While the Native American legends have painted Bigfoot as a fairly benign being, referring to him as “elder brother” and “Hairy Man,” Wildman depictions by European settlers, and the stories they inspired, painted a different picture. There were stories (usually second or third hand) of men being carried off in the middle of the night by large, hairy, man-like creatures. While these stories were quite rare, the media would often portray Bigfoot as a beast running off into the forest with a woman under his arm, and there were also scattered Native American stories about females being kidnapped or at least stalked by the beast. These images, and the idea of a “wild man” running off into the secrecy of the forest to have its way with a hostage woman, may have contributed to the association between Bigfoot, the Wildman, and the fascination that the 1950s and ’60s culture had with the beast.
Joshua Blu Buhs has written perhaps the best analysis of the cultural significance of Bigfoot in his work, Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend. “Throughout history stories of wildmen have provided a way of thinking about what it means to be human: the contradictions, the difficulties, limits, and the glorious wonder of it all.”16 Blu Buhs envisions Bigfoot as a confrontation between a vanishing culture of woodsman masculinity and the modern, consumer-driven culture of the fifties and sixties. The era that included women entering the workplace, the end of World War II, and protests of the Vietnam War was a time of great transition in the United States, especially among the working-class men. “White working-class men were frustrated and scared about the changing society, the changing economy, worried that they were failing. Many Bigfoot tales sought to ease these anxieties by affirming the culture of character, the importance of work, skill, and old-fashioned masculinity.”17 It was working-class men on a road construction job that first found the famous Bigfoot tracks. It was hunters and woodsmen that affirmed the tracks with further discoveries, sightings, and stories. They attained relevance through their interaction with the paranormal, spotting and documenting a mythical beast that was only known by them. The scientists were irrelevant and the women incapable or unwilling to make the deep long treks into the wilderness; so it was these blue-collar men, struggling to maintain their sense of self in a changing world, that ultimately sought out Bigfoot.
The Bigfoot craze allowed a generation of men whose world was changing to find some purpose to their existence, and in some ways that has not changed. Ghosts, UFOs, and Bigfoot remain symbols, regardless of their “reality.” They are symbols of our desires, our fears, and our cultures. People still pursue and believe in Bigfoot with an almost religious-like faith. They spend time and money and sacrifice their reputations and relationships in pursuit of these things. The paranormal, the gothic, is a part of them.
Part of what fed the fascination with Bigfoot was the media portrayal of the creature. “[I]n the early 1970s Bigfoot began appearing at suburban drive-ins. These theaters, like rural areas, were largely ignored by Hollywood, so independent filmmakers supplied the theaters with so-called exploitation movies: cheaply made horror flicks and sexually charged films aimed at a mostly teenage audience.”18 Most of these films portrayed Bigfoot as a killer and a creature of horror. The Legend of Boggy Creek, in which a Bigfoot-type creature stalks the swamps of a rural area, frightening and attacking the townsfolk, actually became a huge commercial success. But it involved the sexualized, horrific aspect of the creature—the dark side of the Wildman; something that is still portrayed by the tabloids and movies to this day.19 Every monster should have a movie, after all. These films are still produced today, though with a knowing, tongue-in-cheek homage to the seventies drive-ins. The Wildman of Navidad beautifully replicates the old drive-in creature features. These films both add a highly sexualized male component to the script. The camera captures a breed of man that has all but died off—the rugged, ugly, full-bearded ancient man in rural towns who hunts and fishes and is beyond the influence of the modern world. Shriek of the Mutilated brought the male sexuality to a new level and added a strong subterfuge of homosexuality between the men hunting the mythical and dangerous Yeti. These films concentrate on men, rather than on women; this male focus is very different from many other horror films. Why? Because they are the ones that are truly in danger of being killed off, not by the creature, but by society.
The Bigfoot legend and mythology has survived to a certain extent. Bigfoot has been transformed into a bit of a commercial on some level, as Blu Buhs points out, advertising beef jerky and even hosting his own television show for kids called Bigfoot Presents. However, the deeper mythology of Bigfoot has also survived, and the fascination remains, as evidenced by the new upsurge in interest from the public and by programs such as MonsterQuest and Is It Real? Ultimately, Bigfoot’s survival is a part of the gothic narrative. “By imagining themselves into the body of Sasquatch, white working-class men could imagine themselves as black, as women, could come in contact with their own souls, their own repressed and forbidden desires.”20
It is these “forbidden desires” that Blu Buhs mentions that may be the darker, gothic narrative for Bigfoot. Bigfoot’s story is, in essence, one of history and repression; the history of an unknown and ancient past before man was a human, and the repression of the inner “wildman” in a culture that is more and more consumed with political correctness, consumerism, and modernity. There is an inherent antisocial darkness about the Wildman, a creature beyond the confines of civilization that kills its food and kidnaps its mate through violence. The media depictions of Bigfoot in both magazines and film have fed this idea of a dangerous creature that roams the forest and threatens the confines of civilization. But why does the idea of the Wildman fascinate us so? Why does the idea of this creature fit so well within our cultural story, our hopes, our dreams and fears?
