Deep in the cedar mountains north of Kyoto lives a creature that has spent over a thousand years being both worshipped and feared — sometimes in the same breath. The Tengu can be the greatest swordmaster you'll ever train under, or the reason you vanish off a mountain trail and turn up days later on a rooftop with no memory of how you got there. There's only one rule that decides which one you get: respect the mountain, or don't whistle in the dark.

Tonight on Freaky Folklore, we trace the Tengu from its origins as a corrupted Chinese meteor-omen to one of Japan's most iconic yokai — the red-faced, long-nosed mountain demon blamed for centuries of real disappearances known as tengu-kakushi. Along the way, we follow a search-and-rescue volunteer whose eleven years of training and standard-issue whistle mean absolutely nothing to a mountain that's been enforcing its own rules a lot longer than he's been alive.

We cover the Tengu's origins, its two forms, its supernatural powers, the traditional defenses against it, and exactly what you're supposed to do the moment you feel something pacing you in the treeline.

If tonight's episode hit that "humans are the real monsters" nerve, check out my other show, Deadly Intent, where I dig into the psychology of real killers. And if you want brand-new horror built from scratch instead of pulled from history, Carman's Crypt has a new original story every week. Both are part of the Eeriecast Network — find everything at eeriecast.com.

Until next time, stay safe out there, because this world is a strange one.

#FreakyFolklore #Tengu #JapaneseFolklore #Yokai #JapaneseMythology #FolkloreExplained #CreepypastaAndFolklore #MountainLegend #SearchAndRescue #HorrorPodcast #TrueFolklore #EeriecastNetwork #JapaneseDemon #MythsAndLegends #CrytpidsAndCreatures

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When a person dies, the Diné believe the good in them moves on — and everything else stays behind. It gathers in that last breath, steps out of the body, and waits. It's called the chindi, and the wise thing, the safe thing, is to leave the dead alone: their homes, their names, the things buried with them.

Wade Corliss dug where he was warned not to. He carried something home from a death hogan out in the red-rock country — and it followed him. This week on Freaky Folklore, we walk carefully into a living Diné tradition to talk about ghost sickness, whirlwinds that turn the wrong way, and the price of taking what was never yours.

Leave the dead alone. Some of them don't stay that way.

🎧 Part of the Eeriecast Network — eeriecast.com

#FreakyFolklore #Chindi #NavajoFolklore #Diné #GhostSickness #Folklore #FolkloreHorror #ScaryStories #HorrorPodcast #Paranormal #Creepy #Eeriecast #Southwest #FourCorners #TrueHorror #HauntedHistory #PodcastCommunity

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Scotland's most famous cryptid has her face on a shortbread tin — but the folklore underneath is one of the deadliest water legends in all of Europe, and it doesn't begin in 1933 with a grainy photograph. It begins in the year 565, with a burial.

In this episode of Freaky Folklore, we drag Nessie out of the gift shop and back into the black water where she came from: the deepest, coldest, most lightless loch in Britain. We get into the 1,400-year-old account of Saint Columba and the "water beast" that had already killed a man before he ever reached the shore. We uncover the each-uisge — the Highland water horse that lures you close, fuses to your skin, drags you under, and leaves only your liver floating back to shore by morning. We expose the beloved "Surgeon's Photograph" for the revenge hoax it always was. And then I tell you an original story about a boy, a brother, and a warm, calm, silent night on the loch in the winter of 1889 — and the one thing the postcards will never tell you about what's waiting down there.

Turn the lights off. Just… not near the water.

#LochNessMonster #Folklore #HorrorPodcast #Nessie #Cryptid #ScottishFolklore #FreakyFolklore #Kelpie #Mythology #FolkloreHorror #ScaryStories #Legends

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Today, we’re excited to share part one of a two-part series from the award-winning true crime podcast RedHanded, hosted by Suruthi Bala and Hannah Maguire. RedHanded is the UK's #1 True Crime podcast, covering everything from high-profile murders and cults to con artists and cultural catastrophes, always asking not just what happened, but why.

In this episode, Suruthi and Hannah dive into the story of Robert "Willie" Pickton, otherwise known as the Pig Farm Killer. They uncover the investigation into the missing women, the community whose cries for help went unheard, and the systemic failures that kept authorities from discovering what was really going on at the pig farm from hell. Head over to RedHanded to catch part two, where Hannah and Suruthi continue uncovering the full details behind Canada's most notorious serial killer case.

Follow and listen to more episodes of RedHanded here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/redhanded/id1250599915?i=1000775119253

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Deep in the frozen forests of the Wabanaki Dawnland lives a giant with a heart of solid ice — a monster that was once a human being, transformed by the cruelest cold there is. Tonight we follow trapper Alistair Crewe into a winter he barely survives, and uncover the origin, powers, and one strange weakness of the Chenoo: the cannibal ice giant of Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, and Passamaquoddy legend. Warmth, hunger, and the terrifying question of what a person can turn into… one frozen choice at a time.

#FreakyFolklore #Chenoo #Wabanaki #NativeAmericanFolklore #IceGiant #Wendigo #Cryptid #Folklore #HorrorPodcast #MythsAndLegends #Cannibal #ScaryStories #Mikmaq #FolkloreThursday

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There's a rule whispered from senior girls to juniors in Nigerian boarding schools, passed on in the dark after the matron locks the doors and carries the only key home: if you wake in the night and hear the slow click of heels down the corridor — koi, koi, koi — you do not move, you do not call out, and whatever you do, you never open your eyes to look. Because once there was a teacher who loved her red high heels more than any student in her care, and death only made her crueler. This week on Freaky Folklore, we walk into the dormitory where she still paces the halls, and we find out exactly what happens to the girls who dare to look.

Beyond the ghost story, we dig into where Madam Koi Koi really comes from — a thoroughly modern haunting born inside Nigeria's federal unity schools of the 1960s, where hundreds of children were locked away overnight under adults who answered to no one after dark. We trace her tangled origins across every version of the legend: the vain and vicious teacher, the eardrum she burst, the car that struck her down, the students who took justice into their own hands, and the Ghanaian "Madam Moke" sealed in a closet. Monster or victim, wearing the very same red shoes — because maybe the truest thing about any ghost story

#FreakyFolklore #MadamKoiKoi #NigerianFolklore #Horror #HorrorPodcast #GhostStories #Folklore #TrueHorror #ScaryStories #BoardingSchoolHorror #AfricanFolklore #Creepy

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There's an old woman at the edge of the village. She keeps to herself, lives in the shadow of the silk cotton tree, and has no husband, no children, no people anyone can name. And in the mornings, the babies three houses down wake up pale, exhausted, and marked with bruises in the soft places — where the blood runs nearest the skin.

Tonight we travel to the eastern coast of Trinidad to meet the Soucouyant: the skin-shedding fireball witch of the French Creole Caribbean, who peels off her own skin like a wet dress, folds it into a mortar, and flies through the dark as a ball of hungry fire. We'll follow a young nurse home to Mayaro in 1953 as she comes face to face with something her training can't explain — and with a village deciding, by torchlight, who to blame.

But the real story is stranger, older, and sadder than any campfire version. We trace the Soucouyant back across the Middle Passage to her West African roots in the obayifo and asiman, through her collision with the French loup-garou and the European seed-counting vampire, to her Lowcountry sister the Boo Hag — and into the three-in-the-morning terror that every culture on earth has a name for. Because underneath the fire is a question that never stops burning: is the monster the thing in the sky, or is it what a frightened community will do to the loneliest woman among them, and call it protection?

Scatter your rice. Salt your doorway. And keep your skin on.

Freaky Folklore is part of the Eeriecast Network — find every one of our shows at eeriecast.com. For more from me, come dig into Deadly Intent (true crime) and Carman's Crypt (original horror), and subscribe on YouTube at Carman Carrion for full episodes and exclusive videos. Support the show ad-free on Patreon or buy me a coffee — links in the show notes. carman-carrion.com

#FreakyFolklore #Soucouyant #CaribbeanFolklore #Trinidad #TrinidadAndTobago #Folklore #Mythology #Horror #HorrorPodcast #FolkloreHorror #BooHag #Loogaroo #OleHigue

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Deep in the karst mountains of eastern Serbia lives a monster no one has ever described, because no one who saw it came back. The Bauk waits in caves, holes, and abandoned houses, lurching through the dark on a clumsy gait, and it can only be driven off by two things: light and noise. For centuries, Serbian parents used it to make children behave. Tonight, two American YouTubers turn its cave into content... and learn why the old rules exist.

In this episode: the real folklore preserved in the era of Vuk Karadžić, the meaning of "bauljanje," why scholars believe the Bauk is the ghost of a vanished predator, and an original story with an ending you will not shake off.

#Bauk #SerbianFolklore #SlavicMythology #FreakyFolklore #Boogeyman: #CaveHorror #BalkanFolklore #Cryptids #ScaryStories #FolkHorror #EeriecastNetwork

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Every coastal people on earth knows the same rule: if something takes you in the water, you swim for shore. The shore is safety.

The A-mi-kuk does not care about the shore.

Four long arms. No legs. A body of slick, naked hide, like an animal that was skinned and never got the message. It rises up under kayaks off the Alaskan coast and drags men down into the silt. And when you claw your way onto the mud, certain you have survived it, it keeps coming. It swims through solid ground the way it swims through the sea. Under the tundra. Under the ice. Under the floor of your house.

This week, Carman goes into the folklore of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, separates the real ethnographic record from a century of cryptid encyclopedias copying each other, and tells the story of two brothers, a fishing net, and a thing that peels its victims out of their own skin.

Because the A-mi-kuk was never a story about the sea. It was a story about the fact that the ground is a promise nobody ever actually made you.

Content warning: graphic depiction of a fatal attack, including detailed injury and body horror.

Freaky Folklore is part of the Eeriecast Network. Every show at eeriecast.com. Watch on YouTube for the full animated experience. More from Carman: Deadly Intent, Carman's Crypt, and Destination Terror.

#FreakyFolklore #Amikuk #AMiKuk #Amikuq #AlaskanFolklore #AlaskaCryptid #Yupik #Inupiaq #BeringSea #YukonKuskokwim #ArcticHorror #Cryptid #Cryptozoology #FolkloreHorror #IndigenousFolklore #SeaMonster #ScaryStories #HorrorPodcast

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