After his first run-in with a wendigo, Dad had this to say:
Cannibalism plus magic equals a dark, dark road. I've never seen anything so hungry. Every motion and sound and breath of the wendigo is about hunger. It's stealthy when stalking its prey, blindingly fast when pouncing, savage and ravenous when eating.
I wish I didn't know about that last part, but you see things in this job.
Algernon Blackwood didn't know the half of it.Algernon Blackwood wrote a famous horror story called "The Wendigo". We got a kick out of it but have to agree with Dad, too-once you've really seen a wendigo, some of the zip is gone from the story.
We've taken out a wendigo, and it wasn't easy. Hunters who don't bat an eyelash at your average spirit speak of the wendigo with the kind of respect due a dangerous adversary. And speaking of hunters, one of the legends from the job was Jack Fiddler, a Cree Indian who claimed at least fourteen wendigo kills-the last in 1907, when he was eighty-seven years old. That one got him thrown in prison, which we can tell you is still one of the perpetual hazards of the family business.
Another winter spirit is the yuki-onna. It's from Japan. Typically appearing as a beautiful woman, the yuki-onna is possibly the spirit of someone who has died of exposure-although we're not quite sure why they're always female. Don't men ever freeze to death in Japan? Her modus operandi: she appears to people who have gotten lost in a snowstorm and either kills them outright or leads them on, promising shelter, until they die. A variation on the lore says that she appears to a parent searching for a lost child, and in this manifestation she holds a child in her arms. When the grateful parent takes the child from her, he or she is frozen in place and dies.
Occasionally her predations take on a sexual flavor, and she leads men to what seems to be a shelter and then, well, you know. Kills them. But not right away.
A slightly more merciful incarnation of the yuki-onna tells of a young boy lost in a storm. The spirit finds the boy and lets him go because of his youth, on the condition that he never tell anyone that he has seen her. He agrees, but years later, he tells his wife the story-whereupon his wife turns out to be the yuki-onna. Again she spares him because he is a good father to the children they have reared together, but because he has broken his promise, she disappears, melting away as if she were made of ice
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Supernatural the book of monsters, demons, spirits and ghouls
Non-FictionI'm just writing the whole Supernatural The Book Of Monsters, Spirits, Demons, And Ghouls book for people who don't have access to it.® xx All copyrights go to Alex Irvine, I don't own anything here :)