Just about every culture has its share of monsters, and whether they’re slain by a hero or said to be still haunting the deepest, darkest, children-shouldn’t-go-there-iest parts of their landscape, these creatures can be excellent fodder for the storytelling imagination.

Part of my mission during my recent deep dive into world mythologies was to learn more about some of these lesser-known cryptids, critters, and beasties. Here are some of the ones that most tickled my fancy.

 

Ahuitzotl

Culture of origin: Aztec

The Ahuitzotl is a creature mentioned in the 16th-century Florentine Codex. Said to live in springs and lakes, it serves as their guardian, protecting the fish that live there from people. The size of a small dog, it’s described as similar to an otter, with sleek, slippery back fur that spikes when it’s on dry land. The main difference is that it has a prehensile tail with a human hand sprouting from the end of it.

Ahuitzotl would lure people to the water’s edge, sometimes by imitating the cry of a baby. It was also said to make fish and frogs rise to the surface to lure fishermen. Once it caught people, it drowned them and ate their eyes, nails, and teeth, which don’t seem like the tastiest bits of a person but did make it easy for people to tell when someone was killed by one and not a run-of-the-mill drowning. 

Aigamuxa

Culture of origin: Khoikhoi

Also called Bushmen, aigamuxa mostly look like people but with the major difference that their eyes are on the bottoms of their feet. Because of that, they have to do handstands or lay down with their feet in the air to see where they’re going. That’s good news for anyone who encounters one, since if they catch you they’ll rip you apart and eat you.

Baku

Culture of origin: Japan

 

Not all monsters are scary and evil, and the baku is case in point. Looks-wise, you’d probably be pretty creeped out to see one. They’re made from pieces left over after making other animals, with an elephant’s trunk, a tiger’s paws, the eyes of a rhinocerous and the tail of an ox.

Unlike most of the other critters on this list, though, a baku doesn’t attack people. Instead, they eat nightmares. If you have a bad dream, you can summon a baku to devour it so you can sleep peacefully. You don’t want to just summon them willy-nilly, though—if you run out of bad dreams to feed them, they’ll start eating your hopes and desires, instead.

Batibat

Cullture of origin: Ilokano/Filipino

Back to the evil beasties, the batibat is a vengeful demon that looks like an obese woman living in trees. Most of the time they leave people alone. If somebody cuts down their tree, though, they stay with the wood and start haunting whatever that tree is used to make.

When batibats get especially dangerous is if the wood they haunt is used as the main post of a house. Then, they’ll attack anyone sleeping in the home, invading their dreams and laying on them to suffocate them, making it so they can’t move when they wake up. There are similar myths to explain sleep paralysis from various world cultures, but this version seems especially rife for climate fiction writers or others who want to make a horror story from humans invading natural spaces.

Chemosit

Culture of origin: Nandi

Also called a nandi bear, the chemosit is one of the most distinctive-looking cryptids I came across. It’s half-man (on the top) and half-bird (on the bottom) with a single clawed leg and nine asses. To make up for the one-leg-ness, it walks around using a spear for support. It’s also twice the height of a human and has a red mouth that glows like a lamp at night. 

That mouth is what the chemosit uses to lure people to their doom. It also sings which, combined with the light, makes people think there’s a party up ahead. Luckily, once it eats someone, all isn’t lost—their friends can get them back by cutting off the chemosit’s thumb or big toe.

Joint-eater

Culture of origin: Celtic

Also called an alp-luachra, a joint-eater is a parasitic variant of the fairy. Basically they’re like a supernatural tapeworm. They first show up as a newt that climbs into someone’s mouth when they fall asleep beside a stream or spring. From there, they climb down the victim’s throat and live there, eating half of their food. You can lure them out by eating a bunch of salty food then laying next to a running stream. 

Kappa

Culture of origin: Japan

 

The kappa is a mischievous water demon from Japan that, like many aquatic cryptids, are most famous for dragging people underwater to eat them (and the kappa’s choice of internal organs makes much more sense than teeth and nails). They’re humanoid but with webbed hands and feet and a turtle shell. They also have a dish on their head filled with the water from their home stream. If they go on land and the water spills, they can’t move again until someone refills it.

Stories of kappa range from them being villainous murderers to cute troublemakers, depending on the tale. Even the murderous ones are fairly pleasant, though, and they’re polite to a fault. In fact, that’s the best way to defeat one—just bow to it, and it’ll be compelled to return the gesture and spill out its water. They also love cucumbers and sumo wrestling, are averse to sesame and ginger, and have three anuses so they can fart three times as much as normal humans. In some stories, you can make a kappa your servant by pulling off one of its arms, and it’ll do favors or share its knowledge to get its limb back.

Mintuci

Culture of origin: Ainu 

Another Asian water beastie, the mintuci is mostly human-shaped but with purplish skin the texture of a turtle’s, and either a bird’s legs or four sets of hooves. What’s most unique about the mintuci, though, is that its arms are connected—pull on one and it’ll get longer while the other gets shorter.

Mintuci are malicious, said to drown animals and people then disembowel and eat them. They can also possess people, especially women, who will then try to seduce men (presumably toward the water to be killed). On the plus side, fisherman have better luck in lakes and rivers where mintuci live, so it can be a good thing for a town so long as they don’t mind the uptick in violent drownings. 

Ochokochi

Culture of origin: Georgian

The ochokochi is similar to a satyr or sasquatch: a large forest creature that’s mostly-human and covered in shaggy hair. Their main distinctive feature is a sharpened bone that sticks out from their chest like an axe blade. They kill by taunting passers by then hug them to death with their chest axe. And, speaking of monsters with oddly affectionate methods of killing victims…

Ovda

Culture of origin: Finnish 

Another cannibal forest monster, the ovda looks even more human than the ochokochi in most reports. From a distance, they just look like a naked person. Once you get close, though, you’ll realize their feet point backwards. In a similar “killing with love” kind of tip, they tickle their victims to death, then eat them.

Tarand

Culture of origin: Greek

 

Lots of Greek mythology has been laced into modern Western folklore, but it’s also vast and there are plenty of hidden gems. One of these is the tarand, a chameleon moose. It changes its hair to match its surroundings and, as such, is exceedingly difficult to catch. It also had skin as hard as armor and was the size of a bull with antlers like a stag, which basically makes it sound like a beast not to be fucked with.

Xiezhi

Culture of origin: China

The xiezhi is a variant of the unicorn that basically looked like an ox or goat with thick fur and a single long horn sprouting from its forehead. Xiezhi were both highly intelligent and had a well-developed sense of justice. In fact, they could sense if someone was guilty of a crime. Legend says that Gao Yao hired a xiezhi and used it in court, which saved them the whole annoyance of a trial and also took care of the whole sentencing and execution part—they’d just let the xiezhi ram the guilty with its horn and that was that. 

Yara-ma-yha-who

Culture of origin: Australian Aboriginal

Last but certainly not least is this fun little guy from the outback who’s sort of like an amphibian vampire. The yara-ma-yha-who is a red frog-man with a large, toothless mouth and suckers on its hands and feet. They hang out in fig trees, then drop down on people who walk under them and drain their blood through their suckers, swallowing their remains.

Like with vampires, though, the victims don’t just die. After the yara-ma-yha-who swallows someone, they take a nap and then throw them up. The person looks normal except a bit shorter and with a reddish tint to their skin. Gradually, over the course of a few feedings, the victim turns into a yara-ma-yha-who themselves.

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#Mythology #Worldbuilding #Fantasy #Horror