Deep within the folklore and mythology of the indigenous peoples of North America lies a chilling and haunting creature known as the Wendigo. With its origins rooted in Algonquian legends, the Wendigo has captivated the imaginations of people for centuries. In this blog, we will delve into the spine-tingling lore surrounding the Wendigo, exploring its origins, characteristics, and enduring significance.
The legend of the Wendigo originates from the beliefs and stories of various Algonquian-speaking tribes, including the Ojibwe, Cree, and Innu peoples. According to the lore, the Wendigo is a malevolent spirit or creature associated with winter, famine, and cannibalism. It is said to be born from the darkest recesses of human desperation and the consuming hunger for survival.
Characteristics and Appearance:
Described as a gaunt and emaciated creature, the Wendigo is often depicted as towering in height with elongated limbs and a skeletal frame. Its skin is pale and stretched tautly over its bones, while its eyes glow with a fierce and ravenous hunger. The Wendigo is often associated with the frigid winter wilderness, lurking in the forests and preying upon unsuspecting individuals who venture too close.
The most prominent characteristic of the Wendigo is its insatiable appetite for human flesh. In legend, it is believed that those who resort to cannibalism in desperate times invite the transformation into a Wendigo, forever cursed with an unquenchable hunger. The creature is said to possess an endless craving for human flesh, driving it to hunt and devour its victims relentlessly.
Symbolism and Cultural Significance:
Beyond its terrifying nature, the Wendigo holds deep symbolic meaning within indigenous cultures. It represents the consequences of greed, excess, and the imbalance between humanity and nature. The Wendigo serves as a cautionary tale, reminding individuals of the dangers of succumbing to their darkest desires and losing touch with their own humanity.
The Qiu brothers,Qiu Xingshan and Qiu Weiqing moved to Shanghai as migrant workers. The world was ravaged due to wars and people had to work day and night for food. Both the brothers worked under a German businessman. As the war went on, the German had to flee china leaving all of his assets behind in the care of the Qiu brothers.
The cost of paint was soaring during that time, the brothers started paint business and became a millionaire overnight. They built two majestic identical mansions with big gardens for each of them. The gardens were a sort of sanctuary on their own having all kinds of wild animals roaming around. There was a tiger, a crocodile in the pond, hundreds of birds that flew up in the sky during noon obscuring the sky. There were all kinds of exotic animals and birds that roamed around in the enchanted garden.
But the days of luxuries were short lived. It seemed that just like a cursed vessel from which you can get whatever you wish for albeit you will have to pay heavily for those wishes, the Qiu brothers were granted those luxuries but they had to pay with something neither they or anyone else could have imagined. The Qiu brothers vanished in thin air leaving their mansions to rot. Whether it was a vessel or the place on which they built the mansion was cursed, we would never know for sure. The animals were either sold off or were eaten by the people of the city when there was a widespread famine and people had nothing to eat.
Later one of the mansions was torn down and the other one was set to be moved to a different location clearing the space for some other new buildings in the growing city of Shanghai. It’s the cycle where old things no matter how great and majestic they once were are replaced with new things, the old always have to make way for new.
Here outside the Qiu mansion, the labourers were working on moving the mansion along with its foundations, but the story of the house was yet to end and something really weird happened. All the workers were rushed to the hospital because they were bitten and chased by animals that they had never seen in their life before. Nobody could work out anything about those animals that can give those sort of bite marks. A search of the whole mansion and its grounds were conducted by authorities but there was not a single trace of any living thing inside the house let alone the animals. The workers refused to work there.
There was a hotel adjancent to the abandoned mansion. The staff claimed that they would often witness mysterious animals wandering in the garden during their night shifts and some of the staff have even claimed to have been chased by these animals. A lady who lived near the site of the mansion even claimed to have seen a dragon-like creature in the garden. While the mansion and the area surrounding it is shrouded by mystery, the mansion was moved in 2010 to a new location where it stays abandoned to this day but people who visit there still claim to witness some sort of paranormal activity.
I grew up pretty close to this small town whose name means “fragrant water” in my local language. How did that come to be, you say? Well well well I’m glad you asked.
Apparently long long ago there’s a king who’s suspicious of his wife. He’s all like gurl you’re cheating, you gotta be! And the queen was like nooooo I’m not! I swear! But the king was not convinced, and kept accusing her. Eventually he decided that the queen is to be sentenced to death. Exasperated, the queen said: “fine, kill me. But then throw my body into this water right here and if I’m innocent the water will become fragrant,”.
The king was like LOL yea right, go die now. /stab
Well, she died. But they humored her and threw her body into the, uh… river or lake or whatever. It’s a body of water. Anyway, lo and behold, a strong flower fragrant starts wafting in the air, just as the queen said it would if she was innocent. The king fell to his knees, probably waving his fists to the clouds yelling a dramatic No0o0oo0000!!!
And then they named the town Fragrant Water. After this legend of a lady who died of shittyhusbanditis, an extremely common disease back in the day. I’ll let yall decide what message / lesson they’re trying to convey by naming their town after this legend. Think before you stab your wives, I guess?
While growing up on the East Coast of the US I would say that the Jersey Devil was the strangest one that I heard, with Chessie the Chesapeake Bay monster being the most wholesome (mostly because of all the children’s books about Chessie).
The little town I lived in has a child’s grave in the older part of the cemetery. It is the only grave in the entire town that has a spiked fence and stones on top of where the body would be. It sticks out when you walk through the cemetery. Further, there is about 6-10 feet where there are no other graves, not the parents, no other kids or relatives. Local teens started circulating a myth that the child was born to a witch who was subsequently murdered after birthing the child. The myth goes that when the child died, they put spikes and stones on the grave to stop the child from rising and killing the towns people as the child would have been a witch as well. This myth circulated so widely that the cemetery put up a little board on the grave saying that the extras on the grave were to prevent animals from digging up the body. It didn’t make as much sense to the town teens as it’s was the only grave in town with those safety measures. People, mostly teens, still to this day go give gifts to the lonely child, lovingly refered to as the Witch Baby, from coins to stuffed animals and flowers.
In 1967, the then Prime Minister of Australia, Harold Holt, swam out to sea and was swept away. It was said that he was caught in a ‘rip’, and dragged out by the current. One of the biggest search operations took place in order to locate him, but was unsuccessful.
His body has never been found, and this has generated a whole bunch of theories. But yeah, pretty weird.
Have you ever had that feeling where you feel like you are awake but you can’t move your body and it feels like there’s a heavy object on your chest ? If not then congratulations you are one of those lucky ones who have not experienced this creepy phenomenon “yet”. Many names have been used to describe this phenomenon, SLEEPING PARALYSIS or OLD HAG SYNDROME are perhaps the most common ones.
Apparently many people who experience this do it very frequently. While asleep people wake up but are not able to move their body and in that moment one can see shadows from the corner of their eyes , sometimes too close for comfort. There are many chilling stories related to sleeping paralysis. There is a scientific explanation for this phenomenon but mostly people who experience these disagree with these explanations.
During these sleep paralysis episodes people often witness some kind of sleep paralysis demons. They have different characteristics for every different person and can look really horrifying according to what some of the people might have described. This coupled with the fact that one cant even move or speak makes it alot more horrifying. Here are some of the stories of redditors who have witnessed these sleep paralysis demons.
1. u/dreams-outrageous
You know, when I was younger (and still a little bit now) I believed that having sleep paralysis was halfway crossing over to another world or dimension. And the demons that would visit me knew I was a little lost, and that thier appearance might be jarring to me, as I was little.
And maybe the habit of just being non threatening and gentle never went away as I got older. I do recall one time I managed to let out this little scared whine, and I swore, the demon shushed me and gently patted my head.
Regardless of whether or not sleep paralysis demons are real, they certainly feel real. So weird. Also good to know that I’m not the only one who has harmless sleep demons.
