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Description:
This video is a trailer for a new show about sirens and how they live amongst humans in a small town.

Connection:
This show appeals to mainly emotional connection, making readers feel bad for sirens and mermaids, therefore falling deeper into the belief they are real. Once a show is made about someone it instantly becomes glorified and people obsess over it, the belief is reignited. It creates this ideology about sirens and how they would live their life, their mating rituals, what they eat and how they would react to humans. This show is getting insane amounts of money and attention which is another main thing on the paranormal watchlist.

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SIREN Official Trailer (2018) Mermaid Fantasy Series HD

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Reflection:
Learning about the history of mermaids didn't really surprise me that much, i knew a lot of it prior to this. What did surprise me though was the fake Animal Planet documentary. That one documentary has been the lead cause in almost all of the mermaid sighting videos out there. I find this topic so interesting because although there is no scientific evidence, i believe in mermaids. Until we have explored every crevice of the ocean and the ocean floor, i will have a reason to believe. I come from an island that is known to have mermaid sightings and legends revolving around mermaids so i do have some bias and i understand that. The research that surprised me the most was how similar it all was, the legend of mermaids really have not progressed much since 1000 B.C.
I think that the most dangerous pseudoscience belief is all natural. People going "all natural and unvaccinated" is LITERALLY killing people, especially in times like this.
I think the least harmful is the belief of legends and myths. It's something fun to believe in and have hope in, they come from ancient beliefs and fun fairytales you tell to your children.
If i could pass on any information to my family members it would be, always do your research. Never believe the first thing you read, find the original source and determine your own biases towards the subject.

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Mermaids (Sirens)

By Kaitlyn Chaisson

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Description:
Below I've attached a photo of a traditional painting of what a siren is believed to look like. The legend of sirens have been around forever. Every culture has a different view of what they may look like, this photo is the typical American view of a siren.

Connection:
This post connects to unexplained. Over half of the sea has yet to be explored so there's no telling in what is really down there. Every culture has their own belief system around mermaids. The actual look of a siren also remains unexplained. Patternicity is also involved with the general belief in mermaids. Many photos and videos are posted with figures swimming in the water that look similar to a tail. People instantly turn to a mermaid in the water. It's always good to be skeptical when looking at anything that involves mermaids. Many people are known to create hoax videos for views and fame.

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Description:
This video from Animal Planet talks about the history of mermaids and where they may have been spotted throughout history.

Connection:
All of the information in this video you would assume to be true, but you can't. Critical thinking needs to be applied when watching this video. It describes a passage from Christopher Columbus claiming he seen humanoid figures swimming in the water with blue toned skin and speckles on their back. This easily could've been confused with some type of sea creature, such as a walrus or seal. Columbus was at sea for months at a time, he obviously wasn't in the perfect state of mind. The history of mermaids itself is unexplained, no one has concrete proof of mermaids. All of the information from this video includes insights from fishermans logs and fisherman are known to go crazy when at sea for too long. The man in the video says himself "There is no scientific record of these beings."

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Mermaid Sightings Throughout History | Mermaids

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Description:
The photo below is a screenshot from a famous video posted to many news outlets about a video of a possible mermaid chasing a boat full of people.

Connection:
The main connection in this video is patternicity. The anomaly in the water could be anything really; a reflection; some debris stuck to the boat; or it could be photoshopped. People are always looking for a reason to believe in the unknown, to believe there's something out in the world other than us, which connects to agenticity. This photo can not be scientifically proven that it's a human and it relates to the watchlist item of "results can't be reproduced or verified."

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Description:
This link will bring you to an article that talks all about mermaids and the facts behind the legend. It includes several links to different documentaries and videos.

Connection:
This article has a lot of critical thinking examples, they never fully confirm in the existence of mermaids and make sure they have all of the facts. A link within the article talks about a possible mermaid spotting from 2009, which connects to perception and observation. So many people seen this occurrence happen and was their view on what really happened depends on their view of mermaids. One eyewitness claimed he seen a tail, which could have easily been a blanket or towel wrapped over their legs.

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In 2012, the television channel Animal Planet aired a show claiming to show evidence that mermaids are real.

