The Monstrumologist

The first book in the Monstrumologist series, 2009

To Sandy

mon•strum•ol•o•gy n.

1: the study of life forms generally malevolent to humans and not recognized by science as actual organisms, specifically those considered products of myth and folklore

2: the act of hunting such creatures

The Androphagi [Anthropophagi] have the most savage manners of all. They neither acknowledge any rule of right nor observe any customary law… [They] have a language all their own, and alone of all these nations they are man-eaters.

– Herodotus, The Histories of Herodotus (440 B.C.)

It is said that the Blemmyae have no heads and that their mouth and eyes are put in their chests.

– Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historiae (75 A.D.)

… another island, midway, live people of stature and ugly nature, which have no head and their eyes on the back and mouth, crooked as a horseshoe, in the midst of the breasts. On another island, there are many people without heads, and which has the eyes and head in the back.

– Wonders of the World (1356)

Gaora is a river, on the banks of which are a people whose head grow beneath their shoulders. Their eyes on in their shoulders, and their mouths in the middle of their breasts.

– Hakluyt’s Voyages (1598)

To the west of Caroli are divers nations of Cannibals, and of those Ewaipanoma without heads.

– Sir Walter Raleigh, The Discovery of Guiana

Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,

Of moving accidents by flood and field,

Of hair-breadth scapes i’ the imminent deadly breach…

And of the Cannibals that each other eat,

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders.

Shakespeare, Othello