NM enchants popular culture with the paranormal

Column: My strange New Mexico
Mike Smith
Issue date: 12/11/06 Section: Culture

"10,000 babies smuggled into U.S. inside watermelons," read one headline.

"Now they've invented a shoe horn for pants," read another.

"Satan's skull found in New Mexico," read the front page of the Aug. 17, 1993, issue.

The story that week claimed that Dr. Ervin Veres, a Hungarian

archaeologist, had discovered a horned skull in the foothills of New Mexico's Sangre de Cristo Mountains, just northeast of Santa Fe. The skull pictured on the paper's cover was unique in that it had two horns protruding from both sides of its upper forehead, all its teeth held in place by what appeared to be petrified gums and a solid-bone goatee jutting from its chin.

"Aside from the odd revelation that Satan's goatee is not a cluster of hair, but rather an actual bony extrusion of his lower jaw, the interesting thing about this headline is the idea that, if his skull has been dug up, then Satan must be dead," read "Brother-Sister," a satirical blog.

According to the Weekly World News, after Veres and his six assistants found the unusual skull, Veres drew the natural conclusion that probably any thinking person would have: In the same way many Christian denominations believe that God once became a man and came to Earth as Jesus Christ, Satan obviously did the same sort of thing around the same time, before dying and leaving his skull.

Research suggests that everything and everyone in the entire article is little more than the goofy invention of a tired writer, but there's something significant about its author's decision to have the skull discovered here in New Mexico. What is it about the Land of Enchantment that seems to suggest itself so readily as the most plausible setting for every wild story from Brave New World to The Man Who Fell to Earth? Wyoming has fewer people. Alaska has more space. Arizona has similar terrain. Yet, the Weekly World News picked us.

"Why New Mexico?" said William deBuys, a New Mexico writer and conservationist. "Why not? It's less well-known than Philadelphia and has more room for hiding things."

Durwood Ball, editor of the New Mexico Historical Review, sees the state's abundance of curious historical sites as a possible reason.

Stephen Ausherman, a New Mexico-based novelist and travel writer, credits the state's reputation for strange occurrences.

"New Mexico and weirdness are synonymous in the American psyche," he said. "I think it started with Trinity or Roswell, and then snowballed from there ... In all likelihood, our state has been featured more often on 'The X-Files' than (on) CNN, MTV and ESPN combined. The paranormal is the meat of our pop culture."

Bob Julyan, chairman of the state's Geographic Names Committee, said the state's mystique stems from its terrain.

"Why does New Mexico attract all the weirdness that it does? ... (It's) the landscape," he said. "The configuration of the land here is stark, dramatic, sometimes surreal, suggesting mysteries and hidden secrets."