Finishing The United States of Cryptids: A Tour of American Myths and Monsters got me one book closer to meeting my reading goal for the year, and it left me with one big question. The book is divided by region (Northeast, The South, The Midwest, and The West) and each chapter focuses on a different cryptid in that territory. I didn’t keep a tally as I read, but I’d guess that in more than half of the tales, the reaction to the possible presence of an unfamiliar creature (whether real, misidentified, or a hoax) was either the original witness(es) trying to get in a shot and/or a monster hunt following. Even when the cryptid was interpreted by the witness(es) as non-threatening, this leap to violence was often the response.
While I’m firmly in the “I Want To Believe” camp, to talk about this without extra awkwardness, I am going to write as if cryptids are real for a moment, so play along.
The first issue with an armed-to-the-teeth response is that if the target is hit, then the shooter has just killed an extremely rare creature. One problem there: people have robbed themselves of the chance to learn about it, from how it interacts with others to what its vocalizations sound like in different circumstances. Sure, we’ve apparently learned a lot about dinosaurs despite not being around them when they were alive, but we all know that it’s not the same as it would be if we could get a glimpse at them when they breathed. Who knows if or where other creatures like this exist?
For those more motivated by selfishness, the other issue — that you’d think would be obvious — is that wounding or killing one might piss off its family. Do we have no sense of self-preservation? Have we learned nothing at all from watching our own warfare? Killing begets more killing. It solves nothing.
The second issue with this shoot first, ask questions later approach: when the cryptid is actually a misidentified animal — which is very likely the case. What’s the purpose in needlessly injuring or killing a bear? A deer? A wolf? A human whose identity is obscured in the woods or far off in a field? Hunters wear blaze orange to prevent being mistaken for a deer by other hunters. Mistaken identity — especially after a long day of drinking — is a thing.
There’s that.
What kept me awake for awhile though is this: what is wrong with us that our urge is toward violence?
What is wrong with us?
Why is it that when something or someone is foreign to us, we interpret that other as a threat?
I don’t usually finish a book and feel irritated, but there I was, thinking about how over several centuries in the United States alone, people would shoot off their guns into the night. This antisocial behavior was not even limited to a particular region; we’d seen it right here in Connecticut.
This behavior is sadly not limited to the past.
After generally ignoring the drones (or “drones”) story in New Jersey, I finally made a point of seeing what people were freaking out about after hearing that Senator Blumenthal had entered the fray. Not only has the president-elect and Felon calling for drones to be shot down, but so has a Connecticut senator who has typically taken a more moderate and thoughtful approach to, well, everything. This information led me to the existence of a social media page/group that the reading of is like watching a monster hunt in real time. If you’ve ever read a Stephen King novel about a mystery plague or an ominous mist filled with prehistoric monsters, then you know what this panic reaction sound like. And, because everyone is online and not hashing this out at the local diner, what’s lost is a sense of who is being sarcastic, who is serious, and who is serious but nobody does or should take them seriously. Spend some time going through that social media group and you’ll learn that a whole lot of people have no idea what airplanes look like and that too many people have been perhaps staring into their phones rather than looking at the sky over the last decade or so, or they would have known that in urban areas, flashing lights at night are not unusual in the least. Then, you’ll see the array of reactions, which are unclear if sincere or not. Many of these reactions show distrust of the government, and while a vast conspiracy is far too organized of an effort to be realistic, the government kinda did this to themselves. You don’t even have to go back very far. In the last year of the Felon president-elect’s first term, Covid arrived. There is no doubt that his response to it led to many Americans’ deaths and illnesses that could have been avoided had he (1) showed any integrity as a human being, and (2) possessed the moral courage to put public health first. Instead, he sowed chaos. He mocked people for wearing masks, setting the tone for his followers. At one time, those opposed to vaccines would have been viewed strictly as conspiracy theorists and seen as people way out on the fringes. While their perspective has not become fully mainstream, there has been a disturbing leap. According to a 2023 Pew study, “among Republicans: 57% now support requiring children to be vaccinated to attend public schools, down from 79% in 2019.” There was no change among Democrats, 85% of whom think it’s reasonable to require children to be vaccinated. How is this relevant to people thinking they are seeing malicious drones in New Jersey? They tell on themselves by claiming these (occasionally) unidentified flying objects exist as a distraction, as a false flag operation, as an attempt to prevent the Felon’s inauguration in January, as a way to spray and spread a new deadly virus — or, they say they don’t know why they’re there, but surely the government is covering up something. Because “the government” is clearly omniscient. 🙄 Whatever the “reason” for the drone season, too often the response has been some version of “shoot down the drones,” even as it is unknown what harm, if any, are being done by them.
