Wendigo

Synonyms:	windigo, windego
See also:	Religion, supernatural, Cryptids in Fanworks Hannibal Wendigo cosplay at Fan Expo Canada 2015. Photo by GabboT
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The wendigo (also spelled windigo, windego; see below for more information) is a supernatural being originating from the folkloric traditions of many Algonquian-speaking peoples. It has appeared in numerous professional works, become a common sight in internet-based horror circles, and made its way into a variety of fanworks.

Names

Wendigo stories originate from oral tradition in numerous Algonqiuan-speaking communities; as such, a variety of pronunciations and spellings for the legend exist. The most common pronunciation of the entity’s name in pop culture and appears to be /ˈwɛndɪɡoʊ/ (when-dee-go), and the most common spelling of the name is “wendigo”. For consistency, this article will use the “wendigo” spelling.

According to some traditions, the wendigo is such a taboo subject that talking about it or naming it is discouraged. Some netizens have taken to censoring the wendigo’s name with asterisks and/or punctuation marks (“w*nd!go”, for example). The very use of the wendigo in stories by non-Native people is sometimes met with controversy.

Description

The exact nature of the wendigo varies greatly depending on what version of the story is being told. That being said, some characteristics are very common across many cultures.

Wendigos are typically depicted as perpetually emaciated, man-eating giants heavily associated with winter and cannibalism. They are created when a human commits an act of cannibalism (or in some cases, non-cannibalistic acts of selfishness), and is cursed into a monstrous form as a result (in some tellings, the wendigo is a spirit that possesses and corrupts humans). The wendigo has an insatiable hunger for human flesh; no matter how much it eats, it remains unsatisfied. It is a dangerous, evil being that should be avoided at all costs, and killed if possible.

Many pop-culture and internet-based depictions of the wendigo give it deer-like traits, including antlers and a deer skull. The 2001 film Wendigo is often cited as the origin of this design trend, though examples of antlered or horned wendigos have been found going back to the 1930s. Most fannish depictions of wendigos include these cervine features.

Use in Pop Culture

Wendigos have appeared in many modern media properties dating back decades. Some recent examples include NBC’s Hannibal, Until Dawn, Marvel Comics and even My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

Their nature varies depending on the property they are adapted into. Hannibal features a black-skinned antlered humanoid. MLP’s windigos are winter spirits that feed on hatred. Until Dawn’s wendigos are closer in appearance to the original legend: emaciated, antlerless humanoids that move at incredible speed.

Stories about the wendigo have become incredibly widespread within the online horror community, being told on various websites (including the nosleep subreddit), and read aloud on YouTube with hundreds of thousands of views. The popular horror YouTuber Wendigoon's username and channel icon are both references to the wendigo. Even the SCP Foundation has contributed to the legend's online popularity with SCP-323, a supernatural deer skull that curses its wearer with wendigo-like traits.

Controversy

Most depictions of wendigos in popular culture deviate considerably from the original folklore. This cultural appropriation and misrepresentation has received criticism from some Native people. In addition, the aforementioned name taboo has created controversy over whether people should be allowed to discuss the wendigo in a casual context in the first place.

Traditionally, we do not talk about them outside of very specific circumstances. We’re told to never say their names out loud, especially at night or during winter, because doing so can draw the attention of one. [...] We’re also very heavily warned away from depicting them; no Anishinaabe person who gives even the slightest fuck about tradition would put them in written stories or games or movies, and they definitely wouldn’t draw or create other visual depictions of them. Some people, like me, don’t even feel comfortable writing their names uncensored. Settlers mock us for caring about this, because they just see w*ndigoag as the Anishinaabe equivalent of the Boogeyman. But the simple fact of the matter is that even if no one takes us seriously, w*ndigoag are very real to us and very dangerous, and we’re not going to risk our lives and the lives of our loved ones on the off chance that our sacred beliefs are wrong. Their place in our culture, one so sacred that their names aren’t even said out loud, makes it excruciatingly painful to see them being bastardized and treated so casually by people who don’t understand what they mean to us.

tired-fandom-ndn, posted 30 November 2019

[sang-the-sun-in-flight, posted 10 April 2023]
feeling annoyed about wendigo and like deer cryptid discourse. nobody owns folk mythology about Fucked Up Deer Creature, if you've ever lived anywhere with lots of deer you will spontaneously develop folk mythology about a fucked up deer creature, ESPECIALLY if you've ever interacted with a deer suffering from chronic wasting disease (prion diseases my beloathed). it's just. stupid discourse. it is not racist to create stories with a fucked up cannibal deer monster.

[nebularanger]
Then just call it something else. You can make a Fucked Up Deer without invoking the specific name (especially since it's not even accurate to what the original creature is anyway)

Hey uhm y'all? W*ndigos and sk*nwalkers are not just a pop-culture/horror genre thing and it's very disrespectful to Native American culture to use them as such. There's a reason I don't use their full names or talk about them (irl and online), and media that view them as sexual, cute, or fun "monsters" is disgusting. If you use the names as jokes or characters or whatever (especially if you're not indigenous) please stop and reconsider.

c-redraws-dc, posted 26 May 2022

The annoying thing about Wendigo discourse is that a good fat chunk of the time, it boils down to pedantic “I’m not Native, but…” hair-splitting about appearance.

