Do you believe? What drives people to search for the fantastic?

[Mark]

I'm a skeptic. No doubt about it, if someone says they've seen a ghost, tried a quack cure, spoken with a medium I have to bite my tongue.

What I want to know is, what drives people to search for extraordinary creatures? IS it a feeling that modern life has lost touch with natural mystery? Do our sanitised lives offer no sense of the unknown, the mysterious? Or do people genuinely expect to stumble across Big Foot or Nessie, if they just look hard enough.

How far are we prepared to stretch our credulity - fairies? unicorns? where do you draw the line?

Why do you believe?

[angela]

  i really don't get it

[seeker]

I think maybe because people love a good puzzle. I think when there is enough urban folklore and myth about something, people are going to get curious about it. Scientists continue to unearth new oddities about our natural world all the time that we thought were pure science fiction. There's always more to discover. Sometimes legends are just scary bedtime stories, other times they were based on real incidents.

Here's an interesting article about cryptozoology I just found today:

"Cryptozoology is a way that zoology understands and discovers new animals by getting information from local people, from natives, from folklores and traditions to really build up a case to see if there's any physical evidence for those actual animals existing," he explained

http://www.theportlanddailysun.com/cgi/story.pl?storyid=20090626105471000306

[NaturalMystik]

It seems so many of the major cryptids (nessie, big foot, chupacabra etc...) are very deeply based in cultural mythology. The anecdotal evidence is enough for me to come to the conclusion that something a little strange may going on... Whether it's bonified a creature of lore or otherwise is a different story. But I do think there may be things out there that we have yet to bag, tag, and catalog... I think if enough people say the see something, it's either an elaborate conspiracy or there really is something to be seen... Either way it's an makes for an interesting story.