They Had Been

Hey, man. I appreciate you coming here today. I mean, I just... I really got to get this out. Please, sit down.

Hell, it's really freezing up in here. Heh.

Early twentieth century- A brief glimpse
You know all those stories about bigfoot? The Lochness? Even those weird, twenty-foot fish found in drawings from the Middle Ages? I know, I know. It all sounds like a bunch of baloney, but what's interesting is that there exists the possibility that they were real, right? I mean, that's what's been keeping these legends alive, even after hundreds of years after they were documented, mostly by witnesses and archaeologists.

What if? I don't mean that this whole discussion is going to hinge on a "what if?", but for now, let's assume that they did exist back in the day, and that they did strike fear, children and adults alike. *Pauses*

I have these... *pulls out a manila folder* ...documents I gathered from museum curators from my travels in Europe and the Orient. They're pretty damn interesting, if not captivating. I mean, look, look. *points to a grayish, worn photograph* See that? That's a freshwater stingray, caught 1952. Bunch of Thai fishermen out to scrape up a day's worth of fish in the Chao Phraya river. Eight meters long, two-and-a-half meters wide. They barely got it back to the river bank, even with the help of three other similarly flimsy boats and the thickest gauged fishing net they had. Creepy, yeah? You don't see that size of fish anywhere in today's terms. Even with modern fishing equipment, there's no guarantee that you'll even find something that colossal.

You remember me talking about bigfoot a minute ago, right? Thing is, they did exist as well. Back the the nineteenth century, game hunters and keepers in South America were bent on capturing an elusive creature, which was described as a large humanoid being, about seven feet tall and exceptionally bulky. Not like a, a fat bulky, but a muscular kind of bulky, know what I mean? Don't start thinking about the 1967 Patterson-Gimilin footage of bigfoot they aired on NatGeo, 'cause you know, that was fake. Cheap shot at fame, really.

Aaanyways. "Bigfoot", in the eighteen-hundredths, was extremely famous among game hunters. They didn't want anyone palming a shotgun and going after their kill, their prize, so they didn't talk about it, didn't tell anyone unless they were trusted game hunters and keepers as well. And you know what? They were able to hunt down five, six of those bigfoots a day. For real. The bodies alone were useless, but once you got the skeleton all dried out, all those organs and muscles decayed, museum collectors would've done anything, paid hundreds of dollars, even thousands, for intact bones and pages of accurate drawings of the creature. And just like the dodo birds of New Guinea, they died out before the first World War erupted. Hell, no one even knows that there are uberly-remote museums in Africa that have complete skeletons of the ill-fated creature. Museums you'd have died trying to drive to. A friend of mine did once, although his car failed to bring him back on the way home. Imagine being stranded on an empty road, seventy-five miles away from the nearest pixel of civilization. Satellite phone saved his ass, though.

When he got back, he told me there was this local museum in Trista de Cunha, which had skeletons of a variety of fish we'd normally see today (and even eat), only about six to seven times larger, and with a few aesthetic differences. The physical structures of the fish, he retold, were rather menacing and terrifyingly practical for real world contingencies. Large, serrated teeth which slid into the right places when the pre-twentieth century fishes weren't out hunting. Fishes that had luminescent bulbs built into their chins, heads and dorsal fins, a world apart from the angler fishes we see today. Spikes, flaps, you name it. Every preservable body part was there to be marvelled at. It wasn't that interesting until he mentioned a skeleton nine feet tall, with the same bone structure as neanderthals. I assumed these could have been the real life bigfoots, though I wasn't one to conclude on that fact solely. *Hands you a sheet of paper*

That's one of a few rare finds I had dug up in Turkey. Nine-foot tall human beings. And that's not abnormal! Archaeologists presume there had been a whole race of them back when Persia was still an existent empire. Their average height would've been between seven to nine feet, themselves sporting abnormally longs legs and an apparently elongated mid-section. The skulls, they were actually quite-normal looking, save for much sharper-looking chins, which actually protruded, as with the nasal bones.

It has been prominently said by the Africans (whom I've conversed with) that long ago, about the time of the sixteenth and eighteenth century, even the days dating back to a little after the death of Jesus Christ, a race of giant people existed, with an average height of eight-and-a-half to exactly nine feet, which is rather astounding. The ancient Africans hunted these giants, because they were believed to be creatures, conjured up by witchcraft. Eventually, in the nineteenth and twentieth century, the British began to take over, and thus the giants themselves were driven out of extinction by astonished, and more likely terrified British troops, who later succumbed to the numerous diseases and drought the continent threw at them.

It's unknown if the giant race really became extinct, or is in hiding up until today, closed off from the cameras and satellites of the modern world. Theirs alone, if it does exist, would then be one shrouded in darkness, a sort of mystical charisma which keeps my motivation alive. Then again, what if?

Why, you might ask, are there not any evidence of them now? Why don't we see them in the news, in documentaries or magazines? Why aren't they frequently studied, and why aren't there any existent remains in museums? Ah, museums. That's the problem, because of a lot of people actually speculate that some museums refuse to put these remains on display. Most prominent example of that is the Smithsonian, which has been suppressing evidence related with the nine-foot humans and remains of other seemingly-prehistoric creatures for one hundred fifty years. What's their reason? I don't know why, but that all the more feeds me, you know? Keeps me interested even after all these years. You don't just find cryptids, shoot them up and conclude that they're already extinct. Dinosaurs, for one, are really extinct, though their lesser forms are found in the likes of reptiles. Giant birds as well, with only the eagle and a few other rare finds which follow in the footsteps of the predecessors.

Hunted down, or brought to extinction by asteroids the size of New York, I'm not one to conclude that the wondrous inhabitants of the old world are all dead, or being burnt up in coal plants the world over. You never really know, since a lot of organisms can adapt, especially if they have a higher sense of intellect. Giant humans, you say? Never mind the numerous basketball players we have today, or the abnormally-gifted tall people of modern times. I'm talking perfectly-developed, perfectly-healthy nine-foot tall humans who lived in tents and hunted just like the old humans did. They couldn't just have died like that.

The tallest man ever recorded was Robert Wadlow himself, right? Eight foot-eleven? And Machnov, the Russian, reputed to be an astonishing nine feet-four inches tall, although he was never attended to by physicians or any other recording commitee. They are, of course, special people with physical abnormalities, much like Mr. Wadlow's unstable pituitary gland, which caused an unusual amount of hormones to speed up his growth. Not normal.

These beings can adapt. Think. Survive. And it's not just them. I believe that many other cryptids are hidden from the world, waiting, feeding, surviving. I believe they're out there. *smirks*

Even now, I still believe they're out there. Oh. Coffee?