The Creepiest Real-Life Mermaid Evidence
Some Mermaids Are Merzombies
In the original telling of Andersen’s «The Little Mermaid,» the sea king’s daughters tell tales about the corpses of sailors that sink down to the sea. In some mermaid mythology, these men are brought back to life in the form of merfolk.
However, these merzombies retain no memories of their life on land.
French Mermaids Have Dragon Wings And Serpent Tails
The Melusina is a sea creature from French mythology with a few tweaks on the traditional mermaid model. Her parents were a fairy and a human, but the mortal father betrayed the magical mother. When Mélusine learned of the betrayal, she imprisoned her father in a mountain. Her mother, furious, cursed her: from then on, she would turn into a serpent below the waist every Saturday.
The beautiful Mélusine eventually won the heart of a king, though she made him promise not to peek in on her on Saturdays. But, of course, he did — and when he saw her monstrous appearance, she flew away.
Some Mermaids Are Portly Monks Trying To Convert You
The world was particularly human-centric in the 16th century. People believed that the creatures of the sea were just the underwater versions of terrestrial animals and plants. So, when French naturalist Guillaume Rondelet came across a sea creature that resembled a monk in 1554, he naturally concluded that it was the oceanic counterparts of those earthly figures. A description of the animal is pretty horrifying:
[It has] a human head and face, resembling in appearance the men with shorn heads, whom we call monks because of their solitary life; but the appearance of its lower parts, bearing a coating of scales, barely indicated the torn and severed limbs and joints of the human body.
The creature is now believed to be a giant squid, though the whole story could have been a hoax on the part of Rondelet.
«So tell us—which of these nightmarish ‘merfolk’ chilled you to the bone?
