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Algernon Blackwood

Posted on March 8, 2025

American Horror Story: Indigenous Folklore and Contemporary Issues in Wendigo Stories

Guest Post

Rebecca L. Willoughby

Mother Earth has been pillaged, / Stripped of her life’s blood. / A violation that has awakened / The malevolent spirit. / Seeking the lost, the frail, / And the depraved… (Antlers, 2021)

While contemporary audiences are often aware of the wendigo legend as a result of recent films and video games, it is important to note the shifts this folk tale has undergone as it is translated from the cultural traditions of the Native American peoples from which it originated into its current form. Here, we explore the enduring aspects of the legend as it has moved into the present time and popular culture, and discuss the use of this mythological figure within mostly White contexts: do these representations honor the long history of the wendigo as a cautionary tale? Or do they continue to appropriate the past as a frightening unknown in order to tell White stories?

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a golden yellow hill sits in the distance
Posted on March 14, 2023

Algernon Blackwood, The Unknown: Weird Writings, 1900-1937

Guest Post

Even though Algernon Blackwood’s ‘The Willows’ is one of my favourite weird tales, possibly even my most favourite, I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve read little of his less-known work and hardly any of his non-fiction writings. This is doubly shameful as not only is there a huge amount of work beyond stories like ‘The Willows’ and ‘The Wendigo’ but also much of it is concerned with a love which I share with the writer: a deep love not only of enjoying nature (or Nature, as editor Henry Bartholomew reminds us of Blackwood’s love of capitalisation) but of becoming lost within it. I’ve never been to the Canada that Blackwood described as ‘the nearest approach to a dream come true I had yet known’, but I have explored the jungles of Borneo, trekked across Andean passes and skirted Himalayan foothills. As Blackwood would’ve known, these are all places where reality itself seems to become thin and one’s soul expands outwards to fill the void left behind. They are, in short, weird places.

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