#cursed knowledge

Case File No. 001: Wendigo

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Disclaimer: The stories, articles, and accounts presented here are works of fiction inspired by myths, folklore, and urban legends from around the world. While they may occasionally name-drop real places, traditions, or historical events, all supernatural bits are 100% made up (sorry, no refunds if you go monster-hunting and only find raccoons). This blog is meant purely for entertainment, so read, laugh, shiver, and please don’t fact-check me with holy water.

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The forests of the northern United States and Canada have always carried warnings older than the maps drawn over them. The Algonquian peoples, Cree, Ojibwe, Innu, Saulteaux, among others, spoke of something that lingered in the treeline during famine winters, something that waits for men to break. They called it the Wendigo.

Not just Wendigo, though. The name mutates as much as the stories do: Windigo, Witiko, Weendigo, even Windikouk in some accounts. The word changes depending on whose fire you’re sitting beside, but the meaning remains: a creature of hunger without end.

The Wendigo myth was born in survival stories. During winters when the snow buried every path and food ran out, starvation pushed people into unthinkable choices. The tale says those who resorted to eating human flesh crossed a threshold, they became cursed, hollowed out into something no longer human.

But cannibalism is just one root. Other traditions describe the Wendigo as a malevolent spirit, one that possesses the desperate or the greedy, twisting them into monsters. In some tellings, it’s not an accident or a choice, it’s a curse, laid by spirits or shamans as punishment for gluttony, selfishness, or consuming more than one’s share.

Either way, the Wendigo is never just about hunger. It’s a moral story first: a nightmare given form to keep people alive, and human, when survival threatened to strip them of both.

Descriptions diverge across regions. Some Cree stories describe the Wendigo as emaciated, its skin stretched over bones, lips gnawed away, eyes sunken deep. Among the Ojibwe, it is said to grow taller with every meal, forever towering, its size increasing in proportion to its appetite.

Later retellings, especially in modern horror, add antlers or a deer skull face, an image that looks cinematic but strays far from older traditions. The original Wendigo looked uncomfortably human, almost too human: gaunt, gray-skinned, the stench of decay clinging to it. Some legends even speak of a frozen heart, a shard of ice at its core.

Wherever the story is told, the Wendigo is always cold, always hungry, and never full.

The Wendigo is defined by what it lacks, satisfaction. It craves human flesh, but the more it consumes, the hungrier it becomes. Stories say it stalks the wilderness during deep winters, mimicking human voices to lure travelers into the snow. Others grant it unnatural speed, impossible endurance, or even near-immortality, making it less a predator and more a natural disaster given legs.

Symbolically, the Wendigo is greed itself. A devourer that consumes not just food, but people, communities, even entire landscapes. Modern scholars have drawn parallels between the Wendigo and colonialism, or even capitalism, an endless appetite that strips the land bare, leaving nothing but ruin in its wake.

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Reported Accounts & Evidence:

“You can smell it before you hear it. Like frozen meat that’s gone bad. That’s when you know to stay inside.”

- Collected from Cree oral tradition, 1910

The most infamous historical case is that of Swift Runner, a Cree man in Alberta who murdered and ate his family during the famine of 1878. He confessed he was under the influence of a Wendigo. To the courts, it was murder; to locals, it was proof of the curse.

Psychiatrists once coined the term “Wendigo Psychosis” to explain what they believed were cases of delusion: individuals fearing they were becoming cannibals, or craving human flesh. The diagnosis has since been disputed, but the name remains as a footnote in psychology.

“Trapper reports finding camp abandoned, stew pot still boiling. Nearby snow showed prints ‘not of man, nor moose.’ Locals refused to pursue trail further north.”

- Newspaper clipping, Whitefish Bay, 1921

“They whisper of a sickness of the soul. A man may look as any other, but his heart is ice, his eyes are black, and he feeds where no man should.”

- Field note, unnamed missionary, 1896

“The Wendigo is born when the fire dies first.”

- Folk proverb, attributed to Saulteaux elders

Traditionally, fire is the weapon of choice. Burn the body, scatter the ashes, prevent it from returning. Some versions speak of shamans able to drive out the spirit with ritual, releasing the trapped human soul inside. Modern pop culture, of course, adds silver bullets and holy weapons, but those belong more to Hollywood than to the northern woods.

The Wendigo survives because hunger never really leaves us. It’s a story about famine, about fear, about what we’re willing to do when survival strips away morality. But the story also mutates, from spirit to monster, from cannibal to capitalism, always finding a new form, like it refuses to die.

