Friday, November 20, 2020
WAKANDAGI
Thursday, November 19, 2020
AIGAMUXA
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
MOKÊLE-MBÊMBE
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
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
Monday, November 16, 2020
HELLHEAD
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
*This demon is inspired by the painting Resurrection and Descent (1650).
Friday, November 13, 2020
SPIRIT OF PREY
Thursday, November 12, 2020
LONG-WHITE CREATURE
"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
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
RED-BIRD
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
TERRIBLE CREATURE OF WRAITH ISLAND
Monday, November 9, 2020
RED-FISH
"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









