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Any person of reason must conclude that the actual existence of fantasy creatures is absurd. Any people of high imagination can yearn that such creatures do exist, and in some extreme cases believe in such existence.

Fantasy creatures have entered the public consciousness through several avenues.

1) Mythology: All cultures emerge with a story of the "ancient" days. These are often contained in the early stages of written religion such as the Old Testament admonition that there were giants in the earth. The dragon, or some form of a dragon is a common imaginative figure that figures into the theology of many cultures including Chinese, Middle East, Western and Mayan tales. The imaginative vision of such a beast is a powerful Image, but the stark reality is that no evidence exists for the actual existence of such creatures.

2) Folklore and Legends: In the early development of cultures many orally transmitted stories emerged which today we unfortunately call "fairy tales".. These are populated by all sorts of existing fantasy features such as trolls, elves, wicked witches, leprechauns, ghosts or wraiths from alternate worlds or the after life. These tales were meant to both entertain and educate. Good always wins out over evil. The more startling the fantasy creature, the greater is the need for the heroes to be brave and true to overcome them. Eastern Europe gave us a particularly rich set of fantasy creatures including the werewolf and vampires with a very widespread set of "rules" of how to deal with these vile beasts.

3) Literature: Although many of the above sources were written down, a special literature emerged that "made up" fantasy creatures. This started with Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein", to Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and has been a solid genre of literature, labeled "horror" to this day. A special cherished strain of this category is comic books. From the creation of "Superman", comics have invented scads of fantasy heroes and villains to wet the public's craving for more and more of these tales. Of course the operative world is "invented". No one actually believes in the existence of "Spiderman" no matter how much the longing for such a circumstance.

4) Mass Entertainment technology: Starting with films, the field of public entertainment has grown tremendously through TV and electronic games. Naturally in search of popular ideas, the entertainment world would "mine" the rich theme of fantasy creatures, with an implicit competition as to who could create the most powerful of fantasy heroes or the most scary and awesome of fantasy villains.

5) The "fringe" element: Not to condemn certain people, there are those who become so obsessed with some fantasy creatures, that they order their life to imitate such creatures. We hear of vampire cults, return to wicca (witches), Satanists, and such. In this limited sense, such people do exist, but they reflect a small and perhaps misguided arm of the fantasy creature phenomena.

To answer the original question, "Do fantasy creatures really exist?", the answer is a resounding "NO"! But considered the above instances by which thoughts of fantasy creatures enter our collective consciousness, it is no wonder that we remain fascinated about such possible creates and perhaps a bit wishful that some would exist. Wouldn't you thrill to a ride on the shoulders of a dragon?

Learn more about this author, Lorne Yacuk.
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