(Don’t believe this mendacious post! This is the real one!) Anthony Trollope was one of the most popular novelists in Victorian England (I haven’t read any of his books because they have no monsters in them). One fine night in 1882 he was reading the novel Vice Versa by Thomas Anstey Guthrie (who wrote it… Read More The Honest-to-Goodness Most Poisonous Book of All
Deadliest of the terrors of the sea, though, is no squid or island or even submarine but “a Sperm Whale of uncommon magnitude and malignity” called Moby Dick. Some say Moby Dick is “continually athirst for human blood.” Some say Moby Dick is “not only ubiquitous, but immortal.” One thing is certain: Moby Dick always… Read More “That Murderous Monster…”
Gilgamesh’s buddy Enkidu is an very very early—the earliest—example of a monstrous figure that would become very popular in European art in the Middle Ages: the wild man. Sometimes called a woodwose in England, the wild man was a hairy, savage figure that lived in the woods. He featured in medieval art, often depicted decked… Read More The Wild Man
You might notice that the ending of the story of Zahhak is similar to the ancient Greek story of Prometheus. In Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus (460 BC), Prometheus steals fire from the gods and gives it to men, and is punished by being tied to a rock in the mountains. An eagle eats his liver,… Read More Zahhak and Prometheus
The Horla is too strange to be perceived by human sense, but that’s not the only way a monster can be invisible. In Ambrose Bierce’s short story “The Damned Thing” (1893), two hunters encounter a huge monster they cannot see. One explains the reason: “There are sounds that we can not hear. At either end… Read More On beyond Horla
Everyone in Sleepy Hollow is talking about the Ghost of Major André—but who is he? John André was a British officer and a spy during the American Revolution, best known for helping the arch-traitor Benedict Arnold betrayWest Point. He was captured near Tarrytown, New York, and later tried, hanged as a spy, and buried in… Read More The Ghost of Major André
“Call it what you like: you look at things as they are.” “Ah—I’ve had to. I’ve had to look at the Gorgon.” “Well—it hasn’t blinded you! You’ve seen that she’s just an old bogey like all the others.” “She doesn’t blind one; but she dries up one’s tears.” –from The Age of Innocence (1920) by… Read More Thoughts on Medusa
“The Renaissance knew of strange manners of poisoning—poisoning by a helmet and a lighted torch, by an embroidered glove and a jeweled fan, by a gilded pomander and by an amber chain. Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he… Read More From The Picture of Dorian Gray
•Odradek, from the story “The Cares of a Family Man” (1919). This strange creature looks like a star-shaped spool of thread with one extra leg. It rolls around, lurking in shadows, trailing thread bits. No one knows what Odradek is, or how it lives, or if it can die. The Family Man’s specific “care” (referred… Read More More Monsters from Kafka
Really there are a lot of them. Some of these were previously mentioned in The Big Book of Monsters, but I’m including them here so I can put links in, and you can stay up all night reading vampire stories until the sun comes up and you feel safe again. Christabel by Samuel Taylor Coleridge… Read More More Vampire Stories
The Big Book of Monsters 