In the past two weeks there’s been a plethora of monster stories in the media, even in the New York Times. We had the infamous Chupacabra video by a police car. We had Bigfoot in a freezer. We had the Montauk Monster washed up on the shores of Long Island.

Some remain unexplained. Some are laughable. Some are both. But they don’t bother me at all. It’s not that I believe in them. Or don’t. But their existence would fit quite nicely into my view of things.

I just love the documentaries of monsters and mysterious beasts you see on the History Channel or A&E. I really do. You have the 50 year old pot bellied hunter standing in the woods recounting his tale of how he narrowly escaped death at the hands of a (insert monster here) and even though his camera was around his/her neck they just didn’t think of it in time. If only, huh?

But then they cut to the man or woman in glasses and a sweater who, sitting in their air conditioned office at some local college, explain how this sighting could easily be explained away as the work of imagination (meaning a case of beer), or just fabrication entirely (meaning that ol’ son of a gun is lyin’ through his teeth.) Then they talk about how little chance there is that something exists which we don’t know about yet.

I know it says something about me. Perhaps I have a strong anti-authoritarian streak in me but I almost always find myself siding with the beer swiller in the woods mainly because we agree on one underlying principle: We don’t know nuthin’. We agree fundamentally that there’s more to this world than we think we know. The beer swilling hunter can still be amazed.

And the professor thinks everything is or will be coldly explained by men in glasses if you just stay tuned to PBS a few more years.

I believe there’s probably all sorts of creatures that may just wander into someone’s back yard one day looking for a snack. The fact that we haven’t seen anything new in a while means just that we haven’t see anything new in a while.
Look. They just found 125,000 gorillas they didn’t know existed. 125,000. We’re just talking one Bigfoot here. One little old Nessie swimming around. They’ve got to be as easy to overlook as say 125,000 gorillas.

The Montauk monster doesn’t crimp my style whatsoever. Bigfoot? I’m cool. Chupacabra? No worries. They all fit into my worldview fine which is to say the world is a very strange place and I don’t know the half of it.

There’s a sickness if you ask me in believing that you know all there is to know. Someone recently said to me that they’d love to accept that there was a God but they couldn’t get over the invisibility aspect. Invisibility? Hah! To believe in something invisible is easy, I told him. To believe that I have sight at all without a God would be the real leap of faith.

I asked him if he believed in radio waves even thought we don’t see them. He responded that we know their effects though. I said it’s the same with God. I see the effect of God everywhere. But then I stopped playing for a moment and asked if he accepted that there were tones that the human ear couldn’t hear. Sure, he said. So I then asked why couldn’t he then accept that there are things the human eye can’t see. So, just as many many sound waves might exist that you can’t hear so there are likely many sights that your eye can’t see.

I believe in invisibilities. Lots of ’em. Invisible just means I can’t see them.

So as for me when it comes down to siding with the bespectacled “know-it-alls” or the beer swilling hunters, you know where I stand.