Bestiary |
Chupacabra
A bloodthirsty monster that targets domestic animals, especially goats, as revealed by its name, composed of the words suckling and goat. Originally from the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, now found from Maine to Chile, including the Moravian city of Brno. The practically worldwide distribution of the creature, originally lizard-like in appearance, was achieved incredibly quickly: it was first seen in Puerto Rico in 1995, when it was also given a name (its godfather was comedian Silverio Pérez), only to be parodied four years later as El Chupanibre by the creators of the Futurama series in the episode I Second That Emotion. Adoption into popular culture is, of course, a sign of successful introduction of any species, whether natural, unnatural or supernatural. Chupacabra has starred in several films or TV shows (Grimm, Bones, Jackie Chan Adventures). Arguably the first of these, Guns of El Chupacabra, even dates back to 1997. So the creators were pretty quick (and its writers, Scott Shaw and Donald G. Jackson even witnessed the monster's attack themselves while working on the film in Mexico, according to the former). But the panic that hit Puerto Rico in ''95 was also fast-moving; the damage to livestock had to be explained somehow. And people basically like to panic, let's face it.
The chupacabra of the twentieth century was a lizard-like humanoid, with grey-green scaly skin and spines on its spine, stocky and about a meter tall. That's how the first witness, Madelyne Tolentino, described it. Nothing in her information changes the fact that she was actually talking about a creature she might have seen in the movie Species, which premiered at the time. As noted cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, also director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Maine, adds another, less likely but not impossible version of the origin could also be rhesus monkeys. Macaques, which are used as laboratory animals (the RH factor, an antigen found in blood, is named after them). The monkeys, which outside of South Asia make their home in many laboratories from which they can escape, like to put themselves on the back legs.
In the new millennium, however, the monster has changed. Quite substantially - it has stopped hopping on two and has begun to resemble more of a skinny dog. Three teeth in its mouth, the marks of which identify its victims. And in this form it became so popular that it came to our territory. The mention of Brno was not just an attempt at a joke; at Easter 2015, a visitor to the forests of Kohoutkov saw and photographed a strange animal, apparently a dog, which some internet discussants soon identified as a chupacabra. Even with this species, a possible natural explanation was soon found, into which the Moravian sighting would fit: leaving aside the immediate possibility of a sighting of a stray Mexican hairless dog (it too is suspect), there are mainly canids, especially coyotes, sick with mange, a mite-induced disease.
So much for appearance and observation. As for the activity itself, then attacks on livestock may also explain the above: predators weakened by disease or injury seek out easier prey - and domestic animals are such. But what about the blood-sucking? The traces of three fangs?
Would we agree with entomologist Barry OConnor of the University of Michigan that this part is pure folklore? Speaking for myself: Yes, we will. Because we've come to know well over the years the human tendency to dramatically enhance stories.
The reader's choice, of course, is up to the reader himself.
Ilustration by LeCire Vectorised by Karta24 (Image:Chupacabras.JPG) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
18.2.2025 (15.4.2018)
Jack Frost
Apparently, he is a remnant of the old Scandinavian deities called Jokul or Frosti. This personification of frosty weather is – among other things – responsible for ice paintings on winter windows.
18.2.2025 (5.9.2004)
Ínó, later Leukothea
She was born as an ordinary princess. As such, she stepped in the same river (or Greek myths) twice. The first visit wasn't quite right, and if she hadn't held the right child in the second story, things could have turned out pretty badly for her.
Some details:
When King Athamas married a second time, he had the children from his first marriage, Phrixus and Hellé, entrusted to his care. Which Ínó didn't like, so, like a proper fairy stepmother, she made sure they went. She did not, however, drive them out into the dense forest like Hansel and Gretel, nor did she rely on unreliable nature. She managed, by impermissible tricks, to induce her husband to sacrifice Phrixus for the sake of saving the crops. Phrixus stood on the altar, but fortunately, Athamas' ex-wife was the cloud goddess Nephele. She (or Hera, or Zeus) sent a flying golden ram, loaded up the children, and dispatched them to safety, whereupon she and her successor undertook the most legendary naval expedition of all time, the voyage of the ship Argo to Colchis.
