8 Most SCARY Mythical Creatures Ever!

 8. Vodnik

Vodyanoy is said to appear as a naked older man with a frog-like face, greenish beard, and long hair, with his body covered in algae and muck, usually covered in black fish scales. He has webbed paws instead of hands, a fish’s tail, and eyes that burn like red-hot coals. He usually rides along his river on a half-sunk log, making loud splashes. Consequently, he is often dubbed “grandfather” or “forefather” by the local people. Local drownings are said to be the work of the vodyanoy (or rusalkas).

When angered, the vodyanoy breaks dams, washes down water mills, and drowns people and animals. (Consequently, fishers, millers, and also bee-keepers make sacrifices to appease him.) He would drag down people to his underwater dwelling to serve him as slaves.

7. Bunyip

In Australian Aboriginal folklore, Bunyip is a legendary monster said to inhabit the reedy swamps and lagoons of the interior of Australia. The amphibious animal was variously described as having a round head, an elongated neck, and a body resembling an ox, hippopotamus, or manatee; some accounts gave it a human figure. The Bunyip made booming or roaring noises and was assigned to devouring human prey, especially women and children. The origin of the belief probably lies in the rare appearance of fugitive seals far upstream; the monster’s alleged cry maybe that of the bittern marsh bird.

6. The Chupacabra

The Chupacabra or chupacabras is a legendary creature in the folklore of parts of the Americas, with its first purported sightings reported in Puerto Rico. The name comes from the animal’s reported habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, including goats. Physical descriptions of the creature vary.

A mix of vampire and marauding, furry lizard, the Chupacabra has become one of the most common beasts studied under the general heading of cryptozoology, the study of animals that may or may not be confirmed. No one has ever caught a Chupacabra, though plenty of eyewitnesses claim to have seen one. Descriptions vary. Eyewitness accounts during a rash of alleged attacks in 1995, many in Puerto Rico, described the animal as having a “reptilian body, oval head, bulging red eyes, fanged teeth, and long, darting tongue,” according to a report at the time in the daily San Juan Star.

5. Mongolian death worm

According to British biologist Karl Shuker in his book “The Unexplained: An Illustrated Guide to the World’s Paranormal Mysteries” (2002, Metro Books), “One of the world’s most sensational creatures may be concealed amid the sands of the southern Gobi desert. ... It is said to resemble a large fat worm, up to 1 meter (3 feet) long and dark red, with spike-like projections at both ends. It spends much of its time hidden beneath the desert sands, but whenever one is spotted lying on the surface, it is carefully avoided by the locals.” 

According to legend, the dreaded Mongolian Death Worm — which local people call olgoi-khorkhoi or loosely translated, “large intestine worm” — has lived up to its name. It can kill in several fearsome ways, including spitting a stream of corrosive venom that is lethal to anything it hits, and if that doesn’t do the trick, it is said to be able to electrocute its victims from a distance. It was rarely seen and never photographed. It was mentioned in a 1926 book by paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews, who didn’t believe in the animal’s existence but noted that stories of it circulated in Mongolia.

4. Jorogumo

According to legend, when a Jorogumo spider (a species of Golden Orb Weaver) turns 400 years old, it gains magical powers. Stories of Jorōgumo can be found in Edo period works. In many of these stories, Jorōgumo changes its appearance into a beautiful woman to ask a samurai to marry her or takes the form of a young woman carrying a baby (which may turn out to be a spider’s egg sack).

Such as Toriyama Sekien’s book Gazu Hyakki Yakō, drawings depict Jorōgumo as a half-woman/half-spider surrounded by her spider children. Their body size averages two to three centimeters long, but they can grow much more significantly as they age; some are large enough to catch and eat small birds. These spiders are renowned for their large size, their vividly beautiful colors, the large and robust webs they weave, and for the cruel destruction they wreak on young men.

Jorō-gumo’s favorite prey is young, handsome men who are looking for love. When a jorō-gumo spots a man she desires, she invites him into her home, and he is usually never seen again. A jorō-gumo can operate like this for years and years, even in the middle of a busy city, while the desiccated skeletons of hundreds of youth build up in her home.

3. Minotaur

Minotaur, Greek Minotauros (“Minos’s Bull”), in Greek mythology, is a fabulous monster of Crete that had the body of a man and the head of a bull. It was the offspring of Pasiphae, the wife of Minos, and a snow-white bull sent to Minos by the god Poseidon for sacrifice. Minos, instead of sacrificing it, kept it alive; Poseidon, as a punishment, made Pasiphae fall in love with it. Her child by the bull was shut up in the Labyrinth created for Minos by Daedalus.

In Greek mythology, the Minotaur was a monster with the body of a man and the head and tail of a bull. The Minotaur was the offspring of the Cretan Queen Pasiphae and a majestic bull. Due to the Minotaur’s monstrous form, King Minos ordered the craftsman, Daedalus, and his son, Icarus, to build a vast maze known as the Labyrinth to house the beast. The Minotaur remained in the Labyrinth, receiving annual offerings of youths and maidens to eat. He was eventually killed by the Athenian hero Theseus.

The word Minotaur is a compound word consisting of the ancient Greek name “Μίνως” or “Minos” and the noun “ταύρος” or “bull.” Thus, the word Minotaur comes to mean “bull of Minos.” While, the Minotaur’s birth name, Asterion, in ancient Greek “ἀστέριον” means “starry one” which suggests an association with the bull constellation: Taurus.

2. Blemmyae

“For the eastern region of Libya [i.e., North Africa], which the nomads inhabit, is low-lying and sandy as far as the Triton river; but the land west of this, where the farmers live, is exceedingly mountainous and wooded and full of wild beasts. In that country are the huge snakes and the lions, and the elephants and bears and asps, the horned asses, the Dog-Headed (Kynokephaloi) and the Headless (Akephaloi) men that have their eyes in their chests, as the Libyans say, and the wild men and women, besides many other creatures not fabulous.”

Blemmyae have broad shoulders covered in hair and ears beneath their armpits. Their most defining feature is their chest-face; on their upper chest, where the pectorals would be, are two large, bulging eyes. Large noses protrude from their sternums, and curving mouths lined with white teeth like playing cards across their abdomens. When they talk, seeing their mouths moving creates a hypnotic affect.

1. Wendigo

In 1907, Algernon Blackwood wrote a short story called “The Wendigo.” Within its pages, he recounted a hunting party venturing into the Canadian backwoods and returning profoundly changed by an encounter with a wendigo [source: Algernon Blackwood].

At about that same time, a Cree tribe of northwestern Ontario named Jack Fiddler told a Methodist minister about his ability to defeat wendigoes. Word spread of Fiddler’s self-proclaimed abilities. A shaman, Fiddler said he had killed 14 wendigoes during his lifetime and insisted his actions -- snuffing out locals before they turned into wendigoes -- saved the lives of many. Jack Fiddler and his brother Joseph were arrested and imprisoned for killing a woman before she transformed. Jack escaped and hanged himself; Joseph died of consumption just days before he would have been released on appeal [source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography].

The Fiddler killings lent credibility to the notion that wendigoes were real. But they also point to a myth evolving from eradicating the physical or mental illness; the murder and quarantined disposal of wendigo bodies may have stopped the spread of disease or silenced the mentally ill. Read to find out how one stops this horrible creature.