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Mythical Monsters

Fact or Fiction?

By Celestia MorellePublished 6 years ago 13 min read
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When you were little, did your parents ever tell you stories where you wondered, "is that true?" For me it was the tale of Sirens; their voices being heard on abandoned shores when all else is quiet. The woman who told me the story told me with such conviction. Years ago, on her travels to the edge of the country, was a beach unlike any other. Even the ocean itself wasn't making a lot of noise that day. The fog was thick and with her ankles submerged in water, the song began. It was quiet, alluring, but also terrifying. Quickly she left, too afraid to investigate. It didn't sound close by and even though the melody was inviting, she felt it in her soul that she needed to get away.

For years I would search for a beach that let me hear the dangerous song, but alas, to no avail. This led me to search for facts, sightings, and I even watched those horrible videos of "real" mermaids, which are clearly people in fake fins, swimming around like they own the ocean or something. I'm here to tell you that not only are those people crazy, but whether or not you believe these mythical creatures are real is completely up to you.

Mermaids

The first story of Mermaids can be dated all the way back to the Syrian Goddess, Atargatis, who transformed into what is believed to be the first mermaid. In one of the stories, it says that she fell in love with a human shepherd boy, whom she killed with her divine lovemaking, no joke. After giving birth to her child and leaving it on the shore, she threw herself into a pool, where she then transformed into a mermaid.

Since then stories have circulated and there have even been those who swear up and down that they have seen real mermaids. Some of the sightings include Henry Hudson in what is now the Bering Sea, where he documented having an odd encounter with a group of mermaids. Due to the length of time sailors spend at sea, it was assumed that he spoke of manatees, like it was for Christopher Columbus's tale, but after further research, there are no manatees in that part of the ocean. There have been several "sightings" from New Zealand all the way to Canada. From the murdered mermaid in Scotland to the Zimbabwe mermaids who were scaring off the construction workers, it is hard to say if the case can be cracked, or if we will continue to wonder if they lurk in the darkness of the sea.

Sirens

"But aren't they the same thing as mermaids?" you might ask.

No, no they are not. Sirens, while they have a similar feel, are said to inhabit one island. In the earlier stories, it is said they are women who lived on shores, singing irresistible songs for unsuspecting men, who would follow their heart songs, only to be drowned or eaten. While they are sometimes portrayed as mermaids, they often are seen as women with wings, whose songs lure sailors to their untimely deaths.

It is said that that sirens used to be ordinary women who were the handmaidens of Persephone, daughter of the goddess Demeter. When Hades abducted Persephone, Demeter gifted the handmaidens with the bodies of birds so they could help search for their lost master. When they couldn’t find her, they eventually gave up and went to live on the island of Anthemoessa, cursed by Demeter (who was angry at their abandonment of the search) to remain in their half-bird form until someone came along and could resist their song—that person being Odysseus. Even though those sirens died then and there, the legend still lives on and some claim to be able to hear alluring calls on deserted shores.

Ghosts

It's spooky time! I don't know many people who are fond of this subject. Even in my day to day life I know people who still don't like to talk about ghosts, because typically it becomes a heated debate.

"I don't believe in ghosts."

"Well, why not?"

"There's no real evidence. I mean, are they souls? Are they energy? No one has ever seen one leave a body, so I mean, where's the proof?"

That's always the argument, it seems. However, in most cases they are right. While there's no concrete evidence, mainly because in this day and age anyone can edit anything, there are still way too many things that I've seen happen that I believe are heresy. While I am also an avid Ghost Adventures fan, I do know that a lot of shows like that are faked.

The belief in ghosts can be found as far back as with the Mesopotamians, where they believed that ghosts would only come back if their offerings had been neglected, which was a serious matter. From the Egyptians, to the Greeks, to even the Romans, they were very serious about ghosts and took it as something that needed to be fixed immediately if there was an issue. In China, they believed an improper burial would cause the manifestation of someone's ghost. They still continue to have the Ghost Festival, which happens on the fifteenth day of the seventh month of the year. It is a day believed to be when the veil is thinnest between the dead and the living, similar to the Mesoamerican Day of the Dead, and the Celtic Samhain. In India, their idea of ghosts more closely resembles a poltergeist, which is a spirit of mischief and playfulness. Each religion and belief system views it differently, which is what causes such a debate on the topic. I personally believe that when a spirit is troubled, it can linger, to people, to objects, and to houses.

