60 Fun Facts About Monster

Who wrote the 1818 novel that introduced Frankenstein's monster?

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published anonymously in 1818 when she was twenty.

In the 1818 novel, who or what actually bears the name 'Frankenstein'?

The scientist who built it, Victor Frankenstein, owns the name; Shelley's subtitle compares him to the mythological Prometheus.

Which actor's 1931 portrayal fixed the flat-headed, bolt-necked image of Frankenstein's monster?

Boris Karloff played the Monster in Universal's 1931 Frankenstein; Jack Pierce's makeup gave it the flat head and neck bolts.

Who wrote the 1897 novel Dracula?

Bram Stoker, an Irish author and manager of London's Lyceum Theatre, published Dracula in 1897.

Which real 15th-century prince partly inspired Count Dracula?

Vlad the Impaler, Vlad III of Wallachia, was called Dracula, 'son of the dragon', after his father's membership of the Order of the Dragon.

How does Dracula turn other people into vampires?

By biting them: in Stoker's novel Lucy Westenra rises as a vampire after Dracula repeatedly drains her blood through bites to the throat.

A lycanthrope is a person who transforms into which animal?

A wolf: lycanthrope comes from Greek lykos (wolf) and anthropos (man); the Old English 'werwulf' likewise means man-wolf.

In modern films, a werewolf's transformation is usually triggered by what?

A full moon triggers the change in most films, from Universal's 1940s Wolf Man sequels to An American Werewolf in London (1981).

Modern fiction makes werewolves, otherwise resistant to injury, especially vulnerable to weapons made of which metal?

Silver: the weakness was fixed in popular culture by Universal's The Wolf Man (1941), in which Larry Talbot is killed with a silver-headed cane.

A vampire is a creature that survives by feeding on what?

Blood: in European folklore vampires are undead humans who leave the grave at night to drink the blood of the living.

Which plant is a classic folk protection against vampires?

Garlic: in Stoker's Dracula, Van Helsing hangs garlic flowers round Lucy Westenra's room and neck to keep the Count away.

Suspected vampires' corpses were sometimes pierced with what?

A stake: during the 18th-century vampire panics in Serbia, exhumed corpses such as Arnold Paole's were staked through the heart.

The word 'zombie' comes from the folklore of which country?

Haiti: in Haitian Vodou folklore a bokor sorcerer is said to reanimate a corpse as a zombie, a word from Haitian Creole zonbi.

The Loch Ness Monster is said to live in a lake in which country?

Scotland: Loch Ness lies in the Scottish Highlands near Inverness; a May 1933 Inverness Courier report made 'Nessie' world-famous.

Bigfoot is said to roam the forests of which US region in particular?

The Pacific Northwest: Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, is reported most often in the forests of Washington, Oregon and British Columbia.

The famous 1967 Bigfoot film was shot by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin in which state?

It was filmed at Bluff Creek in Northern California.

The Yeti, the hairy humanoid said to roam the Himalayas, is known in Western pop culture by what name?

The Abominable Snowman is the Western name; folklorists trace the Yeti to Sherpa tales and misidentified bears and yaks.

What does the cryptid name 'chupacabra' literally mean in Spanish?

Goat-sucker: chupar means 'to suck' and cabra 'goat', a name earned by reports of livestock found drained of blood.

The first widely publicised Chupacabra sightings came in 1995 from which island?

It is often described there as reptilian, spiny and about the size of a small bear.

Mothman was reportedly seen in 1966-67 around which town?

Point Pleasant, West Virginia: sightings began in November 1966, and John Keel's The Mothman Prophecies tied them to the town's Silver Bridge collapse of December 1967.

The Jersey Devil is said to haunt which region of New Jersey?

The Pine Barrens: the Jersey Devil is said to roam this million-acre pine forest of southern New Jersey; tradition dates the creature's birth to 1735.

The kraken is a giant sea monster from the folklore of which country?

Norway: the kraken of Norwegian sailors' lore was described in 1752 by Erik Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen, in his Natural History of Norway.

The kraken's legend is thought to have originated from sightings of what real animal?

The giant squid: Architeuthis can reach about 13 metres, and surfacing or washed-up specimens are thought to have seeded the kraken legend.

In Greek myth, Medusa had what in place of her hair?

Snakes: in Ovid's telling Athena turned Medusa's hair into living serpents, and a single look at her turned onlookers to stone.

Which Greek hero cut off Medusa's head?

Perseus beheaded Medusa using Athena's mirrored shield, then gave the head to the goddess, who set it on her aegis.

The Minotaur had the body of a man and the head of what?

A bull: the Minotaur was born to Queen Pasiphaë of Crete and a bull, and was kept at the centre of Daedalus's Labyrinth.

Which hero killed the Minotaur, guided by Ariadne's thread?

Theseus killed the Minotaur and escaped the Labyrinth by following the thread Ariadne, King Minos's daughter, had given him.

The Cyclopes of Greek myth were giants with how many eyes?

One: the Cyclopes ('round-eyed') had a single eye in the middle of the forehead; in Hesiod they forge Zeus's thunderbolts.

Which Cyclops did Odysseus blind in the Odyssey?

Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, trapped Odysseus's men in his cave; Odysseus got him drunk and blinded him with a sharpened stake.

The many-headed Hydra grew how many new heads for each one cut off?

Two: Apollodorus says two heads grew for each one struck off, so Heracles's nephew Iolaus seared each neck stump with a torch.

Which of his Twelve Labours saw Heracles kill the Hydra?

