From the cannibal spirit Wendigo of the northern forests to the skinless sea demon of the Orkney Islands, the world’s folklore is filled with creatures that have terrified and fascinated people for centuries. This AβZ guide gathers the most iconic mythical creatures and monsters from cultures around the globe, with the origin, lore and traits that made each of them legendary. Whether you are a mythology enthusiast, horror writer, game designer or simply curious about the monsters that live in the human imagination, this is your reference.
Some of these beings belong to living spiritual traditions rather than to old stories and the table notes where that is the case. Creatures that also appear in our guide to entities and demons are marked as well.
AβZ table
| Name | Origin | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Abada | Central Africa (early European accounts) | A small, donkey-sized animal with a boar’s tail and two crooked horns, known mainly from 17th-century European writing about Africa. Its horns were said to cure poison and disease. The name comes from an old Portuguese word for the rhinoceros, the real animal that most likely lies behind the legend. |
| Adze | Ghana / Togo (Ewe) | A vampiric being of Ewe folklore that flies at night as a firefly, slipping through keyholes and cracks in walls to drink blood, preferably that of children. Once captured it takes human form. In that form it can possess people, who are then regarded as witches. Traditional accounts say there is no defense against it. Also in our Entities and Demons guide. |
| Ahuizotl | Mexico (Aztec) | A small, dog-like water creature described in Book 11 of the 16th-century Florentine Codex, with sleek black fur and a human-like hand at the tip of its tail. It seized people at the water’s edge with that hand and drowned them, taking only their eyes, teeth and nails. When it had caught no one, a sound like a weeping child was heard. Its victims were believed to be chosen by the rain gods for the paradise of Tlalocan. Only priests could handle their bodies. |
| Amarok | Arctic (Inuit) | A gigantic lone wolf of Inuit legend that hunts and devours anyone foolish enough to hunt alone at night. It is not simply a killer: in a Greenlandic tale recorded by Hinrich Rink, an Amarok throws a bullied, stunted boy to the ground with its tail, shakes loose the small bones stunting his growth and trains him until he can defeat three bears. |
| Apep | Egypt (ancient) | A colossal serpent of chaos, also called Apophis, and the eternal enemy of the sun god Ra. Every night it attacks Ra’s boat as it sails through the underworld and every night it is defeated. Egyptian priests helped Ra with rituals such as burning and cutting images of the serpent. |
| Aswang | Philippines | One of the most feared figures in Philippine folklore, an umbrella term for shape-shifters who pass as ordinary villagers by day. At night the aswang hunts in the form of a dog, pig or bird, preying on unborn children and stealing or eating corpses. Its traits vary widely from region to region. |
| Banshee | Ireland | A female spirit whose keening cry foretells a death, traditionally in one of the old Irish families. Her Irish name, bean sΓ, means “woman of the fairy mound.” She announces death rather than causing it. She may appear as a young woman, a stately matron or an old hag, sometimes combing her long hair. Also in our Entities and Demons guide. |
| Basilisk | Europe (classical and medieval) | The “little king” of serpents, named for the crown-like white mark on its head. Pliny the Elder wrote that it killed shrubs with its touch and breath, split rocks and could kill with a look. Its one natural enemy was the weasel. Later lore added the rooster’s crow and the mirror, which turns the deadly gaze back on the basilisk itself. |
| Bigfoot | North America (modern cryptid) | A large, hairy, ape-like biped said to roam the forests of North America, especially the Pacific Northwest. The name dates from 1958, when giant footprints were reported in northern California. The legend also draws on older Indigenous traditions of wild forest giants, the source of the name Sasquatch. Despite thousands of claimed sightings, no specimen has ever been confirmed. |
| Bonnacon | Europe (classical and medieval) | A bull-like beast with a horse’s mane and horns that curl back so far they are useless in a fight. Instead it flees and blasts its pursuers with burning dung. Pliny the Elder says the trail could stretch three furlongs (about 600 m). Medieval bestiaries claim it covered three acres and set fire to whatever it touched. The European bison is often thought to lie behind the legend. |
