legends-collection

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Easter Rabbit

The Easter Bunny (also called the Easter Rabbit or Easter Hare) is a folkloric figure and symbol of Easter, depicted as a rabbit—sometimes dressed with clothes—bringing Easter eggs. Originating among German Lutherans, the “Easter Hare” originally played the role of a judge, evaluating whether children were good or disobedient in behavior at the start of the season of Eastertides. As part of the legend, the creature carries colored eggs in its basket, as well as candy, and sometimes toys, to the homes of children. The custom was first mentioned in Georg Franck von Franckenau’s De ovis paschalibus (‘About Easter eggs’) in 1682, referring to a German tradition of an Easter Hare bringing eggs for the children.

The hare was a popular motif in medieval church art.  In ancient times, it was widely believed (as by Pliny, Plutarch, Philostratus, and Aelian) that the hare was intersex. The idea that a hare could reproduce without loss of virginity led to an association with the Virgin Mary, with hares sometimes occurring in illuminated manuscripts and Northern European paintings of the Virgin and Christ Child.  It may also have been associated with the Holy Trinity, as in the three hares motif.

Eggs have been used as fertility symbols since antiquity. Eggs became a symbol in Christianity associated with rebirth as early as the 1st century AD, via the iconography of the Phoenix egg, and they became associated with Easter specifically in medieval Europe, when eating them was prohibited during the fast of Lent. A common practice in England at that time was for children to go door-to-door begging for eggs on the Saturday before Lent began. People handed out eggs as special treats for children prior to their fast. As a special dish, eggs would probably have been decorated as part of the Easter celebrations. Later, German Protestants retained the custom of eating colored eggs for Easter, though they did not continue the tradition of fasting. Eggs boiled with some flowers change their color, bringing the spring into the homes, and some over time added the custom of decorating the eggs. Many Christians of the Eastern Orthodox Church to this day typically dye their Easter eggs red, the color of blood, in recognition of the blood of the sacrificed Christ (and, of the renewal of life in springtime). Some also use the color green, in honor of the new foliage emerging after the long-dead time of winter. The Ukrainian art of decorating eggs for Easter, known as pysanky, dates to ancient, pre-Christian times. Similar variants of this form of artwork are seen amongst other eastern and central European cultures.

The idea of an egg-giving hare went to the U.S. in the 18th century. Protestant German immigrants in the Pennsylvania Dutch area told their children about the “Osterhase” (sometimes spelled “Oschter Haws”). Hase means “hare”, not rabbit, and in Northwest European folklore the “Easter Bunny” indeed is a hare. According to the legend, only good children received gifts of colored eggs in the nests that they made in their caps and bonnets before Easter.

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Easter Bilby

Bilbies are native Australian marsupials that are endangered. To raise money and increase awareness of conservation efforts, bilby-shaped chocolates and related merchandise are sold within many stores throughout Australia as an alternative to Easter bunnies. The first documented use of the Easter Bilby concept was in March 1968 when a 9-year-old girl Rose-Marie Dusting, wrote a story, “Billy The Aussie Easter Bilby,” which she published as a book 11 years later. The story helped catalyse the public’s interest in saving the bilby. In 1991, Nicholas Newland from the ‘Foundation for Rabbit-Free Australia’ also developed the idea of the Easter Bilby to raise awareness about the environmental damage that feral rabbits cause and to replace the Easter bunny with true native wildlife. The first Chocolate Easter Bilbies were sold at the Warrawong Sanctuary when it was owned by John Wamsley.

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This intriguing 1st Century CE marble statue, discovered in Villa Ludovisi, Rome, depicts a child playing with a mask. The craftsmanship reveals a playful and humorous side of ancient Roman art, capturing a moment of innocence and joy.

[legends-collection]

Amu Nowruz

Amu Nowruz (Uncle Nowruz), also known as Baba Nowruz, is a legendary character originating in Iranian folklore. According to the folklore, he appears annually at the beginning of spring, together with his companion Haji Firuz, to mark the beginning of Nowruz, the Iranian New Year. According to some historians he symbolizes Zal, father of Rostam, the hero of Shahnameh.

On the eve of spring equinox, when the Iranian New Year is celebrated in the Iranian cultural continent from Albania in the West to Western China in the East, Amu Nowruz brings children gifts, much like his counterpart Santa Claus. He is the husband of Nane Sarma, who shares a traditional love story with him in which they can meet each other only once a year.

Amu Nowruz is characterized as an elderly silver-haired man who puts on a felt hat, and has a walking stick, a long cloak of blue canvas, a sash, a pair of thin-soled giveh, and a pair of linen trousers. He is a wise historical presence who passes the old story of Nowruz to the youth. Haji Firuz plays a tambourine, dances, and demands gifts, while Amu Nowruz is the giver.

The story of Amu Nowruz and Nane Sarma is one of the symbolic legends of the transition from the old year to the new year: According to legend an old woman named Nane Sarma (“Grandma Frost”) is the wife of Amu Nowruz but can only see him on this one night of the year, after which she leaves him and goes on her way until the next year.

Another version of this story says that on the first day of spring every year, Nane Sarma expects Uncle Nowruz to come and visit her, but before he comes she falls asleep from exhaustion and when she wakes up she realizes that Uncle Nowruz has come and gone. It has also been said that if the two see each other the world will be destroyed.

In another retelling, Amu Nowruz travels all around the world giving children gifts on his way to meet Nane Sarma, who loved him dearly. Nane Sarma would wake up early on the spring equinox to clean her house and ready her table. However, each year she falls asleep just before he arrives. Kindhearted Amu Nowruz would not wake her up; instead, he eats some of the food set out and places a flower in her new clothes. Then, he departs to continue his long journey. When dawn touches Nane Sarma’s face, she wakes to realize she had missed seeing Amu Nowruz again. Each year the cycle repeats, and she awaits him every spring.

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Zombie

A zombie (Haitian French: zombi, Haitian Creole: zonbi) is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse.The term comes from Haitian folklore, in which a zombie is a dead body reanimated through various methods, most commonly magic like voodoo.The English word “zombie” was first recorded in 1819, in a history of Brazil by the poet Robert Southey, in the form of “zombi”. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the word’s origin as West African and compares it to the Kongo words nzambi (god) and zumbi or nzumbi (fetish). Some authors also compare it to the Kongo word vumbi (mvumbi) (ghost, revenant, corpse that still retains the soul), (nvumbi) (body without a soul).  A Kimbundu-to-Portuguese dictionary from 1903 defines the related word nzumbi as soul, while a later Kimbundu–Portuguese dictionary defines it as being a “spirit that is supposed to wander the earth to torment the living”. One of the first books to expose Western culture to the concept of the voodoo zombie was W. B. Seabrook’s The Magic Island (1929), the account of a narrator who encounters voodoo cults in Haiti and their resurrected thralls.

mbies are featured widely in Haitian rural folklore as dead persons physically revived by the act of necromancy of a bokor, a sorcerer or witch. The bokor is opposed by the houngan (priest) and the mambo (priestess) of the formal voodoo religion. A zombie remains under the control of the bokor as a personal slave, having no will of its own.

The Haitian tradition also includes an incorporeal type of zombie, the “zombie astral”, which is a part of the human soul. A bokor can capture a zombie astral to enhance his spiritual power. A zombie astral can also be sealed inside a specially decorated bottle by a bokor and sold to a client to bring luck, healing, or business success. It is believed that God eventually will reclaim the zombie’s soul, so the zombie is a temporary spiritual entity.

The two types of zombie reflect soul dualism, a belief of Haitian voodoo. Each type of legendary zombie is therefore missing one half of its soul (the flesh or the spirit).

The zombie belief has its roots in traditions brought to Haiti by enslaved Africans and their subsequent experiences in the New World. It was thought that the voodoo deity Baron Samedi would gather them from their grave to bring them to a heavenly afterlife in Africa (“Guinea”), unless they had offended him in some way, in which case they would be forever a slave after death, as a zombie. A zombie could also be saved by feeding them salt. English professor Amy Wilentz has written that the modern concept of Zombies was strongly influenced by Haitian slavery. Slave drivers on the plantations, who were usually slaves themselves and sometimes voodoo priests, used the fear of zombification to discourage slaves from committing suicide.

While most scholars have associated the Haitian zombie with African cultures, a connection has also been suggested to the island’s indigenous Taíno people, partly based on an early account of native shamanist practices written by the Hieronymite monk Ramón Pané, a companion of Christopher Columbus.

The Haitian zombie phenomenon first attracted widespread international attention during the United States occupation of Haiti (1915–1934), when a number of case histories of purported “zombies” began to emerge. The first popular book covering the topic was William Seabrook’s The Magic Island (1929). Seabrooke cited Article 246 of the Haitian criminal code, which was passed in 1864, asserting that it was an official recognition of zombies. This passage was later used in promotional materials for the 1932 film White Zombie.

Also shall be qualified as attempted murder the employment which may be made by any person of substances which, without causing actual death, produce a lethargic coma more or less prolonged. If, after the administering of such substances, the person has been buried, the act shall be considered murder no matter what result follows.

In 1937, while researching folklore in Haiti, Zora Neale Hurston encountered the case of a woman who appeared in a village. A family claimed that she was Felicia Felix-Mentor, a relative, who had died and been buried in 1907 at the age of 29. The woman was examined by a doctor; X-rays indicated that she did not have a leg fracture that Felix-Mentor was known to have had. Hurston pursued rumors that affected persons were given a powerful psychoactive drug, but she was unable to locate individuals willing to offer much information. She wrote: “What is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Vodou in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony.”

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Oni

They are often depicted wearing tiger-skin loincloths and carrying iron clubs called kanabō. This image leads to the expression "oni with an iron club", that is, to be invincible or unbeatable.

Their skin may be any number of colors, but red, blue, and green are particularly common. They may sometimes also be depicted as black-skinned, or yellow-skinned.

They may occasionally be depicted with a third eye on their forehead, or extra fingers and toes.

An old etymology for "oni" is that the word derives from on, the on'yomi reading of a character meaning "to hide or conceal", due to oni having the tendency of "hiding behind things, not wishing to appear". This explanation is found in the 10th century dictionary Wamy��shō, which reveals that the oni at the time had a different meaning, defined as "a soul/spirit of the dead".

The character for oni, in Chinese also means a dead or ancestral spirit, and not necessarily an evil specter. Accordingly, Taoist origins for the concept of oni has been proposed. Particularly powerful oni may be described as kishin or kijin (literally "oni god"; the "ki" is an alternate character reading of "oni"), a term used in Japanese Buddhism to refer to Wrathful Deities.

The oni was syncretized with Hindu-Buddhist creatures such as the man-devouring yaksha and the rakshasa, and became the oni who tormented sinners as wardens of Hell, administering sentences passed down by Hell's magistrate, King Yama. The hungry ghosts called gaki has also been sometimes considered a type of oni, Accordingly, a wicked soul beyond rehabilitation transforms into an oni after death. Only the very worst people turn into oni while alive, and these are the oni causing troubles among humans as presented in folk tales.

Pic by Dark-Emissary on DeviantArt

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Yekyua

Yekyua or "mother animal" is a class of Yakut spirits that remain hidden until the snow melts in the Spring.

Each yekyua is associated with a particular animal, and they act as familiar spirits to protect the Yakut shaman. They are dangerous and powerful. The most dangerous are attached to female shamans. The type of animal manifestation also determines the strength of the yekyua. For example, dog yekyua have very little power, while elk yekyua are quite powerful. Only shaman can see the yekyua. When a shaman puts his spirit into that of his yekyua, he or she is dependent on his animal part, in as much as if another shaman who has manifested his animal kills that of another, the shaman with the dead animal will himself die. When the yekyua are fighting in the spring, the shaman with which they are associated feel very ill. The dog yekyua are not prized as they gnaw at the shaman and destroy his body, bringing him sickness. Ordinarily, though, a good yekyua protects the shaman.

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Giant

Giants appear in the folklore of cultures worldwide as they represent a relatively simple concept. Representing the human body enlarged to the point of being monstrous, giants evoke terror and remind humans of their body’s frailty and mortality. They are often portrayed as monsters and antagonists, but there are exceptions. Some giants intermingle with humans in a friendly way and can even be part of human families with their offspring being portrayed as regular humans.

Pic by Vaghauk on DeviantArt

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[legends-collection]

Sea Serpent

An apparent eye-witness account is found in Aristotle’s Historia Animalium. Strabo makes reference to an eyewitness account of a dead sea creature sighted by Poseidonius on the coast of the northern Levant. He reports the following: “As for the plains, the first, beginning at the sea, is called Macras, or Macra-Plain. Here, as reported by Poseidonius, was seen the fallen dragon, the corpse of which was about a plethrum [30 m or 100 feet] in length, and so bulky that horsemen standing by it on either side could not see one another, and its jaws were large enough to admit a man on horseback, and each flake of its horny scales exceeded an oblong shield in length.” The creature was seen sometime between 130 and 51 BC. Hans Egede, the national saint of Greenland, gives an 18th-century description of a sea serpent. On July 6, 1734, his ship sailed past the coast of Greenland when suddenly those on board “saw a most terrible creature, resembling nothing they saw before. The monster lifted its head so high that it seemed to be higher than the crow’s nest on the mainmast. The head was small and the body short and wrinkled. The unknown creature was using giant fins which propelled it through the water. Later the sailors saw its tail as well. The monster was longer than our whole ship”, wrote Egede. On 6 August 1848, Captain McQuhae of HMS Daedalus and several of his officers and crew (en route to St Helena) saw a sea serpent which was subsequently reported (and debated) in The Times. The vessel sighted what they named as an enormous serpent between the Cape of Good Hope and St Helena. The serpent was witnessed to have been swimming with 1.2 m (4 feet) of its head above the water and they believed that there was another 18 m (60 feet) of the creature in the sea. Captain McQuahoe also said that “[The creature] passed rapidly, but so close under our lee quarter, that had it been a man of my acquaintance I should have easily have recognized his features with the naked eye.” According to seven members of the crew, it remained in view for around twenty minutes. Another officer wrote that the creature was more of a lizard than a serpent. A report was published in the Illustrated London News on 14 April 1849 of a sighting of a sea serpent off the Portuguese coast by HMS Plumper. On the morning of the 31st December, 1848, in lat. 41° 13'N., and long. 12° 31'W., being nearly due west of Oporto, I saw a long black creature with a sharp head, moving slowly, I should think about two knots [3.7 km/h; 2.3 mph] … its back was about twenty feet [6 m] if not more above water; and its head, as near as I could judge, from six to eight [1.8 to 2.4 m] …There was something on its back that appeared like a mane, and, as it moved through the water, kept washing about; but before I could examine it more closely, it was too far astern. — "A Naval Officer" “A giant snake appeared at once from the water - and the largest cetacean a boa constrictor way wrapped twice. (I note such a physeter It can grow to 20-30 meters long!) It lasted for about 15 minutes the deadly struggle, the sea was just foaming and crashing waves around us, finally the back of the whale stood out Out of the water, he sank head first into the deep where the snake must have killed him. A cold shiver ran through us a cet at the sight of his final struggle; so writhing poor in the monster’s double ring, like a little bird between the claws of a falcon. View of the two rings, the snake. It could have been 160-170 feet long and 7-8 feet thick.”

Pic by Rusty001 on DeviantArt

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Sylph

Sylphs live in the sky and clouds, flying freely wherever they wish. It is said that they can only travel through the air, as they become trapped in the earth, drown in the water, and burn in fire. It's also said that sylphs are mortal beings, and they can die from hunger, illness and/or physical injury. Their mortal depiction comes from them being portrayed as between spirit and creature. They've also been described as being stronger and more intelligent than humans, having an innate understanding of the universe and connections between all its parts, along with supernatural foresight. They're commonly shown as guardians, protecting secret knowledge or the environment.

Although sylphs are said to be too pure to be seen by the eyes of humans, there are multiple different depictions of them. One depiction is of tall, lithe, human-like creatures with giant wings, large hawk eyes, and sharp/angular facial features. Another depiction is of thin, ethereal beings that change into countless different shapes as they fly through the sky. Sylphs are also sometimes illustrated as having coarse, humanoid shapes that are larger and stronger than those of regular humans. During the romantic era, their appearance was changed to resemble a dainty, fairy-like creature with graceful wings.

Sylphs have power over the skies and air. They've been delineated to have control over the wind and the clouds, and even have the ability to purify the air and control the weather itself. It's been said that the air element induces feelings of festivity, giving someone the abrupt feeling of needing to break out into song or dance.

By Fairyfreakster on deviantart

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Leprechaun

leprechaun is a diminutive supernatural being in Irish folklore, classed by some as a type of solitary fairy. They are usually depicted as little bearded men, wearing a coat and hat, who partake in mischief. In later times, they have been depicted as shoe-makers who have a hidden pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The earliest known reference to the leprechaun appears in the medieval tale known as the Echtra Fergus mac Léti (Adventure of Fergus son of Léti). The text contains an episode in which Fergus mac Léti, King of Ulster, falls asleep on the beach and wakes to find himself being dragged into the sea by three lúchorpáin. He captures his abductors, who grant him three wishes in exchange for release.

The leprechaun is said to be a solitary creature, whose principal occupation is making and cobbling shoes, and who enjoys practical jokes.

The leprechaun has been classed as a “solitary fairy” by the writer and amateur folklorist William Butler Yeats. Yeats was part of the revivalist literary movement greatly influential in “calling attention to the leprechaun” in the late 19th century. This classification by Yeats is derives from D. R. McAnally (Irish Wonders, 1888) derived in turn from John O'Hanlon (1870).

It is stressed that the leprechaun, though some may call it fairy, is clearly to be distinguished from the Aos Sí (or the ‘good people’) of the fairy mounds (sidhe) and raths. Leprachaun being solitary is one distinguishing characteristic, but additionally, the leprachaun is thought to only engage in pranks on the level of mischief, and requiring special caution, but in contrast, the Aos Sí may carry out deeds more menacing to humans, e.g., the spiriting away of children.

This identification of leprechaun as a fairy has been consigned to popular notion by modern folklorist Diarmuid Ó Giolláin. Ó Giolláin observes that the dwarf of Teutonic and other traditions as well as the household familiar are more amenable to comparison. According to William Butler Yeats, the great wealth of these fairies comes from the “treasure-crocks, buried of old in war-time”, which they have uncovered and appropriated. According to David Russell McAnally the leprechaun is the son of an “evil spirit” and a “degenerate fairy” and is “not wholly good nor wholly evil”.

The leprechaun originally had a different appearance depending on where in Ireland he was found. Prior to the 20th century, it was generally held that the leprechaun wore red, not green. Samuel Lover, writing in 1831, describes the leprechaun as; … quite a beau in his dress, notwithstanding, for he wears a red square-cut coat, richly laced with gold, and inexpressible of the same, cocked hat, shoes and buckles.

According to Yeats, the solitary fairies, like the leprechaun, wear red jackets, whereas the “trooping fairies” wear green. The leprechaun’s jacket has seven rows of buttons with seven buttons to each row. On the western coast, he writes, the red jacket is covered by a frieze one, and in Ulster the creature wears a cocked hat, and when he is up to anything unusually mischievous, he leaps onto a wall and spins, balancing himself on the point of the hat with his heels in the air.“ According to McAnally the universal leprechaun is  described as; He is about three feet high, and is dressed in a little red jacket or roundabout, with red breeches buckled at the knee, gray or black stockings, and a hat, cocked in the style of a century ago, over a little, old, withered face. Round his neck is an Elizabethan ruff, and frills of lace are at his wrists. On the wild west coast, where the Atlantic winds bring almost constant rains, he dispenses with ruff and frills and wears a frieze overcoat over his pretty red suit, so that, unless on the lookout for the cocked hat, ye might pass a Leprechawn on the road and never know it’s himself that’s in it at all. This dress could vary by region, however. In McAnally’s account there were differences between leprechauns or Logherymans from different regions: The Northern Leprechaun or Logheryman wore a “military red coat and white breeches, with a broad-brimmed, high, pointed hat, on which he would sometimes stand upside down”. The Lurigadawne of Tipperary wore an “antique slashed jacket of red, with peaks all round and a jockey cap, also sporting a sword, which he uses as a magic wand”. The Luricawne of Kerry was a “fat, pursy little fellow whose jolly round face rivals in redness the cut-a-way jacket he wears, that always has seven rows of seven buttons in each row”. The Cluricawne of Monaghan wore “a swallow-tailed evening coat of red with green vest, white breeches, black stockings,” shiny shoes, and a “long cone hat without a brim,” sometimes used as a weapon. In a poem entitled The Lepracaun; or, Fairy Shoemaker, 18th century Irish poet William Allingham describes the appearance of the leprechaun as: …A wrinkled, wizen’d, and bearded Elf, Spectacles stuck on his pointed nose, Silver buckles to his hose, Leather apron — shoe in his lap… The modern image of the leprechaun sitting on a toadstool, having a red beard and green hat, etc. is clearly a more modern invention, or borrowed from other strands of European folklore. The most likely explanation for the modern day Leprechaun appearance is that green is a traditional national Irish color dating back as far as 1642. The hat might be derived from the style of outdated fashion still common in Ireland in the 19th century. This style of fashion was commonly worn by Irish immigrants to the United States, since some Elizabethan era clothes were still common in Ireland in the 19th century long after they were out of fashion, as depicted by the Stage Irish. The buckle shoes and other garments also have their origin in the Elizabethan period in Ireland.

Pic by Bobfleadip on Newgrounds

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Hoop Snake

According to folklore, the distinguishing feature of a hoop snake is that it can grasp its tail in its jaws and roll after its prey like a wheel; which is similar to the ouroboros in Greek mythology or the tsuchinoko in Japan. In one version of the myth, the snake straightens out at the last second, skewering its victim with its venomous tail. The only escape is to hide behind a tree, which receives the deadly blow instead and promptly dies from the poison.

The hoop snake is mentioned in a letter from 1784 (published in Tour in the U.S.A., Vol. I, p. 263-65. London):

As other serpents crawl upon their bellies, so can this; but he has another method of moving peculiar to his own species, which he always adopts when he is in eager pursuit of his prey; he throws himself into a circle, running rapidly around, advancing like a hoop, with his tail arising and pointed forward in the circle, by which he is always in the ready position of striking.

It is observed that they only make use of this method in attacking; for when they flee from their enemy they go upon their bellies, like other serpents.

From the above circumstance, peculiar to themselves, they have also derived the appellation of hoop snakes.

Purported sightings are still occasionally reported, though the existence of the hoop snake has never been accepted by the scientific community.

Naturalist Raymond Ditmars placed $10,000 in trust at a New York bank for the first person to provide evidence of a hoop snake. Some have suggested it is a distorted description of the sidewinder of the American Southwest, or of mud snakes, which will occasionally lie in a loose hoop shape. The hoop snake possibly is an embellishment of actual instances of snakes swallowing their own tails, mistaking them for prey.

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Faust

Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend based on the historical Johann Georg Faust ( 1480–1540).

The erudite Faust is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a pact with the Devil at a crossroads, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. The Faust legend has been the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical works that have reinterpreted it through the ages. "Faust" and the adjective "Faustian" imply sacrificing spiritual values for power, knowledge, or material gain.

Faust With Mephistopheles by Mary Evans

The Faust of early books—as well as the ballads, dramas, movies, and puppet-plays which grew out of them—is irrevocably damned because he prefers human knowledge over divine knowledge: "he laid the Holy Scriptures behind the door and under the bench, refused to be called doctor of theology, but preferred to be styled doctor of medicine". Plays and comic puppet theatre loosely based on this legend were popular throughout Germany in the 16th century, often reducing Faust and Mephistopheles to figures of vulgar fun. The story was popularised in England by Christopher Marlowe, who gave it a classic treatment in his play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus ( 1592). In Goethe's reworking of the story over two hundred years later, Faust becomes a dissatisfied intellectual who yearns for "more than earthly meat and drink" in his life.

Faust is unsatisfied with his life as a scholar and becomes depressed. After an attempt to take his own life, he calls on the Devil for further knowledge and magic powers with which to indulge all the pleasure and knowledge of the world. In response, the Devil's representative, Mephistopheles, appears. He makes a bargain with Faust: Mephistopheles will serve Faust with his magic powers for a set number of years, but at the end of the term, the Devil will claim Faust's soul, and Faust will be eternally enslaved.

During the term of the bargain, Faust makes use of Mephistopheles in various ways. In Goethe's drama, and many subsequent versions of the story, Mephistopheles helps Faust seduce a beautiful and innocent young woman, usually named Gretchen, whose life is ultimately destroyed when she gives birth to Faust's illegitimate son. Realizing this unholy act, she drowns the child and is held for murder. However, Gretchen's innocence saves her in the end, and she enters Heaven after execution. In Goethe's rendition, Faust is saved by God via his constant striving—in combination with Gretchen's pleadings with God in the form of the eternal feminine. However, in the early tales, Faust is irrevocably corrupted and believes his sins cannot be forgiven; when the term ends, the Devil carries him off to Hell.

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Ljubi

The lubia or ljubi is a water and storm demon, usually depicted as a huge multi-headed female serpentine dragon similar to the kulshedra. In Southern Albanian beliefs, she is a storm deity. She is also referred to as ‘mother lubia’.

Lubia is depicted as a female demon. She is believed to live in a wonderful vegetable garden. Lubia, as a powerful demon, can cause the waters to dry up unless a virgin is sacrificed to her. Lubia is described as having multiple heads, anywhere from 7-100. Like the Lernaean Hydra, when one of her heads is cut off, another grows in its place. Lubia is also known to have irresistible taste for flesh, especially that of little girls.

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Boogeyman

The Bogeyman ( also spelled boogeyman, bogyman, bogieman, boogie monster, boogieman, or boogie woogie) is a type of mythic creature used by adults to frighten children into good behaviour. Bogeymen have no specific appearance and conceptions vary drastically by household and culture, but they are most commonly depicted as masculine or androgynous monsters that punish children for misbehaviour. The Bogeyman or conceptually similar monsters can be found in many cultures around the world. Bogeymen may target a specific act or general misbehaviour, depending on what purpose needs serving, often based on a warning from the child's authority figure. The term is sometimes used as a non-specific personification or metonym for terror, and in some cases, the Devil.

The word bogey originated in the mid-19th century, originally as a quasi-proper name for the devil. It may derive from the Middle English bogge or bugge, meaning a terror or scarecrow. It relates to bugbear, from bug, meaning goblin or scarecrow, and bear, an imaginary demon in the form of a bear that ate small children. It was also used to mean a general object of dread. The word bugaboo, with a similar pair of meanings, may have arisen as an alteration of bugbear.

The word is known in Indo-European languages as puck (English), bogle (Scots), púca, pooka or pookha (Irish) mumus (Hungarian), pwca, bwga or bwgan (Welsh), bucca (Cornish), buse or busemann (Norwegian), puki (Old Norse), bøhmand or bussemand (Danish), bûzeman (Western Frisian), boeman (Dutch), Butzemann (German), bòcan, bogu (Slavonic), buka or Babay/Babayka (Russian, бука), bauk (Serbian), bubulis (Latvian), baubas (Lithuanian), bobo (Polish), bubák (Czech), bubák (Slovak), bebok (Silesian), papão (Portuguese), babulas (Greek: μπαμπούλας), bua (Georgian, ბუა), babau (Italian), Бабай (Ukrainian), baubau (Romanian), and papu (Catalan).

While the description of the Bogeyman differs on a cultural level, there are often some shared similarities to the creatures. Many of the Bogeymen are depicted as having claws, talons, and sharp teeth. Along with that, the majority of Bogeymen are of the spirit variety, while the minority are demons, witches, and other legendary creatures. Some are even described to have certain animal features such as horns, hooves, and bug like appearances.

When looking at the personality traits of the Bogeymen, they are most easily divided into three categories; the kind that punishes misbehaved children, the kind that are more prone to violence, and the kind that protect the innocent. They all relate in the same way, being that they all exist to teach young children lessons. The large majority of Bogeymen are there to just frighten children with punishments, and not actually inflict much damage. The more vicious Bogeyman is said to steal the children at night, and even eat them. The last category is the Bogeyman who protects people and only punishes those guilty, regardless of age.

Because of the myth’s worldwide prevalence, it is difficult to find the original source of the legends. The first reference to the Bogeyman would be considered the hobgoblins described in England, in the 16th century. Many believed that they were made to torment humans, and while some only played simple pranks, others were more foul in nature.

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Bigfoot

Thousands of people have claimed to have seen a Bigfoot, which is most often described as a large, muscular, bipedal ape-like creature, roughly 1.8–2.7 metres (6–9 ft), and covered in black, dark brown, or dark reddish hair. Some descriptions have the creatures standing as tall as 3.0–4.6 metres (10–15 ft). A pungent, foul smelling odor is sometimes associated with reports of the creatures, commonly described as similar to rotten eggs or skunk.

The face of a Bigfoot is often described as human-like, with a flat nose and visible lips. Common descriptions also include broad shoulders, no visible neck, and long arms. The eyes are commonly described as dark in color and have been alleged to “glow” yellow or red at night. However, eyeshine is not present in humans or any known great ape.

The enormous footprints for which the creature is named are claimed to be as large as 610 millimetres (24 in) long and 200 millimetres (8 in) wide.

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