THE YARA-MA-YHA-WHO

The yara-ma-yha-who (© Andy Paciorek)

Also known as the yaroma, the yara-ma-yha-who is one of Australia's most feared supernatural entities, but it may also have a basis in reality, at least according to veteran cryptozoologist Dr Bernard Heuvelmans. For he speculated in his classic tome On the Track of Unknown Animals (1958) that perhaps it was inspired by ancient memories of southeast Asian tarsiers, those small but exclusively carnivorous, nocturnal primates with gargantuan orbs for eyes and weird superficially sucker-like finger-tips and toe-tips.

Heuvelmans deemed it possible that their unearthly, goblinesque appearance may have sufficiently impressed itself upon the native peoples whose descendants subsequently travelled to and settled in Australia, giving rise there to the aboriginal nations, for their collective memories, passed down from generation to generation Down Under, to have preserved a still-lingering version of it, distorted and embellished with lurid imaginings, ultimately yielding the nightmarish yara-ma-yha-who.

Whatever the explanation for it, however, the yara-ma-yha-who is truly terrifying, not only in appearance but also in activity, as now revealed here in my retelling of its traditional grisly behaviour upon encountering an unfortunate human.

Did ancient memories of tarsiers inspire native aboriginal belief in the yara-ma-yha-who? (© LDC, Inc Foundation/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence; © Pierre Fidenci/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 2.5 licence)

Creatures of shadow come in many forms, but few are not only more monstrous in physical form but also more hideous in predatory behaviour than the horrific yara-ma-yha-who of the Australian bush, which is active during the daylight hours but lurks hidden in tall fig trees amid the concealing darkness encompassed by their burly overlapping branches. Here it sits, waiting…

Twilight had not yet fallen as the hunter walked down a long tree-fringed path leading towards his settlement just beyond the forest’s perimeter. Peering fearfully all around, he inwardly cursed himself for not having waited until the sun had set in the sky before journeying through this ill-omened place. For his people’s ancient lore warned of the terrors that dark, lonely locales concealed within their black hearts even during the span of daytime.

Shafts of sunlight filtered through the roof-like canopy of interspersed branches overhead, lighting the gloom below – and revealing a fairly large creature squatting on a sturdy branch just ahead. A koala, perhaps, or even a tree kangaroo? Gripping his spear, he moved closer, as the sunlight slowly transformed the entity from a featureless silhouette into a furry being that seemed to have scarlet skin.

Surely, though, reasoned the hunter, this abnormal hue was due merely to the fiery rays of the soon-to-be-setting sun falling upon it? He fervently hoped so, because the alternative was too terrifying even to contemplate. Fortunately, the creature was sitting with its back to him, so if he could just walk by softly, without attracting its attention, all would be well.

Unfortunately, his foot trod heavily upon a dry, shed twig, which snapped loudly in the evening stillness. Immediately, the creature turned, and as the hunter gazed up into that hideous visage, he knew without hesitation that it was already too late. Just as he had dreaded, what he had encountered was neither koala nor tree kangaroo but was, instead, a yara-ma-yha-who!

(Public domain/Pete Linforth)

The eyes of this fiendish entity were enormous – twin globes of glowing evil that almost filled its entire face within its disproportionately large head. And as its hands stretched towards him, the doomed hunter observed with skin-crawling fascination that each of its long spindly fingers and toes bore a large flat sucker at its tip. Instantly, the yara-ma-yha-who leaped down upon the terrified hunter, knocking him onto the floor, its suckers pressed against his quivering body. And as he lay there, with this foul vampyric beast upon his chest, he could feel each sucker drawing blood from his body, draining him of his life-force.

That alone would have been more than enough horror to withstand, but the hunter knew from his people’s lore that there was even worse to come – much, much worse. Suddenly, when finally satiated with blood, the yara-ma-yha-who opened its wide toothless mouth - and, just like a snake, dislocated its jaws, so that its gaping maw now resembled an immense black cavern. Then, leaning forward, in a single enormous gulp it swallowed whole the hapless hunter, weak and paralysed with fear, but still living.

After executing a macabre dance designed solely to facilitate the movement of its engulfed human victim down its gullet into its distended stomach, the yara-ma-yha-who squatted back down...and waited. After a while, it opened its gigantic mouth again, and vomited forth its prey. Although hideously disfigured by the creature’s highly corrosive gastric juices, the hunter, incredibly, remained alive, but was somewhat smaller in size. When the yara-ma-yha-who saw this, it promptly swallowed him once more, then performed its bizarre dance of digestion.

This grotesque sequence of events was repeated several times, until finally, when vomited up yet again, the hunter, barely living but still breathing, was no bigger than the yara-ma-yha-who, and totally unrecognisable. When it inspected him this time, the yara-ma-yha-who seemed satisfied, and in an instant it had gone, leaping into a nearby tree – to await another victim.

What had formerly been the hunter, meanwhile, lay there on the ground as it gradually revived, its furry skin burnt scarlet from the yara-ma-yha-who’s metabolic acid. Then it raised itself up onto its haunches, its huge eyes blinking in the darkness, its suckered fingers twitching as if electrified. Soon, just like its creator, it would leap into a tree, to watch, and wait – a new yara-ma-yha-who, hungry for human blood and life-force, having already forgotten that it too had once been human.

This ShukerNature blog article is exclusively excerpted from Creatures of Shadow and Night, a book-in-progress written by me in which I retell the legends associated with a global range of supernatural entities of darkness, and complemented throughout by spectacular full-colour illustrations specially prepared by highly-acclaimed graphics artist Andy Paciorek.

THE NAGA HAG

A naga hag (© Andy Paciorek)

Ancient India – a land of gods, demons, and cobras, and sometimes all three combined within a single dread form: the naga, or human serpent. Some of these ophidian deities were benevolent to humanity, such as the great seven-headed naga Muchilinda, whose magnificent heptarchy of expanded hoods shielded the sleeping Lord Buddha from the blazing mid-day sun. Others, especially the female naga hags or nagini, could be far less benign...

It had started as a playful game of hide and seek between the youth and his lover, taking turns to stay concealed for a while behind a tree or a bush at the edge of the jungle, before suddenly leaping forth to startle the other, then laughing, embracing, and kissing. But now the youth was becoming concerned. He had been searching for his lover, calling out her name, for what seemed like an eternity, finally entering into the jungle itself, as the sun gradually dimmed and diminished, its noontide incandescence replaced by the shimmering haze of early evening.

And then, as if from nowhere, his lover had risen up from the tall grass just ahead, her slim, pale form no longer clothed, and almost sinuous amid the half-light of the jungle’s shade. He called to her, but in answer his lover merely extended her arms to him, as her dark hair cascaded over her shoulders in ripples of obsidian. Her limbs remained hidden amid the grass, but her waist and torso swayed slowly, almost hypnotically, willing him to draw nearer, ever closer, to her waiting arms.

The youth smiled, his earlier fear at her absence now totally dissipated as he moved forward. He had only known her for a short while, yet he had fallen passionately, uncontrollably in love with her almost from the first moment of their meeting. And now, at last, it seemed that his love would be returned.

He stood before her, trembling slightly in anticipation as the cool evening breeze ruffled her dark hair until it seemed almost alive, flickering and entwining. The grass at her waist stirred - and as he looked down, the youth was horrified to see what appeared to be a huge serpent writhing where his lover’s feet must surely be standing.

But even as he opened his mouth to cry out in fear, the cry shrivelled and died in his throat. The breeze had become much stronger, blowing aside the grass, bowing it down in all directions, and the youth’s eyes stared, transfixed, unbelieving, at the huge serpent – which, as he now could see only too plainly, was not a serpent at all, but the limbless, scaly-skinned lower torso of his lover. She was not human – or, at least, not entirely so. She was a naga hag!

Even as he forced himself to look back up at her face, dragging his eyes away from the thrashing, serpentine abomination that was an intrinsic part of her body, he knew that it was too late. He gazed into her cold, amber, reptilian eyes, noticing for the first time that they were lidless, and then, with detached, almost preternatural calmness – or perhaps resigned acquiescence – observed how her slender canine teeth had enlarged into venom-dripping fangs.

He closed his eyes once more, for the last time, and so was spared the ultimate horror of seeing his lover’s face transform into that of a human cobra, its hair flailing outward and coalescing into a dark expanded hood, as it leaned forward to sink its fangs into his throat. Once sustained, the naga hag drew back again, and the youth’s limp brittle shell, which had once known life but only an empty promise of love, dropped soundlessly to the ground, drained and dead, like the last rays of the setting sun that were sinking beneath the sable canopy of the jungle.

This ShukerNature blog article is exclusively excerpted from Creatures of Shadow and Night – a book-in-progress in which I am retelling the folklore and legends of a wide range of sinister and decidedly dark supernatural entities of the night, most of which are relatively or entirely unknown outside their respective homelands. Moreover, each of my verbal portrayals is accompanied visually by a spectacular full-colour illustration specially prepared by highly-acclaimed graphics artist Andy Paciorek.