| Bunyip | Australia (Aboriginal) | A dangerous creature said to lurk in swamps, creeks, billabongs and waterholes. Descriptions vary greatly between Aboriginal peoples, from a dog-like face and dark fur to flippers and tusks, but most agree it attacks those who come too near its water. The word comes from the Wemba Wemba or Wergaia language of southeastern Australia. In the 19th century colonists blamed strange calls and tracks on it. Also in our Entities and Demons guide. |
| Camazotz | Guatemala (K’iche’ Maya) | A bat being whose name means “death bat” in K’iche’. In the Popol Vuh the Hero Twins must survive a night in the Bat House of the underworld Xibalba. When Hunahpu peeks out to check for dawn, a camazotz snatches off his head. Bats were tied to night, death and sacrifice across Maya culture. |
| Capelobo | Brazil (ParΓ‘ and MaranhΓ£o) | A hairy forest monster with a long snout like a tapir’s, an anteater’s or a pig’s, depending on the region. Some accounts give it a shaggy human body with round, bottle-shaped feet, while others make it more animal. It is said to crack its victims’ skulls and suck out their brains. Folk accounts say only a wound to its navel can kill it. |
| Carbuncle | Southern South America (Chile, Argentina, Paraguay) | A small, elusive creature of mining folklore that glows in the dark and carries a shining, mirror-like gem on its head or riches inside its body. The 16th-century Spanish explorer MartΓn del Barco Centenera wrote that he saw it several times but never caught it. In some northern Chilean accounts it has a shell that snaps shut when people approach, so it looks like an ordinary stone. |
| Chupacabra | Puerto Rico (modern cryptid) | A cryptid that emerged in Puerto Rico in 1995, after livestock were found dead with puncture wounds and reportedly drained of blood. The name means “goat-sucker.” Early witnesses described a spiny, reptile-like biped. Later “chupacabras” found in Mexico and the southern United States have often turned out to be dogs or coyotes with severe mange. |
| Curupira | Brazil (Tupi) | A guardian of the forest, usually pictured as a small figure with fiery red hair and feet turned backwards, so anyone tracking it walks the wrong way. It punishes hunters who kill more than they need by leading them astray with whistles and false trails. The Jesuit JosΓ© de Anchieta described it in a letter dated May 30, 1560, one of the earliest written records of Brazilian folklore. |
| Dokkaebi | Korea | Goblin-like beings of Korean folklore, more mischievous than evil, that love pranks, food, drink and wrestling. Unlike ghosts they are not the dead but old household objects, such as worn-out brooms or things stained with human blood, that have come to life. Their magic club, the dokkaebi bangmangi, can summon gold or food. They tend to reward the kind and trick the greedy. |
| Dullahan | Ireland | A headless fairy rider on a black horse who carries his own head, sometimes holding it high to see across the countryside. Where he stops and calls a name, that person dies. No lock or gate can keep him out, but he is said to fear gold. Even a small gold pin can drive him away. Also in our Entities and Demons guide. |
| Encantado | Brazil (Amazon) | Shape-shifting beings of Amazonian folklore, best known as river dolphins (botos) that take human form at night. Disguised as handsome strangers, often in a hat to hide the blowhole, they appear at festivals, seduce people and may lure them away to the Encante, an enchanted realm beneath the river. |
| Fenrir | Scandinavia (Norse) | A monstrous wolf, son of the trickster god Loki, who grew so strong that the gods feared him. They finally bound him with Gleipnir, a fetter made from impossible things such as the sound of a cat’s footsteps and a woman’s beard. The god TΓ½r lost his hand in the process. At RagnarΓΆk Fenrir breaks free and swallows Odin before Odin’s son VΓΓ°arr kills him. |
| Golem | Central Europe (Jewish) | A figure of clay brought to life through Hebrew letters or a divine name, often by writing emet (“truth”) on its forehead. Erasing one letter leaves met (“dead”) and the golem returns to dust. The most famous tale, attached in the 19th century to the 16th-century Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, has a golem protect the Jewish quarter before it grows dangerous. |
| Grootslang | South Africa (Richtersveld) | A gigantic serpent, often said to be 12 to 15 m long, that guards the “Wonder Hole,” a bottomless cave in the Richtersveld said to be full of diamonds and to connect with the sea about 64 km away. Some stories give it diamonds for eyes. The widely repeated story that the gods split the first grootslang into the elephant and the snake does not appear in older recorded accounts. It seems to be a modern addition. |
| Hydra | Greece | The many-headed water serpent of Lerna, born of Typhon and Echidna. For every head cut off two grew back, so Heracles had his nephew Iolaus sear each neck with fire. He then buried the one immortal head under a rock and dipped his arrows in the Hydra’s venomous blood. Hera sent the giant crab Karkinos to hinder him in the fight. |
| Iku-Turso | Finland | A sea monster of Finnish mythology whose name roughly means “ancient Turso.” In Elias LΓΆnnrot’s Kalevala (1849), Louhi, the mistress of the North, sends it to sink VΓ€inΓ€mΓΆinen’s boat. The hero lifts it from the sea by its ears, asks why it has risen and makes it swear never to rise again. |
| Impundulu | South Africa (Zulu, Xhosa and Mpondo) | The “lightning bird,” a human-sized bird whose wings and talons call down thunder and lightning. Where lightning strikes it is said to bury an egg that healers must dig up and destroy. It serves witches as a familiar passed from mother to daughter, sometimes takes the form of a handsome young man and craves blood. Coughing blood and chest illnesses such as tuberculosis were blamed on its attacks. |
| Jiangshi | China | The “hopping vampire,” a corpse stiffened by rigor mortis that moves by hopping with its arms stretched out and drains the life energy (qi) of the living. It is usually shown in Qing-dynasty official robes with a paper talisman on its forehead. Folk belief and later Hong Kong films say you can hide from it by holding your breath. Sticky rice, mirrors and peach-wood swords are said to ward it off. Also in our Entities and Demons guide. |
| Kappa | Japan | A child-sized water yΕkai with a beak, a turtle-like shell and a dish-shaped hollow on its head filled with water. Kappa drag people and horses into rivers and are said to steal the shirikodama, a mythical ball believed to hold the soul. They are compulsively polite: bow to one and it bows back, spilling the water that gives it strength. Cucumbers are their favorite food. |
| Karkinos | Greece | A giant crab sent by Hera to bite Heracles’ foot while he fought the Hydra. Heracles crushed it and Hera placed it among the stars as the constellation Cancer. |
| Keelut | Arctic (Inuit, Alaska and Canada) | Described in modern accounts of Inuit lore as an evil earth spirit in the shape of a black, hairless dog that stalks travelers alone in the winter dark. It has hair only on its feet, so it leaves no tracks. Older written sources on this creature are scarce, so details vary. |
| Kelpie | Scotland | A shape-shifting water spirit of lochs and rivers, usually appearing as a beautiful horse. Anyone who mounts it cannot get off because its hide becomes sticky. The kelpie then plunges into the water to drown and devour its rider. It can also take human form. Whoever seizes its bridle can command it. |
| Kraken | Norway | A sea monster of Norwegian lore so vast it was mistaken for a cluster of islands. Bishop Erik Pontoppidan described it in his Natural History of Norway (1752-53), noting that fishermen found rich catches above it but fled when it began to rise. Sightings of the giant squid, a real animal first photographed alive in the wild in 2004, probably fed the legend. |
| Kumiho | Korea | A nine-tailed fox that has lived a thousand years and gained great magical power. Unlike the more ambiguous Japanese kitsune, the Korean kumiho is usually malevolent. It takes the form of a beautiful woman to seduce men and eat their livers or hearts. See also Kitsune in our Entities and Demons guide. |
| La Llorona | Mexico | The “Weeping Woman,” a ghost who drowned her own children, often after being abandoned by their father. She now wanders rivers and lakes at night crying for them. Parents warn children that if they stray near water after dark, she may take them in place of her own. Versions are told across Latin America and the southwestern United States. Also in our Entities and Demons guide. |
| Leshy | Eastern Europe (Slavic) | The lord of the forest in Slavic folklore, able to grow as tall as the trees or shrink as small as a blade of grass. He leads travelers in circles until they are lost, a spell broken by turning clothes inside out or putting shoes on the wrong feet. Herders and hunters made offerings or pacts with him for protection. |
| Manananggal | Philippines (Visayas) | A woman who at night separates her upper body from her legs, sprouts bat-like wings and flies off to hunt. With a long, thread-like tongue she feeds on the blood of sleeping people and the fetuses of pregnant women. Sprinkling salt, crushed garlic or ash on her abandoned lower half stops her from reattaching. She then dies at sunrise. See also Penanggalan in our Entities and Demons guide. |
