Cold Open A long time ago, I read the book Pet Sematary,
by Stephen King.
I understood immediately how a book like that could become a classic.
The question it poses-if you could bring a loved one back but you knew it would come
at a terrible price, would you do it anyway?-is just rife with explosive storytelling potential.
But there's something else in the book that really stood out to me.
Something even more out of place than walking corpses in a lazy suburban town.
Behind all of this evil, all of the tension and guilt and darkness in the story, is a
single operator, pulling the strings.
That sinister presence... is the Wendigo, of Algonquian folklore.
This was the first time I had ever run across it.
And despite everything else going on in the story, I found myself continuously circling
back to ask: what is this thing?
And why did Stephen King choose to use it here?
Maybe not the most important part of the Tale, but certainly one of the more interesting
bits.
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Body Topic #1: What is The Wendigo?
Do a google search for "Wendigo", and you're liable to find a bunch of vaguely muscular,
pale-skinned, blood-spattered, lanky creatures with deer skulls where their heads ought to
be.
It's a striking visual, but also sort of... generic?
A little reminiscent of Slenderman, the Rake, and other internet pulp horror monsters.
The way it appears in Pet Sematary is, in my opinion, at least refreshingly creative.
King describes it as a two-legged figure of unthinkable immensity, blotting out the stars
where it stands.
Covered all over in shaggy fur, it blends into the darkness.
You might not even realize you're looking at it at first.
Most of the time you don't see it at all-you hear it, cackling with piercing maniac glee
in the distance.
At one point in the story, its face appears as an apparition before the protagonist, grinning
hideously, staring with its putrescent yellow-green eyes, ram's horns where its ears should have
been, white vapor pouring from its nostrils, and a pointed, yellow, decaying tongue.
This visual is so wild, my first time reading it, I actually recall visualizing something
more like...
Japanese hannya mask.
Weird.
But interesting!
The Wendigo in Pet Sematary is sort of depicted as an incarnation of pure evil, its singular
goal to sow misery, horror, despair, and perversion in its wake.
And it's powerful in that role.
This is a monster that wants to do more than harm you-it wants you to abandon your humanity.
Yet... despite all the creativity and the power of the monster in this story, it...
is... just kind of a monster.
Any number of creatures could have fit this bill, certainly any number of monsters closer
to the milieu of the writer and the characters-Christian demons and suchlike.
I don't think it's wrong that King chose to use this monster in this way, but I do think
the Wendigo has far more to offer than just being... absolutely evil and invasive.
A lot of things do that.
Like most myths, the Wendigo certainly isn't a well-codified concept.
In fact, originating in the tales of pretty much all the many Algonquian-speaking peoples
of Northern America and Canada, we can expect to experience a... healthy confusion, approaching
this topic.
But this much is pretty consistent: The Wendigo is described as a deeply malevolent, anthropophagous
(that is, human-eating), supernatural being, strongly associated with Winter, the North,
coldness, famine, starvation, the breaking of taboo, and murder.
One Ojibwe scholar from Ontario says, verbatim, that it is "gaunt to the point of emaciation,
its desiccated skin pulled tightly over its bones.
With its bones pushing out against its skin, complexion the ash-gray of death, and its
eyes pushed back deep into their sockets, the Wendigo looks like a skeleton recently
disinterred from the grave.
Unclean and suffering from suppuration of flesh, the Wendigo gives off a strange and
eerie odor of decay and decomposition, of death and corruption."
From what I've read, that's a pretty reliable interpretation.
It's also pretty typical to see the wendigo, just like in Pet Sematary, depicted as a giant.
Not always, but often.
And one of the coolest versions of the giant wendigo is the one where it's only that big
because it grows in proportion to each meal it consumes, so that it can never be truly
full or satisfied-an image of simultaneous gluttony and starvation, which is one of the
wendigo's deepest themes.
A far cry from some of the more... beefy interpretations I've seen.
Speaking of which, the deer-head thing I mentioned earlier seems like an especially strange decision
to me, because if the Wendigo were associated with any particular animal... it would be
the owl.
Across the various Algonquian languages, the words "owl" and "wendigo" were actually cognates,
very similar in sound.
Even more interesting, apparently some Algonquian peoples see the cry of the owl as a portent
of death.
This on top of the fact that the owl, too, is a powerful boreal hunter, and has bright,
wide, gleaming eyes like the victims of the wendigo help to solidify a thematic connection.
I can so vividly imagine some amazing designs and stories following this template, incorporating
the aspect of the owl into this creature.
Sadly, I don't think I've ever seen it done...
Topic #1: Wendigo Possession and Psychosis The last point of contention about the wendigo
is... whether there is, in fact, a wendigo.
As in, just one of them.
Some folklorists suggest that the earliest stories may it out to be a more animistic
entity.
An embodiment of certain aspects of nature.
Cold.
Famine.
Starvation.
Death.
But there's some speculation that during times of strife, when the stress drove people to
desperation, those who became selfish and greedy, or hungry enough to break the worst
taboo of all, cannibalism, were more and more said to be under the influence of the wendigo.
And here's where the question of plurality comes in: apparently the association these
behaviors and the wendigo became so strong, that the most popular version of the tale
quickly came to tell that these people were not only under the influence of the wendigo,
but that they themselves were becoming wendigo.
Sometimes, the transformation is said to be rapid.
Other time, it's covert and intentionally disguised.
But in all cases, the victim is seized with a variety of dark emotions and impulses: greed,
destructiveness, violence, hunger, intense fear of the transformation or the acts they
might commit, and above all else, hunger-especially a hunger for human flesh.
If nothing is done and the condition is allowed to persist, they will soon turn into the monster
of legend.
And so the cycle continues.
Shockingly, there's actually a medical term for condition: Wendigo Psychosis.
There are plenty of records detailing situations where individuals seemed to undergo this transformation
and indeed committed terrible acts.
There's even at least one documented case of a Wendigo killer, who went around putting
these poor souls out of their misery.
But whether this is an actual psychological phenomenon or the wendigo association is just
a folkloric, cultural explanation for other psychotic episodes is a topic of debate.
It may even be the case that this is a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy-people who know
of the legend begin to believe they're undergoing a transformation under certain conditions,
and the thought drives them mad.
Apparently there are many records of such people begging to be killed before the change
is complete.
Topic #3: Application and Potential This is a lot of really fascinating information,
and if you take it at face value, you have a very interesting baddie indeed.
But folklorists who study this also generally take a lot of care to point out: the wendigo
story isn't always meant to be taken seriously, even by the people who had a hand in creating
it.
The wendigo is a deeply symbolic creature, full of meaning and power.
The themes which accompany this figure are rich and deep.
Greed and selfishness are never fulfilling.
Gluttony is never satisfying.
Desperation can bring out the worst in us if we let it.
Malice and greed can rob you of your humanity.
And more than anything else... cannibalism?
Very bad.
Do not do.
The wendigo we see in Pet Sematary and so many other works is really just a... vaguely
evil, corrupting force, not terribly distinct.
In the worst cases, it's just a spooky monster that's gonna getcha or turn your friends into
other spooky monsters.
These works recognize that there's a lot of intrigue in the figure, but leave out all
the nuance that, in my opinion, makes it so interesting.
So, consider this some free material, with a caution attached:
If you're going to use a symbol or reference in your work, like the wendigo, you owe it
to yourself to find out what it meant in its original context before you try to make it
work in yours.
Not just as a matter of integrity, but as a matter of creativity.
I guarantee you will find dimensions and depths you never knew existed.
Now, someone go out there and make a terrifying owl wendigo for me.
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Outro And... that's it for this video!
There's usually a few weeks between uploads, so if you want more Tale foundry in the mean-time,
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Until then, thanks for watching, and keep making stuff up!
I'll see you...
next time.
Bye!