The Wendigo
In the northern forests, the Anishinaabe and Cree speak of a spirit of winter and endless hunger, a being that can take hold of a person.
What was reported
The wendigo appears in the traditions of Algonquian-speaking peoples of the northern forests of Canada and the United States. It's a being of the deep winter, gaunt and cold, whose hunger is never satisfied: the more it eats, the hungrier it grows.
In many tellings, a person could become a wendigo by giving in to greed, or, in the worst famines, by eating other people. Stories warned of its approach in winter storms, and of people who began to change.
Explanations offered
The wendigo is a sacred and serious figure in these traditions, a warning about greed and survival in a land of hard winters, not a monster for entertainment. Horror films and games have borrowed it widely, which many Indigenous people find disrespectful.
- When
- Told for centuries
- Where
- Northern Ontario, Canada
- Witnesses
- Algonquian peoples, including the Anishinaabe and Cree
- Status
- Legend
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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