| Manticore | Persia (via Greek writers) | A man-eater with a lion’s body, a human face with three rows of teeth and a tail that shoots poisonous spines. It was first described around 400 BCE by Ctesias, a Greek physician at the Persian court. Aristotle and Pliny later repeated the account. Its name comes from an Old Persian word meaning “man-eater.” |
| Mothman | USA (modern cryptid) | A man-sized winged figure with glowing red eyes reported around Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in 1966 and 1967. On December 15, 1967, the town’s Silver Bridge collapsed and killed 46 people. Many came to see the creature as a warning of the disaster. John Keel’s book The Mothman Prophecies (1975) and its 2002 film adaptation made it world-famous. |
| Nachzehrer | Germany and northern Poland (Kashubian) | A revenant believed to drag its living relatives into death after it. Lying in its grave, it chews its burial shroud and even its own flesh, draining the family’s life force from afar. In some local legends it climbs the church tower to ring the bells and whoever hears them dies. Belief in it often surged in times of epidemic. |
| Nuckelavee | Scotland (Orkney) | Called “the nastiest” of all the demons of Scotland’s Northern Isles by folklorist Katharine Briggs. This skinless sea demon comes ashore as a horse with a man’s torso growing from its back, black blood coursing through its yellow veins. Its breath withers crops and sickens livestock. It was blamed for droughts, epidemics and the horse disease mortasheen. It cannot cross fresh water. Only the Mither o’ the Sea can keep it confined, which she does each summer. |
| Oni | Japan | Horned ogre-demons, usually huge, with red or blue skin, wild hair, tiger-skin loincloths and iron clubs. In Buddhist tradition they torment the wicked in hell. At the Setsubun festival each year people throw roasted soybeans to drive them from their homes. Some regional traditions treat them as protective figures. |
| Pabilsag | Mesopotamia (Babylonian) | A god of war and agriculture worshipped at Isin, whose star figure became our constellation Sagittarius. Babylonian art shows him as a winged archer with a horse’s body and a scorpion’s tail. The Greeks later simplified this composite into the centaur archer of the zodiac. |
| Pontianak | Malaysia / Indonesia (Malay) | One of the most feared ghosts in Malay folklore, called kuntilanak in Indonesia: a woman who died in pregnancy or childbirth and returns as a beauty in white with long black hair. A scent of frangipani that turns into the stench of decay betrays her, as does a hole at the nape of her neck. A nail driven into that hole turns her into a docile woman until it is removed. Older sources such as W. W. Skeat’s Malay Magic (1900) give this role to the langsuir and call the pontianak the ghost of a stillborn child. |
| Questing Beast | Britain (Arthurian legend) | A strange composite beast with the head of a serpent, the body of a leopard, the haunches of a lion and the feet of a hart. From its belly comes a sound like thirty pairs of hounds in full cry, called questing, which gives the beast its name. In Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (1485) King Pellinore hunts it endlessly without success. The French romances call it the Beste Glatissant. |
| Rakshasa | India (Hindu, Buddhist and Jain) | Powerful man-eating beings of South Asian myth who deceive through illusion and shape-shifting and grow strongest at night. They defile sacrifices and attack the righteous, though a few, such as Vibhishana, side with good. The demon king Ravana, antagonist of the Ramayana, is the most famous rakshasa. Also in our Entities and Demons guide. |
| Scorpion Man | Mesopotamia (Babylonian) | The girtablilu, guardians with a human head and torso on the body and tail of a scorpion. In the Epic of Gilgamesh a scorpion-man couple guard the gate of Mount Mashu, where the sun rises and sets. They question Gilgamesh before letting him pass. Scorpion-men also appear as protective figures in Mesopotamian art. |
| Skinwalker | USA (Navajo) | In Navajo tradition the yee naaldlooshii (“by means of it, it goes on all fours”) is a witch who has gained the power to become an animal by breaking a grave taboo. Skinwalkers are among the most feared beings in Navajo belief. Many Navajo avoid speaking of them at all. This is a living spiritual tradition and should be treated with respect. Also in our Entities and Demons guide. |
| Strigoi | Romania | Restless spirits of Romanian folklore, which knows two kinds. Strigoi vii are living witches whose souls roam at night. Strigoi morΘi are the dead who rise to drain the life of their family first and then their neighbors. Being born with a caul, a bad death or an improper burial could all make someone a strigoi. Garlic, stakes and careful burial rites guard against them. Also in our Entities and Demons guide. |
