Bestiarium

A bestiary of lesser known mythological creatures from around the world

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Xtabay [Mayan folklore]

A pretty girl who lures men with song or beauty, before killing them or passing some other undesirable fate onto them, is a common trope in folklore throughout the world. In Mayan legend, there is a particularly interesting creature called (the) Xtabay, an alluring female demon who inhabits the trunk of ceiba trees and magically emerges to lure men to their doom.

Usually, Xtabay wears a long white dress, and her hair is a deep black. Regardless of who is telling the story, the one trait that the traveller immediately notices is her supreme, almost unnatural beauty.

Xtabay is not a dumb demonic beast – she is intelligent, and will never appear before a man who is unlikely to follow her. As such, she tends to be encountered by the lonely and lusty, and then she casts a spell on her prey to make them follow her. As they fruitlessly try to catch her (for she is very quick and nimble), she leads these men to a strange space deep beneath the earth, but it is unclear what happens there – they never return.

There is an origin story for this creature, but it’s not as old as the myth of Xtabay herself, and was apparently created sometime in the early 20th century under European storytelling influence. It goes like this: two women, Xkeban and Utz-Colel, were both exceptionally pretty but their personalities couldn’t be further apart. The former was known for sleeping with many men, she was a kind person and looked after abandoned animals. Utz-Colel on the other hand was cold and envious but the people admired her virtuous chastity.

After both women passed away, a beautiful and fragrant xtabentún flower (Christmasvine or snakeplant) sprouted from the grave of Xkeban. From the grave of Utz-Colel however emerged a foul-smelling cactus, both of which are clear symbolism. Her jealousy and hatred were so strong that Utz-Colel returned from the grave to plague the world of the living in the form of a monstrous demon, and thus she became Xtabay.

Given that Xtabay is a rather popular monster in traditional Mayan storytelling, it is unsurprising that there are many different versions of her with as many different supernatural traits. Sometimes she is said to only be visible during nights with a full moon, other times she can shapeshift into either a snake or a tree, and there are tales where she transforms between a human form and that of a monstrous bird. In fact, this bird theme is often elaborated upon by giving the demon avian features like talons. In some works she lets men chase them, but when they finally catch her, she suddenly transforms into a thorny bush with two legs that end in bird-like talons. The man is then cursed with a fever and will soon die.

Interestingly, the tree species in which she lives is not coincidental, for the ceiba was (is) sacred to the Mayans. It’s theorized that Xtabay originated as an animistic tree/nature spirit and the embodiment of the ceiba tree.

Sources: Osborn, M., 2022, The Xtabay: From Forest Guardian to Hungry Demon. Humanities, 11(4), 96. https://doi.org/10.3390/h11040096 Preuss, M. H., 2004, Un bosquejo de la violencia en la literatura Maya-yucateca, Scripta Ethnologica, 26, pp. 67-76. (Image source 1: Red-Arkana on Deviantart) (Image source 2: Monohua)

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Yamauba, the mountain witch [Japanese folklore; yokai]

High in the mountains of Japan, an old woman inhabits the wilderness. She is the Yamauba (also Yamamba), or the mountain hag. She makes her home far higher than what a mortal human could climb (as such, the Yamauba is often depicted with clouds in the background to convey altitude). When she finds people trying to climb her mountain peak, she attacks and devours them.

Physically, the Yamauba resembles a very old human woman with white hair and an unnaturally large mouth. Sometimes she is giant (about 10 ft or 3 m tall) and carries an iron staff. There is at least one story in which the crone is defeated and killed, upon which her corpse turns into carrots. One myth describes her origin as an old (human) woman who is evicted from her house by her own grandchildren after the death of her children. With nowhere to go, she leaves society to live in a secluded hut on a mountain. Eventually, she loses her humanity and becomes a demonic witch.

This crone is a common villain in children's stories, and she serves the role of a bogeyman character (sorry, bogeywoman): a malicious monster whose exploits are told to children to scare them into correct behaviour. In one old story, a pregnant woman is traversing a mountain. Knowing that she will give birth before she can make it back to society, she enters a lonely hut and finds it to be inhabited by an old woman. After giving birth, however, her host reveals herself to be a demon and tries to devour the newborn child.

The Yamauba is a hungry, ravenous force of destruction: in one story, she encounters a young fisherman transporting a large catch with his carriage. After halting the cart, the witch ravenously devours all the fish. Still hungry, she then proceeds to eat the oxen. The young man is alarmed by this, as it is atypical behaviour for elderly women to devour cattle whole, and he runs away before she eats him as well.

Despite this, though, the mountain witch is not always considered to be evil! Throughout the centuries, she evolved from a folklore monster into a benevolent entity. At one point, she would help humans living on the mountain with their work or chores, being a huge boon to lumberjacks or builders because of her supernatural strength. A 15th century Noh play, simply titled 'Yamauba', changed her role into that of a nature spirit of sorts. She is as ancient as the very mountains she inhabits, and it is her who brings the winter snow and who makes the blossoms bloom in spring.

In the 17th century, the character changed again to become the mother of Kintaro, a Japanese folk hero. She is associated with motherhood and birth. In one folktale, the Yamauba enters a human village when she is about to give birth, and asks for shelter and aid. After a married couple takes her in, she asks them to name the baby, and they feel honoured to do so. To reward their kindness, she gifts them two boxes: one is filled with yarn, the other with gold.

