The Friday Five - Monsters In My Head

I'm doing research for my WIP on mythological creatures, because as you know (or don't know, but now you do!) the hero of the novel I just finished, Basil Tinwhistle, is one of an elite group of men who hunts paranormal entities. The next book, tentatively titled The Soul Catcher's Siren, isn't about Basil. It's about one of the characters from The Turncoat's Temptress, as with the other novels in the Legends and Lover Series. Typically the character who made a secondary appearance in a previous novel has been a male. This time I did it a little differently and selected a female character. She's a selkie, of no particular magical power, although she has some strange characteristics.

I'm trying to figure out what's special about the hero when it hits me! I'm not going to tell you because as soon as I did, I'd change my mind and make a liar out of myself. But I'm working on figuring out what kind of Big Bad is going to attempt to destroy their relationship. I don't have it yet, but here are some creepy mythological creatures I've run into on my search.

So . . . I take it there's
no chance for a
second date then?

1) Jorōgumo - Well, this is the shit nightmares are made from, no doubt. A spider that- that . . . I don't even want to say it. A spider that changes into a *shudder* woman. She seduces a man, plays some kind of lute to distract him, and binds him with her silk to later use him as supper. In some versions of the story, she pulls him into a waterfall and drowns him. I think I just threw up a little.

2) Rat King - Rat King, like that story where the little girl has to spend the night alone in rat-infested building (why?) and she draws cats on the walls. When the rats come out at night, the cats come to life and kill the rats? No? You mean a rat king is a group of rats all joined at the tails because they got tangled together due to their own doody? You mean there are actual rat king carcasses in museums? You mean a rat king could be living in the walls of my house right now?! Eeewww. Apparently people believed rat kings were responsible for the way plagues spread. Ick, get the Germ-x and a shovel and a lion. We're killing some rats. Wait, science largely believes rat kings are hoaxes? Whew!

Because no one's been
able to capture one on
film yet. 

3) Krasue - A couple of years ago I wrote a novella about boo hags. These nasty demons from Gullah culture who wear women's skin in the daytime and suck out souls at night. They got nothin' on Krasue. This demon separates from it's body so it's just a pretty young head floating around with intestines trailing from its severed neck. It has vampire teeth with which to devour you. Particularly if you're pregnant and are about to or have just delivered a baby. You can kill it by destroying its body or chopping the intestines off.

I just talk and talk.
I'm the talkin'est damn
thing you ever saw. And
then I'm going to eat you.

4) Gef the talking mongoose - Way less frightening than the others listed here, right? Well, according to Wikipedia, he claimed to be a ghost trapped in the form a weasel (this sounds like a bad Disney movie). The mongoose claimed to have been born in New Dehli, India. Upon investigation, none of the footprints or claw marks made by said mongoose were proven to be made by an actual mongoose. Hair from the animal turned out to be dog hair. The 2011 horror movie Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (excellently creepy) may have been influenced by Gef's meaner "poltergeist" persona. I have the sneaky suspicion that mongeese (gooses?) are in fact evil, just like ferrets. They're cute from a distance, but don't forget they have teeth. Please also refer to rat king.

5) Globster - This just gross, so I had to share. Big, rotting carcasses washed up from the ocean. Ugh. Before DNA testing, people believed they were the bodies of sea monsters. There are a lot of really great blob pictures on the 'net. One of my all-time favorites though is in the book Monsters Caught On Film: Amazing evidence of lake monster, Big Foot, and other strange beasts by Dr. Melvyn Willin. All these photos show people standing out there by big rotting carcasses. I was like "Cool!" until I started thinking about the smell . . .