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Name Your Favorite Myth/Folklore Monsters
The first one that really caught my attention as a kid was the hydra. The whole cut-off-the-head-and-two-more-take-its-place thing was really thrilling in that way that such things are when you're six. I'll be damned though, if that metaphor doesn't come up over and over again in life whenever something unpleasant just won't go away. A close second was another Greek legend: Medusa.
I love the phoenix so much i got one tattooed on my back :-)
I was always partial to the Golem, since it could be an ultimate force for good.I did like the "weeping angels" from the Blink episode of Dr. Who.
Randy wrote: "I was always partial to the Golem, since it could be an ultimate force for good.I did like the "weeping angels" from the Blink episode of Dr. Who."
The Golem! Nice one! I remember being captivated by a children's book about the Golem.
Can't seem to find it on Goodreads, though...
Not that anybody cares but found it. The Golem: A Jewish Legend
http://www.speechstuff4kids.com/media...
There is a witch is Slavic folklore called Baba Yaga (roughly translated as old lady Yaga). She lives in a hut with chicken legs and flies in a big mortar with a broom for steering. For some reason I always had a soft spot for her.
Evgeny wrote: "There is a witch is Slavic folklore called Baba Yaga (roughly translated as old lady Yaga). She lives in a hut with chicken legs and flies in a big mortar with a broom for steering...."
The hut is featured in one segment of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition", and there's a witch character based on Baba Yaga in Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series.
The hut is featured in one segment of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition", and there's a witch character based on Baba Yaga in Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series.
as a kid, it had to be the Lock Ness Monster...i guess that falls under "folklore" more than myth, and MAYBE something odd is in the Lock, but it sure isn't a bunch of dinosaurs like I thought (hoped) as a kid
...sure was fun to dream about tho....
...sure was fun to dream about tho....
Spooky1947 wrote: "as a kid, it had to be the Lock Ness Monster...i guess that falls under "folklore" more than myth, and MAYBE something odd is in the Lock, but it sure isn't a bunch of dinosaurs like I thought (hop..."I bet we're around the same age. When I was a kid all of that, the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman, UFO's, were big news. It broke my heart as one by one, they've been debunked. When the guy who made that Bigfoot film came out and admitted it was a hoax right before he died, I was like, "What are you doing? Why did you tell us?"
I love all monsters. However, since the Greek monsters were my first discovery, I gotta go with the Greek monsters. Kraken, hydrae, medusae, harpies, cyclopi, etc. Ahhh the variety!!!
I like Beowulf and fav monster - dragons. The Greek ones are cool as well.
Ghosts,I don't like ghosts.They scare the bejeezus out of me.
Lol. No that is clowns, definitely clowns.
kraken are way cool...so are mermaids and sea monsters...a book i loved back in the day was In the Wake of Sea Serpents, forget who wrote it, but he was a big-shot biologist or something...gave the subject a fair hearing, made for lots of day dreaming in class...lol
Have to be Gargoyles for me - saw the 1972 movie when I was very young (in 1972 when I was 6 I believe) - too young to have been watching I'm sure but... :-)Very scary at that time!
Globalt38 wrote: "Have to be Gargoyles for me"Have you seen the Blink episode of Dr. Who?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YgykF...
"Dab"a soul stealing spirit.I could have this completely wrong it is explained better in "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down".
Randy wrote: "Globalt38 wrote: "Have to be Gargoyles for me"Have you seen the Blink episode of Dr. Who?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YgykF..."
Not a big Who fan but that one looks interesting!
I have a soft spot for Norse mythology and I do love Loki's kids. Jormungard/Jormungandr, Fenris/Fenrir and Hel/Hella. All such awesome threats - especially Jormungard.
Being a bit of a Rusophile, I'm way into the traditional Slavic entities. Domovoi (house guardians), Firebirds (phoenixes), Baba Yaga (child-eating witch who lives in a hut with chicken legs), and Rusalkas (nude water maidens who lure men into their pond and drown them. If I had to choose one way to go out...) ;)
Val wrote: "I have a soft spot for Norse mythology and I do love Loki's kids. Jormungard/Jormungandr, Fenris/Fenrir and Hel/Hella. All such awesome threats - especially Jormungard."Nice call! As a kid, I worked my way to Norse mythology via Marvel Comics and was totally fascinated by what was really, an entirely different world. Like, the fact that Loki HAD kids at all, since, if I remember correctly, he actually gave birth to them. And yes, the Midgard Serpent stretching all the way around the world -- woah.
