James Baquet

    Becky sees her classmate Lily sitting quietly in the common room of their dorm.

    Becky: Hi, Lily. What are you thinking about?

    Lily: Oh, you know, Halloween is this week, and I haven’t decided what to be yet.

    Becky: Any ideas?

    Lily: Well, I want it to be scary. But I think the usual scary things — ghosts, vampires, werewolves — they’re all overdone.

    Becky: I agree. A sheet over your head and — POOF! — you’re a ghost. It’s too easy!

    Lily: Yeah. Vampires are cool — Dracula, and the ones from “Twilight” — but I think everyone’s doing that.

    Becky: How about going as Frankenstein?

    Lily: Yeah, that’s a possibility. The book by that name, by Mary Shelley, is pretty scary. But still, lots of people go as the big green monster. Do you have any other ideas?

    Becky: Have you ever read “Beowulf?”

    Lily: Oh, the old Anglo-Saxon story? Sure!

    Becky: You could try to imagine what Grendel, the monster in that story, looks like.

    Lily: Or Grendel’s mother — also pretty scary.

    Becky: Yeah, that would be great! You know, there are lots of monsters in folklore, too.

    Lily: For example?

    Becky: I guess one of the most famous is the Loch Ness Monster.

    Lily: Nessie! The sort of dinosaur or sea monster from a lake in Scotland.

    Becky: Right. But I’m afraid it would be hard to do a scary version.

    Lily: I might just end up with “cute.”

    Becky: You know, Nessie is an example of a creature from something called cryptozoology.

    Lily: What’s that?

    Becky: It’s a kind of pseudoscience.

    Lily: Sue what?

    Becky: “Pseudoscience.” It means, like, fake science. It looks like science, but real scientists don’t accept it.

    Lily: Okay.

    Becky: So cryptozoology is the “study” of animals whose existence isn’t proven. “Crypto” means hidden, and the “hidden animals” are sometimes called “cryptids.”

    Lily: So Nessie is a cryptid. What else? I’m still looking for the perfect costume.

    Becky: Well, there’s Bigfoot.

    Lily: What’s that?

    Becky: Do you know the Yeti, from the Himalayas? Also called the “Abominable Snowman?”

    Lily: Sure! A kind of big man-like ape or bear that supposedly lives high in the mountains.

    Becky: Right. But some people say he has a cousin of sorts, who lives in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and Canada. It also looks like a giant ape or hairy man.

    Lily: Why do they call it Bigfoot?

    Becky: There have been footprints found — supposedly from the beast — that are 60 centimeters long and 20 centimeters wide.