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The universe beyond our eyes
What's the deal with the supernatural world?
The unknown.
From extraterrestrials to looming sasquatches, there are believers affirming that mysterious elements lurk among humans in the natural world.
Sure, the words ‘alien’ and ‘Bigfoot’ automatically spark visual imagery into a person's mind, but do people know where these imaginative stories came from? How did society even come up with the ridiculous concept of flying spaceships beyond the earth?
Throughout history, supernatural stories have constantly dominated society, whether people are aware of it or not. Ranging from Bitmoji images during Halloween to well-known alien conspiracy theories, the influences from these strange stories have weaved their ways into humans' daily lives. It’s human nature to gravitate towards the unknown specimens of the world, and many factors contribute to that phenomenon.
The majority of supernatural stories have cultural heritage, and these mythical stories usually have origins dating back to the earliest civilizations. Leah Lowthorp, a mythology professor at Oregon State University, is able to observe why individuals choose to interpret certain phenomena in a supernatural manner when teaching her course.
“There's a cultural origin where humans in the past were thinking about, how did it all begin? According to different cultural contexts, different stories emerged that are quite different from each other around the world,” said Lowthorp.
People in the past shared their views about how the world worked based on their own convictions, and these concepts gradually evolved into what we see now. Their variety of ideas were collected into a genre known as folklore myths; folk stories are shared and culminated within groups of people and cultures.
“Folklore is just expressive culture, how people relate to the world around them, particularly through storytelling. Humans are creative and will adapt their stories to the circumstances they live in,” Lowthorp said.
Folklore isn’t necessarily correlated with the supernatural, but the stories that are told often include various magical instances that align with the beliefs of the storytellers.
Ancient stories eventually evolve with each new era of time. The once traditional stories are reshaped with each generational retelling of them, and as the world advances, human's personal ideas of how the world operates evolve along with it.
Different supernatural beliefs create movies, books, and creative storylines that are catered towards human entertainment. Popular culture and the weight of time have given a new look to various ancient myths, but humans shouldn’t forget the roots of the glorified tales seen today.
By: Annabel Chia
The legend of Bigfoot
"In Oregon, and you see Sasquatch pictures and stickers everywhere"
- Leah Lowthorp
Photo: Gracia ShaoXue
Rising in the depths of the forest is a horrific creature known as Bigfoot, but the story of the looming monster hasn’t always looked this way. One version of the story can be dated back to the legend of King Gilgamesh and Enkidu of the ancient Mesopotamian city.
“​​Gilgamesh’s best friend and companion, Enkidu, is someone who is a former uncivilized wild man who ran with the animals, and who has finally been brought into the cultural realm,” said Joseph Nagy, a professor of mythology at Harvard University. “They established a kind of friendship, and they go on adventures together.”
The famous story of Enkidu frequently told in the Middle East, is an earlier Sumerian rendering of the tale of Bigfoot. He was portrayed as both animal and man, living in the depths of the wilderness away from civilization. The narrative of Bigfoot illustrates the basic pattern of folk stories evolving through time; the story of a wild man-beast has developed into the sasquatch in the forest, as the story was recounted with a new exterior.
Sasquatches are large and hairy humanlike creatures; Bigfoot is a type of Sasquatch and the terms are interchangeable.
Aside from the Middle Eastern legend, the myth of Bigfoot has roots in a variety of civilizations. Another ancient origin of a Sasquatch exists in the belief systems of Native Americans living in the Pacific Northwest. The cultural story sees the Sasquatch as the forest's protector, shielding the shrines of nature away from humans.
“[The natives] consider the Sasquatch like the spirit of the forest, the protector and they've had their own personal experiences going into the forest and sensing that there's some other being there,” Lowthorp said.
Today, people don’t see Bigfoot as a protector or a nature spirit because of popular culture’s influence in society. In American culture, Bigfoot is generally considered a dangerous ape-like wildman in the forest with a massive footprint. It’s common to hear murmurings amongst nature lovers who crack jokes about going on expeditions and claim to have seen the giant monster in the forest.
From the ancient civilizations to now, the image of the tale has severely changed thanks to the impact of popular culture.
“In Oregon, and you see Sasquatch pictures and stickers everywhere, it’s definitely a part of wider Oregon popular culture now as well,” Lowthorp said.
Believing that an animalistic lurking man is the forests and watching society from afar varies when asking different individuals. Nonetheless, the Sasquatch's origins are traced back to several civilizations, and the concept of Bigfoot is still significant in the modern world.
Aliens
"I feel like assuming we are the center of the universe, and that there is nothing out there, is a little pretentious"
-Max Sinha
Although they’re often thought of as little green men with neon spaceships, one of the cultural beliefs of aliens originated in several Native American cultures where they claimed that people fell from beyond the earth.
“In Native American tales, some say that people fell from the stars; you could think of how people in the past [thought] about the wider universe, about how the stars and the moon and the sun could possibly, right be related to otherworldly spirit,” Lowthorp said.
Over time, the tales about aliens morphed into a different appearance, and they are a large belief in popular culture today.
“[Aliens] are a modern phenomenon that has become part of American belief. In a class I teach about science fiction, there was a poll of Americans who believe in the existence of extraterrestrials, and it was 50%-60% of the Americans,” Lowthorp said.
As Lowthorp referenced, belief in aliens has evolved into a large part of modern American culture. Alien abductions, the conspiracies about Area 51, and perceptions of a looming unidentified flying object (UFO) have been acknowledged when discussing an alien's common description.
Although the popular theories about aliens are acknowledged and socially recognized, most people haven’t adhered to the exaggerated alien descriptions that have spawned over time.
“I think that aliens probably exist now. I don't think they're the little green men, but, there's probably another life out there,” said Marcus Oettinger, a sophomore at Carlmont High School.
Individual beliefs appear to be separate from the inflated depictions of pop culture. This particular view is closer to the straightforward definition of aliens found in indigenous legends, in which aliens are just descriptions of extraterrestrial life. The other excessive variations of the story are less commonly accepted, despite the popular association of conspiracies and aliens.
“I feel like assuming we are the center of the universe, and that there is nothing out there is a little pretentious,” said Max Sinha, a sophomore at Carlmont High School. “I just don't believe the UFO and Illuminati stuff. ”
Ghosts
"I’m the type of person who sprints up the stairs after turning off the downstairs lights in case there’s a ghost"
- Ryley Hsiang
A ghost has been referenced as a skeletal body, found in haunted houses around Halloween and on other occasions. People are sometimes taken aback by fear while discussing ghosts because of the terrifying correlations made in popular culture, but the reality is that everyone's concept of a ghost is different.
“Ghosts are the memories of people who are dead, but we also honor or hang onto that precedence of people who have passed on,” Nagy said.
The initial origins of ghosts exist in a variety of ancient cultures from all around the globe. A prominent example is seen in parts of Asia, in which the belief in ghosts is extremely relevant to their ancient cultures.
“Chinese people believed that when you die, your spirits leave behind your physical body. A ghost is literally the spirit of a person [in ancient culture],” said Mindy Chiang, the Mandarin Language teacher at Carlmont High School.
The traditional conception of ghosts provoked a festival that’s celebrated in ancient China called the Hungry Ghost Festival, a day in which the civilians would give offerings to these spirits and pay respects. The traditional beliefs of the ancient culture have been carried into today’s modern society.
“It’s a very old festival, but places today such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, and parts of Southeast Asia still see it as a relatively big event,” Chiang said.
Popular culture has distorted the traditional concept of a ghost story, making it appear completely different from the old honoring of ghosts from the past.
“There's a particular story called the Slender Man in [popular culture]. Several folklorists have done research on the Slender Man and how this kind of ghost story gets circulated on the internet,” Lowthorp said.
With the modern inventions of the internet, the perceptions of ghosts to humans have evolved from a cherished perception of their ancestors to a horrifying subject matter. The contemporary ideas about ghosts are made into forms of human entertainment as seen with Slender Man and the various movies and video games made out of the spooky concept. Entertained consumers further perpetuate the ring of horror that was brought to the subject of ghosts.
The idea of ghosts is also taken lightly by most individuals as a quick spook and not taken as an earnest belief.
“I’m the type of person who sprints up the stairs after turning off the downstairs lights in case there’s a ghost, but I don’t exactly believe in [ghosts],” said Ryley Hsiang, a sophomore at Carlmont High School.
Why do humans
believe
Belief in different supernatural tales derives from a deeper part of the human psyche. Generally, for all stories surrounding the supernatural, individuals enjoy relating to the bizarre stories by identifying a familiar subject to hold close to them while also getting the taste of a magical idea.
“We enjoy stories about supernatural beings because they deviate from everyday, ordinary experience, but not too far,” said Andrew Shtulman, a psychology professor at Occidental College.
One example of humans seeking familiarity while enjoying the thrill of the story is seen with Bigfoot. Bigfoot is a nature beast to some and a nature spirit to others, but in both variations, he still has human properties that appear familiar to certain people.
A different kind of supernatural believer includes the modern-day conspiracy believers. Their exaggerated retellings are the main suspects of what caused ancient tales to spiral away from their true meanings.
According to Shtulman, the belief in aliens derives from the desire to question conventional wisdom; he refers to this group of people as those living in the mentality of conspiracy theorists. This mentality allows the human mind to enjoy both the excitement of unconventional wisdom and the challenge of authority, as seen with popular conspiracy theories discussing how the government is intertwined with the aliens.
Although some myths are believed for the sake of entertainment, belief in other creatures like ghosts frequently arises from different logic, a mortal and emotional need.
“The belief in ghosts is a way of expressing our unwillingness to accept death as the conclusion to anyone's life,” Nagy said.
The original beliefs of spirits and ghosts seen in ancient cultures come from the human mind rationalizing things that it can’t understand and seeking a sense of consolation.
Individuals have different ways of accepting how they see the world, and the belief in the supernatural displays the complex inner workings of the human mind.
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“There's a sense of there being a world beyond the visible or the immediate world,” Nagy said.“It can be something frightening, reassuring, or powerful, and it’s not surprising we would be fascinated with the other world.”
