Ittan-momen
Region of origin: Kagoshima, Japan
A possessed bolt of cotton cloth, the ittan-momen is a tsukumogami, a spirit born of a disused or forgotten household items, who glides silently through the night sky looking for victims to prey upon. Unlike most tsukumogami or yokai who have a tendency to be mischievous but harmless to people, the ittan-momen is particularly vicious and will wrap itself around a person’s head, smothering them to death.
Bultungin
Region of origin: Chad
Literally “I change myself into a hyena,” it was believed some people used witchcraft to to turn a hyena, a creature heavily stigmatized as dirty scavengers. The bultungin would turn into the hyena at night and upturn graves to feast on the dead bodies. A similar creature in Ethiopia was known as a bouda, and was heavily associated with blacksmiths.
Trow
Region of origin: The Orkney Islands
Small folk of the Orkney Islands, the trow share traits of their fae cousins in the British isles as well as Norse creatures like trolls and draugr, albeit much tinier, with stories describing trow from as small as mice to upwards of three feet tall. Like the trolls, the trow abhorred sunlight and lived underground in locations known as knowes or howes, earthen mounds disguising elegantly-decorated halls underground, although the trow were said to be able to come and live on the surface during the week before Christmas. When above ground at night, the trows could turn invisible at will to hide from humans, although some people were born with a gift to see the creatures that they could pass on to others through touch, while other tales told of folk methods that granted people this ability such as washing your face with eggs. Trows were often viewed as good-natured, with a love of dancing and music, the fiddle in particular. Their relationship to humans tended to run neutral to positive, the male-only race even said to marry and conceive children with human women, but they were considered mischievous and mercurial and could turn destructive if their knowes were damaged or otherwise treated discourteously. Similar to other fae creatures Trows also often engaged in taking children and cattle and leaving changeling replacements in their place.
Besta-fera
Region of origin: Brazil
With roots in stories brought over by Portuguese colonizers, the Besta-fera, often translated as Bestial Beast, was an centaur-like evil spirit who rode the earth on nights when the moon was full. On these nights it was said to ride out of hell and collect the souls of the damn, galloping loudly through towns until it ended its route in a graveyard, returning with its bounty to the underworld. The Besta-fera was usually thought to never directly threaten mortals, but hearing or seeing it could incite temporary fear or madness. In some versions it was said to be accompanied by a pack of hounds, and may itself have a wolf-like head; in other versions it is missing its head entirely. There is some belief the Besta-fera may be an incarnation of the Devil itself, and it has some connotation with the beast mentioned in Revelations. The term has also come to be used to describe particularly ill-tempered or fearsome people.
Mara
Region of origin: Scandinavian counties
An evil spirit that plants itself on a sleeping person’s chest, feeding off their life-force while “riding” them, causing bad dreams and anxiety along with the sensation of being pinned down. Signs of a mara attack in the night include waking still feeling weary and drained, and tangled hair known as martovor or mare-locks. Mara may also attack livestock and other animals, especially horses, and even trees with particularly tangled branches are said to be victims of the mara. There was some belief that mara were distinct creatures or demons, but other origins labeled them as humans with familial ties to curses or witchcraft, whose spirits would leave their bodies at night. While traveling in this way, mara could take the form of fog, sand or will-o’-wisps that allowed them enter through impossibly small cracks and sneak into their victims’ homes. Mara are primarily female; it was thought a pregnant woman who practiced svartkonst, a form of witchcraft used to ease labor pains, would result in the children being born as mara if female or a werewolf, or varulv, if male. Rarely some male children would be born as mara or possess features of both, known as a marulv.
Argopelter
Region of origin: Northern US forests
An ape-like fearsome critter that makes use of hollowed-out trees as both its home and its ammunition, the argopelter uses its whip-like arms to hurl large branches and pieces of the trees with lethal force down at the heads of loggers and lumberjacks who it feels are invading its territory. The argopelters are largely solitary creatures, due in part to scarcity of the owls and woodpeckers that are their food source keeping them spread out, and also a low reproduction rate as their pups are only born on the 29th of February.
Mantyger
Region of origin: Medieval Europe
A chimeric beast with the body of a tyger, a creature from heraldry similar to but distinct from a tiger, and the hands and face of a man with curling horns and tusks. It is believed the name may be a corruption of the Persian manticore based on a false etymology and use has become somewhat intertwined, but despite some similar features they are often considered separate beasts, and the mantyger may take its origins from second-hand descriptions of baboons.
The Paraná Creature
Region of origin: Carmen del Paraná, Itapúa, Paraguay
Discovered in late October, 2015 floating down the shoreline of the Paraná River in Paraguay, locals came across the decomposing corpse of a small, strange creature. It had wrinkled, frog-like skin and limbs but the hands, tail and face of a primate. Firefighters were called and several photographs were taken but no medical examination or positive identification is ever known to have taken place. Theories of its origins have ranged from a dead monkey whose body was affected by its time in the water to possibly being some kind of relation to the chupacabra.
Nanaue
Region of origin: Waipio Valley, Hawai’i
Kamohoali, a god and the king of all sharks, was swimming close to the Waipio Valley on the big island of Hawaii, was struck by the a woman who had gone swimming late at night, Kalei. Posing as a human chief, he returned to land and sought her out, the two falling in love and eventually getting married. They lived together and in time Kalei became pregnant with a son. Kamohoali realized he could not stay on land forever and had to return to the sea. Heartbroken, he disappeared, in some versions informing Kalei of his divine nature and others he did not, but before leaving he had instructed Kalei that their son must never eat animal flesh. The son, Nanaue, was born with a large gaping hole in his back, resembling a fish’s mouth. Kalei did her best to hide this, and prevent Nanaue from eating meat as she was told, but when he came of age his grandfather, hoping his grandson would grow up into a great warrior, fed him a large, meat-heavy meal. After this, the mouth in Nanaue’s back grew shark-like fangs, he became filled with a voracious hunger and found he could take on the form of a shark when he entered the water. As he grew, the hunger increased, and he could not resist eating the other villagers as they swam in the water. He was eventually found out and chased out of the village. He fled to Maui and attempted to start a new life, marrying a local chiefess, but eventually his hunger got the better of him and was once again chased off after being unable to help himself from eating a young girl, this time arriving in Molokai where he led a more secretive life. He was able to control his more violent urges for a time, but he still went into the water and took on his shark form as discreetly as possible. One night a local caught him shape-shifting and, having heard the tales of a murderous shark-man from the other islands, got other villagers together and caught Nanaue, bringing him to shore and beating him to death.
Gigan
Region of origin: Spaaace
Various versions attribute his origins and loyalties to different alien civilizations, but throughout most iterations the creature known as Gigan was a massive extraterrestrial reptilian creature who was experimented on and rebuilt with various cybernetic enhancements and arsenals and sent to Earth to fascilitate its conquest, often in conjunction with other space-borne kaiju such as King Ghidorah or Megalon, only to be repelled by Godzilla and his allies. Aside from his natural size and hardiness as a kaiju, Gigan makes use of various augmentations that can be swapped out upgraded, from hooks and blades to more complex mechanical additions like chainsaw arms, the buzzsaw in his abdomen and lasers fired from his visor-like single eye.
The Compendium of Arcane Beasts and Critters 