Naga hag or nagini figurine (© Dr Karl Shuker)

ROSE HILL DAWGIE BLUES - THE PHANTOM BLUE MASTIFF OF MARYLAND

Does a huge phantom mastiff emitting an eerie blue phosphorescent glow haunt Rose Hill in the vicinity of Port Tobacco, Maryland, USA? (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Telling ghost stories during the Christmas season is a longstanding Yuletide festive tradition, so here is ShukerNature's contribution for Christmas 2016. But what makes this particular story very special is that its phantom protagonist may actually be real! The apparition in question is the blue ghost dog of Rose Hill, just outside Port Tobacco, a once-thriving seaport in Charles County, Maryland, USA.

According to local tradition, during the political unrest leading up to the American Civil War (or leading up to the American War of Independence, a century earlier, in some versions), a Yankee soldier-peddler called Charles Thomas Sims, accompanied by a huge mastiff-like tick hound with unusual blue-grey fur, sought warmth and shelter one very wintry 8 February at the St Charles Inn, one of many waterfront taverns in Port Tobacco at that time.

Rose Hill Manor (public domain)

Once inside, however, he soon became so intoxicated that he clumsily spilled a number of gold coins out of his purse. This attracted the keen attention of a gang of rough youths, led by a ne'er-do-well named Henry Hanos, who lost no time in luring him out of the inn and the town, leading him instead along Rose Hill Road and up to the vast grounds of Rose Hill Manor atop a lonely hill just outside Port Tobacco.

Here, securely out of sight of the town's populace, Hanos and his mob clubbed the hapless Sims and his dog to death on a big rock in the manor's grounds, near the roadside, and then stole his gold, burying it under a holly tree alongside the road on the hill for safekeeping, but planning to return later and retrieve it. When they did return, however, they were horrified to see a monstrous dog surrounded by an eerie blue phosphorescence howling on the rock, the site of its master's murder and its own  too - and as soon as they tried to draw nearer, the dog raced towards them in hellish fury!

Artistic representation of the phantom blue mastiff of Rose Hill (© Unknown artist/All About Dogs, January-February 1998, reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial, educational/review Fair Use basis only)

Screaming with terror, the youths fled, never coming back, and Hanos swiftly fell ill, dying abruptly soon afterwards. Since then, several others have boldly ventured to Rose Hill to seek Sims's gold, including some troops of General Joseph Hooker fighting near here in the Civil War - but when confronted by the unearthly luminous blue dog, they have swiftly departed this accursed spot, leaving the gold untouched. Moreover, the former owner of Rose Hill Manor in whose grounds the killings allegedly took place, Olivia Floyd, an erstwhile Confederacy spy during the Civil War, claimed in an interview with the Port Tobacco Times newspaper in 1897 to have once seen the great glowing hound there herself – the earliest written documentation of it.

Today, the blue ghost dog is very much a local celebrity in Port Tobacco, which is home to an ornate sign depicting it and even boasts a Blue Dog Saloon containing a huge and very beautiful oil painting by local artist Don Zimmer portraying the tragic scene of the slain Sims lying dead amid a desolate snowy landscape and the teary-eyed ghost of his faithful dog lying close by. Moreover, prints of this magnificent painting can actually be purchased, with all proceeds going towards the Nanjemoy Neighbors Water Project (click here to visit the official website at which to buy a print of the painting).

Magnificent oil painting portraying the tragic death scene from the legend of the Rose Hill blue ghost dog (© Don Zimmer/TheBayNet.Com 2016 – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial, educational/review Fair Use basis only)

The legend of the blue ghost dog of Rose Hill is often stated to be the oldest ghost story in the entire USA, but is it more than just a local folktale? And, if so, are sightings of this terrifying canine apparition still occurring today? (I've read claims that sightings have reputedly occurred as recently as the 1970s, and most frequently during the month of February, but with no details supplied.)

I have no idea of the answers to these questions, so what I'm going to do now is what I always do in situations like this. Namely, request that if anyone reading my present ShukerNature article has further information concerning its subject, and especially any details regarding possible modern-day encounters with the phantom dog itself, please do post them here, as I'd be very interested indeed to receive and read them. Thanks very much!

Could the phantom blue mastiff of Rose Hill look something like this? (© Dr Karl Shuker)

PHANTOM WHITE DOGS AND CELTIC FAIRY HOUNDS

A fairy hound, one of the Cwn Annwn - the hounds of Annwn, the Celtic Otherworld (© Simon Wyatt)

Characterised by their sable-hued pelage, blazing red eyes, spectral nature, and their traditional association with disaster and death, the zooform phenomena known as Black Dogs have been extensively documented. Equally mysterious, but far less familiar, are their pallid counterparts, the White Dogs and fairy hounds. Nevertheless, these canine phantoms are by no means rare.

