Sharks have been cast as monsters for generations, so who better to help us separate real predators from imaginary ones than someone who has spent much of his career investigating monsters?
Author, cryptid researcher and Ghoultown founder Lyle Blackburn is the latest special guest to join the Gulf Great White Shark Society’s “Sharks Aren’t So Scary” public-service campaign.
Blackburn is widely known in the cryptid world for his investigations into legendary creatures and unexplained animal reports. He has written extensively about subjects ranging from the Fouke Monster to the Lizard Man and has appeared in numerous television programs and documentaries dealing with cryptozoology and unexplained phenomena. He is also the founder and frontman of the horror-themed band Ghoultown and a good friend of mine.
That background makes Blackburn a natural fit for what we’re doing with Sharks Aren’t So Scary. Sharks are real, but many of the monsters created around them aren’t.
For decades, movies, television and sensational headlines have transformed great white sharks and other large sharks into almost supernatural killing machines. The real animals are certainly powerful predators and should always be treated with respect, but understanding sharks requires moving beyond the mythology surrounding them.
That is the idea behind Sharks Aren’t So Scary.
The campaign was created by the Gulf Great White Shark Society to use a little Halloween fun to encourage shark education and conservation. Rather than pretending sharks are harmless, we want people to understand what these animals actually are, why they matter and why the reality of sharks is much more interesting than the monsters Hollywood created.
Monsters, Scream Queens and Sharks
Blackburn joins an unusual and very fun group of personalities participating in the campaign.
Horror icon Brinke Stevens, one of the best-known scream queens of the 1980s horror boom, joined us to help deliver the message that sharks don’t deserve the terrifying reputation popular culture has given them. There is an especially interesting connection with Stevens because before her career in modeling, acting, writing and directing, she studied marine biology.
We also teamed up with horror host Count Drahoon, bringing the classic late-night creature-feature atmosphere into Sharks Aren’t So Scary. Count Drahoon has already had some fun with us looking at some of the most ridiculous shark movies ever made, making him another perfect ambassador for a campaign playing with the line between genuine predators and fictional monsters.
Now Blackburn brings the cryptid world into the mix.
There is something wonderfully appropriate about having a man who has investigated reports of mysterious creatures across America remind people that one of the ocean’s most feared “monsters” is simply a wild animal doing what it was designed to do.
Sharks Aren’t So Scary
The Sharks Aren’t So Scary campaign gives the Gulf Great White Shark Society an opportunity to bring together shark conservation, education and some of the horror culture many of us grew up enjoying.
We love monster movies. We love Halloween. We can have fun with giant sharks attacking boats, impossible movie monsters and everything else that comes with the season without confusing those things with the real animals swimming in our oceans.
In fact, that’s part of the point.
A great white shark doesn’t need supernatural intelligence, a taste for revenge or any of the other traits Hollywood has given sharks to be fascinating. The fact that these massive predators navigate enormous stretches of ocean, survive in dramatically different environments and enter the Gulf of Mexico is incredible enough.
The Gulf Great White Shark Society exists to promote greater awareness and understanding of great white sharks in the Gulf while supporting shark conservation and responsible education. Sharks Aren’t So Scary allows us to deliver that message from a completely different direction.
And bringing together a scream queen, a horror host and one of America’s best-known cryptid researchers is a pretty fun way to do it.
Stay with us throughout October for more Sharks Aren’t So Scary videos and special features.
Because sometimes the monster isn’t the animal. It’s the story we’ve created around it.
Chester Moore
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