40 Fun Facts About Wendigo

In some tellings, the wendigo of Ojibwe and Cree legend has a heart made of which substance?

Ice at the creature's core suits a being tied to cold, famine and the far north. Some legends say the heart has to be cut out and melted before the monster is truly dead.

Which Stephen King novel hides a wendigo in the Maine woods beyond an ancient burial ground?

Pet Sematary makes the wendigo the force fueling the burial ground that brings the dead back wrong. King gives the creature yellow-grey eyes and ram's horns in place of ears.

In Ojibwe lore, what happens to a wendigo each time it eats a person, leaving it forever hungry?

It grows larger in proportion to each meal, so its stomach can never be filled. That is why the monster is pictured as a glutton who is also painfully thin.

Which TV drama sent its monster-hunting brothers after a wendigo in Colorado in its second episode?

Supernatural called the 2005 episode simply Wendigo and finished the creature off with a flare gun. Creator Eric Kripke disliked the final design, likening it to a tall, gangly cousin of Gollum.

Marvel's Wendigo, a silver-furred monster born of a cannibal's curse, first fought which superhero?

The Hulk met the creature in a 1973 issue of his own comic. Writer Steve Englehart said its strength and its sad story made the monster sound like a good opponent for the green goliath.

Which PlayStation horror game strands eight friends on a mountain haunted by miners turned wendigos?

Until Dawn reveals its monsters as miners who turned to cannibalism after a 1952 cave-in. Any of the eight friends can live or die depending on the choices the player makes.

Some traditions say which vice turns people into wendigos, a tale told to encourage cooperation?

Greed is the trait the wendigo embodies, along with gluttony and excess. Where survival depended on sharing food through hard seasons, the story warned against taking more than your part.

Which cartoon put windigos, spirits that feed on hatred, in the episode Hearth's Warming Eve?

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic used the windigos to explain how three feuding tribes came to found Equestria. Only the warmth of friendship drives off the spirits and their endless blizzard.

The wendigo, a man-eating spirit of the northern forests, belongs to which peoples' folklore?

Algonquian-speaking peoples such as the Ojibwe, Cree, Naskapi and Innu share the legend. Across all of them the creature is a malevolent cannibal linked with the north, cold and famine.

Unlike the wendigo, the skin-walker is a witch who turns into an animal in which people's tradition?

Navajo tradition calls the skin-walker yee naaldlooshii, roughly one who goes on all fours by means of it. It is a harmful human witch rather than a spirit, and a subject rarely discussed with outsiders.

Which Canadian Marvel hero made his comics debut in a 1974 story that also featured the Wendigo?

Wolverine was sent in by the Canadian government to break up a brawl involving the monster. He appeared in the last panel of one issue and made his full debut in the next.

In Disney's The Lone Ranger, which character is convinced outlaw Butch Cavendish is a wendigo?

Tonto, played by Johnny Depp, hands his partner a silver bullet to use on the cannibal outlaw. His belief grows out of guilt over the men who massacred his tribe.

Which Bethesda game set in West Virginia counts wendigos among its cryptids alongside the Mothman?

Fallout 76 makes its wendigos out of people who ate human flesh in isolation. They roam a post-nuclear Appalachia beside other local legends such as the Flatwoods monster.

Which 2021 film produced by Guillermo del Toro sets a wendigo loose in a small Oregon mining town?

Antlers stars Keri Russell as a teacher who uncovers a spirit passing from person to person. Del Toro built the creature on the idea that the more it eats, the hungrier and weaker it gets.

In some descriptions, a wendigo's approach is announced by a sudden chill or by what else?

A foul stench of decay and death clings to the creature in some accounts. Ojibwe scholar Basil Johnston wrote that it gave off an eerie odor of decomposition and corruption.

Marvel Comics drew its Wendigo as a silver-furred, tailed version of which famous cryptid?

Bigfoot is the creature the comic-book monster most resembles, though it also swings a prehensile tail. The cursed beast looks nothing like the skeletal, ash-gray figure of the traditional stories.

Which English writer popularized the spelling wendigo with a 1910 novella set in the Ontario wilds?

Algernon Blackwood published The Wendigo in 1910, and Lovecraft praised the way its footprints tell unbelievable things. The tale shaped many later horror versions of the creature.

Which trapper was hanged in 1879 after killing and eating his family in a famous wendigo case?

Swift Runner had been a trusted police guide before the killings. He was only about 25 miles from emergency food at a trading post, so the case was never seen as simple starvation.

Which 1990s drama had heroine Piper Halliwell begin turning into a wendigo after one scratched her?

Charmed made its wendigo a werewolf-like beast hiding in plain sight as an FBI agent. Piper's sisters stop it with a flare gun, because fire is the monster's weakness in the show.

Which 1999 horror film puts Guy Pearce in a remote army fort where a scout warns of the wendigo?

Ravenous borrows from the Donner Party and from Colorado cannibal Alfred Packer. In the film, eating human flesh brings strength and healing along with a hunger that never ends.

Which author retold the wendigo tale for children in the book Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark?

Alvin Schwartz loosely adapted the 1910 novella for his children's horror series. When a 2011 edition replaced Stephen Gammell's original drawings, later printings brought them back.

Paul Le Jeune, who wrote the first European account of a windigo, was a missionary of which order?

Jesuits sent regular reports home from New France, and Le Jeune's 1636 letter to Paris told of a man-eater said to have eaten people of a nearby tribe. It predates the Salem witch trials by nearly 60 years.

In the 1910 novella The Wendigo, the doomed Ontario hunting party is after which animal?

Moose hunting brings two Scotsmen and their guides into the bush north of Rat Portage, the town now called Kenora. The party splits in two, and the pair who paddle deeper meet the horror.

Which MTV drama set in Beacon Hills featured a young wendigo named Sean in its fourth season?

Teen Wolf's wendigo, a boy named Sean, kills and eats one of the officers guarding him in hospital. He then takes a boy named Liam hostage on the roof.

Wendigo psychosis, a reported craving for human flesh, is classed as which kind of syndrome?

Culture-bound syndromes are recognised only within one particular society. Critics such as Lou Marano argued in the 1980s that this one was built on stories taken at face value.

Which novelist's National Book Award winner The Round House casts its villain as a wendigo?

Louise Erdrich, a citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, set the 2012 novel on a North Dakota reservation. Its 13-year-old narrator sets out to avenge an attack on his mother.

Linguists think the ancient root of the word wendigo may once have been the name of which bird?

Owl is one possible meaning of the reconstructed ancestor word, a link explored in a paper titled Owls and Cannibals. English has recorded spellings such as Whitego since 1714.

In the 2001 film Wendigo, a family's troubles start when their car hits which animal?

A deer that local hunters had been tracking is the animal, and one enraged hunter confronts the family over it. A shopkeeper later gives their young son a small figurine of the creature.

Which Ontario shaman, arrested for murder in 1907, claimed to have defeated fourteen wendigos?

Jack Fiddler led the Sucker people, and families asked him to kill relatives feared to be turning. He died before he could be tried, and his arrest brought Canadian law to his people.

Which police force arrested two brothers in 1907 for killing a woman feared to be turning wendigo?

The Mounties arrested them at a camp whose people had had little contact with white outsiders. The officers had come north hoping to introduce Canadian law to a people still living under their own.

Which Marvel superhero team has repeatedly fought and captured the Wendigo in the comics?

Alpha Flight's sorcerer Shaman has cured victims of the curse after their capture. In Marvel's telling, northern gods created it to deter cannibalism.

Some Cree folklore says a person turning wendigo can be cured by drinking which substance?

Grease from animals, or fatty meat, was the recommended treatment. In many recorded cases, though, the person was killed instead, to stop the feared cannibalism before it could begin.

Which Cthulhu Mythos wind-walker did August Derleth base on the 1910 novella The Wendigo?

Ithaqua snatches travellers up into the sky, much as the novella's guide is carried off. Derleth had already name-checked the original tale in an earlier story of his own.

In the 1910 novella The Wendigo, which part of the guide Défago's body is left horribly deformed?

His feet are what the guide cries out about from somewhere in the sky after he bolts from the tent. His tracks in the snow slowly take the shape of an inhuman set beside them.

Which American indie filmmaker wrote and directed the 2001 film Wendigo with Patricia Clarkson?

Larry Fessenden later co-wrote a BAFTA-winning PlayStation horror game full of the same monsters. He also appears in it, as a stranger armed with a flamethrower.

Which novelist's early story Mortality and Mercy in Vienna features a case of wendigo psychosis?

Thomas Pynchon published the story in 1959, among his earliest fiction. Its plot turns on a character who develops the syndrome and then goes on a killing spree.

In the retro-style shooter Dusk, wendigo enemies stay in which state before they first take damage?

Invisible before the first hit, the wendigos stalk a rural Pennsylvania setting where a network of Lovecraftian ruins was found beneath the farmland.

The trapper hanged in 1879 in a famous wendigo case lived in which present-day Canadian province?

Alberta was then part of the North-West Territories, and his execution at Fort Saskatchewan was the first hanging carried out there. An army pensioner was paid $50 to act as hangman.

Which author's Monstrumologist series includes the 2010 novel The Curse of the Wendigo?

Rick Yancey made the writer of the classic 1910 wendigo novella a character in his book. He is also known for The 5th Wave, which became a film in 2016.

The 2001 horror film Wendigo follows a Manhattan family's snowy cabin weekend in which region?

Upstate New York is also where the film was shot, on 16 mm stock. The family's young son comes to believe the creature is behind the dark forces around their cabin.