo’s shoulders, her teeth catching Echol’s ear as she bit down.

Echo screamed and backed away, jumping up and down, grabbing at Raven and trying to pull her off of her. But her hands couldn’t find purchase in Raven’s twisting body, and the cat started to slash at her shoulder, ripping through the cloak.

Nia stumbled, falling to the ground when Echo had shouldered her out of the way. She cursed and held out her hands, fingers sparking, but she was too weak to draw her power from the spellbook.

Anya crouched slightly, her hand going to her hip, where a long dagger rested, bound to her waist with leather cords. But she didn’t move, her gaze darting between Nia and Raven clawing at her sister.

Echo finally managed to get hold of Raven, and pulled hard, screaming as Raven bit at her head and scratched her across her forehead. Echo screamed and cursed again, finally throwing Raven from her.

Echo bent over, angry tears coursing down her face, her hands gingerly poking at the scratches on her head and forehead. “Damn that cat to hades!” She snarled as she whimpered at the pain and the sight of the blood on her fingers.

Raven landed on her feet, twirling quickly and facing the sisters again. “Run!” She spat and hissed raising her clawed paw.

And this time Lexa and Clarke ran, Madi safely ensconced in Lexa’s arms as they tore down the paved road as fast as they could back to down, Raven right behind them.

#clextober18 #Hocus Pocus #clexa fanfic #jude81 #The Hocus to my Pocus #clarke griffin and lexa #clextober #clextober fanfic #day 13 of clextober18

23 notes · View notes

man-creates-dinosaurs · 7 years ago

Photo

For Halloween I decided I wanted to try and write about something spooky that nevertheless still fit in with the overall theme of this blog. To this end I’ve decided to write about the fascinating field of cryptozoology and my own interest in the subject from the time I was in middle school till now and about how my views on the subject have changed and evolved. Enjoy! CRYPTOZOOLOGY AND ME: A MEMOIR

When I was in middle school I went through a big cryptozoology phase. I chalk this up to a number of cultural influences. At the time my three favorite shows on TV were The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Invader Zim – all heavily steeped in the paranormal. For those who don’t know, cryptozoology refers to “the study of hidden animals” and its coinage is typically attributed to either Bernard Heuvelmans or Ivan T. Sanderson – who I’ll talk about more later on. For all practical purposes however, today the term generally denotes the vocation of “monster hunter” with the prize quarries being such legendary creatures as Bigfoot and the Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster and other lake monsters including Champ the Lake Champlain monster and Ogopogo of Lake Okanagan, sea serpents, living dinosaurs such as the Mokèlé-mbèmbé – an alleged sauropod living in the African Congo – or the Ropen – a bioluminescent pterosaur inhabiting Papua New Guinea – , as well as such decidedly weirder and less biologically plausible creatures as the Jersey Devil, Mothman and the Chupacabra.

As a kid I read all the major cryptozoological authors: Bernard Heuvelmans (On the Track of Unknown Animals, 1955), Ivan T. Sanderson (Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life, 1961), Loren Coleman (Field Guide To Bigfoot, Yeti, & Other Mystery Primates Worldwide, 1999), Jerome Clark (Unexplained! 2nd Ed., 1998), Coleman and Clark (Cryptozoology A To Z, 1999), Karl P.N. Shuker (From Flying Toads to Snakes with Wings, 1997), John A. Keel (The Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings, 1994), Janet and Colin Bord (Alien Animals, 1981) and Brad Stiger (Out Of The Dark: The Complete Guide to Beings from Beyond, 2001). I also had a well-read copy of W. Haden Blackman’s The Field Guide to North American Monsters (1998) and readily consumed every cryptozoological related documentary or program that came on TV from Animal Planet’s Animal-X to Discovery’s X-Creatures – you can see the influence the X-Files had on pop-culture here! – to The History Channel’s History’s Mysteries.

Looking back on all this I’m not sure how much I really believed that cryptids – the nickname cryptozoologists use for the monsters they track – actually existed. But like many proponents of the paranormal I think it’s fair to say that, at the time, I had a very open mind about all of this.

It may also come as a surprise to many readers to learn that among the various cryptids my favorite wasn’t any of the alleged living dinosaurs or other supposed prehistoric survivors but rather Mothman. I don’t know what it was about the story of the Mothman that so fully captivated me. I think it must have been how utterly alien the creature seemed. By the time I was in middle school dinosaurs, pterosaurs, prehistoric marine reptiles, dragons and even giant bipedal apes were a pretty common part of my imaginary menagerie thanks to lifetime of consuming books and movies about dinosaurs. However until I read Keel’s 1994 book I had never heard of anything even remotely resembling a Mothman.

