A lot of people find worms… gross. Primitive. Boring, even. But monstrous? I didn’t think so.
I even had one as a pet in grade school—don’t judge me.
But alas, humans can’t
just leave the digesting tubes in peace. Nope, we have to have: Monster Death Worms. Like Graboids,
Sandworms, and Precambrian Worms.
But long before those manifestations, two particular kinds of killer worms
loomed large in global folklore and were recounted in history books: the Indus Worm and the Mongolian
Death Worm.
So how can we account for the purported existence of these creatures? What makes us want to turn the
lowly worm… scary? Or are there actually enormous, terrifying worms out there, roaming the earth?
You’re about to find out.
[Monstrum intro.]
​​By my definition, the “death worm” of myth, fiction, and folklore refers to any soft- bodied,
limbless invertebrate monster or cryptid that moves by crawling, lives at least partially under
sediment, and poses a threat to humans.
The most ancient death worm on record is the Indus Worm.
In the 5th century BCE book Indica,
Greek physician and historian Ctesias wrote that the “only animal” found in the Indus River
was a creature that resembled the larvae that live in fig-trees, but on a much larger scale.
He described a behemoth white maggot with a girth “so wide that a ten-year-old child could
hardly embrace it” – and a length spanning “seven cubits long”. Which, by the way, is close to 3.2
meters [or 10.5 feet]. So this thing was huge.
He stated that this giant worm—called the skōlex by his Greek contemporaries—lived obscured in the
mud, coming out only at night to hunt. According to his account, the creature had only two teeth
in its jaws, one above, one below. It used these teeth to grasp horses, oxen, and camels—dragging
their bodies into the water to drown before consuming everything but the intestines.
Ctesias wrote that although a difficult endeavor,
these worms could be captured. A young goat or a lamb would be chained to a large hook and used as
bait. He also claimed that if one was killed and left out to dry it would secrete a highly
flammable oil. Other legends say that the oil was used for a flame-thrower weapon,
akin to the Greek fire used by the Byzantine Empire to torch enemy ships.
A couple of hundred years later, another famous Greek philosopher, Ptolemy also wrote about a
“giant worm” of the Indus, largely repeating Ctesias’s description, even down to the part
about it being “seven cubits tall.”
It wasn’t until the 19th century that scholars increasingly attributed these
stories of the Indus worm to exaggerated encounters with crocodiles or alligators.
Which could make sense given
that estuarine crocodiles are common across India and southeastern Asia, with a habitat that spreads
into the Solomon Islands and northern Australia. Their widespread numbers can be accounted for in
part because they can live in marine, brackish, and freshwater habitats, and they can even cross
the open ocean. And yes, they are known to inhabit rivers. Perhaps this common predator, which
reaches anywhere between 3 to 5 meters (9.85-16.4 feet) in length when full grown , is the true
template for our Death Worm of the Indus River.
But wait. There is another proposed explanation for the monster, one rooted in the religious
history of the Indus River Valley. In 1852, German scholar Christian Lassen
suggested that the worm story was of mythological origins, serving as an allegory for the gift of
fire given by the serpent god of the region, which Ctesias had misinterpreted as a real creature.
This theory gains support when we consider
all the ancient carved and painted figures of snakes and cobras, including representations
of the semi-divine half-cobra, half-human Naga, that have been discovered in the Indus Valley.
These artifacts suggest that serpents were indeed associated with the religious
traditions of the area. The Nāga were said to live underground, could blast flames, and possessed
magical fire. Moreover, in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions the Nagas, like the Indus Worms,
are associated with water. And what if the two top-and-bottom teeth of the worm are really just
distortions of a snake’s fangs?
I’m not sure we’ll ever know the real origin of the Indus Worm tales.
Stories of the creature largely faded into obscurity after the 19th century,
but another killer worm quickly rose up —the Mongolian Death Worm.
Already a creature of regional lore, American explorer and naturalist Roy Chapman
Andrews revealed the Mongolian Death worm’s, terrifying form to a western audience in 1926,
in his expedition accounts of the Gobi desert [On the Trail of Ancient Man].
Andrews wrote
that while he was obtaining permissions for an expedition, the Prime Minister of Mongolia asked
him to capture a specimen of the legendary beast. Andrews claims that Mongolian locals told him the
monster is “shaped like a sausage about two feet long” [put meters on screen] with no head, tail,
or legs. It is so poisonous that touching it or even just looking directly at it would mean
instant death.
In 1932, Andrews clarified that the creature was “probably an entirely mythical animal.”
As the legend grew, so did the length of the beast. Current accounts give the creature’s
length as between .5 and 1.5 meters [2 to 5 feet] and the legendary red worm
now possesses a deadly acidic venom and is even capable of producing electricity.
In a really bizarre entry into death worm lore, one noted scientist paid homage to
the legendary monster with a prank in an otherwise very serious journal.