My favorite thing about the world serpent (Nidhog) is that it's gnawing the roots of the tree of life. That's the ultimate evil- tearing down a whole world on your own head.The minotaur got me into reading in the first place, so that has a special place in my heart.
My all-time fave is probably the manticore. I love The Worm Ouroboros partly because it's the only time I've seen a manticore properly used in fiction.
The Dr. Who weeping angels aren't really mythological - I don't think - but it seems like they aught to be. And that is their strength.
G33z3r wrote: "The Psychology of Invisible Monsters"I do think an invisible monster is the scariest.
Gene wrote: "I'd like to see what people come up with for the most disgusting and/or creepy creatures to come out of traditional myth and folklore.One notes that this conflicts with the title given this topic, namely favorite.
I'll lead off with that old Irish favorite, the Banshee."
I hope that's for the creepy side, since what a Banshee does is lament a death, and nothing more.
Of course, having foresight, she would lament it before the death, which is kinda -- unnerving.
Mary wrote: "what a Banshee does is lament a death, and nothing more...."There's still room for a good author to ply with the concept.
Sir Terry Pratchett used a banshee once - I think it was in Making Money
And didn't Clifford Simak have one in The Goblin Reservation ?
Alan wrote: "Mary wrote: "what a Banshee does is lament a death, and nothing more...."There's still room for a good author to ply with the concept.
Sir Terry Pratchett used a banshee once - I think it was in [..."
Yes, Making Money. He used the D&D concept, though, making it a killer. Since that's the point of monsters in D&D.
Aikiko wrote: "I love the phoenix so much i got one tattooed on my back :-)"
Ditto, but for me it is Dragons. I love the dragon! I have a huge fantasy style dragon covering half of my back in grayscale. The tattoo artist had a degree in fine art and had developed his own gun that would imitate the sketch look of grayscale. It's lovely!
Ditto, but for me it is Dragons. I love the dragon! I have a huge fantasy style dragon covering half of my back in grayscale. The tattoo artist had a degree in fine art and had developed his own gun that would imitate the sketch look of grayscale. It's lovely!
Randy wrote: "I was always partial to the Golem, since it could be an ultimate force for good.
I did like the "weeping angels" from the Blink episode of Dr. Who."
The weeping angels and The Library are my favorite (from Dr. Who) as well. They're so superbly creepy!!
I did like the "weeping angels" from the Blink episode of Dr. Who."
The weeping angels and The Library are my favorite (from Dr. Who) as well. They're so superbly creepy!!
Globalt38 wrote: "Have to be Gargoyles for me - saw the 1972 movie when I was very young (in 1972 when I was 6 I believe) - too young to have been watching I'm sure but... :-)
Very scary at that time!"
I once tried to do a study (charcoal) of the gargoyles all over Oxford (UK)...it was pathetic, and I gave it up for a bad job. But, it was fun going around and seeing them all to try to draw them!
Gargoyles are awesome.
Very scary at that time!"
I once tried to do a study (charcoal) of the gargoyles all over Oxford (UK)...it was pathetic, and I gave it up for a bad job. But, it was fun going around and seeing them all to try to draw them!
Gargoyles are awesome.
Spooky1947 wrote: "as a kid, it had to be the Lock Ness Monster...i guess that falls under "folklore" more than myth, and MAYBE something odd is in the Lock, but it sure isn't a bunch of dinosaurs like I thought (hop..."
I went there in 1990, I so wanted to believe! The museum, however leaves it all completely inconclusive. Who knows what people see?
It is a lovely place though.
I did not see so much as a log floating in the loch. :/
I went there in 1990, I so wanted to believe! The museum, however leaves it all completely inconclusive. Who knows what people see?
It is a lovely place though.
