About 30 years ago, before I officially developed my addiction to D&D and role-playing games, I was always strongly attracted to anything that related to ghosts, supernatural phenomenon, UFOs, Bigfoot, Loch Ness, historical legends and so forth. In those days, such things were not considered real by any stretch, but there was definitely enough “what if” that should you have any modicum of an open mind, you couldn’t completely dismiss them. Now-a-days, generally speaking, I have found that this not the case. With the advent of technology and its powerful amplification on fields of research it would seem that such things, one-by-one, are being debunked quite easily. The skeptics, who always seem to be the villains in these discussions, now appear to be wining. This is fine in my opinion, they can have it because in light of these new arguments and revelations, I seem to be joining them – something I couldn’t have imagined many years ago.
Here’s my primary thought on all things supernatural and strange: “If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?” The standard trick answer to this is “no”, unless there is someone there to hear it. That’s the literal answer. However, this is not what the question is trying to infer. It’s actually making a comment on cause and effect. In other words, the event is only truly real if there’s something present to interpret it. Simply put, a ghost is only a ghost because there was someone there to witness it and interpret it as such. So, obviously, the biggest obstacle is proof. You don’t even have to see the tree to hear it fall, but if you where to head in the direction of the sound it made one would expect to find a fallen tree. But what if you didn’t? Then you suddenly have a mystery on your hands.
In light of this, seeing as the majority of proof falls (pun intended) on eye witness accounts, one now becomes skeptical of the witness’s interpretation of what they actually experienced. In the quest of proof for the supernatural, single witness accounts mean very little to me. I only pause at the stories that have several witnesses – the more, the better. A skeptic may cry “mass hysteria” in his best Bill Murray voice, but it’s difficult to dispute a number of people, especially if they’re all strangers, who separately convey that what they thought they saw was something akin to a Bigfoot.
And then, there’s visually recorded proof. Given that special effects are at an all time high for expressing events realistically, the chances of a hoax are equally real. In fact, only an extremely few and highly unique examples of recorded proof actually pull it off. Our natural sense of what’s real and what’s not is very sophisticated. Even then, when we’re at a loss to interpret such phenomenon as being something less then real, our natural reaction is to still leave room for a hoax.
So, unless a Bigfoot is captured alive, or even its remains freshly recovered for scientists to examine and prove it to be so – they’ll still only classify it as an anomaly of nature, while skeptics will still cry hoax. And this is the frustrating part when trying to interpret modern myth as fact; it isn’t that the idea of it is believable, but that no one can believe it.
To this, I only have to site the coelacanth. Yes, it’s become a bit of joke in popular culture, but the proof of existence of the coelacanth is a strong precedent that life will not allow us to assume anything. If you’re not familiar, the coelacanth was a fish thought long extinct until one was amazingly caught back in 1938. Since then, there have been several instances of the fish surfacing in fishermen’s nets as recently as May of this year. Here’s an example of something we thought never existed, and yet, it’s still alive and kicking 65 million years later. Even though we never actually saw it, we assumed it was dead and gone, but, boy were we wrong. Now, if someone said they only saw the coelacanth, they would have been written off as delusional, however, because we actually got one, we only have to believe it to be true, no matter how crazy it is to think how it came to be. The Coelacanth proves that anything can happen on this huge and mysterious planet we live on.
So, without further ado, here’s a list on my recent conclusions on the present state of various modern myths. Witness!
Loch Ness: Totally fake. The whole Loch Ness mystique evaporated for me when the following iconic picture was finally proven to be fake. Still, there really haven’t been any definitive photos or footage of a creature that has had thousands of eye witnesses...
The reality is, Loch Ness the location is a very inhospitable body of water for anything that is said to be the size of Nessie, no matter what theory you subscribe too; And if you go by the original reported sighting back in 1933, it’s pretty much dead now, if it ever existed at all. However, like Roswell, the site of Loch Ness is very dependent on “it” as a tourist attraction, which means, “it” will never actually die. The other thing that you have to consider about Loch Ness is that if you’re walking by a random body of water and see something cresting along its surface, it’s a mild point of interest, but the shadow of bird along the surface of Loch Ness is the stuff of legends. The coelacanth rule doesn’t apply to Nessie either because the coelacanth was found in its natural habitat, while the Nessie dinosaur theory doesn’t hold the very cold water of Loch Ness.