Later, Ínó cared for the infant of her tragically deceased sister Semelé, her second contribution to the myths. The nephew had a high-ranking father, Zeus himself. That would have been fine, but on the other hand, there was Zeus' legitimate wife, Hera, who was able to take care of her marital and maternal rights. Even after the illegitimate son – later the high-ranking god Dionysos – was gone, Hera took her revenge. Athamas went mad, killing one of Ino's sons, and the terrified queen plunged into the sea with the other while fleeing from her husband.
Although this might have been punishment for attacking his stepchildren - and there were quite a few of these in Greek myth - Zeus decided to save Ínó after all, as a reward for helping to raise Dionysus. Ínó and her son Melikertês did not drown, the sea nymphs took them in, and the former queen became the goddess Leukothea, protector of sailors. Melikertes became Palaimon, the new protector of the harbors. He was worshipped mainly in Rome, though he was sometimes associated with the minister of the same, Portunus.
A mosaic of Ino, discovered 1833 in a Roman villa in Saint-Rustice, Musée Saint-Raymond, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
1.3.2025 (25.7.2004)
Ladies in color
A long, long time ago, but no, this is a different story, so twenty months ago I covered the White Lady here. Among other things, pointed out that she is a phantom geographically widespread. One of the places that is very close to the ladies in white is the British Isles. There are countless White Ladies there. However not all phantom women will settle for this plain color of their dresses.
Let's go to the catwalk, they can introduce themselves.
First to walk...
Green Lady
This common apparition of many Scottish and English castles would seem to bear some relation to the Green Man, and modern pagan cults are guided by it, but the most famous ladies of this color are of human origin. For example, the Green Lady of the Scottish Newton Castle. She's straight out of an almost Shakespearean story. Only instead of Montagues and Capulets were Drummonds and Blairs of Ardblair. Lady Jean Drummond fell in love with a member of an enemy family. It didn't end well, of course, and the unhappy Jean jumped into one of the nearby lakes and then began to haunt. Although it could have gone the other way, there is a story that the Lady of Newton Castle wanted to win the affections of a certain man and, not intending to leave anything to chance, visited a local witch. She was given the following advice: if she spent the whole night at Corbie Stane, a local prominent stone, and dressed in green, the color of the clothing of magical creatures, she was sure to charm the desired fellow. Unfortunately, she died before she did so, and so for unrequited love, she haunts in green. Most often on the eve of All Saints' Day, which is today's Halloween, and the former Celtic Samhain, the night when the souls of the dead can enter our world.
Another Scottish Green Lady, the one from Balgonie Castle, who appears on the castle stairway and is nicknamed Green Jeanie, is the spirit of someone from the Lundi family, the owners of the mansion. She is kept company by a White Lady, but this is quite common in the British Isles. Longleat House in Wiltshire, for instance, is crowded with ghosts. Besides a Cavalier, Bishop Ken, and Cardinal Woosley, there is a Green Lady by the original name of Louisa Cartelet. She became the wife of the second Viscount of Weymouth, which according to legend was fatal to her, the Viscount is said to have murdered his wife and burnt her body. The remains were also discovered in the late nineteenth century, but realistic history says that the lady died in 1736 in childbirth. And so one could go on, perhaps with Green Jean of Wemyss Castle in Scotland, who was spotted by Lady Millicent Wemyss, the Lady in Green of Crathes Castle, or Helen Gunn of Braedmore, who in another clan war, so common in Scotland, was kidnapped by Dugald Keith, a member of an enemy house, and locked in a tower in Ackergill, from where she jumped out and began to haunt.
But the show continues with another model, this time in grey.
Grey Lady
The soul of an (again) unfortunate suicide who jumped from a nearby bridge haunts at Dryburgh Abbey Hotel in St. Boswell, Scotland, while the Dorset Grey Lady with the company of phantom monks resides at Shaftesbury's Grosvenor Hotel. I know nothing of the origins of the other hotel apparition at Killmichael County House Hotel on the Isle of Arran or The Thorn Hotel in Essex. Nor of the equally grey haunt of Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex, which is kept company by the White Lady, then there is the ghost of a drummer and the ghost of a woman who appears in the form of a white donkey. The Welsh Lady in grey from Ruthin Castle is most certainly the soul of the murdered woman.
As a last sample, the Nanteos mansion, built by Thomas Powell in 1739. It has three ghosts, a lady called the Jewel Lady, who haunts for her jewels, a phantom hunter, and of course, the Grey Lady, who appears when one of the Powells is about to die.
Brown Lady
Watch out, now a very special lady is stepping forward. She is one of Britain's most famous ghosts.
She was probably first seen at Houghton Hall, but when Robert Walpole, the renowned statesman and politician and also the father of the father of the gothic novel Horace Walpole, became the brother-in-law of Viscount Townshend, the ghost moved to the Townsend mansion Raynman Hall. The previous tenure has been forgotten and it is now claimed that it was Walpole's sister Dorothy who became the Brown Lady.
She was first seen at Raynman Hall at Christmas 1835 by Lord Townshend's guests, Colonel Loftus and Mr Hawkins. What did they see? An aristocratic lady with vacant eyes in a ghastly face, wearing a brown dress. The apparitions continued, the next well-known and famous character to see the brown ghost was Frederick Marryat, author of many naval novels. In 1926, Lady Townshend saw the Lady in Brown, but by then it was shaping up to be a sensation.
For at four o'clock in the afternoon of September nineteenth, in the year thirty-six, Captain Provand, thus a professional photographer, with his assistant Indre Shira, photographed on the main staircase of Raynman Hall what even the chemist Benjamin Jones hesitated to describe as a material error. The incriminating photograph appeared in the December issue of Country Life magazine, along with a story about its creation, and the Brown Lady became a media star.
Blue Lady
Berry Pomeroy Castle, which at one time was held by the brother of Henry VIII's third wife. Jane Seymour, has, as it happens, a White Lady who haunts the dungeons. Apparently, it is Margaret Pomeroy, who was locked there by her own sister. But apart from her, it's the specter of the Blue Lady, witness to a horrific act that took place in the ancient days of the Norman invasion of Britain. The Norman lord of the castle raped his daughter and strangled the child who was later born. The poor girl, of course, became a blue ghost when she died.
Pink Lady
In Banffshire's Ballindaloch Castle, the Pink Lady appears alongside the usual Green Lady and the ghost of General Grant.
Which is really the last Phantom in the color of today's Bestiary.
13.3.2025 (12.9.2004)
Grey Abbot
For this apparition, I'll serve the exact address. Here it is:
Clydesdale Hotel
15 Bloomgate, Lanark, Lanarkshire, Scotland, UK.
But he didn't move in. The hotel building moved to him, as it was built in 1792 over the former cells of a former Franciscan monastery. What the Abbot there did so long ago that he began to visit this world posthumously, I'm afraid I don't know, but what is certain is that Grey Abbot scares no one, is friendly, even custodial.
But it wouldn't be a place with a past if it didn't have more ghosts; a child once burned to death in the attic of the Clydesdale Hotel, and his screams still echo in the surrounding rooms.
20.3.2025 (19.9.2004)
Espumeros
These sea creatures appear in Cantabria in the form of fat children playing in the waves. They often honk on the shells they receive from friendly sirens, and because Espumeros are also friendly creatures, they warn fishermen of an approaching storm. They will also use the same object now and then as a sprinkler (with fresh water, of course) when watering farmers' fields.
From the ground up, the Northern Spanish merkids in tunics the color of seaweed and grass are simply positive figures.
20.3.2025 (19.9.2004)
Cherufe
The gigantic Cherufe inhabits a very unusual biotope - namely magma in South American Chilean volcanoes. It feeds on young virgins, the usual diet of many monsters around the world.
The Cherufe has forced the young flesh on itself by awakening volcanic activity and earthquakes. The Wise reacted to this as the Wise usually do, instead of thinking of ways to get rid of the monster, they preferred to stick to the tried and true method of throwing one victim after another into the craters. Until the Sun God got fed up and sent two of his warrior daughters, armed with a magical sword, to pacify Cherufe.
The Vulcans still wake up occasionally, though, it's when the frozen monster tries to get out.
20.3.2025 (19.9.2004)
Ya-o-gah
The Iroquois wind lord Gaoh has a huge bear named Ya-o-gah tied to the entrance of his cave, which is nothing more than the personification of the north wind. This North American professional colleague of the Greek Boreas is truly powerful and destructive - when Gaoh unties him, cold hurricanes sweep across the land, rivers and lakes freeze over with the bear's breath. And perhaps if the head of the wind resort of Iroquois mythology should one day forget to re-tie Ya-o-gah, the bear could destroy the entire country, whether by storms or ice.
20.3.2025 (25.9.2004)
Asteria and Perses
The Titans and parents of the goddess of magic, Hecate. Officially. A certain group of ancient authorities suggests, or outright asserts, that Hecate's father was Zeus; the interweaving of Greek myths and the relations of their protagonists is better left to the level of a simple statement and not subjected to closer examination.