Today Mothman seems fairly well integrated into contemporary pop-culture – there was even a 2002 film starring Richard Gere and Laura Linney, though it did admittedly bomb upon its release – but for those who are unfamiliar here’s the basic gist as it has come down in the paranormal literature and is still being recounted to this day: Beginning roughly in November of 1966, citizens of the small town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia – located along the Ohio River – began reporting sightings of a creature which was described as a humanoid being with black/grey skin, red glowing eyes and a pair of giant bat-like wings which came out of its back. This gargoyle-like creature – which the local media would eventually dub “The Mothman” – was seen by dozens of eyewitnesses, usually in passing, though in one dramatic early encounter was said to have chased four young adults who were driving in excess of 100 mph down a deserted road. The sightings eventually came to an end nearly one year later in December of 1967 coinciding with the collapse of the area Silver Gate Bridge which killed 46 people. Many paranormalists, and even some cryptozoologists, have attempted to link the creature with the bridge collapse claiming that Mothman acts as a kind of harbinger of impending catastrophes.

By the summer of 2002 I was so obsessed with the story of the Mothman that I convinced my parents to stop by the town of Point Pleasant during our summer vacation to Niagara Falls. I wanted to see the town where Mothman had appeared. This would turn out to be a poignant trip for me because while on it I acquired the book Mothman: The Facts Behind the Legend (2002) by Donnie Sergent Jr. and Jeff Wamsley. Sergent Jr. and Wamsley were Point Pleasant locals who had undertaken the arduous task of combing through local and state newspaper archives and locating the original Mothman newspaper reports which they then reprinted – alongside original eyewitness statements, police reports, and letters exchanged between Keel and locals – in their book. Sergent Jr. and Wamsley don’t attempt to make any argument about what the Mothman was or wasn’t, their book is simply a collection of primary source documents about the phenomena which unfolded in Point Pleasant between ’66 and ’67. Being able to go back to the original reports and read them for myself had a profound impact on me because it demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Mothman… was a bird. In the original newspaper reports and statements delivered by eyewitnesses the creature which came to be known as Mothman is repeatedly described as a bird. It does not have the body of a man but rather is described as being as tall as one. It does not have red glowing eyes but is rather described as having red markings around its eyes. It does not have leathery bat-like wings but rather feathers and wings like a bird. In some accounts it is even described as having long skinny legs and a beak! In a few cases eyewitnesses describe seeing multiple creatures together in a flock standing in a field or a clutch of trees before flying away. Many witnesses - including those aforementioned scared twenty-somethings who claimed Mothman chased them down a road - reported that the creature produced a high-pitch squeaking sound. What these people are describing is likely a flock of sandhill cranes which stand six-feet-tall, have grey feathers, bright red patches around their eyes and as for the sound they make: just listen. Sandhill cranes are not native to West Virginia but do migrate down the Mississippi River making it conceivable that a flock could have gotten blown off course and ended up in Point Pleasant where they proceeded to scare the daylights out of locals unfamiliar with such large, odd-looking birds. Another possibility is that some sightings of Mothman were of a snowy owl, which is also uncommon in West Virginia. However as documented in Sergent Jr. and Wamsley’s book in December of ’66 several news outlets reported that a local farmer had killed just such an owl. It is worth noting that after this, sightings of the Mothman largely fell off and were replaced by reports of UFOs (which in all likelihood were, pardon the cliché but I’m being dead serious here, weather balloons). A few sightings that occurred in the area during the summer of ’67 appear to have been the result of common turkey vultures. What this means is that contrary to what the paranormalists like to claim the Mothman ‘flap’ did not occur over a 12-month period but only for about three months at the end of ’66/start of ’67 and was certainly the result of people seeing unusually large birds in the area.

However what Sergent Jr. and Wamsley’s book also demonstrated via their reprinting of sci-fi TV screenwriter turned paranormal investigator John Keel’s private letters with local residents was that Keel was actively manipulating information and witnesses in order to have their accounts match the scenario he had envisioned in which the small town of Point Pleasant played host to a virtual invasion of flying saucers and alien monsters portending the disaster which was the Silver Bridge collapse. Keel initially presented these ideas in a streamlined manner in a chapter for his 1970 book Strange Creatures From Time and Space which he would revise in 1994 as his cryptozoological/UFOlogical “encyclopedia” The Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings. Between that time Keel wrote a more extensive version of the Mothman incident as he saw it in the form of a sundry mish-mash of paranormal potpourri that was his 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies. Today more people know Keel’s version of the events then they do the actual eyewitnesses’ and while Keel’s books captivated me as a middle schooler nowadays I find them more than a little cringe worthy. Keel was vehemently anti-science, anti-academia, never cited his sources and often embellished and exaggerated events to make them read better.