The inner Wildman may be the inner horror that confronts the mundane of our lives. The idea of something deep within that is purely animalistic, powerful, and instinctual without the constraints of normal society is a dark and ultimately antisocial idea, and it is one that feeds the gothic narrative of Bigfoot. To confront Bigfoot in the woods is to confront a variety of things—the unknown, the dangerous, the wondrous, and the supernatural—and all are in direct confrontation with modern everyday life. Bigfoot is a reconciliation between these things; it represents a mysterious past and an unknown being with a possibly violent, repressed animal nature.
UFOs AND THE ANCIENTS
“As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elisha saw this and cried out, ‘My father! My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!’ And Elisha saw him no more. Then he took hold of his own clothes and tore them apart.”21
While strange flying objects in the sky may seem like a more recent phenomenon, it is really not new. The Bible speaks of great pillars of fire by night and pillars of clouds by day that guided the Israelites through the wilderness; it tells of the chariot of fire that took Elijah up into heaven in a whirlwind, and great shining stars that signaled the birth of Christ. When talking of UFOs it is important to distinguish between unidentified flying objects and flying saucers. Anything can be an unidentified flying object until, of course, it is identified; but flying saucers are another matter. Not all UFOs are flying saucers, but all flying saucers are (thus far) UFOs; and flying saucers have been recorded throughout history, even farther back than the biblical records. Hieroglyphs on the Great Pyramid depict flying machines in the shape of discs and what appear to be modern-day astronauts descending from them. Images painted on cave walls during the Renaissance and Romantic periods show strange objects in the sky—sometimes threatening, sometimes enlightening, but always with an accompanying story.
Carl Jung examined the proclivity of the human mind to see circular objects in the sky in both dreams and artwork in his work, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. The flying disc becomes
a sign of epiphany from heaven. “In the present instance it seems to me sufficiently safe to conclude that in my examples a central archetype consistently appears, which I have called the archetype of the self. It takes the traditional form of an epiphany from heaven…”22 The idea of flying saucers being heavenly psychic realizations is very interesting when looking at the biblical passage from 2 Kings quoted above. Elijah’s apprentice, Elisha, asks that he be bequeathed a double helping of the spirit of Elijah. Elijah states that if God allows Elisha to view his ascent into heaven, then he would be granted his desire. Thus, the chariots of fire descend, and Elisha sees his teacher taken away and becomes endowed with a spirit greater than that of Elijah. “The company of prophets from Jericho, who were watching, said, ‘the spirit of Elijah is resting on Elisha.’ And they went to him and bowed to the ground before him.”23 Elisha goes on to perform miracles such as purifying the water in Jericho so the people can drink it. The vision of the chariots of fire imbued Elisha with mystical knowledge, an ability to perform miracles, and reverence from the people and prophets of Jericho. He was thus able to go to the land and help the people of Jericho.
Elisha is not the only person in history to claim a greater knowledge or power from their interaction with a UFO. People who claim to have been visited by alien creatures, or even abducted by them, often claim they have received a message regarding the fate of the world, or that they have been gifted with a vision of the star systems from which the aliens came. Barney and Betty Hill, the United States’ first official abductees, recreated a star map from which the alien craft supposedly came. Whitley Strieber saw visions of doom and destruction during his time aboard the spacecraft. Some even claim to communicate with the aliens regularly and thus are able to relay messages from the aliens to mankind. Indeed, if one were to actually witness a flying saucer, and certainly, if one were to come in contact with the beings who are piloting the craft, he or she would be imbued with a knowledge and understanding that surpasses all currently accepted reality. To see this flying saucer, therefore, would be to gaze upon something that reflects both the known world (human technology) and the unknown world. It exists in our present world as an image of a reality that cannot be known. It is a gothic symbol from our subconscious.
So what does this have to do with the American gothic narrative? How would these visions in the sky fit into the overall gothic experience of a collision between past and present, known and unknown, mundane with horror? While we often associate flying saucers with images and ideas from science fiction, the phenomenon itself is as old as man’s consciousness. Jung uses the flying saucer as an archetype for the interaction of the conscious and subconscious of man, something that is inherently part of the universal consciousness of human experience. But there are more concrete interactions.
On the moorlands of Britain stands a wonder of the world that has long been associated with the paranormal. Stonehenge, to this day, baffles scientists and anthropologists as to its origins and its meaning. It has been associated with witchcraft, mass burials, ancient calendars, and UFOs. The most obvious mystery is how this monument was constructed over 5,000 years ago by a society of hunters and gatherers. Some of the massive stones were transported to their present location from as far away as 200 miles. One can only speculate the purpose of this overwhelming task. It is a task that is very difficult to explain or comprehend and, thus, has become a thing of great paranormal speculation. Geoffrey Monmouth wrote of Stonehenge in his classic literary work, History of the Kings of Britain, “They are mystical stones and of medicinal virtue. The Giants of old stole them from the farthest coast of Africa and placed them in Ireland, where they inhabited at the time.”24 Merlin describes them as “…a structure of stones, which none of this age could raise without a profound knowledge of the mechanical arts.”25 They called these stones “Giant’s Dance.”