Only one thing needs to be stressed: this Asteria is not the Asteria who had an affair with Apollo, nor the one who had an affair with Bellerophon, nor is she the daughter of Alcyone or Helios. She is the sister of Zeus' mistress, Leto. Their parents Koios and Foibe were the Titans of the first generation; consequently, both were aunts of Zeus. Yet she had to refuse his advances and even flew away from him in the form of a quail. According to Ovid, Arachne recorded this fact in her competition tapestry.
"She also winds Asteria, she embraces the eagle in the struggle," 1) the Roman poet informs us.
It is not easy to walk in front of an eagle in bird form, so other authors add further information.
Asteria is said to have changed form in her escape, and to have fallen from the heavens like an island into the waves of the Aegean Sea; since her name means Starry, it is not really anything astronomically strange. Except that she didn't wipe out the dinosaurs, but remained afloat and – if you haven't figured it out, some ancient Greeks have – was the very stray piece of solid ground that allowed Leto to give birth.
On her herself, if we follow this version of her life story, that is, on an island no longer named Asteria but Délos, she met Perses, another Titan whose function and character we, like the ancient authors, can only guess from the name meaning Destroyer. But this was not a particularly unthinking brawler; Hesiodos gave us the third and last personal information we have about the son of Crius and Eurybia, otherwise the parents of the much better known Astraios: Perses stood out even among the wise.
The two then brought forth a daughter far more famous than they themselves had ever been.
1) OVID. Metamorphoses. Brookes More. Boston. Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922. Asteria before her transformation into a quail captured by Marco Liberi, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
11.4.2025 (4.7.2021)
Python
How to make life unpleasant for her husband's lovers, Greek Hera could give the lectures. Zeus wasn't serious about fidelity and populated Greek myths with a myriad of offspring, from disposable heroes to great men like Heracles, the most illustrious of Zeus' human descendants, and Apollo, the same among gods.
When the latter was to be born, Hera could not well enough employ the tactic of ruthless destruction (one of the most gruesome examples of this method of Hera's is the story of the Libyan Queen Lamia), for the expectant mother of the divine twins Apollo and Artemis was the Titaness Leto. And supernatural beings are somewhat more difficult to kill. But Hera did the trick - from her position as a powerful supreme goddess, she arranged that Leto could not give birth on any piece of solid ground. Moreover, she sent Python, a dragon with a scaly serpentine body, the son of the Earth Mother Gaia herself (remember that origin), to the Titaness. Neither the curse nor the dragon pursuer accomplished the task, and fate claimed its own ironically on the floating island of Délos, thus removing the first obstacle. The second - Python - was stopped by the rocks which, at Zeus's command, emerged from the bottom and detained the dragon; besides, they allowed the island to anchor and ensure its prosperity in later times, derived from tourism.
When Apollo grew up, he first of all took care of liquidating the old accounts (it was in his genes). He found Python and shot him, but as it was a monster otherwise blameless and of good pedigree, he was sentenced to spend his time as a shepherd for King Admetus. The rather trivial punishment (many gods and heroes have served community service) and the offense it punished, however, represents a historical exchange of a Great Goddess for a patriarchal deity; according to myth, Apollo buried Python and built the famous Delphic oracle (with its equally famous employee, Pythia) on the site, but in reality he buried the by-then-respected temple of Mother Earth Gaia with its guardian Python and took the cult into his administration. This is evidenced by the myth itself - for the Sun God not only placed a stone on the grave of his mother's persecutor and declared it to be the center of the world, but also renamed the site from the original Pýthó to Delphi so that no memory of the dragon would remain. Well, at least he had the decency to comment on his seizure, though perhaps – because of the strength of the previous cult – he had no choice but to leave the name of the serpent Pýthon to the priestess, just as, according to another version of the myth, the name Delphi remained after Delphine, the intimate monstrous friend of the shot Pýthon.
And so we come to the crossroads or the monstrous tangle of Greek myth. Although they look like a unified history to today's reader, they are a bunch of often disjointed and unconnected myths of different nations, some, as time went on, put together by ancient authors (for history is written by the victor), others merged in later times and many of them simply forgotten.
