Wendigos is a popular character for myth and fantasy readers. In Algonquin myths, Wendigo is a macabre creature that lives in the material and spiritual world. It often resembles a human being in distorted forms or has animal characteristics such as horns and sharp claws, as if its appearance were not already frightening enough. Wendigo can also assume a spiritual form and possess a person’s body, making them behave violently and cruelly.
It was believed that Wendigo emerged in the world when an awfully bad person committed heinous crimes such as murder or cannibalism. When that person dies, they return in the form of a Wendigo. It is tall, slender with claws and teeth capable of tearing flesh, and can camouflage itself and imitate the human voice to attract its victims. They are associated with negative behaviors and thoughts when dingoes represent the worst in human beings.
The ancient beliefs of Native American peoples mentioned the existence of a creature that appeared to be the incarnation of a nightmare. This terrible monster lived in the icy forests of the north, where it wandered in search of new victims, which it devoured to the bone with pleasure. This creature is known as Wendigo, a curse for fear and concern, especially among the Algonquin tribes who inhabited northeastern North America near the Great Lakes region. If you want to read horror and mythology on wendigos, you are on the way.
5 Books About Wendigos (Algonquin Myth)
The belief in Wendigo originated a medical term Wendigo psychosis, a syndrome where a person feels an uncontrollable desire to eat human flesh, although this was a frightening legend. It was a warning for people not to cultivate the feeling of greed. Above all, they can control their violent impulses. Otherwise, they would be the first to be hunted by Wendigo.
When a wendigo manages to devour a human being, it instantly increases in size. Thus, it will never be able to satisfy its hunger completely. For this reason, they also represent the difficult winter months for many ancient peoples. They brought with their hunger and cold, often leading to the despair of cannibalism as a means of survival in villages. As a myth reader, I organized a list that characterizes wendigo as a main evil character. So, I will review 5 horror and myth books about wendigos. Let’s go!
1. The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist)
This is the sequel to The Monstrumologist. It is set in the late 1800s. Our main character was recounting his memories from when he was 12 years old, and he is the assistant to the Monstrumologist, Dr. Warthrop. The story begins with a very beautiful lady color from Dr. Warthrop asking for his help finding her husband. Apparently, her husband ran off to Canada to look for the Wendigos for reasons we aren’t aware of yet. Then Henry and the doctor went to Canada.
The characters are so well developed. Henry is too adorable, and he’s a trooper for sticking up with the doctor and his eccentric ways. Dr. Warthrop is eccentric, crazy, and very serious about his work. As the story continues, we learn more about Warthrop’s backstory and how connected the woman and his friends are.
There is a great deal of action towards the end of the book, but it does a flip in the beginning and middle. Many of the actions happen at the book’s beginning when Dr. Warthrop and Will Henry go to Canada. You start to slow down and focus on the character development throughout a lot of the middle. The entomologists focused on the monster part and the hunting, and in this story, we get a flip of there’s more focus on the character development. If you are a Wendigos reader, then you must read it.
Author: Rick Yancey
Average Customer Review: (4.6 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Action & Adventure Fantasy
Number Of Pages: 424
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Mass Market Paperback
2. The Wendigo
It is one of the best Wendigo books I have ever read in my life. Algernon Blackwood is an English broadcasting narrator, journalist, short story writer, and the most prolific ghost story writer in the genre’s history. He’s most known for The Wendigo, which was from 1910. Nowadays, it’s going to be tame. But in 1910, when this was released, this was crazy. Throughout the story, you’re following a group of people. This group of gentlemen is on an adventure or in search of something.
They were going out there in the woods. They have a Native American tour guide named Punk, and he knows a lot about the woods. His family’s from there. All of a sudden takes off, and he runs off into the woods while they’re sleeping. The third chapter is terrifying when you start to realize what’s going on. There’s a Wendigo! You have to read the book if you want to know the mystery.
Author: Algernon Blackwood
Average Customer Review: (4.3 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Action & Adventure Fiction
Number Of Pages: 48
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Mass Market Paperback
3. Pet Sematary
This book deals with loss, and it’s horrific. You experience and dream the extremes of yourself when you lose someone you love. The story takes that experience the emotions that run through a human when that level of grief strikes them and brings it to the unnatural and supernatural extremes that Stephen King often does.
Whether it’s vivid nightmares emotions, you didn’t expect that to scare you and freak you out. The anger, rejection, lashing out, and the fact that your entire world feels different and out of place. Stephen considers Pet Sematary to be his scariest book, full of the Wendigos, Zelda, and those coming back from Church or Gadge.
The author knows how to accomplish an objective when it comes to horror. When someone is torn from your life, you will do anything to bring them back to life. That’s a natural part of the grieving process. If you love someone, you’ll do anything for them to keep living. Stephen King grabs this and gives his typical horrific elements to expand it terrifically.
Author: Stephen King
Average Customer Review: (4.7 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Occult Horror Fiction
Number Of Pages: 580
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle
4. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
The book series terrified an entire generation. The trilogy of books was written by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Stephen Gammell between 1981 and 1991. It brought that horror element to the forefront and shaped my interest to this day. The cover of the first book was especially terrifying to me. A large head was seemingly coming out of the ground, making eye contact with the reader, smirking with the skeletal mouth. Oh! It’s a wendigo!
The story is about two little girls who treat their mom like crap to get a drum from a gypsy that they had met. The mom gets scooped and leaves the girls under the care of a woman with glass eyes and a wooden tail. At least this time, it wasn’t the pictures. It was the mental image with a wooden tail thumping on the ground.
In addition, it was the most challenged book of the 1990s and the seventh, most challenged book of the two thousand parents who didn’t want to have to talk to their kids tried relentlessly to get these books banned. The book’s inspired an entire generation of readers, writers, artists, and educated children through Alvin Schwartz’s folklore retelling throughout different cultures.
The otherworldly pictures combined with the stories and legends passed down through ages. Also, the illustrations for this book are the most haunting images you could conjure in your worst nightmares.
Author: Alvin Schwartz
Average Customer Review: (4.6 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Fairy Tales, Folk Tales & Myths
Number Of Pages: 111
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
5. The Lightning-Struck Heart (Tales From Verania)
This follows a character named Sam Halverson. He is apprenticed to the King’s Wizard and Morgan of Shadows. Everyone calls him Sam of Wilds because you find out that he was tasked to go into the forest and bring something back at the beginning of the book. He brings back the two best friends he makes while in the forest. Also, he brings back a harmless gay unicorn called Gary, and he brings back a half-giant or wendigo named Tiggy.
Sam is very prudish, and he doesn’t talk about sexual things all that much where his best friends are the complete opposite. So that’s the whole thing. At the beginning of the book The Prince of This Kingdom, Justin is taken by a sexually aggressive dragon.
The king of this land decides to send the best night of this kingdom, the fiancee of Justin and Sam, to rescue the Prince. The only problem is that Sam has a huge crush on Ryan Flockhart. He has to deal with those feelings as they try to track down this dragon and rescue Justin, who is like a big jerk.
Author: TJ Klune
Average Customer Review: (4.6 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Literature Fiction
Number Of Pages: 405
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle
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