It's October, and you know what that means: creepy stories! No, I'm not talking about a certain short-fingered vulgarian making cracks about how "nasty" his political opponent is - I mean the kind of things that go bump in the night.
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In the August of 2013, my wife @alladesria and I moved to the Adirondack Mountains of New York. The majority of the Adirondacks is protected land that’s stewarded by the state, and that means the settlements up here are smaller in order to preserve the wilderness as much as possible. The result is that you’re never far from nature; in fact you’re likely to be completely surrounded by it, much as we were until we moved about 45 minutes south to the city of Glens Falls.
When we were living in the park, stepping outside in the dead of night can be a spooky experience. An overcast, moonless evening with no wind has a sepulchral stillness that can leave you aware of nothing but the beating of your own heart – until you hear that twig snap. Or that pack of coyotes yipping in the hills, circling your cabin. It's one of the reasons I'm a gun owner, no lie - I've spent more than one sleepless night with the key to my trigger lock in my hand, watching over my wife and daughter while they slept.
I know that sounds melodramatic, but the darkness of night can conjure unseen horrors – and as the days grow shorter, the trees grow more bare, and the snap of cold air signal the long nights of winter approaching, those horrors seem all the more real. While I'm more afraid of the depravity and violence that humans can do to one another more than anything supernatural - the dark stillness of an Adirondack night can be irrationally terrifying.
One of the many reasons we moved down off the mountain was because winter in the Adirondacks is no joke. We've experienced evenings of minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit, and that’s before you take the wind chill into account - we would go through thousands of dollars' worth of propane just to keep the house at a chilly 65 degrees. It's even worse outside - a layer of ice under the snow means food for the wildlife is scarce, and that means anything bigger than a woodchuck is hungry. In fact, the word Adirondack is a Mohawk word that roughly translated means “they eat the trees." It's the Mohawk name for the porcupine, as they love to eat the bark off trees, but it's also a pejorative they used to refer to the Algonquin tribes further north that would often go hungry in the harsh winters, forcing them to strip the buds from tree branches in the search of something - anything - to eat.
The Algonquin of the First Nations feared and hated winter to the point that an avatar of the deprivation of the season coalesced into the particularly nasty form of the wendigo. Referred to by the Algonquin as a manitou, or spirit, the wendigo represented the horrible, all-consuming hunger and terror that a long, lean winter brought to this region all too often. Unlike other spirits, the Algonquin would never seek the guidance or wisdom of the wendigo; instead, they did whatever they could to avoid its attention, as it was said it could possess those who succumbed to one of the greatest of cultural taboos: cannibalism.
Spirits of constant hunger, wendigo were said to appear as massive, gaunt, pale humanoid beasts reeking of rotten meat, with wicked claws and lips tattered from its jagged teeth. The hunger of the wendigo could never be sated; some say it would simply grow ever larger as it devoured people whole, cursed to ever hunt for its next meal in a frenzy of maddening blood lust.
The wendigo spirit was said to possess anyone who committed the great sin of eating the flesh of another human. It would drive these people mad, driving them to deplorable acts of violence in search of fresh human meat, eventually warping their bodies to resemble the demonic spirit that they harbored within. Once the wendigo had sunk its icy claws into your soul, you were doomed to forever roam the frozen wastes, murdering and consuming as many victims as you could until you either succumbed to the elements or were captured and exorcised. If the wendigo had destroyed the person you were, there was only one option: death.
Most modern anthropologists point to the wendigo legend simply as a story to reinforce the cultural taboo the Algonquin had against cannibalism, especially since the cold North American winters could easily isolate small settlements for weeks or even months at a time. The combination of cabin fever and dwindling food supplies could drive anyone to extremes when it comes to self-preservation – just look at the story of the Donner Party for a good example of this – and the creation and dissemination of the wendigo myth likely served as a way to discourage the act among the Algonquin. "We might be hungry," they likely mused, "but at least we're not monsters."
Despite this, there are historical instances of cannibalism that still occurred during those brutal winter months. Many would cite wendigo possession after the fact as the catalyst for the act to the point where those resorting to cannibalism would adopt the violent insatiable nature of the manitou in a grisly instance of self-fulfilling prophecy. It happened often enough that the term Wendigo Psychosis entered the western vernacular. Instances have of course been exceedingly rare since the 20th century as access to non-perishable food spread, but the wendigo myth has survived and has become a staple of pop culture horror.
Despite the fact that the wendigo has been relegated to the kind of B-movies that you would see on SyFy starring the kinds of washed-up celebrities that peaked in the 1980s, the true terror of this malevolent spirit stalking the frozen wastes of North America is still chilling – especially if you happen to be living deep in the territories the wendigo was said to inhabit. In the dark, even the most rational of souls cling to the circle of safety cast by the floodlights on the front porch, especially as the wind howls through the trees like a hungry beast and claws at your skin with needle-sharp, invisible claws. But it’s just a story, after all – don’t spend too much time thinking about the wendigo tonight as the shadows deepen and the weather turns colder. Still, you might want to keep your cupboards stocked with a few extra cans of food.
Oh, and pleasant dreams.
This is an updated version of a post appearing on my old blog, The Amateur Professional. The original can be found here, though this one has been updated and expanded considerably.