For Delphine with the serpent's tail was the sister of Typhon, the father of a number of Greek monsters. And Python (otherwise known as the personification of the north wind) was the local counterpart of Typhon. In any case, Delphine belongs more to his story today; when Typhon drove all the Olympian gods into Egypt (where they took on animal forms) and later pulled all the sinews out of the returning Zeus, it was Delphine who gave these parts of the divine body for safekeeping. But Pan frightened her with his usual roar, and Hermes stole the sinews (or else Cadmus lured them away, saying he needed new strings for his lyre), and Apollo eventually shot the monster.
So take it like a yard sale, and when wearing it, keep in mind that the pants of your suit probably originally belonged to another jacket, and the handkerchief was blown in on the wind from the next door's garden where the neighbor was drying her laundry.
Python, disposed of by Apollo depicted by Hendrik Goltzius (1558-1617), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
11.4.2025 (1.11.2004)
Tieholtsodi
lives, as they say, in Lake Michigan, and so it is obvious that we are looking at another of my favorite creatures, the water ghosts and monsters. If it is still to be seen today I do not know, but I am aware of his unfortunate role in the birth of mankind, in this case, the Navajo.
The Navajo, as we know, once inhabited the distant First World, where they lived in the form of insect people. Dragonflies, grasshoppers, various species of beetles and ants, bats (I know, bats, but explain biological systematics to Stone Age people), and so on.
As is the way with humanity, especially primordial humanity, they may have liked it in the First World, but Eve was already quite the piker. The insect people also sinned against the laws of the gods and were thus expelled by the four deities and the flood. To the Second World, where they lived in harmony with the Swallow People for twenty-four days. Until one insect did something wrong and the migration of the nation continued. To the Third World, the world of the Grasshoppers, where for twenty-four days... That's right, a relapse.
The Fourth World marked a change for the Insect Nation, the gods transformed them into human beings. And populated the area with animals. It was looking like the end of the line, but - no, now they hadn't offended anyone. One day the First Man went across the river in a boat, and after a while the First Woman and the other ladies discovered that they probably weren't going back right away. The river separated the men from the women.
Which didn't suit everyone. One day, a mother and her two daughters tried to cross the water. The mother succeeded.
The daughters – and here, finally, we have the protagonist of this story – were dragged underwater by a monster called Tieholtsodi.
Fortunately, the gods were on hand.
The waters parted and, at the gods' request, one man and one woman entered Tieholtsodi's kingdom, along with Coyote, a familiar figure in many North American legends. In the great house, they found both the two lost daughters and the two Tieholtsodi children. People grabbed people and ran, Coyote kidnapped Tieholtsodi's offspring. Which was a mistake, and it doesn't change the fact that the people didn't know about the kidnapping.
The very next day, many wild animals flocked to human dwellings to ask for protection, and a few days later, the waters began to rise. Until it flooded the entire Fourth World.
Fortunately, its inhabitants managed to escape up the giant reeds to the Fifth World, our world. But the water continued to gush out of the hole they climbed out of until the First Man discovered Coyote's crime, discovered the kidnapped offspring, and realized they weren't out of the big trouble yet. But when they quickly threw Tieholtsodi's children back in, the water calmed down.
The story, which I've only lightly pitched, continues, of course. But since there is no more water monster in it, I'll save it for another time.
11.4.2025 (25.9. 2004)
Qiqirn
The Inuit are famous for dog sledding. Incidentally, they harnessed their sleds differently than Jack London's gold diggers and the real ones; while the palefaces of the North operated tandem sleds, the Inuit sleds were pulled by dogs harnessed in the shape of a tree, with a lead dog at the head. They didn't care about the pedigree of their draught dogs; every northern region had some of the now-famous dogs whose purebred offspring many people now torment in pens (perhaps this fashion has passed, but until a few years ago my neighbor across two gardens couldn't understand that a husky had to run and that it wasn't enough to take her on a leash for a walk, or let her run six by fifteen meters).
Qiqirn, though it has a canine form, would probably not be harnessed. For it is a supernatural dog, enormous, hairless except for the remnants of fur on the tip of its tail, around his muzzle, on its ears and paws, and frighteningly monstrous.
But that's about all that qualifies its to claim other phantom dogs and dog monsters, such as European phantom dogs and dog monsters, starting with Cerberus. Unlike them, it is, despite its appearance and size, extremely timid. As soon as it sees or sniffs the presence of a human, it runs away cowardly.
11.4.2025 (25.9.2004)
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