Wendigo...

kill him before he gets worse. January Francois came here and asked me if I would read some prayers for the sick man. He doesn't look like a human being. He seems to be terribly swollen in the body and face. The sight of him is enough to frighten any person. The poor Algonquin slept very little here for the last nineteen days since he arrived. They have been watching him all the time. I don't know how this will end. January one Friendzois, came from me last night and I

went with him. I told him we ought to take some rope with us and tie him up if we could. The sound of him was terrible. It was like the calling of a wild animal. We tied him with the ropes and I left to find some more, but but he couldn't find any, and when I got back, the cords around his arms were already breaking. The Gonquins asked what we shouldn't do. They said that when he got up, he would kill all of us. I told them to do what they had to do is I had no

more ropes which to bind him. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And that was the account of Francis work beaten uh the Orkney HBC clerk at the Trout Lake Outpost the winter of eight during the alleged Windigo possession of napatan Auger. Edited slightly for clarity's sake, but otherwise exactly what's in the history books.

And we wanted to bring that bit to your attention because what we're talking about is a creature or a possession that has to deal with cannibalism. Yeah, and even though the creature itself is obviously a creature of myth, we've talked before about the power of myth, the power of paranormal scripts within a culture, as well as the real life incidences that have allegedly occurred because of or

alongside the Wind to Go belief. Because if the oral account of this particular Wind to Go possession story, as collected by the University of Alberta's Nathan D. Carlson, holds true, then the Algonquin tribes people gave Napappen boiling bear grease an attempt to cure him after this, uh this account that I read, and then when that didn't work, they executed him with an axe, cutting off his head and

bearing it separate from his body. Now, there are various problems, of course, with any account of cannibalism, just just cannibalism alone, much less when you start involving supernatural uh in material as well. Yeah, and that's the thing about Window that's so interesting is it really highlights this issue of cannibalism.

And we've talked about this before. It's very hard to really pin down cannibalism what has actually happened with humans for sure, Actually in nature it's very easy to explain, right because they are not ashamed of it, they're not ashamed and and they have a purpose, a real clear purpose their cannibalism. And you have um, the sexual cannibalism in orb spiders, right, that helps in terms of sexual

reproduction fitness. And then in tiger sharks you have siblicide. Right, you have a tiger that eats excuse me, a tiger shark that eats a sibling because it's an easy source of energy. Yeah, it's it's just pure economics. It's a harsh world. Sometimes you have to reabsorb energy back into the the winning prospects, and that's just how it goes. But of course in human culture the economics may still hold true, but we have all of these layers of

of moral concerns of society and culture. They just complicate the equation. Well, I mean, when you say the economics, you're talking about survival cannibalism. In other words, you're just at the end of your rope and you may be with someone who could provide you with a bit of energy, or perhaps there is even a body who that has recently passed that someone uses. And we have many accounts

of this survival cannibalism in history. There a count that are proven and then there are accounts that are sort of forever being argued about, such as the Dolmar party, where that some saying well, maybe they didn't resort to survival cannibalism, whithers say yes, some say well the bones, there's no bone evidence that they did, and others say, well, well they wouldn't know on the bones, they would have eaten the soft flesh, and of course that wouldn't the

evidence of that wouldn't survive. And then you know how many people are going to come back from a chaotic trip to the mountains and be like, WHOA, I only survived because I ate my friend Caleb. Right, it's just probably something that you're going to admit at cocktail parties, right, Um, so, yeah,

you've got the survival cannibalism. And then, just to complicate things a little bit further, we have these accounts of cultural rituals which may or may not be symbolic cannibalism, right, They may actually have occurred or occurred in different ways that we don't think is cannibal as Dick. Yeah, well, I mean you always have the the outsider viewing some sort of cannab supposedly cannibalistic ceremony or hearing about it.

