Villages Under Attack

Copyright by Gary L. Pullman

In Godzilla (1954), a radioactive, fire-breathing, dragon-like monster attacks Tokyo. After being transported to New York City, King Kong attacks The Big Apple. Other creatures, gigantic and otherwise, have likewise run amok in other big cities. In The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), an escaped Tyrannosaurus rex attacks San Diego. To be a resident of any such metropolis at the time of an attack by such monsters would, indeed, be terrifying.

Big cities aren't usually isolated from the assistance that police, medical personnel, firefighters, and other emergency services provide, and they are often homes to a variety of experts upon whose knowledge and experience endangered citizens can rely. In fact, since, typically, big cities are served by airports, railroads, interstate highways, and, sometimes, ports, the deployment of military troops is often quick and easy. Such cities as Tokyo, New York, and San Diego may suffer some loss of life and damage, but, in the end, it's likely that the likes of Godzilla, King Kong, and T-rex are going down and staying down.

Villages, which lack the size, population, infrastructure, technological assets, expertise, and protective firepower of large cities and are often isolated in difficult-to-reach terrain are a different story altogether. If a gigantic monster—or a monster of any size—were to attack, I'd rather take my chances in a big city than a village, any day.

Beginning of the End (1957, clearly shows how a small town, Ludlow, Illinois, fares—or fared—against the attack of gigantic monsters—in this case, radioactive mutant grasshoppers. Apparently before it could sound an alarm, Ludlow was annihilated. Its entire population of 150 residents, who are nowhere to be found, are presumed to be dead. The only clue to what happened to Ludlow's townspeople is the barrenness of the surrounding farmlands, which look as though their crops were devoured by a swarm of locusts.

The monstrous grasshoppers do not fare well when their swarm attacks Chicago. Botanist Dr. Ed Wainwright has gathered intelligence concerning the attackers. He knows locusts have eaten radioactive grain stored in a nearby silo, and he has heard of mysterious incidents in nearby communities. When he discovers the gigantic grasshoppers, he realizes that they have devoured the region's crops and are now seeking human prey. He provides the expertise that the United States military forces need to exterminate the grasshoppers. An electronic mating call is devised from test-tone oscillators, and the warm-blooded predators are lured to Lake Michigan, where the cold water incapacitates them, and they drown.

Unlike Ludlow, Chicago survives, because it is a large city that can provide the scientific and military resources needed to eliminate the threat posed by the gigantic, predatory grasshoppers.

The Black Scorpion (1957) is similar to Beginning of the End in its contrast of a helpless village the residents of which are attacked and injured or killed by gigantic insects—the scorpions to which the film's title alludes—while a big city is saved from the predators' threat of mass destruction. Troops under the command of Major Cosio arrive in the Mexican town, San Lorenzo, to provide disaster relief in the aftermath of a nearby volcano's eruption. However, their soldiers' weapons prove ineffective against the gigantic scorpions, and the villagers remain unprotected. Military might, this movie suggests, is not enough; it must be applied in a fashion made possible only by scientists or other experts.

Fortunately for the humans whose lives are at stake, the largest of the gigantic scorpions kills the others. Now, it is up to Dr. Velasco, an etymologist, to determine an effective way to destroy the remaining scorpion. It is only after he provides the information necessary to destroy the insects, as the scorpions approach Mexico City, that the military can stop them. Using meat as bait, Velasco and his team lure the insect into a stadium, and the army attacks it with larger, more lethal weapons, such as tanks and helicopters, than those that were used by Major Cosio's men. Nevertheless, the tactic fails, and it is only when geologist Dr. Hank Scott fires a spear attached to an electric cable into the scorpion's throat—its only vulnerable spot—and electrocutes the gigantic insect that the predator is killed and Mexico City is saved.

Unlike the village of San Lorenzo, Mexico City provided such assets as a stadium, military aircraft and tanks, and the combined expertise of an etymologist and a pair of geologists, Scott and Dr. Arturo Ramos. Scientific knowledge combined with military might and the architecture of the big city were enough, combined, to defeat the scorpion.

Some other horror movies in which monsters attack villages include The Birds (1963), The Blob (1958), Carnosaur (1993), Earth vs. the Spider (1958), Iron Invader (2011), Manticore (2005), The Mist (2007), Monster from Green Hell (1957), Tremors (1990), and Wyvern (2009).