The program was filmed to appear to be a documentary, complete with interviews with "scientists" (paid actors) and phone-camera footage. With only the show's very brief disclaimer in the end credits noting it was a work of fiction, many viewers thought that proof of mermaids' existence had finally come to light.

A month after the program aired, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration posted a statement on its website denouncing the supposed existence of the half-human, half-fish beings. "No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found," the post read.

Where do mermaid myths come from?

In mythology, mermaids - or mermaidlike creatures - have existed for thousands of years.

The first myths of mermaids may have originated around 1000 B.C. - stories tell the tale of a Syrian goddess who jumped into a lake to turn into a fish, but her great beauty could not be changed and only her bottom half transformed.

Since then, many other mermaid stories have appeared in folklore from various cultures around the world. For instance, the African water spirit Mami Wata is mermaid in form, as is the water spirit Lasirn, who is popular in folklore in the Caribbean Islands.

Throughout history, various explorers have reported sightings of mermaids, the most famous of which was Christopher Columbus.

Columbus claimed to have spotted mermaids near Haiti in 1493, which he described as being "not as pretty as they are depicted, for somehow in the face they look like men," according to the American Museum of Natural History.

Captain John Smith is described in Edward Rowe Snow's "Incredible Mysteries and Legends of the Sea" (Dodd Mead, January 1967) as seeing a big-eyed, green-haired mermaid in 1614 off the coast of Newfoundland; apparently Smith felt "love" for her until he realized she was a fish from the waist down.

Experts believe Columbus, Smith and other mermaid-spotting explorers really caught glimpses of human-size marine mammals called manatees and dugongs.

Indeed, despite past and recent "sightings" of the mythical sea creatures, mermaids, like the Loch Ness Monster, may just be a case of mistaken identity.

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In mythology, mermaids have existed for thousands of years. Here's a look at those myths and historic tales of mermaid spottings.

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Description:
This video includes some of the worlds "top 5 best mermaid sightings"

Connection:
Although this video includes an overwhelming amount of evidence, it's all fake. Most of the videos were taken from a documentary put out by Animal Planet which was later revealed as fake and just for fun. Scrolling through the comments of this video shows a strong emotional connection some people have with the unexplained. So many people want to have something to believe in, something mysterious about the world we live in. It brings in the reason for belief of agenticity, people believe in some otherworldly creature that can control the tides and creatures of the sea.

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Top 5 Real Life Mermaids Caught On Camera #2

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Description:
This website strictly gives information about mermaids (sirens) and the greek origins of the legend. The background information on mermaids is just one part of the website, the site in general is for bookings and photo-shoots.

Connection:
This website is the perfect example of a money grab. It gives some great background information on mermaids and the history of them, but their actual intentions are about money. One of the main things to watch for in pseudoscience is "money is often involved." The site offers 'mermaid tails' and mermaid photo sessions... all for a price. The history of mermaids given includes information about how "sexy and mysterious" they can be, which everyone wants to be. Overall all of the information given does not progress the belief in mermaids and talks about the basics of mermaid history as a facade for money hungry owners.

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Originally, Greeks considered Mermaids half woman and half bird, but, considering that all mythical stories are constantly changing along tradition, then we find that Mermaids become half fish and half woman after a dispute with the Muses, their aunts from the genealogic point of view. In ancient texts, Mermaids appear not alone but in a group of two or three and not only in the water but sitting on reefs waiting for the arrival of ships. The description of the Triton is similar, son of the sea God Poseidon for the Greeks and Neptune for the Romans. Triton was a creature with the upper part of the body with the shape of a man and the lower part with a fish tail. Triton had the power to tame the turbulent waters blowing a shell.

If we look back at history, we see that the first Mermaids appeared for the first time painted on caves in the late Palaeolithic (Stone Age), about 30,000 years ago, when human beings had a strong control of the land and began to sail the sea.

