“Since childhood, I’ve been faithful to monsters. I have been saved and absolved by them, because monsters… are patron saints of our blissful imperfection…”
– Guillermo del Toro
From the moment humankind developed the ability to fear, monsters have existed within our cultural imagination. They terrify us, dazzle us, and help us conceptualize the unknown both in the outside world and within ourselves. Every culture across the globe has its own set of creatures that go bump in the night, but a select few reign most prominent in our nightmares. Read on for a comprehensive guide on history’s most iconic monsters… at your own risk.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE UNDEAD
Life eternal doesn’t look the way you want it to – unless you don’t mind the smell of rotted flesh. We spend our lives lamenting death’s final veil. So why, then, do we recoil at that which tears it?
VAMPIRES
The myth of the vampire is as old as human civilization itself. Tales of the lamashtu, a blood-drinking demon who hunted babies and pregnant women, sent chills down the spines of ancient Mesopotamians, while the Egyptians worshipped Sekmet, a lion-headed war goddess known for her bloodlust. Despite this, the most commonly known vampiric folklore takes us further west, to Southeastern Europe. Known as vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania, these bloodthirsty creatures flooded the folklore of these regions, which eventually boiled over into a fully-fledged wave of panic throughout the continent in the eighteenth century – namely, in major cities such as London, Vienna, and Paris. While gory accounts of the risen dead spread through newspapers in these cities, smaller villages began exhuming, beheading, and cremating any corpses they suspected of vampirism. One village even claimed that Arnod Paole, an allegedly undead soldier, shrieked and released a gush of fresh blood when his corpse was stabbed in his coffin. This scare, in junction with other cultural myths surrounding figures like Vlad the Impaler and Elizabeth Báthory (commonly known as the “Blood Countess”) – as well as those perpetuated in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) – solidified the region’s status as a hub of vampiric lore, despite frustration among modern-day locals.
So, how does a vampire come to be? The exchange of blood is the most common way for vampirism to spread. As Renfield says in Dracula (1897), “the blood is the life.” While we tend to think that just a simple bite will do, other pieces of vampire folklore state that the exchange of blood must go both ways for one to be fully transformed. In other cases, one can become a vampire by making supernatural dealings, renouncing God (a la Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)), dabbling in witchcraft, or defying the Orthodox Church in Russian myth. Some folklore even claims that any dead body that has an animal jump over it is at risk of succumbing to vampirism. So our advice for a long and happy afterlife? Keep Fido away when it’s your time to go.
ZOMBIES
While tales of the undead originate back to ancient times, the zombie has a much more recent – and darker – history than its other death-defying counterparts. Myths of zombification began in the Caribbean in the 17th and 18th centuries: specifically, French-occupied Haiti, where enslaved Africans were subjected to harsh manual labor. The West African religion of Voodoo and its practices – one which is now understood as a type of “zombification” – became widespread among the enslaved populations, who were surrounded by constant death and decay on account of their working conditions. But what this specific ritual produces is far from the rotted, flesh-hungry figures you would see shuffling across the screen in Dawn of the Dead (1978). Instead, the Vodun cults that practiced zombification used it to take control of another person’s life as punishment for crimes or wrongdoing. Some priests, known as bokors, concocted a mixture of medicinal herbs that cut off the person’s oxygen supply, inflicting brain damage, paralysis, and ultimately, complete obedience. The traditional Vodoun zombie is not truly the dead come back to life, as most American zombie media depicts – but they are still trapped in a space between life and death nonetheless.
However, colonizers who were ignorant of the intricacies of Voodoo culture failed to understand the nuances that came with zombification, which ultimately spiraled into widespread misconceptions of both the practice and practitioners. Centuries later, zombies quickly took root in Western pop culture, with most excluding the religion from their zombie lore entirely. American interpretations of the zombie myth focus on broader themes of consumerism, isolation, and post-apocalyptic speculation. These modern zombies come to be through the spread of a virus, radiation, electrical charges, or the fallout of bioweaponry.
SHAPESHIFTERS
People who snap and contort into the forms of beasts. Creatures that wear the skin of another. Sometimes, horror does not look us in the face – it lies in wait within what we cannot see outright.
