Stories about the Wendigo have been told for centuries, echoing fears of humanity's darkest
potential.
Like all of the best beasts of folklore, the Wendigo tales strike up visceral images of
things we all fear.
Here's the truth behind the Wendigo.
So what, you might be asking, is the Wendigo?
According to legend, the Wendigo could be one of two things.
The first possibility is that it's a physical being; a hideous monster that stalks the northern
woods, desperate to sate its unfathomable hunger.
Different stories described it differently.
Sometimes it had the head of a stag, and other times it was closer to a monstrous human,
emaciated from constantly starving.
It was sometimes said to grow in proportion to the size of the meal it had just consumed,
making it impossible for the beast to ever eat its fill.
In other stories, a Wendigo is a malevolent spirit that takes control of men's bodies,
cursing them with an incurable need to consume human flesh.
It was said that this spirit could possess a person who was overcome with selfishness
or greed, leading them to acts of cannibalism.
"And his hunger becomes craven.
Insatiable."
This sort of storytelling is mirrored in the folklore of other cultures: If you don't behave
then Krampus will take you, and if you're too self-involved, you'll become a man-eating
forest ghoul.
The wendigo originates in the northern regions of North America with the folklore of the
Algonquian indigenous peoples.
The term "Algonquian" in this case refers less to a single tribe of Native Americans
and more to a subset of cultures based mostly around Canada, the Northeast U.S. coast, and
the Great Lakes regions.
Many of these societies shared similar dialects and, importantly, the life experiences inherent
in a life spent in the punishing climate of the North.
Starvation and exposure to the elements were very real dangers, and as with any culture,
fears gave birth to stories and mythological personifications of possible threats.
In the same way that concerns about the destructive potential of nuclear technology brought Godzilla
to the modern world, a very real fear of desperation may have led to the proliferation of stories
about the Wendigo.
Different groups had different variations on the mythos, but one thing always stayed
the same: the all-consuming hunger that drove it to take the lives of the unwary.
According to legends, a Wendigo is almost impossible to escape.
They are relentless in their pursuit of food and unaffected by the punishing elements.
On their home turf, the unforgiving cold in the forests of the North, you're pretty much
out of luck.
Some sources say you're no better off if you make it to shelter since the Wendigo, like
the humble velociraptor, has no trouble opening doors.
"It didn't smash a window or break the door.
It unlocked it."
Wherever you go, the creature will follow, raking at you with grasping claws, tirelessly
pursuing the despairing hope that you will be the meal that finally gives it satisfaction.
Oh, and it's also worth mentioning that even if you do escape, you'll probably lose your
mind.
Every so often, a mythological creature will become so iconic that a medical condition
will be named after it.
The chimera lends its name to genetic chimerism, in which an organism has more than one set
of DNA.
We get the word "phobia" from Phobos, the Greek personification of fear.
Narcissism, hermaphroditism, and Proteus syndrome all come from ancient mythology.
The Wendigo, too, has a namesake, and as you might expect, it's downright unpleasant.
Wendigo psychosis is a fascinating condition with a storied history.
It's a term for what happens to people who for one reason or another turn to eating other
people.
Shock factor aside, it's especially eye-catching in that it isn't necessarily a result of being
desperate for food.
In fact, some of the most famous cases of Wendigo psychosis seem to have sprung up for
no reason at all.
Whether it's an actual psychiatric condition or the result of culturally embedded fears
taking hold of people is a matter of debate, but the stories are gripping.
For just over 40 years in the 1600s, a group of French missionaries of the Jesuit order
traveled through New France, a wide swath of North America that is now comprised of
Montreal, Quebec, and regions of the United States acquired during the Louisiana Purchase.
On this mission, the men of the cloth interacted with the indigenous people, hoping to spread
Catholicism.
They published stories of their encounters in a series of books called The Jesuit Relations,
which they used to spread word of their work and attract financial backing.
In a particularly horrific passage, the Jesuits described the ill fate that befell a group
of men they were supposed to meet.
Reportedly, they had been overcome with a mysterious psychosis, which they described
in detail:
"[They become] so ravenous for human flesh that they pounce upon women, children, and
even upon men, like veritable werewolves, and devour them voraciously, without being
able to appease or glut their appetite, ever seeking fresh prey, and the more greedily
the more they eat."
The account continues, and we're told that the afflicted men had to be executed as this
was the only cure for their condition.
It's one of the first Western accounts of Wendigo psychosis in action, and it's also
tied with every German fairy tale for the worst bedtime story ever written.
According to the Edmonton Journal, a man known as Swift Runner was generally well liked for
a while.
He was a member of the Cree tribe, and he had worked as a guide for the local mounted
police.
But toward the end of 1878, he took his family into the woods and walked into macabre history.
The next time he was seen in public was in the spring of 1879.
He claimed that his entire family, including his wife and six children, had died of starvation
during the harsh winter months.
The police at Fort Saskatchewan, however, couldn't help but notice that the man himself
didn't look like he had missed a meal.
They investigated his campsite and discovered grisly remains: bones picked clean of meat,
some with the marrow hollowed out.
A skull with a shoe jammed inside.
When confronted about the crime, Swift Runner confessed to having killed and eaten his family.