| Taniwha | New Zealand (MΔori) | Powerful beings that dwell in rivers, lakes, the sea and caves, often in the form of huge reptiles, sharks or whales. Many are kaitiaki, guardians of a particular tribe or place, while others are dangerous. In 2002 concern for the taniwha Karutahi led Transit New Zealand to partially reroute a Waikato highway. This is a living spiritual tradition and should be treated with respect. |
| Thunderbird | North America (Indigenous) | A vast supernatural bird in the traditions of many Indigenous peoples, notably on the Pacific Northwest coast, around the Great Lakes and on the Great Plains. The beating of its wings makes thunder and its eyes flash lightning. In many traditions it is less a monster than a powerful spirit that battles whales or underwater beings to keep the balance between sky and water. This is a living spiritual tradition and should be treated with respect. |
| Tikbalang | Philippines | A tall, bony trickster with a human body and a horse’s head and hooves that haunts forests and mountain trails, leading travelers astray until they are lost. Wearing your shirt inside out is said to break its spell. Anyone who plucks the special hairs from its mane, often said to be three, can tame it as a loyal servant. |
| Tiyanak | Philippines | A demon that takes the form of a crying baby in the forest. When a traveler picks it up, it reveals its true form and attacks. It is often said to be the spirit of a child who died before baptism. As with the tikbalang, some say turning clothes inside out confuses it. |
| UmibΕzu | Japan | A giant yΕkai whose name means “sea monk,” appearing as a vast, dark, bald head that rises from calm seas as they suddenly turn rough. It breaks ships as it surfaces or asks the crew for a barrel to fill their boat with water. The sailors’ defense is to hand over a barrel with no bottom and escape while it is confused. |
| Vetala | India (Hindu) | A spirit that haunts cremation grounds and animates corpses. In the Vetala Panchavimshati (“Twenty-five Tales of the Vetala”) King Vikramaditya must carry a vetala that hangs upside down from a tree to a sorcerer. On the way it tells him a riddle-story. Each time the king breaks his silence to answer, the vetala flies back to its tree, until the last riddle leaves him speechless. |
| Wendigo | North America (Algonquian) | A malevolent spirit from the traditions of Algonquian-speaking peoples of the Great Lakes and northern forests, such as the Ojibwe, Cree and Innu. It is tied to winter, starvation and the taboo of cannibalism: a person who eats human flesh risks becoming a wendigo, a gaunt being that grows with each victim and is never satisfied. The antlered, deer-skulled wendigo of films and games is a modern addition, popularized by the 2001 film Wendigo. This is a living spiritual tradition and should be treated with respect. Also in our Entities and Demons guide. |
| Werewolf | Europe | A person who turns into a wolf by curse, magic or will. The Roman poet Ovid tells how Jupiter turned King Lycaon into a wolf. Fear of werewolves peaked in early modern Europe, when men such as Peter Stumpp of Germany, executed in 1589, were tried as werewolves. The silver bullet became a fixed weakness mainly through 20th-century film. |
| Xing Tian | China | A giant who challenged the Yellow Emperor and was beheaded in the fight. Refusing to die, he turned his nipples into eyes and his navel into a mouth and fought on with his shield and axe. He appears in the ancient Classic of Mountains and Seas (Shanhaijing) and became a symbol of unbreakable will. |
| Yeti | Himalayas (Sherpa) | A large, ape-like creature said to roam the high Himalayas, part of Sherpa and Tibetan folklore for centuries. In the West it became the Abominable Snowman, a name coined in 1921. Expeditions have reported huge footprints and strange calls, but a 2017 DNA study found that supposed yeti remains came from bears and a dog. |
| Zaratan | Arabic world (medieval) | A sea creature so vast that sailors mistook its back for an island, landed and lit fires, only for the beast to dive and drown them. The 9th-century writer al-Jahiz mentions a sea monster called saratan, meaning “crab,” and doubts the island story. Jorge Luis Borges’s Book of Imaginary Beings spread the spelling “zaratan” and its now-familiar turtle form. The same island-beast appears in Sinbad’s voyages and the legend of Saint Brendan. |
[…] beasts and hybrid monsters have their own home in our AβZ of mythical creatures and folklore monsters. Beings that appear in both guides are marked in the table. Where we have an in-depth article, the […]