Cute Creeps From Pop Culture: Cryptipedia

Sunday, December 07, 2008

Cryptipedia

There's been some discussion on other message boards about the number of cryptids that could or will make an appearance in the Secret Saturdays cartoon. The highest number speculated suggests we could have a couple hundred 'real' cryptids to choose from. I want to assure you that the number is much higher! As a truly geeked-out student of cryptozoology, I was able to cull together a list of 500 mysterious creatures, along with descriptions, habitat, and a note on whether they were modern sightings or folkloric legends. This became the original Cryptipedia database, and has been used by writers of the series, comic book scripters, and game designers ever since. The game will have something like 40 exclusive cryptids alone, plus many more from the show. And my list keeps growing... every year that goes by reveals new unidentified mystery creatures popping up around the globe. Add to that my growing library of books on folklore, legends, monsters, demons, and the like (which can include reports of 'real' sightings of missing creatures), and you get the idea. We have more than enough cryptids to choose from, and plenty for you to discover through our Secret Saturdays universe.

"Horror and humor have been on intimate terms at least since the time of Elisabethan and Jacobean drama. Shakespeare's darkest tragedies were leavened with a gallows wit..."

-David J. Skal The Monster Show

"Even as we deny that our flesh must decay, however, we surround ourselves with fictional images of the very fate we strive to hear nothing about. They are everywhere: in books, films, and TV, in advertising, in toys and games for all ages, in children's breakfast food. No American child (even one lucky enough to escape Count Chocula) can grow up without learning what a vampire is..."

-Walter Kendrick The Thrill Of Fear

"... through expressions such as the comical Hyakkiyagyõ emaki, an inversion occurs, and that which should not be gazed upon is rendered visible-- and gazed upon with pleasure. The unseen (unseeable) is transformed into spectacle; the mysterious spirits of untamed nature are transmuted into familiar everyday objects; terror turns into humor; pandemonium becomes parade."

- Michael Dylan Foster Pandemonium and Parade

"The horror movie asks you if you want to take a good close look at the dead cat (or the shape under the sheet, to use a metaphor from the introduction to my short story collection)... but not as an adult would look at it. Never mind the philosophical implications of death or the religious possibilities inherent in the idea of survival; the horror film suggests we just have a good close look at the physical artifact of death. Let us be children masquerading as pathologists."

-Stephen King Danse Macabre

"No one will ever love a story the way a kid loves a story, whether told in a novel or as a ghost tale furtively whispered around a campfire. That's because no adult has an imagination quite like that of a child, where monsters might be real and lurking just under the bed."

-Monica S. Kuebler Rue Morgue