Whether it’s a myth to frighten children, a metaphor for endless greed, or something that still waits in the tree line when the snow comes down, the Wendigo remains an old warning that never lost its teeth.

Some nights, hunters swear they still hear voices calling their name in the woods. And those who’ve heard them don’t go looking.

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Credits:

Written & Compiled By: Zen (me)

Artwork By: Emma

Evidence:

Newspaper clipping, field note - Created by Zen

Wendigo territory map - posted on Reddit by user u/badbitch115 under the subreddit r/WendigoStories

Profile records of Swift Runner - posted on murderpedia.org

Sources & Inspirations:

wikipedia.org

britannica.com

thearcheologist.org

murderpedia.org

mysteriesofcanada.com

So... There is a song in minecraft movie called "ode to Dennis"-

Having autism and ADHD is a blessing and a curse because on one hand, I’m basically a walking encyclopedia of random facts and information. On the other hand, a fair amount of that information is so fucked up that it’s not socially acceptable to share it with anyone. So naturally, I took every fucked up fact, every bit of twisted trivia, every bit of cursed knowledge that I could come up with off the top of my head and compiled it into one big list to post on the internet. Some of this information may permanently ruin your (you, the reader) perception of certain things. None of this information should have ever seen the light of day, and a fair amount of it was never, ever meant to be known by humans.

You cannot unlearn anything on this list. This is your chance to scroll past.

You have been warned.

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According to FDA standards, a jar of peanut butter is allowed to have up to seven (7) rat hairs before it’s considered unfit for human consumption. If it has 7 or less rat hairs it will still be sold in stores.

If I just ruined peanut butter for you, don’t google the FDA regulations on any other foods you enjoy.

Human teeth have 36 calories each.

The average human body has roughly 125,000 calories. This is actually relatively low, which makes cannibalism in humans generally unsustainable.

Human meat tastes like pork.

Penguins have been observed practicing necrophilia.

Dolphin vaginas secrete a substance that acts like an aphrodisiac on steroids. When scientists swabbed some of it on a chimpanzee’s penis, it masturbated so furiously that it had a heart attack and died.

Dolphins have been known to intentionally commit suicide if kept in poor conditions.

Scientists that work with cockroaches often become allergic due to exposure. Simultaneously, they also develop an allergy to chocolate and pre-ground coffee. Make of that what you will.

Dolphins have been observed masturbating using decapitated fish heads.

Dolphins have been observed getting high on pufferfish venom recreationally, sometimes even passing a pufferfish around like a joint.

There’s a LOT of rape across the entire animal kingdom. Like, a LOT. It’s especially prevalent in dolphins, otters, ducks, penguins, and primates, to name a few.

On a related note, female ducks have corkscrew shaped vaginas. Male ducks also have corkscrew shaped penises that measure in at a whopping eighteen inches.

The barnacle has the largest penis to body size ratio in the animal kingdom, with its penis being up to eight times as long as its body.

Chimpanzees have been observed using frogs as a fleshlight.

A disembodied human head weighs about 10-12 lbs and is balanced in such a way that requires you to use both hands to pick up.

Pigs will eat every single part of a corpse - including bones. In 2012 a farmer in Oregon was eaten by his pigs after having a heart attack and falling in their enclosure. This also makes pig pens a prime spot for dumping bodies.

A body will decompose faster if you fill the rectal cavity with yogurt before burying it

When burying a body, make sure to bury it in a heavily wooded area. If vegetation is too sparse and/or the body isn’t buried deep enough, it will be easily noticeable after a few months because plants will grow in much thicker directly above where the body was buried.

You cannot bury a body in sand, as sand is too porous. The smell will seep through and give away the location

The entire universe could theoretically exist as a false vacuum and collapse into nothingness at any moment without warning.

Any alien civilization advanced enough to detect life on earth is also probably advanced enough to destroy our entire planet almost immediately. At the peak of interstellar technology, the only limiting factor is the speed of light. If they decided to attack, we probably wouldn’t even know it was coming until the entire surface of the planet was already vaporized.

It takes three and a half rotations to fully detach a human head from its body.

Recently deceased bodies can experience rigor erectus, which translates to “death boner.” This is especially common in victims of hanging, as it’s primarily caused by trauma to the cerebellum or spinal cord.

There is an extremely real chance that you have unknowingly purchased a product that was made by modern day slaves at least once in your life. Coffee, cotton, fish, clothes, shoes, and technology are among the most vulnerable industries.

A decapitated head remains conscious for several seconds after separated from the body.