About Monsters And Angels/Chapter One

Chapter One: Monsters And Their Human Origin A monster is a frightening, grotesque, or fictional creature, an exceptionally cruel person, or anything of unusually large or powerful scale. [1] The Munsters, Stranger Things, The Exorcist, Poltergeist, Shaun of the Dead. We love monsters, they are part of a large film and Entertainment industry. Around the world, monsters appear in films and on TV shows. They pop-up, taking forms that range from ghosts and demons, to zombies, werewolves, and hungry-spirits. Although these monsters are described as supernatural, able to cross the barriers that separate the dead from the living, many monster traditions originated from human experiences. This wikibook explores the concept that monsters are kind of human, merely symbolic expressions of human fears, behaviors, or cultural change. By closely examining the human origin of monster myths, readers may understand how they developed, why these stories persist, and why they mutate over time. Monsters As Cultural Expression: Monsters are not just the creations of individuals. Monsters emerge from cultural environments and reflect shared concerns within a community. When people are concerned about events occurring in their neighborhood, or in their society, they may express their concerns indirectly, by sharing short stories, poetry, Art, even comic drawings that address their concerns. Monsters are associated with taboo behavior, meaning actions that are considered dangerous, behaviors that are often socially forbidden. In an interview with Michael Connerty, Emil Ferris, the author of the graphic novel: My Favorite Things Is Monsters: Book One, talks candidly about sexuality and horror movies. Michael Connerty: There are a lot of very powerful images that punctuate both books, cent[e]red on women and violence – some come from classical painting, some in the form of your imaginary comic book covers. Emil Ferris: I grew up with that, I mean you saw women portrayed in a particular way, and horror comics always used women, and horror movies did too, where there was this sexualization of a woman before she was murdered, which is really a very frightening thing to do. And Karen and Deeze talk about that, I mean they talk about the sexualization of brutality, you know, which is often the brutality of sex, when it's negative, when it's assault. It's just something that has to be pointed out. I like the fact that they have that conversation, because I think more people need to have that conversation with their sons and their daughters. They need to talk about those things but we're so afraid to talk about those things, and we have to. We have to because it's so hard for children to figure out, 'well, how do I negotiate this world?' It's just really good to be frank about these things. [2] The common sources of monsters include: - Trauma: events that leave an emotional or physical response, usually deeply harmful, disturbing, or overwhelming. - Illness: physical or mental poor health interpreted through symbolic stories. - Social conflict: tensions within families, communities, or societies. - Taboo behavior: actions considered dangerous or forbidden. - Environmental conditions: landscapes, climate, or natural hazards. Monsters come from trauma, illness, social conflicts, behaviors that are taboo, and social conflict. They are born from our darkest release. + Mural thumb|Hip Hop Meeting Málaga (Drak-Baros-Elalfil, 2023) 04 The Trama Monster: Trama survivors may see visions of monsters in their nightmares or daydreams. They may experience a form of post-traumatic stress, whereby anxiety lingers long after the traumatic event has ended. In Psychology, monsters may be symbols for unspoken or unprocessed trauma. Monster imagery in film and literature serves as a tangible manifestation of psychological trauma, repressed grief, and existential threat. [3] In psychological studies, monsters represent the breakdown of pre-trauma assumptions about safety, self, and the world. It seems the world is safe and known until a monster appears. Unprocessed pain can be projected outwards, into a tangible, symbolic "monster" which allows the mind to shape, grasp, or manipulate the invisible terror inside. Toby Allen, a popular Illustrator, started The "Real Monsters" Project, an Art project he started by illustrating his mental health disorders, such as anxiety, depression and social phobia, as fantasy creatures. In Monsters, a blog about monsters, Allen talks about the inspiration behind the "Real Monsters" project: Interviewer: What is the inspiration behind your art? Why did you choose to depict mental illnesses as monsters? Toby Allen: The Real Monsters project originated from imagining my own anxieties as monsters and finding it to be a really therapeutic process. It made them feel weaker, and I was able to look at my own anxiety in an almost comical way. I wanted to expand upon this idea and draw other representations of mental illnesses that could help people in the same way it helped me. [4] A similar concept can be understood in The Babadook (2015), a film directed by Jennifer Kent. In The Babadook, following her husband's violent death, a mother's repressed grief and clinical depression is personified as an entity that feeds on denial. Research in clinical psychology notes that cinematic or internal "monsters" serve as a tangible symbol for post-traumatic stress and anxiety. These symbolic "monsters" represent a subtle threat that a person must confront and master in order to achieve emotional balance. [3] Monsters associated with illnesses: Monsters are often seen as cultural or physical manifestations of real world physical and mental illnesses that pre-modern societies could not explain. Human societies, along with most diseases, existed before microscopes. Without modern scientific tools, human understanding of disease -- such as how they multiplied, or how they were passed -- was small and strongly linked with the supernatural. In the BBC article The Real-Life Diseases That Spread The Vampire Myth, Stephen Dowling writes about vampires and porphyria (a genetic disorder): Take porphyria, for instance, which affects heme, the chemical compound which helps make up the haemoglobin found in our blood. The patients suffer itching, rashes and blisters every time their skin is exposed to sunlight. In the very worst – and thankfully, very rare – cases, the gums recede from the teeth, making them appear far more prominent. Their bodily waste takes on a purple hue, like that of undigested blood. And the effects of sensitivity to light can be so severe that sufferers lose their ears and noses – a physiognomy echoed in the looks of vampires such as Nosferatu. [5] Porphyria is a rare genetic disorder, described by Desiree Lyon Howe of the American Porphyria Foundation, as being so rare "there are probably no more than a few hundred of these severe cases in the entire world at any one time." [5] Although rare, in Medieval times, in remote and closed communities, the chance of porphyria surviving in a small gene pool was greater than today. The farming villages in Transylvania, now part of Romania, were ideal. Stories about vampires spread from eastern European regions, like Transylvania, westward. With little medical knowledge, medieval folks could have accused people suffering from porphyria of being vampires. Another disease associated with monsters is Werewolf Syndrome or Hypertrichosis, which is a condition characterized by dense, abnormal hair growth over the body. This condition may have started a few werewolf myths. [6] + Hypertrichosis thumb|Petrus Gonsalvus and his wife Catherine (c. 1575) by Joris Hoefnagel. Watercolor and gouache. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. thumb|Polytrichia J.? Homo pilosus. Adr. Evtikhiev. thumb|Die Gartenlaube (1874) b 061 Reference: 1. Dictionary.com. Monster. In Dictionary.com. Retrieved October 14, 2026, from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/monster 2. Connerty, Michael. Scary monsters and super creeps: An interview with Emil Ferris. Published in Studies in Comics, Jan 2025, Art Source 3. Hamilton, Jenny. Monsters and posttraumatic stress: an experiential-processing model of monster imagery in psychological therapy, film and television. November 5, 2020 In Nature.com https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-00628-2 4. Real Monsters project. February 6, 2026. Monsters https://dstrl.org/RealMonsters/real-monsters-project 5. Dowling, Stephen. October 31, 2016. The real-life diseases that spread the vampire myth. BBC.com https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20161031-the-real-life-disease-that-spread-the-vampire-myth 6. "Hypertrichosis." October 8, 2026. In Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertrichosis