HGB Ep. 561 - Legends of Sea Monsters

Moment in Oddity - The Cornell Pumpkin (Suggested by: Cassandra Distilli)

Back in October 1997, a giant pumpkin was speared atop Cornell University's McGraw Tower, a whopping 173 feet in the air. To this day nobody knows who, why or how. As the gourd lasted from month to month suspicions grew as to whether it was actually a pumpkin. A sample of it was taken via a remote controlled weather balloon and it indeed was identified as the gourd in question. Over the years, no true answers have been uncovered. Obviously for the pranksters, the escapade was highly dangerous and they likely did not wish to get in trouble. There was an anonymous submission in 1999, received by a reporter named Manjoo that, "it involved some daredevil clambering up the tower's steep spire, and some strategically placed duct tape". That tipster never named names. The decaying, daredevil, deciduous gourd even had a dedicated webcam which was a newer technology for the time and had people viewing around the world. In March of 1998, the pumpkin was removed. The plan was to have Don M. Randel grab it while up in a crane bucket. However, while the bucket was unoccupied a gust of wind bumped the crane bucket into the tower. This vibration knocked the wrinkly decaying pumpkin down onto a construction scaffold. Regardless of how it got there, a massive pumpkin being skewered onto a university spire 173 feet in the air, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Dizzy Gillespie

In the month of October, on the 21st in 1917, Dizzy Gillespie was born in Cheraw, South Carolina. (chr-Raw) He was the youngest of nine children whose father was a local bandleader. Many instruments were available to John 'Dizzy' Gillespie and his siblings. At the young age of four, Dizzy began with the piano. After the passing of his father when Dizzy was only 10 years old, he then taught himself how to play the trombone and trumpet by the age of 12. Dizzy idolized jazz trumpeter, Roy Eldridge, and longed to become a jazz musician himself. In 1933, Gillespie received a music scholarship to Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina. He was hired by the Frank Fairfax Orchestra in 1935 and subsequently went on to work with the orchestras of Edgar Hayes and later Teddy Hill. While Dizzy was with the Cab Calloway Orchestra he began writing big band music for Woody Herman and Jimmy Dorsey. After a falling out with Cab Calloway he spent time freelancing. He continued to grow as a musician, performing with big names of the time and then Dizzy joined the Earl Hines band in 1942. This was when he really started developing his 'Bebop' style. This was known as the first modern jazz style however Dizzy said of it, "People talk about the Hines band being 'the incubator of bop' and the leading exponents of that music ended up in the Hines band. But people also have the erroneous impression that the music was new. It was not. The music evolved from what went before. It was the same basic music. The difference was in how you got from here to here to here ... naturally each age has got its own shit." In addition to all the great music Gillespie created, he was also known for his puffed cheeks style of playing and bent trumpet when he performed. In 1953, his trumpet bell got bent upwards in an accident. He liked the sound so much that he had a special trumpet made with the bell raised at a 45 degree angle. Dizzy Gillespie had a 56 year touring career by his final performance. He was an innovator in the world of jazz and his music is still enjoyed around the world, today.

Legends of Sea Monsters

The most unexplored areas of the earth are its vast waterways. Humans can't breath underwater and thus our explorations of the seas are very limited. We often wonder if stories about mysterious and sometimes ferocious sea creatures are inspired by our imaginings of what could be below the surface of the water or if they are based on true experiences. When deep sea explorations do manage to send back pictures, some very unique and weird creatures are revealed. They help to make some of the legends we have heard about monsters in the water, more believable. On this episode, we are going to explore the myths and legends and possible true stories of sea monsters.

Sea creatures can be pretty odd. Seahorses are pretty unique and the leafy seadragon variety of this family of Syngnathidae (Sig nath ah die) look like floating plants or bits of seaweed and yet they are a fish. The Gulper Eel resembles a regular eel when it is swimming, but when it feeds, it looks more like a balloon on a stick. This eel has a huge jaw that it extends backwards from the head as it takes a huge gulp of water and then the head deflates as water is expelled through its gills, leaving behind tasty crustaceans. The Gulper Eel is also one of those deep-sea creatures that has bioluminescence. The Dumbo Octopus is actually named for Disney's Dumbo the elephant character and that is because this deep ocean creature that hangs out around 13,000 feet under the water, slowly flaps its ear-like fins to move. And then there is the Vampire Squid. Apparently, this creature isn't really a squid and it actually doesn't do anything vampiric. It's just a deep, dark red color and the webbing between its arms is cloak-like. These are all real creatures found in the sea. But what about the creatures that we learn about in myths and legends?