Sources: Reider, N. T., 2005, Yamauba: Representation of the Japanese Mountain Witch in the Muromachi and Edo Periods, International Journal of Asian Studies, 2(2), pp. 239-264. Doi:10.1017|S1479591405000112 Yoda, H. and Alt, M., 2016, Japandemonium Illustrated: the Yokai Encyclopedias of Toriyama Sekien, 319 pp., p. 13.

(Image source 1: Eric Belisle)

(Image source 2: Monika Eidentaite, artwork for The Field Guide to Witches)

(Image source 3: Toriyama Sekien, 1776)

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The Spartoi: dragon teeth soldiers [Greek mythology]

When the Greek hero Kadmos (Cadmus in Latin) arrived in Boeotia to find Europa, he attempted to slaughter a cow to make an offering for the goddess Athena, and ordered his soldiers to bring water.

Unbeknownst to the soldiers, the well was guarded by a horrible dragon, supposedly a son of war-like Ares himself. The monstrous creature killed most of his men until Kadmos arrived. Being quite the warrior himself, he managed to slay it. Then Athena gave him the advice to pull the teeth from the dragon's corpse and plant them in the fertile soil as if they were plants. Not one to question the will of the gods, Kadmos obliged and sowed half of the teeth like a farmer sows grain.

Human-like creatures grew from them and emerged from the soil fully armed. They were called Sparti or Spartoi, meaning 'sown' or 'sown ones'. They are also sometimes referred to as ‘earthborn’ or ‘the earthborn men’. Kadmos picked up some rocks and flung them at the strange creatures before them, confusing the Spartoi, who assumed that their siblings had turned on them. In a fit of rage, the creatures pounced on each other until all but five were slain. These survivors were named Pelorus, Hyperenor, Chthonius, Udaeus and Echion.

Whether these soldiers were fully human is debatable (the magic of the gods doesn't have to follow the rules of biology, after all) but they did eventually marry human women. Modern artists often give them a more fantastical design to underline their monstrous origin, often making them tooth-like creatures or magically animated skeletons. In older illustrations, the Spartoi are usually depicted as human soldiers.

The war god Ares was not pleased at the killing of what technically amounted to his grandchildren. He enslaved Kadmos as punishment, but set him free after eight years.

The other half of the dragon's teeth, however, were kept and eventually ended up in the possession of the wicked king Aeetes, ruler of the Colchians. When Jason of the Argonauts landed there, he was challenged by the king to yoke the two fire-breathing bulls of Hephaestos, and to sow the remaining dragon teeth. When Jason did so, a new batch of armed Spartoi emerged, just like in the past, armed with spears, shields and helmets. And like their siblings, these creatures had a violent nature and lusted for battle.

Repeating the actions of his predecessor, Jason hid from the Spartoi and pelted them with rocks. Once again, the creatures began to slaughter one another until only a few remained, at which point Jason emerged from his hiding place and killed the survivors without mercy, even those who didn’t have enough time to fully come out of the soil. Soon, every earthborn soldier was left dead, their blood flowing back into the ground that had birthed them.

Sources:

Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, book 3, chapter 4, which you can read here.

Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, book 1, chapter 9, which you can read here.

Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, book 3, lines 396-422, lines 1163-1190, lines 1340-1407.

(Image source 1: Darko Kreculj on Artstation, illustration for Project Icelus)

(Image source 2: Cadmus and Athena, by Jacob Jordaens)

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The Goborchinn [Irish folklore]

The 11th century Irish chronicle Sex Aetates Mundi (literally ‘the six ages of the world’) describes the existence of the Goborchinn, a race of horse-headed beings.

References to these monsters in Irish manuscripts are scarce and we don’t really know how they treated or were treated by humans, but as they were described in a decidedly negative light, being grouped together with monsters, they were likely malicious.

They are often claimed to be a subspecies of the mythical Fomorians/Fomóraig, the ancient monstrous opponents of the early Irish people, but this is inaccurate. Rather, these two groups share the same origin as they were descended from the same ancestor: after the biblical Flood, Cham (or Ham) mocked his father Noah for being drunk and naked. Under the influence of this curse, Cham became the father of Luchorpáin (think of these as early leprechauns), the Fomóraig and the Goborchinn, a race of human-like beings with the heads of horses. The horse-headed Goborchinn have often been associated with the Fomorians, and while the name can mean either ‘goat-headed’ or ‘horse-headed’, we do know that one of the Fomorian kings in the Lebor Gabála was named Eochaid Echchenn, a name that translates to something like ‘Horsehead’, hence why the Goborchinn are generally accepted to have the heads of horses.

In earlier Celtic mythology, horses and horse-associated spirits were viewed in a more beneficial light, and the Christianisation of these myths might partially account for the change. It is unclear to me whether the Goborchinn were based on earlier, non-Christianized monsters, or to what extent, though it seems there is indeed a connection with earlier Celtic spirits.

Interestingly, there is evidence that these monsters were derived from the Cynocephali, a race of dog-headed humans discussed in older medieval texts. They might also be related to the more well-known Irish water horse monsters.

Sources:

MacCulloch, J. A., 1911, The Religion of the Ancient Celts, Morrison & Gibb Limited, Edinburgh, p. 189-190, 399 pp.

Clarke, M., 2012, The Lore of the Monstrous Races in the Developing Text of the Irish Sex Aetates Mundi, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 63, p. 15-49.

Lyle, E., 2021, Myth and History in Celtic and Scandinavian Traditions, Taylor & Francis, 302 pp.

(Image source: 'Horsehead' by Alex Tuis, visuals for Horsehead)

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The Orusulu [Bribri mythology; Costa Rican mythology]

In the indigenous mythology of the Costa Rican Bribri people, Orusula was a monstrous demon.

He resembled a boar of colossal proportions and lived in lagoons and swamps, where he dwelt in the mud. Orusula was able to produce a noxious foam that inflicted a rash on people who touched it, and this rash would eventually kill the victims.

I’m speaking in the past tense for a reason: long ago, Sibu, the supreme deity of the Bribri pantheon, fought the demon and defeated it.

He cut off the monster’s head and drained the blood from the corpse. Sibu kept this blood as a reminder to the mortals, so that humans would not forget the power of the creator god.

Source:

Stone, D., 1962, The Talamancan Tribes of Costa Rica, Millwood N.Y., Kraus Reprint Co., p. 52, 158 pp.

(Image source: ‘Demon boar’ by Ziforyu on Artstation)

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The Corc-chluasask: calves of the fey bulls [Scottish/Irish folklore]

The word 'fairie' is usually associated with tiny humans living in secluded forests, but fey creatures come in all shapes and sizes. One of them is the Tairbh-Uisge, a magical aquatic bull from Scottish and Irish folktales. It resembles a normal animal, though it is smaller and has a velvety, smooth skin. I discussed them some years ago in an earlier post.

However, sometimes a Tairbh-Uisge would mate with regular cows, and the result was a Corc-chluasask. These creatures were the offspring of a fairie parent and a normal, mortal cow, and inherited supernatural characteristics from their father. They could be identified by their ears, as one half of both ears appeared to be missing. This detail tends to vary: sometimes, they are said to have no ears at all, or unnaturally small ears, or weirdly round ears. But the ears are always the characteristic that give them away. It's in the name, 'Corc-chluasask' which means something like 'split ears'.

While I found no accounts of these monsters attacking people or animals, they were apparently malicious nonetheless, and would bring misfortune to the cows around them. As such, farmers on the Isle of Skye would traditionally kill newborn calves with noticeable deformities on their ears, lest they grew up to bring bad luck to the farm.

Interestingly, these creatures appear to be bovine counterparts of a sort to the Each-Uisge, or Kelpie, a rather famous Scottish folk monster with a common recurring motif: a fey creature disguises itself as a beautiful horse, usually with some bizarre characteristics to betray its supernatural nature, and entices people to ride it. When a victim does so, the horse reveals itself to be a monster and jumps into deep water to drown its rider.

They were also said to procreate with normal horses, creating foals that were almost indistinguishable from regular horses but could be identified by their strange drooping ears.

This is actually a recurring motif in Celtic folktales, where fairie animals would mate with regular animals, often producing supernatural offspring.

Source:

Meurger, M., 1988, Lake Monster Traditions: A Cross-Cultural Analysis, Fortean Tomes, 320 pp., p. 127.

(Image source: Bamart, this is actually an illustration of the Taroo Ushtey, the Manx variant of the same monster)

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Antiphates and the Laestrygonians [Greek mythology]

With the upcoming Odyssey movie, I thought it would be fun to pick a creature from Homeros’ Odyssey for this week's post!

After being dismissed by Aeolus, Odysseus and his men find themselves in Telepylus, in the land of the Laestrygonians. In this strange land, nightfall is followed almost immediately by morning. All the captains of his squadron steered their ships into the large, enclosed harbour. But Odysseus himself, clever as always, had his own ship tied up to a rock out of sight.

A messenger, accompanied by two soldiers, was sent to the palace of Antiphates, the leader of the Laestrygonians. Upon their arrival, the party was greeted by his wife, a truly enormous woman. She fetched her husband, who promptly tried to devour the Greeks. Two of them managed to get away to warn the fleet, which was soon set upon by a horde of Laestrygonians: terrifying giants who hunted and ate human flesh. They pelted the ships with boulders from atop the cliffs overlooking the harbour, smashing man and ship alike to splinters.

Not a single ship managed to escape the massacre, except for Odysseus’ personal vessel, which was hidden upon arrival. The Greek soldiers were carried off by the giants, like a fisherman carrying his catch on a spear.

While they only had a rather short appearance in the story (in fact, I forgot they existed before seeing giants in the new movie trailer), the Laestrygonians play a significant role in the narrative by reducing Odysseus’ fleet to one ship. The concept of the heroes ending up in a strange land inhabited by man-eating giants or other monsters is actually found in several Greek stories, and like many of Odysseus’ adventures in books 9-12, it might have been adapted from older legends and stories.

Sources:

Homeros, the Odyssey, Book X, 60-134, which you can read here.

Homeros, 1991, The Odyssey Revised Translation by D. C. H. Rieu, Penguin Classics, 416 pp., p. 29.

(Image source 1: J. C. Andrä, 1902, Griechische Heldensagen für die Jugend bearbeitet, illustration based on the fourth panel of the Odyssey Landscapes in the Musei Vaticani)

(Image source 2: François Licata on Artstation)

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The Enenra: Japanese smoke spirits [Japanese folklore; yokai]

This yokai is a sentient smoke cloud from Japanese folklore. As the story goes, a pauper once lit a fire to repel the mosquitoes from his home. The smoke from the fire was very thin and took on strange and unnatural shapes, eventually taking the shape of an ethereal living being, which was then given the name Enenra, or 'net smoke'.

As such, Enenra is composed entirely of smoke. There’s not a lot of backstory here, and it’s left ambiguous whether there are more individuals of this ‘species’ out there.

