Mythical Creatures in Folklore: Yacaruna, Trolls, and Succubi Explained

So my upcoming book initially wasn’t going to be shared with anyone. It was supposed to just be a passion project that I could throw my attention into when I was burnt out on writing my nonfiction ADHD book (that I totally abandoned, by the way). I literally came up with it by deciding that I was going to write a book that mixed my interests: herbalism, medicine, and folklore. 

And now, here I am toiling away at this thing, wondering how many people are going to like what I’m doing, and how many people are going to think I’m just fucking weird. It’s a trip. 

One thing it’s made me even more sure of, though, is my love of myths and folklore. It’s so much fun to sit around learning about old creatures and their connections to ancient – and sometimes, not so ancient – peoples. 

And, if you’re like me and this sounds like a shitton of fun to you, too, then you’re gonna love all this. 

I thought I’d go into the creatures you’ll see in my book, as they are in the world’s stories: where they originate, what they look like, and any fun tales I can find about them along the way. 

Let’s get started, shall we? If you’d prefer to watch rather than read, you can do so here.

Yacaruna

The yacaruna is a creature of South American legend, specifically from Amazonia. Some sources merely refer to them as water creatures, while others refer to them as deities. They’re described as hairy, with deformed feet and backwards heads. Despite the fact that these dudes apparently look like hairy fish with a penchant for ignoring you, it’s said that one of their most popular moves is to seduce young women. They do this by shapeshifting into handsome young men and then luring these girls to the depths, never to be seen again. Apparently every guy I met in my 20’s was a Yacaruna. Figures. 

The lore on these monsters is sparse, but what we do know is fascinating. They apparently ride black crocodiles like canoes, live in underwater cities of pearl and fish scales, and will give healing knowledge to shamans if they ask really, really nicely. 

A neat little story I found, starring the Yacaruna: 

In the Peruvian native village of Shimpiyacu,there was a girl who was apparently incredibly hot but didn’t want to marry any of the schlubs in her village. Her parents were like, “Ah, girl, you’re like 12, you wanna be a spinster living with 23 cats?” to which she probably responded with both middle fingers and a threat to get a septum piercing, I dunno. 

Anyway, the girl would go down to the river at night to sit in the moonlight and think about her ideal man, and one day, a guy showed up who was everything she’d ever wanted. They became incredibly close, with the girl telling him everything and always returning home afterwards very happy.

One night, when she returned home, her parents were like: “aiight listen, no one has invented indoor plumbing yet and white people keep coming here trying to steal gold. The hell are you so happy about?”

And she was like, “Mama, I met someone.” 

And her mom and dad were like “Oh thank God someone still wants you.” 

But Grandma wasn’t fooled and she was like, “Yeah I don’t buy it.” Because Grandma was too old and out of fucks to think about people’s feelings at this point.

Anyway, again, the young man comes to the house one night and charms everyone but Grandma, who has a really hard time believing that such a hot guy would want to bother with her granddaughter because the girl…I dunno…eats her boogers and doesn’t shower or something…so when the guy leaves after promising to finally ask the girl for her hand, Grandma follows. When she follows them down to the river, she gets the surprise of her life: the young man turns into a yacaruna before her very eyes, and then drags her granddaughter into the water before she can do anything about it. 

They try desperately for two days to find the girl and get nowhere, with the mother having dreams about her daughter and even receiving an unmarked gift of food, presumably from her, by the river one day. Overtaken with grief, the mother eventually stumbled down to the river in the dead of night with Grandma following behind her, because no one in this village has learned to talk about their problems yet. 

Upon reaching the edge of the river, the mother sees the daughter floating above the water with a yacaruna behind her, presenting as a red demon on the back of a giant alligator. They took the mother with them, and no one ever saw any of them again. 

For the record, the yacaruna in my book is a good guy, so he can’t relate to any of this. Also his name is Philip, because it’s my book that’s why. 

Trolls

Troll folklore is way more prevalent, and so expansive that we’d be here for hours if I was to cover every single little thing about them on record. I do regret to inform you that they’re not little naked babies with wild hair and jewels in their tummies. Sorry, but you’ve been lied to. 

Trolls actually got their start in Norse and Scandanavian mythology. Though it was never really agreed upon what they actually looked like, it was agreed that they’re assholes to humans, that they prefer living in the mountains and amongst rock, and that they prefer to be left alone. They’ve had a number of names over the years, including “jötun” and “huldrefolk,” and they’ve always been known for causing mischief.

Weirdly, it sounds like trolls were used as a way to keep Christians in line for awhile, as they were said to be able to track Christians down by the scent of their blood. The story goes that trolls ran Norway until the Christians showed up and drove them out, so now there’s a resounding hatred for the ones responsible for their displacement. It was even said that trolls would throw boulders at churches in retaliation. I’m not saying anything about anyone’s religions here, okay? This is what the TROLLS would do. All complaints go to the troll complaint department. 

I also find it kind of funny that no one can even agree on whether trolls are large or small. Some legends say both, some say they’re as big as mountains, and some say they’re super tiny and live in hills (the Huldrefolk being the best-known version of those). 

In my case, I went for a super-tall, stupid, and violent troll named Njal. So I guess I knew what I was doing just as much as anyone else did. 

Succubi

The succubus is a creature that I think a lot of people are at least marginally familiar with.

The succubus is often shown in folklore to be a beautiful and alluring woman who seduces her prey, usually a man, and then she…ahem…mates with them. Because she needs a man’s…leavings…in order to reproduce and survive, the succubus will often go for as many rounds as she can, draining the man’s life force each time as she does. The first and most famous succubus is Lilith, Adam’s first wife in Jewish myth. In those stories, she also has a thing for stealing and eating children, and she’s well-known for getting down and dirty with the angel Samael before ultimately telling Adam to kick rocks. 

Many different cultures have a “succubus” in some form or another, though they’ll usually have different names. And I could get into the fact that this probably comes from a place of misogyny and the shaming of so-called “promiscuous” women, and that the fact that this goes back a ways to Ancient-fucking Sumeria suggests that they’ve been looking for a way to control and scare women for centuries, and that some of the myths and that when you think about it, Incubus is really weird for naming itself after the male counterpart of these things, but I won’t say any of that because i’m trying to behave. 

Also, just a funny factoid: I have a succubus in my book that I accidentally got 100% right according to folklore. I’m not saying more than that. 

So there you have it: three monsters that I find totally fascinating. There will be more as we go, so if there’s a monster you want me to cover, drop in the comments.