Bigfoot: The thing about Bigfoot, unlike Nessie, is that “it” seems to be just about everywhere where there are trees – or snow. Sasquatch and Yeti are part of an ancient people’s culture. The sighting of these creatures has existed for thousands of years, but nothing has defined Big Foot the way the 1967 Patterson film has. To be truthful, I’m still a big fan of the film. I’m not saying that it is completely conclusive - most footage of big foot, and 99.9% are clearly fake, either happens from several to lots and lots of yards away, or obscured by some thick foliage - but at the very least, the Patterson film is easily the most realistic of anything to date.
Assuming it’s a hoax, it should be considered the best hoax film of all; shot out in the open in brilliant daylight conditions? Balls. Despite skeptics, I do subscribe to what many experts point out in the film, and likely the most compelling aspect of the subject, is that muscle structure is plainly actuating through a very confident stride. Furthermore, the creature looks heavy, beyond a fat guy in a homemade gorilla suit. On the flip side, why some Hollywood professional hasn’t stepped forward and made an honest attempt at simulating this film is baffling. And yes, some guy has come forward to say he was the guy in the Bigfoot suit, but whose to say that he isn’t the hoax? Having said this, if it wasn’t for this perplexing footage, I don’t think I would give Bigfoot a chance. Explain this to me, Patterson film included, but of all of the footage out there, you would think that at least one of these visually recorded sightings would prompt the recorder to actually chase the thing. They’re not cheetahs y’know, and this has always been my problem with big foot footage, up and above the quality of the film/video, the quality of the sighting, or how realistic the thing actually looks – not once does someone run after it. Why? So, for me, large, hairy, Neanderthal like creatures roaming the deep, unexplored forests of our vast world does seem possible in light of the coelacanth rule. And given the Patterson film, my mind is still open on this one, but barely.
JFK Assassination and Modern Conspiracy Theories: So, for laughs, look at the Patterson film, and then the Zapruder film. Unlike the Patterson film though, Zapruder’s is of a real event but still, when I watch it, it feels just as surreal. However, if I’m going to talk about modern myth, then the modern myth of conspiracies has to be included, starting with the assassination of JFK and the Zapruder film. One has to ask that if it wasn’t for the Zapruder film, would the JFK conspiracy theory exist the way it does. It’s no secret that the recreation of events surrounding the assassination is disjointed, and at times illogical (magic bullet theories and such), but it’s the Zapruder film that gives credence to the suggestion of a second shooter. And if you’ve got a second shooter, you’ve got a conspiracy. Unfortunately, after that, trying to reconstruct the conspiracy and the specific motivations behind it becomes circumstantial and suspect. Given the Zapruder film, its clear to me that there’s a second shooter, and yes, I believe that certainly some kind of conspiracy had occurred, but I’ve given up on trying to figure out anything beyond that. If I was a betting man, I’d say it was the mob. The point is, is that since this mystery, conspiracy theories of all kinds now dot the modern myth landscape, whether they’re founded or not. And no, Bigfoot was not the second shooter.
UFOs/Roswell/Area 51/Crop Circles: So, from conspiracy theories, to Roswell - likely the most famous non-conspiracy. I say non-conspiracy, because most conspiracies have to have fact and motive to suggest that they exist. Roswell is based strictly on eye-witness accounts, but none of their testimony really points in any discernable direction, nor is it very consistent.
Furthermore, the so called proof is pretty weak – even Mac Brazel, the fella that found the crash site, initially described the debris in very mundane terms. All we really know is that something fell from the sky on farmland in New Mexico. Period. I suppose what has people second guessing the incident is the Military’s apparent reaction to it all, which appears to be a high level one. To me this sounds like an over zealous American military behaving so during the height of the Cold War. None of this matters though, real or not, because Roswell is now a cheesy tourist town that depends on the story. So much for credibility.