For many of us, our first foray into stories about scary creatures in the water involve horror movies. "Jaws" left many of us fearing the possibility of a giant sized shark literally hunting humans. Giant Octopuses and the Kraken have made many appearances in movies like "It Came From Beneath the Sea" and "Clash of the Titans." And we all grew up reading books featuring Roman and Greek mythology with many varieties of sea creatures. What kid didn't fear a piranha would nibble on them in a river and "Stand By Me" made us all think twice about jumping in a small pond for a swim, especially the *ahem* boys because of leeches. There are mermaids, which have presented themselves as both good and bad in various tales. But is there any truth to any of these stories about fantastical sea creatures? Anyone who has seen old maps drawn out by explorers, has probably noticed that these explorers had a penchant for drawing sea monsters on the maps. Was this just for artistic flare or were these images supposed to serve as a warning for something that was actually seen? In some cases, sea monsters were included on maps to symbolize certain things. For example, German cartographer Martin Waldseemuller is widely known as the first to use the word "America" on a map. In 1516, he created a large-scale wall map of the world called the Carta Marina Navigatoria and on it he drew King Manuel of Portugal riding a sea monster to symbolize Portugal's mastery of the oceans. So in that case, a sea monster was decorative. 

But these whimsical additions to maps weren't necessarily meant to just be decorative. Chet Van Duzer wrote the 2013 book "Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps" and in an interview with the Scuba Diving website he said, "Although the sea monsters on many medieval maps seem imaginative and fantastic to our eyes, in most cases they were the artists’ best efforts to represent an animal that contemporary scientific texts such as encyclopedias or bestiaries (medieval books of animals) said existed. We have to bear in mind that in the vast majority of cases, the cartographer was drawing or painting a creature he had never seen, copying the image from a book whose artist had never seen the creature either. There is a decorative aspect to all sea monsters, but particularly on medieval maps, the principal intention was to create a more complete image of the world by including some of its aquatic life — and also to indicate the dangers that the sea might present to sailors." Cornelius de Jode made a map of North America in 1595 and on it he drew a creature named the Hoge and described it as good to eat with a delicate favor, but its picture on the map looks terrifying. We are left wondering what exactly this was based upon. 

Probably my favorite mythical creature would be the Gill Man, who is one of the main monsters in the Universal Movie Monster line-up. And that's why, because I love my Universal Monsters. The movie "Creature From the Black Lagoon" is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year (2024). That movie was inspired by real stories being shared in the Amazon about a man-like sea creature. The producer of the film, William Alland, went to a dinner party hosted by Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa in 1941. Figueroa told Alland about a humanoid, fishlike creatures that supposedly lived in the Amazon river. He had heard several stories about the creature. Those stories about a fish-man stayed with Alland for ten years and in 1951 he wrote a screenplay outline inspired by those stories that he called "The Sea Monster." Maurice Zimm rewrote that initial story in 1952 and Harry Essex and Arthur Ross fleshed out the story into a script that they called "The Black Lagoon." Director Jack Arnold was attached to the project and the work of those three men, along with cinematographer William E. Snyder and aquatic cinematographers James C. Havens and Scotty Welbourne and the design of Milicent Patrick's Gill Man suit, brought forward something far deeper than just a simple monster movie. Sequels took viewers down the road of whether the Gill Man was a missing link in the evolution of fish into human or a human that was adapting back to the sea. Is it possible that humans could live in the water? Did we once live in the water and lose our gills?

Author HP Lovecraft embraced the idea of a fish-man and wrote the horror novella "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." The story is set in the once profitable port town of Innsmouth that is basically a ghost town when the narrator of the story visits. Historical accounts he gathers inform him that an epidemic killed half of the residents. The few people who live here smell of dead fish and have flat noses and bulgy, starry eyes. A local drunkard tells the narrator that it wasn't an epidemic that killed the townspeople, but rather a race of creatures called the Deep Ones who were immortal fish-like humanoids. They bred with some of the people of Innsmouth and the offspring would evolve into fish people as they aged and they would return to the ocean. The drunkard also tells the narrator that the Deep Ones intend to take over the world. The narrator eventually runs into some Deep Ones and sees that they have fish-like heads, are grey-green in color, have gills on their neck, webbed hands and unblinking eyes. We won't share the weird twist at the end, but things don't go well for the narrator.

The Ichthyocentaur (Ick theo cendoor)

The Ichthyocentaur is a Greek mythic being and is a triton, meaning its body is made from three things: the upper half is human, the middle is horse and the tail is fish. The creepy part about this thing is that the earliest examples of it appeared in friezes at the Pergamon Altar, which Hitler had brought to Berlin because this has been considered by many to the Seat of Satan. One is also seen portrayed on a map of Scandinavia from the 16th century. These creatures are also sometimes called sea-centaurs. Most myths feature them as being peaceful and they blow on conch shells to calm storms. Although in some stories they do the same thing to start storms.

Jörmungandr (Yore Mon Gone der)

Jörmungandr is found in Norse mythology and is known as the Midgard Serpent or World Serpent. This is the middle child of the trickster god Loki and the giantess Angrboda, which explains how he came to be unfathomably large. This is a sea serpent that is depicted as encircling the Earth and biting its own tail. When it releases its tail, the final battle of the world or Ragnarök will start. Jörmungandr is an arch-foe of the Norse thunder-god, Thor. It is said that during Ragnarök, Thor and Jörmungandr will fight each other to the death.

Cirein-cròin (Curen Croan)

In Scottish Gaelic folklore, the cirein-cròin is a large sea monster that would eat seven whales a day. It liked to attack humans by playing a trick on them. This creature would change itself into a small silver fish so that a fisherman could catch it and then once it was hauled on board the boat, it would change back into a monster and eat the fisherman. This creature is one of the most terrifying sea creatures of the time in the Scottish Gaelic folklore tradition.

Devil Whale

The Devil Whale was a mythological creature that seemed to have a demonic nature and was usually depicted as either a whale or a sea turtle. This creature was huge, giving it the ability to swallow ships whole. When it was sleeping, it resembled an island. This creature was usually attracted to a ship upon which a fire was started and it would attack the ship and drags it to the bottom of the sea. The Devil Whale originated in Ireland starting in the 6th century. An early story was reported by an explorer known as Saint Brendan the Navigator who lived from 484 AD to 577 AD. One Easter Sunday as he was traveling with some monks, he stopped the group to camp on an island. They started a fire to cook their meal and the island started moving. It was trying to swim away and Saint Brendan realized they were on the back of a Devil Whale. They all ran to the safety of their boats. There were some who referred to the Devil Whale as Cetus

Cetus

Guillaume le Clerc wrote in the 13th century AD, "But there is one monster, very treacherous and dangerous. In Latin, its name is Cetus. It is a bad neighbour for sailors. The upper part of its back looks like sand, and when it rises from the sea, the mariners think it is an island. Deceived by its size they sail toward it for refuge, when the storm comes upon them. They cast anchor, disembark upon the back of the whale, cook their food, build a fire, and in order to fasten their boat they drive great stakes into what seems to them to be sand. When the monster feels the heat of the fire which burns upon its back, it plunges down into the depths of the sea, and drags the ship and all the people after it." The Cetuss was sometimes described as a whale, but at other times it was more of a sea serpent with the head of a wild boar and the body of a whale or a dolphin with divided, fan-like tails. These large beasts grew to 40 feet in length and their skeletons were taller at the shoulder than an elephant. The term cetacean (for whale) derives from cetus and that is the name of the whale constellation.