I look at this as, on one hand, well, what did you all expect by making drone technology available to the general population? In Connecticut it’s illegal to fly them in State Parks, yet there have been multiple Instagram accounts I unfollowed because the drone operators were posting photos taken of places like Talcott Mountain State Park. I don’t want to encourage people who think it’s fine to bring their disruptive toys into natural spaces where I want to hear birds more than mechanical whirring. Aerial photography generally feels lifeless and trite to me anyway, but it’s been trendy and we know that plenty of people have these toys. Larger models are supposed to be registered, but in observing how many motor vehicles in my neighborhood have obviously fake plates, I will guess that plenty of people do not bother playing by all the rules. What are the odds that most of these so-called sightings aren’t people just screwing around for a laugh now? People wrap their entire cars in strands of lights and erect 12ft tall skeletons on their lawns. You think they aren’t also going to trick out their flying toys and scare the neighbors? Please. If I hated drones any less and lived in Jersey, I would absolutely be doing that. Nobody expects an April Fools prank in autumn.
But whatever is or isn’t flying around is besides the point. It’s people adding to the furor by tossing all of their anxieties into the public realm. This includes people who unironically cite ChatGPT responses to their questions, as if this is even remotely a legitimate and reliable source of information. This includes people who think that somehow a government they openly regard as incompetent is able to cease being incompetent long enough to pull together a giant, cohesive conspiracy. This includes people who post their worries about sheltering in place, urge everyone to evacuate the area to, and this comes up most, demand that the mystery lights be shot down.
I ask again, what the hell is wrong with us? Why again and again choose violence?
The photos in this post were taken recently in a wooded area of Hartford. I knew to expect these structures before going onto the site. What I also know is that several years ago, before these were constructed, there were rumors about people living out in these woods. The implication of that assertion was that their alleged presence was a problem. To clarify: it was not homelessness described as the problem, but that those living outside were the problem. I took issue with that. Besides that I never saw evidence of people living there, I had to ask: how is this hurting you? Did they bother you ever, at all? Or was it that otherness that was being reacted to?
I thought about those claims as I wandered about on a bitterly cold day. How many people might encounter these structures in this setting and make a completely false assumption about why they are here or who put them there?
What would people assume about these structures if I posted only the photos above, or cropped them strategically, and said nothing except found in a wooded area of Hartford? What would they assume differently if I lied and said they were found in the woods behind a suburban cul-de-sac?
It actually does not take much to dispel some myths or misinformation. In this case, even if you were not told that these were forts built by local kids playing in the woods, you could simply walk around and look at what was on the site. There’s a sign reading “ORANGE SODA” and others where the handwriting and list of names gives it away. Then, there’s the type of litter they left behind: empty soda bottles, and only empty soda bottles. No beer cans. Not even a cigarette butt.
Closer examination shows that someone involved in this fort-building project was not even calling theirs a fort. That’s a cottage, thank you very much.
I wonder about the kind of person who might encounter this sort of site and decide without a closer look that it presents a problem and demolish it without reading the signs, without taking the time to look. It’s a shoot first, apologize later — if the apology is mandated — response. We can choose to be better than that. We can choose not to be the monsters.
