SORCERER’S FAMILIAR

SORCERER’S FAMILIAR

“And something showed itself there in the swampiness. A lump like a head rose into view, with two larger lumps like shoulders just below it.”

“Two slab-like paws caught the bald rim of the circle and a great shaggy shape humped itself up and out and stood erect before him. It was taller even than Thunstone, broader even than he was and it looked nothing natural. In the dancing light of the torch, it seemed to be thatched over with dark, wet fronds and tussocks. Its head was draped with such stuff. Though which gleamed two closely set eyes, pale as white hot iron. A mouth opened in the tangle and out came a rumbling shout like the roar of a great beast. It slouched heavily towards him on two feet like shovels.”

“It’s great long forelimbs rose like derricks. Thunstone saw talons, pale and deadly.”

“The weedy bulk almost forced him back.”

Manly Wade Wellman, Rouse Him Not

GROB

 
GROB

"The other, Grob, might be a great crouching ape, if apes had branched horns and were covered with green scales the size of lily pads."

"It was a shrewd enough blow to make Grob flounder a bit, and his head lifted. Under the shallow jaw with its fierce pointed teeth showed a throat without scales, shaggy with mossy hair."

Manly Wade Wellman, The Edge Of the World

OSPARIEL

OSPARIEL

"One either side of her ebony throne lounged a tame monster, heightening by contrast the impact of Iarie's beauty. One of these, the rather mollusoid Ospariel, was crapaced in a green shell, from which peered brilliant eyes above a stir of tentacles."

"Just behind him crept Ospariel on what seemed to be an infinity of dark, jointed legs."

Manly Wade Wellman, The Edge Of the World

COLD PERSON

COLD PERSON

“They were great, translucent, helmet-shaped things, moving by hitch-and-hunch upon a rubbery pedestal, snail fashion, but with surprising speed and maneuverability. The comblike crest stood a full five feet from the ground, and at the lowest and thickest point the body was about the same in diameter. At a point just forward of the top sprouted a spray of from six to eight tendrils, like a wriggling plume for the helmet. These were snakily agile, capable of stretching six feet or more, and each terminated in a disklike sucker, like a palm, for grasping or holding or cradling. In the midst of the gleaming gray bulk hung a heavy-appearing body the size of a football, that gave off a deep-red light. This may have been the vital organ, or the sensory body, or both. It throbbed at times, and the degree of its light varied.”

“There was a crowding together, a fluttering of tentacles, as though the Cold People conferred in sign language.”

Manly Wade Wellman, The Dark Destroyers

BEYONDER

BEYONDER

"It was man-sized but not man-shaped, not really. Maybe more like a big lizard risen up on its tail."

"The helmetlike dome had a curved window in it, glass or something like glass That window had been shattered by Gander Eye's bullet. Inside it, he saw something that was not a face. It was a shiny, shaggy expanse as gray as half-melted lard, there inside. The shagginess wasn't hair; it might be like the legs of a whole lot of flies."

Manly Wade Wellman, The Beyonders

RONDOCHE FAMILIAR

RONDACHE FAMILIAR

"And Leonardo was always interested in monsters. He shut himself away and studied all kinds of unpleasant little things - lizards, spiders, bats - and borrowed from all, blending and flavoring them with his own genius."

"If Leonardo da Vinci, a curly-blond boy in his teens, had studied lizards, bats and spiders for this, he had not hodge-podged his studies. Anyone else would have been content with a lizard's body, a spider's knuckly jointed legs, a bat's wings. Not so Leonardo, master of his eye and hand and brush even before his voice had changed and the first peachy fuzz had sprouted for the the beginning of that apostolic beard he was to wear."

"The legs - there seemed to be a great many of them - were hairy and jointed, but those in front, at least, bore hand-like extremities, reminiscent of the forefeet of lizards. Those wings were true da Vinci work; Norbier remembered the tales of how da Vinci, seeking to invent the airplane centuries before Langley or Wright, studied painstakingly ever flying creature, bat, bird and insect. As for the thing's head, that was apparently meant to seem a squat, dark-furred blotch, with two glowing close-set eyes peering from the thick fur as from an ambush. A real face to it, flattened like a bat's and a mouth with a jaw of ophidian shallowness, but a little open to show... yes, fangs. No wonder that everyone who saw the thing, from Piero da Vinci to the present, squared his shoulders a trifle to dissemble a shiver."

