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Wendigo / Windigo

I hope this is okay to post here as it isn’t my story. But one of my favourite stories on here is about a woman house-sitting near Savernake Forest and the story was copied from Mumsnet (not by the OP).

There’s a post the comes around on Tumblr every so often with additions each time. It begins

Irish: I don’t believe in Faeries

Irish: No way am I setting foot in that Faerie Ring.


So it goes on talking of certain places you don‘t want to disturb or go near after dark, initially in Ireland then moving to various places in the US, things people have seen etc. I may, if allowed, try and post the entries on the pertinent pages as they’re all allegedly IHTM.

This one however, is of the Wendigo (possibly).

_______________

K (Tumblr user) and I are very old friends. I used to live in the same town as her, in Southern California.

One night, a few years ago, we were celebrating the end of finals and the start of winter break, and we just hanging out in her car, killing ourselves with late night Taco Bell.

Well, we decide we don’t want to go home just yet, so we start driving. We drive up a canyon, near her place.

Now, we both had made this trip many, many times, in daylight and dark. A local tourist trap is in that canyon, and there’s a shortcut to a college campus that goes through that canyon.

It was a normal winter night in SoCal.

Well, about halfway through I start to get scared. For no reason. Within the span of two heartbeats I grew so terrified that my palms were shaking and my mouth was dry and for some reason I couldn’t take my eyes off the wood to the driver’s side.

“Turn around.” I say, quickly.

“Dude, already on it.” K said, doing a quick three point turn. I look in the mirror as she’s pealing away and see the creature. It was vaguely humanoid, and hairless, with elongated limbs and pitch black eyes, on all four limbs, loping after us.

Now, if you’re in the know, you might be thinking “hey that’s like the creatures from Until Dawn, I call bullshit on this.” Well, Until Dawn was four years away, and it wasn’t even in development yet, so shush.

I rip my eyes away from it and hold on tight as she drives. Then, at the same time, both of us get this instinct and we speak.

“Don’t look in the backseat.”

Needless to say, neither of us did. She drove damn near 90 on a dark canyon until we saw the lights of her complex at the mouth of it.

I haven’t gone back in there since, and that canyon got shut down about a year ago due to a landslide and it hasn’t opened back up.

I’m a history major, and research always has been my first love, so I go digging. I visit the local history society, talk about my tale.

Turns out the whole valley used to belong to a people called the Tativam. One day, after the Spanish arrived, they vanished. Without a trace. We have a graveyard of theirs that we know of. One of my professors was trying to stop the houses that were being built on it.

Spoiler alert: he didn’t, and the houses are hella haunted, and nobody wants to live there.

Personally I do think the creature is a wendigo. That chain of mountains is park of unbroken chain that leads right up the Serra Nevadas and Donner Pass.

THE Donner Pass.

You do the math.

____________________________________________________

So I thought: What’s the Donner Pass?

“In the spring of 1846, a group of nearly 90 emigrants left Springfield, Illinois, and headed west. Led by brothers Jacob and George Donner, the group attempted to take a new and supposedly shorter route to California. They soon encountered rough terrain and numerous delays, and they eventually became trapped by heavy snowfall high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Purportedly reduced to cannibalism to survive through the winter, only half of the original group reached California the following year. Their story quickly spread, and before long the term “Donner Party” became synonymous with one of humanity’s most ingrained taboos.”

Donner Pass

So make of that what you will, as they say.
 
I hope this is okay to post here as it isn’t my story. But one of my favourite stories on here is about a woman house-sitting near Savernake Forest and the story was copied from Mumsnet (not by the OP).

There’s a post the comes around on Tumblr every so often with additions each time. It begins

Irish: I don’t believe in Faeries

Irish: No way am I setting foot in that Faerie Ring.


So it goes on talking of certain places you don‘t want to disturb or go near after dark, initially in Ireland then moving to various places in the US, things people have seen etc. I may, if allowed, try and post the entries on the pertinent pages as they’re all allegedly IHTM.

This one however, is of the Wendigo (possibly).

_______________

K (Tumblr user) and I are very old friends. I used to live in the same town as her, in Southern California.

One night, a few years ago, we were celebrating the end of finals and the start of winter break, and we just hanging out in her car, killing ourselves with late night Taco Bell.

Well, we decide we don’t want to go home just yet, so we start driving. We drive up a canyon, near her place.

Now, we both had made this trip many, many times, in daylight and dark. A local tourist trap is in that canyon, and there’s a shortcut to a college campus that goes through that canyon.

It was a normal winter night in SoCal.

Well, about halfway through I start to get scared. For no reason. Within the span of two heartbeats I grew so terrified that my palms were shaking and my mouth was dry and for some reason I couldn’t take my eyes off the wood to the driver’s side.

“Turn around.” I say, quickly.

“Dude, already on it.” K said, doing a quick three point turn. I look in the mirror as she’s pealing away and see the creature. It was vaguely humanoid, and hairless, with elongated limbs and pitch black eyes, on all four limbs, loping after us.

Now, if you’re in the know, you might be thinking “hey that’s like the creatures from Until Dawn, I call bullshit on this.” Well, Until Dawn was four years away, and it wasn’t even in development yet, so shush.

I rip my eyes away from it and hold on tight as she drives. Then, at the same time, both of us get this instinct and we speak.

“Don’t look in the backseat.”

Needless to say, neither of us did. She drove damn near 90 on a dark canyon until we saw the lights of her complex at the mouth of it.

I haven’t gone back in there since, and that canyon got shut down about a year ago due to a landslide and it hasn’t opened back up.

I’m a history major, and research always has been my first love, so I go digging. I visit the local history society, talk about my tale.

Turns out the whole valley used to belong to a people called the Tativam. One day, after the Spanish arrived, they vanished. Without a trace. We have a graveyard of theirs that we know of. One of my professors was trying to stop the houses that were being built on it.

Spoiler alert: he didn’t, and the houses are hella haunted, and nobody wants to live there.

Personally I do think the creature is a wendigo. That chain of mountains is park of unbroken chain that leads right up the Serra Nevadas and Donner Pass.

THE Donner Pass.

You do the math.

____________________________________________________

So I thought: What’s the Donner Pass?

“In the spring of 1846, a group of nearly 90 emigrants left Springfield, Illinois, and headed west. Led by brothers Jacob and George Donner, the group attempted to take a new and supposedly shorter route to California. They soon encountered rough terrain and numerous delays, and they eventually became trapped by heavy snowfall high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Purportedly reduced to cannibalism to survive through the winter, only half of the original group reached California the following year. Their story quickly spread, and before long the term “Donner Party” became synonymous with one of humanity’s most ingrained taboos.”

Donner Pass

So make of that what you will, as they say.
There's a very good film starring Guy Pearce and Robert Carlyle which has the Donner Party and Wendigos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenous_(1999_film)
 
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