The holiday season has come and gone, but we still have two months of winter to get through. What better symbol of the coming cold months than the cannibal giants of Algonquin mythology?

Many people have heard of the wendigo, the cannibal monster found in American Indian folklore across much of the northern US and Canada. Wendigos have been featured in movies, comic books and TV shows. In northern New England, the five Wabanaki tribes talk about a similar creature, known either as the chenoo, the giwakwa, or the kiwakwa. You should avoid it no matter what it’s called!

@ New England Folklore

Misterstourworm is a collaboration between Savourna Stevenson, the harpist and composer, and Stuart Paterson, the Fife-based playwright who, for more than 20 years, has adapted children’s myths and legends for the stage.

The work is the result of what Stevenson called a “life-changing” grant of £25,000 made by Creative Scotland in 2001.

It enabled the couple to create a tale set in a mythical Scotland in which a young hero embarks on a magical quest to free his people from a fearsome, fire-breathing sea monster, Misterstourworm.

A number of residents who have lost their patience with the unholy creation said they have tried being mad, but decided it is not worth the effort if the monster is just going to keep crushing the skull of every innocent blacksmith’s daughter who makes the mistake of offering him a flower. According to Grul, the townspeople have “had just about enough of this business,” and resolved to address the issue openly with a full and frank discussion, “no matter how painful it may be.” A two-hour chase through foggy moors ensued, at which point the monster took refuge in the closest thing he had to a home, the castle of his creation.

@ The Onion

Welcome to Zombinc!

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MEARCSTAPA is an organization committed to the scholarly examination of monstrosity as an area of social and cultural interest to past and present societies. Our inter/trans/post/pre-disciplinary approach allows us to explore the significance of monstrosity across cultural, temporal, and geographic boundaries. We are interested in a multivalent approach using materials on monsters and monstrosity from literary, artistic, philosophical, and historical sources.

Smith found a scrap of tablet containing the missing part of the Flood story [from Gilgamesh]. He telegraphed word of his find back to the Daily Telegraph, giving Edwin Arnold the scoop he wanted, and his feat was reported in newspaper stories around the globe.

It is appropriate that the recovery of this ancient text was announced to the world by the most modern of means. The world’s first telecommunications system, commercial telegraphy had been pioneered by Samuel Morse in the 1840s. It came into wide use around the world in the 1860s, and the first successful transatlantic telegraph line was laid in 1866, just seven years before the Daily Telegraph sent Smith to Iraq. On the day that Smith made his great discovery, the New York Times ran an article reflecting on this convergence of ancient and modern modes of communication: “It is hardly possible to conceive of two more opposite literary productions than the modern newspaper and the crumbling and mysterious records found among the ruins of antiquity…. There is something startling in associating the two together, in thrusting them into sudden and unexpected juxtaposition; and this is what has just been done by a London journal, which has sent Mr. George Smith, the well-known archaeologist, to puzzle out the antique inscriptions of Assyria.” The ancient tablets were joining forces with the latest technology as they circulated out into the world.

~ David Damrosch, The Buried Book (45-46)

Will Buckingham’s novel Cargo Fever (Tindal Street) is certainly a gripping adventure story, but it’s also an intriguing contribution to the the genre of the ape-monster story. I won’t assume Buckingham had such an academic goal in mind for the novel, but I do think Cargo Fever responds to the canon in interesting ways.¹

Orkneyjar — a website dedicated to the preserving, exploring and documenting the ancient history, folklore and traditions of Orkney – a group of islands lying off the northern tip of Scotland, where the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean meet.

Including the Nuggle, a much less adorable version of the water horse.

There was a time when the atomics industry fueled more than political debate—it fueled the growth spurts of God’s creatures, which turned the tables against the domineering species known as man. Giant spiders, towering ants, train-sized gila monsters, praying mantises larger than 747s, and yes, even mutated leeches big enough to swallow you whole.

These were the themes behind the classic Creature Feature films of the 50s and 60s. By the 70s we learned that no amount of atomic radiation would cause a flea to grow so large it could leap across an entire city, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look back on those drive-in films with a sense of fondness. They are as fun today as they were back then. It was, after all, the sight of these giant beasts attacking man that became the catalyst for many of today’s horror writers to pick up a pen.

~ call for submissions @ Permuted Press

We’ve only just begun using our baby monitor and I’m not used to it yet, so every time the wee critter upstairs makes a squeak I jump out of my skin because it comes through the receiver like the snarl of some fierce, fearsome creature behind me.