You're having Westerners observed or hear about a ritual that that from the people that they view as primitive, and so you know, it's hard to tack down the actual

truth of the matter. Yeah. Actually, if you want to look at a good example of this and someone who actually furthered this idea of cannibalism, you can look to Columbus who encountered the Arawak people in Hispaniola during the fifteenth century and they warned him of another tribe, the carab that eight people, which it appears this other tribe never existed. So this has been really hard for anthropologists to go through and to try to figure out. But as far as I can tell, this other tribe just

wasn't a reality. So it may have just been for them this story about another tribe just kind of a boogeyman, a boogeyman right telling the night there's another tribe out there and they're so bad they eat people. You don't want to be like that and you don't want them to come for you, right, Or maybe they just wanted, you know, Columbus to hang around and they were like, how we need to get him to stay here with

us and not go exploring. So in addition, Columbus may have mistaken the ritual of keeping a loved one's bones around the house. So that's what the Arrow act people did, and he may have mistaken that for evidence of cannibalism.

And of course the whole thing is ridiculous too when you realize that Columbus h comes bearing his his Catholic faith, and of course Catholicism, like a lot of Christianity, is rich in this symbol symbolic consumption of Christ's blood and flesh, which even though you're not actually consuming blood and flesh, uh, it is, it is symbolic cannibalism at heart, right, which

we see in so many other cultures. The problem, of course, is that Columbus was the authority on all matters for and at that point, so people are like, so where'd you go, what'd you see? What you experience? And then whatever he said became sort of the gospel. Yeah, And that's one of the problems you have throughout history too. I mean, going back to plenty of the Elder and all these guys where you just have certain voices and there aren't a lot of there's not a lot of

discussion about the matter. But you know, this guy said that there are cannibals living in Africa and that remains sort of the voice of truth for a matter of centuries. So that's why The Wind to Go is such an interesting thing to look at, because it really gets at the heart of the taboo of cannibalism, but also the psychology of the ways in which we behave when we have these folk tales as stand ins for for what

becomes a reality. Yeah, so I want you to imagine a dark, gaunt giant that haunts the woods, clad only in matted hair, and it's peering attitude from the wild depths, with blood red eyes as wild as sinister and sinister as those of an owl, with claws that are curl and muscles that are coiled with the strength of a bear, and its teeth are eager, and its foul tongue is longing for the taste of human flesh that sounds cuddly. Yeah. Yeah, Now, this is something that is This creature is known to

different north around in tribal groups. Um. And when we're talking about the geography here, we're talking about French Canadian territory UM and the Algonquins. Are they figure in this quite a bit as well as a couple of the other tribes. Yeah, the Algonquins as one of the most populous and widespread North American native language groups, and uh, at different times it composed like a whole bunch of

different tribes. You know, they did a lot of different tribes that would spoke the Algonquin tongue, and there was a lot of shared beliefs among them, and they they thrived in the harsh world of northern North America, a land of vast unforgiving wilderness, brutal winners, particularly during the Little Ice Age era in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, which correlates exactly with a lot of this exploration by

French Canadians who met up with these different tribes. And we'll talk about this more, but they began to um actually adopt some of these folk tales of the Wendico and also wanted to mention that it goes by Whittakao Witigo Wikio and Weendigo long Ago Windigo Witigo and we ti Goigo. It sounds like a corporation, Yes, secretly is based on cannibalism. It's right we tigo, you can we tigo to um. And the cool thing about this is that the windogo really sort of describes two different things

at play here. One is the beast that you described who lives in that forest waiting to feast on a human. The other is a cannibalistic spirit that can possess a human. Yeah, and that spirit kind of walks the barrier between the world and the world of the spirits. And of course that's a very important area in the tales and the belief systems in the world view of the the first

people of North America. Yeah, and if you look at the Algonquins, they they really focus on these spirits as uh as a sort of cautionary tale to people during these very harsh winters not to turn to cannibalism, because they're saying that if you eat the flesh of another, well, your soul is now susceptible to the wind to go. Yeah. There there were a number of causes, a number of things that could turn you into a window go. Most of them are are based in diet and food and

and hunger. Um. So you might be cursed by a sorcerer always a possibility, you know, it'll happen if you are yourself, if you yourself are a sorcerer, you might seek the transformation in yourself. Always an option, all right. You might trigger the change if you fast too long or feast too heavily, So a little too much food, a little too little food, you're gonna potentially open yourself

