🦌 The Wendigo

A spirit of winter and endless hunger that turns people against their own kind

Also known as Windigo, Wendigo

📺 "Tonight's guest comes from the long northern winter, and it is always, always hungry. Put the antlers away, that's a costume. The real thing is thin, tall and never full."

          _____
         /     \
        |  _ _  |
        | (o|o) |
        |   ^   |
        | \___/ |
         \_____/
       ___|   |___
      /   |   |   \
     /    |   |    \
    |  .  |   |  .  |
    |  |  |   |  |  |
    | /   |___|   \ |
    |/    |   |    \|
          |   |
          |   |
         _|   |_
        (___) (___)

Origin: Algonquian-speaking peoples of the Great Lakes and the subarctic (Cree, Ojibwe, Innu and others)
First appeared: Cree, Ojibwe and Innu oral tradition (oral tradition, recorded by outsiders from the 17th century)
Pack: World Folklore

terminal-of-terror monster wendigo

💀 Facts

The wendigo comes from the Cree, Ojibwe, Innu and other Algonquian-speaking peoples
It is a spirit of hunger and winter, and in many tellings it can never be satisfied
Traditional descriptions make it gaunt and towering, not antlered: the deer skull is a modern invention
In some tellings a person who gives in to greed or cannibalism becomes a wendigo
Algernon Blackwood borrowed the name for his novella The Wendigo in 1910
Indigenous writers today use the wendigo as a way of talking about greed
The Ojibwe spelling is wiindigoo and the Cree is wihtikow; English has dozens of variants

📜 Legend

The wendigo belongs to the Cree, Ojibwe, Innu, Saulteaux and other Algonquian-speaking nations of the northern forests, where winter famine was a real and recurring danger. In their stories it is a spirit of hunger and cold: a person who gives in to greed or eats human flesh may be taken over by it, or may become one, growing taller with every meal and never once feeling full. Tellings differ from nation to nation, but the wendigo is usually gaunt and ravenous rather than a horned beast, and the stories carry a lesson about sharing and restraint in a hard country. The wendigo is still a serious part of living cultures, and Indigenous writers today use it to talk about greed in the modern world.

🎭 Myth vs Movie

True or false? Make your guess, then click a card (or press r) for the verdict.

The wendigo has antlers and the skull of a deer.

✘ FALSE

That look is a modern invention from films and games. Traditional tellings describe a gaunt, towering, famished figure, sometimes with a heart of ice.
A wendigo can never eat enough to be satisfied.

✔ TRUE

In many tellings it grows in proportion to what it eats, so it is always starving. That is the point of the story.
The wendigo was invented by a horror writer.

✘ FALSE

Algernon Blackwood's 1910 novella borrowed the name, but the stories are far older and belong to the Cree, Ojibwe and their neighbours.
The wendigo legend is tied to real winters of famine.

✔ TRUE

The wendigo is associated with the dead of winter, when food ran out in the northern forests, and it warns against the ultimate taboo.

🕯️ Quotes

“The Wendigo is simply the Call of the Wild personified, which some natures hear to their own destruction.”
Dr Cathcart, Algernon Blackwood, The Wendigo (1910)

“My feet of fire! My burning feet of fire!”
Défago, Algernon Blackwood, The Wendigo (1910)

Lines come only from public-domain texts.

🃏 Stat Card

Strength: 8
Speed: 8
Cunning: 6
Dread: 9

⚡ Powers

Hunger that never ends
Growing with every meal
Spreading its hunger to others
Running through the winter forest faster than any hunter

🧄 Weaknesses

Generosity and sharing
Its heart of ice, in some tellings
Fire and the coming spring
A full stomach that it can never have

Stats power the Monster Mash: terminal-of-terror mash wendigo

🎞️ Legacy

Algernon Blackwood's novella The Wendigo (1910), the first famous outsider's retelling
Stephen King's Pet Sematary (1983) and the film Ravenous (1999)
Indigenous writers such as Basil Johnston (Ojibwe), who describe it as a lesson about greed

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