Moving on to Area 51…let me see, a super secret military installation that will kill ya if you try to get in…which means that the stuff they test there must be pretty, pretty secret…which means that the technology their using must be super cutting edge…which means if you saw it floating around at night you’d probably have no idea what you were looking at and consequently, you’d think it’s a UFO. But, since it’s super cutting edge, it’s not. I like the theorists who suggest that Area 51 is housing a fallen UFO and therefore, the reason we have all this quick advancement in technology. So, what they’re saying is that aliens were using cell phones with Snoop Dogg ringtones?
Here’s the funny part, aside from my disdain for Roswell and Area 51 exaggerations, I don’t completely discount the idea of UFO’s. Ninety-nine percent of the sightings are complete crap, but on the other hand, there are a number of incidents that are interestingly credible. A couple of my favourites in this department are the 1996 Yukon sighting and Rendlesham Forest. Both are an excellent examples of what I mean by credible evidence. You can look them up yourself, of course, and there’s actually a few more worth noting. The Yukon one is exceptional given what I was talking about with respect to witnesses. A chain of witnesses, 22 in all, spotted an obvious UFO heading down the Yukon highway. There were even moments where the witnesses encountered one another and stopped to talk about what it was they were seeing. To top it all off, all their stories were extremely consistent. No matter what is to be believed here, these people truly saw something unexplainable. Rendlesham is cool because is makes Roswell look like the cheese it is. For me personally, I think you’d be kidding yourself that you were to assume that we’re the only possibility of life in this unimaginably huge universe of ours, but in the same vein, I can’t imagine them visiting us. Despite this thought, there does seem to be enough incidences to make one wonder.
As for crop circles…completely man made.
Ghosts/Hauntings: This one…is a tough one - for me at least. First, you have the more famous accounts of ghosts and hauntings. Second, you have the advent of a number of ghost sighting documentaries and shows, based mostly on the fact that everyone owns a video camera to fill them with content. But lastly, and more importantly, there are a number of people I know personally, with whom I respect completely, who have extremely interesting stories of their own personal experiences with supernatural happenings. Of all the topics that I’m talking about here, this is the one where I keep a definitive open mind on. Speaking of the mind though, the power of suggestion and the hyper-sensitivity of one’s imagination can be extremely self-manipulative. And as we all know, things that go bump in the night are open for a wide level of interpretation because, well, they’re happening in the dark. But again, even though I haven’t personally experienced something that I couldn’t explain, I know enough people who have, and many of these stories are very compelling. The ones that I would tell have the criteria that I like to look for in all of these kinds of things – multiple witnesses, different points of view from these witnesses, and what is generally unique to ghost stories - several coincidences. It is difficult to discount these stories, because the people that tell them are even perplexed by what they have seen, but they know they experienced something, and it wasn’t to be easily explained away.
There are some patterns to modern sightings that I would like to just bring to light however. First would have to be this globular light/mild light tracer thing that never existed before night vision digital cameras. So, like, the air around us is full of teeny-tiny debris that we don’t readily see in the light, but contrast it with night vision, and its gonna reflect. Somehow, these little globular light things have turned into the cat’s meow of ghost footage. Why? I wear contacts, and there have been tons of times when something microscopic will be caught on the lens that looks like something floating just out of site. Looks just like these objects.
Second, why do all hauntings have to happen at night? What makes the night so special? Of course, there’s stories that happen during the day, but 99.999999% happen at night. Again, I think much of this has to do with things being much more fuzzy at night, and thus, makes us much more susceptible to our imaginations. Plus, night vision looks waaaay more cooler capturing creepy footage then conventional lighting.
Lastly, I’m done with “cold spots”. It really should be called “poor circulation”, whether it is in the rooms of a house or in one’s nervous system. In a large percentage of hauntings there’s always someone suddenly feeling cold. This, somehow, is equated to the presence of ghosts. Next time you happen to be doing something mundane, like driving in your car and you get a sudden chill, whatever you do, don’t look in your rear view mirror… 
Ancient History: Erich von Däniken partly in mind, the idea that some of the remarkable engineering achievements that the ancients managed are somehow related to extraterrestrial influence is ridiculous. I remember when the construction of Stonehenge was portrayed as being such a mystery that it would never be solved, unless you wanted to play the alien card. In the same vein, Easter Island was so perplexing that even news related specials would mention the theory of alien application. And the patronizing continued with the lines of Nazca; that they were so spectacularly hard to do that they must have been inspired to be UFO landing strips. Well, in these cases, and of all the ancient monuments, they’ve all been fully theorized and explained. Sorry, no aliens.
