Happy Sunday, Missians!
Just in case you like a little spookiness in your Sunday morning routine, let me welcome you to the first Monsters of March post for 2019.
Today's Monster is the Wendigo.
Information on the wendigo is courtesy of Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendigo
First off, what is a wendigo?
In Algonquian folklore, the wendigo or windigo (also wetiko) is a mythical man-eating creature or evil spirit native to the northern forests of the Atlantic Coast and Great Lakes Region of the United States and Canada. The wendigo may appear as a monster with some characteristics of a human or as a spirit who has possessed a human being and made them become monstrous. It is historically associated with murder, insatiable greed, and the cultural taboos against such behaviours.[1]
How do they look?
Just in case you like a little spookiness in your Sunday morning routine, let me welcome you to the first Monsters of March post for 2019.
Today's Monster is the Wendigo.
Information on the wendigo is courtesy of Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendigo
First off, what is a wendigo?
In Algonquian folklore, the wendigo or windigo (also wetiko) is a mythical man-eating creature or evil spirit native to the northern forests of the Atlantic Coast and Great Lakes Region of the United States and Canada. The wendigo may appear as a monster with some characteristics of a human or as a spirit who has possessed a human being and made them become monstrous. It is historically associated with murder, insatiable greed, and the cultural taboos against such behaviours.[1]
How do they look?
Basil Johnston, an Ojibwe teacher and scholar from Ontario, gives a description of a wendigo:
The Wendigo was gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tightly over its bones. With its bones pushing out against its skin, its complexion the ash-gray of death, and its eyes pushed back deep into their sockets, the Wendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave. What lips it had were tattered and bloody ... Unclean and suffering from suppurations of the flesh, the Wendigo gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition, of death and corruption.[11]
In Ojibwe, Eastern Cree, Westmain Swampy Cree, Naskapi, and Innu lore, wendigos are often described as giants that are many times larger than human beings, a characteristic absent from myths in other Algonquian cultures.[12] Whenever a wendigo ate another person, it would grow in proportion to the meal it had just eaten, so it could never be full.[13]Therefore, wendigos are portrayed as simultaneously gluttonous and extremely thin due to starvation.
The Wendigo is seen as the embodiment of gluttony, greed, and excess: never satisfied after killing and consuming one person, they are constantly searching for new victims.[14]
What is Wendigo Psychosis?
A culture-bound syndrome with symptoms such as an intense craving for human flesh and fear of becoming a cannibal.[2] In some Indigenouscommunities, environmental destruction and insatiable greed are also seen as a manifestation of Wendigo psychosis.[3]
Is any of this real?
That my friends, I cannot say. I consider myself an open-minded person, so I usually say, anything is possible. Even if such creatures don't exist, it still makes you wonder how did such a legend come about. A person went crazy one day and started cannibalizing other people? Someone was starving to death, and had no other choice but to eat deceased people so he could survive, (and then he became ostracized and considered a "monster" by his fellow tribe members)? Who knows? Let's just say I'm not looking to be out in the dead of winter in some deserted forest to find out.
Where can I find out more?
To find out more about these creatures, check out these sites:
The Wendigo: A Terrifying Beast with an Insatiable Hunger for Human Flesh:
Wendigo-Flesheater of the Forest:
The Wendigo: The North Woods of Minnesota:
Okay, guys....
Don't let any wendigos get you until we see each other again! See you back here next Sunday for our next Monster of March.
Until then,
This is your host J,
signing off...
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