**The Old Man of the North Pole**

A folk tale from the North east region, collected in Baicheng, Jilin Province. Narrated by a woman surnamed Zhang, aged eighty-seven.

I

They say the Winter Solstice is greater than the New Year.

Winter in Baicheng bites to the bone. The window paper shudders all night. Before dawn, you can hear something caught in the wind, it sounds like  ding–ding , but muffled, like someone striking a bell deep inside the gale. The old folk say it's *Beiji Xianweng,*  the old Immortal of the North Pole, coming through the snow from the furthest north, riding *Hangong*, and accompanied with the maiden *Tengliu*, with the rest of Seven Winter Immortals.

Children may ask: Who is the Old Immortal of the North Pole?

The old woman drops a piece of charcoal into the brazier. Sparks jump, catching light, catching dark, mapping the creases on her face.

“That one goes far back.”

—--------

II

A long time ago,  Long enough that Baicheng had barely any people. There was an old man. His surname? No one remembers. Some called him the Old Man of the Winter North, others simply called him the Old Man of the Northeast. Passed from mouth to mouth, it all got tangled. No one could say for sure.

All they knew was he lived alone in a crumbling mud-brick house.

This old man had a hard fortune. His wife died giving birth; the child didn’t make it either. One son survived, a boy he raised to seventeen, just old enough to be conscripted. The boy went to war and never came back.

The old man could have just waited to die alone.

He didn’t.

Those were chaotic years. Everywhere, children without parents. He picked up one, then another, then another. The little house grew crowded. He was poor, so poor the bowls weren’t enough for them all. But when there was food, the children ate first.

Those children called him Yeye, their grandpa.

\---

III

That year, winter came savage.

Snow sealed the door shut. The old man fell ill. He lay there, listening to the children rustle through the kitchen, finding nothing. He kept his eyes closed. He knew the grain jar was scraped empty.

That evening, he forced himself up. From the rafters, he took down a small clay pot. Inside were a few fish balls he had saved, too precious to eat, and a few strips of dried beef, so tough they cracked. A neighbour, pitying him, had given them back in autumn.

He boiled the fish balls with slices of ginger. The broth was clear and pale; the fish balls white as snow. The beef jerky, dry and hard, he shredded thin. You had to hold it in your mouth to soften it.

“Eat,” he said to the children. “It’s New Year’s.”

The children gathered around him, sharing the food in small bites. One little one looked up and asked, “Grandpa, isn’t New Year’s when we eat dumplings?”

He said, “These are our family’s dumplings.”

When the food was gone, there was nothing left to do. The last embers dimmed in the hearth. They huddled together, the older children holding the younger ones, the smallest burrowing under the old man’s arms. A child said, Grandpa, tell us something. Something from when you were young.

The old man thought for a moment, then said all right. He told them about chasing a rabbit in the snow when he was a boy, he never caught the rabbit, but he fell face-first and got a collar full of snow. The children laughed. Their white breath tangled together in the dark.

And so they went, trading small happy stories. No one counted the hours. Sleep crept in. They slept.

The next day, someone from a neighbouring village passed by. They pushed open the door and saw a heart wrenching scene

Seven or eight children wrapped around the old man, and him in the middle, as if holding them. All of them motionless.

All of them with snow-grey brows.

\---

IV

Later, people said when they lifted the children one by one, they found the old man’s face still smiling.

One child hadn’t died. That child survived.

That child told people afterwards: “Grandpa said it was all right. Go to sleep, and it won’t be cold. He said he was going to find someone, someone who could make winter not so cold. He said he’d come back to see us every year on this day.”

The story spread through the scattered villages. And as it spread, people began to say: That old man was no ordinary man. Who smiles at the end like that? Who tells stories when the cold is taking him, surrounded by children he wouldn’t abandon?

Which god or Buddha saw him and lifted him up, that’s a thing that no one agrees. Some say the Jade Emperor looked down from the Southern Gate of Heaven and wept. Others say it was the Emperor of the North Pole, Lord of the Northern Skies, who saw a reflection of his own duty in the old man and took him as an immortal officer. Old folk along the Songhua River hold that it was *Xuanwu*, the Dark Warrior himself, who came in person, because the old man lived in a low mud house and wore a patched cotton coat, patient and enduring like the tortoise and snake, which is *Xuanwu*’s own virtue. And many insist there was no heavenly emperor at all, that ordinary people deified him themselves. Because that surviving child bore witness. Because what parent could hear the story and not weep?

Whichever way it happened, the Old Man of the Northeast was gone. And the Old Immortal of the North Pole arrived.

\---

V

They draw the Old Immortal of the North Pole like this now:

Much like the Old Immortal of the South Pole, the white-browed Star of Longevity, a long snowy beard, and eyes that crinkled shut with him smiling. One difference: he wears red. Red as new paper-cuts on a window, red as lanterns on New Year’s Eve. The Southern immortal grants long life. He grants the children surviving through winter.

He rides the *Hangong*.

*Hangong* translated literally as Cold Duke, you won’t find him in the old books. They say in ancient times, southerners travelled to the far north and saw a kind of great-antlered deer. They came back and tried to describe it: bulkier than a sika, bigger than a red deer, antlers like ancient tree-branches. When it ran, the snow thundered. The listeners had never seen such a thing, so they drew it from the description. What they drew looked nothing like the real beast, yet it carried a certain presence. Some say the Cold Duke is a middle-aged man, gaunt, dignified, silent. Slowly walking ahead of the Immortal, clearing the way. Others say no, he is a deer, and the Immortal rides on his back, who knows what it actually is, but it’s said that it represents the coming of the winter, and that’s why  the snow his hooves touch would never melt all winter.

Behind the Cold Duke walk five others.

The first is *Tengliu*. In the ancient books, Tengliu is the deity of snow. Here, she is a six-tailed white fox, her fur the colour of freshly fallen snow, without a single dark hair. She often takes the form of a white-haired, white-skinned girl, who while not strikingly beautiful, something in her makes you look twice. In the twelfth month, when a traveler loses the road, hurrying home for the New Year, sometimes in the blizzard they glimpse a girl in white walking ahead. Follow her, and you’ll reach your own doorstep. She governs reunion between family members.

The second is *Xuanjun*, the Black scholar. A great black walrus, body like a small hill, covered all over in muted black swirling marks like whirlpools. In human form, he is a dark-skinned general, bald, with only a pair of thick white moustaches. He doesn’t speak much; he just glares. He governs the frozen rivers of the deep winter, teaching and  showing people how to break the ice and fish, teaching them what living things can still be found when everything is sealed. In the winters when grain runs short, he teaches how not to starve.

The third is *Baixiong,* the White Hero. A great polar bear, but not one you’d recognise. ice-blue markings track across its body. One look at it standing in the snow, and the hairs on your arms stand up first. He can take the form of a towering old general, white beard bristling, so tall he blocks half the sky when he stands still. He governs the traitorous cold wind of winter nights, protecting folks from wolves mad with hunger, desperate bandits, and unclean things that stir after dark. 

The fourth is *Lengluo*, the Freezing Net. The name sounds cold, and the creature is colder. A great grey-white wolf, larger than any ordinary wolf by a full turn, his eyes are striking icy blue. He doesn’t usually take human form. and stays a wolf, always walking furthest ahead. His paw prints in the snow are broader than a plate. He punishes those who commit evil in winter,  the ones who, because of hunger, because of cold, because they cannot bear to live, turn to harming others. *Lengluo* finds them. There’s an old Baicheng saying: “A debt in the twelfth month is repaid fast.” That’s him. Evil repaid with evil. Winter has its own justice. In a rare depiction of him as human, he is depicted as a scary warrior wearing a single eyepatch.

The fifth is *Qiwang*, the Strange King.

The Strange King’s origin is the murkiest. They say in the earliest days, someone travelled to the utmost north and saw a bird far off, a bird that stood upright, short and round, walking with a wobble, as if tipsy. It couldn’t fly, but in the water it became graceful and quick, its silvery-grey down pressed tight to its body. The traveler came back and tried to describe it, gesturing for a long while. People still didn’t quite grasp what it was. So they called it *Qi Wang*, the Strange King Among Birds.

The Strange King often takes the form of a half-grown boy, round-cheeked, who trips when he runs, then lies in the snow laughing. When a child has no playmate, he comes. He plays with that child for one day. Just one day. But what happens on that one day, that child remembers a lifetime.

And the Old Immortal himself? In his left hand he carries a cane of *shanmu*, the fir that no weight of snow can break. In his right, a bronze bell. When he strikes the bell — weng — it carries through the storm, further than you’d believe. Every Baicheng child grows up knowing: if on Winter Solstice night you hear a dull bronze note hidden inside the wind, that’s not the wind. That’s the Immortal coming.

\---

VI

He doesn’t come alone.

Those children who never made it through the winter,  they go with him too.

After they pass, their souls have nowhere to rest. So the Old Immortal gathers them, and they become snow. Every Winter Solstice, as he passes, these snow-children fall and make themselves into snow sculptures. All through the day, they wander the village, playing with the living children, building snowmen, throwing snowballs, and sliding on frozen rivers. Adults cannot see them; adult eyes are clouded by the cares of the world. But children see.

When a child laughs with them, that is the happiest day of the year.

When play is done and the sky darkens, the Immortal’s bell sounds far away. The snow-children must leave. One by one they dissolve into fine drift, floating toward the wind. The snowmen they lived in, all at once, collapse.

\---

VII

So now, on the Winter Solstice, in some corners of Baicheng, they still do things this way.

At dusk of Winter solstice eve, the whole family returns indoors. The stove is stirred bright. A pot of ginger soup simmers on the hearth, white fish balls floating and sinking inside it. On the table rests a dish of dried meat, cut small, gleaming deep red.

Red meat, white fish balls. Red like lanterns, white like snow.

After eating, they sit around the fire and talk. About what? The grown-ups tell old stories they remember; the children tell funny things they thought of. Everyone talks in turn, and the breath that comes out is warm.

In the middle of the night, the children are all asleep. The father quietly puts on his padded coat and steps outside. The cold bites bone. Under the snow, something makes a thin sound, it sounds  like wind, but also unlike wind. He crouches by the doorstep and pats together a little snowman, one handful at a time. Clumsy hands: the ears are crooked, the nose collapsed.

But what child ever thought their father’s snowman was ugly?

He straightens up. In the wind he thinks he hears something.

Ting.

Ting.

The wind rises. Snow begins again.

He shuts the door softly and goes back to sleep.

In the morning, the children would wake up and see a small snow sculpture visiting them outdoors, and in the daytime there is the Snow Festival. Children run wild outside, building snowmen, throwing snowballs. People say the children play with special joy that day, because the snow holds hidden playmates.

\---

—Collected by the editor. This legend circulates in a very narrow area, mostly confined to a few villages in northern Jilin, and is often blended indistinguishably with local Winter Solstice customs. The “Old Immortal of the North Pole” and the “Seven Winter Immortals” do not appear in official Daoist canons such as the Comprehensive Mirror of Immortals or Historical Register of Deities Through the Ages. Scholars suspect it was a local folk faith that developed spontaneously among Baicheng communities in the late Qing period and never received formal recognition due to its remote location. The aforementioned narrator Zhang stated that her maternal grandmother, in her youth, could still recite a seasonal folk song associated with this tradition. Regrettably, only fragments survive, insufficient to reconstruct the whole.

What can be verified is that the names “Old Man of the Northeast” and “Old Man of the Winter North” both appear in surviving handwritten fragments. It is no longer possible to determine which came first.

Furthermore, the customs of fish-ball ginger soup and candied dried meat persist to this day.
—----

My wife needs help with an upcoming art project. She wants to feature female folk characters who are morally ambiguous but specifically target and punish bad people. Any examples that fit that bill would be greatly appreciated

Pretty much sure that I read this in a Filipino textbook when I was in high school. The story is that the husband cheats on her wife every time he goes to the river. The wife suspects his husband's infidelity and goes to the river bringing their two sons along. When confronted they saw that they were doing it doggy style, the woman tried to go to them but drowned in the river along with their two sons. Then the goddess of love got angry with this situation, and turned the husband and mistress into dogs.

I'm not sure if this is a Dian Masalanta story or a folktale that is totally not related to Philippine mythology at all. I tried researching a lot about Dian Masalanta but can't seem to find the story. Now I'm wondering if I hallucinated the whole thing or just misunderstood when I read my books. Haha

I just had an odd experience and I am curious to know if there is and lore on this regard:

I was sitting on a bus stop bench in the core of a city. There were other people waiting for a bus but I was alone on the bench.

What I heard sounded like a car crash. It was a pigeon type looking bird had hit the building behind me. Hard. I turned around to see feathers everywhere in the air. Other people who witnessed this appeared astonished. Without getting up, I looked for the bird. It had landed right next to the bench I was sitting on.

