If you want to hear about what the Wendigo did in another Stephen King novel after the
events of Pet Sematary, then stick around to the end of this video.
Hello and welcome to Horror History, my name is Professor CZsWorld or whatever the HECK
you want to call me.
Today’s lesson is about the Wendigo, the ancient creature that haunts the cursed burial
ground beyond the Pet Sematary in Ludlow, Maine.
Stephen King’s Wendigo is based off of an Algonquian mythological creature, but in the
novel it is attributed to a different Native American tribe located near Eastern Canada
and the northeast United States known as the Mic-Mac tribe, which is spelled like this
in the book, probably a reflection of how Jud Crandall might have pronounced it.
"This was their burial ground."
"Whose burial ground?"
"Mic Mac Indians."
But this is how it’s spelled in real life.
Here are a few pronunciation videos I found.
“Mi’kmaq.”
OK, so now I know how a robot would pronounce it.
Let’s try to find the human version.
“Mi’kmaq.”
“Mic….
mac....”
HAHAHA
So the Wendigo legends told of a huge bipedal creature, around 15 feet tall.
Some versions of the legend tell of a more human-like form, others skew more beast like,
but all seem to have a few features in common: they are extremely thin from starvation, to
the point where you can see their skeleton poking through the skin all Eugenia Cooney
style, or even wasting away to the point where the skeleton is just exposed.
They typically have a stag’s head and antlers, often have claw-like hands, a wretched smell
of decaying flesh, and patches of fur stained with human blood.
This is because the legend is told as a metaphor for greed, consumption and starvation in times
of famine as a way to scare the tribesmen away from taboo ideas such as cannibalism.
Some versions of the legend tell of humans who were overtaken by greed turning into Wendigos,
or in the case of Pet Sematary, those who came into contact with The Wendigo would become
cannibals.
Let’s explore life of the Wendigo as depicted in the universe of Stephen King’s novels.
The first mention of the Wendigo dates back to the pre-1600s when the creature came across
the Mic-Mac burial ground in Ludlow, Maine.
The Wendigo used it’s demonic powers to curse the ground, and the tribe soon discovered
that any corpse buried there would be brought back to life by The Wendigo.
Those who have witnessed these reanimated corpses claim that they can understand some
truth behind the stereotypical depiction of a zombie in popular culture, because the corpses
would come back as a shell of their former selves, with evil intentions to inflict physical
and psychological harm to all of those they come in contact with, including the consumption
of human flesh.
The Mic Mac tribe came to understand this new, dark power that pulsed throughout their
resting place and abandoned it some time before settlers arrived in the 1820s.
What I would have done if I were them, is forget about all this cannibalism stuff change
my name to the Big Mac tribe and open my own burger restaurant.
Mic Mac Donalds -- and there’s a guy just up the road who’d love to be the mascot…
Ludlow became a small agricultural community, so a main road was established to send crops
out to be sold on the market.
The Wendigo continued to stalk the woods to the north of this road, and it’s insatiable
hunger continued to build.
At the very end of the 1800s and into the early 1900s, the road became more of a truck
route as automobiles were becoming more prevalent, which made it a very dangerous place, with
truckers seeing it as an open stretch of country road to blow through despite the fact that
there were families situated on that road.
Some say the Wendigo had something to do with the reckless behavior of these drivers, because
it had some kind of evil influence within a certain radius of the ground that it soured.
Drivers have reported a sudden urge to drive fast when crossing over into Ludlow and not
being able to pinpoint why.
This led to an increasing amount of deaths from pets who had wandered into the road and
been struck down by these trucks.
For this reason, the kids of the town established a Pet Sematary in the woods, and I personally
think it’s no coincidence that this location was chosen just shy of the Mic Mac burial ground.
I’d guess that the Wendigo’s influence manipulated these kids to choose this location.
At some point, someone climbed over the deadfall on the edge of the Pet Sematary, and
ventured throught the swamp and into the cursed grounds to bury their pet.
It’s not clear who the first person was to bury a pet there -- but those who did received
some kind of curse from the Wendigo, and they’d almost always end up showing a friend or loved
one the power the burial ground.
The animals who were buried there would be revived by the Wendigo and come back with
the stink of the ground they were buried in, and were usually be meaner and more violent
towards other small animals and sometimes humans.
However, reviving pets who met their fate too early was not seen as a horrible offense,
because they lacked the ability to communicate with humans, so the psychological attacks
were not a factor.
It’s just a good thing they didn’t bury Scooby-Doo, Brian from Family Guy, Garfield,
Stimpy, Courage, Meowth, Detective Pikachu, Lucy even though he’s not technically a
cat…
Charlotte from Charlotte’s web, and for the love of GOD….
The Cat In The Hat.
By the time Jud Crandall’s dog Spot died in 1910, a boy named Stanny B had already
discovered the burial ground’s secret and passed it on to Jud.
When Spot was reanimated by the Wendigo and came back from the dead the next, day, Jud’s
father was hardly surprised, it seemed that he too knew of the burial ground’s power,
although it’s unclear if that was from experience or if he had just heard about it.
He warns his son not to go to the cursed ground again, and Jud agrees.
He keeps this promise for a many years, until one fateful day, when the Wendigo lures Jud
back to the burial ground.
Spot lived on another four years after that and despite a couple small incidents was mostly
the same, despite being horrifying to Jud’s mother.
"Jud, come and get your dog!
He stinks of the ground you buried him in!"
But the cycle continued for years, and it was mostly kept secret by the town’s locals.
At one point a man named Lester Morgan tried to revive his prized bull Hanratty.
It is not entirely known how he managed to lug the massive corpse all the way to the
burial ground on a sledge, but it is implied that he received some help from The Wendigo.
When Hanratty came back, his possession by the Wendigo was particularly nasty.
He would charge at anything that moved… animals, people and even trees swaying in
the breeze to the point that his horns were broken and his head was bleeding.
Lester had to put Hanratty down once again to spare any additional damage.
The Wendigo continued possessing animals buried in the place beyond the Pet Sematary until
1941, where a young Ludlow man named Timmy Baterman was killed during World War 2.
Should have stayed home and played Apex Legends Timmy my man.
His body was sent back to Maine for his funeral, but his father, stricken with grief, buried
his body in the Pet Sematary, the first known human burial since the Mic Mac days.
The Wendigo brought Timmy back, and possessed him to scare the townsfolk, who all believed
Timmy was dead.
People started to notice him walking along the roadside with a blank look and gossip
of his return spread faster than a Shane Dawson conspiracy.
OK, maybe not that fast.
Got a little carried away there.
The Wendigo used it’s knowledge of everything that has happened in the town to torment those
who he interacted with; divulging their most embarrassing secrets and making horrible threats
to some of the women in the town.
Timmy’s father ended up going insane from his undead son’s constant torture, and burned
down the house with both of them inside.
The next major incident took place in the 1980s, over 70 years since Jud buried his
dog Spot for the first time.
Jud had just befriended the Creed family, who had just moved in across the street from
him.
When the family’s cat was run down in the road, Jud took Louis Creed to bury the cat
in the Mic Mac burial ground, finally breaking the promise to his father that he would not
go back there.
Jud believed that he never meant to show Louis the cursed place, that the power of The Wendigo
made him do it, and by introducing Louis to the soured grounds, he transferred the curse
to Louis’s family.
Not long after, the young boy Gage ran into the street and was killed, and I mean freaking
YEETed by an oncoming truck, a tragedy that Jud felt he was partially responsible for
because he showed Louis the burial ground.
The Wendigo has the ability to influence those within a certain radius of the cursed ground
and for the next two days, it constantly puts ideas about digging up Gage and putting him
in the Mic Mac grounds into Louis’s head.
Louis sends his remaining family away to visit his wife’s parents in Chicago, claiming
he needs to wrap some things up at work before joining them.
This gives him the privacy he needs to retrieve his son and take him up past the Pet Sematary
and over the deadfall towards the forbidden burying ground.
His wife, Rachel, senses something is wrong and travels back to Maine on a string of last
second flights, but after just missing the last flight, she’s unable to get there on
time.
She talks on the phone with Jud, who realizes what is happening and tries to stay up and
wait out for Louis, hoping to talk him out of this despicable act.
Despite not being tired at first, Jud quickly starts to doze off and recognizes that the
Wendigo is doing this to him to try to clear any obstacles in Louis’s path.
Jud does everything he can to stay awake, but in the end passes out before Louis arrives.
As Louis approaches the cemetery, the fog around him goes into a swirl and encloses
him.
He feels that the swamp around him is alive and sentient.
When the mist clears, Louis sees a pair of yellow-grey eyes before him.
A spirit with rotting teeth, the curved horns of a ram, and peeling flesh, was laughing
in the distance before him.
As Louis trudged on after that, the face floated before him at a constant distance, until it
eventually faded back into the mist.
The frogs and insects of the swamp go quiet as a huge creature shakes the ground with
it’s footsteps and approaches Louis.
A vile smell fills the air as the monster gets closer to him.
As it reaches its closest point, Louis looks up and sees the sparks of a pair of yellowish
eyes some sixty feet above him.
The Wendigo, knowing Louis is heading to the Mic Mac grounds, lets Louis pass as it continues
going north.
As Louis continues, he comes across a massive claw-like footprint and forces himself to
believe that it was something else to keep himself from going insane.
Louis buries his son in the cursed burial ground, goes home and goes to bed.
During the night, The Wendigo goes ahead and revives Gage, who kills both Jud Crandall
and Rachel.
Louis discovers their bodies in the morning and goes crazy after seeing what the monster
has done to his wife, but the last sane thought that crosses through his mind, is the image
of the Wendigo in the swamp that previous night.
As he heads up the forest path with Rachel’s body, Louis’s physician’s assistant Steve
Masterton sees him disappear over the deadfall, presumably passing on the knowledge of the
burial ground once again to feed the Wendigo’s insatiable hunger with a new set of victims.
It’s unknown what happened to the Wendigo from then until almost 15 years later, in
the summer of 1997.
Actually, it’s not really confirmed that The Wendigo comes back at all, but there are
many people who believe that an evil deity from Stephen King’s novel The Girl Who Loved
Tom Gordon, is in fact, the Wendigo from Pet Sematary.
I don’t personally think there’s enough evidence to draw this conclusion, but there
are some points that I find interesting anyways.
The story is about a 9 year old girl named Patricia McFarland who goes missing while
hiking with her Mom and her brother on the Appalachian Trail in Eastern Maine.
The area she first gets lost in isn’t very close to the woods that The Wendigo prowled
in Pet Sematary, but if you continue down the Appalachian Trail, it does continue to
go toward Ludlow, so it’s possible that the Wendigo traveled this stretch of woods
after destroying Louis Creed’s family.
After getting separated from her family and lost from the path, Trisha continues down
along a stream to try to find civilization, and she notices some disturbing signs along
the way, like a tree that has been slashed at by some giant claws and a decapitated deer,
which is maybe the strongest evidence towards this creature actually being the Wendigo,
considering that Wendigo are most often depicted with a stag’s head.
The further into her journey she gets, the more the voice in her head tells her that
this “thing” is following her, At some point, as Trish starts to hallucinate some
strange images and it’s not entirely clear what’s real and what’s in her mind.
She comes across a trio of robed figures in the form of her history teacher, her father,
and the God of the Lost, the creature that has supposedly been following and watching
her.
It’s head appears to her in the form of one of her fears during the journey, a swarm
of wasps.
After several days she finally makes it out of the wilderness to a road, and the God of
the Lost comes for her in the form of a bear like creature, but she and the hunter who
helps her scare off the deity, are never quite convinced this is an actual bear and both
seem to have the idea in their heads that it’s actually something supernatural.
It could be the Wendigo, or it could be some wild creature that was revived by the Wendigo
and is now being controlled by it.
Personally, I just don’t see a lot of strong connections between the two, and I’d have
to say they are maybe related entities at best.
Just as the Wendigo in Algonquian folklore was used to warn against taboo behaviours
such as cannibalism, the Wendigo in Stephen King’s stories warns against tampering with
the natural order of life.
In Pet Sematary, the Wendigo tempts a doctor who has lost his son to defy nature to bring
him back after being unable to resuscitate one of his patients earlier in the story.
In this sense it’s very similar to the classic horror story Frankenstein, because in trying
to create life, this doctor ends up creating a monster.
The Wendigo represents the taboo; that line that should never be crossed by any man.
It is an evil force and an embodiment of those things that go against nature.
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon also contains themes of man vs nature… or at least 9 year
old girl vs nature… but they are conveyed in a much more positive way, with Trisha “defying
nature” by overcoming seemingly impossible odds to survive.
So that wraps up today’s lesson here on Horror History.
Your homework is to like this video and let me know what your thoughts are on The Wendigo
and The God of the Lost in the comments.
Are they the same?
Are they related?
Or are there other similar themes that tie them together?
I’ll be looking forward to your responses.
Check out the video on the left for 47 Things You might have Missed in 1989 Pet Sematary
movie adaptation, and if you’re a fan of Stephen King, you’re definitely going to
want to subscribe to CZsWorld for new horrors every week, ring that deathbell for notifications
and I’ll see you in the next one.
Assuming, we both survive.