I did not see so much as a log floating in the loch. :/
I've been reading up on American cryptid folklore recently, and as a result I've really been getting into the Mothman mythology-- especially the interpretation of the creature as a being from a higher dimension that is adjacent to our own.I also love Tsukumogami, which are a kind of Japanese yokai. When an inanimate object has been around for 100 years, it acquires a soul and gains sentience, becoming an animated creature. This can happen to literally anything- paper lanterns, sandals, fans, hairbrushes. Even bolts of fabric or sliding rice-paper doors. The most well known- though still pretty obscure- tsukumogami is the karakasa obake, which is a living umbrella or parasol.
Going back a few years to the banshees, I always end up thinking of the Disney movie Darby O'Gill and the Little People. That wailing used to terrify me as a kid. Now I wish I could find that movie somewhere to watch it again.I think someone mentioned the Pooka. I've always been more partial to the Kelpie, a shapeshifting spirit that usually takes the form of a horse which carries unwary travelers who try to ride it to a loch or the sea, and drowns them ^.^
Asian mythology has some of the bizarrest creatures. You gotta love the Uma-no-ashi – A horse's leg which dangles from a tree and kicks passersby...
If I have to go for 'creepy': the monster under the bed/in the wardrobe' I was terrifed to look under my bed at night and I wanted nothing more that seeing my wardrobe door closed. (the movie Poltergeist didn't help me with that one for sur).As I grew up in Gabon, Mami Wata was intriguing for me, not terrifying but someone to be warry of.
As for loving: Dragons in any mythologies, although those in the Chinese or Japanese myth have a greater appeal for me. And werewolves: I just love them. Even the 'evil' one. Because I can't see them as evil but more as a force of nature.
Korrigan from the 'breton' (in France) myth are a huge hit as well.
Actually, I have too much love for spirits, monsters and else to choose. Oops.
Pontianak/Kuntilanak. The pontianak is a female vampiric ghost in Malaysian and Indonesian mythology. The pontianak are said to be the spirits of women who died while pregnant.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponti...
There is actually a city called Pontianak in Indonesia because in the old days (less people and development) it used to have nightly infestation of the spirits.
There are many forms of P but the one scares me the most would be the flying head with its entrails following.
As a kid it was the gremlins movie that made me think I had monsters under my bed...
Andrea wrote: "As a kid it was the gremlins movie that made me think I had monsters under my bed..."yeah. This movie traumatized me. Broke the lovely image of Christmas in too many ways. :p
I always quite liked selkies.For terrifying, I'd pick the nuckelavee - I remember seeing a picture of it in Katharine Briggs Abbey Lubbers, Banshees, & Boggarts: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Fairies and finding it genuinely scary.
Since I'm Mexican, it's split between the Mexican folklore ghosts El Cucuy and La Llorona.El Cucuy (the boogeyman) eats mean children. While La Llorona (the weeping woman) is a woman in search of her children, which she drowned to get back at her husband for leaving her for a young woman. She ended up drowning herself, but now in order to get into heaven, she has to find her drowned children. She also drowns any children that come near the rivers of Mexico at night.
In Trinidad folklore, I've always liked the soucouyant.An old miserable woman who sheds her skin at night and turns into a ball of fire. She then flames across the sky and enters your home through any size hole or crack while you sleep to suck your blood.
If you wake up with red spots on your skin, most likely your friend would say the phrase "soucouyant suck yuh"
The Sphinx because she thinks in a human way, but definitely doesn't look human
weird that most of scariest beings mentioned here in various cultures are in female form
As far as creepy legends go, I'd say the Native American Skinwalkers are the ones that freak me out the most.
I like the monster Grendel because he is somewhat mysterious in how he looks. Because of his vague description, he could look like any creature I could think of. I also like his battle with Beowulf in which Beowulf rips Grendel's arm right out of its socket.I also like the dragon Fafnir, which was slain by the Norse hero Sigurd with the sword Gram. Even though I detest dragons being killed, the legend and overall battle was interesting.
I am thinking of drawing inspiration from their battle for one of the fights in my fantasy book.
Grady P. Brown
Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy
Books mentioned in this topic
Abbey Lubbers, Banshees, & Boggarts: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Fairies (other topics)Making Money (other topics)
The Goblin Reservation (other topics)
The Worm Ouroboros (other topics)
Swords and Deviltry (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Grady P. Brown (other topics)Fritz Leiber (other topics)
I'll lead off with that old Irish favorite, the Banshee.