Do humans try to hide the ugly parts of communities by creating Monsters?
Every October, we invite monsters into our lives. They hang from our porches, crowd the candy aisle, and show up at parties in cheap polyester. We treat them as harmless fun, which makes it easy to forget that they were once taken very seriously.
Humans have always had an innate fascination with the supernatural, whether that be a fear of the dark and the creatures that lurk inside, or a love of horror movies during the best and spookiest time of the year. However, most do not know why we are drawn to the occult, or how the idea came to be. The history of the supernatural and paranormal is not always as simple or as defined as one may believe.
Many of our favourite monsters are much older than we think. Creatures such as the Zombie are more complex and interesting than just being brain-eaters. Different cultures also have different origins for the same monster, such as some Asian yōkai. Through the wonderful and spooky class of Religious Studies 201: Ghosts, Monsters, and Demons, taught by the hilarious professors Dr. William Arnal and Dr. Kevin Bond, one can explore the macabre and ignite a curiosity in themselves that can only be quelled by digging deeper.
Monsters often police the boundaries of a community; who belongs, who does not, and what must never be done. -Alexandra Balogh
More than just “Monsters”
The class brought forward a very spooky question: where did these monsters come from, and what were the people trying to say when they imagined them? The short answer is that monsters are rarely just monsters.
In the ancient Near East, demons were blamed for the things no one could control: illness, nightmares, and sudden deaths. Greek myths gave us Medusa, the Hydra, and the Minotaur, creatures that lived at the edges of the known world and tested the heroes who dared to cross into it. When a culture lacked a name for a danger, it often gave the danger a face.
The devil of medieval Europe, with his horns and hooves, grew over centuries, shaped by scripture, sermon, and art until he became a vivid symbol of everything a community feared and condemned. Folklore from Eastern Europe produced the vampire, a corpse that would not stay buried, born partly from fear of disease and from the unsettling things that happen to bodies after death. Monsters often police the boundaries of a community: who belongs, who does not, and what must never be done.
In Japan, yōkai are a vast and strange family of spirits, some frightening, some mischievous, some oddly sweet. The oni, horned ogres who punish the wicked, are driven out each year during the Setsubun festival, yet they also appear in stories as figures of surprising complexity.
Hungry ghosts, found across Buddhist and Chinese traditions, are spirits tormented by insatiable craving, a monster that doubles as a lesson about desire. Hindu and Buddhist texts add their own caste, from rakshasas to Mara, the temper who tried to pull the Buddha away from enlightenment.
Ghosts may be the most universal of all. Nearly every culture imagines that the dead can linger, and nearly every one has rituals for dealing with them, including festivals, offerings, and ancestor veneration. Ghosts are about relationships and unfinished business, about what the living owe the dead and what happens when that debt goes unpaid. The Hungry Ghost Festival, when offerings are set out for wandering spirits, makes the idea feel almost tender.
Monsters can be some of the best historical sources. They record what people feared, what they valued, and what they could not explain. So, this Halloween, when a vampire rings your doorbell, consider what they are carrying. They are thousands of years of human imagination in a plastic cape.
If you ever get the chance to take Religious Studies 201, take the class. It is the rare course that makes you love the dark just a little more and understand it a whole lot better.