“Mechanical arts” could certainly be understood in today’s technology, but 5,000 years ago, what constituted mechanical arts? Whatever methods were employed by ancient man to build Stonehenge have obviously been lost in time, as modern technology has erased our past knowledge of mechanical arts. And even if we were to definitively answer the question of “how,” the question of “why” is of greater importance and even more mysterious.
In 1965, astronomer Gerald Hawkins put forth a theory as to the purpose of Stonehenge. As discussed in Time magazine, “In his analysis, he identified 165 separate points on the monument, and linked them to astrological phenomenon like the two solstices and equinoxes and lunar and solar eclipses. It’s a difficult theory to disprove completely and some evidence is persuasive—at dawn on the summer solstice, for example, the center of the Stonehenge ring, two nearby stones (The Slaughter and Heel Stones) and the sun all seem to align.”26 But even these theories are met with skepticism from the scientific community, which states that there is no way ancient man had the precision or knowledge to construct such an intricate calendar. However, Hawkins’s theories remain one of the more legitimate and socially and scientifically acceptable of the reasons explaining “why.” But this answers only part of the question.
Four thousand years ago Great Britain was populated by a small group of people barely out of the Stone Age. They had a few primitive tools made of bones, and they probably eked out a living with only the greatest difficulty. Anthropologists estimate that there were probably about three hundred thousand of them. They were undoubtedly divided into warring clans and factions, since factionalism is a natural state of man. Yet somehow, thousands of these people managed to get together and spend many generations quarrying huge stones (some weighing thirty tons) in the Prescelly Mountains of Wales and hauling these enormous blocks 240 miles to Amesbury. There they systematically arranged these stones in a circle, following precise measurements—so precise that they were able to construct a mathematically correct astronomical calendar.27
Hawkins’s argument of an astronomical calendar is impressive, but not as impressive as the feat these ancient peoples undertook; in fact, by comparison, it doesn’t seem to make a bit of sense. Stonehenge literally took thousands of years to construct. Even conservative estimates show this undertaking to be almost unbelievable. As stated in Britannia History, “While we can’t say with any degree of certainty what it was for, we can say that it wasn’t constructed for any casual purpose. Only something very important to the ancients would have been worth the effort and investment that it took to construct Stonehenge.”28
This could almost be considered an unexplainable anomaly of human history, if Stonehenge stood alone in the world as a symbol of ancient man’s mysterious technology and endeavors; but it’s not. It is one of many, many mysterious and unexplainable structures that exist throughout the world. They are structures that defy explanation and understanding and continually defy our efforts to define them. Among these are the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx, the faces of Easter Island, the temples of Tiahuanaco, the Mayan calendar, and the Nazca Lines of Peru; all of these are ancient structures and creations that defy understanding and definition, and all of them seem to contain an unknown knowledge of the ancient earth … and perhaps something more. The intricacies of their mathematics, the mysteries of their creations, the precision of their craftsmanship remain the center of much controversy. How did the Mayans create a calendar that is so precise that it even accounts for the small wobble of the earth on its axis? Why are the Nazca Lines only visible from a plane and seem to serve no practical purpose?
In 1968, German writer Erich von Däniken released his work Chariots of the Gods; it became an instant best-seller. In it, Däniken hypothesizes that the human race was more or less created by an alien race that visited earth millions of years ago and is ultimately responsible for humanity’s ascension from primitive beast to a race of technological demigods through interbreeding with female earthlings and eliminating specimens that did not meet their requirements.
Obviously the “man” of those times was no homo sapiens but someth
ing rather different. The spacemen artificially fertilized some female members of this species, put them into a deep sleep, so ancient legends say, and departed. Thousands of years later the space travelers returned and found scattered specimens of the genus homo sapiens. They repeated their breeding experiment several times until finally they produced a creature intelligent enough to have the rules of society imparted to it. The people of the age were still barbaric. Because there was a danger that they might retrogress and mate with animals again, the space travelers destroyed the unsuccessful specimens or took them with them to settle them on other continents.29
Sound insane? That’s precisely what the critics thought. However, Däniken is not just randomly hypothesizing; he is focusing on the great similarity between ancient texts and legends from peoples around the world, which all seem to include gods descending from the heavens in “chariots” that generally consist of fire and thunderous sound, interbreeding with human women, imparting great knowledge to the ancient people, and then ascending back into heaven. The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, the Bible, the Mahabharata, Egyptians, Tibetans, American Indians, Eskimos, and ancient Incas all have very similar stories concerning the origins of man and knowledge. Couple these legends and texts with massive stone structures created by “primitive” man, unusually precise measurements, and their understanding of the stars, calendars, mathematics, and metallurgy, and you suddenly have a very real and believable hypothesis that is antithetical to today’s understanding of ancient history. “I am simply referring to passages in very ancient texts that have no place in the working hypothesis in use up to the present. I am drilling away at those admittedly awkward spots in which scribes, translators and copyists could have had no idea of the sciences and their products … It is unworthy of a scientific investigator to deny something when it upsets his working hypothesis and accept it when it supports his theory.”30
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