Cryptid of the Week: Week 4
Welcome back dear readers to the fourth installment of Cryptid of The Week. With this newest edition, we have reached the 1-month landmark for the series making this a momentous occasion. So, I thought to myself what would make this edition more special than the others, and what could I do differently while still keeping it Cryptid of The Week when I just switched things up a bit last week? Well, I decided to return to the tried and true formula of the first two editions and, to make it different, I would talk about a monster that I am almost certain you have never heard of. I thought that me introducing you to this Cryptid for the first time would be a good example of why I started this series to begin with, which was to introduce you all to monsters you had never even known existed. So from now on I will write of the most obscure and disturbing Cryptids ancient mythology can offer, however, I may occasionally move back to more well-known Cryptids should they be suggested to me, or I find them interesting to write about, but as of now, I’m focusing on the obscure. The first Cryptid on that list is the Poroniec.
The Poroniec is a creature of old Slavic folklore and is a demon spawned from the rebirth of the corpse of an unborn fetus. A Poroniec is born when an unborn fetus either lost through a miscarriage or stillbirth is discarded unwanted by its family left unnamed and is unburied or buried in an unmarked grave. The unwanted corpse filled with fury rises its dead decrepit flesh writhing with hate twisting and tearing into an almost unrecognizable shape with barely any human characteristics. The creature filled with rage and an unspeakable hunger will then go out during the night searching for pregnant women to feed on. First, they will find a pregnant woman and stay by her bedside or hide under her bed over the course of a few nights siphoning her energy and strength making the woman weaker and weaker. Once the woman has become weak enough it will latch onto her stomach and begin to suck her blood and continue until it has killed the child within her often resulting in the woman dying as well. Telltale warning signs of a Poroniec are a pregnant woman becoming weaker and weaker over a short span of time, suffering from fatigue, fainting, dizziness, and general weakening of her constitution. The only way to rid oneself of a Poroniec is to either kill it by either ambushing it during an attempted feeding or tracking it to its unmarked grave where it sleeps during the daytime and killing it there. In order to kill the creature, one must be cautious as it can become extremely ferocious when encountered and, the best way of confirming its death is to attack it until its movements cease and then burn the corpse. The second way to get rid of a Poroniec is to capture it preferably during the daytime as it sleeps as this will be the best time. Then have one of its parents then bury it underneath the threshold of the family house as well as perform the sacred act of naming the child. This will result in it becoming a kłobuk, a guardian spirit, that will protect the house it never got to live in with the family it never had the chance of meeting.
The Poroniec was a story that is believed to have been created as an explanation to some of the symptoms of pregnancy as well as a deterrent to the discarding of unwanted children as well as the dead. As always if you have any suggestions of any Cryptids I should write about feel free to comment down below, and see you all next week.
Featured image Credit: Beastiary.us