Many strange animals and creatures exist in the world of mythology. Almost every culture in the world has stories about some sort of mythological animals. How could people defend themselves against these blood-hungry creatures when they also had the ability to shapeshift into bats, wolves, and luminous fogs? And then there were the supernatural beings, such as the incubus and the succubus, who were more interested in seizing human souls than in sucking human blood. Such creatures were painted by Stone Age artists more than 10,000 years ago and represent some of the world’s oldest cave art—and they probably precipitated some of the world’s first nightmares. There is no known culture on this planet that has not at one time or another cowered in fear because of the savage attacks of a nocturnal predator known as a therianthrope, a human-animal hybrid such as a werewolf, “werebear,” “werelion,” or a “were-something.” It is difficult for those living in the modern world to imagine the night terrors of our ancestors as they prepared to face the demon- and monster-riddled world after sundown.
The chupacabras ( from chupar “to suck” and cabra “goat”, literally “goat sucker”), is a legendary cryptid (a creature whose existence has been suggested but is regarded as highly unlikely) rumored to inhabit parts of the Americas. It is associated more recently with sightings of an allegedly unknown animal in Puerto Rico, Mexico, and the United States, especially in the latter’s Latin American communities.
The name comes from the animal’s reported habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, especially goats. Physical descriptions of the creature vary. Eyewitness sightings have been claimed as early as 1990 in Puerto Rico, and have since been reported as far north as Maine, and as far south as Chile. It is supposedly a heavy creature, the size of a small bear, with a row of spines reaching from the neck to the base of the tail. Biologists and wildlife management officials view the chupacabras as a contemporary legend.
A ghoul is a folkloric monster associated with graveyards and consuming human flesh, often classified as undead.
The oldest surviving literature that mention ghouls is likely One Thousand and One Nights. The term is first attested in English in 1786, in William Beckford’s Orientalist novel Vathek, which describes the ghūl of Arabian folklore.
An imp is a mythological being similar to a fairy or demon, frequently described in folklore and superstition. The word may perhaps derive from the term ympe, used to denote a young grafted tree. Over the years, the word came to refer to smallish entities that were direct offspring of the Devil and sent from hell to do evil deeds to humans on Earth. Imps might well be called junior demons, and one of their principal assignments, according to Christian authorities, was to disguise themselves as black cats, owls, ravens, or some other animal and serve as a witch’s familiar. In many of the transcripts of the European witchcraft trials, the demonic spirit given by the Devil to a witch to do his or her bidding was referred to as an imp.
Imps are considered “fallen fairies” and are often described as mischievous more than seriously threatening, and as lesser beings rather than more important supernatural beings. The attendants of the devil are sometimes described as imps. They are usually described as lively and having small stature.
Some witnesses say that the Jersey Devil that haunts the Pine Barrens in southeastern New Jersey is a cross between a goat and a dog with cloven hoofs and the head of a collie. Others swear that it has a horse’s head with the body of a kangaroo. Most of the people who have sighted the creature mention a long tail, and nearly all of the witnesses agree that the thing has wings. But it doesn’t really fly as much as it hops and glides.
Most accounts of the Jersey Devil legend attribute the creature to a “Mother Leeds”, a supposed witch, although the tale has many variations. According to one version, she invoked the devil while giving birth to her 13th child, and when the baby was born, it either immediately or soon afterwards transformed into a devil like creature and flew off into the surrounding pines.
A succubus is a female demonic legendary creature who seduces men in their sleep. Similar to a vampire, succubi draw energy from men to sustain themselves. In the past succubi were depicted as frightening and demonic, usually with wings and a tail. Sometimes the wings are that of a bat or a bird. The tail takes various shapes, sometimes that of a snake or an aquatic tail like that of a mermaid.
Succubi appear to men as beautiful, sensual women, tempting and promising, but they also may be vampires thirsting for human blood. While those males who consort with a succubus often meet an untimely end, on occasion their interaction with the entity brings about a horde of demonic children, who will one day gather at his deathbed and hail him as their father.
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence (generally in the form of blood) of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person.
Although vampiric entities have been recorded in many cultures and according to speculation by literary historian Brian Frost that the “belief in vampires and bloodsucking demons is as old as man himself”, and may go back to “prehistoric times”, the term vampire was not popularized until the early 18th century, after an influx of vampire superstition into Western Europe from areas where vampire legends were frequent, such as the Balkans and Eastern Europe, although local variants were also known by different names, such as vampir (вампир) in Serbia and Bulgaria, vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania. This increased level of vampire superstition in Europe led to mass hysteria and in some cases resulted in corpses actually being staked and people being accused of vampirism.
A werewolf or werwolf, also known as a lycanthrope, is a mythological or folkloric human with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf or an anthropomorphic wolf-like creature, either purposely, by being bitten or scratched by another werewolf, or after being placed under a curse. This transformation is often associated with the appearance of the full moon, as popularly noted by the medieval chronicler Gervase of Tilbury, and perhaps in earlier times among the ancient Greeks through the writings of Petronius.
Werewolves are often attributed super-human strength and senses, far beyond those of both wolves or men. The werewolf is generally held as a European character, although its lore spread through the world in later times. Shape-shifters, similar to werewolves, are common in tales from all over the world, most notably amongst the Native Americans, though most of them involve animal forms other than wolves.