If you’ve heard of one cryptid from the USA, it’s Bigfoot. If you’ve heard of two? The second is probably Mothman. So what’s the story? It goes back to 1966, a time of great social upheaval – and around the same time the Bigfoot legend took off. Hey, maybe America was just primed for supernatural […]
Today is Bi Visibility Day, which means it’s that time of year again to talk about my sexual orientation. Contrary to what some of you might think from reading this blog or seeing my posts on social media, I actually don’t like to talk about it very much. I’ve always been a pretty private person. […]
What the heck is a modron? I’m so glad you asked. Modrons are a type of Dungeons and Dragons monster that have been around since AD&D’s first edition – over thirty years, now. They’re clockwork constructs made of both organic and mechanical parts. They’re weird, they’re cute, they’re sort of steampunk, and they’ll kick […]
Well, this post is a little different from some of my past entries on real animals, like spiders or tarantula hawks – those posts are about real-life traits of real-life animals that happen to be monstrous. This post is about a made-up trait of a real-life animal. That’s right. I’m putting salamander myths in […]
This week’s monster hails from the classic arcade game of the same name. Released in 1980 by Atari, Centipede ranks as one of the best-known games of that early arcade era. Maybe you remember it because you were there, maybe you need to hunt down a decent barcade or internet copy for a refresher course […]
Hey! As of this post, I’ve been writing Monster of the Week for one year! Pretty nifty. I generally try to balance my monster posts between four categories: mythology and folklore, recent urban legend, gaming, and pop culture. It’s about time for a pop culture post, so I figured I’d write about my favorite monster […]
This is it, guys. Numero uno. The one you’ve all been waiting for. The big kahuna. The big… Foot. No, no, no! Not that big foot. The hairy one — and don’t bring up hobbit feet, I’m talking about the tall, humanoid North American forest dweller that some folks believe is a missing link between humans and our ape-ier […]
This week’s monster is a little different. Normally, I would write about a legend or an enemy from a video game or movie — fiction. The tarantula hawk isn’t like any of them. The tarantula hawk is real. So if creepy crawlies make you squirm — if the greatest consolation in the movie theater is […]
Like the ugly American I am, I first encountered the redcap in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Little did I know that the creature from Professor Lupin’s Defense Against the Dark Arts class is a figure from real-life (or Muggle, depending on how you look at it) British folklore — and a […]
Ah, yes, the wonderful world of Pokémon. A certain app released last month has kicked 90s nostalgia into high gear and made us all hyper-aware of those good ol’ pocket monsters once again. But there has always been a darker side to this world. Like most franchises with any kind of internet fandom, Pokémon has […]