What really, really annoys me of late is this Royal Blood Line thing. Where as the hows and whys behind Stonehenge went from fluff to scientific fact, and much of ancient history is beginning to be revealed for what it truly is, it pains me that they are now turning around and trying to staple “facts” to something like, for example, the Bible. Whether you believe in religion or not, it is the dynamic of faith that fuels one’s beliefs. So, attempting to attach historic fact to the life of Jesus is sorta missing the point. It’s what it’s teaching that matters, not whether it’s specifically real. So, as much as we are slowly beginning to see modern myth begin to wane in the wake of scientific and technological revelation, having to prove that Jesus was just some dude who was actually married and had kids, or explaining the 7 Plagues as environmental happenings, or that the remains of Noah’s Ark is on Mount Ararat is completely unnecessary. In many respects, such theories have become the new Chariots of the Gods, ironically enough.
5. Poor C3-PO: In the original films, 3PO as a character is an active participant. There are a number of instances where the protocol droid’s skills are required. He may not have been saving lives the same way R2 does throughout ALL the films, but 3PO was never regarded as a non-character. In the newer films, his participation is absolutely useless. Not once are his skills or presence required – does he even interpret anything for anyone? Clones might have ranked up there with Empire/Star Wars if it wasn’t for all that 3PO lameness throughout the robot factory. In fact, his history is reduced to being the hapless witness to the trials and tribulations of Anakin and Padme, let alone the boyhood creation of a future Sith lord. 
4. Why, By the Second Film, Jar-Jar is suddenly an Essential Character: The much maligned Jar-Jar Binks. This is one perspective that I did not catch on my own. It took a friend, who absolutely despises Jar-Jar, to point the following out, and prove that George just ain’t throwing things to the wall and hoping they stick. My friend still hates Jar-Jar though.
1. Luke’s Attempted Suicide: So, Luke finds out that Vader is his father, and rather then being captured, Luke let’s himself fall off of the platform. As he tumbles down the abyss like shaft, he is suddenly sucked into an exhaust tube. As a kid, and I think many fans since, believed that he used the Force to steer himself into the tube. When I got older, the act of letting go became crystal clear – Luke is actually attempting suicide. Now, this may not be a huge revelation to some, but when you put it into the context that Star Wars is meant to be kid’s film, and its leading hero would choose to kill himself instead of facing the firing squad so-to-speak, that’s pretty deep. Modern story telling usually has the hero keeping a brave face till the better end, but in legends and lore, of which Star Wars is partly based, this kind of solution happens with greater frequency. The reality is, Luke had no idea that he be would sucked in by the exhaust tube, let alone attempt to manipulate his body into one. It’s apparent he didn’t have that kind of control over the force anyway. It’s fate that he survived, pure and simple.
10. The Killer: Make no mistake, overall, this is not a great film. Its acting is stilted, the story is contrived, and any time it tries to go in the opposite direction of all the muzzle flashes, it fails laughably. However, The Killer is on this list for a reason, and one reason only; that despite all its faults, its no-holds barred, extremely imaginative, deliciously violent, exceedingly stylized action sequences have to be seen to be believed. This film is to action what porn is to sex. In fact, the narrative becomes so secondary that you start not to care about the motivation behind all the violence but just how compellingly naughty it all is. It is so dense with action, that you actually start to experience action overload. That’s because it’s a John Woo film, and like all John Woo films, the story is nothing more then a thin excuse to hammer bolt his incredible action sequences too. Really, there are several John Woo films you could swap through this spot, but I think The Killer is the best. Plus, Chow Yun-Fat is one cool dude.
9. Rumble in the Bronx: Off setting John Woo in the Hong Kong action parade is the greatest action star of all time, Jackie Chan. Unlike Woo’s relentless quest for bloodthirsty elegance, Jackie Chan is determined to deliver on the edge-of-your seat fun. There is no merit of excellence to be attached to the story, acting, or anything else technically related, but Jackie is so compelling, so completely charismatic and precise through the beats of his action sequences that nothing else matters. And right when you think that he has reached the peak of his physical capabilities, he takes you over the edge by suddenly risking his life in something as silly as a movie stunt. It is this formula that makes Jackie so great…it is not the fictional situations of the movie that cause tension in the viewer, but the fact that you’re watching your action hero performing death defying acts of bravery for real. Sometimes, these action sequences are so fast you have to slow down the film just to see how dangerous any given move might have been. Like the slot for The Killer, really, you could choose a number of Jackie Chan movies to place here, but again, I’ve decided to go with the film that brought him to the North American mainstream. But I still think it’s the best.
The entire movie then becomes a 4 way chess match between the convicts, the train, the dispatchers monitoring the train, and the prison warden obsessively eager to get the convicts back. Mix in an unforgiving environment, an innocent bystander stuck with the convicts, and an unprepared system of checks and balances and the mayhem is wickedly belligerent. The brutality encountered in this movie is realistic and raw as our anti-heroes are battered and smashed rentlentlessly in their attempts to stop the train safely. In fact, the characterizations of self preservation, whether by life or reputation, are so manipulative throughout that it gets to a point where you’re not sure who you would like to see succeed. Cap off an ending that is not only action filled, but emotionally riveting and you got one primo action film.
7. Raiders of the Lost Ark: A classic. Producer and writer George Lucas harkens back to the day of the “Saturday serials” – episodic action stories showed at movie theaters on Saturday mornings in the 40’s/50’s; sometimes westerns, sometimes science fiction, that always ended in a cliffhanger. Although Star Wars carries a level of influence from Lucas’s love for this style of action story, Raiders is the ultimate homage to them. Combine this with story and designs drawing completely from pulp comics/novels such as Allan Quartermain, Tarzan, and Zorro, and Raiders takes you on a ride that is difficult not to love. Although it may not be as action laden as some of the other films on this list, it is a perfect example where the stuff that happens in between the action sequences is just as interesting as the action sequences themselves. But when director Steven Spielberg hits you with the action, he proves yet again why he is one of the great masters of film making. Utilizing the cliffhanger style of action to its maximum, there is never a moment where our hero, Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, does not face certain death only to turn it into a desperate act of survival. Whether it’s matching wits with ancient traps, dastardly Nazis, or acts of God, Indy quite satisfyingly manages to find a way to get on top at every turn. Raiders went on to reinvigorate the pulp genre and influence just about every action film made since, not to mention the fully loaded franchise the movie launched.
6. Kill Bill, Part 1: To a moviephile such as myself, there are stretches where you begin to think that you’ve seen it all, then a movie like Kill Bill comes along. And Quentin was interested to see if he could direct action…and the answer is a brilliant, arm-hacking, yes. It’s no secret that Quentin Taratino is a media ambassador for all things 70’s, but Kill Bill is a send up of all things action Orientated in general. Easily the bloodiest of any other film on this list, the entire movie is an action acid trip, surreal and close to silly at times. Like Scoriesse, Tarratino manages to make seriously brutal acts of violence almost…funny. Maybe it’s because the movie does a great job of not taking itself seriously without reducing the tension. Aside from the obvious reason why this film makes the list - the single handed slaughter of the Crazy 88s - it is really the wide panoramic of film techniques and styles the movie adopts and features throughout. Black and White, silhouette, and anime are just a few of the many ways Taratino brings the action; not to mention his trademark of chopping the narrative’s timeline into a series of chapters that are mix and matched out of their original timeline. Uma Thurman, as The Bride, is one of two strong female action heroes on this list that takes on a testosterone soaked picture, hoists it up on her shoulders, and not once do you believe that she is any less tough or capable as any other action hero ever portrayed. The only reason why this isn’t higher on the list is that Vol. 2 flat out sucked.