How To Create Monstrous Monsters

copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman

How to create monstrous monsters is a question that pretty much all horror writers will face, usually sooner than later. It’s one of the many challenges that sets us apart from writers of say, romance fiction (unless the leading man is really, really undesirable).

So how do we create monstrous monsters?

One effective way is to follow the lead of our ancient predecessors, the makers of myth who lived, as Edgar Allan Poe might say, “many and many a year ago,” although not necessarily “in a kingdom by the sea.”

In an early attempt to demythologize mythical beasts, the basilisk was once thought to have resulted from a misshapen egg laid by a cock--that’s right, the rooster, not the hen (the beast was also known as a cockatrice). Mistaking the odd egg for one of its own, a maternal cobra hatched it, it was said. Even at the time, however, a detractor found this explanation more incredible than the mythical beast itself.

Since then, explanations have become more believable.

Scientists think that some mythical creatures (many of which are monsters) are based upon real-life counterparts.

Some, they say, are based on misinterpretations of fossilized dinosaur bones.

According to their view, the ancients, believing the skeletons were the remains of animals that had died later rather than sooner (and having no idea that the earth was millions of years old), mistook these giant skeletons for creatures who’d gasped their last gasp relatively recently. If there was one such creature, the early mythmakers believed, there were likely to have been--and might still be--others lurking nearby.

As the American Museum of Natural History’s “Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, & Mermaids” points out, the notion of the one-eyed Cyclops could have derived from the discovery of a wooly mammoth’s skull, its more-or-less centralized nasal cavity mistaken for the socket of the creature’s single eye.

Likewise, the museum’s article observes, the griffin might have been based upon the skeletal remains of a Protoceratops, and the roc might have been inspired by the discovery of the fossilized bones of the gigantic, prehistoric Aepyornis, native to Madagascar, which attained a height of 10 feet and tipped the scales at about half a ton--and from the Mongol emperor Kubla Khan’s mistaking a palm frond for a feather of the fabled bird.

Other mythological monsters are thought to have derived from similar real-life lineages. Centaurs are believed to have been fanciful descriptions of nomad horsemen, the likes of whom ancient Greeks had never seen before. The many-headed hydra that Hercules, with a little--all right, a lot--of help from his nephew Iolaus, killed could have been a personification of an unruly river delta that the Greeks were able, finally, to bring under their control. The Gorgons, Ms. Medusa included, are thought to be based upon images of a snake-headed woman’s stone face. A likeness of this mask was carved into warriors’ shields.

Live Science’s “The Surprising Realities of Mythical Beasts” offers similar origins for several of the monsters of myth. Mermaids may have been born of sailors’ loneliness and longing for the womenfolk they’d left at home and a little wishful thinking that allowed them to mistake sea creatures for facsimiles of their lady loves. No less an adventurer than Christopher Columbus mistook a trio of scantily clad manatees for mermaids, albeit a rather unattractive and manly sort of maids. From a distance, they might have looked inviting enough--to a sailor far from shore--but, closer, they were “not as pretty,” the mariner complained, and “somehow in the face," the bewhiskered sea beasts resembled men.

In a related article, “Top 10 Beasts and Dragons: How Reality Made Myth,” the same website explains the origin of the dragon. This mythical monster is based upon actual reptiles such as alligators, lizards (frilled dragons, bearded dragons, flying dragons, Komodo dragons, megalania prisca, pterosaurs, seahorse-like sea dragons), and a snake (the python). Additionally, comets, with their long tails, flashing across the nighttime skies, may have been interpreted as dragons in flight.

So, how does one create monstrous monsters? The same way the ancients did. Look at something that seems as if it could be frightening if it were to be misunderstood as being something else, far more threatening. See it anew. Misinterpret it, and, in the process, envision it as wild, antisocial, powerful, threatening, and, most likely, as having bad breath. Ask yourself, for example, what kind of monster California freeways might make or imagine a not-so-innocent dust mite a thousand times its normally microscopic size. Viola! You’ve created a monster!

Sources Cited:

“Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, & Mermaids.” American Museum of Natural History.
“The Surprising Realities of Mythical Beasts.” Live Science.