One of Great Britain's most famous White Dogs is Gally-trot, reported in the North Country and Suffolk, which resembles a bullock-sized dog with a white shaggy coat. Gally-trot earns its name from its tendency to chase after anyone who runs away from it, and from its fearsome demeanour ('Gally' translates as 'to frighten'). What may be the same apparition has also been recorded specifically from a marshy pool near Burgh, in Suffolk, called Bath Slough.

During the years leading up to World War II, a White Dog was often seen racing across the road linking the Norfolk villages of Great and Little Snoring, and on one occasion an unsuspecting motorist drove directly through it! Equally intangible is the white hound of Cator Common, Dartmoor, which, in one particularly memorable modern-day instance, abruptly disappeared in full view of a lady who had stretched out her hand to stroke it.

A pack of White Dogs

Even more extraordinary, as brought to my notice by cryptozoologist Jan Williams, is the White Dog reported from Leek Brook in Staffordshire. Just like its Black Dog equivalent, East Anglia's Old Shuck, this particular White Dog has no head! Another Black Dog trait mirrored by certain White Dogs is their association with chains - as demonstrated by the white hound of Bunbury, Cheshire, which is normally observed dragging a length of chain behind it.

A few Black Dogs have actually materialised inside churches, and there is at least one White Dog on file with a similar claim to fame. Resembling a ghostly white hound, this preternatural beast reputedly appears inside the church at Pluckley, Kent - not too surprising a locality, perhaps, as Pluckley is popularly deemed 'the most haunted village in England'.

Mystery beast investigator Neil Arnold has publicised a fascinating but hitherto little-known, present-day sighting of a White Dog. One evening during the early 1950s, a soldier based at an army camp inside Richmond Park was returning to the camp after visiting London when he noticed that the park's deer seemed unusually disturbed. Suddenly, several deer raced by him in a state of great panic, and when he looked behind them he was amazed to see a huge, pure-white hound, of hideous appearance with immense teeth, chasing after them. However, it was no normal, corporeal dog. Instead of running across the ground, this uncanny entity was racing through the air, at a height of about 1 ft above the ground!

The Richmond Park White Dog (© C. Martin)

Although most reports of White Dogs emanate from Great Britain, there are varied traditions elsewhere too. For instance: Lamper, the Hebridean death dog, is white, and runs round in circles to warn of an impending death. Werewolf lore has it that the loup-garou (French werewolf) can assume the guise of a White Dog. And in Romania, gypsies claim that many cemeteries here are occupied by white spirit wolves, which guard the living by discovering and destroying any vampires that may arise within these graveyards.

In his book Animal Ghosts (1913), veteran ghost investigator Elliott O'Donnell recalled how an acquaintance called Rappaport had encountered a pack of spectral hounds one winter's night on the slope of Russia's Ural Mountains. Headed towards a lake, Rappaport had been riding aboard a horse-drawn coach when a fierce pack of wolves had begun pursuing it. Despite his success in shooting some of them, however, Rappaport and the coach driver, Ivan, feared that they would soon be overwhelmed by the savage, snarling horde. Then, without any warning, the air was filled with a loud baying sound. Racing towards their coach was another canine pack. However, this one was composed not of wolves but of enormous white hounds. At the sight of these weird beasts, the wolves turned tail and fled:

"On came the hounds - more beautiful dogs I had never seen; as they swept by, more than one brushed against my knees, though I could feel nothing save intense cold. When they were about twenty yards ahead of us, they slowed down, and maintained that distance in front of us till we arrived on the shores of the lake. There they halted, and throwing back their heads, bayed as if in farewell, and suddenly vanished. We knew then that they were no earthly hounds, but spirit ones, sent by a merciful Providence to save us from a cruel death."

Lancashire's gabriel hounds are phantom dogs that race through the air, rather like the Richmond Park beast, and are sometimes said to be luminous white in colour, but are readily distinguished from 'normal' canine spectres (white or otherwise) by having human heads.

A fire-breathing White Dog (Johannes Gehrts)

Another pack of ghostly White Dogs has been reported near Wellington in Somerset, whose open-mouthed members allegedly emit flame from between their jaws as they race along. This case has been investigated by renowned British folklorist Ruth L. Tongue, who has linked it to the longstanding British tradition of fairy hounds.

Also known as hounds of the hill, fairy hounds are said to be the hunting dogs of the Little People, who dwell in hollow hills. And according to Welsh mythology, a pack of these ethereal creatures, known as the Cwn Annwn, was also owned by Arawn, King of Annwn - the Celtic Otherworld. Resembling large white hounds with long slim legs, they are characterised by their ruby-red ears and eyes.

