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FOUR MYTHOLOGICAL BEASTS THAT ACTUALLY EXIST

CRYPTOZOOLOGY, according to cryptozoologists, is the study of heretofore undiscovered species. According to everybody else, it’s what lunatics who prefer lying in the international language of science call the animals they make up. Bigfoot is the spawn of cryptozoologists, for instance. It’s pretty much a bullshit factory, but every so often real researchers discover that the terrified villagers were warning them about that monster because it’s right behind them. These are the terrifying myths that turned out to be terrifying realities.

4. THE KRAKEN: MONSTER FROM THE DEEP

The myth

The word kraken is simply German for “octopus.” Kind of a letdown, right? An octopus isn’t very scary; it’s more like the physical manifestation of pubescent awkwardness—all flailing limbs and messy secretions—but as with many monsters, it’s really just a matter of scale. Nothing is cute when it’s big enough to eat your house, and the kraken is no exception.

For years sailors have been returning to harbor with stories of a giant tentacled beast. Some said that it was more than a mile in diameter. Others claimed that it was the first animal made in all of creation and would only perish when the world ended. We tended to relegate tales of the kraken to the same bin of bullshit where we throw mermaids and the Loch Ness monster—or at least we did until a few years ago, when a bunch of New Zealand fisherman hauled one into their boat.

The reality

It’s called the colossal squid. Now, we tend to get a bit unnerved by anything that scientists decide to label colossal, because they’re a moderate bunch. In the realm of science, something only gets dubbed as colossal because the textbooks frown on classifying animals as being of the genus F**kmassive holyshitbricks.

And the colossal squid is not just a name: It’s a thirty-foot-long flailing engine of nightmares. Scientists excitedly tell us of its oddities, such as tentacles lined with “sharp, swiveling, three-pointed hooks,” and how the 1,091-pound specimen on display in New Zealand is thought to be “much smaller than average.”

It’s not like it’s a peaceful behemoth that we’re giving a hard time due to its appearance. Comparing the smaller-than-average specimen the fisherman hauled in to the largest squid thought possible prior to 1997, experts from Auckland University of Technology noted, “The Colossal Squid, with the hooks and the beak that it has, not only is colossal in size but is going to be a phenomenal predator,” before helpfully clarifying that this made it “something you are not going to want to meet in the water.”

So no, ancient mariners weren’t just being quaint when they marked the deep sea as “here there be monsters” on their maps; it was just shorter than writing “here there be thirty-foot-tall multilimbed, razor-hooked fury beasts that look like a giant, wet bag of violence, and you should probably just stay home until somebody invents faster boats.”

3. IRKUIEM: THE GOD-BEAR

The myth

There could be all manner of bizarre creatures living in Siberia, the frigid wilderness that covers 10 percent of the earth’s land. Human beings didn’t really bother to set up proper civilizations out there. To this day, explorers come back from the Siberian hinterlands with tall tales about giant reptiles, living mammoths, and enough yetis to populate some kind of yeti academy. Mixed in with all that bullshit was the god-bear.

The reality

In 1936, a Swedish zoologist named Sten Bergman ventured into Siberia and started to hear stories about so-called monster bears. After Bergman mussed the hair of a few tribal elders while saying, “Sure, buddy. Did he come out from under your bed?” the natives showed him pelts, skulls, and paw prints larger than those of any known bear in the region. That’s when science collectively stopped rolling its eyes and making wanking motions, and began taking the god-bear seriously.

It just so happens that the villagers’ description matched that of an