CHENNAI: Who doesn’t love a good monster? Where would the great mythologies of the world be without their great monsters? There’s something fascinating and creepy about how they epitomise our darkest fears. Let’s take a tour of some of the most terrifying monsters legend and folklore and the works of fiction they’ve strayed into.
The Barghest: This hound dog is no cuddly puppy! A fearsome, huge black hound, he has vicious teeth and claws, and haunts the north of England. The barghest haunts desolate moors and preys upon hapless travellers. He is also known to have entered cities like York, and wreaked havoc in the more seamy parts. Indeed, legends of the barghest are most concentrated in Yorkshire, and this legend provided the inspirations for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, where much is made of the eerie Yorkshire moors and the legendary hound who haunts the accursed Baskerville family. Never fear though — Holmes is around to hunt the hound and cut him down to size!
The Selkie: Famous in Scotland and Iceland, the selkie lives in the ocean as a seal, but removes its fur to become a human being on dry land. If you find a selkie’s discarded seal-skin on the beach and take it away, the selkie cannot return to its watery home. Human beings who have married selkies in their human form and have had children with them may wake up to find their families transformed into seals. The selkie has influenced many great stories over the ages, but I’d like to draw your attention to this recent story by the upcoming fantasy author, Sofia Samatar, Selkie Stories Are For Losers, which you can read online here — http://www.strangehorizons.com/2013/20130107/selkie-f.shtml.
The Vetala: A spirit that haunts cremation grounds and possesses corpses, the vetala is sometimes referred to as the Indian version of the vampire. They are evil spirits who eat human flesh and drink human blood, which is why they are compared to vampires. They try and influence people to turn away from godly ways and commit evil acts. They can be repelled by mantras and laid to rest by performing their funeral rites. In a series of popular legends, called the Baital Pachisi, we are told the story of a vetala who entered into a challenge with king Vikramaditya. The vetala tells him a story every night and then poses a riddle based on it. If the king solves it, he captures the vetala. These stories were made into the popular TV series, Vikram Aur Vetal in the 1980s and there is an excellent translation by Sir Richard Burton.
The Onryo: Japanese folklore is full of terrifying monsters and ghosts. There are creatures that you will be haunted by in your sleep just by reading their descriptions — people with demonic heads and heads that fly off on their own to peer through people’s windows and attack them with fearsome teeth. In contrast, the onryo is fairly straightforward — it is a vengeful ghost. Wronged in life, this onryo extracts terrible vengeance on its enemies, often persuading them to take their own lives. The onryo can also cause natural disasters like floods and earthquakes and its malice can often expand to attack more than just those who caused it harm. Here is a typical onryo story, as told by the American-born Japanese folklore expert, Lafcadio Hearn — http://www5.ocn.ne.jp/~kilib/hearn/works/a_japanese_miscellany/of_a_promise_broken.html.
The onryo is also the inspiration behind the Ju-On series of movies — don’t watch those if you want a good night’s sleep after that.
Of course, there are many more monsters of folklore and legends from around the world that have inspired great stories by writers over the ages. I have room for only a few here. But maybe in the future, we will embark on another journey to the land of the monsters that I could not include here.