The Greek name "Seirén" is related in meaning to a rope, and Mermaids would be something like "the ones that tie or grab", mainly sailors tempting and enchanting them with the sweetness of their songs. Those songs were irresistible and they fascinate anyone as their melodies were full of promises, hence the literary expression "Siren song". Throughout history, we can see that such attraction was not only united to a tuneful singing but also to their femininity. This being is always characterized by living between two worlds, sea and earth, or between life and death because we also find Mermaids as funeral emblems accompanying with their singing those who began their journey to the afterlife. It is clear that the first written text talking about Mermaids is the Odyssey, but as a legend or oral story, we find more Mermaids in other parts of the world. In the Middle East, the first stories where Mermaids appeared are found in Assyria in the year 1000 BC where Atargatis, a Syrian goddess who ruled the seas, was consecrated and worshiped with fish in temples full of large ponds. In China, many Chinese mythology tales talk about Mermaids as wonderful, skilled and versatile beings, whose tears become pearls. Mermaids are also found in Romanesque columns, sharing prominence with the Nereids and the Harpies.

In Ireland we find the Merrows, a species whose females are the equivalent of Mermaids, excepting for membranes in their hands. In the Scottish mythology there is the Ceasg, the "maid of waves," a special mermaid whose lower half is a salmon. In Wales a legend says that in the sixth century a mermaid called Murga, which means "woman who comes from the sea", was captured. She was taught to speak the native language, and she learned to sew and talk, but she never lost the ability of living in the water. In Spain, there is a famous legend about the "Sirenuca" from Cantabria, a mermaid that had once been human. Her mother was fed up with her disobediences about the ban to go to the cliffs screamed "God grant that you become a fish" and that's the way it was.

One of the most famous sighting was done by Christopher Columbus himself, who wrote in his logbook that he had seen three mermaids, but they were not as beautiful as they are represented, which somehow they had the face of a man. This assessment is ideal to illustrate the theory that the alleged sightings of mermaids have usually been sightings of manatees, walruses and other animals.

But the literary text that introduced Mermaids in history was the "Odyssey" written by Homer, who explains how the hero Ulysses had himself tied to the mast of his boat in order to listen the mermaids songs without any danger, although he is not the only one who managed to be uninjured, the Argo ship crew commanded by Jason was also unharmed. They managed to escape from the bewitching melodies thanks to a great musician called Orpheus, son of Apollo, who travelled with them and who with a magical song managed to avoid Mermaids.

That seductive singing was considered by Christians as an incitement to lust. Later, the Mermaids seduction stopped being something people could hear in order to become something more visual. Now, the images that represent Mermaids are the ones of Ladies of Water, very beautiful and showing provocative gestures to those who glimpsed at them. With all that, German Romantic poets, used to talk about monsters and wonders found in Mermaids a new motif. It is at that time when lonely mermaids were discovered solitary in Germanic rivers, and they were also confused with the Naiads and Undines. Sometimes they kept using their voice as a seductive weapon but other times it was their beauty that was attracting as one could see them in a corner while looking themselves at the mirror and brushing their long hair. Instead, the post-Romantic painters imagined them more aggressive, jumping themselves over the sailors from the sea; it was the typical image of "Femme Fatale" of the nineteenth century. In contrast, romanticism also created a kind of amorous mermaid desiring to change and become a woman, changing her tail for legs. The story of "The Little Mermaid" written by Hans Christian Andersen is a clear example of this.

So when modernizing, mermaids become an echo of the old seductive creatures, everything mythical evaporates and even trivializes, therefore from the ' Sirenas Mediterranean Academy ' we want to give to that figure of mermaids all the lost magic and mysticism, as a vehicle for teaching the marine world and the history and stories of the "Mare Nostrum", the Mediterranean Sea.

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History of mermaids - Sirenas Mediterranean Academy

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Originally, Greeks considered Mermaids half woman and half bird, but, considering that all mythical stories are constantly changing along tradition, then we find that Mermaids become half fish and half woman after a dispute with the Muses, their aunts from the genealogic point of view.

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Description:
The website below talks the history of mermaids and how fascinated humans are with them. They have subsections and many ancient photos!

Connection:
This website really unpacks the history of mermaids and why people love them so much. It has a lot of unexplained informations and involves a lot of confirmation bias. It only includes information that supports their points about mermaids. It brings in a lot of agenticity and how people have been using that as a reason to believe in mermaids for centuries now. It explains how unexplained all of the information about mermaids is, and how many emperors believes mermaids would bring them power, wealth and health. One thing they do really well is source their information and all of the background information.

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Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid is a heartwarming tale of a mermaid falling in love, battling evil to be with her love, and living happily ever after as a human. Just kidding. That's the Disney version. In Andersen's, the young mermaid has her tongue cut out, gets burned hard by the prince when he chooses another woman, and eventually dissolves into sea foam instead of saving her own life by ritualistically stabbing said prince through the heart and bathing in his blood. Seriously.

It was for this reason that Starbucks adopted the mermaid as its logo. ( No it isn't, that's libel. Is it still libel if I admit it's libelous? I guess we'll find out.) Regardless, it took mermaids millennia of mythology to land on those coffee cups. But relations weren't always so good between our two species-mermaids have largely been thought of as hell-bent on seducing sailors into the depths, or just smashing boats with storms if they're not really feeling like putting the effort into being charming.

So why the mixed reviews? Where did the legend of the mermaid come from in the first place? From ancient deities to corporate lackeys, the history of our aquatic cousins is certainly a strange one.

According to Terry Breverton in his book Phantasmagoria: A Compendium of Monsters, Myths, and Legends, before there were mermaids, some 4,000 years ago there was a merman: Ea, the Babylonian god of the sea. He had the lower body of a fish and upper body of a human, and was one of those handy all-purpose deities, bringing humankind the arts and sciences while also finding the time to battle evil. And because he was associated with water, he was the patron god of-no joke-cleaners because, well, someone needed to be. Ea would later be co-opted by the Greeks as Poseidon and the Romans as Neptune.

The earliest mermaid-like figure was likely the ancient Syrian goddess Atargatis, who watched over the fertility of her people, as well as their general well-being. She, too, was human above the waist and fish below it, and was accordingly associated with water. The Syrians bestowed Atargatis with the biggest, most resplendent temple they could muster, which came complete with a pond of sacred fish that you probably weren't allowed to throw coins into for a good luck.

Never one to be left out of disseminating misinformation, the great Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder, whose Natural History would serve as scientific gospel for centuries to follow, wrote of the nereids. These were nymphs we'd recognize as half-human half-fish mermaids, though "the portion of the body that resembles the human figure is still rough all over with scales." He notes that Legatus of Gaul once wrote to Emperor Augustus claiming he found a "considerable number" of them "dead upon the sea-shore." Pliny also mentions "sea-men," who when night falls "climb up into ships; upon which the side of the vessel where he seated himself would instantly sink downward, and if he remained there any considerable time, even go under water."

Such maliciousness is echoed in the sirens of Greek mythology, which variously were presented as beautiful women, half-bird half-women, and as mermaids. These fiends would lure men to their deaths with some sexy singing, as Odysseus well knew. He had his men strap him to the ship's mast to avoid falling victim as they passed the island of the sirens, while his men plugged their ears with wax.

And so mermaids entered European mythology with conflicting personalities: Sometimes they were portrayed as beautiful, seductive maidens-almost goddesses like Atargatis-greatly desired by lonely sailors, while also being cast as siren-esque beasts that dragged men into the inky-black depths. But whatever the portrayal, mermaids wound their way deep into the nautical lore of the Middle Ages onward.

Really, it was best to avoid mermaids and mermen, just to be sure. Olaus Magnus, the 16th century writer and cartographer whose seminal map Carta Marina obsessively cataloged the many monsters of the seas around Scandinavia, noted that fishermen maintain that if you reel in a mermaid or merman, "and do not presently let them go, such a cruel tempest will arise, and such a horrid lamentation of that sort of men comes with it, and of some other monsters joining with them, that you would think the sky should fall." Sea-people, it was widely held, were terribly bad luck to see or snag.

Other encounters were more harmless. In 1430 in the Netherlands, it was said that after the dikes near the town of Edam gave way during a storm, some girls rowing around in a boat found a mermaid "floundering in shallow, muddy waters," according to the Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend. "They got her into the bat, took her home, [and] dressed her in women's cloths," which was a solid choice on account of her being a woman. She couldn't be taught to speak, however, and remained totally mute.