WEREWOLVES
Blurring the distinction between man and animal, these beasts have hunted on the fringes of folklore for thousands of years before Lon Chaney Jr. first sported its furry visage in The Wolf Man (1941). The term lycanthropy – which refers to one’s transformation into a wolf – originates from the ancient Greek myth of King Lycaon, who famously angered the gods by feeding them human flesh and was transformed into a bloodthirsty wolf as punishment. Centuries later, Irish and Norse medieval folklore regarded werewolves more as gentle human minds trapped in wolves’ bodies, rather than wild beasts; and to some, the term “werewolf” was associated more with mere outlawry than lycanthropy itself. Werewolves, such as those detailed in Giraldus Cambrensis’s Topographia Hibernica (1188), are even shown speaking as humans do. And while they have always served as allegories for animalistic vice, werewolves’ public perception did not begin to darken until the end of the Middle Ages, when people started associating them with the Devil. From then on, werewolves have been an inescapable facet of horror fiction up through the present day, gaining popularity through texts like Sabine Baring-Gould’s Book of Werewolves (1865) and more lighthearted pieces like I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957).
Within this frame, how do folklorists determine how the werewolf came to be? In many early cases, lycanthropy is a curse inflicted by a higher supernatural being as punishment for immorality, such as in King Lycaon’s case. Arcadian myth, inspired by Lycaon, states that consuming human entrails induces the transformation. In Norse sagas, warriors who wore wolf skins transformed within the heat of battle. Other topical means of transformation include either rubbing “flying ointment” all over the body or undressing and replacing your clothes with a wolfskin belt. But most modern interpretations pinpoint the spread of lycanthropy to the exchange of infected saliva, blood, or both. How many times have you witnessed an ill-fated bite or scratch in your favorite werewolf movie? But, regardless of how werewolves were created, one thing is for sure: they’ll always have us shuddering at the sight of a full moon.
CHANGELINGS
Fairies haven’t always been the rosy-cheeked, winged cherubs you’ve seen in your childhood storybooks. Prior to the 1800s, fairies and fae creatures were depicted as devilish, bat-winged imps who could be formidable foes when crossed, having been cast down to earth for their rebellious nature as angels. Though small, they possess immense powers which could be used to heal the sick, grant wishes, and bring good luck – or, if slighted, could be used to spoil food, destroy crops, and bestow curses. Among their most devious practices was the act of abducting children or other loved ones and replacing them with changelings, supernatural replacements enchanted to look like the abductee. Some folklore depicts the changeling as “stock,” an enchanted piece of wood made to look like the missing person, while other stories state that the changeling is another supernatural entity – usually the child of a fairy or troll – that magically appears as the person’s doppelganger. While a changeling’s identifying traits may vary among individual cases, the switch is typically marked by a stark and sudden change in the person’s personality traits and behavior. One of the most famous examples of a real-life “changeling” case is that of Bridget Cleary, who was murdered in March of 1895 in Ballyvadlea, Ireland. Having witnessed a personality change in Bridget, followed by the onset of a worsening illness, her husband and father became convinced that she had been abducted and replaced by a changeling. She was tortured, burned, and killed in front of relatives, as her husband believed that doing so would bring the “real” Bridget back – only to realize too late that the real Bridget was the one burning.
Myths of changelings flourished across Europe prior to the Industrial Revolution, as it was a time when reliance on the family was key to survival. Infants, children, and adults who exhibited uncommon behaviors or were born with physical or mental disabilities were, therefore, often scapegoated as changelings. And while it’s easy for a modern audience to look back and see that there was no supernatural interference at play, all the medieval family could do was keep pieces of iron close and their loved ones closer.
OTHERWORLDLY HORRORS
With discovery – of sea, of space, of our own limitations – come nightmares bordering on the incomprehensible. In their uncharted waters, you sit between a Scylla and Charybdis of your own: the isolating terror of the unknown, yet knowing still that you are far from alone.
