The Roster

Universal Classics --pack universal

The monsters that haunted Universal Pictures from the silent era to the 1950s.

• 🧛 Dracula Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897 novel) Dracula (1931) · Bela Lugosi The legendary vampire count from Transylvania
• 🧟 Frankenstein's Monster Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley (1818 novel) Frankenstein (1931) · Boris Karloff The tragic creature created by Dr. Victor Frankenstein
• 🐺 The Wolf Man The Wolf Man by Universal Pictures (1941 film) The Wolf Man (1941) · Lon Chaney Jr. A man cursed to transform into a werewolf
• 🏺 The Mummy The Mummy by Universal Pictures (1932 film) The Mummy (1932) · Boris Karloff An ancient Egyptian priest brought back to life
• 🐟 The Creature from the Black Lagoon Creature from the Black Lagoon by Universal-International (1954 film) Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) · Ben Chapman (land) and Ricou Browning (water) An amphibious humanoid from the Amazon
• 👻 The Invisible Man The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells (1897 novel) The Invisible Man (1933) · Claude Rains A scientist who discovers the secret of invisibility
• 🎭 The Phantom of the Opera Le Fantôme de l'Opéra by Gaston Leroux (1909 serialized novel) The Phantom of the Opera (1925) · Lon Chaney A disfigured musical genius haunting the Paris Opera House
• 🔔 The Hunchback of Notre Dame Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo (1831 novel) The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) · Lon Chaney The deformed bell-ringer of Notre Dame Cathedral
• 👰 The Bride of Frankenstein Bride of Frankenstein by Universal Pictures (1935 film) Bride of Frankenstein (1935) · Elsa Lanchester The Monster's electrifying mate, alive for only a few unforgettable minutes
• 🦇 Dracula's Daughter Dracula's Daughter by Universal Pictures (1936 film) Dracula's Daughter (1936) · Gloria Holden A melancholy countess desperate to escape her father's curse
• 🌿 The Werewolf of London Werewolf of London by Universal Pictures (1935 film) Werewolf of London (1935) · Henry Hull A botanist who brings a curse home from Tibet, along with a very rare flower
• 👽 The Metaluna Mutant This Island Earth by Universal-International (1955 film) This Island Earth (1955) · Regis Parton A big-brained insectoid worker from a dying alien world
• 🩸 Son of Dracula Son of Dracula by Universal (1943 film) Son of Dracula (1943) · Lon Chaney Jr. A vampire count who moves to the American South under a thinly disguised name
• 🦍 Paula Dupree, the Ape Woman Captive Wild Woman by Universal (1943 film) Captive Wild Woman (1943) · Acquanetta A circus gorilla turned into a glamorous woman by a mad endocrinologist
• 💀 The Mad Ghoul The Mad Ghoul by Universal (1943 film) The Mad Ghoul (1943) · David Bruce A medical student turned into a walking corpse by an ancient Mayan gas
• 🐭 The Mole People The Mole People by Universal-International (1956 film) The Mole People (1956) · Uncredited performers in Jack Kevan's masks Clawed, hunched diggers enslaved by a lost Sumerian city beneath the mountains
• 🦂 The Tarantula Tarantula by Universal-International (1955 film) Tarantula (1955) · A real tarantula, steered across miniature sets with jets of air A laboratory tarantula grown to the size of a house by a miracle nutrient
• 🦗 The Deadly Mantis The Deadly Mantis by Universal-International (1957 film) The Deadly Mantis (1957) · A giant mechanical model, with no actor inside A prehistoric praying mantis thawed from the Arctic ice and heading south

Cryptids --pack cryptids

Creatures people swear they have seen, from the Himalayas to the Jersey Pine Barrens.

• 🦶 The Sasquatch Indigenous Sasquatch traditions and the 1958 Bluff Creek footprints (named in 1958 after the Bluff Creek footprints; far older in Indigenous tradition) Indigenous traditions of the Pacific Northwest and 20th-century American folklore A tall, hairy wild man said to walk the forests of the Pacific Northwest
• 🦕 The Loch Ness Monster Highland water-beast lore and the Inverness Courier's 1933 report (the modern legend began in 1933, when a new road opened up the view of the loch) The Scottish Highlands A long-necked something said to live in the deep, dark water of Loch Ness
• 🦋 The Mothman Point Pleasant sightings reported in the Point Pleasant Register (sightings from November 1966 to December 1967) Point Pleasant, West Virginia, USA A winged, red-eyed figure that haunted Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in 1966 and 1967
• 🐐 El Chupacabra Reports of drained livestock in Puerto Rico (first reported in Puerto Rico in 1995) Puerto Rico, then across Latin America and the southern United States A spiny, blood-draining night creature first reported in Puerto Rico in 1995
• 🐴 The Jersey Devil The tale of Mother Leeds' thirteenth child (18th-century Pine Barrens lore; the great panic of January 1909) The Pine Barrens, a million acres of forest on the US east coast A winged, hoofed, horse-headed fiend said to haunt the Pine Barrens of New Jersey
• 🧊 The Yeti Sherpa and Tibetan tales of a wild man of the snows (ancient in the Himalaya; the English nickname was coined by a journalist in 1921) Sherpa and Tibetan folklore of the Himalaya The shaggy wild man of the high Himalaya, known to Sherpas long before anyone called it abominable

World Folklore --pack folklore

Monsters from the stories people have told around fires for centuries, from Prague to Tokyo.

• 🗿 The Golem Jewish legend (ancient roots; the Prague legend was written down in the 1800s) Jewish folklore A giant of clay, brought to life with sacred words to protect its people
• 😱 The Banshee Irish legend (Irish oral tradition, recorded since the Middle Ages) Irish folklore A fairy woman whose wail warns that death is near
• 🧙 Baba Yaga Slavic folk tales (oral tradition, recorded in print from the 1700s) Slavic folklore The forest witch of Slavic tales, who lives in a hut on chicken legs
• 🥒 The Kappa Japanese yōkai tales (widely recorded in the Edo period (1603–1868)) Japanese folklore (yōkai) A polite but dangerous river imp with a dish of water on its head
• 🏮 The Jiangshi Chinese ghost stories (recorded in 18th-century story collections) Chinese folklore A stiff-limbed corpse that hops through the night, draining the breath of life
• 💧 La Llorona Mexican legend (colonial Mexico, from the 16th century onward) Mexican and Latin American folklore The weeping woman who wanders the riverbanks at night, searching for her children
• 😈 Krampus Alpine folk tradition (centuries-old customs of Austria, Bavaria and nearby regions) Alpine folklore The horned Christmas demon who punishes naughty children
• 🦌 The Wendigo Cree, Ojibwe and Innu oral tradition (oral tradition, recorded by outsiders from the 17th century) Algonquian-speaking peoples of the Great Lakes and the subarctic (Cree, Ojibwe, Innu and others) A spirit of winter and endless hunger that turns people against their own kind
• 🐎 The Nuckelavee Orkney legend (Orcadian oral tradition, written down by Walter Traill Dennison in 1891) Orkney folklore, Scotland A skinless horse and rider from the sea whose breath withers crops and sickens cattle
• 👹 The Rakshasa The Ramayana and the Mahabharata (first named in the Rigveda; the epics took shape between roughly 500 BCE and 400 CE) Hindu mythology and the Sanskrit epics of India A shape-shifting being of Hindu epic, often man-eating and sometimes noble
• 🌺 The Pontianak Malay and Indonesian legend (oral tradition across the Malay world, in print by the 19th century) Malay and Indonesian folklore The ghost of a woman who died in childbirth, beautiful until she turns around
• 👣 The Draugr The Icelandic sagas (written down in the 13th and 14th centuries from older tradition) Norse sagas, medieval Iceland The walking dead of the Norse sagas, who guard their mounds and crush the living
• 🐊 The Bunyip Aboriginal Australian oral tradition (oral tradition for thousands of years; first printed in 1845) Aboriginal Australian traditions, especially of the Wemba-Wemba and other south-eastern peoples A bellowing creature of the billabongs and swamps of south-eastern Australia

Literary Monsters --pack literary

Monsters born on the page, from a London laboratory to a Danish mead hall.

• 🧪 Mr Hyde Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886 novella) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) · Fredric March The brutal second self a London doctor lets loose with a potion
• 🎨 Dorian Gray The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890 novel) The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) · Hurd Hatfield A beautiful young man whose portrait ages and rots in his place
• 🐈 Carmilla Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu (1872 novella) Irish Gothic fiction The languid vampire of Styria who loved her victims before she drained them
• 🎃 The Headless Horseman The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving (1820 short story) American folklore and the ghost stories of the Hudson Valley The headless Hessian who gallops the roads of Sleepy Hollow in search of what he lost
• 🦴 Grendel Beowulf by Unknown Anglo-Saxon poet (composed between the 8th and 11th centuries) Anglo-Saxon epic poetry, drawing on Scandinavian legend The night-stalking monster of the fens who devoured the Danes in their own hall
• 🐲 The Jabberwock Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll (1871 poem) Victorian nonsense verse The nonsense monster with jaws that bite and claws that catch

Classical Mythology --pack mythology

The monsters of Greece and Rome, who were terrifying heroes three thousand years before Hollywood.

• 🐍 Medusa Theogony by Hesiod (around 700 BCE; retold by Ovid in 8 CE) Clash of the Titans (1981) · A stop-motion model animated by Ray Harryhausen The snake-haired Gorgon whose gaze turns anyone who meets it to stone
• 🐂 The Minotaur Greek vase paintings of Theseus and the bull-headed man (from the 7th century BCE; told in full by Apollodorus, Plutarch and Ovid) Greek mythology (Crete) The bull-headed man of Crete, fed on Athenian youths in the heart of the Labyrinth
• 🐕 Cerberus Theogony by Hesiod (around 700 BCE; the dog's capture is the last of the twelve labours of Heracles) Greek mythology The many-headed hound who lets every soul into the underworld and none back out
• 🐉 The Hydra Theogony by Hesiod (around 700 BCE; the labour is told in full by Apollodorus) Greek mythology (Lerna, in the Argolid) The many-headed water serpent of Lerna that grew two heads for every one cut off
• 🧿 Polyphemus the Cyclops Odyssey by Homer (around 700 BCE; the one-eyed giant of book 9) Greek mythology (Homer's Odyssey) The one-eyed, man-eating giant who trapped Odysseus in his cave
• 🦁 The Sphinx Theogony by Hesiod (around 700 BCE; her riddle reached the Athenian stage in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex by about 429 BCE) Greek mythology The winged, lion-bodied riddler who devoured every traveller to Thebes who answered wrong

Silent Screen --pack silent

The first monsters ever filmed, from Edison's studio to Weimar Germany, flickering in black and white.

• 🐀 Count Orlok Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens by Prana-Film (1922 film) Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) · Max Schreck The rat-toothed vampire of the first great vampire film, Dracula in all but name
• 🛌 Cesare the Somnambulist Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari by Decla-Film (1920 film) Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920) · Conrad Veidt A sleepwalking killer sent out at night by a sinister showman at the fair
• ⚡ The Edison Monster Edison's Frankenstein by Edison Studios (1910 film) Edison's Frankenstein (1910) · Charles Ogle The first screen Frankenstein monster, brewed in a cauldron in 1910
• 🤖 The Maschinenmensch Metropolis by Thea von Harbou (1925 novel) Metropolis (1927) · Brigitte Helm The gleaming Art Deco robot built to wear a saint's face and wreck a city
• 🃏 Gwynplaine L'Homme qui rit by Victor Hugo (1869 novel) The Man Who Laughs (1928) · Conrad Veidt A nobleman's son whose face was carved into a permanent grin as a child
• 🎩 The Man in the Beaver Hat London After Midnight by MGM (1927 film) London After Midnight (1927) · Lon Chaney The bug-eyed, needle-toothed vampire of cinema's most famous lost film

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