Now, it was a pervasive ancient belief that every land animal must have a counterpart in the sea, and humans were no exception. Clearly, there must be sea cows and sea horses and sea swine out there. So while we had the mermaid representing us in sea, some claimed that things got even more specific, and that the clergy had their own aquatic representatives.

In the mid-16th century the French naturalist Guillaume Rondelet supposedly got his hands on two specimens bearing a striking resemblance to a pair of religious types: monks and bishops. The Encyclopaedia Metropolitana of 1817 describes the supposed "sea monk" accordingly: "The face was human, but coarse and clownish, the head smooth and without hair, a sort of hood resembling that of a monk covered the shoulders," while its "lower parts ended in a spreading tail." The "bishop fish" was "yet more wonderful, being clad by nature in the garb of a bishop." It was taken to the king of Poland, who in his benevolence decreed it be carried back to the ocean and set free.

But out at sea, the number of mermaid sightings exploded as the Age of Discovery kicked off, as men in big, expensive boats made their way around the world. John Smith, of Pocahontas fame, caught sight of one off of Newfoundland in 1614, noting that "her long green hair imparted to her an original character that was by no means unattractive." And in 1493 the expedition of Christopher Columbus took time out of their wanton murdering to sight the mythical mermaid near what is now the Dominican Republic. As Columbus wrote in his diary: "The day before, when the Admiral was going to the Rio del Oro, he said he saw three mermaids who came quite high out of the water but were not as pretty as they are depicted, for somehow in the face they look like men." And then they got back to the murdering and enslaving.

In reality, the admiral had likely seen a manatee (what Smith had seen is anyone's guess, considering manatees don't venture that far north). And indeed it was strange creatures like these, a group known tellingly as the sirenians that also includes dugongs, that explorers encountered as they made their way around the world. Sadly, they ended up driving the most incredible sirenian to extinction: Steller's sea cow. At an astonishing 33 feet long and 24,000 pounds, it was 20 times heavier than the manatee. But because it was so large, it never needed to fear predators before humans. By the turn of the 19th century, it was gone.

But it was the dugongs that were likely the source of the myth in the first place. They swim the waters around what used to be the former Syrian and Babylonian empires, and could well have inspired the half-human half-fish gods Atargatis and Ea. And as Michael Largo notes in his Big, Bad Book of Beasts, the mermaid as a bad omen could come from ships sailing too close to shore, where sirenians congregate, only to run aground. Because when in doubt, blame the harmless aquatic mammal.

But as science and reason solidified their hold in European and American society, the mermaid slipped further out of natural history and deeper into sailor lore. After all, out on the high seas, it never hurts to dream. I mean, it worked for Tom Hanks when he got rescued by a mermaid in , and look at him now. He's got, like, Oscars and stuff.
References:
Breverton, T. (2011) Phantasmagoria: A Compendium of Monsters, Myths, and Legends. Quercus Publishing

Fried, J. and Leach, M. (1949) Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend. Harper and Row

Largo, M. (2011) The Big, Bad Book of Beasts. William Morrow

Smedley, E. (1817) Encyclopaedia Metropolitana. Google Books

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Fantastically Wrong: The Murderous, Sometimes Sexy History of the Mermaid

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Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid is a heartwarming tale of a mermaid falling in love, battling evil to be with her love, and living happily ever after as a human. Just kidding. That's the Disney version. In Andersen's, the young mermaid has her tongue cut out, gets burned hard by the prince when he...

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Description:
This photo is from a 19th century folklore of mermaids luring soldiers to their death.

Connection:
This photo is beautifully drawn and is very alluring, appealing to a certain aesthetic. The actual intent of mermaids is unexplained, many stories claim they sang to fishermen and soldiers trying to lure them to their death, while other claimed they were warriors of the sea protecting buried treasure. Overall it seems that they have malicious intent when it comes to humans, unlike Ariel they want to kill the prince. The legend of mermaids does not progress at all, since 1000 B.C. the stories have been the nearly the same in every culture and era.