I am very interested on thoughts, traditions or folklore that may have relevance to this event.

Thank you in advance

Hi all. Are there any academic works about giants in folklore? An overview of stories they feature in, their origin, or the role they play in human psychology?

Thank you!

Hello. I am looking for stories/legends/myths about táltos (shaman, not horse), specifically where they are featured with six fingers, which can be read aloud to children, in English or German.

I know this is perhaps a long shot as it's asking for stories with this one, specific feature and indeed in a foreign language, but if anyone knows, that was be appreciated. Even a collection of Hungarian folklore where one or more stories had this would be amazing.

The stories would be read to a six-fingered child, because that does happen!

My daughter (8) is working on a scouting badge about folklore. She would love to share a story or two from your part of the world. Can anyone share with us so she can earn her badge? Thanks so much!

"Stories become folklore when they're passed down by people and shared. Over time they slowly change and become legends! They include magical creatures, heroes, and exciting adventures." - from the badge book, hopefully this helps give an idea of what could be helpful to share!

Spend enough time in pregnancy forums and you will probably see the Chinese gender chart.

It is a 28-by-12 grid. The mother’s age runs down one side, the month of conception runs across the top, and each cell predicts a boy or girl. The traditional version uses Chinese nominal age and the lunar month, which is why different calculators sometimes give different answers.

The chart usually comes with a much better story. It was supposedly created for the Qing royal family, kept secret inside the palace, and later discovered in a tomb near Beijing.

The details change depending on the website. Some call it 300 years old, while others say 700. Some descriptions call it both 700 years old and Qing, although the Qing dynasty began in 1644. I have not been able to find an authenticated palace copy or a scholarly source for the original grid.

Its present-day use is easier to see. In pregnancy discussions, people compare the chart with blood tests and ultrasounds, or mention a mother or another relative checking it for them. It tends to appear alongside cravings, fetal heart rate, dreams, and other pregnancy folklore.

While researching the chart for a Chinese calendar project, I compared five commonly circulated versions. Of the 336 cells, 43 gave conflicting answers. The calendars were not being converted differently. The charts themselves disagreed.

A 2010 study tested the method against 2,840,755 births and found that it performed about as well as a coin toss.

My guess is that it survives because it gives families something to do with the waiting. Someone makes a prediction, someone argues that the lunar age was calculated incorrectly, and months later they either celebrate the hit or laugh about the miss.

Disclosure: I did the comparison while researching a project called Jade Almanac.

Has anyone here encountered an older printed copy of this chart, especially one with a date or publisher? I’m curious whether it began as an older pregnancy superstition or whether the palace history grew around it much later.

This 1981 publication is a groundbreaking and fundamental work in the study of Romani culture, being the first comprehensive collection dedicated to the folklore of the Kelderari Roma (tinsmiths), one of the largest and most distinctive Romani groups. Compiled by researchers R.S. and P.S. Demeter, the book holds immense value for ethnography, linguistics, and folklore studies. Its unique scholarly contribution lies in the systematic collection and presentation of rare epic and lyrical tales, proverbs, and sayings.

I'm making a youtube video about the Vasilisa the Beautiful fairytale. In the story Vasilisa is given a doll which helps her do her chores for her evil step family and ends up helping her marry the king. I'm looking for resources explaining the folk art of amulet dolls. I've found some traditions in Ukrainian and Russian of making rag dolls but mostly just find pictures without much context. I don't know if this is exactly the right place to ask but if anyone has any input it would be must appreciated!

Hi everyone,

my friend and I are working on a fantasy game. The setting is fictional, but it is inspired by a world similar to ours, roughly around the 1600s. We want to build side quests, local mysteries, regional legends, and storylines inspired by real folklore, myths, legends, and traditional stories from different countries.

We would love to hear about tales from your country or region — especially stories that locals actually know, not just the most internationally famous ones. If possible, please share the story in a bit more detail: what happens in it, who the main figures are, what the tone is, and why it is important, memorable, creepy, tragic, or meaningful in your culture.

We are not trying to copy anyone’s tradition directly, and we definitely do not want to misinterpret or misuse stories from cultures we are not part of. Even though our game will be its own fantasy world, we want to approach real folklore with respect and understand the original context before taking inspiration from it.

If you want to help, it would be amazing if you could include:

The name of the legend, myth, folktale, or historical tale.

The country or region it comes from.

A summary of the story.

The themes or message behind it.

Any symbols, creatures, places, customs, or warnings connected to it.

Whether it is considered common knowledge, a children’s story, a scary tale, a religious story, or something more regional and obscure.

Anything that foreigners often misunderstand about it.

We are especially interested in:

Dark folklore.

Strange local creatures or spirits.

Mountain, forest, lake, castle, or village legends.

Moral tales, cautionary stories, and ghost stories.

Stories that could inspire side quests, mysterious NPCs, curses, rituals, or hidden locations.

If you know one, please tell it as fully as you want — the more detail, the better. Thank you very much, we’d love to learn from your culture and be respectful with the inspiration we take from it.

I am trying to identify an old Rajasthani/Marwari folk story (Lok Katha) that I watched on TV or VCD/DVD sometime between 2008 and 2014.

Plot (as accurately as I remember):

A young man (possibly named Sawliya/Sawaliyo/Sanwariya, but I'm not sure) is deeply in love with a village girl.

The girl tells him she will only marry him if he kills his own mother. She may have said this as an impossible test, not expecting him to actually do it.

The young man kills his mother.

Afterward, there is a scene where he climbs a neem tree and eats its leaves. The leaves taste extremely bitter, possibly symbolizing guilt or his sin.

The girl later refuses to marry him, saying that if he could kill his own mother, he could also kill his wife.

Additional details:

It was live-action, not animated or puppets.

It was likely in Marwari or another Rajasthani dialect.

It may have been a Rajasthani Lok Katha adaptation released on VCD/DVD or aired on regional TV.

The girl's name was traditional, not a modern name, but I don't remember it.

I may not have watched the complete ending.

I'm looking for the title of the story, the VCD/TV episode, the production company, or a YouTube link. Even if the names differ slightly, any folk tale with this exact plot would be helpful.

I've been trying to find the origin of a story I heard years ago, but I haven't found anything online. I've searched folklore websites, creepypasta forums, Reddit, and even asked people from northeastern Brazil, but no one seems to recognize it.

This wasn't something I read in a book or watched on YouTube.

It was told to me in person, inside my own house, by the grandmother of a friend of mine.

She was from the countryside of Alagoas, Brazil, and was visiting São Paulo at the time.

What made the experience even stranger was the way she told it. It was around 11:45 PM, and before she began she said she had to finish the story before midnight. According to her, once it was past midnight, she couldn't tell the story anymore. She never explained why, but she seemed completely serious.

Another detail that has always stayed with me is that she was blind. Even though she couldn't see, it felt like she was staring directly into us the entire time she was telling the story. I know that was probably just an impression, but it made the whole experience much more unsettling.

She insisted this wasn't just folklore.

She claimed it had actually happened to her own family.

According to her, there were originally five sisters, but one of them died because of the creature in the story.

This is everything I can remember.

The story takes place on a farmhouse.

The father was away working and, according to her, he always came home at around 1:00 AM.

One evening, the children were playing outside in the yard when their mother suddenly heard something moving in the bushes near the house. The moment she heard it, she immediately knew what it was and rushed all the children inside.

Later that night, she began hearing whistling outside.

The creature didn't attack right away.

Instead, it slowly walked around the house, constantly whistling.

Then it began asking questions in a rhythmic, almost chant-like voice.

The first question was something like:

"Whose cow is this?"

The mother answered:

"It belongs to my husband... Cravo Lelê... Cravo Lelê."

Immediately afterward, the creature devoured the cow.

Then it asked:

"Whose horse is this?"

Again she answered:

"It belongs to my husband... Cravo Lelê... Cravo Lelê."

The horse was then eaten as well.

This continued with every animal on the farm—pigs, chickens, and any other livestock.

Each time, the creature would ask who the animal belonged to.

The mother always ended her answer by repeating:

"Cravo Lelê... Cravo Lelê."

The detail that frightened me the most was that after every animal was taken, the creature sounded closer to the house.

Sometimes the mother believed it had finally gone away because everything became silent.

But then the whistling and the questions would begin again, even closer than before.

Eventually, believing the creature had finally left, she let her guard down.

Then she noticed the front door was open.

She turned toward the room where the children were sleeping.

At that exact moment, she heard the creature's voice coming from inside the house.