"It seemed to crouch there, then to hoist itself erect on the tips of its multiple claws. Among the curved, jointed brackets of its hind legs hung a puffy body, like a great crammed satchel. The integument had pattern, like scales, and from the spaces between the scales sprouted tufts and fringes of dark fur, like plush grown wild. And it had wings, also scaly and tufted, ribbed like a bat's that winnowed and stirred above its bulk. The head, a shaggy ball, craned in his direction. Deep within the thicket of fur upon the face clung two wise, close-set eyes, that glowed greenly, then redly, at him. Between and above them the fur seemed to part in two directions, as if the undeveloped forehead frowned.  A mouth opened, the light caught a stockade of white, irregular, pointed fangs. A great gout of foam came out, and fell splashing on the floor."

"The two foremost limbs rose, and at the ends Norbier saw hand-like claws, like the front feet of a big, big lizard."

Manly Wade Wellman, The Leonardo Rondache

TOLLER

TOLLER

"'It's the hugest flying thing there is, I guess,' said Miss Tully. 'Its voice tolls like a bell, to tell other creatures their feed's near.'"

"The Toller said gong-gong-gong, from closer in."

Manly Wade Wellman, The Desrick On Yandro

BAMMAT

BAMMAT

"'The Bammat's something hairy-like, with big ears and a long wiggly nose and twisty white teeth sticking out of its mouth—'"

"'Oh!' And Mr. Yandro trumpeted his laughter. 'You've got some story about the Mammoth. Why, they've been extinct—dead and forgotten—for thousands of years.'"

"'Anyway,' he went on arguing, 'the Mammoth—the Bammat, as you call it—is of the elephant family. How would anything like that get up in the mountains?'"

"It was big and broad-headed, with elephant ears to right and left, and white tusks like bannisters on a spiral staircase. But it was woolly-shaggy, like a buffalo bull. The Bammat. How could such a thing move so quiet-like?"

Manly Wade Wellman, The Desrick On Yandro

WHAT THE ANCIENTS LEFT BEHIND

WHAT THE ANCIENTS LEFT BEHIND

"I knew whose hand it was, black-furry like a spider."

"That third one looked at first glimpse like a big, big man wearing a dark fur coat. Then you saw the fur was on the skin, with warty muscles bunching through. The head was more like a frog's than anything else, wide in the mouth and big in the eye and no nose. It spread its arms quiet-like around the shoulders of Reed Barnitt and Aram Harnam, and took hold with two hands that had both claws and webs."

"Their eyes piced up  thelantern light and shone green, like dog eyes."

"'The Ancients are dead,' spoke up Clay. 'Way I reckon, what's in there ain't no Ancients; just something the Ancients left behind.'"
Manly Wade Wellman, Shiver In the Pines

MARTIAN

MARTIAN

“Like many Martians, he was braced upright on his lower tentacles by hoops and buckles around his bladdery body, so that he had roughly a human form, over which lay a strange loose armor of light plates. In the breathing hole of his petal-tufted skull was lodged an artificial voice-box that achieved words.”

“Behind them three Martian space-hands, sprawling like squids near the control-board, made flutelike comments to each other. The tentacle of each twiddled an electro-automatic pistol.”

Manly Wade Wellman, The Devil’s Asteroid

LIVING SMOKE

LIVING SMOKE

"The smoke was molding itself, in what light I could make out, and began to look solid and shapy, as tall as me but thicker across, and two streamy coils waved out in the air like arms."

"I saw that smoke shape drifting sort of slow and greedy, clear of the hearth, and betwixt those two wavy steamy arm coils rose up a lumpy head thing. There was enough firelight to see that this smoke was thicker than just smoke. It must have soot and ash dust in it, solid enough to choke you. An in the lumpy head hung two dull red sparks, like eyes."

