AND FOUR MORE NEGLECTED MONSTERS FOR HALLOWEEN SEASON

Balladeer’s Blog’s recent looks at Eight Neglected Monsters for Halloween Season and Six More Neglected Monsters for Halloween Season were big hits with readers, so here are four more.

MALDOROR

First Appearance: The Songs of Maldoror (1868)

Cryptid Category: Malevolent Unearthly Entity

Lore: Maldoror repeatedly lied about his nature and origins, casting doubt upon everything except the unspeakable vileness of … whatever he was. He/ It was possessed of greater than human strength, sadistic cunning and the ability to sprout tentacles, wings or other appendages from his shoulder blades.

This supernatural menace glided through the world with a serial killer’s mentality and viewed all other living things – even children and animals – as nothing but potential victims. Maldoror’s graphic violence against those he preyed upon was so disturbing that it would know no equal until the most depraved murderers of the 20th Century came along.

The monstrous entity encountered many other oddities like a hermaphrodite, a philosophical mad gravedigger, a large black tarantula, the Angel of the Lamp and others.

NOTE: Newer readers may have never been exposed to my 2015 stanza by stanza examination of The Songs of Maldoror. Written by Isidore Ducasse in 1868, the work was obscure until its revival in the 1890s by the surrealists. I often describe Ducassse as technically the first 20th Century author despite his death in 1870 during the Siege of Paris.

FOR MY FULL EXAMINATION CLICK HERE.

GUY ELPHINSTONE

First Appearance: The Dust Cloud (1912)

Cryptid Category: Ghostly Motorist

Lore: In life, Guy Elphinstone had been a very early motorcar enthusiast but one who ignored all caution when driving. He exceeded all reasonable limits on his speed and careened around at will, driving other motorists off the road and terrifying “perambulators” (now called pedestrians).

Elphinstone would spitefully drive over farm animals, game and pets at breakneck speed and even killed a child in the fatal accident that also took his own life right outside his home, called Bircham Lodge.

Ever since then, the man’s ghost would nightly haunt the roadway, driving a spectral vehicle while clad in his driving helmet, gloves, goggles and long coat. The wild man continued looking for victims, even after his death.

FOR MY FULL-LENGTH REVIEW CLICK HERE. 

ETHELIND FIONGUALA

First Appearance: Ken’s Mystery (1888)

Cryptid Category: Vampire

Lore: Ethelind Fionguala was abducted and turned into a vampire in 1500s Ireland. Three centuries later, she still sought out victims, often near her original grave outside Cork.

Ethelind could use glamour to convince her male victims that they were courting her at posh parties instead of a cemetery and that the rundown, dilapidated houses she nested in were luxurious mansions. After sleeping with her and having much of their blood drained, those victims lucky enough to still be alive would awaken to discover they had really been making love amid ruins filled with rats, spiders and the like.

Fionguala’s most legendary victim, an artist and musician who fell to her on one Halloween Night in the 1880s, spent the rest of his life hoping for Ethelind to take him again. He painted nothing but portraits of her from then on and would leave all his doors and windows open every Halloween, longing for her return.

FOR MY FULL-LENGTH REVIEW CLICK HERE.

THE BLACK ABBOT

First Appearance: The Messenger (1897)

Cryptid Category: Undead Clergyman

Lore: In the Brittany region of France during the 1890s, a mass grave of 39 skeletons was dug up during landscaping work. One of the skeletons proved to have belonged to Abbot Sorgue, killed along with 38 Breton soldiers in a 1760 battle against English invaders.

The Black Abbot, as history remembered him, had betrayed his fort’s congregation to the enemy and was put to death himself. The figure rose from the dead and began killing off the workmen who had disturbed his remains as well as the owners of the land involved.   

The risen Sorgue’s skull rested upon a body made of black blood with yellow corpuscles, clad in an abbot’s robes. The Black Abbot could pass through glass windows and could see through the eyes of Death’s Head Moths.

FOR MY FULL-LENGTH REVIEW CLICK HERE.