Welcome to the Museum of general motors & dynamics of ephemerology

Welcome to the
Institute for research of anomalies





#1. Cryptids are creatures presumed extinct,
hypothetical
species, or creatures known
from anecdotal evidence and/or other
evidence insufficient to prove their existence
with
scientific certainty








The uncanny valley

The uncanny valley itself is where dwell monsters, in the classic sense of the word. Frankenstein’s creation, the undead, the ingeniously twisted demons of animé and their inspirations from legend and myth, and indeed all the walking terrors and horrors of man’s imagining belong here. In essence, they tend to be warped funhouse-mirror images of humanity, and many if not most share one or both of a pair of common traits.
The more obvious of these is overt, intimidating superhuman power, whether physical or paranormal, but the other is far subtler. Recent research suggests that the human idea of beauty may rest on a surprisingly simple foundation: symmetry. According to the study, symmetry of face and body suggests health and vigor—and therefore genetic fitness—while asymmetry implies the opposite.
Besides explaining the instinctive repugnance people tend to feel toward more mundane distortions of the human body, this can be extrapolated to include all manner of more exotic malformations. Unpleasant surface textures, exaggerated features or proportions, and incongruous, out-of-place additions or inclusions, even body parts that are not directly connected to one another yet move in concert, all reach deep into the primitive part of the human mind to draw forth fear and disgust.
And so we answer the first part of the question with which this article began. Hollywood and, before it, countless authors have unconsciously exploited the uncanny valley to thrill audiences with creatures and villains carefully designed to fall into a pit every bit as awful as that of Hell. One might even make a case that they are in fact one and the same.