2. u/binmehdi
I’ve a strange demon. He is old like 50 years, is bald somewhat and has a very satanic face with a beard. He grabs me from my back and sequezes me too much that I scream and scream until my mom or brother comes to my room to wake me up. This doesn’t happen when I am sleeping straight or on the left side but happens when I am sleeping on right. That means even without any weigh on my body I feel him. It has been 4 months since I last saw him. I am poor at drawing but I’ve seen him so much that I can describe his facial features.
3. u/Bloop_bleep_bloopp My first time it was a figure in a motorcycle helmet standing in the doorway of my room. My first time living away from home on my own. It feels like your mouth is sewn shut and your tongue isn’t there anyway even if you wanted to scream, and your body is stapled you the bed, or in some thick substance that doesn’t let you move. I get it less and less often as I get older (think messing around with drugs caused it) and now when I get it I can alter my breathing enough my boyfriend wakes up and can then wake me up. It’s bloody horrible though.
4. u/TheTwiggsMGW
Through college and few years after I had sleep paralysis fairly often. It was never the same hallucination. The first experience was Samara from The Ring hanging over me and dripping water onto me (woke up drenched in sweat). I’ve also just seen the shadows of people on the wall while they spoke nonsense from the foot of my bed, seemingly with ill intent but I couldn’t understand them.
5. u/dreams-outrageous
Most of the time it was too dark for me to see, so it would just be the feeling of something pressing down on me, forcing me into the mattress, and usually accompanied by exaggerated house sounds or the sounds of nature outside of my window was open.
Usually whenever I have them, they appear in the corner of my room. They’re tall, and impossibly thin, with large and long hands, all pitch shadows with red circles where eyes should be. They sorta resemble people?
They usually just come up and sit on the edge of my bed, and pat my knee gently as if to comfort me. They aren’t mean or anything. They go between looking at me, and just looking at things around my room, reading posters, etc.
Eventually they sorta just… dissolve into thin air, and then they’re gone. Its a weird experience, but I’m glad its not deeply horrifying.
6. u/scythevettore
I used to have them when I was younger. I would always wake up and three blob-ish black masses would be at the foot of my bed. No faces but blacken (moreso than their bodies) and sunken in where their face should have been, no sharp lines or distinct figures. Just three separate blobs floor to about 6ft long. Couldn’t move, felt like I couldn’t breathe, and I would just have to lay there until they dissipated. They weren’t violent but felt malevolent. Felt like hours until they left but I had no sense of how much time would pass.
I would like to note that my mother made me collect dolls growing up and would put them in my room. I whole heartedly believe those keep the dead inside but that’s my opinion
7. u/mindfeces
There’s frequently an auditory component to my sleep paralysis.
I intuitively know “they” are on the other side of my bedroom door, soon to enter.
The auditory part consists of the times when I can “hear” (this is a bit more of a dreamlike sensation) savage knocking and rattling. That part is pure fucking torture.
8. u/Wild Sea_9827
Before I was diagnosed with narcolepsy and found out about sleep paralysis, I thought I had ghost encounters, with touching and telekinetic stuff and everything. This new information made sense of my life again.
9. Unknown
I’ve had sleep paralysis like twice. I never had any visual hallucinations though. Just auditory hallucinations. Both times it was the deafening sound of television or radio static. One of the times freaked me out because I had my radio on so I thought that something was messing with it. Tried to get up to see what was going on with it and realized I couldn’t move. Luckily I was familiar with sleep paralysis and was able to wake myself up.
10. kirkrjordan-Bd
Before I knew what sleep paralysis was thought I was straight up haunted…now I know otherwise.
The hallucinations and feeling like you’re buried under a ton of bricks is indeed scary.
What is worse though is that you feel a malevolent presence in the room and it is somehow exerting the paralyzing force onto you… that’s even more scary.
Those 3 things are all scary on their own and worse together but they are all rational fear responses to what is happening. Sleep paralysis fear feels different…it feels like on top of all of the above the chemical in your brain that makes you feel afraid is being injected into you. Pure. Fear. In your brain…completely irrational fear..on top of all the other stuff.
That’s the best I’ve way I’ve been able to describe the horror.
Mysteries of the world 