In 1956, Charles Bogert
co-authored a monograph about the Helodermatidae lizard family that referenced a “new species” of
lizard-cobra hybrid “shaped like a sausage” with a “speckled band” pattern and “fangs in both upper
and lower jaws.” Touching its skin will result in instant death. It is named as the Sampoderma
allergorhaihorhai and lives throughout India, or “possibly Baker Street England.” Yes, in addition
to clearly linking the fictional lizard with the Mongolian Death Worm, there’s a Sherlock
Holmes reference. Why did a renowned scientist play such a practical joke, and how did it make
its way into a legitimate scientific publication? Well, you’ll have to ask the peer reviewers about
that last part, but reportedly Bogert just wanted to rile up his uptight colleagues.
The 20th-century continued to yield more fictional monstrous
worms in the pages and films of science fiction.
Frank Herbert’s widely praised Dune series quickly captured the imaginations of millions of readers
and massive critical acclaim. It also gave us Kyle MacLachlan.
Center to the story are the Sandworms, a species
of hundreds of meters long ‘worm-like’ monsterS with thick, scaled orange skin.
A biography of the author written by his son notes that many mythological tales inspired
the creation of Dune including dragon myths. Throughout history,
dragons have been known by many names, including the Old English ‘wyrm,” which
is actually where we get the name for the very undragon-like invertebrate “worm.”
And while the Sandworm is also associated with the religion of Arrakis’s locals and can be
captured with hooks and mined for its “spice,” rather than a flammable oil like the Indus Worm,
similarities between those two death worms are interesting as well.
Herbert’s books are vague about the innermost biology of the Sandworm, perhaps intentionally,
choosing to focus on how it impacts the environment of Arrakis and people who
encounter it. Although the creature most physically resembles earthworms,
in the real world ‘annelid’ worms require moisture to survive which is very different
from the dry desert of Herbert’s alien planet. You would think that the desert habitat and
physical similarities of Herbert’s sandworm, including that it is trailed by lightning,
would indicate that legends of the Mongolian Death Worm inspired the author
—yet he attributes the sand dunes of Florence, Oregon as his primary inspiration. Although
Herbert did conduct extensive research on deserts and the religions in desert environments.
He also drew parallels between the brutal shifting sands of the desert with the equally
merciless sea. The similarities made in the book between the sand dunes and the ocean
call to mind the real marine worms that mirror many elements of the Sandworm— “Bobbit worms.”
Distributed across the shallow marine and intertidal environments of the Atlantic,
Indian, and Pacific Oceans, Bobbit Worms [Eunicid polychaetes] are largely mysterious—and pure
nightmare fuel if you ask me. What we do know is that they can grow up to 3 cm in diameter
and reach a length of 3 meters. They live in burrows which they use to hide from their prey
before launching upwards to violently seize unsuspecting marine critters in their jaws
and drawing them back underground. Yes,
jaws. Worms with jaws. Who are real. Yeah, these seem like the real-life version of death worms.
Let’s not forget Tremors, a franchise I hold near and dear to my heart,
whose subterranean worm-like ‘Graboids’ prowl the sands of Nevada.
The special effects artists of the film stated in a 2014 interview that the “best material”
for monsters comes from Nature. They cite the snapping turtle’s jaws as the inspiration for
the Graboids’s mandible. Although again...these seem more like “Bobbit worms” to me.
Graboids are pure fiction. Although we do live on a planet with Worm lizards (Amphisbaenia), usually
limbless burrowing lizards that resemble earthworms though they possess rudimentary
eyes and eardrums, and are capable of identifying some low-frequency vibrations.
Which just so happens to remind me of a famous fictional species of death worms.
To add to your mental file of real “worm-like things” that could star in horror movies,
we have grey-brown limbless burrowing lizards, slowworms.
And then there are the giant earthworms.
Scientists theorize that Giant terrestrial earthworms once roamed parts of our world
—and some still do. Like the Giant Gippsland worm of Australia, which can reach up to 3 meters in
length. That being said, these creatures are much skinnier and lack the killing
power of your typical death worm monsters. Australia also happens to have a few species
of burrowing beach worms that can grow quite long. Because of course they do. Because, Australia.
So we have thousands of years of worm-like monsters that inspire monster legends,
science-fiction, and horror stories—but what makes these worms scary besides their giant size?
Some people do suffer from Scoleciphobia, the irrational fear of worms,
usually associated with a perception that they indicate poor hygiene or dirtiness.
And worms do love the dirt. More broadly worms, grubs, maggots—all limbless, faceless,
wriggling things that can cause us harm. Worms can contaminate our food. They can enter our bodies.
They help eat dead things—even us. Perhaps the persistent construction of Death Worms
is partially an extension of this uneasiness about invertebrates, and a fear of what lies below our
feet every day.
Is there a real, venomous monster worm buried somewhere in the Gobi Desert or the Indus River
waiting for us to discover it? If you ask me, probably not. But when we actually start exploring
that possibility, we are confronted with the other very real creatures that wiggle, slither,
and creep their way across our planet.
And sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction.