Ghostly and Cryptid Encounters

     Tales of spirits and the supernatural have been a part of cultures around the world for thousands of years.  From the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot sightings, the Chupacabra, and the Jersey Devil to encounters with spirits both malevolent and benign, these topics have been the subjects of horror movies, TV shows, documentaries, books and more throughout history.  Some people believe and some don't, but that's how it always goes.  Even those who have had encounters themselves might not be wholly convinced of their existence or some world beyond, but they live with a doubt in the back of their minds that there is at least one thing out there that can't be explained.

     Ghosts and the like are another topic that has always interested me.  While I have yet to make up my mind about whether I believe myself or not, I do like to indulge in stories about them.  I have seen multiple television shows that bring in witnesses to tell their stories about supernatural events in their life.  Most are quite comical actually such as one program called Celebrity Ghost Stories, because you know every celebrity has had an unexplained encounters.  Or another called Mountain Monsters where a team of rednecks travels around the country, running around in the woods waving guns like total idiots while they chase after whatever local monster people claim to have seen.  Every once in awhile you do find a show that is better than the others because it takes pseudoscience in another direction.  Ghost Hunters, a show that used to be on the SyFy channel prided themselves on trying to prove that the spirits that people claim haunt their homes, businesses and historical buildings are not real before saying that the odd events that occur in those places can't be explained.  I enjoy their investigations much more than the shows about psychic detectives that come in and read the energies of the house and probably charge the poor family a lot of money for nothing.

   I think that there are so many claims out there because believing in cryptids and ghosts is fun.  Its fun to be able to think that there is something out there that science has yet to discover or that science can't even explain yet.  And imagine what it would be like if any of these actually did exist and we found it.  There are so many things that we would be able to learn from them scientifically, although I fear that if we ever do find something like a cryptid science will kill it.

There's even a Bigfoot research society! http://www.bfro.net/