SIRENS AND SEA BEASTS
The ocean, though an ever-common presence in many of our day-to-day lives, is both humankind’s first and final frontier. Its bounty has nourished early civilizations, and its churning masses have long given us a means of traveling to and connecting with one another. But with this sheer enormity comes an uncharted, chilling vastness. Its depths remain undiscovered. So, it’s no wonder that folklore’s most ancient and terrifying monsters have called it home. Among the most popular of these sea-dwelling beasts is the siren, which is famously depicted in Homer’s Odyssey. While their voices are beautiful and uncontrollably alluring, their appearances – and intentions with those they lure – are far from it. Early depictions of sirens from the 7th century B.C. show them as large birds with women’s heads or wingless bird women, while they appear simply as mermaids (referred to as “tritonesses,” after the sea god Triton) in later accounts. According to the Greek tragedian Sophocles, sirens originate from the sea god Phorcys, but other mythological figures like Achelous the river god, the muses Terpsichore, Melpomene, Calliope, and Sterope of Calydon are also accredited with their creation. Similar to those surrounding fairies and imps, other myths claim that sirens and merfolk were followers of rebellious angels who were locked out of heaven and subsequently fell into the sea.
But sirens don’t sing alone in the deep blue sea. Hydra, Scylla, Kraken, Cetus, Ningen, Ogopogo, the Loch Ness Monster: any culture with access to a body of water has folklore rife with sea monsters. But what’s enchanting about the sea and its diverse pool of species is that you hardly need folklore to find “monsters” – many are just species that have been previously unknown to us. While they may sometimes be depicted as otherworldly invaders in stories, such as the Martians depicted in H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, in many other cases, these sea beasts are regarded as primordial to the earth, having existed here since the beginning of time. They are not monsters, but unfamiliar neighbors. Neighbors who send chills down our spines when they prompt us to consider what else is lurking out in those not-so-far-away murky depths.
COSMIC VISITORS
Tentacled beasts that lurk at the edge of reality. Little green men descending from the heavens. Despite what you may have previously thought, these moon-age nightmares have struck fear into the hearts of mankind long before we set foot in the stars. In fact, the most famous of these creatures first arose in the 1920s, with the publishing of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Centered on themes of ancient alien entities such as the Great Old Ones and the Elder Gods, existential dread, and the vastness of the universe, these stories took the existing horror genre and infused it with an air of scientific terror. The most famous of these is The Call of Cthulhu (1926), a tale that recounts the impending return of its titular character, a part-octopus, part-dragon, part-human entity whose cult of followers commit blood sacrifices and travel to a remote island to bring about its second coming. Many of the cosmic horrors depicted in his works, like The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1936) and Dagon (1919), also draw connections to the mysteries of the sea: a realm that mankind has barely scratched the surface of. But what lies at the heart of these particular monsters – and our anxieties towards them – is discomfort with the unknown. H.P. Lovecraft’s works are the product of a greater fear of difference both among people and in the world at large.
But where do these creatures come from? They’re incomprehensible to the human mind and are more ancient than time itself. In some cases, they’re conjured from the depths using occult rituals; in others, they invade from far-away galaxies, formed as naturally in their own universes as man is to earth. In a witness testimony in The Call of Cthulhu, Lovecraft writes:
“There had been aeons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them… were still to be found… They all died vast epochs of time before men came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them.”
What is especially haunting about cosmic beings is how little we (and their creators) actually know about them. The magic is in the mystery, and the terrifying wonder is in uncovering it.
HONORABLE MENTION: THE MONSTER WITHIN
If invention is the child of necessity, then horror is the child of invention. Botched creation, hubris stretched too thin: what makes man more horrifying than monster is that we are, in fact, real.
THE MAN-MADE MONSTER
If you don’t believe in monsters, it’s easy to say that any monster is a man-made one. You may even be true in asserting that the only power they have over us is what we give them. But what about the creatures that were sculpted by human hands? The most iconic example is the Creature from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), who is created from stolen cadavers and embarks on a murderous rampage after he is rejected by his creator, Victor Frankenstein. But the creature, though physically monstrous, is far from the true monster of the classic horror novel. Instead, it’s Frankenstein himself who is widely acknowledged as the true monster. And what about the terrifying human-animal hybrids concocted and viciously experimented on in The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)? Their forms are grotesque, but they pale in comparison to the grotesque mind of their creator and jailer. Similar to the cosmic horror genre, the idea of the monster within is steeped in anxieties toward scientific progress – yet somehow, it is timeless and intrinsic to the way we conduct ourselves.
We hope you enjoyed this journey into the wild and wonderful world of monster folklore! Did you learn something you didn’t know before? How about something you wished you hadn’t learned at all? For more monster lore, hauntingly fun how-to’s, and everything Halloween, be sure to check out the Spirit Halloween Blog. Stay curious, stay scary, and keep your eyes peeled for the creatures that lurk in the darkness!
