Sharks aren't the only man eaters out there...

Humans have a strange fascination with horror. This shows in our movies and books. Aliens, psychopaths, supernatural demons, and so many other stories and threats have been in movies more and more frequently in the past fifty years, and all have their own ways of inspiring fear in the viewers, and, of course, money for the producers. But of the many types of monsters that inhabit our movies, some of the scariest for me are those monsters that live in the sea, or water in general. Really deeply in the sea.

I'm not a big fan of horror movies. I never saw the point of scaring the crap out of me as a child and I don't see the point of it now either. But in this country, I'm not sure it's possible for a person to go their lifetime without even seeing a trailer for a horror movie. This leads to glimpses of those monsters, and those are definitely enough for me.

Once when I was in a restaurant with my family, I was bored waiting for the food. My attention wandered from the conversation my parents were having to the television screen in the corner. On it a movie was playing. Naturally, this attracted my focus, and i saw a man promptly being eaten by this this that came out of the water. I did not know it then, but the movie was called Frankenfish. As a small kid, I was very much frightened, but I almost couldn't stop myself from watching the thing on the screen eat the man. When we left the restaurant and went home, I kept thinking about the fish thing I saw. It was the source of many nightmares.


When I was even smaller, I saw this music video. In the video, there was a monster that looked like an alligator, but also like a man. This was traumatizing for me, and for years afterward, I had dreams of the "Alligator Man" haunting me and trying to eat me. needless to say, I think that this experience was probably the catalyst that started my fear of water monsters.

This monster represents the fears of a small kid, trying to sleep but jumping in his bed at every bump in his room. It brings to mind hours of lying in bed, trying to make myself smaller to conceal myself from that horrible thing trying to eat me. Sometimes I would almost go a whole might without sleep, only attempting to do so when I could finally see some light outside my window.

Culturally, the monster represents that unknown that makes a lot of money, and as such, is something that is exploited by producers for the quick buck. if there's anything I've learned from movies, it's that Thing will be back...