Taniwha

The taniwha is a part of Maori mythology and is described as being reptilian with spines running down their backs. At least some of them are described that way. They can appear in different ways. Some have wings and resemble dragons and the ones found in the sea, usually appear like a whale or a large shark. The taniwha live in deep pools, rivers or the sea. The creatures were believed to have traveled here with different canoe crews. A taniwha could be either protective or something that was dangerous and frightening depending on how the Maori treated it. Thus, the Maori revered the taniwha. The taniwha would attack people from other tribes and they usually ate those people. New Zealand's capital, Wellington, has a harbor called Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Tay Fah Nah Nooee a Tahrah). Legends claim that this was carved out by two taniwha and one of them petrified into a hill that overlooks the city. Another legends features three sisters who were out picking berries and one is kidnapped by a taniwha. It takes her back to its cave lair where she eventually bore it six sons. Three were taniwha and three were human, The woman trained her human sons to fight and gave them weapons and they eventually killed their taniwha brothers and they were all able to escape and return to their village. If a Maori had a significant interaction with a taniwha, it could become a taniwha when it died. Crocodiles occasionally cross from Australia to New Zealand, but they cannot be sustained there for long as it is too cold. Some historians believe that the taniwha were just crocodiles that the Maori weren't accustomed to seeing.

Bakunawa (Bok ew nawa)

The bakunawa comes from Philippine mythology and is a serpent-like dragon. The name means "bent snake" and this sea serpent is thought to control eclipses, earthquakes and sometimes the weather. The eclipses happen when the creature eats the moon. Filipinos discovered that the Bakunama didn't like loud noises, so when ever there is an eclipse, the Filipinos go outside and ring bells and hit things to make noise.

Hydra

No, this is not the global terrorist organization from the Marvel Universe.  Hydra is from Greek mythology and was the offspring of the volcano god Typhon and Echidna who was a half-woman, half-sea serpent. Hydra was a gigantic water monster with nine heads. One of them was said to be immortal and would grow back as two if cut off. The Hydra had poisonous breath and blood. The creature lived in the lake of Lerna in the Argolid. People believed that Lerna was an entrance to the Underworld. Killing Hydra was one of Hercules' Twelve Labors. He covered his face with a cloth to protect himself from the poisonous fumes and used a sword to cut off its heads. At first, Hercules had no success because the heads kept growing back. He enlisted the help of his nephew who cauterized each neck stump after Hercules removed the head. Athena gave Hercules a golden sword to cut off the immortal head and he placed this under a rock.

The Kraken

Giant squids are definitely a thing, but could there be one as big as the Kraken. The Kraken has always been depicted as being large enough to enclose its tentacles entirely around a full sized ship or submarine. Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" features a giant squid that measured 72 feet and is the antagonist against Captain Nemo and the crew of his submarine called Nautilus. The Giant Squid attacks the Nautilus, which rises to the surface, so that the crew can fight the creature. Captain Nemo ends up in a tentacle and is saved by master harpooner Ned Land who gets the squid right between the eyes with a harpoon and Ned then dives into the water and cuts off the tentacle holding Captain Nemo, saving the captain from drowning. This was basically Verne retelling the story of the Kraken. The Kraken was first mentioned by a Norwegian king named Sverre Siggurdsson (Svear like swear) in 1180 AD and it gets its name from the Norwegian krake, meaning malformed or overgrown, crooked tree. The king described the sea monster as being so large that it could be confused as an island. The Kraken dwelled off the coasts of Norway and Greenland and liked to hang out in the waters near Iceland. Icelanders called it Hafgufa and described it as being the largest of the sea monsters. Stories of the Kraken describe it as looking crablike with long tentacles that could reach all the way up to the topmasts of ships. So this creature is octopus-like, but it is different enough that its not just a giant octopus. Scholars believe that early Norwegians would see bits of large squid or octopus washing up on the shore and they formed their myths of the Kraken around that. 

Scylla (Sky lah)

Scylla actually started off as a water nymph who was the daughter of Phorcys (Four keys), a Greek sea god, and Ceto, a sea goddess. This is the ultimate sea monster who is described as being man-eating. And she might have a bad disposition because one story claims that Scylla had been a beautiful woman who had the sea god Glaucus fall in love with her. He went to a witch and asked her to make a potion that would make Scylla fall in love with him. The problem with this is that the witch was in love with Glaucus, so out of jealousy she made a potion that turned Scylla into the hideous sea beast. What made encountering Scylla even more dangerous for sailors was that she was positioned across a strait from a sea-swallowing monster named Charybdis that formed whirlpools. So sailors would try to avoid the whirlpool and pass really close to Scylla. The distance between the two was described as being within arrow's range. This kind of scene is played out in Homer's Odyssey and six sailors are grabbed off the deck of Odysseus' ship and swallowed whole by Scylla. Our modern era has coined "between Scylla and Charybdis" as "between a rock and a hard place."

Triton

Triton in Greek mythology was the son of the Olympian sea god Poseidon and Amphitrite, who was the queen of the sea. The best description of Triton is that he was a merman with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a fish. If you've seen the movie "The Little Mermaid," that's Triton. People described him as being dreadful. He used a conch shell to control the sea. And this leads us into merpeople. 

Mermaids and Mermen

Mermaids and Mermen are water creatures that have the upper body of a human and the bottom half of a fish. These creatures are associated with weather on the sea like storms and floods and they are sometimes blamed for shipwrecks. Merfolk have appeared for centuries in the folklore of nearly every culture in the world. The most popular story that has carried over into our modern era is "The Little Mermaid," which was written by Hans Christian Andersen. The first appearance of mermaids is traced to 1000 BC and a story that originates in Assyria. The Assyrian goddess of fertility, Atargatis, became a mermaid after casting herself into a lake. She did this because she ended up killing her lover. She was so beautiful she couldn't completely transform into a fish and retained her human form above the waist.

Scottish myths featured the Ceasg, which was the maid of the waves and had the form of a woman above the waist and the tail of a salmon. The Merrow are the merfolk of Scotland and Ireland and they not only feature the traditional human body with fish tail, but they have webbed hands. The mermaid of the Starbucks lodo is a Melusine, which are found in mainland Europe and are freshwater mermaids that can have two tails. This mermaid could take on a human form for as long as a week, so she married a human. She would transform into her mermaid form once a week while taking a bath. Kinda like the movie "Splash." She forbade her husband from coming into the bathroom when she was bathing, but one day he did and when he saw her tail, she left him forever.

Germany has the Undine, which was probably inspiration for The Little Mermaid. Undine was born as a mermaid and exchanged for a human child. She grew up and married a human who rejected her later and Undine returns to her family and the sea, but warns her husband that if marries another woman, she is duty bound to kill him. We'll just say, the husband ended up dead. Likewise, the Little Mermaid fell in love with a human prince, but he rejected her and married another and the little mermaid starts to dissolve into sea foam and is rescued in the last moments. Not quite like the Disney ending. Cambodia and Thailand have the legend of the golden mermaid who is named Suvannamaccha. She falls in love with a prince and has a baby with him. What's with mermaids and princes? There are mermaid stories from Africa, New Zealand, Cameroon, Brazil, South Korea, China and the list goes on. There are those who believe that early stories of mermaids were possibly sea cows or manatees. They are cute, but I would never mistake them for beautiful women. Sightings of mermaids continue today, although scientists claim that has never been any proof to those sightings.

Wildmen were popular in folklore and one story that was told in 1210, featured a wild merman of sorts. The story was told by a monk named Ralph of Coggeshall. He wrote, "Men fishing in the sea caught in their nets a wild man. He was naked and was like a man in all his members, covered with hair and with a long shaggy beard. He eagerly ate whatever was brought to him, but if it was raw he pressed it between his hands until all the juice was expelled. He would not talk, even when tortured and hung by his feet. Brought into church, he showed no signs of reverence or belief. He sought his bed at sunset and always remained there until sunrise. He was allowed to go into the sea, strongly guarded with three lines of nets, but he dived under the nets and came up again and again. Eventually he came back of his own free will. But later on he was never seen again. Ralph noted that people didn't know if the wild man was a 'mortal man, or some fish pretending human shape, or was an evil spirit hiding in the body of a drowned man'."

Sirens

Sirens in Greek mythology first appeared in Homer's Odyssey, but were not described. Other works have described Sirens as being part woman and part bird. Sometimes they were depicted as birds with human heads. Sirens live on small islands in the sea and can also be found in the water. They have a unique and beguiling power. Sirens have beautiful singing voices that entrance sailors and this leads those sailors to their deaths. Sirens would sometimes be used as synonyms for mermaids, but they clearly were a very different mythical creature. This melding of the two started in the medieval period.

