Monster #9—The Wendigo

The concept of being lost in the woods and freezing to death is pretty scary. So is the idea of being eaten by wild animals when you're lost in the woods. What could be worse than that? How about being lost in the woods AND eaten by wild animals? Or worse than that? Being eaten by cannibals.

Now... what if you were the one lost in the woods... but YOU were the cannibal? That's pretty frightening too.

The wendigo is a monster that embodies these fears. From the original Algonquian mythology, the wendigo was described as a bloody-lipped gaunt person that reeked of death. Worse... humans could become wendigos if they were overpowered by greed.

From those myths, a number of more modern incarnations of the wendigo have evolved, but the core elements remain the same—there's something out there in the frozen woods that wants to eat you. One of Algernon Blackwood's greatest short stories is called "The Wendigo." From there, the story impressed H. P. Lovecraft and others in his writing circle, notably August Derleth, and as a result, the legend infiltrated the Cthulhu mythos in the form of the Great Old One Ithaqua. The wendigo would go on to show up in Marvel comic books, in video games, modern fiction, and of course in RPGs. I got to be the one to put the wendigo into 3rd edition D&D when for my monster assignment for the 3rd edition Fiend Folio I was asked to stat up some mythological monsters of my choice for inclusion. One of the ones I picked was the ahuizotil (a cool critter I might do in a future monster day entry), but the one I was the most proud of was the wendigo, which was a template you could put on a person or wild animal to turn him or her or it into a ravenous monster. My friend Greg Vaughan got to stat up the Pathfinder version of the wendigo for Rise of the Runelords, but I developed that adventure ("Spires of Xin-Shalast") so I got to get some work in on him there as well.

And, of course, the wendigo's been showing up more and more often in film and TV as well, with appearances in movies like Ravenous and The Last Winter and on shows like the X-Files and (according to Wikipedia) My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

Perhaps scariest of all, though, is the fact that, in a way, this monster's for real. "Wendigo psychosis" is a very real mental disorder that causes one to be overcome with an urge to eat human flesh when other sources of food are readily available. That's right. There could be a little bit of wendigo lurking in someone reading this blog at this very moment. Maybe... even in someone WRITING this blog!

You've come a long way, Mr. Wendigo! Don't ever change!

Not a good time to be unable to run...

Recommended Reading

• "The Wendigo," by Algernon Blackwood
• "Pet Semetery," by Stephen King
• "Ithaqua," by August Derleth

Recommended Viewing

•  Ravenous, dir. Antonia Bird
• Wendigo, dir. Larry Fessenden
• The Last Winter, dir. Larry Fessenden

Story Review—The Willows

--> "It's their sound," he whispered gravely. "It's the sound of their world, the humming in their region. The division here is so thin that it leaks through somehow. But, if you listen carefully, you'll find it's not above so much as around us. It's in the willows. It's the willows themselves humming, because here the willows have been made symbols of the forces that are against us."

—"The Willows," Algernon Blackwood

One of my recent purchases (and the primary source of inspiration for doing a day of short story reviews) is The Century's Best Horror Fiction, recently published by Cemetery Dance Publications. The books are incredible—100 great stories, some of which I've read but, delightfully enough, many of which I have not.

The subject of today's review, though, is a story I've read many times. And reading it again in this book... it still gave me goosebumps.

"The Willows" is, in fact, one of my favorite stories of all time. It's easily my favorite by Algernon Blackwood. Very few other stories come close to capturing the mounting sense of dread and alien horror that Blackwood achieves in "The Willows," and he does it in a way that would (and, in fact, did) make Lovecraft proud.

In this story, two friends making a canoe trip down the Danube river happen upon a strange stretch of land in a flood plain and become stranded on an island that, over the course of the story, is eroded away by the rushing rivers, just as their minds are being eroded away by the encroaching presence of... SOMETHING... from another dimension.


The story builds on itself, becoming more and more oppressive and haunting with every page, until finally at the last, the final line of the story... despite the fact that it's something utterly mundane... is giving me goosebumps right now just thinking about it.
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"The Willows" is...

• ... one of my  favorite short stories. One that I don't get tired of, no matter how often I read it. And one that creeps me out just by thinking about some of the things it implies.
• ... perhaps H. P. Lovecraft's favorite story—"It is my firm opinion that his longish short story The Willows is the greatest weird tale ever written."(from a letter to Fritz Leiber, November 9th, 1936)
• ... probably not a story to read if you're in the mood for action-packed mayhem, but if you're sitting in a quiet room and it's raining outside and your window's open and you can feel a chill creeping through the room... you'll be in the right frame of mind to visit "The Willows."

Grade: A+