The same year I became convinced that Mothman was just a misidentified bird I also encountered the magazine Skeptical Inquirer at a local Barnes & Noble. The cover story was “Evaluating 50 Years of Bigfoot Evidence” by researcher Benjamin Radford. I got the magazine and in six short pages Radford had disabused me of any notion that Bigfoot might exist. A final encounter with marine biologist Richard Ellis’ book Monsters of the Sea (1994) on a trip to the library convinced me that sea serpents and lake monsters were also likewise nothing more than figments of mankind’s imagination. My fascination with cryptozoology now thoroughly deflated I redirected by interests back towards world mythology and folklore; a path which eventually led to me obtaining two degrees in Religious Studies and teaching in the field.

I didn’t think much more about cryptozoology during my time in college with a few exceptions. In grad school I took a class on the paranormal in American culture and had to read the book Paranormal America: Ghost Encounters, UFO Sightings, Bigfoot Hunts, and Other Curiosities in Religion and Culture (2011) by Christopher Bader, Frederick Carson Mencken, and Joseph O. Baker. I ended up having a lot of issues with the trio of scholar’s methodology – for example the fact that they seemed willing to accept certain claims made by cryptozoologists at face value such as the idea that Native American lore is full of descriptions of Bigfoot-like creatures: it isn’t – but one point they do make and make well is that the kind of spin-doctor treatment employed by Keel when writing about the Mothman is rampant within the field of cryptozoology and goes all the way back to its very founders.

As mentioned at the top, the coining of the term cryptozoology is generally ascribed to either Bernard Heuvelmans or Ivan T. Sanderson. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1911, Sanderson attended Cambridge University where he obtained a BA in zoology and later an MA in both botany and ethnology. For a while Sanderson worked as a science popularizer penning articles and appearing on TV with live animals. However, beginning in the 1940s Sanderson developed an interest in the paranormal in general and cryptids in particular – especially Bigfoot and the Yeti – and began writing about such topics fulltime; mostly for pulp-style men’s adventure magazines. As detailed by Joshua Blu Buhs in his book Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend (2009), while Sanderson certainly seemed to believe that Bigfoot and the Yeti existed he nevertheless didn’t hold most Bigfoot eyewitnesses in high regard, which is to say nothing of his low opinion of his fellow Bigfoot researches. Despite such misgivings however Sanderson knew what his reader’s did and didn’t want to hear and as a result spun stories in which less than reputable eyewitnesses became upstanding citizens, crazy sounding sightings were reworked into more feasible narratives, and credulous cryptid hunters became competent men of action.

In 1948 one of Sanderson’s articles on the possibility of living dinosaurs caught the attention of Heuvelmans; a Belgian-French zoologist who had earned his PhD from the Free University of Brussels studying mammal dentition. Like Sanderson, Heuvelmans became enraptured by the idea of cryptids and spent the rest of his life writing articles and books on the subject. Two of these books, On the Track of Unknown Animals (1955) and In the Wake of Sea Serpents (1965), were especially influential and worked to establish what would become the overarching methodology of all cryptozoologists. The first of these, employed in On the Track, is what paleontologist Darren Naish has dubbed the “prehistoric survivor paradigm.” Simply put this approach advocates that when attempting to identify an alleged mystery animal the first route one should take is finding a prehistoric animal which superficially matches the description of said mystery animal and proclaiming it the creature you’re looking for. Application of the “prehistoric survivor paradigm” is widespread in cryptozoology with Bigfoot and the Yeti being identified as Gigantopithecus – an extinct species of giant ape similar to an orangutan from Southeast Asia –, sea serpents and lake monsters being dubbed extant plesiosaurs, pliosaurs, mosasaurs, Pleistocene era whales like basilosaurus and in the case of cryptozoologist Dennis Hall a long necked Triassic era reptile known as tanystropheus, supposed giant Thunderbirds being claimed as either pterosaurs or surviving members of a clade of large North American vultures known as Teratorns, and legendary African dragons being seen as evidence of living dinosaurs. In one remarkable case Heuvelmans even proposed that the Australian cryptid feline known as the Queensland Tiger might be an extinct species of marsupial known as the thylacoleo. Thylacoleo means “pouch lion” but the lion part of the name is metaphorical not literal since in life the thylacoleo would have looked more like a giant wombat then a tiger.

