Wendigo

Wendigo – The evil spirit that devours mankind

The Wendigo is also known as Windigo, Windago, Windiga or Witiko. It is a creature appearing firstly in Algonquian mythology, where it is described as an evil cannibalistic spirit. This spirit could be a human who has transformed into a Wendigo, or a human possessed by the Wendigo spirit. Humans were transformed when indulging in cannibalistic practices.

The Wendigo is a spirit associated with the Winter, starvation and famine. It is also referred to as the Spirit of the Lonely Places. Wendigos are rarely satisfied and need to feed nearly constantly.

Some legends describe the Wendigo as a giant, constantly growing as he consumed human flesh, but the Wendigo is also emaciated, as he is constantly hungry and requires even more flesh to feed on. He is said to be so thin as to be hardly seen in the dark. It has glowing eyes, long yellow fangs and a very long tongue. Their skin are sallow with a yellowish tone to it. They can be up to hundreds of years old and are notoriously hard to kill.

Basil Johnston, an Ojibwa teacher described the Wendigo as:

“The Weendigo was gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tautly over its bones. With its bones pushing out against its skin, its complexion the ash gray of death, and its eyes pushed back deep into their sockets, the Weendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disenterred from the grave. What lips it had were tattered and bloody [....] Unclean and suffering from suppurations of the flesh, the Weendigo gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition, of death and corruption.”

Once a person has been transformed into a Wendigo, or has been possessed by a Wendigo spirit they become massively violent and obsessed with obtaining human flesh for consumption.

Most people transformed into a Wendigo started eating human flesh due to starvation, as a final act of desperation. The Algonquian cultures viewed the eating of human flesh as a very serious taboo. If you however happened to find yourself starving, he proper reaction would be to either suffer it out or commit suicide.

There is however a mental illness termed Wendigo Psychosis, which causes its sufferer to crave human flesh. In the native cultures such individuals were recognised early on and executed before they could harm their tribe members.

One of the most well know cases of Wendico Psychosis was the case of Swift Runner, a Plains Cree trapper from Alberta. In the winter of the year 1878 Swift Runner’s family was starving, to the extent that his eldest son passed away. While the nearest emergency food supplies were only about 50 km’s away (within 25 miles), he however decided to kill his wife and five children in order to eat them.

One of the most famous Wendigo hunters was Jack Fiddler. He was a Shaman and a Oji-Cree chieftain, well know for his ability to kill Wendigos. He had bragged to killing up to 14 of the creatures. Jack fiddler and his brother (in some reports his son) Joseph were however arrested in 1907 for murder. He claimed that he was hunting a woman who was a Wendigo and that she was about to transform. His only solution was to kill him. He committed suicide and his brother was sentenced to death.

There are some reference to the fact that someone bitten by a Wendigo will begin to crave human flesh, but this seems to be based too wildly on the Werewolf legent.

There is no cure when one has transformed into a Wendigo, other than death.

The Wendigo is a solitary creature and are well adapted to forests. Many unexplained disappearances have been blamed on the Wendigo. The Wendigo legends are restricted to the colder parts of America and have not really spread to the south.

In the upper areas of Minnesota many legends have spread and stories have been told for many years about a mysterious creature encountered by campers and hunters.

According to the lore, the Wendigo is created whenever a human resorts to cannibalism to survive. In years past, such a practice was possible, although still rare, as many of the tribes and settlers in the region were cut off by the bitter snows and ice of the north woods. Unfortunately, eating another person to survive was sometimes resorted to and thus, the legend of the Wendigo was created.

In the town of Rosesu (Northern Minnesota0 from the late 1800’s to the 1920’s a Wendigo was reported to be sighted on numerous occasions. Each time that the Wendigo was sighted an unexpected death followed.

The North Central regions of Canada, especially Kenora is well know for its Wendigo sightings and is commonly know as the Wendigo Capital of the world.

While a Wendigo is notoriously hard to kill, they have a few weaknesses. As with many of their evil counterparts, Wendigo’s are supposed to be sensitive to iron and silver. It is also said that you have to drive a silver stake through its heart and then dismember the body in order to be sure that it will not get back up.

REPORT FOUND IN A NEWSPAPER PUBLISHED 28 August 200t

Expert: Mystery beast could be 'wendigo'

Published: Aug. 28, 2006 at 8:27 PM

TURNER, Maine, Aug. 28 (UPI) -- A DNA test has been ordered to determine the species of a mystery beast killed in Turner, Maine, that some believe was a mythical creature called a "wendigo."

The Lewiston (Maine) Sun Journal shipped DNA samples from the "Turner Beast" to Dr. Irv Kornfield at the University of Maine and to HealthGene Corp. in Toronto to attempt to determine what sort of animal was killed by a car Aug. 12, the newspaper said. Results are expected back later in the week.

Canadian researcher Michael de Sackville, who has written 23 nonfiction books on history and anthropology, said the animal could be a feral dog or a wolf-dog hybrid, "but it could also be a little monster long known to the Algonkian-speaking Aboriginal peoples of northeastern North America as the 'wendigo.'"

"The northeastern Indians told tales of the wendigo entering villages by night and breaking into individual long houses where it often carried off small children. This reminds one of the much more recent tales told by Turner residents about the 'beast' that would skulk around farmhouses at night and attack pets left outside," de Sackville said.

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