up to the window goes caress. But most importantly are all of all as you mentioned, if you if you were forced to consume human flesh, or if you're tripped into doing so, even in a dream, then the window go can reach out to you, touch your soul and bring on this steady and horrible change, And then you might feel ice in your hearts. Yeah, because that's uh, that's that's the big thing right there. Um. They're number

of symptoms. According to the Algonquin Reports catalog by Nathan D. Carlson, the symptoms include stupor, catatonia, depression, paranoia, and orexia or the inability to hold down food, nausea, vomiting, emaciation, glazed eyes, bodily or facial swelling, violent shouting, hallucinations of family members as food animals, particularly as beavers, and finally, this unstoppable

urge to consume human flesh. Yeah, there was one account that reading in a separate book where like a mother was was potentially turning into a window go and she was telling her she's matter or children. She's saying, you all look like beavers to me. Now wow, But but it's that. But the big thing that, like the major symptoms and the ultimate symptoms are the unstoppable urge to consume human flesh. And this chill in your in your torso, in your heart as your heart becomes this lump of ice,

that's right, as the transformation occurs. Let's take a quick break and when we get back, we'll talk about psychosis. All right, we're back. We're just talking about the symptoms in the folk tales of the of the Wind to Go and uh, and how your heart may seem to become this lump of of of ice and you have this irresistible urge to consume human flesh. Now, there were a few cures curative measures that were also related in

the folk tales. But I think it's interesting for you talking about the curative measures, is that people took this folklore and then they began to exhibit these symptoms, and this is what that psychosis is in these cases of people actually coming down with not actually turning into these

sort of werewolf like creatures, but actually comminating some dastardly acts. Yeah, because, on one hand, as h as Nathan D. Carlson points out in his excellent article reviewing Wittico and Ethno History of Cannibal Monsters and the Athabaska District of Northern Alberta nineteen ten um, this was not just a you know, folk tale that was told. This was something in which there was a lot of belief. There was a lot of fear, he says, quote in the collective belief systems

of pre twenty one century algonquins. Contrary to the opinions of some modern academics, as discussed below, the Wittigo condition was not a legendary fabrication. For example, in early eighteen ninety six, Richard Young, the Anglican Bishop of the Athabaska District, wrote the following in a letter journal to the Evangelical Fathers in the Church Missionary Society. Quote, the Indians have a great terror of these so called windigoose or cannibals.

They believe that after eating human flesh, their heart becomes a lump of ice and no one alive is safer them assert as all of this sounds to us, it is a real terror to the untutored Indian. So there's a little obviously there's a bit of xenophobia and UH and and racism and in that uh, that particular portrayal, but but still it underlines that this was this was

serious medicine. And if you're in a situation where you have been forced to resort to survival cannibalism, and then it's known, or even if it's known only to you and you return with shame, perhaps they other members of your your group know that this occurred, and before you know what, you're ostracized, and maybe you feel and there are a number of these symptoms, like if there's a whole list of possible symptoms, and if you begin if you experience one of them or feel like you experience

one of them, uh, combined with the guilt that you feel, then how long before you begin manifesting this this paranoid idea you were transforming. Yeah, let's set the scene for this too. Or we're talking about these sort of starvation winters that would occur and in this part of the world, um, particularly as you said, during that period from the sempent

century to the nineteenth century. And you know, you have people who would sort of collectively get together as families during that time and band together and try to survive. But there is still a huge amount of isolation. So you might be with five, six, seven of your fa only members. Um, you know, out in the middle of nowhere with this wind whistling or this wind howling. And when you look at these algonquin Um depictions, the wind

is a huge force here. So I don't have you ever been like on the mountain before, and and um, there's just huge amounts of wind coming in at your structure. If you're in a tent or in a cabin, yeah, yeah, it's just if you're you're out in the open, it's just whipping by. It's all you can hear in your ears. And if you're in a structure or even you know, in the shelter of a tree or or or some stone, and it's just whistling by, and it's and it varies,