The problem with the “prehistoric survivor paradigm” should be self-evident. Namely that the animals in question are extinct, in most cases by many millions of years. Proposing that a supposed mystery animal is a relic from some bygone era is a bit like a detective assuming that a mugger who a witness describes as being a tall Caucasian male with dark eyes and a beard must be Abraham Lincoln simply because he matches certain aspects of the witness’s description. Cryptozoologists of course love to point to the case of the coelacanth; a Cretaceous era fish believed extinct until living ones were discovered in 1938 in the West Indian Ocean. However this prehistoric fish is something of a red herring. It is one thing to lose track of a fish in the fossil record. It is another entirely to claim that large marine and terrestrial animals such as dinosaurs could somehow survive for millions of years without leaving any evidence.

In the advent that the “prehistoric survivor paradigm” should fail, Heuvelmans’ second approach was to simply makeup an animal. This is what he does with wild abandon in his In the Wake of Sea Serpents. Have an eyewitness who claims to have seen an animal swimming in the water with brown fur, a long neck and tail, webbed feet and a horse-like head? No problem! This is clearly a description of an unknown species of giant long-necked, long-faced otter! Heuvelmans does this throughout Sea Serpents going as far as to invent nine whole new species of undiscovered sea monster. As Buhs notes in his Bigfoot book, Heuvelmans appears to have operated under the peculiar belief that as long as one could describe an animal so that it sounded scientifically plausible then that was enough to assume that it likely existed! Modern cryptozoologists still operate under this rubric. Loren Coleman, the most prominent cryptozoologist alive today and curator of the International Cryptozoology Museum located in Portland, Maine, follows Heuvelmans’ example perfectly in his 1999 Field Guide To Bigfoot, Yeti, & Other Mystery Primates Worldwide co-authored by Patrick Huyghe and illustrated by Harry Trumbore. In this book, Coleman proposes the existence of a dozen different species of unknown hominid ranging from extant Gigantopithecus and Neanderthals, huge “devil-monkeys,” swamp dwelling Skunk Apes, fairy-tale style “True Giants” and even a type of semi-aquatic species of primate with webbed claws and spines which he believes may be responsible for reports of the chupacabra – who we will come back to shortly.

Despite the fact that Heuvelmans and Sanderson’s methods were scientifically unsound, scores of self-professed cryptozoologists continue to use them to this day. And as Benjamin Radford notes in his book Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction and Folklore (2011) whenever the claim that cryptids are merely cultural constructions is raised cryptozoologists immediately point back to the alleged eyewitness testimony: the bread and butter of cryptozoology. People don’t have eyewitnesses encounters with cultural constructs they say. Except for the fact that they do. Human perception and recollection is extremely unreliable. People get confused, forget, misremember, make mistakes and unknowingly fabricate details even about some of the most commonplace and important events in their lives. With regards to seeing something that isn’t really there, a classic example is the case of the escaped red panda of the Netherlands’ Rotterdam Zoo in 1978. After news got out that one of the zoo’s red pandas had escaped its enclosure hundreds of eyewitness sightings from across the country poured in. Suddenly people were seeing red pandas everywhere and anywhere. Eventually zookeepers found the animal and determined that it had not traveled outside the zoo’s immediate vicinity. How then does one account for the multiple eyewitness sightings of the animal? Merely that people upon hearing about the escaped red panda became primed and expected to see it and so did. This same phenomena happens when people travel to places like the woods of the Pacific Northwest or Loch Ness. Because they’ve heard the legend of Bigfoot and Nessie they now expect – even if only subconsciously – to encounter the monster and as a result any unusual sight or sound becomes the beast. This is what celebrated folklorist Bill Ellis refers to as “Legend Tripping.”

Of course in some instances people actually do see some animal they can’t identify, but then we’re back to the sandhill crane in Point Pleasant. A former colleague of mine, Alan Rauch who specializes in the area of animals and their representations in literature and popular-culture, often speaks about the issue of “animal illiteracy” among the general public. The simple fact of the matter is that most people are not particularly familiar with the numerous creatures that inhabit this planet alongside us outside of those few domesticated animals we keep as pets or on farms and those celebrity animals found in zoos and aquariums like lions, elephants, gorillas, giraffes, dolphins, whales, etc... And many are also unfamiliar with the full capabilities of many animals. For example, few people seem to know that bears can move about on their hind legs, that moose and deer are excellent swimmers or that alligators are adept at climbing. The issue of animal illiteracy is undoubtedly responsible for a great many alleged cryptid sightings as was demonstrated in 2010 when a video posted online of a great frigatebird was mistaken by many Americans as footage of a pterosaur!

