A monster is often a kind of grotesque creature whose appearance is frightening and the forces of destruction threaten the social or moral order of the world.

A monster may also look like a human, but in folklore they are usually depicted as the lower class, as mutants, deformed, supernatural and others.

Animal monsters are outside the moral order, but sometimes they happen because of some human violation of moral law (for example, in the Greek myth, Minos did not sacrifice a white bull, whom Poseidon sent him to God, so that as a punishment Poseidon made Minos’s wife Pasipheas) falls in love with a beast and gives birth to a man with the head of a bull, a minotaur). Human monsters are those who have never been completely human in origin (Medusa and her Gorgon sisters) or who have lost their humanity (werewolves, Frankenstein’s monster) due to some kind of supernatural or unnatural action, and therefore who can no longer or cannot follow the moral laws of human society.

Monsters give rise to a written history, and an academic study of specific cultural concepts expressed in society’s ideas about monsters is known as monstrophy.

Monsters appear in literature and feature films. Famous fantasy monsters include Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, werewolves, mummies and zombies.