Forums » Smalltalk » Favorite Folklore Creature?

I personally love japanese folklore of the kitsune, foxes that transform into little girls to trick and lure men to their death or to steal from them.

There is a creature in the Romanian folklore called strigoi.
A strigoi is a corpse that was not buried, and so it got back on its feet and started aiming around during the nights aimlessly.
Basically the Romanian version of a zombie/ghoul.

I'm huge into Irish/ Scottish and Norse folklore. Creatures like the Dullahan, Kelpies, Selkies, Nuckelavee, Cu Sidhe, Fae and faeries and jotun and all sorts really tickle my fancy.

A lot of my favorites stories revolve around Fae and Faeries, not the cutesy ones you might see in disney stuff, but the kind where people are kidnapped or enchanted into the realm of faeries, where they're trapped there for only minutes but in the real world they've been gone for decades. The stories about mushroom circles or hawthorn trees sitting all alone in a field and how to damage or cut it could bring disaster to a town. The mythology and legends are absolutely fantastic to read about.

One of my other favorite myths is Der Earl Konig, The Earl King, the master of the Wild Hunt. The stories about him are always tragic, cause in most cases, the Earl King is seen as an omen of ill or death. There've been a fair few retakes of teh myths in modern fantasy stories that have given the legends an interesting spin, which is always fun.

Some of my favorites are from Japanese folklore, like karasu-tengu and kitsune, but I like folklore from all over. I have a Nokken character which is a siren type that preys in the lakes of lakes of Iceland...or Finnland. I can't remember the details offhand, but they're cool since they are usually male, unlike the usual beautiful woman luring men to their death.

Any type of implish fae-creature is a fun time as well. Been meaning to write one for a while.

i'd die for mothman //wheeze
I used to be really big on changelings but then they started to rub me the wrong way since it was largely just people looking at their unhealthy/Neurodivergent/physically disabled child and being like "I bet you're just an old fairy man. Die." And, it doesn't help any that I'm disabled and mentally ill, and so are most the people I know. It's mostly just a 'put urself in their shoes' gone too far that it's went and ruined some things for me. Plus, a lot of my thing for changelings came from personal roleplay headcanons, and that's all been shifted onto my own species which are... just called Shiftlings.

I like the more aggressive creatures that aren’t all what they seem. Like Sirens or Mermaids. There is many different representations of mermaids, but I particularly enjoy the ones in which they are like Sirens and lure men to their deaths. I also really love anything that I would keep as a pet. I’m weird and would literally keep something that will kill me as a pet. As long as it’s cute. Like I don’t know. I also have a very broad definition of cute.

Although I'm not that into fantasy, I think elves have to win for me. As cliche as it sounds, Lord of the Rings made me love them. Orlando Bloom as an elf is one of the few men I find extremely handsome.

Leprechauns are fun too. And mermaids are up there, as are fairies. Also, selkies, which I only learned about due to the lullabye album I heard while I was volunteering at a daycare in my 20s. It was by a girl named Karan Casey, and she has such a beautiful Irish lilt to her voice when telling the folk stories.

And fairies are a'ight.

I also really like Elves. Especially the child stealing ones. Those are interesting.

Easily the Phoenix. A blazing, ferocious symbol of immortality and rebirth, undying, unyielding, blazing with an immortal fury. Also they're associated with the sun and I have a thing for solar cults- Even beyond the obvious things it symbolizes, the phoenix was always seen as a noble and pure creature, as befits it. The only downside might be that myths relating to the phoenix dont generally involve any gratuitous ultraviolence and they generally dont seem particularly powerful (although in modern fantasy thats different, of course)