Of Wings and Things: Psycho-Sexual Encounters and the Supernatural
on September 1, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Reports of winged beings have long been included in the more obscure reports of cryptozoological and ufological weirdness from around the world. Arguably, the most famous of all such incidents was detailed throughout John Keel’s investigations of the “Mothman,” which occurred in West Virginia in the late 1960s. Since that time, Mothman has become the predominant image in most people’s minds when it comes to envisioning a winged monstrosity of the cryptozoological variety. There are, however, other instances involving claims where such creatures have been witnessed, and though details about their existence are far more obscure, they bear a variety of similarities to folkloric traditions from various cultures around the world. Strangely, among these similarities are parallels having to do with the alleged creature’s interaction with their habitat and surroundings, as well as a prevalence of sexual aspects to their dealings with humans.
One recent discussion addressing unidentified winged monsters detailed encounters with an alleged “gargoyle” seen near the vicinity of the El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico. This was presented by the astute Scott Corrales at Inexplicata, where he shared some unique accounts that included a physical attack sustained by an area local. According to Corrales, “some people have identified (the monster) with the Chupacabras, yet others believe it is a differnt, elusive and sinister entity whose lair is in Barrio Ensenada, amid the ruins and tunnels of the Guanica Sugar Mill, where the skeletons of its victims can be found.”
Arguably, the manner in which this story is presented here has a folkloric overtone, with it’s tales of an old abandoned building in which the creature now resides. One might assume that if the creature’s victims were really piled up beneath an old sugar mill, a criminal investigation would have ensued to uncover the remains and find the culprit. However, before substantiating the claims with physical evidence Corrales presents that, as stated earlier, does involve an attack one man claims he received from the creature, it would be interesting to ponder those folkloric elements for a moment. After all, when comparing this story to the circumstances presented in reports of the alleged Mothman creature, we begin to see some striking similarities.
Much like the “Gargoyle” of El Yunque is said to inhabit an abandoned sugar mill, Point Pleasant’s Mothman creature similarly inhabited an abandoned TNT factory in the area. There could be a number of reasons for this similarity; one being that, as a matter of tradition, monsters always tend to reside in a dark and dangerous lair. Think of legends involving dragons and other mythic beasts, whose caves must be entered by a brave soul in order to liberate an afflicted populace from the dangers the monster in question presents to them. It would be fitting, supposing there was indeed some physicality to the existence of creatures like Mothmen or gargoyles, that people would uphold this tradition by similarly assigning them a “dragon’s lair” of sorts, whether or not the creature actually resided there at all. Or perhaps, much like the notion of a haunted house and the ghosts, bogey men, and other terrors that hide within, the psychological extensions of one’s own fear of the location itself could actually manifest, to some degree, in the presence of a devilish creature similar to a Mothman, dragon, or in this case, perhaps a gargoyle.
Ruminating on the folkloric archetypes present in this circumstance, while interesting in terms of the psychology of the experiences reported, does little to fend against the problems we’re presented by the very real physical attacks some witnesses have described. Corrales goes on to describe a man, whose only given name is “Valdo,” who was apparently attacked by the winged beast near Guánica Lagoon in the mid-1990s:
“He was injured in his stomach, his [abdominal] fat could be seen,” noted a witness, describing the injuries suffered by a man on his belly and back, caused as if by “an animal’s claws.” The witness soberly expalined that the wounded man lifted the t-shirt he put on after the attack, saying that a “large winged” animal took him by surprise in his back yard and attacked him.
The description of physical attacks made by monstrous winged animals isn’t specific only to Puerto Rico’s gargoyle. Over the years, a horrific creature called Popobawa has been described by residents of Zanzibar and nearby locales, and much like it’s western cousins, the creature is said to have wings, and bears a penchant for physically attacking its victims. Popobawa’s attacks differ, however, in that incidents involving the creature have a predominantly sexual nature; strangely, men have claimed the creature will enter their homes at night and sexually molest them, promising to return if they don’t share the terrifying experience with others. Though the gargoyle of El Yunque isn’t described as a sexual deviant like Zanzibar’s Popobawa, there are other creatures present in the culture and traditions of the region that are more similar in this regard, which makes for a fitting point from which we’ll diverge away from the exclusive conversation of winged monsters, instead drawing parallels between those whose presence is accompanied by strange sexual circumstances.
Both the Pombero, as well as its lesser-known cousin, Kurupi, are entities credited with sexual molestations and general mischief in Guarani culture and other parts of Latin America. Much like Zanzibar’s Popobawa, the Kurupi is characterized by its abnormally large male genitalia, though the traditions surrounding the Kurupi show that it, unlike Popobawa, favors the opposite sex, having been blamed for the occasional impregnation of women. A similar myth, stemming from further south in Chilean lore, involves the goblin-like Trauco, a creature which carries a stone hammer representative of its sexual potency. It too is accredited with luring human women away for purposes of breeding with them.
In truth, if one were to canvass the traditions and superstitions of various countries and their people, it would no doubt show that similar sexualized encounters exist in a variety of cultures. Malaysia’s Orang Minyak, a ghost-like serial rapist in Maylay traditions that attacks young virgins, caused localized panic in 2005 during a surge of encounters young women had with a strange man entering their bedrooms at night. The following description is given at the Wikipedia entry on the creature:
In short, the orang minyak is a supernatural serial rapist that is hard to see and hard to catch. Some have speculated that the orang minyak is a regular criminal who uses black grease as a night-time camouflage. Due to the use of black grease, it makes the orang minyak hard to catch, as pursuers would not be able to hold on to him. However, in some encounters with the orang minyak, the situation is not explainable from a non-supernatural angle.
Further compounding the sexual nature of such supernatural encounters is the similar manner in which UFO abductees claim their captors often show a preoccupation with the genitals. The most widely accepted rationale for this among ufologists has to do with the premise that human “specimens” are being used as breeding stock, of sorts, for an elaborate intergalactic hybridization program. In short, our alien visitors are dependent on using human genes in order to bolster their own waning reproductive facilities. Again, however, if we were to attempt to look at this from a purely folkloric perspective, the noted parallels existing between faerie traditions in the British Isles compared alongside modern abduction reports; or the similar consistencies between UFO lore and archetypal mystic encounters that shamans divulge, might have us believe that the persistence of sexual encounters throughout illustrates something deeper and, fundamentally, an aspect of our humanity which remains nested curiously within the psyche.
What does all this mean, in the end? Does it dispel the notion that winged devils, the likes of which have been seen in Puerto Rico and other locales worldwide, could exist in a physical sense? This may not be the case, but the physical nature of the occurrences, whether they be violent intrusions in terms of attacks, or the more psychologically intrusive molestations, also points to an inherent psycho-sexual relationship that exists between experiencers of strange phenomenon and their otherworldly assailants. Perhaps the intrusive aspects that so often manifest in supernatural experiences may represent, if anything, an ongoing internal struggle for dominance in the human character, obliquely defying humankind’s conquests as a species hitherto on this planet.
Not a bad thing, perhaps, to be reminded that for all our strengths, we are not without our weaknesses… whether they be actual, or merely perceptions thereof.























Right on Micah Hanks. Nandor Fodor was the best on this — a Freudian psychologist who argued for a projection of the libido as driving paranormal phenomenon, via the subconscious repression. Technological development is driven by the commodity fetish which means that higher technology is a lower astral realm, or lower chakra level of energy.
The occult technology is a projection of the repressed sex energy so that technology is increasingly alive and demonic, merging back into Nature.
Imbrogno’s Djinn model is along these lines as well — it’s not necessary to be possessed by the occult technology but at the same time the overall “commodity fetish” dynamic is real and needs to be transformed. I call this the “trajectory of tantric technology” through the “separation of heaven and earth” as “mass ritual sacrifice.”
I think your take on winged creatures reflects the problem everyone in this field has that the phenomena has both a physical/materialistic and psychological/psychic dimension. What appears purely at first as an unknown animal on further examination is found to share some characteristics with supernatural entities. Are not shared traits that classes of creatures have include a range of common and unique characteristics? Primates have shared and non shared traits. Lemurs and humans have thumbs, hair, and have the fight or flight reflex. Humans grieve the lost of one of their own, lemurs don’t. Some of the higher primates do grieve though. Where you posited yourself in spectrum of the phenomena reflects what effects, characteristics, and rules are observed.
Another problem might be one of perception. How one views a subject determines what answers you are looking for. Crime can be look at as problem of control and prevention were alarms, police, prisons , and executions may be used to fight it. Crime may also be combated by addressing it root causes that lie in psychological, social, and economic realms. A combination of both those viewpoints could be use to solve the criminal problem. Maybe a multidisciplinary approach is needed when dealing with the paranormal.
Maybe the study of the paranormal shares some of the problems that modern physics has. The laws that govern how my car works, the movement of star systems, and lifetimes of galaxies does not seem to work in the subatomic world of muons and quarks. What rules work for particles the size of angstroms does not work for objects of planetary proportions either. As above not so below appears to be the rule. But to muddle things up there appears in physics where Hermes did get it right. The placebo effect in which a inert sugar pill is given to a patient is one such example. The placebo appears to cure the person only do to the belief of the patient. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is another. In this theory the position an electron can inhabit may range over a group of energy levels. Not till the electron is observed that it’s energy level appears to be fixed. It seems in both of these examples that the mind changes the physical world. The question is what type of physics does “mind” inhabit or is it outside the boundaries of science? Which in turn leads us to ponder where in hell does the paranormal reside?
Drew, very insightful commentary, as always! Eric, you present some very interesting points here, also. Though I only nearly skirted the quantum aspects in another recent post at this blog, I feel that some of the elements both of you describe do indeed create (or rather, illustrate) a unique predicament for those who seriously hope to solve the riddle of what is happening with such phenomena. Perhaps this has to do, as I’ve alluded, with physics; perhaps it is solely psychological… or perhaps, strangely, there is some sort of connection between the two.
It’s a tricky situation either way; I know that saying any such phenomenon is purely psychological presents a dilemma for those who have experienced things as horrific as sexual molestation at the hands of an unseen force (such as Doris Bither in the 1970s, which became the basis for the film called “The Entity” staring Barbara Hershey). This is somewhat magnified in the more physical sexual encounters reported by those who have met an “entity” (for lack of a better term) such as Popobawa or Orang Minyak.
Speaking of the latter of these two, there are somewhat valid, recent reports of each of these, whereas things like the Kurupi represent folkloric fertility icons in South and Central American culture. Nonetheless, their archetypal nature (and the consistency between these and winged beasts such as Popobawa, or even the ancient Assyrian Pazuzu) is intriguing, to say the least. I am beginning to develop a theory, of sorts, that there are indeed reasons for the sexualized encounters people describe having, based on the human physiology and the resulting psychological formations that resulted from our distinctive evolution into bipedal, thinking, reasoning beings. Hard to bring all the elements together here and any of it make sense, but rest assured there will be future writing projects where the time can be taken to lay all this on the table in greater detail. Keep your eyes peeled!