Celtic fairy hounds - the Cwn Annwn (© Roger Garland)

Researching Somerset fairy hounds, Ruth Tongue noted a modern sighting near Priddy. The eyewitness was a man who had seen two huge dogs, taller than Irish wolfhounds but with a rough white coat and red ears, walking by him, on the other side of the road, making no noise. According to local lore, he had been very lucky, because if they had walked by him on the same side of the road, or had uttered any sound, he would have surely died.

In her book Forgotten Folk-Tales of the English Counties (1970), Tongue included a story recalled in 1917 by a Mrs Foden of Long Mynd, and also known in Cheshire, with a similar variant in Irish folklore. It concerns a labourer's young assistant who was going home from work late one night when he saw a huge dog, larger than a calf, with a rough white coat and red ears, lying in some bushes. Thinking at first that it was a foot-sore foxhound, he collected some soothing dock leaves to wrap around its feet. After collecting them and calling the dog to him, however, he realised that it was "...one of the fairy hounds from the hill who bring death or ill-luck".

Although badly frightened, the boy boldly bandaged the animal's paws, then wished it good night before continuing his journey home. Nothing untoward happened to him, but one dark evening in November he was going back home along that same road when a huge demonic goat-like beast confronted him, with glowing green eyes. Transfixed with fear, the boy was certain that he would be killed - when suddenly a huge White Dog with red ears appeared from nowhere and ferociously attacked the goat-beast, enabling the boy to escape. Click here for my own detailed retelling of this folktale in an earlier ShukerNature post.

A porcelain fairy hound (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Of course, such tales as this could be dismissed as nothing more than charming but wholly fictitious folklore...except for the fact that such animals are still being reported today. Each year at sunrise on Midsummer Day, a ghostly priest reputedly enters West Kennet Long Barrow, a Neolithic tomb overlooking Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, and is followed by a spectral White Dog with red ears. A similar beast with fiery eyes is said to appear each evening at midnight in a Neolithic burial chamber called the Devil's Den, at Fyfield, also in Wiltshire.

Old traditions die hard, and those featuring White Dogs and fairy hounds are no exception.

A White Dog

A NOVEL INSTANCE OF RED EYE-GLOW POTENTIALLY RELEVANT TO CRYPTOZOOLOGY AND ALSO TO THE PARANORMAL

A preternatural Black Dog with glowing red eyes (public domain)

The article reproduced below in this present ShukerNature post was the first one of mine to be published in Strange Magazine, way back in November 1991. Its subject is a fascinating case of red eye-glow whose very singular nature provides a truly unique insight into this anomalous phenomenon – one that has been reported both with tangible, corporeal creatures of cryptozoology and with zooform entities of a seemingly supernatural, paranormal nature.

In order to read my article's text, please click on this image of it to enlarge it:

My red eye-glow article from Strange Magazine (© Dr Karl Shuker/Strange Magazine)

PIGGING OUT AT CHRISTMAS - IT'S GRIM WITH THE GLOSO

Chased by the gloso! (© Richard Svensson)

Welcome to a seasonal ShukerNature post, featuring a little-known but greatly-feared preternatural creature long associated with Swedish Yuletide.

In Britain, the animals most closely linked to Christmastime via folklore and other traditions include such familiar and generally friendly species as the robin, the reindeer, and the turkey. In Skåne and Blekinge, the two southernmost provinces of Sweden, conversely, a very different, and far more daunting, creature pervades the Season of Goodwill, and its presence is anything but good. Scarcely known outside its Scandinavian provenance, outwardly it resembles a pig, but no ordinary one, for this preternatural entity is in many ways the porcine equivalent of Britain's phantasmal Black Dogs, and is just as dangerous!

Most commonly referred to as the gloso (other names for it include the galoppso and the gluppso, all translating as 'galloping sow'), this dire beast is grim in every sense of the word. This is because the gloso is a church grim (or kyrkogrim in Sweden), i.e. a supernatural creature derived from the spirit of an animal or person supposedly sacrificed when the foundation of a church was built, and which now protects the church and its grounds for all eternity, and cannot be killed by any normal weapon. Generally, the gloso lives either within the cemetery of the church to which it is bound, or within a mound in a field directly adjacent to that church.

A stop-motion puppet of the gloso from a film by Richard Svensson (© Richard Svensson)

Those unfortunate enough to have encountered this terrifying entity liken it in basic appearance to an enormous female domestic pig, usually jet-black in colour (though sometimes ghostly white), but with a ridge of razor-sharp spines or bristles running down the centre of its back, a pair of huge tusks curving out from its jaws, eyes that glow a fiery red, and the fearful yet very real ability to breathe fire. Other tangible, physical abilities attributed to the gloso, and which thereby distinguish it from insubstantial ghosts or spectres, include its predilection for devouring fresh corpses in the churchyard and for sharpening its tusks upon gravestones. It also leaves visible tracks in its wake.

The gloso can be encountered at any time during the year, but it is said to be at its most malign during the week linking Christmas and the New Year. And yet it is during this same week when it can also be its most beneficial – provided a certain magical rite associated with it is performed correctly. If this rite is not, however, the person performing it will not live to see in the New Year!

According to Swedish legend, on the evening of Christmas Day (and also on New Year's Eve) anyone can discover everything that will happen to them during the incoming New Year if they are brave enough to withstand an assault by the gloso. The ritual stipulates that after the sun has set, you must visit four different churches in four different parishes, walk around each church in an anti-clockwise direction, and then blow through the keyhole of each church's door. After blowing through the keyhole of the fourth church's door, if you then peer through it you will witness all of the most notable events that await you in the New Year, rushing before your eyes in a rapid stream of images like a speeded-up movie film.

Another view of the stop-motion gloso puppet from a film by Richard Svensson (© Richard Svensson)

But for such precious insights, you must pay a steep price – the wrath of the gloso. For it will abruptly appear and chase after you, spurting hot blasts of fire at your rear end and striving to run between your legs so that its ridge of razor-sharp bristles can rip you apart. Happily, however, if you are brave enough to attempt the feat, there is one way in which this dread beast can be pacified – by turning around and facing it, with an arm outstretched, offering it a loaf of bread. If the gloso allows you to feed it the bread, you are safe. If not...

In some variations upon this legend, the same gift of New Year foresight can be obtained by confronting the gloso at a crossroads instead. As a teenager, the maternal grandmother of Swedish artist and cryptozoologist Richard Svensson once visited a crossroads in Blekinge on New Year's Eve for the express purpose of conjuring forth the gloso – though merely to see it rather than to witness what the New Year held in store for her. (Un)fortunately, however, the gloso failed to materialise.

The gloso, from a bestiary by Richard Svensson (© Richard Svensson)

The gloso is also part of a much lengthier, more complex magical ritual in which the person taking part is hoping to gain psychic talents, and this multi-stage ritual has to be performed on several different magically-potent dates, including Christmas night once again. Here is how Swedish folklorist Håkan Lindh described it to me:

"The ritual was a kind of vision-quest that a person who wanted to gain psychic gifts undertook several years in a row. After a bit of fasting he went out, under absolute silence, on a night-time walk to powerful places, a graveyard, a stream running towards north, a holy well, etc, and during these walks he was given trials. One of these was Gloso, and he avoided danger by just keeping his legs together and refusing to show fear. If he did, he came to no harm and gained a bit of magic power. Next year he met something else, a dragon turned into a chicken, for example, Odin on a horse, a band of aggressive Vättar [Norse nature spirits], and so on and on. While the ceremony went on, he got visions about who would die in the different homes he passed by, who would get ill, and what he could do to cure those illnesses. He also gained material magic tools too during these walks, like bones from dead people etc.

"This ritual continued to be performed until c.150 years ago, and I personally know a few who have tried it recently."

In some Swedish traditions, moreover, the gloso haunts lonely roads where murders have occurred. Håkan has mentioned to me that just a few miles north of his home village in Halland, Skåne, is one such locality (where a murder took place during a botched robbery), and that alleged sightings of the gloso have been reported there and in the woods nearby.

It is possible that the gloso is a remnant of earlier Nordic legends appertaining to Gullinburste ('Golden Hair'). Named after its golden bristles, and also known as Slidrugtanne ('Horrible Tusks'), this was the great boar that pulled the chariot of the Norse deity Frey, god of fertility and pleasure. Moreover, in Blekinge there is even a local myth neatly combining Norse tradition with Christianity, in which every year St Thomas, armed with a mighty sword, rides a tamed gloso during the Christmas week to rid the land of fatally-alluring troll-maidens and other malevolent pagan beings - especially during the evening of 21 December, known as Thomas's Eve. Presumably, his saintly status affords him immunity from being torn in two by his gloso's lethal back-bristles while riding it!

The Norse god Frey with the great boar Gullinburste (Johannes Gehrts, 1901)

In light of such a horror as the gloso, suddenly even our own Black Dogs, Owlmen, and other British zooform entities seem positively tame by comparison. So I very sincerely hope that every ShukerNature reader's Yuletide celebrations this year will be blessed by a notable absence of fire-breathing pigs!

My most grateful thanks to Richard Svensson and Håkan Lindh for generously providing me with plentiful information concerning the gloso, and also to Richard for so kindly permitting me to include his superb illustrations in this ShukerNature post.