Amazon Warrior Women

No, I'm not talking about that awesome Wonder Woman TV show, or the new movie that just came out. I'm not even talking about Xenon the Warrior Princess. The earliest mention of REAL Warrior Women dates back to Homer's Iliad, where he mentions that the women they fought were worthy enough of being boasted about when killed, without looking like sexists pigs. Their legends continue in the fall of Troy and within the foundation of Athens. Romance stories were mixed in, including Achilles and the Amazon Queen, but no hard evidence was ever found for that. By the mid-sixth century B.C., the foundation of Athens and the defeat of the Amazons had become undoubtedly linked.

In a desperate search to find the vanquished foe, the Amazon Warrior capital was found. The women divided their time between pillaging expeditions and procreation. It was confined to an annual event with a neighboring tribe. Baby boys were sent back to their fathers, while the girls were trained to become warriors. An encounter with the Greeks at the Battle of Thermodon ended this idyllic existence. Three shiploads of captured Amazons ran aground on the southern coast of the Black Sea. At first, the Amazons and the Scythians were braced to fight each other. But love indeed conquered all and the two groups eventually intermarried. Their descendants became nomads, trekking northeast into the steppes where they founded a new race of Scythians called the Sauromatians. It is said that no girl was allowed to marry until she killed her first man in battle.

The trails for these women ran cold, until the early 1990s when an archaeology team found a plot of over 150 graves filled with weapons and the Sauromatians. Though the findings don't prove the Amazon Warrior Women were a complete matriarch, they do give way to believe that there really were tall, strong, fighting women in the olden days.

Dragons

Almost every fairy tale involves a dragon guarding a castle or treasure. We've seen so many different animated dragons, that we can almost picture what they would look like in real life. If they were real. In the early days, before fossil documentation and archaeology was actually a thing, it didn't stop people from finding the fossils. However, due to a lack of knowledge, people considered them dragon bones. For years, a town in Austria hung onto the skull of what was a dragon the town had slayed many years ago, but it turned out it was just the skull of a wooly mammoth.

The first story I can find about dragons involves the God Poseidon, who sent up his dragon to wreak havoc on a town where a woman boasted that she was more beautiful than the sea nymphs. To make up for her pride, Poseidon's beast destroyed the village and he vowed to not stop until they sacrificed their daughter to it. Perseus, the son of Zeus and Princess Danae, stumbled upon the captive princess and murdered the dragon to save her, and then they were married. Ring a bell? For years, people believed in Dragons, even putting spots on the map that said, "Here Be Dragons." Even though a lot of the dragon findings have been proven as dinosaur fossils, it doesn't completely rule them out. I mean there's always the Bearded Dragon.

Phoenix

Did you ever wonder where Dumbledore got that bird of his? Definitively speaking, the phoenix is a long-lived bird that can be born again, but it's symbolism has become a wonderful thing throughout fictional pieces of work, including the famous X-Men. The most classical backstory on the Phoenix takes place in the Arabian mornings, since it was said to come out every morning and sing a song of melodic genius that even the sun God Apollo would listen in.

At the end of its life, which some have said was almost 13,000-years-old, it builds a pyre, and consumes itself in the flames. The new bird is then reborn three days later out of the ashes, and from there it takes the rest of the remains as an offering to the sun God's temple. These days, if you try to find out about the Phoenix, all you can find are real estate pages on Phoenix, Arizona. However, its story has been told across several different countries, and it's up to you decide if it was a magical bird, granted immortality through fire, or just a long-lived, over-sized red robin.

Harpies

Looking up the backstory of Harpies, you'll find that there really isn't much to see. It is believed that they are wind spirits, with the head of a woman, and the body of a bird. If anyone actually paid attention to Homer's Odyssey in school, you'll remember that Harpies were the winds that carried people away. In other works of literature like Dante's Inferno, Harpies are seen in the seventh layer of Hell. Their original purpose was to be agents of justice, even if it meant doing it in a not so nice way.