it's it's this changing tone almost the song. Yeah. And yeah, I remember when I was in Costa Rica, Monteverde and I was I spent a couple of nights in a cabin on the top of the mountain there, and the first night I was like, oh, this is beautiful. It's gorgeous. The second night I was like, it's this is awful. I cannot get any sleep. The wind is howling. The third night I started to feel like I was going crazy. So imagine months of this going on. I want to say,

if you resort to cannibalism and Monteverdi, that's on. You don't try and pin that on a wind to go. Well, that's the thing, right, So I go out with a friend. We're gonna go try to trap something. You know, maybe he breaks his leg. You know, things aren't looking good forms, so off them and I have a little bit of his meat. And then as we as you said, come back to camp or to your cabin, and you feel

in the shame for it. Um. Now, I didn't want to point out that Kevin Vulcan a professor of psychology. He's often called on as a behavioral expert on TV shows, and they're like, he categorizes it as an extreme form of cabin fever. So again, you've got harsh environmental factors there. You're with a couple of people and things can go awry. You're with a bunch of people that you love but

are also maybe driving in a little crazy yeah. And uh and because that's one of the common tropes of the window go story is you have like a mom or a dad or even both that go nuts and start eating the kids. And then you know, you eat one kid, then you eat the second, and then and then it just could out a hand. Yeah, Vulgan says, it becomes a compulsion. So there you are in your cabin, the wind howling for months on end, and you began to really think that you are the winding go right,

it's it's taken hold of you. You're feeling icing in your heart and uh, your your child is starting to look like a drumstick yeah or beaver beaver. Yeah. All right, we're gonna continue talking talking about that particular strain, but just to go back presented cures that that we're explored for for the wind to go situation, Carlson relates to several from different sources, but they include drinking high wines

by the fire, which sounds rather pleasant. I would say that should be your first stop on any attempt to treat a suspected wind to go situation. Next the hit the consumption of heated or even boiling animal flats fats. So you have some some moose meat, bear meat, what have you. You heat to heat the fat up, get it nice and boiling, and then you drink it. Now, both of these methods drinking by the fire, drinking hot

animal fat. The idea is that it would help uh burn away the ice that is formed in the heart. That's the key to the window go There was another tail that I believe Carlson related in which there was a group of window goes and they were they were just a you know, complete terror and you know, eat

everyone in sight. And they were particularly hard to deal with because, on one hand, window goes were said to be bulletproof, you know, or bullets didn't affect them, and the only way to to really kill them was to deal with that icy heart. But these window goes had taken their icy hearts out and store them elsewhere so that they were they weren't not susceptible to that. Yeah. So,

um so those are some options. Also, you could of course get a spirit medium to use a shaking tent ritual, which is a special tint in which spirits could be summoned. But if these didn't work, the only thing to do was to tie the window go down and hack it to pieces with an axe bearing the pieces so as to keep it from becoming whole again and killing everyone inside. Now, someone by the name of Jack Fiddler, an Okay CREA member, actually took that the kind of became the van helsing

for his community of window Goes. He claimed to have slaid fourteen people who were possessed, and he was in prison when he murdered a woman who he says was on the verge of turning into a windinga. So just you know, there were people out there that we're trying to actually, you know, stop it before it started what they really thought was going to be a possession. And of course we have so many different examples of people who actually did this to their families, who actually ate

their families. So you can see why someone like Jack Fiddler might really take this to heart as his cause, his his reason for being. Yeah, and now, of course one of the of course, the problems we mentioned with cannibalism and cannibism stories, so the window Goes stories were we're told enough around the campfire and by a bi bi Algonquin tribes people who really love stories and told stories. And the nature of stories that are told as is that you you take on stories as your own that

are other people's. You you prop up a story by saying you were there when you weren't. All of these things happened. The fish gets a little larger with each telling, etcetera. And then you have the French Canadian voyagers, the travelers who are who are who are meeting these people trading stories with them, and of course they're early into telling

stories as well. Uh So we can't take every story to heart, but some of them are are are actually really well found at For instance, uh the swift Runner kids, Now, this was a Cree trapper who serially murdered and consumed

the bodies of his wife and five children. And this was near Athabaska Landing Trading Post in the north the Central Um in north central Alberta in the Winner of eighteen seventy eight, and um, all the murders except the last one, we're more of a clear case of starvation cannibalism.