Chased by the gloso! (second version) (© Richard Svensson)

WULVERS AND WOLFEN AND WEREWOLVES, OH MY!! - TALES OF THE UNINVITED

Wolf-men appear in the mythology of many cultures worldwide (Richard Svensson)

One of the most unusual examples of the werewolf movie genre was the film 'Wolfen' (1981), based upon the novel The Wolfen (1978) by Whitley Strieber. Albert Finney starred as a Manhattan detective searching for a mysterious, elusive, and exceedingly intelligent species of highly-evolved humanoid wolf, which has been preying upon humans from the earliest times and is responsible for the werewolf legends but has never been revealed by science. Of course, wolfen are wholly fictional...aren't they?

Front cover of my copy of Whitley Strieber's novel The Wolfen; this is the 1992 reissue of Coronet Books' 1979 paperback edition (Dr Karl Shuker)

Similarly, world mythology is amply supplied with wolf-headed humans or wolf-men. These include ancient Egypt's jackal-headed god of the dead, Anubis; the evil Thessaly-originating king of Arcadia, Lycaon, transformed into a wolf by Zeus but often portrayed as a wolf-headed man; the cynocephali of India; and even St Christopher, frequently depicted as a dog-headed human. Moreover, the British Isles is famously rich in fabulous monsters, one of which is the wulver - a reclusive wolf-headed humanoid from Shetland mythology, which is covered in short brown hair, lives in caves dug out of steep hills, and enjoys fishing. Once again, however, wulvers are entirely legendary...or are they?

Medieval colour illustration of some cynocephali supposedly sighted by Marco Polo in the Andaman Islands

There is an unsettling number of reports on file describing reputedly authentic encounters with wolf-men. These include the following pair of spine-chilling incidents, each featuring an extraordinary skull and the even more extraordinary events that followed its discovery.

Southwest of the Shetlands is another group of Scottish islands - the Hebrides or Western Isles. According to ghost-hunter Elliot O'Donnell's book Werewolves (1912), these were once the setting for a frightening encounter with a decidedly malign wulver-like beast. Several years earlier, O'Donnell had taken down the testimony of the wolf-man eyewitness, a Mr Warren (named as Andrew Warren in an account of this episode included by Graham McEwan in his book Mystery Animals of Britain and Ireland, 1986), who claimed that his creepy experience had occurred while he was a teenager, staying in the Hebrides:

"I was about fifteen years of age at the time, and had for several years been residing with my grandfather, who was an elder in the Kirk [Church] of Scotland. He was much interested in geology, and literally filled the house with fossils from the pits and caves round where we dwelt. One morning he came home in a great state of excitement, and made me go with him to look at some ancient remains he had found at the bottom of a dried-up tarn [lake]. 'Look!' he cried, bending down and pointing at them, 'here is a human skeleton with a wolf's head. What do you make of it?' I told him I did not know, but supposed it must be some kind of monstrosity. 'It's a werwolf[sic]! he rejoined, 'that's what it is. A werwolf! This island was once overrun with satyrs and werwolves! Help me carry it to the house.' I did as he bid me, and we placed it on the table in the back kitchen. That evening I was left alone in the house, my grandfather and the other members of the household having gone to the kirk. For some time I amused myself reading, and then, fancying I heard a noise in the back premises, I went into the kitchen. There was no one about, and becoming convinced that it could only have been a rat that had disturbed me, I sat on the table alongside the alleged remains of the werwolf, and waited to see if the noises would recommence. I was thus waiting in a listless sort of way, my back bent, my elbows on my knees, looking at the floor and thinking of nothing in particular, when there came a loud rat, tat, tat of knuckles on the window-pane. I immediately turned in the direction of the noise and encountered, to my alarm, a dark face looking in at me. At first dim and indistinct, it became more and more complete, until it developed into a very perfectly defined head of a wolf terminating in the neck of a human being. Though greatly shocked, my first act was to look in every direction for a possible reflection - but in vain. There was no light either without or within, other than that from the setting sun - nothing that could in any way have produced an illusion. I looked at the face and marked each feature intently. It was unmistakably a wolf's face, the jaws slightly distended; the lips wreathed in a savage snarl; the teeth sharp and white; the eyes light green; the ears pointed. The expression of the face was diabolically malignant, and as it gazed straight at me my horror was as intense as my wonder. This it seemed to notice, for a look of savage exultation crept into its eyes, and it raised one hand - a slender hand, like that of a woman, though with prodigiously long and curved finger-nails - menacingly, as if about to dash in the window-pane. Remembering what my grandfather had told me about evil spirits, I crossed myself; but as this had no effect, and I really feared the thing would get at me, I ran out of the kitchen and shut and locked the door, remaining in the hall till the family returned. My grandfather was much upset when I told him what had happened, and attributed my failure to make the spirit depart to my want of faith. Had he been there, he assured me, he would soon have got rid of it; but he nevertheless made me help him remove the bones from the kitchen, and we reinterred them in the very spot where we had found them, and where, for aught I know to the contrary, they still lie."