Wendigos aren’t sacred spirits, and while you should know where they come from and who tells their stories and why, they’re not untouchable, closely guarded cultural relics. They’re cautionary tales/allegorical monsters that are the walking embodiment of hunger, greed, cold, and cannibalism, and whether they’re depicted with or without a deer skull for a head, the idea is the same…a terrifying, flesh-eating being that lives innawoods.

“But Chai, I want to show my support of Native causes by harassing strangers over a creepy thing on the internet!”

Skinwalkers. Bastardized to hell and back, depicted as something miles away from their true form for spoopy purposes, originating from a far more closed off culture that’s more protective of them.

You want skinwalkers.

chaifootsteps, posted 30 September 2021

Indigenous Person: Hey, W*ndigo and skinwalkers aren’t cryptids or even folklore creatures. They’re from Algonquin and Navajo people respectively and have a very specific history and meaning and are still sacred to people who are part of those groups today. So don’t use them as fantasy monsters or base aesthetics around them. They’re not yours to use and they’re not for those purposes.

About ten gazillion non Native, mostly white people: You can’t just arbitrarily declare random things to be yours*! I’ve not even heard of those things before now but it’s still a serious violation of my rights to say that I can’t use them in a hypothetical story! You asking me to not be a racist asshole and to show basic respect to extant cultures already devastated by colonialism is the same as forcibly barring me from talking about what I want! And not sharing culture is now cultures die! You don’t want segregation do you????????!!! Also free speech!

*yes I have literally seen that said before.

butch-with-a-tortoise

In any case, numerous Native academics and creatives have used the term in their work, often using the wendigo legend as a metaphor for colonialism, capitalism, or excessive selfishness more generally.

In Fandom

Wendigos appear as characters in many fanworks. They are especially prominent in fandoms with source material that features wendigos. As of June 2023, there are around 1200 works on AO3 with the additional tag "Wendigo". As one can imagine, a significant percentage of these works are darkfic; of those 1200 works, almost half are also tagged with the "Graphic Depictions of Violence" archive warning. Fans of the cryptozoology field often count the wendigo as a cryptid, though this application of the term is controversial.

Many artists active in fan spaces have created wendigo OCs, and while rare, wendigo adoptables have been made by members of the furry fandom.

Some works can be described as “Wendigo AUs”, in which a canon character is reimagined as a wendigo. For example, there are currently over 200 works on AO3 featuring a wendigo version of Hannibal Lecter. These wendigo!characters may be presented as evil, or may be more sympathetic.

Some examples of fandoms that include wendigos in their fanworks:

• Hannibal. An antlered humanoid commonly referred to as a wendigo appears in the show itself. Many fans have created works in which the canonically cannibalistic Hannibal Lecter is a wendigo.
• Hazbin Hotel. Alastor is a fan-favorite demon character who was a cannibalistic serial killer in his human life, and whose form in hell is deer-like with antlers. As such, he is often interpreted as a wendigo.
• Supernatural. The second episode of the series features wendigos as monsters, and many fanworks feature them in some capacity.
• Until Dawn. Wendigos are enemies within the game.

Example Fanworks

Art

• Christmas episode of DuckTales was awesome! by dexsterpiece (DuckTales)
• Danny Phantom vs The Wendigo by dragonrex1 (Danny Phantom)
• Eat The Rude by thatdramabitchq (Hannibal)
• Inspiring: Girl seeks vengeance on her friend group in nothing but her underwear by daikaiju-arts (Until Dawn)
• It's Wendigo Alastor doin a spookin by boss-yoshi (Hazbin Hotel)
• Supernatural - Wendigo by Weilard
• Wendigo Alastor by xitsen
• Wendigo Awake by frikineitor143 (Gravity Falls)

Fic

• Evolve by awesomepony3947 (Supernatural)
• Gone With the Wendigo by bellatemple, written for the 2012 round of the Supernatural Crossover Big Bang (Supernatural/My Little Pony)
• Human Error by jemariel
• Hunger by JackNTrade (Little Witch Academia)
• I Intend to be Independently Blue by Loz (Teen Wolf)
• the light the moon sends back by bodhirookes (BuzzFeed Unsolved)
• raised by wolves, and other beasts by kafkian (Hannibal)
• Wendigo by Aggression (Hetalia: Axis Powers)
• Wendigo by Peter Wood, originally posted to the Due South Archive (The X-Files/Due South)
• Wendig-oh by smileyavocado1
• Wheredigone? by Vinylshadow (My Little Pony)

Meta

• Alastor Demon Form Theory~ by hellotrixstergodhi (Hazbin Hotel)
• Folkloric discussion: Is The Beast from Over the Garden Wall The Wendigo or Der Erlkönig or perhaps both?, ^{Archived version} by thenightling (Over the Garden Wall)

References

Footnotes

Citations