Developing Your Ability to Write Description

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Unlike scripts and screenplays, all short stories and novels depend upon their writer’s ability to write convincing descriptions. One might think of description as the equivalent of the writer’s motion picture camera. By describing what a character or narrator perceives, the writer shows his or her reader what is to be seen, just as he or she also provides whatever other sensations the reader perceives, whether sounds, smells, tastes, or tactile sensations. The world is delivered to us by our senses. Therefore, to deliver the fictional world to the reader, the writer must appeal to his or her senses. Description is visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile.

Description not only sets the scene, but it can create a mood. It can set the story’s tone. It can even suggest the story’s theme.

To develop your writing ability, study the masters of the art of descriptive writing. Edgar Allan Poe, Ray Bradbury, and, of course, William Shakespeare can teach anyone a few hundred tricks of the trade, but one should study all the writers the read, especially, perhaps, those whose work--particularly whose descriptions--they most enjoy.

Nothing can replace a study of the masters of description, but a few principles for effective description can be offered:

1. Analyze the elements of perception. For example, what do we mean when we say that we “see” something? What are the elements of vision? Intensity, color, texture, distance, shape, size, contrast, density, perspective--all of these and more are elements of the visual experience.

2. Learn the principles of composition. You’re not a visual artist, you say? Oh, but you are! You may not sketch or paint or sculpt, but you create word pictures, or images, and, therefore, you should know about such elements of composition as line, shape, color, texture, direction, size, perspective, and space. You should also know how to use such principles of composition as proportion, balance, harmony, orientation, negative space, color, contrast, rhythm, geometry, lighting, repetition, perspective, viewpoint, unity, the rule of thirds, the rule of odds, the rule of space, simplification, the limiting of focus, symmetry, the centering of focus, the movement of the viewer’s eye, and others to their best advantage in achieving your narrative purpose.

3. Learn the elements and principle of mise en scene, which term refers to the placement and treatment of all the elements which are to appear before the motion picture camera, including the elements of the setting, properties (props), actors, costumes, and lighting. Although, as a writer of short stories or novels, you won’t be filming a movie, the more you know about how other artists, whether they are set decorators, directors, illustrators, painters, photographers, advertising artists, or sculptors, create, the better you will be able to develop your ability to write descriptions.

4. Use non-verbal communication to communicate; in other words, learn how to communicate through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch as well as language. There’s a great scene in the “Bad Girls” episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which the slayers Buffy and Faith enter a dark alley splashed with crimson. Darkness suggests death, and crimson, blood. On a nearby construction sawhorse, an amber caution light flashes. There is no need for dialogue, music, or sound at all, and if these elements re present, I certainly don‘t remember them. However, the viewer understands immediately that something dangerous is about to happen, and, sure enough, within moments, Buffy and Faith are attacked by a band of vampires. The symbolic use of color communicates on an unconscious, almost subliminal level, thereby enhancing the effect of fear that the scene evokes. For a masterful use of non-verbal communication in a short story, read Chillers and Thrillers’ article concerning Bran Stoker’s masterpiece of terror, “Dracula’s Guest.”

5. Use metaphor, simile, symbolism, allusion, and other rhetorical devices to suggest figurative meanings and to enrich your narrative by supplying psychological, philosophical, sociological, or theological associations and themes. A story that has depth is likely to be both more rewarding and more memorable than one that does not. In fact, it is such depth that makes classic stories classics. There are reasons that Hamlet and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are likely to outlast the popular plays and novels of the moment, and one of those reasons is narrative and thematic depth.

6. Determine your scene’s purpose before you write it, and use your purpose as a means of evaluating and revising your description. Descriptive writing makes fiction immediate and emotional, but its should also help to advance your narrative purpose. Is the scene meant to evoke a powerful emotion? Is its intention to present a conflict? To introduce a new character? To provide an explanation or to supply background information? Is the purpose of the scene to plant a clue or a red herring? Is the scene meant to introduce or develop a subplot?

7. Revise, revise, revise. A functional scene isn’t good enough. It should be the most interesting and best written scene of which you are capable. Consider how rewriting the scene could improve it. What detracts from the effectiveness of the description? Would a different perspective add interest? Could the characters do something more exciting while they’re getting the point across? Again, study the masters and see how and why their scenes and descriptions are interesting and dynamic.