Toriyama Sekien, in his 18th century yokai encyclopedia, was the first to give a face to the smoky phenomenon. He gave it a friendly appearance with a large, round, smiling head for an almost cute aesthetic, communicating to the reader that this is not a malicious being. With this, he created the design that most future depictions of this creature would be based on.

Like many yokai in Japanese folktales, it is connected to an animistic tradition where a supernatural identity is given to a phenomenon or object. The Enenra also carries a connotation of poverty with it, because Sekien implied that the smoke is so ghostly thin because the pauper only had a little bit of firewood and couldn’t afford more. The kanji used for the ‘ra’ syllable refers to thin gauze fabric, such as the netting that trappers used.

Sources: Yoda, H. and Alt, M., 2016, Japandemonium Illustrated: the Yokai Encyclopedias of Toriyama Sekien, 319 pp., p. 180. Van der Linden, M., 2018, Toriyama Sekien och hans arv: En analys av Toriyama Sekiens yōkai kataloger, deras kawaii-estetik och Sekiens inflytande på det japanska folkets föreställningsvärld, Linnéuniversitetet, Växjö, Kandidatuppsats, 36 pp., p. 20-22.

(Image source 1: Olivia Leppard)

(Image source 2: Konjaku Hyakki Shui, Toriyama Sekien)

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Of the Buso and the Tigbanua [Filipino folklore]

Buso, also Busao or Busaw, are a type of giant humanoid monsters featuring prominently in the folktales and legends of the Mindanaoan Bagobo people in the Philippines. They are often translated as, or compared to, ogres: Buso usually eat human flesh and prefer dead corpses, which they dig up from graves. The entire body is then devoured except for the skeleton. People would placate them with offerings of rice, pigs, or even slaves, to keep them away from villages.

Buso are dangerous and physically ugly. They are embodiments of evil personalities, so it’s fitting that there is a lot of variety among them. Sometimes they have a singular, red or yellow cyclops-like eye, or sharp claws to dig up graves and rip the flesh from bodies. One account gives them disproportionally short arms but large fingers and feet, and a face equipped with two large tusks. Another Buso was described as having a large ivory horn growing from its head, that was constantly ablaze with fire. At least one account claims that these monsters can fly.

There’s a belief that you can summon these monsters with a specific ritual: when a person dies, and their coffin is being constructed, you have to cut some splinters from it and return them to the stump of the tree the wood came from. If you leave the wood fragments there, a Buso will appear on the night following the funeral. Its arrival will be heralded by a swarm of fireflies.

The Bagobo folk hero Tuglay happened upon a Buso village one day: while foraging for food, he saw smoke rising in the distance and, trying to find the source, found a vast field of giant sugarcane and trees that grew unnaturally large fruits. Going further, Tuglay saw a city consisting of a truly colossal mansion surrounded by an impossible number of smaller houses, all inhabited by hideous giants.

(It is said that the city stretched over 8 million mountaintops, and I assume this number isn’t meant to be taken literally.)

Note that despite being supernatural monsters who love to catch and devour humans, the Buso do also farm crops like we do. In fact, Tuglay saw many workers tending to the fields.

There is a folktale of a Buso who finds and captures two human kids. He puts them in a basket and carries them to its home, intending to eat them. As is often the case with these stories, the children escaped by outsmarting the monster: they wriggled free of the basket and filled it with stones, so that the Buso would not notice the difference in weight. The kids then climbed a tall tree to hide until the monster was gone.

But the ogre did discover their absence eventually, and cast a spell at a plant near the foot of the tree. It magically grew to a giant height, but before the monster could climb it, the children plucked nuts to throw at the plant until it shrunk down again. This went on for a while, the Buso’s spell against the thrown nuts, until the monster lost its patience and left without its prey.

Another, particularly interesting story features a ‘deal with the devil’ in which a starving, desperate father strikes a deal with the leader of the Buso. The ogre would deliver bananas to the man, in return for his two children.

One particular type of Buso is the Tigbanua: these are the most terrible of all Buso. They live in trees, and each individual owns/inhabits one tree. Though dangerous, they were deadly afraid of dogs, which is the main method of defending oneself against these monsters. One time, a hunter had killed a wild pig but found that it was too late to return home before nightfall. He made a shelter to spend the night, but was awoken from his sleep by voices coming from the treetops: he had unknowingly ventured into Tigbanua territory. Miraculously, they did not devour him, for the chief of the Tigbanua declared to all his people that this man was a veteran hunter who had come to this forest many times before. And terrible as he was, he respected the human and his trade.

Sources:

Ramos, M. D., 1990, The Creatures of Philippine Lower Mythology, Phoenix Publishing House, 424 pp., p. 103-104, 107-109, 111-114.

Gaverza, J. K. M., 2014, The Myths of the Philipines, An Undergraduate Thesis Submitted to the College of Social Science and Philosophy Diliman, Quezon City, as Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of B. A. Linguistics, 177 pp., p. 22-25.

(Image source 1: Brian Valeza)

(Image source 2: Traci Shepard, Arcane Beasts and Critters)

(Image source 3: 'Datu of the Buso' by Artofaugusto)

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The Psoglavi [Slavic mythology]

Psoglavi (also Pasoglavci in Croatia), are a race of demons with a humanoid body and a dog-like head with a singular eye in the forehead, like a cyclops. Sometimes they are said to have a horse’s tail or the hind legs of a goat. A Psoglav hunts by smell and has an exceptional sense of smell, presumably because of the dog head. It is said that if a Psoglav hunts you, the best way to escape it is by burying yourself in a pile of manure, so as to mask your scent. In Croatia, it was believed that these creatures prefer the taste of Christians above all, and then preferably Christian women.

Besides hunting living prey, these demons were not above eating corpses and were known to defile graves to dig up rotting cadavers to eat. Specifically Christian and Muslim cemeteries were frequented by the monsters, and for this reason people would put a menhir stone on top of graves to prevent the Psoglavi from unearthing the remains.

They were not unintelligent beasts, but had a functioning society, and were even known to keep dogs. In one story, three Psoglavi captured a group of kids who were left by their parents to guard the cattle. They subdue the children without killing them and bring them to their house, where the mother of the Psoglavi prepares to cook them. As is often the case in these stories, the kids defeat the monster with trickery rather than strength, and in the end they escape and push the creature into her own cauldron where she is boiled alive. The children escape, but the demons who captured them soon find the corpse of their mother and realize what happened. They release the hounds and try to track the children.

This story takes an odd turn when the children find a woman who is married to a Psoglav, and still takes pity on the kids. She agrees to hide them when the monsters come looking for them, and then sends them away across a river. They all escaped with their lives.

Interestingly, these demons supposedly hail from a strange distant country that is exceptionally rich in precious stones.

Another, entirely different origin story claims that Psoglavi are born from human women who have committed especially evil acts, as a divine punishment to the mother.

In reality, these dog-headed demons are theorized to be the Ottomans, whose attacks on the Croatian people inspired propagandized tales of monsters assaulting the good, innocent, religious people. Eventually, these stories were twisted until the attackers were completely inhuman, savage demons.

Sources:

Šešo, L., 2021, Dog-headed Creatures as the Other: The Role of Monsters in the Construction of the Croatian Identity, Časopis za književnost, kulturu i književno prevođenje, VOL 11, No. 2, DOI 10.15291/sic/2.11.lc.1.

Detelic, M., 1998, Flesh and Bones: on Literary and Real Codes in Fairy Tales, Balcanica – Annual of the Institute for Balkan Studies, XXIX, p. 269-305.

(Image source 1: Laslo Ludrovan)

(Image source 2: Anthony Rivero)

(Image source 3: Alexandru Munteanu)

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The Shiqq, the goul, and related monsters [Arab folklore]!

(Image source: ‘Nasnas’ by Niko Boiko)

Ghouls play a large role in Arab and Bedouin folklore, usually as a devil, genie or undead monster that eats people. Before the creature was incorporated into Islamic belief and legends, the Ghoul was usually a shapeshifting female demon that inhabited the desert and preyed on travelers. The later Islamic ghoul was a demon or a type of genie that either attacked travelers in deserted areas, or destroyed stored food by eating or corrupting it (which made it spoil). One can banish them by citing a verse from the Holy Quran. Some medieval texts also mention that ghouls set fires at night, so that travelers would get lost.

Different versions exist, however, and there are stories in which ghouls are always female and seduce men before hurting them. Interestingly, some Islamic scholars believed that ghouls did indeed exist in the distant past, but were destroyed by God to protect humanity.

One very peculiar version was mentioned by 12th century author Muhammad al-A’drīsī, who claimed that Ghouls originate from an island. Both the males and females have a very feminine appearances, their eyes are bright like lightning, and they have long fangs. Some other popularly recurring traits of ghouls are a taste for human flesh, a weakness to rabbit foot charms (you are supposed to hang one around your neck to ward off the ghouls) and the ability to possess human bodies and render them insane. In fact, it is believed that the Bedouin people considered rabies to be caused by a Ghúl inhabiting the body.

The ghoul as it currently exists in the popular perception, is largely influenced by the Arabian Nights (and further by Galland’s translation). This version is usually male and tend to inhabit graveyards. They feed primarily on corpses, and dig up bodies from graves to feast, which was apparently all added by Galland.

(Image source: ‘Shiqq’ by ALiteralCar)

There is also a peculiar pre-Islamic creature called a Shiqq, which is considered a type of ghoul. These strange beings resemble half a human, as in a human who was bisected longitudinally, though the extent to which this resemblance is portrayed varies. They famously have one leg, one arm, and one eye, and often appear before travelers to frighten them to death. Alternatively, they sometimes bludgeon victims to death as well.  One story tells of a hero who travelled to Mecca on a donkey and met a Shiqq. The monster fought him with a sword, and in the end, both combatants succumbed to their wounds.

It is related to, and often conflated with, the Nasnas, a similar creature that resembles half a human, but lives in the woods. In fact, Nasnas are sometimes said to be the offspring of a human and a Shiqq.

In 1888, Charles Doughty mentioned in his ‘Travels in Arabia Deserta’ that the desert wasteland was inhabited by a creature the locals called a Ghrôl: it had a long neck with a humanoid head equipped with a singular eye in the middle and a beak with one or two tusks. It had two arms, unlike the traditional Shiqq, but both arms resembled the fledgling wings of a chicken, except they ended in hands with undivided fingers. It had two legs, one of which ended in an ostrich foot and the other had the hoof of an ass. These creatures are exclusively female and would call people by their names, to make them believe a family member was calling them, and so lure them into the desert.

Sources: Al-Rawi, A., 2009, The Mythical Ghoul in Arabic Culture, Cultural Analysis 8: 45-69. Alsowaifan, S. H., 2001, Qasim’s Short Stories: An Example of Arabic Supernatural/Ghost/Horror Story, thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of philosophy, University of Alberta, 283 pp., p. 36-37.

