Every country has its own Bigfoot. Some are terrifying, some are awesome, and some are just plain ridiculous. We've found the seven creatures that manage to be all three.
If these freaks of nature actually exist (and we really hope some of them don't), it proves beyond doubt that the whole world is just one big pile of bat-shit blithering fuckcrazy.
Tanzania is the perfect holiday destination for people who enjoy hot weather, beautiful sunsets and being sodomized in their sleep by an ethereal, bat-winged penis ogre.
Legend says that the beast known as Popobawa has been menacing the Tanzanian island of Pemba in his own unique style ever since the '70s. He can be identified by his smell (reputed to be quite pungent), and also by the fact that he is a one-eyed flying ogre with his spam javelin lodged in your rectum. He attacks only men, sneaking into their houses at night and buttburgling them for up to an hour, then--in an oddly familiar twist to anyone who reads superhero comics--demanding that they tell all their friends about him.
Crime has a new enemy. His name is PenisOgreRapistMan.
Popobawa has one eye, which is one more than this artist.
We know what you're thinking, that this legend got started because some dude's wife expressed curiosity about the odd grunts and slaps she heard when she came home unexpectedly one day. The dude quickly threw out a story about an implausible marauding fuckmonster while the gardener hid in the closet and quickly put on his trousers.
That would not however explain the actual hysteria that surrounds the Popobawa, and the many alleged sightings. What would explain it is their country being full of flying rape ogres.
How Do We Kill It?
There is no silver bullet for the Popobawa in folklore. However a mob did successfully hack a Popobawa to death once, though at the time the creature had taken the form of a random mentally ill villager. It is entirely possible that when the man confessed to being the Popobawa, he was in fact speaking figuratively.
According to folklore in the Philippines, your standard manananggal has the body and face of a beautiful older woman, with a couple of minor differences, such as its leathery wings and its ability to detach its torso and fly away sans legs. Manananggals terrorize the Visayan islands, where people hang large amounts of garlic around their houses as a deterrent to the manananggal, which seems unnecessary since the legless things probably don't have the ability to land.
On the whole, manananggals are fairly harmless. Oh, except that they feed on pregnant women, using their hideous proboscii to suck out the hearts of their fetuses.
Legend also says the manananggals propagate themselves by "spitting a black chick into someone else's mouth" (in fact, we actually discovered the manaanggal because we were Googling that phrase for unrelated reasons). If you find yourself infected by a manananggal, your friends can kill the chick inside you by hanging you upside down from a tree and fumigating you, so either way it sounds like you're in for a pretty shitty afternoon.
How Do We Kill It?
Filipinos insist that manananggals are not ghosts or undead, they are depicted as flesh-and-blood organisms which feed and reproduce. That means they can be killed.
Folklore says you have to sprinkle salt or garlic onto their detached lower torso. The rest of the manananggal is then unable to re-join with itself, and will die when the sun comes up. If that doesn't work we would also suggest shooting it a lot.
Nestling snugly in the "What The Hell, People" category, the wolpertinger is a cute little bunny that sports antlers, wings and fangs. Its home is the Black Forest of Bavaria, where it probably spends most of its time being extremely confused. Wolpertinger have the horns of a roebuck, the wings of a jay and the feet of a duck, making them the only animals capable of both aquatic and mid-air rutting.
There is some evidence for creatures like the Wolpertinger, or at least there are actually antlered rabbits out there. The Shope Papilloma virus causes horny, cancerous growths to appear on a rabbit's head and body, often giving it the appearance of having antlers. This doesn't explain the wings, unless there's also a kind of cancer that makes you fly.
Seriously, what is it going to do with the fangs? Gore a cauliflower to death?
How Do We Kill It?
The method for catching one is pretty fucking awesome. Legend has it that wolpertinger are particularly enamored of beautiful young ladies, so if you happen to be of the curvy and boobular persuasion, you need only make your way to the forest after dark and wait for the wolpertinger to appear, then expose your glorious breasts to the night. The wolpertinger will turn into a blithering blob of lust, and can be easily bagged and thrown into a wood chipper.
Interestingly, this curious interspecies attraction also raises the possibility that wolpertinger are born with human cocks. Crypto-zoologists are tellingly silent on this point.
Either way, ladies, if you intend to go walking in the woods at night with the intention of attracting a wolpertinger, you might want to alert the authorities beforehand. The authorities in this case being anyone in the Cracked offices.
The allghoi khorkhoi, or "blood-filled intestine worm," is a delightful little fellow approximately three feet in length that supposedly lives under the Gobi desert, slithering to the surface during the rainy season in order to prey upon camels and horses and generally be horrible. Its crimson body resembles a length of cow intestine. The Death Worm is capable of spitting deadly yellow venom at its victims, and also of firing ranged electric shocks strong enough to kill a man instantly, or power a modest refrigerator for up to three hours.
It was first brought to the West's attention by Roy Chapman Andrews, the adventurer said to be the inspiration for Indiana Jones, seen having eaten his fourth wolpertinger of the morning.
"Acid-spitting electrical death worms ... WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE ACID-SPITTING ELECTRICAL DEATH WORMS?"
Laugh if you want, but if there's one place in the world where bastard-crazy creatures still wait to be discovered, it's the Gobi Desert. It is basically more than half a million square miles of burning wasteland, much of which remains unexplored. A team of experts went hunting for the Deathworm in 2005, and concluded that they do in fact exist since disparate nomadic witnesses all gave the exact same description of it. Therefore either the worms are real, or modern nomads a) all possess cell phones, and b) are a bunch of wise-cracking dickbags.
It's not impossible for such a large worm to exist, though (some Australian varieties are up to 10 feet long).
How Do We Kill It?
If you are out in the wild and encounter some huge, murderous acid-vomiting hellmaggots, and if they start farting electricity at you a propos of nothing, the best course of action is to get back in the car. Drive until you get across the border, then call the military and have them nuke the area into molten glass.
It's easy to feel a little down in the morning, as you slump over your wilting shitflakes and ruminate on the day of savage tedium that lies ahead. However, such existential misery can be allayed simply by saying to oneself, "No matter how dull, desperate and lonely my life has become, I nevertheless live in a world where fish can launch fireballs."
On certain stretches of the Mekong River, an evening walker can behold a magical sight. At around 8pm during the full moon of October, hundreds of egg-sized balls of red flame rise from the water like a myriad misdirected Hadoukens, floating up towards the stars, where they quietly disappear. Locals claim that these fireballs are caused by an eel called the Phaya Naga, specimens of which have allegedly been found.
According to legend, the fireballs are an offering of thanks to Buddha, which seems a little ill-advised, even if you are a deity, your first reaction to being pelted with fireballs is probably not going to be, "You're welcome."
In 2003, reporters from a Thai television station claimed that the fireballs were simply tracer bullets, fired as part of the Buddhist celebrations. The Laotian government responded by arresting the reporters.
How Do We Kill It?
Our experience with creatures like this says that they move in a predictable pattern, and will have one vulnerable spot that is usually glowing red. Each successful strike at that spot should get it to drop power-ups and three strikes should finish it.
If however the phaya naga in fact just an armed, unruly crowd, it's probably better just to go with the flow. Aim your gun at the sky and join them in trying to shoot down Buddha.
Otherwise known as "The Reason Furries Still Dare To Dream" the Tikbalang is a tall, hairy humanoid with the head of a horse and legs so long that they stretch above its head when it sits down. Like the Manananggal, it makes its home in the deep forests of the Philippines, where it tries its best to convince everyone that detachable torsos are for retards. Tikbalangs are said to be transformations of aborted fetuses that have been sent back to Earth from limbo, which is nice.
Folklore differs on the Tikbalang's character. To some, he is simply a trickster, enticing his victims into the forest to taunt and slap them mercilessly, then vanishing and leaving them to make their own way home. In other words, a total prick.
Others give him a much more demonic aspect, claiming that he is a red-eyed hellbeast who hoof-stomps the poor victim while smoking a huge cigar. All agree that he can perfectly mimic the appearance of friends and loved ones, and that his transformation is heralded by the strong smell of tobacco. And that he's a prick.
The Tikbalang distracts its pursuers by farting Lucky Charms.
The only thing that makes us think this isn't an invention of the furries is the total pictorial absence of female Tikbalangs with disturbingly huge breasts.
How Do We Kill It?
It may not be necessary, since it is possible to avoid the Tikbalang's attention by turning one's clothes inside out. It is probably best not to probe too deeply into the logic behind this. We are, after all, talking about a cigar-smoking horse monster whose favorite pastime is slapping people.
This is the historical version of the Transformers. Thanks to the wondrous adhesive power of excrement, several rats become joined at the tail, combining to form one writhing mass of filth and squeaks that spins through town like a horrendous plague-tipped cartwheel.
In Medieval times, seeing a rat king was taken as a bad omen, which was a bit of a no-brainer, really. You don't have to be Nostradamus to think, "Hmm, I am currently looking at a huge ball of shit-covered rats slathering a path straight towards my face. I predict that bad things will soon happen."
There are actual specimens of these in museums. The first recorded sighting of a rat king was in 1596. Sightings became rarer in the 1800s, after black rats were supplanted in Europe by their brown cousins, whose tails are presumably too slick with baby tears and the blood of puppies to entwine properly.
A man dances gaily with a stick, unaware of the squeaking terror that stalks him!
How Do We Kill It?
Since rats trapped in this way would eventually die of starvation or dismember themselves in an effort to escape their knot of filth, the best thing to do is just lock your doors and wait inside for the next month or so.
In fact, survival of the rats in such a situation would be so tenuous that most scientists believe the rat king specimens in the museums to be hoaxes, though none of them deny the existence of the one that is RIGHT BEHIND YOU, OH SHIT!
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