VENUSIAN

 VENUSIAN

“It wasn't only the way they smelled, it was the way they talked. It was sort of gurgling and tongue-tied and it sounded like too much saliva and too few teeth." 

“The people at the door were plump, even for Venusians. The biggest one, the one with six. chins and two stomachs and whose name, was Shallot-s'hu, had brought a fossilized "Dardanor" epiphyte as a friend's gift, and the others had brought presents too. Their manner were lovely, no matter how much the Venusians themselves smelled like fish, and Oona felt herself, begin to warm to them.“

Margaret St. Clair, The Himalaychalet

“A fat Venusian had been comin’ down the steps of the Tashkent Import and Export Exchange.”

Margaret St. Clair, Return Engagement

ROTIFER

ROTIFER

"'Oh—nothing,' Harry turned back to his work. As if on after-thought, he explained, 'I was wondering if the rotifers could see me when I'm looking at them.'"

"Mr. Chatham laughed, a little nervously, because the strange fancies which his son sometimes voiced upset his ordered mind. Remembering the dark glistening eyes of the rotifers he had seen, however, he could recognize whence this question had stemmed."

"There was a swarm of them under the lens, and they swam lazily to and fro, their cilia beating like miniature propellers. Their dark eyes stared, wet and glistening; they drifted in the motionless water, and clung with sucker-like pseudo-feet to the tangled plant stems."

"'I won't tell you how to talk to them, because nobody ought to talk to them ever again. Because they find out more than they tell.... They know about us, now, and they hate us. They never knew before—that there was anybody but them.... So they want to kill us all.'"

"He remembered the shapes that swam and crept in the green water gardens, with whirling cilia and great, cold, glistening eyes."

Robert Abernathy, The Rotifers

LIZARD MAN

LIZARD MAN
"And then the openings poured forth lizard men. There were at least a hundred of them, all about four feet in height, their skins gray-green in the eerie luminescence. Their loins were wrapped in some sort of bindings that left room for the massive tails that dragged the ground behind them. They had almost no necks, and their lipless mouths extended more than an inch beyond where their noses should have been. Their bulbous eyes stared unblinkingly as they shambled forward on massive lower legs that bent nearly double. Had they straightened those legs they would have been the height of a man."

Lewis Shiner, Lizard Men Of Los Angeles

THINKING-TIME-DREAM-THING

THINKING-TIME-DREAM-THING 

"Pretty soon, entirely without volition on his part, queer, half-formed dream things would float through his mind . Like dark , polliwogs. Propelling themselves along with their tails, hinting at secrets that nobody knew, not even grown-ups. Some day he would be able to catch one, quickly, before it wriggled off into the inner hidden chamber where They had a nest and, then , he would know."

"He had only had it for a split second but he remembered it had blind, weepy eyes and was smooth."

"'"And make a thinking-time-dream-thing hold still so's I can get it. So's I'll know. I guess that's all. Hahneeweemahneemo, O Idol of the Flies, you are free to GO!'" 

"Another—shooting itself along with its tail—its greasy sides ashine . Another—and another—and another—and then a seething whirlpool of them. There had never been so many . Spiny, pulpy, slick and eellike, some with feelers like catfish, some with white, gaping mouths and foreshortened embryo arms."

"Its nose holes went in and out, in and out, in and out, like something he had known long ago in some past, mysterious other life , and it whimpered as it came and whispered things to him."

Jane Rice, The Idol Of the Flies

DUNE ROLLER

DUNE ROLLER

"It was not a pebble or a piece of chipped glass as he had supposed; instead, he fished out a small, drop-like object shaped like a marble with a tail. It was a beautiful little thing of pellucid amber color with tiny gold flecks and streaks running through it. Sunlight glanced off its smooth sides which were surprisingly free of the surface scratches that are the inevitable patina of flotsam in the sand-scoured dunes."

"'It reminds me of something, with that little tail. I know — Prince Rupert drops.'"

"It looked the same as the three small drops he had previously seen, but he saw that what he had mistaken for golden flecks inside of it was really a fine network of metallic threads which formed a web apparently imbedded a few centimeters below the thing's surface."

"'There have been some funny old stories told along these shores. I heard one myself from my grandmother when I was about twelve. About the Dune Roller that was bigger than a schooner and lived in the caves at the bottom of the lake. It came out every hundred years and rolled through the dune forest, leaving a strop of bare sand behind it where it had eaten the vegetation. They said it looked for a man, and when i found one, it would stop rolling and sink back into the lake.'"

J.C. May, Dune Roller

OPALESCENT THING

OPALESCENT THING

"'I can't describe it — no one could. It resembled nothing so much as a star shaped blob of transparent jelly that shimmered and changed color like an opal. It appeared to be some lower for m of animal, one-celled, not large, only about a foot in circumference when it stretched those feelers out to full length. It oozed along over the sand like a snail, groping its way with those star-points — and it hummed!'"

"'It took me about three days to trap the thing, although it gave no more actual resistance, of course, than a large snail.'"

"I saw horror — a jelly-like, opalescent thing like a five-pointed star. It pulsed and quivered for an instant, and the room fairly rocked to the unmuffled sound of that vibrant humming."

Mary Elizabeth Counselman, The Black Stone Statue

WAKANDAGI

 WAKANDAGI

"This is the name of a water monster in the traditions and beliefs of the Omaha and Mohawk Native American people of the United States. This massive being has a long serpentine body with horns on its head and legs with hooves, all of which resemble those of a deer."

Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters and Dragons

AIGAMUXA

AIGAMUXA

"In the mythology of Khoisin people of South Africa, the Aigamuxa are man-eating monsters that inhabit the dunes of the Kalahari Desert. These curious humanoids are described as having their eyes placed in the instep of their feet so that they are obliged to stop and lift a foot in order to see where they are going. Although they otherwise look relatively like humans, their huge bodies and heads make them fearsome adversaries, mainly because of their enormous fanglike teeth."

Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters and Dragons

MOKÊLE-MBÊMBE

 

MOKÊLE-MBÊMBE

"This is the name of a marine monster in the early travelers' lore of the West African coast. The Mokêle-Mbêmbe was said to be a monster resembling an elephant but having a single horn from its head and a tail resembling that of a crocodile or a scaly serpent."

Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters and Dragons

ROKUROKUBI

ROKUROKUBI
By day, rokurokubi appear to be ordinary women. By night, however, their bodies sleep while their necks stretch to an incredible length and roam around freely. Sometimes their heads attack small animals, sometime they lick up lamp oil with their long tongue, and sometimes they just cause mischief by scaring nearby people.

Matthew Meyer, Yokai.com

Among them are famous yuirei (ghosts), teenage (supernatural beings with both human and bird-like characteristics) and rokurokubi (phantoms with impossibly stretching necks, or heads that come off and fly around), all of which appear in 

Laficadio Hearn, Japanese Ghost Stories

“A rokuro-kubi is ordinarily conceived as a goblin whose neck stretches out to great lengths, but which nevertheless always remains attached to its body.”

Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies Of Strange Things

HELLHEAD

HELLHEAD

"It is a creature with a face that is human-like but with an opening on the top of its head from which the righteous exit Hell. We call this creature “Hellhead.” We have found what we think is the source for this creature in a medieval Russian novel about Alexander the Great, called Александрия (Aleksandriya)."

Hell is portrayed in two ways in these icons. Firstly, as a large black, seemingly empty cave, and secondly, it is ‘personified’ as a red creature, looking like a human in many ways but with two or more eyes and an opening in its head out of which the righteous arise. We have called this creature 'Hellhead.'"

"Based on this representation of Hell as having a head from which the righteous rise from the mouth in the top of its head and the fact that representations of headless creatures similar to

Hellhead existed in a much copied novel29 known in Russia, we feel that it is this fanciful representation of Blemmyes in the Alexander novel that was the source for Hellhead."

Henry A. Hundt & Raoul N. Smith, A Teratological Source of Hellhead

SPIRIT OF PREY

 

SPIRIT OF PREY

"As we sat down under this tree and were thinking about that night's danger, there we saw a "Spirit of Prey", he was big as a hippopotamus, but he was walking upright as a human-being; his both legs had two feet and tripled his body, his head was just like a lion's head and every part of his body was covered with hard scales, each of these scales was the same in size as a shovel or hoe, and all curved towards his body. If this "Spirit of Prey" wanted to catch his prey, he would simply be looking at it and stand in one place, he was not chasing his prey about, and when he focused the prey well, then he would close his large eyes, but before he would open his eyes, the prey would already be dead and drag itself to him at the place that he stood."

Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard

LONG-WHITE CREATURE

LONG-WHITE CREATURE

"We slept in the bush, but when it was about two o'clock in the night, there we we saw a creature, either he was a spirit or other harmful creature, we could not say, he was coming towards us, he was white as if painted with white paint, he was white from foot to the topmost of his body, but he had no head or feet and hands like human-beings and he got on large eye on his topmost. He was long about 1/4 of a mile and his diameter was about six feet, he resembled a white pillar."

Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard

"Also all the terrible-creatures sent their representatives as "Skulls", "Long-white creatures", "Invincible and invisible Pawn" or Give and take" who fought and won the Red people in the Red-town for the "Palm-Wine Drinker";
Amos Tutuola, My Life In the Bush Of Ghosts

RED-BIRD

 

RED-BIRD

"After that I loaded the gun for the second red creature (red-bird) and within 5 minutes it appeared out again, then I got ready for it. I saw that it was a red-bird, but its head could weigh one ton or more and it had six long teeth of about half a foot long and very thick, which appeared out with its beak."

Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard

TERRIBLE CREATURE OF WRAITH ISLAND

TERRIBLE CREATURE OF WRAITH ISLAND

"I could not approach him as he was as big as an elephant. His figernails were long to about two feet, his head was bigger than his body ten times. He had a large mouth which was full of long teeth, these teeth were about one foot long and as thick as a cow's horns, his body was almost covered with black long hair like a horse's tail hair. He was very dirty. There were five horns on his head and curved and levelled to the head, his four feet were as big as a log of wood."

Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard

RED-FISH

RED-FISH 

"But when these two red creatures were coming out from the hole, they did not walk side by side but following each other and when the one at the front appeared and was coming towards me, it was red-fish in form."

"At the same tim that the red-fish appeared out, its head was just like a tortoise's head, but it was as big as an elephant's head and it had over 30 horns and large eyes which surrounded the head. All these horns were spread out as an umbrella. It could not walk but was only gliding on the ground like a snake and its body was just like a bat's body and covered with long red hair like strings. It could only fly to a short distance, and if it shouted a person who was four miles away would hear."
Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard