Two rural East Texas brothers observe an unknown, skinny, antlered humanoid moving from the field into the woods near their home. It was not a human or a deer. What was it?
I received the following account:
"Growing up in rural East Texas we would run/bike on our road after school. Our road was a dead-end road, so nobody ever drove down unless it was the mailman or someone living there. To do a whole lap was about 1 mile. There was one stretch of the road that was empty, with one side of the road having pretty thick woods and the other being an open field but with really tall grass that came up to the waist. This stretch was maybe 1/3rd of a mile? I'm not sure, but it was quite a distance between the two houses on either end of the stretch.
One afternoon as we'd started running, we had just passed the house marking the beginning of the stretch when we saw something move from the field into the woods. It was super fast! I've never seen anything move that fast in my life. And it was on two legs. But, it wasn't a human. The center of balance was off. It reminded me of how a bear may run, but it was much skinnier than a bear and there was no way a bear could move that fast on two legs. It definitely wasn't human though. My brother saw antlers on its head, but it definitely wasn't a deer either. A deer can't run for 50 yards on two legs. Whatever it was, went into the woods and didn't make a single noise.
We turned right around and went home for the day. We never saw anything like that again, but I swear that if my brother hadn't been there, I would have thought I was imagining things." S
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WENDIGO MYTHOLOGY - WHAT ARE THEY? | Join Us For LIVE CHAT | Questions & Answers #Wendigo #Cannibal
The wendigo has been misappropriated from its original context in Algonquin folklore. The word "Wendigo" roughly means “The Evil Spirit Who Devours Mankind.” Originally it was depicted as a cannibal ice giant and cautionary tale relevant to the realities of Algonquin life. Euro-American popular culture mutilated it into what may only be described as a "zombie-were-deer."
First, the Algonquin monster has relevance to their traditional way of life. Their culture was reliant on teamwork, so selfishness is a deadly sin to them, and the wendigo is the ultimate embodiment of that.
Secondly, wendigo psychosis is a real mental illness and was historically used as a justification to destroy the Algonquin culture. There are written accounts in the last two centuries of people suffering from this illness being murdered by their peers.
So then, how was the Wendigo tale altered? This goes back over a century to Algernon Blackwood's story "The Wendigo." The story does not depict a Wendigo but seems to get it confused with the Inuit (not Algonquin) creature Ijiraq and possibly the Tariaksuq. In the story, the monster burns away a victim's feet with friction, while in myth the Ijiraq is sometimes described as stripping the flesh off its victim's shins and if it survives then it becomes a faster runner. The Ijiraq is otherwise described as a trickster who kidnaps children or lures hunters by pretending to be caribou. So, it is easy to assume Blackwood read about the Ijiraq and then twisted the details for his own story.
Now Euro-American popular culture takes the name of an Algonquin cannibal ice giant and applies it to a zombie-were-deer; it has been utterly stripped of its original context and symbolism. I doubt there will ever be much push-back against the zombie-wear-deer version since it has been burned into popular culture at this point.
Now, that being stated, I'm going to present several modern-day accounts that some of the witnesses described as the ‘Wendigo.' Then you can determine what the creature in the report is. Is it an original folktale of the cannibal ice giant or something a bit more contemporary?
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Have you had a sighting or encounter?
Contact us by email or call the hotline at 410-241-5974 Thanks. Lon
Contact us by email or call the hotline at 410-241-5974
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