Quite aside from its highly sensational storyline, it is rather difficult to take seriously any account featuring someone (Warren's grandfather) who seriously believed that the Hebrides were "...once overrun with satyrs and werwolves"! By comparison, and despite his youthful age, Warren's own assumption that the skeleton was that of a deformed human would seem eminently more sensible - at least until the remainder of his account is read. Notwithstanding Warren's claim that his account was factual, however, the arrival of what was presumably another of the deceased wolf-headed entity's kind, seeking the return of the skeleton to its original resting place, draws upon a common theme in traditional folklore and legend.

King Lycaon, portrayed in this 16th-Century copperplate engraving by Italian artist Agostino de' Musi as a ferocious wolf-headed man comparable to the entity reported by Andrew Warren

As documented in Werewolves (1933) by the Reverend Montague Summers, an authority on such entities, the second of the two bloodcurdling episodes to be considered here occurred in summer 1888, and featured a professor from Oxford who had rented a holiday cottage in a mountainous area of Merionethshire, Wales. During his stay there, the professor decided to go fishing one day in a local lake, and while doing so he hooked an unusual object that proved to be the skull of an extremely large dog-like beast. Curious to discover more about his unusual catch, he took the skull back to the cottage, but left it in the kitchen when he went out for the evening with a friend, leaving his wife alone in the cottage.

While they were away, the professor's wife suddenly heard a strange snuffling sound outside the kitchen door, but when she went into the kitchen she saw to her horror the face of a terrifying red-eyed beast, seemingly part-human and part-wolf, outside the window, grasping the window ledge with paws that resembled hands. Greatly frightened, she ran back to the front door of the cottage and bolted it - just in time. Moments later, the monster was panting outside, and rattling the door's latch. Unable to open the door, it paced round and round the cottage, snarling and growling with rage as it vainly sought some way to enter, until eventually it departed, leaving the petrified woman shaking with fear inside.

When her husband returned with their friend, they made absolutely sure that the house was totally secure, and then sat waiting with stout sticks and a gun at the ready, in case the wolf-man, werewolf, wulver, or whatever it was, returned - which it did.

Holding a figure which may resemble the wolf-man that besieged the professor's holiday cottage in Wales (Dr Karl Shuker)

Later that same night, as the cottage lay enshrouded in a still darkness, its three alert occupants heard the soft crunching of paws upon the gravel outside, then the scratching of nails or claws against the kitchen window. And, to quote Summers, as they peered towards the sound: "...in a stale phosphorescent light they saw the hideous mask of a wolf with the eyes of a man glaring through the glass, eyes that were red with hellish rage". They raced to the door, but their quarry had heard them, and as they opened it they could just discern a huge form racing into the lake, and disappearing from view beneath the surface.

There seemed only one way of bringing this living nightmare to a close. So as soon as it was light, the professor left the cottage, rowed out into the lake, and hurled the mysterious skull as far as possible into the lake's depths. Returning the skull from whence it had come evidently restored an equilibrium of sorts, because its semi-lupine seeker never returned.

Coupled with its melodramatic storyline, this case's absence of names via which its details could be independently checked or pursued by other researchers does not bode well for its verisimilitude. Of course, it could be that the professor and the others did indeed exist but did not wish their identities to be made public - which, though perfectly understandable, is hardly beneficial in furthering the case's claims to authenticity.

What big teeth you have! (Richard Svensson)

Even more worrying, however, is this case's profound similarity to the earlier one, documented by O'Donnell. In both histories, a large canine skull (one in isolation, the other attached to a human skeleton) is found in a lake (one still containing water, the other dried up), brought back to the finder's residence, and left there in the kitchen during the evening with only a single person in the house. This person is duly confronted at the kitchen window by a terrifying face and hand(s) - presumably a living representative of the skull's species (described in near-identical manner within the two histories) searching for it. Although the entity is ultimately frustrated, it has elicited sufficient fear for the skull's finder to return the skull to its place of discovery, after which the entity is not seen again.

All the better to bite you with!! (Richard Svensson)

Yet even if we dismiss Summers's case as a piece of fiction inspired by O'Donnell's report, there are others still to account for, some of which are again included in O'Donnell's book and McEwan's. Hence it is a great pity that the remains reputedly found by Warren's grandfather were never examined by a qualified zoologist. After all, how often in modern times has science been presented with the skeleton of a mythical entity for formal scrutiny?

Wolf magic!