But then the last one, well, I'll just read you what he had to say, when when he was interviewed, he said, at that that moment, the window go suddenly took possession of my soul, and in order to live longer, far from people, and to put out of the way the only witness to my crime, I seized my gun and killed the last of my children, and aid him as that I had done the others. Some weeks later I was taken by the police, sentenced to death, and

in three days I am to be hanged. And indeed this is where it gets a little a little extra historical importance added to this is that, according to Carlson, uh swift Runner was the first person hanged by the Mounties, the Mounted Police UH, which which gives this Uh swift Runner winding. Okay, so a unique position in the history of Canadian jurisprudence. So the thing about this is that

we don't know that it's actually a psychosis. In fact, academics have seen it, or they've talked about as a cultural balanced psychosis, but they've also called it UM perhaps a culturally localized manifestation of paranoid schizophrenia, because we see some mental illness UM in this area. And then a correlate of scapegoating. And then also in Nathan D. Carlson's paper Reviving Whittico, he says that it could have been

a culturally mediated performance. So in some ways, again it was taking to heart this, uh, this story and performing it in a way. Uh. Perhaps that person didn't actually want the taste of flesh, but they were caught up in the moment, in these long winters and the sort of disease that would settle in with this, and maybe

they began to display these historyonics. Yeah. And then also there there are situations where you can well imagine one using the wind to go idea and wind to go stigma for personal gain, like, for instance, here at work, so we all have new desks. Um, louder Milk Alson. Louder Milk has a particularly nice desk. It's like right

next to the window. It's pretty good. So I can imagine that if ladder Milk were to be accused of being a wind to go, um, you know, someone might say, well, hey, I kind of want louder Milks desk, So I'm gonna jump in on that bandwagon and try to to push that that idea among my my fellow a coworker. And then you originally reached the point where there's nothing left to do but chopped her into pieces, and then lo

and behold, I'm setting in her new desk. Okay, so you're the one who started the rumor about not going into the bathroom alone when ladder Milk was using yes and about what she's really been bringing in her launch pail. Okay. The second thing, someone I want to mention is that some of us might apply a little magical thinking to that space and think that they wouldn't want to inhabit it for fear of being possessed by the Wind to Go as well. Yeah, exactly, I just want to point

that out. Okay, but maybe I'm strong enough to set there. It's my my thing. I'm just gonna keep my desk far away from me just in case though. Okay, Well, fair enough, all right, we're gonna do another break, and when we come back, we're gonna keep discussing the Wind to Go myth and uh and some of the really interesting cultural aspects of it. All Right, we're back. We're still talking about the Wind to Go myth of the

Algonquin people. And of course it's uh. It's been picked up over the years we're gonna talk a little bit about how it was picked up by the French Canadians. But of course even in modern culture you see it to show up in in different forms of media. For instance, Uh, Stephen King's novel Pet Cemetery has a wind to Go

in it that uh I remember is working pretty well. Um. The movie Ravenous uh is uh it also features the wind to Go myth pretty strongly, kind of kind of taking it and combining with Western vampire uh folk folklore to create kind of I think an interesting Animal's been a while since I've seen it, but as a really awesome soundtrack by Damon Auburn of Blur and Guerillas and

minimalist composer Michael Nyman. And uh, let's see, there was Larry Fresden's film Windigo, which was like an indie horror film. It was pretty interesting. And the TV show Hannibal has sort of dream hallucination sequences in which a wind to Go character appears. That that I thought was pretty effective and one of the pieces of media that may have

started at all in terms of mass consumption. Uh, sorry about that pun is Algernon Blackwood's nineteen o seven shorts read the Wind to Go, you know, and I like Ultra and on Blackwood. I have enjoyed his writing in the past, but I started to reread his Wind to Go story and I have to say I didn't like it. I didn't feel like it was really very wind to go e. You know, it was just he kind of took the name Win to Go and some a certain

amount of the feeling for it. But then I don't know, I thought I thought it felt kind of felt like it fell flat a bit. Well though, you you could say that at that point Blackwood didn't have this sort of vast stores of information about the Wind to Go to pull from. You couldn't go to the Wikipedia or listen to our podcast. No, no, you probably had a French Canadian friend who was like, let me tell you about this crazy thing that happened to a friend of

