Folklore and mythology don’t need to be real to matter. Every story tells us something about the society it was produced in, even if the story itself isn’t literal. But what does the bizarre case of Wisconsin’s infamous cryptid – which nobody but simultaneously everybody believes in – say about life, and culture, in America?
In the story of Oedipus, the sphinx is described as mythical creature with the head of a human, the body of a lion, and the wings of an eagle. Capable of thought and speech, it poses a riddle to travellers on the road to the city of Thebes. Should they pass the test, they can journey on; should they fail, they will meet a gruesome end.
We shouldn’t need to consult with the fossil records to confirm that such a creature never existed. But the riddle of the sphinx says something about the society it was created in. It arguably reflects a society where states fear the outside world; and where entry to foreigners was contingent on demonstrating a certain kind of knowledge or conduct. Perhaps what could clumsily be compared to an ancient citizenship test.
We might not be dealing with set-in-stone facts – and of course, every interpretation of these stories is very much an interpretation – but we can still learn about past societies from their fictions. The way people told themselves stories to help process the world – its contradictions, its terrors – as a means to stay resilient in absurd and cruel times, remains something we continue to do as a species, even now.
This begs the question: what do our modern mythologies say about us?
The question came to mind several times while watching an episode of Boogeymen – a documentary series hosted by Shiver, and available for free on YouTube. Stumbling on this in my feed, sometimes I have to give the algorithm a little credit: it’s a snappy, fun 40-minute exploration of a cryptid that has stalked the perimeter of a small town in Wisconsin for almost a century.
Accounts of the beast say it has a tough, hairy hide, a horned head, spiked elbows, a scaly tail, glowing red eyes (then again, don’t they all?) and – of course – fangs so large and sharp, that they struggle to fit in the creature’s gaping maw. And there are plenty of eye-witnesses to back these accounts – because like sasquatch/the chupacabra/the mothman, a cottage industry has sprung up in the town of Rhinelander dedicated to its strange and terrible neighbour.
You may feel like you’ve heard all this before. The difference, though, is that everyone involved is openly playing a game. Jerry Shidell debuts in the documentary as a wide-eyed believer, a witness to the awe-inspiring power of the creature – adding that sadly the footage of it he captured on his iPhone was destroyed, when his cat immediately kicked the device from his kitchen counter, smashing it. His story is delivered with such insistent conviction, that it comes across as a genuine story, if not a true one.
But Shiddell soon lifts back the veil on the performance art/historical reenactment that has become such a large part of his life in Rhinelander. He is simply following in the footsteps of Eugene Shepherd – a well-known Wisconsin land surveyor, timber cruiser and prankster from the late 1800s. Assembling materials from local stores, he crafted the first janky model of a hodag – and staged a riotous photoshoot with a mob he assembled, where they posed as if in battle with the creature.
The picture we see from this session is ridiculous. I say that from a modern standpoint, of course. Perhaps it might be understandable for some people to easily suspend their disbelief for this, late at night in a bar, where the tall tales and the beer were flowing. But the punchline is that a small group of scientists from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., announced they would be traveling to Rhinelander to inspect the apparent discovery.
At this point, Shepherd finally admitted that the creature – which he had been displaying lucratively at county fairs – had in fact been a practical joke. But while you might expect his legacy to be one of embarrassment, with modern residents of Rhinelander lamenting that the only thing that ever put them on the map was a conman, the opposite seems to be the case.
Shepherd’s legacy is celebrated. Shiddell recreates his carnival side-show annually, with all the panache of a seasoned showman. Meanwhile, the town’s artist creates huge paintings of hodag families trudging through wintery landscapes. The local school’s sports teams adopt the creature as their mascot. Even the police department has a crest featuring the famous cryptid.
Exactly why is hard to pin down. Of course, there is the fact that much of the town’s economy has simply grown to benefit from perpetuating hodag-mania. There is also the not-insignificant aspect of one of the town’s own successfully bamboozling bigwigs from D.C – and the pride to be taken in that, amid a blue-collar state famously derided as having little going for it besides breweries, dairy and serial killers.
But beyond that, what does the success of the hodag say? A strange, hodgepodge creature, pieced together from assorted animal hides and materials, to give the appearance of a single, formidable predator. Ultimately, a lie, constructed by the descendants of white settlers, in a land they were unfamiliar with, working to bend the frontier to their will. The hodag is the embodiment of the mythmaking essential to creating the mythology of a national identity – E pluribus unum – on the back of mass-immigration.
On one level, the baffling biology of the hodag serves as a kind of satire of that colonial project which – by forcibly crushing and melting down multiple ways of life, to create a single monoculture, supplanting those which previously existed on stolen land – yields something garish, even monstrous to the outside observer. On another level, the way in which Rhinelanders still hold the hodag in such esteem might reflect the redeemable aspects of that project. There is no turning back the tide at this point, no return to pre-colonial times. But in an America increasingly hostile to the idea of multi-culturalism, there is something to be said for the modern reassessment of the ‘monstrous’ hodag by the town that now paints it as a cheery, friendly emblem representing the best of their town. Their ingenuity, their sense of humour, and their assorted origins.