Manly Wade Wellman, Dumb Supper

THE THING UP UNDER THE ROOF

THE THING UP UNDER THE ROOF

“Years afterwards, I saw through a microscope, the plodding of an amoeba. The thing up under the roof sounded as an amoeba looks, a mass that stretches out a thin, loose portion of itself, then rolls and flows all of its substance into that portion, and so creeps along. Only it must have been many, many thousands of times larger than an amoeba.”

“It seemed to me, at that moment, that the lath and plaster were no tighter or stronger than a spider web. And that the entity was incalculably more awful than prince and father of all spiders.” 

Manly Wade Wellman, Up Under the Roof

GOLGOTHA DANCER

GOLGOTHA DANCER
"The front of the picture was filled with lively dancing creatures, as pink, plump and naked as cherubs and as patently evil as the meditations of Satan in his rare idle moments."

"In my first half-moment of wakefulness I was aware that the room was filled with the pink dancers of the picture, in nimble, fierce-happy motion. They were man-size, too, or nearly so, visible in the dark with the dim radiance of fox-fire. On the small scale of the painting they had seemed no more than babyishly plump; now they were gross, like huge erect toads. And, as I awakened fully, they were closing in, a menacing ring of them, around my bed. One stood at my right side, and its grip, clumsy and rubbery-hard like that of a monkey, was closed upon my arm."

"That was their strength and horror—their ability to go flabby and non-resistant under smashing, flattening blows."

"She spoke, not in reply, but as if to herself. "They have no faces," she whispered. "No faces!" In the half-light that was diffused upon them from our lamp they presented the featurelessness of so many huge gingerbread boys, covered with pink icing."

"I met them, feet planted. I tried to embrace them all at once, went over backward under them. I struck, wrenched, tore. I think I even bit something grisly and bloodless, like fungoid tissue, but I refuse to remember for certain."

Manly Wade Wellman, The Golgotha Dancers

BEHINDER

BEHINDER

“‘And there's the Behinder.’ 

‘And what,’ said Mr. Yandro, ‘might the Behinder look like?’ 

‘Can't rightly say, Mr. Yandro. For it's always behind the man or woman it wants to grab.’”

Manly Wade Wellman, The Derrick On Yandro

“A biggish beast, standing about five feet and walking erect. The slender body mades it possible to hide completely behind the bole of a ten inch tree. The belt is long, thick and black, and the tail is carried recurved.”

“The Hidebehind is never found in the open. He always conceals himself behind a tree trunk. His marvelously quick, stealthy gait makes it possible for him to stay constantly behind his prey, no matter how quickly the suspicious victim may spin about in the hope of glimpsing the marauder.” 

Henry Tryon, Fearsome Critters

SASABONSAM

SASABONSAM
“‘Like what the Ashantis in Africa call Sasabonsam,’ said Holly ‘He lives in a silk cotton tree there, and catches unwary men with his feet as they pass below’”

Manly Wade Wellman, The Old Gods Waken

The Sasabonsam is described as a tall, thin humanoid shape that is colored red, with straight hair and bloodshot eyes. Their incredibly long legs have feet that point in both directions.”

Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters and Dragons

“One non-human vampire creature is also found in Africa. That is the asasabonsam, a monster described as having ferocious iron teeth.”

Kostantinos, Vampires: The Occult Truth

“A vampire found in Africa, known among the Ashanti of southern Ghana and by people in the areas of the Ivory Coast and Togo. The asanbosam is believed to reside in deep forests, most often encountered there by hunters. It is of general human shape with two exceptions: its teeth are made out of iron and its legs have hooklike appendages.“

Matthew Bunson, The Vampire Encyclopedia

GARDINEL

GARDINEL

“They look some way like a shed or cabin, snug and rightly made, except the open door might could be a mouth, the two little windows could be eyes. Never you'll see one on the main roads or near towns; only back in the thicketty places, by high trails among tall ridges, and they show themselves there when it rains and storms and a lone farer hopes to come to a house to shelter him. ... The few that's lucky enough to have gone into a gardinel and win out again... tell that inside it's pinky-walled and dippy-floored, with on the floor all the skulls and bones of those who never did win-out; and from the floor and walls come spouting rivers of wet juice that stings. ... and all at once you know that inside a gardinel is like a stomach.”