8. Use your web browser’s image search engine to access online images or visit actual physical locations, and then describe them. A picture of an eerie cemetery will help you to describe an eerie cemetery. Painters and illustrators paint and draw from life; the least a writer can do is to describe what he or she sees on a computer screen or, for that matter, in the real world. Charles Dickens’ short story of horror and terror, “The Signal-Man” may have been inspired by the Clayton tunnel crash of 1861; its setting resembles the actual location of the crash. Motion picture directors usually take full advantage of natural settings, too, dispatching location scouts to find appropriate and dramatically effective filming locations. Short story writers and novelists can do the same, and many have.

9. Study great descriptive writers and learn from their techniques; make sure you include poets among the writers you study. Yes, we mentioned this a couple of times already; we’re mentioning it again. That’s how important it is. Some critics and instructors advise writers to avoid the use of adjectives and adverbs in writing descriptions, but even a cursory study of great writers, whether classical or popular, shows that successful authors have used, and do use, such modifiers in their descriptions (check the examples below). While it’s probably a good idea to be judicious in selecting and employing adjectives and adverbs, there’s certainly no reason to avoid them altogether. When a critic’s or an instructor’s advice runs counter to the actual practice of established writers, go with the writers’ practice, over the critic’s or the instructor’s recommendations, every time.

10. Practice, practice, practice!

We promised you a couple of examples.

Here’s one, from Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”:

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like windows--upon a few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into every-day life--the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart--an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it--I paused to think--what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion,
that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down--but with a shudder even more thrilling than before--upon the re-modelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

Here’s a second, from Bradbury’s “The Sound of Thunder”: notice, in particular, his masterful use of metaphors and similes:

It came on great oiled, resilient, striding legs. It towered thirty feet above half of the trees, a great evil god, folding its delicate watchmaker's claws close to its oily reptilian chest. Each lower leg was a piston, a thousand pounds of white bone, sunk in thick ropes of muscle, sheathed over in a gleam of pebbled skin like the mail of a terrible warrior. Each thigh was a ton of meat, ivory, and steel mesh. And from the great breathing cage of the upper body those two delicate arms dangled out front, arms with hands which might pick up and examine men like toys, while the snake neck coiled. And the head itself, a ton of sculptured stone, lifted easily upon the sky. Its mouth gaped, exposing a fence of teeth like daggers. Its eyes rolled, ostrich eggs, empty of all expression save hunger. It closed its mouth in a death grin. It ran, its pelvic bones crushing aside trees and bushes, its taloned feet clawing damp earth,
leaving prints six inches deep wherever it settled its weight. It ran with a gliding ballet step, far too poised and balanced for its ten tons. It moved into a sunlit arena warily, its beautifully reptile hands feeling the air.

Total Institutions As Horror Story Settings

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

A total institution is a world unto itself. It is more or less self-contained and can function pretty much independently, without the need for an inordinate amount of outside assistance or support. These are examples of such institutions, many of which, for reasons we will consider in just a moment, are excellent as settings for horror stories:

• Boarding schools
• Colonies
• Circuses and carnivals
• Dude ranches
• Labor and logging camps
• Hospitals, medical and psychiatric
• Hotels
• Managed-care facilities and nursing homes
• Military and certain other government installations
• Monasteries and nunneries
• Museums and art galleries
• Prisons and reform schools
• Religious cult facilities
• Religious retreats
• Resorts
• Ships and submarines
• Spaceships or space stations
• Summer camps
• Universities

These locations supply much of their own casts of characters. A boarding school will be populated by administrators, students, support staff, and teachers. They may be visited, occasionally, by parents. Dude ranches will feature administrators, guests, riding instructors, and support staff. Hotels will include managers, desk clerks, bellhops and other support staff, including cooks and bartenders, and, of course, guests. Managed-care facilities and nursing homes will be peopled with an activities director, nurses, orderlies, managers, and patients. Family members, doctors, and government officials may visit such facilities on occasion. Military installations will include officers and enlisted personnel and some civilian support staff and may be visited on occasion by other military and civilian personnel, such as government officials, media personnel, and scientists or other experts. Prisons include guards, prisoners, support staff (such as a doctor and nurses), and wardens. Resorts include many of the same personnel as are featured at such other total institutions as hotels and dude ranches. Summer camps feature administrators, camp counselors, support staff, and campers. Parents may visit the camps as well, usually at the beginning and the end of the season. Universities are populated by administrators, professors, students, and a variety of support personnel such as secretaries, cooks, custodians, maintenance personnel, landscapers, and security and police forces. Such personnel can become characters in a horror story that takes place in a total institution.

A total institution can be remote from the rest of civilization. Even those that are in or near cities are, by their very nature as total institutions, set off from the larger community. In most cases, their isolation cuts them--and their residents and workers--off from the organizations and systems of the larger world, such as large-scale medical support, firefighting capabilities, law enforcement and military forces, educational institutions, power companies, repair services, grocery stores, gasoline supplies, and so forth, making them, over time, vulnerable on many levels. These institutions also cut off their residents and workers from the cultural belief system that supports daily life. Over a long period of time, the people in such places could revert to a primitive state or set up a society of their own that is based on values and beliefs that are alien to those of the larger world. Such institutions can also lead to the brainwashing of their residents and workers, especially when their isolation cuts them off from other views and perspectives against which to measure the ideas and statements of the institution’s leaders, creating an “us against them” mentality. Isolated total institutions can be vulnerable from both within and without.

Finally, the use of a total institution as a setting makes escape difficult or impossible once the horrors begin and puts the courage and resources of the characters to the ultimate test, the penalty for the failing of which is death, and the reward for passing is survival.

A few of the many stories (novels and movies) in which the action takes place in a total institution are:

• Alien (movie, by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett, et. al.): The crew of the spaceship Nostromo investigates a signal from the moon of a nearby planet. On the moon, they discover a ruined and abandoned spaceship populated with monstrous aliens, one of which implants a fetus inside a Nostromo crew member, which is born aboard the crew’s vessel, where it rapidly attains adulthood. Total institution = spaceships.



• The Butterfly Revolution (novel, by William Butler): Winston Weyn maintains a diary in which he recounts the experiences he has at High Pines, a summer camp. The boys rebel against the camp leader, Mr. Warren, when he insists that they undertake a butterfly hunt. Taking over, they then also take over Low Pines, the nearby girls’ summer camp. Totalitarianism, serious crimes, and brutality ensue. Total institution = tropical island



• The Green Mile (novel, by Stephen King): A healer is convicted of sexually assaulting and killing two young girls whom he’d tried to cure and is sentenced to death. In the prison, he is tormented by a sadistic guard who ensures that the healer experiences a hideous death in the electric chair. Total institution = prison (and, later, a nursing home).



• It, the Terror From Beyond Space (movie, by Jerome Bixby): In rescuing the sole survivor from an expedition to Mars, a ship picks up a stowaway--the monstrous alien that killed the explorers. Now, it attacks the rescuers, picking them off one by one. Total institution: spaceship.



• Jurassic Park (novel, by Michael Crichton): Scientists use DNA recovered from the blood inside a mosquito preserved in amber to create dinosaurs, which they install in an island resort, but things go hideously wrong. Total institution = island resort.



• The Lord of the Flies (novel, by William Golding): Boys being evacuated during a war are stranded on a tropical island after the airplane that is transporting them is shot down. In an effort to institute order, a conflict arises that causes death and destruction among the boys. Total institution: tropical island. (Note: Stephen King often speaks of how he admires this novel and wishes he had written it.)



• The Relic (Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child): A scientist undergoes a horrific transformation as a result of eating a strange jungle plant and terrorizes the employees and guests of New York City’s American Museum of Natural History. Total institution = museum.



• The Resort (Bentley Little): A haunted resort offers more fear and horror than fun in the sun for a vacationing family. Total institution = resort.



• The Shining (novel, by Stephen King) and 1048 (movie based on a short story by Stephen King): Hotels are the scenes for ghostly and demonic terror in this novel and this short story, respectively. Total institution = hotels.



• Something Wicked This Way Comes (novel, by Ray Bradbury): What’s coming is a carnival of horrible secrets and dark powers. Total institution = carnival



• Taps (movie, by Devery Freeman, Robert Mark Kamen, James Lineberger, and Darryl Ponicsan): Rather than allow their military school to be razed and replaced by condominiums, a team of cadets takes over the academy, fighting for their alma mater and its leader’s honor. Total institution = military boarding school.



• The Terror (novel, by Dan Simmons): A pair of ships become icebound in the Atlantic and are harassed by a strange creature that lives among the icebergs. Total institution: ships.

• University (novel, by Bentley Little): A Grecian god returns, wrecking havoc at an American university campus. Total institution = university.

• The Thing from Another World (movie, by Charles Lederer, based on a novella by John W. Campbell, Jr.): An alien shape shifter is discovered in a block of arctic ice; thawed out by scientists, it attacks and kills the staff of a remote research station. Total instution: arctic research station.

Everyday Horrors: Giant Animals

copyright 2008 by Gray L. Pullman

Animals can be affectionate, loyal, and companionable. They can be amusing, amazing, and beautiful. They can work hard on our behalf, and even help to rescue people stranded in the wilderness or fight off would-be attackers, robbers, rapists, and murderers. Well, maybe not goldfish so much. On the other hand, they can also be cunning, ferocious, wild, dangerous, and deadly. Unless one of the friendly sort is going to end up first going mad and then going for the throat, however, as Cujo does, or become a victim of the monster, whatever it is, it’s not likely to be of much use to the horror writer, unless the author happens to be Dean Koontz, and loves dogs more than he does Greta (his wife). California has passed a law, it seems, that anyone who lives in Newport Beach, is a novelist, has a golden retriever, and is married to a woman named Greta who willingly takes second place to the dog must include at least one canine character in every novel he writes, and the dog must be above reproach, even if his or her master is not. For others who write in the genre, the fierce and ferocious--and, often, the biggest--animal is more likely to earn a spot in the story’s cast of characters.

In horror fiction, as in (from some men’s standpoint, but seldom women’s) breasts, generally, the bigger, the better. In another post, concerning “The Underbelly of the Bug-eyed Monster Movie,” we’ve already discussed some movies that feature big, bug-eyed monsters (hence the title of that particular post). Quite a few movies, especially in the past, featured such villains, as some do today, and novels, of course, and short stories (and some narrative poems, such as Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, and Beowulf) too, for that matter) feature giant animals as their monsters of choice. One of the ones that started it all, as far as novels are concerned, is H. G. Wells’ The Food of the Gods, in which a mad scientist develops a food additive that’s even better--way better, in fact--than Wonder Bread in developing strong bones and bodies or whatever Wonder Bread develops. The formula’s even better than Ovaltine!

Stories like these usually relied upon the past (dinosaurs), undiscovered countries or lands of the lost (dinosaurs) or mad scientists (giant experimental plants and animals), atomic radiation (giant plants and animals) or extraterrestrial visitations (alien animals) instead of central casting to supply these threats. However, they needn’t have gone to such trouble or looked so far. Nature, right here and right now, supplies writers with real-life giant animals. True, some are more frightening than others, but, if one is, like Stephen King, willing to gross out if he can’t scare a reader, what some of these giants may lack in the fright department they compensate for in the disgusting department.

Here are a few of the more repulsive, sometimes frightening alternatives Mother Nature has in stock at the moment:

• Camel spiders
• Giant catfish
• Giant rats
• Goliath beetles
• Goliath frogs

Camel spiders anesthetize people and then eat them alive. That’s what some American veterans returning from duty in Iraq, the home of the infamous spiders, claimed, anyway--who’d escaped such a fate--but that was an exaggerated contention in several ways. First, the camel spider isn’t really a spider at all. It’s a solpudgid, which is an arachnid, all right, just not one of the spider family. (Other non-spider arachnids include scorpions, mites, ticks, and Peter Parker.) As a solpudgid, the misnamed camel spider has no venom with which to poison (or even anesthetize) anyone, nor does it have a system by which it could deliver such a toxin, even if it had one to deliver. Still, the camel spider looks diabolical, even deadly, and, in horror fiction, appearances go a long way. The writer can always make up the facts as he or she goes along. If the author wants anesthetizing, or even poisoning, spiders, the author can and will have them. A good writer, especially a writer of horror fiction, never lets the facts get in the way of a good monster.


It might seem that the bewhiskered catfish would make an unlikely horror monster. If there wasn’t at least a glimmer of evil in its lidless, cold eyes, though, do you think it would have come to the attention of so august a body as the National Geographic Society, the same group who showed bare-breasted African women to the innocent schoolboys of 1950 America? Just look at this sucker! It’s nine feet long, and, according to The Society, as its members in good standing are allowed to call it, this fish is “as big as a grizzly bear,” and “tipped the scales at 646 pounds.” This variety of potential cat food is one of “the species known as the Mekong giant catfish.” Put a few teeth inside it, and it could be the next piranha, super-sized.

Africa’s Goliath frog grows to a length of thirteen inches and can weigh as many as seven pounds!

Its yuck factor is correspondingly great for anyone who has frog fear, which, as it turns out, may be more people, male and female, than one thinks. It can’t quite leap tall buildings in a single bound, but it can cover a distance of twenty feet in a single jump. It can live for fifteen years, so it’s capable of revenge, like Grendel’s mother. It lives in Africa, or, more specifically, Cameron’s Sanaga basin. People eat it, rather than the other way around (so who’s the real monsters?) or is sold to a zoo, where, usually, it doesn't do well. However, no self-respecting horror story writer would let a frog of this size go to waste as a potential peril to humankind. No way! Instead, like the non-poisonous, non-carnivorous, non-spider camel spiders, in horror fiction, these babies are going to be depicted as venomous, flesh-eating monsters that, having reproduced faster than their normal rate, for some reason having to do with human stupidity and/or greed, are now threats to humans, unable to subsist any longer on lesser animals such as the rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and elephant.


Would a story featuring three-foot-long rats be scary? Duh! Stories involving rats only the size of puppies are frightening; a film or a novel featuring rats the size of Garfield or Odie would be terrifying (bigger generally is scarier). There’s just one thing wrong with such a scenario. Nobody would buy the existence of a rat that big, right? Wrong. The ones in H. G. Wells’ novel, The Food of the Gods, were even bigger, and, besides, there really are three-foot-long rats, just not in your neighborhood--at least, not yet. Of course, there’s no reason that a character in a horror story couldn’t legally (or illegally) import some from New Guinea’s Foja Mountains or they couldn’t be procured by a zoo (or even created in a scientific lab). According to Smithsonian Institution scientist Kristofer Helgen, “"The giant rat,” which weighs up to three pounds, “is about five times the size of a typical city rat," and has no fear of humans.

Another giant among us is the Goliath beetle, which measures about five inches (huge for a bug). It also lives in Africa, and eats human flesh. (Not really. They eat tree sap and fruit in the wild or cat food or dog food in captivity.) They sound like helicopters when they fly, because their bodies are heavily armored. They don’t bother people, but, because humans are naturally squeamish concerning creepy crawlies, they could, especially if they could be induced to swarm for the camera, be pretty good monsters. A writer would probably want to mutate them, though, so they could be transformed into carnivores. That way, they could prefer people meat to Tender Vittles or Kimbles ’n Bits.

Many people would have thought that giant animals, with a few exceptions, such as whales, elephants, and ostriches, are a thing of the past--the distant, prehistoric past--when dinosaurs roamed the planet. The discovery of new giants among us suggests that this is not true. Over four hundred new species have been discovered on Borneo alone since 1996, and Madagascar and South America, as well as the ocean, have yielded others. In King Kong, Carl Denham had to go to the uncharted (that is, imaginary) Skull Island to discover the lost world of the giant ape and surviving dinosaurs, but, with the dicovery of new species, including giants, seemingly every other day, horror writers may need to go no farther than Madagascar, the African continent, Japan, or South America to encounter real, living, breathing monstrosities. Who knows? There may even be one in your backyard, and it may be hungry.

Meanwhile, we can continue to turn to the pages of horror novels and science fiction stories to read about them or watch them wreck havoc on the big screen.

Update (3/21/08)

Over the past year, scientists, poking around in the world’s oceans and rain forests, have announced their discoveries of several new species of animals and of some giants among known species. Among the latest discoveries are giant macroptychaster starfish, measuring two feet across, which were located in New Zealand’s Antarctic Ocean. Other newly found giants include an 11-foot, 844-pound white shark, a 990-pound colossal squid, an Echizen jellyfish larger than a man, and a 23-pound lobster. Scientists aren’t the only ones to encounter these giants. On his farm near Eberswalde, Germany, Karl Szmolinsky breeds 20-pound giant rabbits, like the one he’s holding. More and more, the everyday world is catching up with the imaginary giant creatures of horror, fantasy, and science fiction literature. No doubt, some of these beasties will be tomorrow fiction’s featured creatures, although not, perhaps, the giant bunnies.

“Everyday Horrors: Giant Animals” is part of a series of “everyday horrors” that will be featured in Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of Fear. These “everyday horrors” continue, in many cases, to appear in horror fiction, literary, cinematographic, and otherwise.