Happy Halloween, everyone! I hope you didn’t get too scared – that would leave nothing for me to do. In the spirit of Halloween, here are some horrible monsters, demons, and other nasty creatures that you didn’t want to know about.
Cannibalistic Arctic Spirits
The Wendigo is a cannibal spirit that lives in Northern Canada and also the Great Lakes Region, i.e. here. It originates from starvation in the cold winter months. If a person is so hungry that they turn to cannibalism, they will slowly transform into a Wendigo.
Wendigo spirits are extremely tall and thin – so emaciated that some say that if they are turned sideways, you cannot see them. They are starving all the time – sometimes they eat their own lips and fingers in their crazy hunger. As a person transforms, they become more and more violent, killing and eating even their own family. The more people they eat, the larger they grow – thus, their hunger can never be fully satisfied.
If the transformation cannot be stopped, these people must be killed before they fully transform.
The Flying Head with Dangling Intestines
The Penanggal is precisely what the title says. There are various origin stories – some say the Penanggal is a woman who made a pact with the Devil and broke it; others say that it is a witch practicing black magic. The most plausible story is that there was once a woman who was taking a bath. When a man walked in; she was so startled that her head jerked up so hard that it came off, dragging her intestines with it. This made her so angry that her floating head chased down the sucker who forgot to knock.
The Penanggal smells of vinegar, because she soaks her loose intestines with vinegar, in order to get them to fit back into her body more easily. The intestines drip poison everywhere, and if they touch you, you develop huge open sores. She also has a long, invisible prehensile tongue that she uses to lick up the blood of mothers giving birth. She may also drink the blood of newborns. There is no escaping – she can move through walls and ooze up through cracks in the floor.
To get rid of one, you should find her headless body and put broken glass in the cavity, so that it shreds her intestines when she tries to re-enter it in the daytime.
There is a similar monster called the Manananggal, which detaches her entire upper torso. This one is capable of sticking her tongue into a pregnant mother in order to eat the heart of the unborn baby.
Both of these look like ordinary women in the daytime.
The Rape Bat
The Popobawa is a creature that appeared in Tanzania in the 1960s. It looks like a bat most of the time, but it is a shapeshifter and can change its appearance. However, you can recognize it by the sulphurous smell it often emits, and also by the fact that it sneaks into your house at night and rapes you in the butt. Specifically the butt, for some reason. It also inverts the stereotypical rapist warning – if you do not tell everyone else, it will come back and do even worse things to you.
It can also possess people. (This is not considered to be an excuse for inappropriate behaviour). If you deny that it exists, this makes it even more angry. However, it can be warded off by the Koran.
Apparently, it attacks more frequently around election time, though it has not yet endorsed any major political party.
The Monster that Licks Poop
Regardless of how clean you keep it, and the wonders of indoor plumbing, bathrooms are still pretty gross. It’s what they’re for. And the dirtier the bathroom, the more the Akaname likes it.
The Akaname has a long tongue, and sneaks into the bathroom late at night to lick up the filth, and by “filth” I mean crusty old poop and pee spatters. It is also red in colour, because in Japanese “red” and “filth” are homonyms, and everyone knows that poop monsters always love a good pun.
Fortunately, the Akaname is not particularly dangerous – it just wants to eat your old poop. Thus, if you go to the bathroom late at night and see a red monster licking up the suspicious dirt with a long prehensile tongue, don’t worry! There is nothing to be afraid of.
The Boraro
The Boraro is a monster found in South America in the Amazonian jungle. It looks like a man, except that it is covered in thick black fur (so like a gorilla, then). It also has big pointed ears, and tusks. However, its most potent weapon is its genitalia – it can pee a huge stream of strong acid.
There are a few things it doesn’t have – for example, a belly button and knee joints. Also, its feet point backwards in order to confuse people. Thus, if you knock it down, it will have trouble getting back up.
It has a soft spot for animals, so if you hunt them, it will get you. If it captures you, it follows a rather curious procedure. First, it squeezes you with its strong arms until your body is just a pulpy mass. However, it does not break the bones or puncture the skin while doing so. Then, it makes a small hole in the head, and sucks out all the liquefied insides until just a dry bag of bones is left. Afterwards, it blows up the skin like a balloon until the person looks normal on the outside, which requires some serious taxidermy skills.
When it is finished with you, you are inexplicably still alive and are able to walk home, dazed and confused. However, you obviously don’t live for very long afterwards.
To escape the boraro, you can do any of the following:
a) Knock it down, as above.
b) Run away backwards, while facing it.
c) Offer it a cigarette.
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