The second: after the Nemean lion, Eurystheus sent Heracles to the swamp of Lerna to kill the Hydra, his second labour.

Cerberus, the multi-headed dog, guards the gates of where?

Hades: Cerberus guards the entrance to the underworld of Hades, letting the dead in but never out; capturing him was Heracles's twelfth labour.

The Sphinx of Greek myth killed travellers who could not solve what?

A riddle: the Sphinx asked what walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon and three in the evening, and devoured those who failed.

Which hero outwitted the Sphinx in Greek drama?

Oedipus answered the Sphinx's riddle with 'man', and the creature killed herself; Sophocles's Oedipus Rex recalls the feat.

Grendel is the creature who terrorises the mead-hall in which Old English epic?

Beowulf: the Old English epic has Grendel raid King Hrothgar's hall Heorot for twelve years until the Geatish hero Beowulf tears off his arm.

Godzilla first appeared in a film from which country, in 1954?

The giant monster, or daikaiju, was directed by Ishiro Honda for Toho.

What awakened and empowered Godzilla in the original story?

Nuclear radiation: in the 1954 film, hydrogen-bomb tests in the Pacific rouse and mutate the creature, a metaphor for Japan's atomic trauma.

King Kong is famously depicted as a giant version of which animal?

A gorilla: King Kong, a giant ape from Skull Island, first appeared in RKO's 1933 film, animated by Willis O'Brien's stop motion.

Which filmmaker directed the 2005 remake of King Kong?

Peter Jackson directed the 2005 King Kong, with Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow and Andy Serkis performing Kong in motion capture.

The Mummy horror monster is traditionally a reanimated corpse wrapped in what?

Bandages: the mummy is an embalmed corpse preserved in linen wrappings, as in Universal's 1932 film The Mummy, which revives the priest Imhotep.

Cthulhu, a giant cosmic monster sleeping beneath the Pacific, was created by which author?

H. P. Lovecraft introduced Cthulhu in The Call of Cthulhu, written in 1926 and published in Weird Tales in February 1928.

Cthulhu is usually depicted with a head resembling which animal?

An octopus: Lovecraft described Cthulhu as a vaguely anthropoid outline with an octopus-like head whose face is a mass of feelers.

The Bogeyman is a monster traditionally used to do what?

Frighten children into behaving: parents invoke the Bogeyman as a shapeless lurker who takes misbehaving children, a threat found across many cultures.

Which blue Sesame Street monster is known for the eating noise 'Om nom nom nom'?

Cookie Monster, the blue Muppet performed by Frank Oz and later David Rudman, gobbles cookies with a loud 'Om nom nom nom'; his favourite is chocolate chip.

How does the scientific community generally explain reported sightings of the Loch Ness Monster?

Hoaxes and misidentifications of known animals, along with wishful thinking and mundane objects, are the accepted causes.

Medusa was the only mortal among the three sisters known collectively as what?

Her sisters were Euryale and Stheno.

Cerberus was said to be the offspring of Echidna and which other figure?

Typhon: Hesiod's Theogony makes Cerberus the child of Typhon and Echidna, sibling to the Hydra and Orthrus.

The Sphinx of Greek tradition had a woman's head and a bird's wings on the body of which animal?

A lion's haunches carried her; the Egyptian sphinx, by contrast, typically had a male head.

Godzilla has been given which royal nickname?

King of the Monsters: the title was coined for the 1956 American re-edit Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, which added scenes with Raymond Burr.

The Jersey Devil is traditionally said to be the child of a woman known as what?

The creature is usually pictured with wings and cloven hooves.

Grendel is described in his Old English poem as a descendant of which biblical figure?

Cain: the poem says Grendel sprang from the kin of Cain, whom the Creator banished for killing Abel; monsters and giants descend from him.

The Chimera had a lion's front, a serpent's tail and which animal's head on its back?

Its very name means 'she-goat' in Ancient Greek, and Homer places the beast in Lycia in Asia Minor.

Which hero was ordered by the king of Lycia to slay the Chimera?

Bellerophon, riding the winged horse Pegasus, killed the Chimera for King Iobates of Lycia, who had expected the beast to kill him.

In Irish folklore, what does the wailing banshee foretell?

A death in the family is what her keening heralds; her name means 'woman of the fairy mound', and many accounts make her tiny, between one and four feet tall.

The wendigo, a cannibal spirit popularised by Algernon Blackwood's 1910 novella, comes from the folklore of which group of peoples?

Algonquian peoples told of the wendigo; the English word borrows from Cree and Ojibwe, and Blackwood's novella popularised the spelling.

The most famous golem legend has Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel shaping a clay figure in which city?

Prague's late-16th-century rabbi is the hero; golem tales in Kabbalah go back to at least the 12th century, and the figure is often called a forerunner of Frankenstein's monster.

Erasing one letter from the Hebrew word for 'truth' on a golem's forehead leaves which word?

Death: removing the aleph turns emet ('truth') into met ('dead'), so the golem returns to lifeless clay.

According to Pliny the Elder, the odour of which animal is the basilisk's weakness?

Weasel: Pliny's Natural History says the basilisk, whose name means 'little king', is killed by the stench of a weasel thrown into its hole.

Which whirlpool monster lives across the narrow strait from the six-headed Scylla?

Charybdis: Homer's Odyssey sets the whirlpool opposite Scylla, and 'between Scylla and Charybdis' means a choice between two evils.

Which monster guards the Cedar Forest until Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill it?

Humbaba, the giant set by the god Enlil to guard the Cedar Forest, is beheaded by Gilgamesh and Enkidu in the epic's fifth tablet.