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The automaton assistants of Hephaestos [Greek mythology]

Hephaestos was the craftsman of the Greek gods and the patron god of smiths and metalworkers, and for good reason: his skill with metal was unmatched, both on Earth and among the immortals of Olympus. The armour and shield of Achilles were forged by him, as were the jewels of Thetis. But besides his skill with armour and trinkets, he had the ability to build living automatons out of inanimate metal.

To aid him in his work, he forge god had crafted handmaidens of gold. They were shaped like human women and were designed to assist their maker. Far from unthinking machines, these mechanical creatures were capable of speech and thought, and in fact were said to be quite intelligent. Though none of them were as competent as Hephaestos himself, these automatons had learned their considerable skills from the gods themselves.

Not all of Hephaestos’ automatons were humanoid, however. When the goddess Thetis visits him in the 18th book of Homeros’ Iliad, she finds the forge god working on a set of 20 mechanized metal tripods. These were equipped with wheels and could move by themselves, so that Hephaestos could command them to serve the gods of Olympus during their gatherings.

In modern interpretations, people tend to re-imagine these metal servants as clockwork robots, though they were never actually said to contain gears or other moving mechanical components. It is likely that Homeros imagined them as magically animated constructs rather than robots in a literal sense of the word.

Sources: Homeros, Iliad, book 18, lines 365-425. Silverman, K., 2022, The Androids of Hephaestus: Between Human and Machine in the Iliad, Selected Proceedings of the Classics Graduate Student Symposium at the University of Florida, 1. doi: 10.32473/pcgss.v1i.130426. (Image source: Kekai Kotaki, actually unrelated concept art for Guild Wars, but I thought it fits and I like his artstyle)

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The Lagarfljót Worm [Icelandic folklore]

Local folklore has it that Lagarfljót, a lake in Iceland, is supposedly home to a giant lake monster. It resembles a colossal slug-like worm or snake, and has been known to attack people and animals. Sightings of this creature (or just vaguely of ‘something’ that supposedly inhabits the lake) date as far back as 1345, and there are still locals who claim to believe in the creature or even to have encountered it. Among the people who live near Lagarfljót, the creature is often called ‘Ormur’, simply ‘the worm’. Sometimes, it would even crawl onto the shore and spit poison onto the land.

Unlike most lake monsters, this one actually has a very specific origin story! According to an old Icelandic folktale, there once was a little girl who lived on a farm. She received a gold ring from her mother and, determined to get the most possible gold out of it, she tested out a local old wives’ tale. Supposedly, if you put some gold underneath a slug, both will magically grow in size. The slug in question is a lingworm, but it is unclear to me whether this is an old (translated) Icelandic term for a generic slug, or a specific, possibly mythical type of slug.

In any case, the girl found one and kept both the ring and the slug safe in a linen chest, seeing no harm in testing out an old piece of folklore. When she eventually came back to check on the chest, she found it close to bursting, so much had the gold and the slug expanded. Severely frightened by the creature, the girl threw the chest in a nearby lake, not realizing that both the ring and the animal would keep on growing. And grow it did, until the tiny slug became a giant dragon.

A lot of time has passed since, and the monster kept causing trouble for the locals. Two Finns, both shamans wielding magical power, eventually showed up and claimed they were going to kill the creature and take the gold, but they quickly returned and claimed the beast couldn’t be slain. In the end, they did manage to bind the creature to the bottom with two ropes, one around its tail and the other around the head, so now it can no longer reach out of the lake and attack people.

Sometimes, however, an arch of the monster’s snake-like body rises out of the water, and this is considered to be a bad omen.

The same story is told about different bodies of water, such as Skorradalsvatn, and the resulting lake monsters are often conflated with each other.

Sources: Árnason, J., 1862, Íslenzkar Þjóðsögur og Æfintýri, Vol. I, Leipzig, 666 pp., p. 638-639. Sigurðsson, A., 2016, Museum of Hidden Beings: A Guide to Icelandic Creatures of Myth and Legend, Wool of Bat series, Eye of Newt Press, 80 pp., p. 50-51. Lees, C. A. & Overing, G. R., 2017, Women and Water: Icelandic Tales and Anglo-Saxon Moorings, GeoHumanities, 00 p. 1-15, DOI 10.1080/2373566X.2017.1403859 (Image source 1: Halldor Baldursson) (Image source 2: ‘Lagarfljótsormurinn’ by Spring Bee on Artstation)

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Spring-Heeled Jack, a 19th century London cryptid story

(Image 1: The cover of a fiction magazine ‘Spring-Heeled Jack 2 by Robert Prowse, 1904)

In 1837 and 1838, northwest London was terrorized by a series of attacks from a mysterious figure. He would come out at night and mainly assault women, ripping their clothes with his cold iron fingernails and stealing valuables.

After every sighting, the creature would always escape by leaping unnaturally high, a trait that earned him the nickname ‘Spring-Heeled Jack’.

Supposedly, he was often seen jumping from one rooftop to another, laughing maniacally during his escape. He usually only scared people, but there are also stories of Jack tearing a child to shreds with his iron talons, and crashing a carriage by suddenly appearing in front of it and then disappearing. There are several accounts of the cryptid scaring people to death.

Many people claimed he was a supernatural creature. Sometimes he was said to wear a suit of armor or a black cape, and other times he supposedly took the form of a bear or a white bull. He was described as ‘devil-like’, smelled like brimstone, had glowing red eyes, and sometimes would spit blue fire (in some stories, the fire was produced from a magic bullseye lantern). Some sources equated him with the actual devil.

