The Vanishing Hitchhiker – promotional art for Nintendo Switch, one of many variations or adaptations of the urban legend

(18) URBAN LEGENDS

The modern folklore par excellence – “a genre of folklore comprising stories circulated as true, especially as having happened to a ‘friend of a friend'”. And yes – worthy of their own top ten.

Apparently the term urban legend as used by folklorists has been in print since the 1960s, but is best known – particularly to me – through their most prolific popularizer, Jan Harold Brunvand, in a series of books from The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends & Their Meanings onwards.

“Many urban legends are framed as complete stories with plot and characters. The compelling appeal of a typical urban legend is its elements of mystery, horror, fear, or humor. Often they serve as cautionary tales. Some urban legends are morality tales that depict someone acting in a disagreeable manner, only to wind up in trouble, hurt, or dead.”

“Urban legends will often try to invoke a feeling of disgust in the reader which tends to make these stories more memorable and potent. Elements of shock value can be found in almost every form of urban legend and are partially what makes these tales so impactful. An urban legend may include elements of the supernatural or paranormal”.

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Possibly the most iconic UFO picture of all time and certainly the mantra of UFO enthusiasts – the poster for The X-Files made by the production team for the series

(17) UFOS & UFOLOGY

Close encounters of the third kind.

The modern mythology par excellence, a mythos of extraordinary depth and complexity – one that has even absorbed former fairy folklore, angelic visitations, and divine encounters into itself, as well as forming part of new religions.

Technically, there is nothing mythic about UFOs in their purest sense – as unidentified flying objects. Observations or sightings of aerial phenomena and unidentified flying objects have been a prosaic matter of fact, both since human flight and previously throughout history.

And there is nothing mythic about any number of prosaic explanations for them, which could well be the subject of their own top ten – setting aside human error (often of known or subsequently identified objects), delusion, hoax or psychological effects, there are a number of ordinary objects or phenomena.

Aircraft or balloons. Astronomical objects. Atmospheric objects and light phenomena, including my personal favorite I yearn to see for myself, ball lightning.

Of course, what is mythic is the hypothesis that has become synonymous with UFOs – the extraterrestrial hypothesis, essentially UFOs as alien spacecraft or visitation. Although arguably that is one strand, albeit the predominant one, of various overlapping hypotheses, which propose exotic explanations other than ordinary phenomena.

Timecraft rather than spacecraft (and future humans or posthumans rather than aliens). The cryptoterrestrial hyphothesis. The interdimensional hypothesis. Space Nazis or communists.  Or some sort of government conspiracy to manipulate perception.

UFOs and ufology have a number of layered elements. There are the UFOs themselves – ranging from the foo fighters and ghost rockers of WW2 (or their predecessors as mystery airships) to more contemporary black triangles, flying saucers and green fireballs.

Then there’s the aliens, most predominantly the aliens known as the Greys, or their predecessors Little Green Men – the former being suspiciously humanoid and nude – as well as their predilections for cattle mutilation (presumably as bowsers they pump as fuel for their spacecraft), crop circles, abduction, and the omnipresent probing (or lurid sexual fantasies to rival those of witchcraft).

That last always throws in a skeptical note for me. It’s hard to imagine that aliens are so advanced as to cross light years of space or different dimensions just to give some hick an enema. I mean, I would, but I’m not particularly advanced and that’s just my sense of humor.

Also – why is it never the sexy aliens? Although there is (or was) a strand of aliens in UFO mythology as Nordic aliens.

And then there’s the deeper levels of UFO mythology revolving around human interaction – or conspiracy – with aliens. Roswell and Area 51. Men in black. Majestic 12. And my personal favorite, the endless ancient alien hypotheses, with Eric von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods foremost among them for me – aliens built the pyramids!

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Map of Bermuda Triangle (or one version of it anyway) – public domain image in Wikipedia article “Bermuda Triangle”

(16) EARTH MYSTERIES –
ATLANTIS, BERMUDA TRIANGLE & TUNGUSKA

“The time when the oceans drank Atlantis”

Atlantis – myth, allegory, Egyptian priestly gossip…

Not to mention empire of so-called Earth mysteries – that modern mythology of beliefs about geographical locations or monumental architecture and their “energy”. Ley lines, megaliths, pyramids, Stonehenge. Geomancy and feng shui.

But back to Atlantis, it is representative not only of ‘earth mysteries’ but of all mythic lost or sunken continents, lands and kingdoms, including phantom islands and even hollow earth or subterranean realms.

All of which could readily round out their own top ten – Lemuria or Mu, Hyperborea or Thule, Ys or Lyonesse, Agartha, Avalon or Tir Nan Og, Eldorado, Hy-Brasil, Shambhala or Shangri-La.

And they’re just the big names, although the biggest name of all in lost lands is course Atlantis itself, thanks to Plato. Ironically, Plato used Atlantis as a minor allegory (and counterpoint to Athens), set 9000 years or so before his time, one which concludes with “Atlantis falling out of favor with the deities and submerging into the Atlantic Ocean”, but it subsequently assumed a mythic significance after him.

