Customer Reviews

Monsters Among Us

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm not often a reviewer. In fact, this is my first review. However, I feel that I must say a couple of words about this book. This is not a cryptozoological study in the style of Karl S Shuker. Nor is it a 'mock-nonfiction' book like the 'Cryptozoological Society's Guide to Magical Beings'. This is a collection of folklore, interviews and incidents about events that Steiger feels have some validity towards his thesis. Unfortunately, said thesis is obscured by a great deal of non-scientific thinking, as Steiger appears to be essentially a paranormalist and a purveyor of tall tales than he is interested in seeking more than a token explanation for them.

In many cases, as in the Ghoul of Paris, a little known incident of vampirism, he provides us with almost nothing in the way of speculation and not much in the way of information, instead choosing to focus on the well-known case of Elisabeth Bathory. It's understandable, but disappointing. In short, if you're looking for an indepth scientific or even pseudoscientific analysis of 'monsters', look elsewhere. However, if you're looking for a collection of folklore, you could do much worse than picking up Monsters Among Us.

Did you know that the earth is hollow? Yup, Brad Steiger devotes an entire chapter to the evil critters that climb out of those giant holes at the North and South poles. Quoting celebrated scholars like Dr. Raymond Bernard ("The Hollow Earth") and pulp magazine publisher Ray Palmer (one of the most bizarre figures in 20th century publishing, who founded Fate magazine and made a celebrity out of Kenneth Arnold,)Steiger enlightens you concerning the facts about our misuderstood world. For example, did you know that the famous explorer Admiral Richard Byrd discovered that there IS no North Pole? Instead, he discovered the gigantic hole in the top of the world which leads to the interior, where a race of giants bask in their dusky interior sun and fly out in UFOs to explore the outside world. (Of course, the government has forced Byrd's family to falsify his logs and cover up the truth.) The interior is a busy place, filled with "Detros", detrimental robots sprung from the fevered brain of famous lunatic Richard Shaver! I could go on forever about this book...vampires really exist, werewolves actually change shape from human to lupine, and on and on. I love books like this, but I was never naive enough to believe that they're anything but a guilty pleasure, "like a weakness for cheap sweets," as George Orwell once put it. I hope that the person reading this review is aware that the monsters described in this book are either illusionary or, to put it mildly, unproven? I'd bet a lot of money against the existence of a real wewrewolf.I'll grant the possibility that something which could be described as a "sea serpent" could exist. But it's more likely that those witnesses are honestly misinterpreting prosaic animals.

Strangely, Steiger's chapter on vampires is completely wrong. Steiger believes in the suave, sexy Dracula figure that is beloved in Western literature. In fact, the stud Vampire is almost totally an invention of Bram Stoker and, to a lesser extent, Sheridan LeFenu. The vampire legend which Stoker mined for his book described a hideous, repulsive creature, literally an animated corpse. The vampire in the movie "Nosferatu" is much more in line with the original vampire legend. Authorities like Montague Summers, who Steiger quotes, use primary documents to demonstrate that the horrible stench coming from the vampire was as deadly as his physical powers. Christopher Lee and Bela Lugosi became the archetypal vampires because they were commercially viable. You can't create a popular genre without an appealing main charector. There was nothing sexy about the original vampire.

Well, anyway, Steiger's books are a lot of fun. I love suspending disbelief and pretending for a while that the world is teeming with undiscovered monsters. Just don't take these things seriously. This book is complete nonsense. But it IS fun.