Swift Runner's story went on to become the go-to example of Wendigo psychosis since it's
believed that he had ready access to means of survival besides slaughtering and consuming
his entire family.
The full truth will probably never be known, and the world's most famous Wendigo was executed
in late 1879 in Alberta's first government-sanctioned hanging.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a member of the Sandy Lake First
Nation whose name translated to "He who stands in the southern sky."
Known to the Europeans in the area as "Jack Fiddler," he was a shaman, a holy healer with
a particularly sought-after skill set: Jack could fight Wendigos.
Jack claimed to have stopped as many as 14 Wendigos in his life.
His method?
Euthanization.
When people felt the curse of the Wendigo beginning to overpower them, they would send
for the holy man to end their misery before they could do any real damage, safe being
better than sorry.
As it was the turn of the century, tribal traditions were beginning to go by the wayside.
When the Canadian government got wind of a mystical cannibal fighter, they didn't put
much faith in the idea of spiritual medicine by way of execution.
Mounties were sent to investigate and discovered a woman who had been strangled to death in
order to pull the people-eating spirit out of her.
Jack and his brother were arrested for murder.
Before he could be executed, the shaman escaped from jail and killed himself.
If you're one of the millions of people across the world who love Stephen King movies and
novels, you're probably aware that the Wendigo plays a pivotal role in one of his most famous
horror stories.
In Pet Sematary, an upper middle-class family moves into a big, creepy house in a small
Americana town, which is what usually happens to upper middle-class families in horror movies.
Through their friendship with a local alcoholic and a series of merry mix-ups, they discover
that they're living within spitting distance of a Micmac burial ground, abandoned by the
natives because the ground was sour.
In the 1989 movie adaptation, the combination of a woodsy area and a vaguely defined spiritualism
was enough of an explanation to get audiences onboard.
However, in the book and the 2019 remake, there's a cannibal monster helping to cause
trouble for the central family.
Yes, the spirit of the Wendigo is what drives the actions of the undead in Pet Sematary.
As if the central narrative wasn't creepy enough.
For all of the evil attributed to the Wendigo throughout history, at least a little good
has come from it: The Wendigo indirectly contributed to keeping Hugh Jackman employed for the better
part of two decades.
Starting in the '70s, Marvel Comics co-opted the Wendigo legend, taking myths about a bone-thin
forest demon and subtly sculpting them into a comic book villain, 8 feet tall and covered
in muscle.
The Wendigo served as a Hulk antagonist, a man cursed with primal hunger after committing
an act of cannibalism in the Canadian wilderness.
It was during a Hulk v. Wendigo smackdown that Wolverine made his first appearance.
The scrappy little superhero still had a significant amount of rebranding to do before he would
become a household name.
Still, he managed to down the Wendigo without using any silver at all, which must've taken
some effort.
So there you have it: The Wendigo is technically part of the same universe as Iron Man.
No word on when he'll be getting his own movie, or how the MCU would square having a flesh-eating
death demon in the same cinematic universe as, say, Baby Groot, but they've made weirder
things work.
In much the same way that the spirit of the Wendigo lurks in the corners of the forest,
its presence can also be felt across swaths of popular culture.
They've appeared in more than their fair share of B-movies, as well as episodes of shows
like Charmed and Supernatural.
Frightening monster that it is, the Wendigo also makes a great target in the world of
gaming.
They're the main bad guys in 2015's Until Dawn.
Most recently, they appeared in Fallout 76 as the hideous result of radiation-based mutation,
featuring otherworldly, stretched-out bodies, acid-laced teeth, and potbellies waiting to
be filled with delicious wasteland wanderer giblets.
There's even a mission where the player is tasked with killing one while dressed as a
clown because anything is possible in the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout.
And for fans of adding a little bit of horror show nightmarishness to their kid-friendly
cartoon gaming, take comfort in the fact that the maneater from the North can be adorably
summoned in the Scribblenauts franchise.
Horrifying.
No matter what your thing is, it's nice to know that there are other folks out there
who share the same interests.
Lucky for the Wendigo, it's far from the only cannibalistic night-sweat inducer on the field.
"Cultures all over the world believe that eating human flesh gives a person certain
abilities.
Speed, strength, immortality."
There are Iroquois and Seneca legends, for example, that tell the story of the Flying
Head.
The Flying Head is a giant, you guessed it, flying head, said to be taller than a man
and hungry for human flesh.
In some stories, it's the cursed head of a murder victim, out for delicious revenge.
In other tellings, it's the fate that awaits people who turn to cannibalism in the first
place.
Many of the Athabascan tribes indigenous to Alaska, British Columbia, and the Pacific
Northwest told stories about the Wechuge, another man-eater, said to be the result of
a person being overpowered by old, powerful spirit animals.
And what list of human/monster amalgams that will devour you in your sleep would be complete
without fan favorite Baba Yaga?
She's the occasionally friendly Slavic forest witch who lives in a chicken-legged hut and
probably thinks you're delectable.
So to sum up, the good news is that the Wendigo probably isn't real.
The bad news is that, according to the law of averages, one of the other dozen or so
cannibal monsters out there might be.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite monsters are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.