Somewhere along the line, they began to be described as ugly, violent, and malicious creatures who could eat anything and anyone in sight. The Harpies are most known in the story of Jason and the Argonauts as they rescue the a man who was blinded and abandoned by Zeus. The Harpies had been stealing his food and making it unfit to eat, since eternal hunger was his punishment. However, Jason came to his rescue and almost defeated the Harpies, when the Gods were said to have intervened.

In this day and age, the Harpy is actually the name of a real bird that looks like a mix of an owl and Buckbeak from the Harry Potter series. Even though there's been no evidence that Harpies are real, it doesn't make their history any less interesting.

Cerberus

Puppies! Cerberus was a good doggo said to have guarded the gate to the underworld, as seen in the wonderful animated Hercules (I mean Hunkules) movie. The earliest mention of the snake-like pupper can be found in the 8th-7th Century BC. He is not called by that name, but is simply referred to as "the hound of Hades." In some description, he has up to three hundred heads, although the most common one is fifty heads, three of a dog and the rest of snakes all over the body, definitely a depiction that is too scary for Disney.

The go to description now is three dog heads, snakes protruding from all over the body, and a serpent-like tail. Cerberus is most commonly known for guarding the gate and being captured as part of Heracle's 12 labors to right his sins and become immortal. Now we all know that mutated animals are a real thing, but was Cerberus really a dog? In fact, some people seem to think that Cerberus was actually just a really big snake. In the earliest records, he is only called the "hound of Hades," which doesn't necessarily have to mean a dog. Others believe that Cerberus was just one dog, and there were more than one guarding the gate, but really there is no way for us to know.

Unicorns

"What? Unicorns are totally not real."

Did you know that unicorns aren't found in Greek Mythology. In fact, they are found in natural history, described as white horses or goat-like creatures with horns and sometimes beards. In some cases, they are depicted as darker animals, with not-so-horse-like bodies, instead taking on the form of what is coincidentally an extinct species of rhinoceros. The talk of unicorns goes so far back, but the further the findings are explored the more they seem to be debunked. The first case of unicorns was recorded in India, where there were several animals that match encountered descriptions including the extinct species of rhino, the bull, the oryx (a kind of antelope), and the Indian Ox.

Over and over again, unicorn fossils were said to have been found, but with modern equipment, the findings of olden days have been disappointing. One of the oldest "unicorn skeletons" was actually proven to be a bunch of random bones put together. In medieval times, the idea of magical unicorn horns surged, and all the ones that were recovered turned out to be horns of narwhals, which is known as the sea unicorn, although not nearly as magical.

Even though no real fossils were ever uncovered, people still claim to see unicorns in the wild, so who knows?

Centaurs

"Really? Centaurs? You can't really believe they are real, can you?"

I mean, were you alive back then? I don't think so, Susan. Centaurs were the half-horse half-man mix said to have been created when Ixion, the son of Ares and king of the Lapiths, a people who lived in Thessaly, fell in love with Hera, the wife of Zeus. Ixion arranged to meet with Hera, planning to seduce her, but unfortunately Zeus heard of the plan and formed a cloud in the shape of Hera. Ixion loved the cloud lady, and through that, the race of centaurs was created.

Most centaurs were brutal and violent beings, with only a small few actually being decent creatures. For them being real, you get some interesting stories, but mostly weird conspiracy theories. Some say they are from interspecies relationships, which I'm pretty sure is biologically impossible, although some would swear up and down of the opposite. Others seem to believe that they were created by evil scientists, and the list goes on.

To some it seems that maybe they were just lawless alcoholics that hardly ever got off their high horse.

Even though all of these creatures, monsters, and ghosts are probably just figments of the imagination created to reflect humanity's fears and worries, there's always that slight hope that maybe, there's more to this world than we think.

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About the Creator

Celestia Morelle

When I write, I connect with a part of me that otherwise doesn’t exist. She’s a flame that I spend hundreds of thousands of words trying to grasp. I hope you feel her too when you’re reading. I turn the sirens voice into art, for she is me.

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