Manly Wade Wellman, Why They’re Named That

CULVERIN

CULVERIN

"But, just ahead of him, the Culverin hoved itself half into sight on its many legs. It pointed its needle-shaped mouth and spit a pebble. I heard the pebble ring on Mr. Yandro's head."

Manly Wade Wellman, The Desrick On Yandro

KALU

KALU

"And then: 'Bones, yes - something like man-bones, but bigger and thicker, also something like bear-bones, or big ape-bones from a foreign land. And a rotten light to them. So I was for a moment that the bones weren't empty. Inside the ribs were caged puffy things, like guts and lungs and maybe a heart that skipped and wriggled. The skull had a snout like I can't say what, and in its eye-holes burned blue-green fire.'"

Manly Wade Wellman, Nine Yards Of Cloth

This monster will be available in the Appalachian Compendium
ON SALE THIS FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 15TH 11AM EST

IN THE YOG-BLOGSOTH STORE!
(Limited to 20)

DJIBAW

DJIBAW

"All blotchy and green and brown with a white belly and a wet smoothness, it was a frog. But it was bigger than a man by twice, I suppose." “You think of him as what we call a djibaw, and evil spirit. We think of him as a part of nature, that defends nature's weak things.”

Manly Wade Wellman, Frogfather

RAVEN MOCKER

RAVEN MOCKER

"Amongst those anisgina things, I should offer that the Raven Mockers can be put down for near about the worst of all. They were given that name because they can fly if they want to, and when they fly, they make a noise like a raven. Reuben Manco imitated it for me, kraa-kraa, a pure down ugly noise. They make it their chief business to help a man to die,  you might could say. If somebody gets down flat on his back, bad sick or wounded, the Raven Mockers fly in and crowd all round and over him like a bunch of, well, like ravens. Most times they make themselves right hard to see by air real man or woman except maybe a wise old Cherokee medicine man. And the medicine man has got to pray his strongest prayers and work his best and fastest and sensiblest with  all the magic he knows, so as to keep those Raven Mockers off from one they're out to kill."

"They're heads were round and dark, with a knobby look all over them, and the heads and those wrappings were the same sooty-looking color that, in the sunlight, might could have been a deep diry brown. They'd come on out and spread this-a-way and that to surround us, and they stood and looked on us with eyes like coals of fire that had died 

down to a scummy pink."

"It had a monkeyish look to it, only not just monkey, either. Monkeys are funny, and this wasn't funny. I mean, the skull was squashed low and shallow above and its jaw was wide and shallow below. Its mouth hung loose and ugly and went all the way across, and its two pink-shining eyes hung deep back in it, in hollows like pits under two big bony brows like jackknife handles. But not funny like a monkey, or either with that sad monkey look. It was pure poison mean. And, I reckoned, hungry."

"That stuff was a kind of skin. It grew downward from the wrists and elbows of the long arms, it ws fast to the two sides of the squatty body, all the way down to the ankles of the short, chunky legs. It was like the spread of an umbrella, or of the wings of a bat. Only it had no ribs to it, just the wide-pulled stretch of it you could see the moonlight through."

Manly Wade Wellman, The Old Gods Waken

"Of all the Cherokee wizards or witches the most dreaded is the Raven Mocker (Kâ'lanû Ahkyeli'skï), the one that robs the dying man of life. They are of either sex and there is no sure way to know one, though they usually look withered and old, because they have added so many lives to their own."

"Every little while as he flies he makes a cry like the cry of a raven when it "dives" in the air--not like the common raven cry--and those who hear are afraid, because they know that some man's life will soon go out. When the Raven Mocker comes to the house he finds others of his kind waiting there, and unless there is a doctor on guard who knows bow to drive them away they go inside, all invisible, and frighten and torment the sick man until they kill him. Sometimes to do this they even lift him from the bed and throw him on the floor, but his friends who are with him think he is 

only struggling for breath."

James Mooney, Myths Of the Cherokee