Imaginary Worlds - Searching for Cryptids

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

When I was growing up, Bigfoot appeared regularly on the covers of supermarket tabloids, so I assumed he was a joke. But I’ve discovered that he’s part of a larger and even stranger world of cryptids – creatures that people believe are real but haven’t been scientifically verified. Cryptids are having a cultural moment, and they’re a vital part of folklore. Native Alaskan storyteller James Dommek Jr. discusses his podcast Alaska Is The Center of The Universe and his audiobook Midnight Son. James has been collecting tribal stories about cryptids because he sees them as cultural treasures that need to be preserved. I also talk with J.W. Ocker, author of The United States of Cryptids: A Tour of American Myths and Monsters, about why so many small towns in the U.S. are embracing their local cryptids as a last ditch effort to revitalize their economies. This episode is sponsored by MiracleMade and Uncommon Goods  Get 15% off your order at uncommongoods.com/imaginary.  Go to TryMiracle.com/IMAGINARY to save over 40%, and when you use promo code IMAGINARY, you’ll get an extra 20% off plus a free 3-piece towel set. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm Eric Malinski. And this is James Domic Jr. He is the host of the podcast, Alaska is the center of the universe. The title of the show is reaction against the fact that Alaska's official nickname is the last frontier. To the indigenous people of the state, to the native people of the state, it's not a frontier. It's not the last one. It's our home, and we're very comfortable in this wild place. Our people have lived here for thousands and thousands of years.

James is from the Inupak tribe. His great-grandfather was one of the last in a long line of Inupak storytellers. I always say that my people went through a time machine. We were the last indigenous people in the United States to have contact, and that didn't happen until very recently. just because we were so isolated. That generation went through a time machine and a lot of things got jumbled around.

James says their traditional ways of life are still under threat from assimilation to climate change. But they do have a natural resource that is within their power to preserve their stories. The Inipak people, we've known for a long time that there's something out there. The Inocons have been here too.

They're not human. They dwell in the human realm and the spirit realm, which is their home. Many of the episodes of his podcast are dedicated to cryptids. A cryptid is a word for a creature that people believe is out there, but it hasn't been scientifically verified yet. For instance, Bigfoot, or the Lochness monster, are examples of cryptids. And cryptids are having a moment now from podcast. podcasts, to festivals, to merchandise.

But in Native Alaskan cultures, cryptids are not for tabloids, reality TV, or scientific study. They're sacred stories, although there is a range of stories and beliefs among the different Alaskan tribes. James had to travel all over the state to find people to interview,

which was not easy. One guy was so reticent, James had to give him seal meat and tech support to encourage him to tell his story. What really surprised me is there's a lot of Alaskans who have seen incredible, unbelievable things that will not talk about them publicly.

They talk to me, they've told me because they know that I believe and that I am a keeper of stories and that they know that I am a seeker. When it comes to stories about the fantastical, whether it's cryptids, ghosts, or UFOs, my mind often turns into an episode of the X-Files. There's a Mulder and Scully in my head, taking sides.

My inner Scully usually wins, but then the debate starts all over again. Mulder, it's the same story I've heard since I was a kid. It's a folk tale, a myth. I heard the same story when I was a kid, too. Funny thing is, I believed it. Thanks, Doreen. I ask James where he stands on cryptids.

I don't try to swing one way or the other. I'm not trying to make people believe one thing or the other about the stories that I tell. I like to tell people these are the stories that people talk about up north. Some of the people who have had encounters believe that they are spiritual beings that exist in a realm and in a frequency that our senses can't pick up. Other people believe they are flesh and blood. and I believe that the sightings that have happened up north in my area of the world have been flesh and blood.

James did an episode that I couldn't stop thinking about. It was about a creature called the Kushtika. These tales originate from the southeastern tribes of Alaska. It still is a very real fearful part of the culture. There was people who wouldn't talk about it because the sun was down. There were people who wouldn't talk about it just out of sheer, just out of just fright, and also just like, it was a very real thing

to not talk about and getting some of the people to talk about was very, it was like pulling teeth. But what I did find out about the kustakas, a lot of other cultures around the world have a similar situation. And the situation is you're out and about, you're somewhere, usually out in the country and you see someone that you know a familiar person whose face is exactly like someone you know they're usually at the tree line or at the edge of the water in these stories with the kushika and this person who is familiar to you ushers you in and says come with me if you go with them you this the you won't come back and when I was doing my research on it I realized that there was so many

other cultures around the world who have had the who have this similar exactly similar story but the kushikas said it can change into anybody that it wants to they say that when it's not deceiving people and trying to take people it rests As a land daughter, when it's just chilling out, it's it's a land daughter. But when it wants to take a soul, it turns into whoever it knows who you are familiar with. In that episode, James talked with a tribal elder who got emotional when he told this story from his youth. The man was boating with his aunt and uncle. They got drunk. Things went haywire on the sea. His aunt and uncle couldn't or wouldn't save themselves.

The nephew survived, but to this day he is haunted by that memory, partially because his aunt and uncle's behavior felt so out of character. This was one of the few moments in the show when James talked about cryptids as metaphors. He said the Kushika could be seen as a way to explain what happens when your loved ones are under the influence of alcohol. which is a long-standing problem in tribal communities. The stories remind you that sometimes you need to be wary of people you might normally trust. They may not truly be themselves at that moment. There's a lot of changes that has happened with indigenous people,

but one of the things that hasn't changed, one of the things that never gets forgotten within the people is the fear. It survived this whole colonization and forced assimilation. that we've experienced from first the Russians and then the Americans things have changed languages has been lost stories have been lost but one thing that hasn't been lost is this generational tribal fear it gets passed down and so these stories kind of reflect that the kushikaz is a great example of that and fear keeps you alive too fear keeps you alive exactly uh fear has a way of keeping you alive for sure in alaska there's just a lot of ways to die in Alaska. There's no two ways around it. The land, it wants to swallow you up. The water

does not care. And so you have to have a healthy fear that you are, you are not the biggest in the area. There's other things that call the shots. Speaking of big things in the area, he also talks about Bigfoot, or their version of Bigfoot. In our culture, in Inupal culture, we call them, the word we have for them is called Inuk-Pisuk. I just find it fascinating if you just break that word down. Inuk, in the word Inuk, the first part of it, Inuk, it means person. The second part of the word pisuk, it means walk. And so my ancestors named this creature walks like a person.

It's just well known that if we see them, we are to leave them alone they're going to leave us alone every culture in Alaska has these stories and has a name for this creature and in Alaska up north the only description

that differs from say a siding in the Pacific Northwest like British Columbia or Washington is that the Inuk Pisuk up here has red hair reddish hair and it has longer hair

it flows in the wind they they this the elders say that they don't waste anything that they drink the blood of animals that they kill there's every culture every culture in alaska has a story of the hairy man and there's a word every culture has a word name for we lived in such a hard place and it was very nomadic life and you didn't have a lot of time to just sit around and think about though. It was a very on-purpose type of life, hunting, hunting and gathering. And so if they had a word for it, chances are that it was actually a thing, because there wasn't a lot of words for nonsense things. You just didn't really have time for it. It was like life and death all the time, I think. These sightings still happen to this day on all up in, all over Alaska. And people now know

that I like these stories. I tell these stories. I'm not afraid to tell stories of Alaska. encrypted and i try to find credible truth and credible sources i'm looking for photos i'm looking for anything that's material and a lot of people uh look at our native stories and our indigenous stories and say that's just a lot of that's just a lot of made up stuff that's a lot of woo superstitious but yeah i like i said within every one of these stories there's a sliver of truth It's winter, and if you live in an apartment with an old radiator like I do, you know that these radiators have two modes, turning your bedroom into a sauna or not turning on at all. I can't fall asleep if it's too cold, but if it's too hot, I wake up in a sweat and I can't

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plus a free three-piece towel set. They make an amazing gift, and with a 30-day money-back guarantee, there's no risk. That's try miracle.com slash imaginary. Code Imaginary at Checkout. Thanks to Miracle Maid for sponsoring this episode. James has another show on Audible called Midnight's Sun. It's categorized as an audiobook, although it sounds like a podcast. In fact, it sounds like a true crime podcast with supernatural elements mixed in.

Midnight's Sun was also turned into a documentary, called Blood and Myth, which is on Hulu. It's about an indigenous actor named Teddy Kyle Smith. He is currently incarcerated for first-degree attempted murder. But he claims that he was being harassed by cryptids called Inukens. He says the Inukins were trying to lure him to his doom, and they were messing with his mind when he shot these two brothers. Long ago, before the white people,

came to the Arctic. Legend has it that we, the Inupak tribe of northern Alaska, lived alongside another tribe, the Inyukhans. The Inequins were similar to us in some ways, except they were very, very short, and they were extremely strong. It was said one little Ineokun man could carry a whole caribou all by himself. Teddy Kyle Smith's defense. that he was being influenced by a long-lost race of humanoids did not hold up in court. James investigated the story, and this is personal for him. He and Teddy Kyle Smith are from the same tribe.

And, as I mentioned earlier, James' great-grandfather was one of the last official storytellers of their tribe. He and his stories would talk about these, the Inyklunds, multiple times. I always knew, because of understood the way his stories were put together, I always understood that there was a sliver of truth in every one of these stories. And with Midnight's Sun, I wanted to see if I could validate some of these traditional stories of what we've been telling ourselves in up north for thousands of years.

Yeah, I don't think I was going to mention is that, you know, for me, when I hear stories about different versions of sort of human-like figures, whether they're really small or whether they're very large or whatever, I've always been fascinated by the stories of how, not stories, but the science, of how hundreds of thousands of years ago, half a million years ago, there are all these other types of humans on the earth. It was almost like Middle Earth. And I always wonder if these stories, there's a part of us that, you know, You know, there's always this, when people look at what aliens, they say, I want to know we're not alone in the universe.

I feel there's a part of us that wants to know that we're not alone on this planet. And I wonder if that's part of it, too. I love Lord of the Rings. I think it's the greatest story ever told. I'm 100% obsessed with Lord of the Rings. I watch the extended versions. I've often wondered that if so a lot of this tribal, a lot of tribes in Ditch, because I've studied them from all over the state of Alaska, like obsessively.

And part of me wonders if some of these stories that involve these little people or these big, tall hairy people, if these are genetic memories of Denisovians or Hobbit Floriances type people, if these are genetic memories of Neanderthals, it's like we can't forget that there was others. And I believe that our own species, our own type. is we are the only ones left today, these days, because of we're so adversarial in our nature. I think these other versions of humans like the Denisovians or the Neanderthals, I'm not quite as sure as they were as territorial or adversarial. I think that's one of the

reasons why we are still or today because we fight. But yeah, I've often wondered if that is the case that we are remembering some of these stories and some of these different types of people. What do you think of a lot of these other towns, and usually in the lower 48, where if there is a cryptid, you know, mothman or something like that, they go all out with the merchandising, the tourism, the festivals. Do you just think that's kind of amusing? That's just another part of American culture, or I don't know, I'm wondering if you have any opinions about those. I mean, it's just, it's, it's the, it's the way it is. It's America is a capitalistic society and that's, it's the American way to try to make a buck off of anything. So,

I imagine the last thing you want is to create some kind of big marketing festival to get a lot of people from outside Alaska to come to look for. No, I don't want any of that. Yeah. I've had people ask me very specifically where the coordinates are for certain, things that I've talked about in my stories and I don't tell people. I don't, number one, I don't want people going out there who don't know what they're doing and I don't want them getting hurt on account of a story that I've told. That's not the point with these stories. I think it would be frowned upon actually from the people around here.

But that's not even something I would even consider. It's more about just preserving the oral tradition of native storytelling. you know, the winter time is the time we tell stories, you know, it helps pass along the long winter months. So it's part of the culture up here. It's funny because I mean, you're talking on how you don't like the Alaska being called the last frontier, but part of the idea of the frontier is the idea that there's still some mystery out there, though we haven't, quote, unquote, conquered at all. But it sounds like part of, you feel like part of your culture is that that is the whole point you know yeah i think that uh we under we have a very interesting

relationship with the land because we live off of it so much and we understand that it's such a big place uh the western mindset is we know it all and the indigenous mindset is there's we don't we don't fully understand some of these things i've lived here my whole life i've never lived anywhere else and i i understand and i was part of respecting the land is is letting the land know we don't fully understand you and you do have your secrets and we will never know all of them

and that's okay I wanted to travel beyond Alaska to figure out why so many people are fascinated by cryptids so I contacted J.W. Ocker. He wrote a book called the United States of Cryptids

a tour of American myths and monsters. To research the book, he visited dozens of states. In fact, he's been to every state in the country except Alaska. So I told him about James' podcast, and he was intrigued. I love that because one of the biggest problems cryptic people do have is they don't feel their cryptids legitimate until they tie it to Native American belief. So if they don't have a history, it goes back to Native Americans, they believed in this. And by doing that, they often twist the beliefs and the mythologies to fit their narrative, you know, but it's validation to them.

If they can say, oh, this creature was here before we were, they can, because again, cryptos can't just appear. Bigfoot's around. It hasn't been around for a very long time, even before, you know, the colonial era of America's. But there's a danger in that where you're using somebody else's stories, mythologies, as true history to connect to your story, right? To make your story valid.

That's so interesting that there's a form of like cultural appropriation that happens. Thank you. That's the word. That's literally happening a lot of cryptids. And it's like, you can see why it's happening. Like, there's a logical reason, practical reason why it's happening, but you also have to be super careful about that. In his book, JW talked with people who like cryptids

just because they think they're a fun and quirky part of pop culture. And he talked with other people who think that cryptids are real or potentially real. They call themselves cryptozoologists. So the beautiful thing about the word cryptid is it is a legit scientific phenomenon, right? We have discovered creatures that we thought to things. anymore we've discovered creatures that were only rumors um from locals before right the celacanth the ocopi uh platypus right the platypus nobody believed the platypus was a real animal

and even when they had like taxidermid creatures in their hands they'd be like you made this yourself you put a duck on a beaver obviously is what you did so they had to have live specimens there so the idea of a cryptid is completely 100% legitimate um some of the more extravagant cryptids however there's a whole spectrum of how believable they are right so some there's some some cryptos that no, even like the most ardent cryptic believer would say, no, no, that's kind of a fable or that never happened or is a hoax. And there are some that are more biologically plausible, right? That, you know, Bigfoot is one of those where not too hard on the imagination to be like, oh, it's me, but like two feet taller and harrier, right? That kind of doesn't strain

the imagination. You know, anything in the water because we're not in the water, right? It's very mysterious thing water, uh, giant bodies of water. So it's easy to say it doesn't strain the imagination, like there's something in there that we haven't discovered yet, right? So it's just a, it is a spectrum. I hate that answer usually, but like it is. There's on one end, there's the Yocopy and there's the sealocamp. And the other end, there is, you know, laser shooting pteractyls, which there is on, out in Iowa. So for those people who go to those conventions where they do believe this is all just,

these are just fables, these are myth, this is folklore. Why did they love cryptids so much? Why do they still think this is the funnest thing to be into? I didn't know the answer going into the project, but I think I have an answer that satisfies me coming out of it. And that is, it's just an exercise of wonder is what it is at the end of the day, right? It's people saying, you know, wouldn't it be awesome if there are more discoveries left in this world, right? Sometimes, especially in the modern world and us having access to every single channel of communication, it seems like we've kind of figured all out.

We've seen everything. Every square inch has been GPSed and satelliteed and all those things. And also there's also this because they are a category of monster, like we call cryptids monsters all the time. You know, there's a whole category of people that love monsters, whether it's, you know, Universal Studios monsters, horror monsters. So this is a brand new category of monsters where it is giant furry things, flying reptiles, lizard men, all kinds of things that are conventional monsters and movies, but they might be real. Or there are stories in real life about them. It's another way to phrase it. They're also a great fit for merchandise. Unlike King Kong or the creature from the Black Lagoon,

there is no official version of these cryptids that you need to reference or get permission from a company, artists can use their imaginations fully, and they do. As I mentioned earlier, J.W. Ocker traveled across the country to visit towns where there are cryptid sightings. And I was surprised to learn how many towns have made their local cryptids into part of their identity. Probably the biggest trek I did was the Dakotas, because it's middle of nowhere. It was COVID. It was COVID. It was COVID. And I'm here in the Dakota's driving between North Dakota and South Dakota, nothing around, snowing. And I'm looking for Bigfoot statues and Thunderbird sites.

And it's just like, you know, that's where the closest I felt to actually journeying the rest of these times, because I'm looking for towns that celebrate cryptids. It's mostly me just bellying up to the bar, right, and ordering whatever cryptid theme local brewery beers on tap. That's kind of how I explore. So when you go to one of these towns, like, what qualifies as a great visit? Because I imagine myself going to these towns and being like, so I hear this cryptid exists here. And they're like, yep, yep, it does. You want to buy the beer with a cryptid name on it? You know, like, what more?

Like, what qualifies as a great visit that you made it out there? That's a really good question that nobody's asked me. I'm glad you did. It is you need a centerpiece. And that centerpiece, ideally would be a museum. You have a museum dedicated to your cryptid or cryptic in general. That's enough for me. That's enough, right?

Even Folk, Arkansas, which is literally in the middle of nowhere. You would never go there on purpose or an accident. you have to like Bigfoot to go to Folk, Arkansas. And they have a museum. And it's beautiful, and they have, like, recreations. And, like, it's really cool. So you need a museum. Barring that, the best time to see these towns is festival time.

Like, when all the vendors are out and there's tons of stuff to do and they're celebrating, those are the best times. Because otherwise, usually if a town is celebrating it crypted, it's because they're in their last phase of existence. They've already lost their industry. People are moving out. The economy of the town's collapsing. So they have to find a way to pull people in.

And there's always many ways you can pull people in, right? Geography and history and stuff. And everybody has that one soldier statue in the middle of the town green, right? Come to our lakes, come to our mountains, come to our shores. But if you have like a giant turtle in your past, a 50 foot, a 50 foot long turtle in 1952, you're probably the only one to have that. So then, you know, in marketing terms, you have a differentiator. So now in order for people to have that experience, they have to come to your town.

point pleasant west virginia got to set up this model of we're at tiny town you would never come to our town ever uh we lost industry a million years ago however we have this one year in our past that has is strange enough for us to build statues and museums and plaques to and that now you know 10,000 people come every september to that festival what is this festival about the mothman the mothman allegedly looks like a giant moth human hybrid with red eyes. It was first cited in 1966 near a former munitions plant that locals called the TNT area. The sightings increased for almost a year, and then they tapered off after a tragic bridge collapse. But the story picked up again in the 1970s with a popular book called The Mothman Prophecies. The book was turned into a movie starring Richard gear and today the mothman appears in video games like fallout and fortnight i asked jw if point pleasant west virginia was the first town to figure out how to turn their local creature into a cash cow

if it wasn't the first town it is the most influential town multiple multiple times i was told we started this festival because the mothman festival was so successful if you can do it there you can do it anywhere And it's true to a point, I mean, the mothman is pretty special. Why is the mothman special? I don't get why this is of all the cryptids that are, it's weird. He's like up there. There's like the pantheon of like Bigfoot and Lockness Monster. And mothman is like the most, I don't know, he's like the equivalent of like a musician's

musician or an artist's artist. Like most people don't know who he is, but the people who know cryptids all know who he is. Like how did he end up there? Yeah. I have a crasser analogy than that one. He's windies, right? You know, this Burger King versus McDonald's.

But every once in a while, you just want to go to Wendy's, right? Is that cool, like you said, the cool band that nobody's listening to yet? I think it's a few things. I think one is, it is a unique design that's very important. If it was too big-footish, if it was too pterodactylish, it wouldn't be as unique. And the second one of that is it's the only cryptid with an arc, an actual story arc, right? Every single cryptid starts the same way. It's drunk or high teens in the backroads of town, in the dark, red eyes.

That's kind of every single cryptid story starts, and then South the Mothman story starts. In this case, though, every single cryptid story ends with no proof, no peltz, no body, it just gets away. In this case, though, because the tragedy of the Silver Bridge collapse, the story kind of stops there. It doesn't really, if you dig into the sidings, it doesn't really, but as far as cultural narratives, it goes, for one year, this creature is all over the place. And it was more than him, actually, but this creature was all over the place. And then tragedy happened, and he disappeared. So I think that's one of it. And then the third thing is, point plus,

it has embraced that myth like no other Cryptotown has. They have that giant, unique stainless steel statue. If that thing was made of stone or wood, it probably would be as cool. Stain the steel, they have the museum. And very unique. You can go explore the area where the Mothman was first found, the TNT area. And it feels like you're there. Like, normally you go to a town.

You're like, where was this big foot scene? It's across that road there. Or it's out in the woods somewhere. It's a vague site that's not interesting. the TNT area has these giant house-sized concrete igloos that house munitions, that house chemicals, all these things over the years. And now they're all empty in the middle of this park,

overgrown, and it feels like you're actually exploring and that you can see the mothman any second, even though it's, whatever, 60, 70 years later. Is there something uniquely American about this? Like, are there other towns around the world where they do the same thing, or is it just very American to just merchandise the hell out of your cryptids? That's what it is.

So there is cryptids all over the world, right? And even in our definition of cryptid as a monster that science doesn't believe in, all over the place, right? But we are the best at marketing. We invented marketing. So the way I was talking about this, and this isn't obviously a Cryptotown, but Salem, Massachusetts. It's which city. However, wasn't the first city of marketing languages, wasn't the last city.

The biggest witch trials happened over in Europe. It is not unique in most ways. And yet, of all the places in the entire planet, it is which city because it grabbed marketing first. So it is marketing. Again, Bigfoot is being marketed constantly. That's why he's in commercials. That's why his festival is the most exciting. That's why, you know, all the stickers you see on cars are shaped like that Bigfoot walking or whatever. So it's exactly that. We market like no other person, like no other people on the planet market. So you mentioned as well that you were disappointed that Bigfoot was everywhere. I was surprised. Again, to me, Bigfoot is like in the 1980s or 90s, there's a supermarket tabloid Bigfoot citing, ha ha, this, this right. rag is a joke or is even ironic. Why is he so popular? I don't understand.

Is it the missing link idea? So the joke I always do when I'm doing in talks is that I asked Lauren Coleman. He's like the founder of the International Chirology Museum. We've been doing it for decades. And he believes we love Bigfoot so much because we're narcissists because he looks like us, like a reptile creature, a flying creature doesn't. We, you know, our biases, our work at all times. We're always, oh, you look like me.

Even the superficial differences. If you look like me, you're on my team. You don't know like me, you're not on my team. But practically, something happened at some point, and we all realized, oh, to look for Bigfoot, you just walk in the woods. That's all you do. You don't mount an expedition to Tibet.

You don't learn how to do side scan sonar in locks in Scotland. All you do is walk out in the woods and you hit trees the sticks. And you're looking for Bigfoot. It's kind of like the ghost hunting phrase, right? When those shows came out back in the early 2000, you're like, oh, that's all you do to look for ghosts. You just take a paper recorder and you wander around an empty house in the dark. suddenly everybody was doing that, right?

Suddenly everybody was a ghost hunter because the tools were accessible and the process was easy, unfortunately. That's why you know it's not science because it's an easy process. Same with cryptids, Bigfoot. You just wander around the woods. And even though you don't find a big foot, it's still Bigfoot hunting, right? So you mentioned too before that in some of these towns, some people are not happy that, you know,

of all that our last ditch effort or Hail Mary attempt to save this town is like celebrating a monster. How often did you find that to be the case? Regulated. And usually, again, it depends on the timeline, right? Like, right when they first start doing it, there's always a had of people pushing back in it. Like, we're going to be a laughing stock.

You know, we don't want to be known for this. We're going to be known across the country as the town that has a python running around it. Whatever. Do we want that? That's a be our world. But I think over time, they eventually lose. They almost never win the people that are more conservative about that. Because, A, there's no other option.

Like, they're not bringing some other option to replace that. And in the end, it is a lot of fun. Like once you go to a Bigfoot convention, it, you realize, oh, it doesn't matter that I'm, there's certain conventions that you should, they're giving papers and talks. And it's really all about that. But most town celebrations are just fair, right? themed fairs. So once you go to those, like, oh, this is a lot of fun. And it's good for the town.

Look who all is here. Look at all these stores. So you start, once you start seeing it work, usually the commodgions come around, I think. I've also read that there are also people, uh, creation. who are really into cryptids because they want to believe like, oh, look, we found living dinosaurs

Darwin was wrong. So I grew up Christian. I grew up Christian. I grew up in this world where, but yet it's very, if they can have a live dinosaur in their minds, again, I say this just for my personal experience

back when I used to be that way, then it tears up the entire timeline of evolution, right? It's not 600 million years ago, 200 million years ago, whatever it is, it is. No, no. These creatures were all built

or created at the same time. And so obviously they're sharing the same space. You just said you used to be that way. Was there a time that you also believed that the Earth was five, six thousand years old and dinosaurs and humans? Oh, yeah. Is there, can we make a connection between that, those beliefs, and then your interest in the beliefs in cryptids now? Because there's an anti, there's an anti-connection, right? Where I was a joke, I'm kind of, I'm not a skeptic in the sense that I'm out to disprove anything.

I can care less to what people believe. But I don't believe a lot of things. I don't really believe in the more extravagant cryptids. I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe in true love. I don't believe in predestination. Ghost and true love are two very different things. I'm an all-round cynic of all things, right?

But when I was a Christian, I believed in everything. I believed in witches and ghosts and demons and gods inside of hearts and, like, creators of the universe. I believed in some extravagant things. And that's one of the reasons why I think my belief mechanism broke. You know, one day I believed it, and the next day I didn't. And if I can be, if my beliefs can be that elastic, and if I could be that wrong, whichever direction I was wrong, who knows,

then I can never trust myself again about anything, right? So I think it is. I think my fascination with belief, it comes down to belief, right? I think it's what you nailed. Right now, cryptids, most cryptids, it's a belief. We don't have hard evidence of all the most extravagant ones. You know, it's been 75 years since we named Bigfoot, and we haven't found a body, right? That's very important.

To the point where some cryptosologists, the non-biology ones, they're switching ideas. Like, what if, what if Bigwood is a ghost? What if he's ultra-terrestrial? What if he's anything to make him not, if he's a thought for him, anything to make him still exist, without leaving a body behind or anything like that. So the elasticity of human belief is my biggest fascination of life, right? Just because I don't understand how we trust ourselves. Like, it's like that, like Charles Dick and Ebenezer Scrooge Langer's like,

you're just a bit of undigested mustard. Like half the time I can't trust my eyes. How can I have such like firm beliefs about, you know, very, very important things in life? You know, so I have to do it in a way that I make sure I'm not making fun of people that believe differently than me or being condescending because that's not the point. The point is, these beliefs exist. Like we were talking about earlier, these beliefs exist, and that means something. In some fantasy books, comics, movies, TV shows, or games,

when there are mythical, godlike beings living among us, the explanation is often that these beings have come into existence only because people believe in them. Even their appearance is shaped by the collective imagination of the believers. and if people believe in them less, these beings become less powerful. I think this spills over into real life, because if people believe in cryptids or just celebrate them to the point where it affects the way they think, behave, or feel, then these cryptids are a part of our reality. Does that make them real? Or is that just a matter of semantics?

We'll explore this idea further in the next episode. my annual holiday audio drama. That is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to James Dom Mc Jr. and J.W. Ocker. James' podcast and audiobook are both available on Audible. I included links to those and J.W.'s book in the show notes. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman.

We have another podcast called Between Imaginary Worlds. It's a more casual chat show that's only available to listeners who pledge on Patreon. In one of the recent episodes, I talked with the podcaster Bo DeLare about a show, The Voodoo Project. We discussed why pop culture tropes around voodoo, like Pindolls and Witch Doctors, are damaging to the real religion of voodoo. Between Imaginary Worlds comes included with the ad-free version of the show that you can get on Patreon. You can also buy an ad-free subscription on Apple Podcasts. If you support the show on Patreon, at different levels, you get either free imaginary world stickers, a mug, or a t-shirt, and a link to a Dropbox account, which is the full-length interviews of every guest in every episode. Another way to support the show is to recommend it to a friend, post about it on social media, or leave a nice review wherever you get your podcasts.

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