The Furry Hand (La Mano Peluda, which can also be translated as the Hairy Hand) is a Latin American legend, better known in South America, particularly, Colombia.

This legend is used to scare children into staying in their bed after the lights are off. However, not even in your bed at home were you safe, because The Furry Hand was always there just waiting for you to step out of bed after bedtime.

Legend has it, originally the hand had belonged to a man who was killed during the inquisition for p...

Mythical creatures of the Bogeyman type are a common occurrence in many cultures. From the Middle East to the Americas, these dark creatures are commonly imagined as monsters that punishes children— and adults at times— for misbehaving and breaking taboos. The reasons they punish people are as varied as their punishments, that go from eating small children to stealing the soul of those who enter their territory.

Particularly, in the Czech Republic and Slovakia children are frightened by the Bubák...

The Island of the Jinn (or genie, as these supernatural beings are commonly called in western literature) appears in the ancient Arabic story of Zein Ul Asnam and the King of the Jinn, in which the main character travels “days and nights in the foulest of deserts” before encountering a monstrous boatman, who brings him to an island that is covered with incense trees and ruled by a magical King of the Jinn.

This Island, which most experts think is in fact the archipelago of Socotra in the Arabian...

Grendel (meaning literately “The Destroyer”) is one of three antagonists, alongside

with Grendel's mother and the dragon, in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf.

Beowulf is an English heroic epic poem set in Scandinavia and cited as one of the most important Anglo-Saxon literature works of all time. Dated between the 8th and early 11th century (AD 700–1000), this epic poem tells the story of Beowulf, a great hero who comes to the aid of Hroðgar, the king of the Danes, by defeating a beast known as...

According to the Scandinavian mythology, the Kraken is a giant sea creature generally described as an octopus or squid. Probably no legendary sea monster was as horrifying as this. A kraken would attack a ship by wrapping their arms around the hull and capsizing it, and the crew would drown or be eaten by the monster.

Tales of a huge, many armed, headed or horned sea creatures exist from ancient times.

Many cultures have legends of kraken-like monsters, which serve as evidence that this creature w...

Most often, Cipactli has been described as a sea demon or monster looking like a crocodile, at times showing some toad and fish  features.

In Aztec cosmogony, this asexual sea monster is considered as original source, the start from where the  cosmos was created. The Aztecs held the belief that the Earth was created from the destruction of this large sea demon, who, in time, was created by the four original gods.

The story of creation, according to the Aztecs, is actually a story of birth, death,...

According to the Örvar-Odds Saga, the Hafgua was the mother of all sea monsters. This giant monster fed on whales, ships, men, and anything it could catch. It inhabited the Greenland Sea and may disguise itself as a pair of rocks rising from the sea. Those two rocks are its jaws, its nose and lower jaw.

The Hafgua lived underwater, but it was so big that when the tide was low her nose and head would rise out of the water, looking like a rocky island.

The only physical description know of this cre...

In Greek mythology, Geryon was the son of Chrysaor and Callirrhoe, and grandson of Medusa. He was a fearsome giant who dwelt on the island Erytheia, in the far west of the Mediterranean, in the company of the mythic Hesperides (Nymphs of the West).

Geryon had three bodies, three heads, and –in later accounts— four wings, all together in one body. He owned a herd of man-eating cattle, whose coats were tinged red by the light of sunset, that the Greek hero Herakles had to capture as one of his twel...

A particularly odd monster, the Amphisbaena is a two-headed reptilian beast most often depicted as a dragon with a head growing out of the tip of its tail. The origin of the myth, however, speaks of a double-headed snake, both heads identical, with the ability to move both forwards and backwards to confuse its enemies. In fact, the word amphisbaena comes from the Greek words amphis (both ways) and bainein (to move), making reference to the main ability of this beast.

The study of depictions of th...