monster
Sep 30, 2026
Nian and the Red Door
A record of Nian, the beast of Chinese New Year folklore, and the customs of red paper, fire and noise still said to keep it from the door.
Read more
Sep 18, 2026
What the Wolf Was Promised
A visit to the Gosforth Cross in Cumbria prompts a retelling of Fenrir's binding and the fate the Norse sources give him at Ragnarök.
Read more
Sep 8, 2026
The Beast Mistaken for Land
A journal entry on the hafgufa, the vast Norse sea creature said to be so still and so large that sailors mistook its back for an island, sometimes at fatal cost.
Read more
The Ox-Headed Serpent of the Drowned Coast
Along Galicia's Costa da Morte, fishermen once spoke of the Urco, a vast sea serpent with the head of an ox, said to rise before wrecks and storms. The entry follows the beast through the memories of a coastline that has buried more sailors than it has ever given back.
Read more
Sep 2, 2026
The Thing in the Reeds
A journal entry on the bunyip, the water-dwelling being of Aboriginal folklore from the Murray-Darling basin, and how a warning about dangerous water became, in colonial hands, both a cryptid and an insult.
Read more
Aug 10, 2026
The One Who Sees in Circles
A journey into the mountain country of Sicily and the Peloponnese in search of the Cyclopes — giant shepherds of Greek myth whose single eye may owe less to invention than to a bone in the ground.
Read more