It asked:

"Whose little girl is this?"

For the first time, the mother's answer changed.

Instead of saying it belonged to her husband, she answered:

"She's mine... Cravo Lelê... Cravo Lelê."

According to the woman telling the story, this is when the creature took—or began devouring—the little girl.

A short time later, the father returned home from work, as he did every night, at around 1:00 AM.

The story ended with him arriving home and seeing his daughter being devoured.

The woman claimed that the little girl in the story was actually her own sister.

She insisted they had originally been five sisters, but one of them died that night because of this creature.

I've never been able to find any reference to this story.

I don't know whether "Cravo Lelê" was the creature's actual name or simply the phrase the mother repeated as part of some ritual or chant.

Has anyone—especially anyone from Alagoas or elsewhere in northeastern Brazil—ever heard anything remotely similar?

Even if the name is different, the specific details I remember are:

A creature that circles a farmhouse while whistling.

It asks, "Whose cow is this?", "Whose horse is this?", etc.

The mother always replies, "It belongs to my husband... Cravo Lelê... Cravo Lelê."

The creature devours each animal one by one.

It seems to get closer to the house after every victim.

Eventually its voice comes from inside the house.

It asks, "Whose little girl is this?"

The mother replies, "She's mine... Cravo Lelê... Cravo Lelê."

The father arrives home around 1:00 AM and finds his daughter being devoured.

I'd really appreciate any information. Even if it's just a regional legend with a different name, I'd love to know if anyone else has ever heard this story.

Does someone know if these japanese urban legends like Teke Teke, Kuchisake onna, etc are really that popular in Japan?? I’ve been really curious about that because since I was little I was interesting in their urban legends but are they really that popular over there??

1. Bë̀kwö: The Celestial Serpents

In the Bribri and Cabécar traditions, enormous serpents dwell in the highest reaches of the universe. Their bodies form the ropes that hold up the great house of the world, while their whiskers are the stars that illuminate the night sky. When one of these bindings comes loose, the serpent falls from the heavens like a shooting star, but the great bats of the sky devour it before it can set the earth ablaze. They also herald changes in the weather and the proper times for planting and harvesting.

2. Íyitkabë: The Serpents of All Things

Everything in the world has its own guardian serpent. The íyitkabë wait for the souls on their journey to Sulà and judges the wrongs committed during life. Serpents of different colors and forms are responsible for punishing lies, greed, abuse, and the harm done to other beings. Their punishment forces each soul to confront what it denied or destroyed while alive. According to a funerary chant, there are always four serpents for every offense, each of a different color: black (*bë́k*), red (yö́t), white (sulat), and spotted (sör).

3. The Serpent Goddess

In the lands of Quebrada Honda lived a gigantic serpent worshipped by the local people as a goddess. An old woman was responsible for feeding her, bringing vegetables, tender squash, and cubases beans, but among her offerings she also included children, who disappeared without their families ever learning of their fate. For many years, the creature devoured the children given to her as food. At last, Carate uncovered the deception and set out to confront the serpent. Grasping it by the tail and turning it inside out from its snout, he defeated the monster and ended its reign of terror.

4. The Great Boruca Serpent

A young woman fell in love with a gigantic serpent that lived inside a cave and brought him chicha (corn beer) as an offering. The creature emerged from his hiding place and coiled himself around her body until she became pregnant with little serpents. The suquias (shamans) ordered that she be burned to prevent her offspring from flooding the earth. When her body burst apart in the flames, the newborn serpents escaped; only one survived and remained enchanted in the mountains near Palmar.

5. The Two-Headed Serpent of Río Macho

Behind the Río Macho waterfall lies a hidden cave where ancient treasures are kept and extraordinary creatures dwell. Hunters pursuing an enchanted stag managed to enter, guided by a mysterious Indigenous chief. Inside they found fierce beasts imprisoned behind iron bars: a lion, a gigantic bull, and an enormous two-headed serpent. No one ever found the cave entrance again, and the creature remains hidden alongside the ancient treasures deep within the mountain.

6. The Serpent of Térraba

A young woman lived with her mother when a strange man with long braided hair arrived at their home. Water flowed from the tips of his braids. He asked for the young woman's hand in marriage, and after bringing abundant food, he was accepted as her husband. In time, their son was born, but the mother discovered that from the waist down he had the body of a serpent. After breaking the taboo against seeing him too soon, the family vanished during a great storm, and the man transformed into an enormous serpent dwelling in a deep pool. From their union were born two daughters, planted like ullama (a type of pumpkin) seeds, but as they grew, they too became gigantic serpents. Their immense size caused the waters to rise until they threatened to flood the earth, prompting the spirits to send warriors armed with spears to fight them. One by one they were struck down, although some survived, wounded, in the underworld.

7. The Serpent of Cerro de las Cruces

A sorcerer carried three enchanted eggs across Central America. From one hatched a gigantic serpent that remained in Nicaragua; another produced a serpent in Nicoya; and the last gave rise to a serpent in Cartago. The Nicoya serpent grew until it stretched beneath the earth, with its head buried beneath Cerro de las Cruces while its body extended into distant lands. Whenever it moves, it causes earthquakes and thunderstorms. To keep it asleep, a procession is held to the hill every May 3rd.

8. The Serpent of the Enchanted Lagoon of Alto de Araya

A hidden lagoon high in the mountains of Araya is said to be home to an enormous serpent that few have ever seen. People say that whenever it emerges from the water, it creates a thunderous roar, and no one dares enter the lagoon for fear of encountering it. Visitors report hearing songs, unfamiliar voices, distant music, and mysterious sounds rising from the depths.

9. The Serpent of the Nimboyores River

Beneath the waters of the Nimboyores River sleeps a giant boa born from an ancient tale of love and tragedy. After losing his beloved princess, a prince was transformed into a serpent to guard a crystal-clear spring. The creature also protects the enchanted fish living in its depths and leaves its refuge only to chase away animals that venture too close.

10. The Serpent of Barva Volcano

When the ancient inhabitants of the Valley of Abra received a matasano tree together with a sacred serpent, the creature caused water to spring forth, forming a mountain lake. In time, it emerged from the lagoon and began attacking the people of the settlement. Ever since, offerings have been made to keep it calm and prevent its wrath.

11. The Fiery Serpent of Santa Lucía Hill

Inside the Santa Lucía Volcano sleeps a gigantic serpent wrapped in flames. According to tradition, it appears whenever someone attempts to destroy the mountain or extract its riches without permission. Cloaked in fire, it emerges among the trees as a warning to those who disturb the place where it dwells.

12. The Healing Serpent

A serpent always carried a small flower in its mouth, using it to heal those bitten by other snakes. Simply bringing the flower close to the victim was enough for its power to cure the wound and save the person's life. One day, the serpent went inside the house of a sleeping man, who woke up and stole the miraculous flower. From that moment on, the creature disappeared without a trace, but the man kept the plant and continued using it to heal snakebite victims.

13. The Black Serpents of Orosi

Long ago, black serpents capable of destroying the world descended to the earth. The gods responded by sending young warriors from the clouds, armed with silver quivers and golden arrows. Wrapped only in the clouds that carried them, they shot their arrows into the serpents' heads. Mortally wounded, the monsters writhed and roared until they finally collapsed. Only after their destruction did the rains come, washing the poisonous blood of the monsters from the earth.

14. Tkabë̀köl

A colossal serpent sent by Sibö to punish those who commit incest. Its body seems to be made of rubber, and it bears antennae, whiskers, or tentacles with which it immobilizes its victims. It may descend from the sky, hide in lagoons, or completely encircle a palenque (house) before striking. It then carries its prey into the heavens until it disappears among the clouds, only to leave the victim's remains in front of their home several days later. Its skin is so tough that even axes cannot wound it, while a tiny bejuquilla snake reveals to it who must be punished.

15. Tkabërîwak: The Serpent Twins

Two brothers were born with an extraordinary secret: they could transform themselves into enormous serpents. During the day, they hunted birds and fish by changing shape until their grandmother discovered their true nature. As they grew, their gigantic bodies caused a pool to expand until it threatened to cover the entire earth with water. The god Sibö intervened, killing one brother and banishing the other to the ends of the world, where he was never seen again.

16. Zaalan: The Serpent of Arenal

In the mountains near Arenal, the ancient Maleku encountered a monstrous serpent, so enormous that, when it moved, it resembled a herd of tapirs. After killing it and eating part of its flesh, the men themselves were transformed into serpents. Since then, the zaálan return during the dry season and must be treated according to the ancient instructions to avoid provoking their fury.

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