These attacks happened during a time when ghost stories were popular entertainment (newspapers would even publish dramatized reports of supposedly haunted locations), and as a consequence Jack got mixed with folklore ghosts in the public eye. He was regarded as a devil or a ghost, and parents even used him as a bogeyman to scare misbehaving children.

(Image source 2: illustration from an unknown penny dreadful, BBC Hulton Picture Library)

In fact, Spring-Heeled Jack was soon connected to an earlier ghost sighting of a figure in a white robe in the cholera burial ground (which contains a mass grave for the Sheffielders who died in the epidemic of 1832).

Some people, according to an 1873 article in the Sheffield & Rotherham Independent, believed that Jack was actually the ghost of a cholera victim who came back to haunt the world of the living. Supposedly, he would regularly return to this graveyard. Also, in one account from a carpenter who claimed to have been attacked, Jack summoned two ghosts to aid him when the victim tried to fight back.

Interestingly, he was sometimes described as an athletic (but not supernatural!) human being wearing a devil mask and a suit. In these stories, the giant leaps were explained by way of spring-loaded shoes.

The newspapers named a suspect: Lord Henry de la Poer Beresford, marquis of Waterford, who was already notorious in the area for his love of pranks. He would pull practical jokes on passersby, which were often needlessly cruel and outright dangerous. In 1838, The Times published an anonymous letter to the mayor of London, claiming that the local prankster nobleman was indeed the culprit, though hard evidence was never found. Some people formed armed mobs to patrol the streets in an attempt to catch Spring-Heeled Jack in the act, but they never succeeded.

(Image source 3: Vladimir Lemajic)

The character seemed to stick, however, and became popular in the ‘penny dreadfuls’: cheap, weekly fiction stories that often featured crime and action plots. In these books, Jack usually had horns and bat wings. He was usually a vengeful anti-hero rather than a villain, despite being based on a cryptid who assaulted women. In fact, he was often written as a hero of the working class in these books, fighting aristocrats who abused their power and money.

Spring-Heeled Jack’s popularity resulted in the appearance of several copycats by the mid-19th century: some of these were harmless pranksters, dressing up as a winged devil to scare and confuse people, while others would rob or assault their victims.

It is difficult to distinguish fact from fiction: though I doubt he actually performed even half of the feats ascribed to him, I don’t find it unlikely that there really was a masked robber. The foggy streets of 19th century London were no safe places for women, after all.

Sources:

Clarke, D., 2006, Unmasking Spring-heeled Jack: A case study of a 19th century ghost panic, Contemporary Legend n.s. 9: p.28-52. Mackley, J. S., 2016, Spring-heeled Jack: the Terror of London, Aeternum: the Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies, 3(2), p. 1-20. 2324-4895.

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The horses of Aeneas [Greek mythology]

(Image: Aeneas Knocked Down by Diomedes, painting by Giulio Romano for the Palazzo Ducale. Notice the horses to the left of Aeneas)

In Homeric canon, when the gods took Ganymedes to Olympus for his exceptional beauty, his father Tros received horses as compensation from mighty Zeus himself. While this probably doesn’t make up for kidnapping one’s child, these animals were a special divine breed and were bred by the gods of Olympus. As such, they were better than all regular horses bred by mortals.

These heavenly horses were eventually passed down to Laomedes. King Anchises, who was presumably aware of their divine origin, managed to get his own mares to breed with them behind Laomedes’ back and without his permission, effectively stealing the breed and acquiring his own supernatural equines. When the mares gave birth to six supernaturally swift foals, Anchises gifted two of them to his son Aeneas, one of the heroes of Troy.

(Image: ‘The Battle of Diomedes and Aeneas’ by Jan van Orley, ca 1720)

Aeneas put them to good use in the Trojan war, having them drive his chariot into battle against the Greeks. Not much is known about their appearance, other than that their manes were white. Unfortunately for Aeneas, the horses were stolen by the Greek hero Diomedes, who was honestly kind of a dick throughout the book. They were entrusted to Deïpylus, who drove them back to the safety of the Greek camp.

Aeneas would have perished then and there, had not his divine mother Aphrodite intervened: she held a magic sheet of garment over him that sheltered him from harm before rescuing him from the battlefield.

Source: Homeros, Iliad, book 5, lines 255-329. Image source 1: Bridgeman Images Image source 2: The MET Museum

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Nineteenth century hypothesized lifeforms on the moon, life on the sun, and why they're all probably sinners:

(Image: the Lunarians from Georges Méliès’ 1902 silent movie ‘Le Voyage Dans la Lune’)

Is there life on the moon? It’s a question that humanity has been pondering for thousands of years. Thomas Dick, a Christian minister and astronomer, wrote in 1838 that he was certain of the existence of extra-terrestrial life. The existence of an incredible variety of lifeforms on Earth implies that God actively delights in bringing both life and enjoyment to otherwise dead worlds. He believed that God is always consistent in His creation, and therefore concluded that other worlds must be inhabited by living creatures as well.

He mentioned the existence of vegetation on the moon, which was a point of discussion among astronomers at the time, and did not deem it impossible that animal life existed on the lunar surface as well.

So what did Dick suppose these Lunarians looked like? Sadly, he never attempted to make hypotheses on the appearance or biology of these hypothetical aliens. But he likely assumed they resembled humans. Befitting his job as a church minister, Dick consistently tried to interpret every astronomical hypothesis in a strict biblical framework. And since humans are supposedly created in the image of God, we can assume that the Lunarians are, too.

