Who needs fangs, claws and physical might when visual contact is enough to kill? Let's take a look at...
- Miniwashitu (or Mi-ni-wa-tu)
- King Balor of the Evil Eye
- Keṭeb Meriri (or Ketev Meriri)
- Karnabo
- Basilisk and Cockatrice
- Gorgons (Including Medusa)
- Bĭnáye Aháni
- Muirdris
- Fad Felen
- Skoffin
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| Window to the soul, or to the grave? (Samuel Scrimshaw) |
1. Miniwashitu (or Mi-ni-wa-tu)
There's a creature found in Dakota legend known as Miniwashitu or Mi-ni-wa-tu (water monster.) It's said to live in the Missouri River, where its movement in the waters is said to break up the ice each spring.
Folklore claims that the creature can occasionally be glimpsed as a reddish, fiery blur in the water, with is presence heralded by a deafeningly loud roar... but you really wouldn't want to get a better look, as a direct view of the creature shatters the human mind and kills the unlucky observer. It wasn't a quick process either - those so afflicted would become crazed and restless, writhing until they died.
There is a description from a man who saw Miniwashitu - it had a strange body covered in reddish hair otherwise like that of a buffalo, a protruding notched backbone like the blade of a saw and a single cyclopean eye in the middle of the forehead, beneath a single horn. The man found that his vision dimmed after seeing the creature and (though he managed to find his way home) he lost his grip on sanity and perished soon after. Some tales claim looking it in the eye is even worse, paralyzing the observer with fear until madness and death claims them. Fortunately the creature isn't a man eater - the consensus seem to be that keeping your eyes down and moving away from the water when it roars will keep you safe!
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| An evil eye? (Mustafi Numann) |
Far back in the ancient history of Ireland, one can find the mysterious Fomorians. The legends of these creatures are fairly murky, but a running themes is that they were a magical but misshapen folk that lived beneath the water or on Tory Island off the Irish coast, venturing on to Ireland to raid and exact a tax of corn, milk and children each year.
Their mightiest king was Balor, who (as a child) had watched his father's druids performing a ritual that would bring plague to their enemies. Something of the lingering dark magic entered Balor's eye, causing it to swell and granting it the power to bestow death.
Balor treated his massive eye like the superweapon it was. He kept it shut while amongst his people, and it took four men to help him lift his eyelid when he wanted to employ its deadly powers. He also kept it covered with seven cloaks, with the removal of each cloak increasing the devastation of its gaze. Removing one cloak would cause ferns to wither, a second would redden the grass, at third and fourth the trees would smolder then smoke, the fifth would heat everything under the gaze red hot, and the sixth and seventh would cause everything to spark and then burst into flame.
Balor would eventually be slain by his grandson Lugh Lamhfada (Lugh of the Long Arm) who taunted the Fomorian king in battle. Balor had his men raise his eyelid to burn the insolent human, only for Lugh to cast a magical spear (or in some tales, launch a magic slingstone) at the now-vulnerable eye. The attack struck true and knocked the deadly orb out of Balor's head, with the chaotically spinning eye slaying a several Fomorian warriors before burning a hole in the ground!
3. Keṭeb Meriri (or Ketev Meriri)
There's a demon in the Jewish faith known as Keṭeb Meriri, who personifies the killing heat of the midsummer noon. Described as having the head of a calf with a single revolving horn in the center, his body is covered in a mixture of scales, hair and eyes, with a single prominent eye mounted on the chest.
As mentioned above, this entity is associated with the middle of the day - and also with a Jewish mourning period known as "The Three Weeks" between the 17th of Tammuz and 9th of Av, which is the middle of summer. There's actually an old custom that warns against going out alone during those times, possibly as a defense against the demon - though it certainly would be a wise precaution against the dangers of heatstroke!
As a representation of the day's deadly heat, you might expect this creature to be pretty dangerous - and you'd be right. Simply seeing Keṭeb Meriri will cause both man and beast to fall down on the spot and die!
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| Karnabo was said to possess a trunk... (Waldemar Brandt) |
4. Karnabo
Coming from the Ardennes is the legend of the Karnabo, a creature said to dwell on the Rocroi plateau in an abandoned slate quarry. Human-like in silhouette, its face possesses the eyes of a basilisk (known for their lethal gaze) and an elephantine trunk, while the wheezing of its breath can paralyze or even asphyxiate humans and animals that pass to close to the quarry.
The parentage of the Karnabo is equally strange, as his father was said to be wandering bohemian with a penchant for sorcery, while his mother was a 67-year-old ghoul. Karnabo inherited his father's talent for magic and is credited with the ability to cure whitlows (a painful infection usually occurring in the fingers or thumbs) on Good Friday by using magical chants.
Legend has it that a young girl went to explore the slate quarry, only for Karnabo to leap out and abduct her. Local authorities walled up the entrances to the mine, but it's said that the odd roar and sound of sobbing can still be heard when a storm rages near the quarry.
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| A deadly glare? (Arib Neko) |
Pliny the Elder wrote that not only did the creature have the power to slay humans with a glance, its touch and breath were equally deadly - bushes or grass it passed would be scorched and even rocks would burst on contact. He also relates that a man once slew a basilisk from horseback using a spear, only for the creature's contamination to travel up the weapon and kill both rider and mount - not bad for a creature only 12 inches long.
There was, however, a creature that was a match for the basilisk - the weasel. Pliny believed (like many other researchers of the time) that weasels possessed a venom of their own and that a confrontation between a basilisk and weasel would end in mutual destruction!
In time, depictions of the basilisk started to incorporate bird-like traits (you can see an example in "Der naturen bloeme van Jacob van Maerlant" in folio 122va) though typically retained the tail of a serpent. This depiction of the basilisk seems to have inspired the cockatrice, a creature conceived when a rooster's egg (yes, from the male bird) was incubated by snakes or amphibians. It was depicted as having the body of a rooster and the tail of a serpent, typically sharing the deadly gaze and venomous presence of the basilisk.
6. Gorgons (Including Medusa)
Greek mythology holds arguably the most famous creature to slay with a gaze - the gorgon. These creatures saw several revisions as the mythology evolved, starting out as a single monster of the underworld before becoming three sisters (Stheno, Euryale and Medusa) born to the sea gods Ceto and Phorcys. Other versions of the tale portray Medusa as a mortal woman cursed by Athena for sleeping with Poseidon in her shrine
Early depictions portrayed them as winged creatures with round faces, flat noses, prominent teeth and protruding tongues, all capped off with a mane of snakes in place of hair. Later depictions of Medusa would portray her as much more human, albeit retaining the serpent hairdo.
The ability to turn those who looked upon them to stone seems to have been a trait shared by all of the gorgons. It's mentioned in several ancient Greek texts such as Bibliotheca by Pseudo-Apollodorus (wondering about the name? Bibliotheca was originally misattributed to the scholar Apollodorus, but nobody knows who the real author was - hance the "pseudo" label!)
Of the three, only Medusa was mortal - and it was her that the hero Perseus was tasked with slaying. Armed with a reflective shield so he could "see" his foe without making eye contact, Perseus snuck in and decapitated Medusa - he's later use her severed head as a weapon!
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| Bad hair day? (Michael Jerrard) |
7. Bĭnáye Aháni
The Bĭnáye Aháni (literally "Eye Killers") of Navajo folklore had a rough start in life. It's said that they were twins, born without limbs or heads (though they did have eye-like depressions) and subsequently abandoned to die at Tseʻahalzĭ′ni (Rock with Black Hole.) The twins survived though, living inside the hollow hill and growing into a deadly threat.
8. Muirdris
This one doesn't actually kill with a glance, but it is worth an honorable mention. The story goes that the sleeping Fergus Mac Leide (King of Ulster) was almost abducted by sea sprites, but woke when his toes touched the water and managed to subdue his would-be kidnappers. They offered him a boon in exchange for their lives, and Fergus asked for the ability to explore beneath the water - and they agreed (they gave him either magic herbs or a fish-scale cloak that would let him survive in the depths) but with a warning to never dive beneath Lough Rudraige.
The headstrong king didn't listen, and what should he encounter in Lough Rudraige but Muirdris, a strange sea-monster that contracted and inflated like bellows. So strange was the sight that the king's features were distorted and his mouth pulled back past his ears.
The sight may not have been lethal, but the king would eventually die battling the beast after realizing what a fool he now looked!
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| Better hope it's an arctic fox and not a skoffin... (Jonatan Pie) |
9. Fad Felen
Fad Felen is an curious monster from Welsh mythology. The renowned Brittonic bard Taliesin was said to have predicted the death of Maelgwn Gwynedd, a powerful king in a poem. He claimed that a strange beast would emerge from the sea marshes, one with golden eyes, hair and teeth - and that this creature would bring the king to ruin for his misdeeds.
Eventually this beast did come, causing the panicking monarch to seek shelter in a church... but he made the mistake of peeping through the keyhole, dropping dead on the spot as a result.
It's thought that the whole affair may be referencing the yellow plague that ravaged Wales in the 6th century. Folklore sometimes personified it as a creature rather than a disease, with a possible translation of "Fad Felen" being "Yellow Pestilence."
10. Skoffin
Iceland has quite a few monsters, but few are as innocuous as the skoffin. This creature is the result of a union between male artic fox and female cat, but (rather than being cute) its glance is death.
Putting it a few notches above most of the creatures on this list, you don't need to see it to be in danger. One story claims that a priest bidding goodbye to a parishioner saw him collapse and die as he exited the church. Realizing a skoffin was perched on the roof and watching the door, the cunning clergyman pushed a mirror outside and killed the creature with its own reflection.
It turns out that this is one of the two ways of defeating a skoffin, the other being silver projectiles (preferably with crosses carved into them for good measure!)
Thanks for reading - for more folklore, try...