“Atlantis has become a byword for any and all supposed advanced prehistoric lost civilizations and continues to inspire contemporary fiction”. To its mythic archetype of lost continent or land, one might also add its fantasy role as sunken, submerged or submarine kingdom – with the Atlanteans adapting to their new marine habitat.

Foremost in Atlantean mythology, at least as my personal favorites, are the so-called “location hypotheses” – the historical (or pseudohistorical) speculations as to the location of Atlantis, if only as possible sources of inspiration for Plato’s allegory.

Although not as wild as they used to be – with modern understanding of continental drift and plate tectonics putting paid to any actual lost continent (foremost among them Ignatius Donelly’s nineteenth century revival of the Atlantis myth) – there are still some wild theories proposed for America or even Antarctica as Atlantis.

Personally, I’d like to see more speculation for the United States as Atlantis – not as an allegory by Plato but a premonition (or both, the United States kinda fits the Atlantis allegory as well). Not to mention the Atlantean cold war against Lemuria-Mu.

Seriously, however, I lean more towards Plato creating a mostly fictional account, from more plausible sources of inspiration from the Mediterranean – my favorite being the volcanic eruption on Thera and the fall of Minoan civilization on Crete, although close runner-up is more contemporary (and personal) events to Plato in Sicily.

And then there are the more literary influences or interpretations – from utopias (or dystopias), including the definitive Utopia of Thomas More, to the lost land of Atlantis as metaphor for something no longer obtainable

Or again, personally I’d like to see more speculation for Atlantis as premonition by Plato, not to the future but as deep atavistic memory to the distant prehistoric past, when we were all happy little trilobites in Pangaea, or Gondawana, or whatever prehistoric supercontinent it was back then

“We can’t tell where we are… everything is… can’t make out anything…It looks like we are entering white water… We’re completely lost.”

The Bermuda Triangle is one of my personal favorite modern myths – hence its inclusion as earth mystery in this special mention – despite it being, you know, complete crap.

Firstly, it’s a pretty loose triangle, often more of a Bermuda Trapezoid, even extending as far as Ireland in some variations – although it usually includes the Sargasso Sea, which I find almost as fascinating.

Secondly, the idea of the area as uniquely prone to disappearances is only recent, arising in the mid-20th century, albeit with a bang with my favorite myth within the myth, the disappearance of Flight 19 quoted above. (It happened, but not as part of any larger triangular mystery).

Thirdly and most fundamentally, there’s no mystery. “The number of ships and aircraft reported missing in the area was not significantly greater, proportionately speaking, than in any other part of the ocean” – and “the number of disappearances that did occur were, for the most part, neither disproportionate, unlikely, nor mysterious”.

Also the claims of writers who contributed to the Bermuda Triangle legend, Charles Berlitz foremost among them for me, “were exaggerated, dubious or unverifiable” – including just straight out misreporting accounts of meteorological conditions or omitting the belated return to port of ships reported missing.

But who cares about all that – it’s just fun, particularly in fantasy, where the underlying reason for the mystery usually “will turn out that something really weird is involved with the area, such as aliens, paranormal activity, Eldritch Abominations, Atlantis, or something even weirder”. Perhaps Cthulhu or other dimensions. Even if human activity is involved, it’s some ancient conspiracy or cult.

Also this entry is intended to be representative of mysterious disappearances and “vile vortices” in general. There’s the similar Devil’s Sea (or Dragon’s Triangle) near Japan, as well as a few other triangles. The lost colony of Roanoke. The Mary Celeste. Ambrose Bierce. Amelia Earhart

And there’s also my personal Bermuda Triangle, because whenever I lose things, they vanish completely from the face of the earth – perhaps into Charles Fort’s Super-Sargasso Sea.

And then there’s the third of my holy trinity of Earth mysteries – the Tunguska Event. Although I feel a little trepidation ranking the Tunguska Event with the Bermuda Triangle and Atlantis – because unlike those latter two, the Tunguska Event is more grounded, less earthly or mysterious.

It’s also a less enduring phenomenon – an explosion in Siberia usually reckoned at 10-15 megatons on 30 June 1908. As to what caused the explosion – there’s the mystery, but again it’s usually reckoned to be a meteorite. The only catch is that an impact crater or meteorite has never been found, so the leading hypothesis is that it exploded as an air burst rather than from direct impact.

If so, it was a lucky day for St Petersberg at the same latitude, as a few hours difference might have made it the site rather than a remote and sparsely populated region of Siberia.

However, that doesn’t stop wilder hypotheses, ranging from the still relatively mundane such as a comet or exploding leak of subterranean natural gas, to the bizarre – “a deuterium-rich meteorite causing an all-natural thermonuclear explosion; a chunk of antimatter; a miniature black hole passing through the Earth; an alien spacecraft crashing or discharging some kind of superweapon; psychic experiments or magic rituals gone wrong”.

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)