How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Had I a mind of a more metaphysical bent, I would have assumed this house to be haunted, but, like the monstrumologist, I rejected the notion of hauntings and other supernatural phenomenona. There are indeed more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy, but those things were, like the Anthropophagi, quite physical, entirely natural, capable of fulfilling our curious and baffling need for a marauding horror of malicious intent, thank you very much. (6.7)
Will Henry has obviously spent enough time with Dr. Warthrop to know that the really scary stuff is all real—he doesn't need to think about haunted houses when nature provides some truly horrific monsters.
Quote #5
Even so, humanity's rise had benefited her, and not merely by providing her with an abundance of prey on which to feed: To survive in an ever-diminishing habitat, the Anthropophagi had become bigger, faster, stronger. When the pyramids first rose from the Egyptian sands, the average Anthropophagi male measured a little more than six feet from foot to shoulder; after a mere five thousand years, a blip in evolutionary time, he now towered more than seven feet. His claws were longer, as were his legs and his powerful arms. His eyes had grown to three times the size of ours, for we had driven him into the night, from his bower in the acacia tree to the cool forest floor or the dank caves of Kinshasa and the Atlas Mountains. Nature may have designed the beast beneath the bed, but the ascent of man had perfected her. (6.222)
Human beings are pretty rough on their environment—more so than any other creature on the planet. It's not surprising, then, that the reason the Anthropophagi are so terrifying is a result of their evolutionary path to combat the changes human beings enacted upon their environment.
Quote #6
"I saw the mouth of hell fly open and the spawn of Satan spew forth! That is what I saw!"
"Malachi, the creatures that killed your family are not of supernatural origin. They are predators belonging to this world, as mundane as the wolf or the lion, and we are, unfortunately, their prey." (8.107-108)
The only thing Dr. Warthrop is forgetting is that typically, unless we're doing something pretty bizarre, the wolf or the lion aren't going to enter our homes in the middle of the night and slaughter our families in a really gruesome manner. The Anthropophagi may be natural, but they're terrifying.