Once instances of legend tripping and animal illiteracy have been removed the small numbers of supposed cryptid sightings that remain often tend to be so outlandish as to raise serious doubts about their legitimacy. A good example of this is the case of the original chupacabra eyewitness Madelyne Tolentino; a Puerto Rican woman with an interest in UFOs and conspiracy theories who claimed that she encountered a creature identical to the monster from the movie SPIECIES (1995, Dir. Roger Donaldson) which she had just recently watched. Not only does Tolentino claim that she encountered this creature but that she was able to observe minute details about its anatomy – such as a lack of genitals – even though she was a considerable distance from it and that it levitated and communicated with her telepathically. She also claims that this was only the first of two chupacabra encounters that she had with the second occurring while she was taking a taxi across town! Despite the fact that Tolentino claims to have had two other eyewitnesses with her at the time of her first encounter no one has been able to corroborate her story, though her husband did at one point claim he was in possession of “chupacabra slime” similar in appearance to the ectoplasm seen in the movie GHOSTBUSTERS (1984, Dir. Ivan Reitman) though he could never produce the actual substance for anyone to see. Radford, in his aforementioned book Tracking the Chupacabra, concludes that if Tolentino is not perpetuating a hoax then she is likely a victim of confabulation; a psychiatric disorder in which a person loses the ability to distinguish between fact and fiction as evidenced by Tolentino’s conviction that the monster and events from the movie SPIECIES are real. Of course, even the most dyed in the wool cryptozoologists realize how ridiculous a story like Tolentino’s sounds, and so in the tradition of Sanderson and Keel will judiciously edit the tale when relating it in books and articles on the chupacabra removing inconvenient details and instead making it sound as if Tolentino merely had an eyewitness encounter with a strange animal.

In wrapping up, I want to talk about what renewed my interest in cryptozoology. As stated before, after the boom and bust cycle of my middle school years I didn’t think much about cryptids. I don’t regret the time I spent looking into the subject however because I love monsters and because I believe that learning about cryptozoology and then learning to recognize the flaws inherent in cryptozoological methodology as outlined above helped me to develop critical thinking and research skills that served me well as I began to peruse a degree in Religious Studies – an academic field where researchers are often confronted with many issues similar to those found in cryptozoology (i.e. the importance of primary source documents, the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, the deliberate and accidental blurring of fact and fiction, etc…)

Then in 2010/2011 I discovered the podcast Monster Talk (tagline: “The Science Show About Monsters”) hosted by Blake Smith with co-hosts Karen Stollznow and, for the first few years, Benjamin Radford. As Blake has explained many times over the years the idea behind Monster Talk was to do a show on cryptozoology and the paranormal that amounted to more than just wide-eyed mystery mongering. To this end Monster Talk is firmly rooted in science and academic scholarship. Each episode focuses on a particular topic with special guests called in to speak on specific matters. These guests are not only fascinating to listen to but have also provided me with a wealth of new reading material including such books and papers as Robert E. Bartholomew’s The Untold Story of Champ: A Social History of America's Loch Ness Monster (2012), Robert Lebling’s Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar (2011), Matt Alt and Hiroko Yoda’s Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide (2012), Christopher Josiffe’s article on Gef the Talking Mongoose, Joe Laycock and Natalia Mikels’ work on the connection between Nessie and Buddhism, and Brian Regal’s fascinating research on the history of the Jersey Devil. And now is a great time to be interested in critical approaches to cryptozoology too with multiple excellent books available. Two that come highly recommended are Darren Naish’s Hunting Monsters: Cryptozoology and the Reality Behind the Myths (2017) and Abominable Science! Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids (2012) by Daniel Loxton and Donald Prothero.

To be clear, the aim of Monster Talk is not to ridicule cryptozoologists or those who believe or even just have an interest in such creatures but rather to try and separate history from legend and to do so with nary an ounce of cynicism about the subject matter. The hosts of Monster Talk are not doing this show because they think monsters are dumb. They clearly love monsters. It’s just that they believe (as I do) that it’s important to remain aware of where fact ends and fiction begins, and that often time truth is indeed far stranger than fiction.

Image: Acclaimed sci-fi and fantasy painter Frank Frazetta’s art which adorned the first cover for John A. Keel’s Strange Creatures from Time and Space (1970).

16 notes · View notes