Dear Reader,
The binary of “skeptic” and “believer” is somewhat meaningless, as most binaries are. You saw something out of the corner of your eye. There is always a gap between our senses and our stories — and it always gets filled in. Even a skeptic is exercising faith. Some of us see ghosts in our peripheries, lurking in our vision’s vignettes. Some of us swear that it wasn’t an animal that rustled the bush just now. Some of us think that any supernatural account is full of shit. But whatever you believe, on some level, everyone is capable of being all these at the same time. Cryptids too harbor this conflict all at once.
Whether or not you believe in them, cryptids are modern personifications of our culture around myth. We see them, then they’re gone — we take photos, but they’re too blurry to verify. They are painted into campfire stories, warded away by definition, passed down as cautionary tales, hunted with pitchforks, unmasked by Mystery Incorporated, worshipped and debunked to be worshipped again.
Cryptids are compelling precisely because they don’t quite get to be real. If the Loch-Ness Monster (Nessie, to her girls) were 100% provable, she would just be another animal — an incredible one, but an animal nonetheless with a lengthy taxonomic name and a DNA sequence. But because cryptids get to lurk in between grainy CCTV pixels and moderately upvoted Reddit posts, they float around comprehensibility — not quite within nor without our logic. And that makes them mysterious. Or fascinating. Or lovable. Or terrifying.
Cryptids are like secrets. And mirrors. They’re hidden, but everyone knows about them. They’re unobservable, but we’ve all seen a picture. And your perception of them is reflective. Lots of people are afraid of “Bigfoot.” Others see the Sasquatch as a unique, benevolent, deific species. Probably most never think about them/it (?) all too much. As editors, we’re pretty split. We believe, we don’t, we’re neutral — what does that say about us? What does your belief say about you? Can you trust a skeptic or a believer to present you with this project themed around the unknowable? Probably not, but here it is anyway. We hope you enjoy the sound of our writers leading you into the woods.
Hurry, get the camera,
Cipher