Is America Filled With Monsters?

Bigfoot. Mothman. Skunk Ape. Chupacabra. These are strange names, though perhaps you’ve heard of a few. They are some of America’s more famous local monsters. They are “cryptids,” which can be defined as a fabled creature yet to be scientifically proven to exist.

Statistically, millions of Americans believe that cryptids are real. For instance, approximately one in five believes in Bigfoot. This belief, in turn, helps support a huge monster industry. One 2024 study found that Bigfoot products generate $140 million annually. Today there are numerous museums available for the monster investigator, not to mention a plethora of films, toys, websites, and festivals.

Many have questioned whether or not monster mania is a good thing. Some argue that monster belief propagates pseudoscience, which is a movement that challenges scientific authorities and often suggests that scientific institutions are malign entities. This can work to the detriment of public health and faith in essential institutions.

Some, on the other hand, argue that Bigfoot and its kin can spark a healthy interest in biology and environmentalism, and can also provide succor to marginalized groups that feel “monsterized” by an intolerant society. And it is certainly without debate that monsters have become economic bonanzas and even entertainment megastars.

Regardless of one’s position, a fruitful way to analyze our monster madness is to see how cryptids connect us to our nation’s cultural history. Monsters communicate larger concerns, highlight historical changes, and illuminate aspects of our past and present. Here are two examples.

What Our Monster Madness Reveals

Let’s start with Bigfoot. In 1958, a journalist named Andrew Genzoli of the Humboldt Times in Eureka, California, got a report from loggers in Bluff Creek about giant humanoid footprints. The size of the prints inspired Genzoli to coin the term “Bigfoot.”

A month later, more tracks were found. The loggers made a plaster cast of them, and soon Bigfoot was the talk of the whole region. Though there is compelling evidence that the tracks were created as a hoax by a well-known local prankster, ongoing sightings and new tales that found “evidence” of the creature in the distant past kept the story alive.

In 1967, two investigators, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin, recorded footage of what appeared to be a large Bigfoot lumbering along a riverbed at Bluff Creek, California. They went on to screen their film across the country, sparking much debate and earning themselves piles of cash. On came waves of movies, TV shows, and merchandise. Today, Bigfoot is internationally known; and the hunt has not ended.

The popularity of Bigfoot speaks to a broader context. As scholar Joshua Blu Buhs notes, at midcentury:

“American working-class white men were doing quite well financially, but, broadly speaking, they were leery of the changing culture. Mass media made the world seem fake and the postwar emphasis on family and ‘togetherness’ (a word coined in 1954) could feel stultifying. In addition, the economy was changing from an industrial one to one based on services and consumption—and that changed what it meant to be successful, to be a man.”

Bigfoot offered up an untamed “Wildman,” a creature that could be tracked deep in the forests and celebrated in film, art, and song. Bigfoot hunting empowered common folks to discover their own sources of evidence—i.e. “I saw it and it chased me!”—otherwise stigmatized by the scientific elites whom they distrusted. Finally, Bigfoot offered an entertaining diversion from a stifling, dehumanizing industrial economy.

Another monster discovered at this time similarly illuminates the hopes and fears of a troubled time. Out on a lonely road in West Virginia, four young adults out cruising claim to have encountered a red-eyed, flying humanoid. It chased them into town and quickly entered local lore as “Mothman.”

That Mothman appeared and terrified the town of Point Pleasant at a time when local boys were coming back from Vietnam legless, traumatized, or dead, is a significant fact. The creature drew a traumatized town together.

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Indeed, today, in an otherwise economically blighted corner of America, Mothman offers hope in the form of a museum, a festival, and a healthy dose of tourism. The town of Point Pleasant is flourishing again, thanks to the creature.

Cryptids Teach Us About Ourselves

Both Bigfoot and Mothman offer access to understanding the troubles and dreams of our past and present. They can problematically inspire troubling habits, e.g. the belief that science is “wrong” and that anecdotal reports and “common sense” suffice as reliable evidence. But they can also inspire hopes and help resuscitate stagnating local economies.

What is more, cryptids deserve our attention as signals of deeper social and psychological processes. We can study cryptid belief in order to better understand the human mind, such as our proclivity to anthropomorphize objects and our urge to believe in a more fantastical reality.

Perhaps the ultimate good in monster hunting is that it serves a community building function. Notes Daniel Loxton, co-author of Abominable Science: Origins of Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids, “finding commonality with other human beings is a good in itself—an end in itself. Indeed, in respect to this particular end, the ‘skeptical’ part of the skeptical community is largely beside the point.”