5. Aliens: At the time this movie came out in 1986, never before had something like Aliens been attempted earlier. Of course, since then, this movie has been aped time and time again, but has yet to be duplicated to the same effect. And likely never will. First off, very few movies can claim to be a science fiction/action/horror/thriller. In fact, for the first chunk of this movie, there is very little action at all, starting off as a mystery/horror, then building into a thriller, and then exploding into a sequence of action that is relentless and intense. For the marines, highly trained and full of bravado, they are cut down in numbers almost immediately by the aliens, and then things just keep getting worse and worse for the survivours. And this is what makes the action so great – the good guys are never actually surviving, let alone wining, they’re seemingly holding on just long enough for the honour of a horrific death. Yes, there is the unstoppable threat of the aliens, but then they must consider the deadline of a nuclear reactor going critical, party dissention, a traitor in their midst, and contacting their mother ship to send a remote aircraft. But even the best laid plans go awry, calling upon improvisation and blind courage to make it through. Sigourney Weaver received an Oscar nomination for reprising the role of Ripley, the no-nonsense, quick thinking, tough-as-nails heroine that takes over the lead of the marines. James Cameron’s script is impeccable, only exceeded by his direction that brings you in and out of the action through the various perspectives of the marines, unbelievable special effects that still hold up today, and an unforgiving willingness to put his characters through hell at every opportunity. James Horner’s score helps to accentuate the mayhem, which also received a nomination, and has been used in several other movies and movie trailers since.
3. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back: Yes, one of the Star Wars films HAS to be on this list, and it has to be Empire. You don’t get cheated on this one, and in the context of when it first came out, it was absolutely mind blowing. And that is why it scores so high on the list. Never before and never since has a there been a movie where so much was riding on the outcome of its action scenes. There’s action and then there’s epic action – Ben Hur chariot race styles – and Empire in the wake of Star Wars was the ultimate definition of it. Here you have a morality tale of good vs. evil, where good looses every single confrontation. Badly. OK, the wampa didn’t fair too well, but aside from that, good gets an ass whooping ever time. Good manages to survive it all mind you, or else there isn’t a third movie, but by the end of Empire, evil totally deserves a cold one. The cool thing about epic action is emotional pay-off. Somehow, despite all the crushing defeats, not once are you any less exhilarated by the outcome. The movie is so uniquely special for this quality that I doubt very highly that George Lucas, writers Lawrence Kasdan/Leigh Brackett, and the director Irvin Kershner even realized what they were concocting till way after the fact – “Jeez, y’know George, the good guys sure do loose a lot”, “Don’t worry, I’ll cheese it up for the good guys in the next one”. That aside, the movie is on the list for the snow-walkers alone. No, actually, it’s on here for the chase scene through the asteroid field. No, no, let’s go with the light saber duel between Luke and Vader culminating into one of the most famous exchanges in cinema history. Y’know, I’m going to stop here, because I think I just got an idea for my next blog.
2. Die Hard: Like a lot of movies on this list, Die Hard ended up influencing the pop culture as a whole after its success. Indeed, as far as simply-plotted, reality based action films go, this is likely the best of all time. Ironically, director John Mctiernan has done some of the best action films of all time (Predator, The Hunt for Red October) but also some of the worst (Last Action Hero, Rollerball 2002 – a travesty). Needless to say, this is his crowning jewel. Die Hard contains all the elements that usually define most action films; a charismatic hero facing superior odds, a charismatic villain that is not to be taken lightly, and lots of gun fire and explosions. Some how, though, Die Hard manages to make all these obvious elements seem new again. Unfortunately, it is for this reason that the movie is not number one – since its release in 1988, this movie has been copied so many times, to its credit of course, that it doesn’t seem so new now. However, at the time of its release, this picture kicked total ass. The focal point of this movie’s greatness is the performance of Bruce Willis as John McClane, a cop who finds himself in the middle of a hostage situation at the top of an office high-rise. Managing to elude the kidnappers, the movie becomes a clever game of cat and mouse as McClane attempts to take on the entire cadre of baddies. But McClane is no average action hero, in that, as far as action heroes go, he’s extremely average. Somehow though, through wits, courage, and the fact that one of the hostages is his estranged wife (whom he wishes wasn’t so estranged), McClane navigates, with much difficulty, the never ending, death defying situations that are constantly thrown at him. This movie takes many cues from Raiders as cliffhanger after cliffhanger is solved by McClane, often with sloppy results, which is yet another reason why this movie is so great; when McClane reacts to survive one obstacle, he inadvertently causes another problem for himself that is just as deadly. This movie lives off of the motto of “out of the frying pan and into the fire”.