a friend of a friend of mines. Right, And when someone tells you a story like, especially when it's from a different culture, what can you do but combine the scraps that you were given. It may or may not make sense from from your own cultural standpoint. You combine it with the ideas that you already have in your own culture. And you end up with sort of a

new animal, a new myth emerges from this synthesis of ideas. Yeah, so let's let's sort of do some time traveling here to say, the Lake Superior region in Canada eighteen fifties. You probably would hear a French Canadian really complaining about this really harsh winter and saying that they were so hungry and there were so little resources that they actually

boiled their moccasins in eighth them. I mean these are true accounts, and um and then and but then also of the story that is so popular that you end up telling it even if you didn't necessarily experience it, right, And then of course one thing leads to another. You start talking about canibalism, right because you say, oh, man, if I ate my my Momkasons from just two seconds away from from you, buddy, right, and the conversation gets

really awkward. Yes, this was This was all excellently discussed in Werewolves and Windy Goes Narratives of cannibal Monsters in French Canadian uh voyageer oral tradition by Caroline Protruction of York University, where she she really goes into what happens when the French Canadian voyagers encounter the algonquins and start swapping tails. Yeah, because you have to again sort of

imagine this this time period. There are missionaries, fur traders, colonists, the voyagers all going through and meeting different tribes and then hearing about these atrocities. Now, if you are someone who is French Canadian, you might be familiar with some other folklore from Europe, like say werewolf, So it wouldn't be too crazy because you may have a belief system that supports that. Yeah, because the werewolf myth of course is that on certain nights because of the moon, you know,

maybe some curses are in play as well. But a man transforms into a wolf or a wolf like being and then goes out and eats things, including human flesh, and then the next morning he's like, well, what do I What had happened? What did I do? What horrible things happened to me? What kind of monster did I become? Right? And then you've got the whole like, man, I was boiling my my moccasins, and you have all these other accounts.

In fact, I wanted to bring up Jamestown. So Tino nine um that that colony had such a harsh winter that we know that they engaged not in just eating say dogs, cats and horses. But recently this year, the bones of a fourteen year old girl were excavated, and um Douglas Owsley, he's the Smithsonian forensic anthropologist who analyzed the bones, says, given, given these bones in a trash pit, all cut up and chopped up, it's clear that this

body was dismembered for consumption. So in the same way, if you have these this folklore from Europe and you know about werewolves, you know that people can be transformed into them, and you also have these folk tales standing in for moral code, then as a European who is in this territory, this Algonquian territory, you probably would say, wow, we gotta watch out here. Yeah, because I mean, the werewolf myth ultimately revolves around the idea, you know what

happens if I give in to my besteal nature? What if my my beasteal nature overcomes me? What have I given to the economic sensibility of cannibalism, for instance, despite

all of my human moral standing. And so there's a there's there's a lot of of comparisons to be made between the werewolf myth and the Wind to Go myth, And you can definitely see where the werewolf myth would help you understand the Wind to Go myth, even though the Wind to Go myth is totally about human human flesh being consumed, totally about cannibalism, whereas cannibalism is just

sort of one aspect of the werewolf myth. Yes, patruct actually says and as you say her find paper that what we can learn from this is that the cannibal monster stories that for yousers told each other revealed many aspects of their lives and cosmology, such as starvation, mental illness, and metamorphoses because in a way they were undergoing a transformation themselves. Yeah, they started out as Westerners in a strange world. They travel out into this just I mean,

it's kind of hard to imagine. There's some books have really done a great job of of portraying this excursion into the wilds of some of this territory. I think of like Northwoest path Sage. I also think of Black Robe, excellent book. Um, you go into this just rich, wild world where there are no Westerners there, they are these these foreign peoples that you can only partially understand, that

have a totally different world view than you do. And and then you start and you're in dealing with with limited resources, you're suddenly you find yourself starving or you're you're ill, and then what are you to make up

of all that? And then over time you have the Westerners assimilating more and more with the native cultures to the point where they're they're taking uh, they're taking Algonquin brides, They're they're they're they're becoming their own communities with this shared mythos that has been weaved together from both the Algonquin traditions and the the European traditions that they imported.

