Writer & Editor
It could be said I have an overabundance of t-shirts. This despite the fact I routinely purge them every five to ten years. All those heavy-metal concert shirts from the ’80s? Gone. All my theatre shirts from the ’90s? Gone. Well, hm, wait, a stash of them has been discovered in an old dresser at the lake. Do I toss them out? What a sartorial dilemma. I only have one torso…
A pack of wolves, a parliament of owls, a herd of bison… Should you need to refer to groups of paranormal things, though, what do you say? Traditionally, “coven” is used to refer to a group of witches or vampires, but someone has taken up the challenge to assign words for all groups of beasties.
This is a creative if specious list… I do love the “lunacy of werewolves.”
We never get tired of hearing about Beowulf.
No, I’m not talking about the actual Geatish hero or the eponymous poem in Anglo-Saxon, or even the attempts at movie versions in recent years (I haven’t seen the one with Angelina Jolie, though if that’s the only one you know, check out Sturla Gunnarsson‘s original take on the story in Beowulf & Grendel with Gerard Butler and Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson). I’m mainly interested in the basic trope of Specialist Warriors From Away Swoop in to Deal With Monster.
It’s the basis for most of the hunting-the-psycho cop shows out there, in particular Criminal Minds.
