Strange Encounters

On October 25, 2005, Rick Johns, associate professor of biological sciences at Northern Illinois University, presented a lecture in NIU's Holmes Student Center regarding "Genetic Explanations for Halloween's Legendary Creatures."

During his lecture Johns discussed rare diseases and disorders that he proposed could be the root in reality of certain classic monsters of legend and lore. He spoke of vampires, werewolves, cyclops, and other creatures.

Though conditions exist that could have, in ages of ignorance past, caused a "monster" scare and possibly generated reports of encounters with these creatures of legend, monsters of folklore remain in the realm of fantasy.

An important note: it is unacceptable to refer to human beings suffering with any disease, disorder or condition, as "monsters." Keep that in mind as you read this examination of the conditions and diseases described in Johns' lecture.

Real Vampires?
In his discussion on vampires Johns described a disease called porphyria (pronounced poor-fear-e-uh), which in some cases, can cause symptoms similar to some aspects of fictional vampirism, such as skin burning and blistering upon exposure to sunlight. When he touched on the need for blood -- at least one component of it, heme -- to counter effects of porphyria, Johns opened up a can of conjecture among his audience.

One in particular was a staff reporter for Northern Star who wrote an article about Johns' lecture in which he carelessly states, "In the past, people would drink blood to help cure the disease."

According to my research, aside from the fact that people suffering from porphyria couldn't intuitively have known the cause of their condition, the drinking of blood wouldn't have helped them anyway. There also would not have been a craving for blood among those who suffered from this disease.

Porphyria is better understood today, and can be treated. Could someone taking a late night stroll in 17th century Europe have encountered a person with a rare form of this disease? Certainly. But would they have reacted by dubbing this person a vampire? Not likely.

Of Man and Wolf...
Johns' also discussed werewolves, and how a disorder known as hypertrichosis could lend support to tales of real wolf-men. This is at least more plausible than the vampire theory.

Hypertrichosis is a condition in which vellus hair, the fine hairs that cover the body, grow in excess. This excess growth can appear on the face, shoulders and other areas of the body not generally related to the growth of pubic hair. The term hirsute is used to describe excessive growth of pubic hair and should not be confused with hypertrichosis, though a person affected by hypertrichosis could have a combined effect with hirsutism.

The excessive hairiness required to resemble a wolf — which, without complete structural changes in the human body, is impossible — would serve as an example of the most rare form of hypertrichosis. In some extreme cases, like those of Fedor Jeftichew (a.k.a. "Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy", later "Man" pictured above), and Stephan Bibrowsky ("Lionel the Lion-faced man"), the afflicted became well known circus sideshow attractions.

There are many other cases of severe hypertrichosis too, including Buddhist master Su Kong, and a man, Moung-Phoset, and his 70 year-old mother, Mah-Phoon, touted by P.T. Barnum in 1887 as "pure, long-established types of the most weird, peculiar, distinct race of mankind of whom there is any trace or record." Whatever the heck that means.

And that's not all. Contemporary examples of hypertrichosis can be seen in Danny and Larry, "the Wolf People." They have a website at TheWolfPeople.com.

While many of these people with hypertrichosis do strangely resemble the countenance of Lon Chaney's Wolfman, they are far from wolves. That a person affected by hypertrichosis would come to be considered a manifestation of a mythical creature is merely the result of imagination and superstition, the two main components that lead to the notion of werewolves, and most other "monsters," in the first place.

The Cyclops
A real Cyclops? Consider a disorder called holoprosencephaly. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke the most severe form of this disorder is cyclopia, "an abnormality characterized by a single eye located in the area normally occupied by the root of the nose..."

Most mutations associated with this disorder are so severe that babies die before they are born. We must note that the term cyclopia mentioned above is obviously derived from the word cyclops, which was used in Greek mythology to describe giant one-eyed beings. The most popular are the three who forged thunderbolts for Zeus in return for freedom from imprisonment at the hands of their father and later their brother Kronos.

Would writers of Greek mythology have had to encounter a person afflicted with holoprosencephaly in order to write about the cyclops? Bear in mind that babies born with this disorder during those early ages of civilization would have had very little chance of survival. An imaginative writer could have developed the idea of a cyclops simply because the notion of a human with one eye in the middle of his forehead is a disturbing deviation from the norm.

There's a perverse interest in seeing something that does not fit in with what we consider normal. Why do you think we pay the two bucks to walk past "freaks" in a sideshow?

Some monster myths and legends may have some basis in reality. Mutations, disorders, disfigurements, maybe even real but yet unknown creatures, could be the root of some "monster" tales, but writers and artists dream up some of the most bizarre monsters and phantoms on their own, so a real physical mutation or disorder resembling a fictional monster isn't necessarily a requirement.

It's safe to assume that imagination, possibly (even probably) triggered by observation of physical human aberrations, has a stronger roll to play in the birth of monster lore than actual living monsters.