The Loch Ness Monster

We weren't sure about bringing the Loch Ness Monster up because stories have been told about this monster for centuries and yet it seems that sightings in our modern era have been debunked as hoaxes or identifiable objects or animals that were mistaken as a sea serpent. For example, an otter was once thought to be the Loch Ness Monster. Most people call the monster Nessie. It is thought that it was first sighted around 500 A.D. at Loch Ness, which is a large freshwater lake near Inverness, Scotland in the Scottish Highlands that reaches a depth of nearly 800 feet and is the largest volume of fresh water in Great Britain. The interesting part about this first documented sighting is that it was recorded in the 7th century biography of Saint Columba who was an Irish missionary that introduced Christianity to Scotland. Now while most stories about Nessie don't seem scary, Saint Columba stopped specifically at Loch Ness because he had heard that there was a beast in the water that was killing people who would be swimming in the lake or fishing on it. And it just so happened that St. Columba saw the monster about to attack a man and he invoked the name of God and yelled, "Go back with all speed." The creature retreated and never seemed to attack anyone again.

Leviathan

Leviathan shows up in a lot of literature and is always presented as a demonic sea serpent that is the embodiment of chaos. Of all the mythical sea creatures, this is the one I believe in because it comes up in the Bible many times. Leviathan appears six times in the Bible in five verses. We want to share the most significant passage, which is Job 41, "Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down its tongue with a rope? 2 Can you put a cord through its nose or pierce its jaw with a hook? 3 Will it keep begging you for mercy? Will it speak to you with gentle words? 4 Will it make an agreement with you for you to take it as your slave for life? 5 Can you make a pet of it like a bird or put it on a leash for the young women in your house? 6 Will traders barter for it? Will they divide it up among the merchants? 7 Can you fill its hide with harpoons or its head with fishing spears? 8 If you lay a hand on it, you will remember the struggle and never do it again! 9 Any hope of subduing it is false; the mere sight of it is overpowering. 10 No one is fierce enough to rouse it. Who then is able to stand against me? 11 Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me. 12 "I will not fail to speak of Leviathan's limbs, its strength and its graceful form. 13 Who can strip off its outer coat? Who can penetrate its double coat of armor? 14 Who dares open the doors of its mouth, ringed about with fearsome teeth? 15 Its back has rows of shields tightly sealed together; 16 each is so close to the next that no air can pass between. 17 They are joined fast to one another; they cling together and cannot be parted. 18 Its snorting throws out flashes of light; its eyes are like the rays of dawn. 19 Flames stream from its mouth; sparks of fire shoot out. 20 Smoke pours from its nostrils as from a boiling pot over burning reeds. 21 Its breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from its mouth. 22 Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. 23 The folds of its flesh are tightly joined; they are firm and immovable. 24 Its chest is hard as rock, hard as a lower millstone. 25 When it rises up, the mighty are terrified; they retreat before its thrashing. 26 The sword that reaches it has no effect, nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin. 27 Iron it treats like straw and bronze like rotten wood. 28 Arrows do not make it flee; slingstones are like chaff to it. 29 A club seems to it but a piece of straw; it laughs at the rattling of the lance. 30 Its undersides are jagged potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge. 31 It makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment. 32 It leaves a glistening wake behind it; one would think the deep had white hair. 33 Nothing on earth is its equal- a creature without fear. 34 It looks down on all that are haughty; it is king over all that are proud."

Leviathan goes back to a Babylonian creation myth as well when the god Marduk defeats the sea serpent goddess Tiamat and uses her body to create the heavens and the earth. The Jewish Festival of Booths known as Sukkot, concludes with the following prayer, "May it be your will, Lord our God and God of our forefathers, that just as I have fulfilled and dwelt in this sukkah, so may I merit in the coming year to dwell in the sukkah of the skin of Leviathan. Next year in Jerusalem." Also as part of Jewish tradition, Leviathan is said to send so much heat out of its mouth that it boils the waters of the deep and that it carries such an odor that no living creature can stand it. Some Gnostic sects identify Leviathan as an ouroboros, the serpent eating its own tail. So just like the Norse Jörmungandr (Yore Mon Gone der). All sea serpents seem to be terrifying and Leviathan seems to be the most terrifying of all.

Clearly, there are dozens and dozens of myths and legends that include monsters that live in the sea. These tales have endured for centuries and even feed our current fears of what may lie below the surface of the water, There are very real and very deadly creatures that live in the waters. Are some of those creatures related to these mythical beasts? Did any of these mythical beasts exist? Are these sea monsters a real thing? That is for you to decide!