Summary: Sometimes the world seems like a pretty dull place. While science has given us a greater understanding of the world we live in, sometimes it seems like it has sucked all the magic and wonder out of it too. Wouldn’t it be great if there really were monsters lurking in the woods outside your house? Well, perhaps there once was. Although most of the things that scared you as a child, those things that go bump in the night, were actually just creaking attic beams and groaning attic pipes, perhaps the children of previous generations really did have something to be afraid of. After all, don’t most legends have a basis in fact? Here are five mythical creatures that could exist, or rather that could have existed long ago. 1. The Sasquatch Everybody knows the story. Everybody’s seen the video of a man in a gorilla costume taking a leisurely stroll through the woods. But is there any truth behind the tales of this big-footed missing link? Well, the most famous film recording of Mr Bigfoot, shot in 1967 by Roger Patterson, is widely believed to be a fake for obvious reasons. However scientists have been unable to provide any evidence to either prove or disprove its authenticity. Instead, scientists and sceptics have focused on the sheer impossibility of Bigfoot’s existence. Most ecologists agree that the climate of North West America is simply unable to support a species of great ape such as this, and certainly not in the numbers required to maintain a breeding population. For that matter, any population large enough to ensure the continuation of the species would be pretty hard to hide, making Bigfoot sightings much more common than they actually are. The slim possibility does remain that the Bigfoot species is in decline and near extinction. But if this were so, such a rapid population decline since the arrival of European settlers would have seen the species become completely extinct long ago. Of course there are tales of hairy woodsmen predating the widespread colonization of North America. Native American folklore is crammed with references to Bigfoot, although the descriptions they give of the creature’s appearance, behaviour and temperament vary wildly. Most depict Bigfoot as a kind of bogeyman who feeds off of the flesh of naughty children. Of course, when Bigfoot is viewed in this context it could be said that there are Bigfoot stories in the folklore of every culture the world over. Why is this? Well we humans seem to have a need to fantasise about big hairy monsters, perhaps because we once lived alongside them. It’s possible that aural tradition has preserved, if somewhat distorted, the story of how we once shared our earth with a real-life missing link – the Neanderthal – around thirty thousand years ago. 2. The Vampire Another myth that would seem to be as old as time itself is that of the vampire. The vampire is one of the most enduring legends of all time and, like the big bad bogeyman, there would seem to be a version of this myth in almost every culture on the face of the planet. Of course the descriptions of these blood sucking creatures varies wildly from country to country. In South East Asia, for example, there are seemingly endless variations on the same theme. Here, vampires usually take the form of a beautiful young woman. Some can detach their head or torso so as to fly about the night sky. Some have no fangs but drain the blood from their victims using their hair. Others use an elongated tongue to lap the blood, or even to suck foetuses from the wombs of sleeping women. Even Bigfoot is said to be a bloodsucker in at least one Native American version of the myth. Even our own vampire folklore cannot be taken at face value. The modern vampire has evolved from an impressive variety of European vampire myths. For example, the association with bats was the invention of Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. Before the nineteenth century vampires more commonly turned themselves into cats or dogs. A stake through t[...]
