Browse
21 creatures, 63 illustrations.
Philippine creatures
Mesoamerican creatures
Slavic creatures
Themes
- Good and evil — The commonest question asked of a folk story is whether good defeats evil. Most of the creatures here will not answer it, and what they answer instead is more interesting.
- Heroes and the quest — Most creatures on this site are never defeated by anybody. Where a hero does appear, the shape of the story changes completely — and so does what counts as winning.
- Loss — A surprising number of these creatures began as a death that the community could not file properly — and the belief is what the grief was given to do.
- Shapeshifters — Nearly everything on this site changes shape. What differs is the purpose — and where the purpose is concealment among people, the folklore turns into a set of tests.
- Warnings — Match a creature to the place it belongs to and the warning becomes literal. These are the dangers a community actually faced, given a face and a name.
- Water spirits — What lives in the water differs less between traditions than what you can do about it — and the difference is a question of scale.