The Appalachian area of America is home to some of the greatest stories and legends on this side of the Mississippi River! The monsters our side of the country holds are simply spectacular, and I don’t think we talk about them enough. I’m here today to show and tell you about two mythological monsters that’ll make your skin crawl! 

Picture this: you’re on a late-night drive through the country hills, the pine and oak trees towering above you on each side as you drive along. Now and again, you see red, beady eyes in the forest looking back at you. It may be an outline of a person with great, big wings. You feel like you’re going crazy, but you hear massive wings beating behind you as you drive along. You feel the sweat dribble down your skin as you chance a glance at your mirror and see it. It’s tall—at least 7 feet tall. Powerful white wings juxtaposed by its pitch black body, and those haunting red eyes that seemed to draw you in. It’s flying at you and screeching like a demonic force. You slam your foot on the gas and drive as fast as you can. With luck, you make it away from the creature. You just met the pleasant West Virginian star, the Mothman.

The Mothman was first spotted in 1966 by a duo of couples while they were out and about. It chased them and screeched at them, and when they called the police later, they shared the same description I gave you: big, tall, scary thing with red beady eyes. More repeats came in over the coming days. Some said the terrifying creature at Point Pleasant looked kind of like a heron. Others said its eyes were like bicycle reflectors. There was one thing about it, though. It was a real thing those people saw.

A wildlife biologist named Robert L. Smith figured out what it might’ve been. He said it was likely just a lost sandhill crane with a similar description to the Mothman. However, Point Pleasant was hooked. It became a popular local legend, and a museum is even dedicated to it.

That’s only the first monster I’ve got in store for you today! Now imagine you and your friends decide to go camping. You hike all day in a lovely park and set up some nice places in a clearing with lots of dry firewood and a sky filled with glorious stars. One of your friends has to take a leak. You hear some rustling and screams from the direction. Against all horror movie rules, everyone but a buddy of yours, who’s terrified, goes to try to find him. As you make it to where you last saw him, all you see is a ripped and eaten mess that used to be called your friend. Then you hear the same sounds from the direction of the campsite, and you and your friends rush back to try and save your friend before it’s too late.

Then, you see it: bony with dark nagant fur and a bloodied skeletal maw. You realize it looks like a deer’s skull but perverted in some ways. The teeth are sharp, the face is more angular, and the antlers on it are more akin to razor-sharp horns. It turns to you, and in the hollow spaces in the skull where the eyes would be, you somehow can see what it’s feeling. Hunger. Unending, undying hunger. You know that whether or not you run, it won’t matter. Tonight, you will be a feast for one who can never fill themselves. 

The creature is from Algonquian folk tales and is one of the scariest creatures you could ever dread finding in the woods: the wendigo. However, they didn’t all start as beautiful creatures whose hunger is never sated. At first, they were normal men and women, according to Algonquian folklore. However, in a cold winter, at one point or another, their hunger got too much. Their stomach cried out for something, Anything! So they would make a choice that would forever change them and dine upon the flesh of their fellow man. From there, those humans became emotionless monsters with a constant unending hunger. During good times when food was plentiful, they’d appear like normal people, maybe with slightly sharper teeth or more gaunt eyes. But when winter came back around, and they got hungry once more, they could shift into the wendigo and begin the hunt for their prey. To try and quench a hunger that would never, ever leave them again.

Keep your eyes peeled when you’re in the woods. You never know when you might hear the Mothman’s screech or meet the wendigo’s hunger!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendigo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothman