The following photo was recently posted on a British Columbia hiking group on Facebook. The woman who posted the photo (Barb Stanbrook-Schmidt) stated:
"Two years ago we were hiking on Vancouver Island in October. It was the middle of the week, in the backcountry near Englishman River and we met this fellow lurking in the woods."
Here is a screenshot of the Facebook conversation:
NOTE: It looks like a costume, but I'll leave it up to the readers. Lon
Have you had a sighting or encounter?
Contact me by email or call the hotline at 410-241-5974
Thanks. Lon
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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
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