And yet xenophobia exists. And that's where it becomes really interesting, because the Windigo is really a stand in for this otherness. As you said, these are people in a new land with new experiences, and everything is the other, including the Algonquin at some point in other tribes. So uh, you know, with the Winding carries this idea that you're you're engaging

in this other world, the supernatural world. You know, I can't in thinking about the Windo go I keep coming back to some material that we came across in our episode on the Problem of Hell, where we talked about the the old gods that that society has had, the hunter gatherer gods, the horned gods that were more chaotic, that were that that dealt thematically with the scarcity of food and the the uncertainty of tomorrow's meal and the meal after that and the in and in doing so

you can see where that you can see why the wind to Go is really the ultimate evil spirit of the Algonquins, because it represents the uncertainty of food, and it represents the likelihood at even at times of starvation and in falling, what it would take to fall below the barrier, the threshold for um civilization, you know, because I feel like a lot of our stories deal with that.

Like we watched the show like Breaking Bad, and we see that these cars to see a character that's falling throughout the entire show, and at what point does he fall below the threshold? And you see these other characters that you know, addicts and whatnot, and you you look at them and you think there's a character who's fallen below the threshold. Woe as would be me if I were to to to fall that low as well, and uh in in a society like that, like that is

the base mark cannibalism. You've fallen below the moral standing that defines that protects the culture well right, And it's a reminder of that time period when that the line between you know, death and survival, which is just like that you cross over so quickly. So it would be tempting to engage in cannibalism if you had to, because

it may be the difference between life and death. Indeed, product me Up points out that a lot of these stories, he shared stories of the wind to Go that the French Canadians shared with the Algunquins, that there were there were two lessons essentially in all of them, particularly for

the the the French Canadian listener. First of all, the idea that the native people's are your friend or at least to be relied upon in the wilds, because a lot of these stories they end with either you're starving and uh and some Algonquins come along and they feed you and then you're you're saved, or the Windigo situation happens and they're the ones who come with the knowledge of how to defeat the Wind to Go or they

actually chop it up for you. But then the second lesson, and this lesson, and she says is a is a little more subdued. The lesson is that starvation cannibalism is an option. It's kind of a whisper in the ear saying and so this is horrible, but if you've got to do it, you can do it. And if it's going to get whispered into your ear, you might as

well blame it on the wind, right. Yeah. Um, you know the thing about this is that anthropologists, when they began to study this in earnest, found that it pretty much dried up. All of these these expressions of windigo possession just evaporated. So again it brings into question whether or not it was really a psychosis or if maybe this part of the world was opening up, and um, there were other influences going on. So there you have it.

The Wind to Go one of my favorite monsters, evil spirits, and one is just so so rich, just such a rich creature, a rich mythological idea, and uh and I love how it it also exists in this meeting of worlds with these two distinct alien cultures of the French

Canadians and the Algonquins coming together. Yeah, and now I challenge you guys to go and watch American Werewolf in London again if you've already seen it or for the first time, and think about it through that lens, because it becomes a bit of a different movie, still stellar, maybe even better actually, And and I would also challenge anyone to take take the idea with you too, that the Wind to Go may come to you and your dreams. So throughout the next week as you dream, uh interpret

your dreams in light of the Wind to Go? Myth was that was that was there ice? Was there a chilling wind where there? Who did the beast itself appear to you in the woods. I'd love to hear about that. Now. I feel like we should have like a logo with the wind to Go challenge the challenge alright, So hey, you want to get in touch with us about any of that, you know the general ways to do it. You can go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is our core website. That's the mother ship, that's

where everything winds up eventually. You can also find us on social media. We're on Facebook, We're on Twitter, We're on tumbler. Uh, We're on Google Plus. We have a YouTube account, mind Stuff Show, and uh Julie. If they want to send us a good old fashioned email, how can they go about that? Well, after they visit stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, they can send us an email at blow the Mind at Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, does it How stuff works dot com