(Image: Giant spiders spin a web between the moon and Venus at the command of the Lunar King Endymion, in ‘A True History’ from Lucianus of Samosata, 2nd century AD)

While his book did not discuss the appearance of these moon people, Dick did provide an extensive discussion on their moral character. He interpreted volcanoes as ‘agents of destruction’ and bringers of calamity, and therefore reasoned that they were divine punishments for humanity’s sins. As there weren’t any sins yet in Eden, there could not have been any volcanoes on the Earth at the time. And many astronomers at the time believed to have seen evidence of the existence of volcanoes on the moon. Therefore, he concluded that if there are volcanoes on the moon, the Lunarians must be sinners, or at least as sinful as the people from Earth.

Though it should be noted that Dick himself was not convinced by the supposed observations of volcanoes on the moon, instead believing that these were artifacts created by reflection of light from the earth.

If lunar people exist, then why not solar people? For obvious reasons, most astronomers at the time believed that there is no life on the sun (and, obviously, most astronomers still agree). Thomas Dick, however, pointed to the earlier works by Sir W. Herschel, who rejected the notion that it is impossible. Sunspots, which were interpreted by some astronomers as holes or openings, appear dark, meaning there is a layer of black matter underneath the solar surface. He rejected the notion that the sun is incredibly hot, because if it were, this ‘subsolarian’ matter would visibly glow with heat, and we can tell from empirical observation that it is dark.

In this model, the sun consists of a huge sphere of dark, unknown matter surrounded by two layers of ‘clouds’. The outer layer glows brightly and is the source of the light that illuminates our world. The inner layer protects the surface of the black sphere from these rays, maintaining a liveable temperature for whatever creatures live there.

(Image: the court of the Lunarian king in Le Voyage Dans la Lune, 1902)

If this all sounds ridiculous, that’s because it so obviously is ridiculous. But keep in mind that Dick was a die-hard creationist and believed that every celestial body was designed by an intelligent creator. 

He also points out that such creatures are likely intelligent and intellectual, as God would have wanted them to be able to appreciate the beauty of the worlds He created. In fact, he theorized that extraterrestrial creatures may be much smarter than humans: the gap in intelligence and wisdom between man and the lowliest lifeforms is vast, but that between humanity and God is even greater, so there is no reason to assume it is devoid of other living things.

Source: Dick, T., 1838, Celestial scenery; or, The wonders of the planetary system displayed, Harper & Brothers, 422 pp., p. 239-242, p. 264-266, p. 270-274, p. 348, p. 393-395.

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The Bahkauv [German folklore]

In the German city of Aachen, a local folktale concerns an aquatic monster that supposedly once inhabited the old drainage canal, specifically of the Büchel and Kaiser springs. The creature somewhat resembled a monstrous calf, so the locals took to calling it ‘Bahkauv’, meaning something like ‘creek calf’.

Accounts on the appearance of the Bahkauv tend to vary. While it always resembles a calf with monstrous characteristics, accounts disagreed on the details. Common characteristics for the Bahkauv are a thick shaggy fur, glowing eyes, sharp teeth, bear-like paws that ended in sharp talons, and a long tail that dragged behind it.

It was known to bite people: at least one account claims that a victim was bitten in the neck. It is also known that the monster was equipped with chains around its legs and neck. The rattling of these chains was often heard in the vicinity of the city’s waterways.

The Bahkauv was strictly nocturnal and preferred to attack drunkards at night. While there are accounts of the monster mauling its victims, it was actually more of a trickster than a real danger: the monster never killed people. Instead, it played a particular and supernatural prank: when the Bahkauv spotted a suitable victim, usually a drunk man trying to get home after a night out, the creature jumped on the victim’s back in order to be carried. As soon as the victim reached their home, the Bahkauv released him and disappeared. Interestingly, the creature would inexplicably become heavier if the victim tried to pray while carrying the unwanted rider. Conversely, if the victim cursed the monster, it would become lighter.

While this might seem like a strangely particular thing, the concept of a supernatural monster that hops on people’s backs and demands to be carried is actually a recurring trope in European folktales. In Germany, there are stories about a different bogeyman that does this, which is called Aufhocker. Usually, these unwanted piggyback riders have a wolf-like appearance but that is not always the case. In Austrian folklore, it was a witch, and yet another version featured an undead wandering spirit who needed to be carried to a church in order to redeem his soul.

Interestingly, it has been hypothesized in recent years that these mythological creatures were actually phantom-body connectomes, a neurological phenomenon in which the brain incorrectly believes that a heavy load is being carried, which is caused by the activation of the brain’s temporo-parietal junction. This would explain why a strangely specific premise is so common in folktales across several cultures.

For what it’s worth, the Bahkauv eventually disappeared. The locals theorized that when the entrances to the city’s underground waterways were closed, the creature ended up locked inside.

Sources: Braun, W. W., 2024, Sagenhaftes, Mythen, Märchen und Legenden aus Deutschen Landen und der Welt, BoD Books on Demand, 320 pp., p. 157. Lecouteux, C., 2016, Encyclopedia of Norse and Germanic Folklore, Mythology, and Magic. Armand, F., 2021, Aufhocker: Quand l’Identité Alien d’un de nos corps-fantômes se porte sur le dos, Caietele Echinox, 41 :85-99. (Image source 1: Evgeny Shvenk, illustration for the TTG ‘Cryptic Nature’) (Image source 2: Phasemoth)