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| “ | (...)its eyes tilted up like the eyes in a classical Chinese painting, were a rich yellowish gray, sunken, gleaming. The mouth was drawn out in a rictus, the lower lip was turned inside out, revealing teeth stained blackish-brown and worn almost to nubs. But what struck Louis were the ears, which were not ears at all, but curving horns...they were not like devil's horns; they were ram's horns. | „ |
| ~ Stephen King about the Wendigo in Pet Sematary. |
The Wendigo is a supporting antagonist in the Stephen King Mythos. It is a primal demon that terrorized the Algonquians, the Micmacs and other Native American tribes, as well as cursed the Pet Sematary.
As described by the legendary author Stephen King from the novel, this ancient ghoulish demon is a grotesque, laughing god, a face with up-tilted, yellowish-gray, gleaming eyes, mouth drawn down in a rictus, lower lip turned out, blackish-brown, worn down teeth, ram's horns for ears, black pulsing veins in the lips, flared nostrils expelling white vapors, a long, pointed, dirty-yellow, scaled and peeling tongue, with a white worm underneath it.
Biography[]
Background[]
The Wendigo might be linked with the three Moirae, because of its ties with Death. The Wendigo prematurely cuts the thread which binds humans to life, so it might be linked with Atropos.
The Wendigo inhabited the entire northern hemisphere of North America, around Canada, and had supreme dominion over every creature and every organism in its domain.
Sometime in its life, it encountered the primitive Micmac burial site in Maine, in the place which would become Ludlow. The Micmac burial ground lay not too far through the woods from a pet cemetery which would become used by the town's future children.
The Wendigo cursed the Micmac burial ground and the curse's consequences would be that any corpse laid in the ground would become reanimated in a day, but as either murderous shells of their former selves or worse, cannibals. Seeing this danger, the Micmacs abandoned Ludlow and resettled elsewhere.
Pet Sematary[]
Throughout the Caucasian/white settlement of Ludlow during the old colonial days of America, the Wendigo lurked behind the scenes, manipulating events in the town just as Pennywise and Andre Linoge manipulated events in the two American small towns of Derry and Little Tall.
The Wendigo reanimated whatever animal was laid in the newly rediscovered Micmac burial ground with his necromantic power, such as bulls, cats, and dogs. It revived the dog of Jud Crandall, a native to the town, and his father, who knew of the cemetery, warned Jud against future excursions. Once reanimated from death, the "resurrected" corpses showed more aggression than usual and would frequently attack strangers. They lived for roughly 10 years and then died again.
During The Vietnam war, however, the burial ground's pull became stronger, when a man named Timmy Baterman was killed in Italy and shipped back to be buried. Timmy's father buried him in the Micmac cemetery, feeling the pull.
Timmy was reanimated and came back to his father's house, possessed by the dark influence of the Wendigo. This did not escape attention, and a group of townspeople, including adult Jud, came back to Timmy's house, demanding his father to undo the evil he had unleashed. Mr. Baterman refused to notice anything unusual, although he was physically ill.
Tim, possessed by the Wendigo's dark powers, gave away dark secrets about the men who had come to speak to his father, and scared the men senseless so that they left. However, that night, Tim's father shot his son, then doused the house in flames, and shot himself. The doctor thought Tim had been dead for weeks because of how decomposed his body had become (which made sense as the Wendigo's necromatic ability did not restore the already dead tissues).
Once the Creed family moved into Ludlow, Dr. Louis Creed's daughter Ellen, who was nicknamed "Ellie", lost her cat on the highway. So an old Jud took Louis to the Micmac burial ground and persuaded him to bury the cat. The cat was subsequently reborn and came back to Louis' house the next day. Wendigo's necromatic force which ensured this turn of events however, resulted the cat to become more aggressive than usual as well as inducing it with craving for flesh and emanating a terrible smell like a corpse.
Shortly after, Louis' infant son Gage was killed on the highway when he was mowed down by a lorry. Louis went mad and, despite Jud's protests, took Gage up from his grave and carried him through the woods to the Micmac cemetery, narrowly avoiding the Wendigo on the way, whose presence he actually saw. The Wendigo let Louis pass unimpeded, as it knew what he was about to do. Louis buried his son and the next morning his son had reanimated.
His son, reanimated by the Wendigo's necromatic force as with the cat that buried earlier, proceeded to kill Jud and Louis' wife, and then came for Louis. But Louis was quick, he killed the reanimated cat, and then killed his reanimated son. The Wendigo, bereft of a human body for instruments of his destructive necromatic influence, biding its time in the woods as it waited for another victim. Louis happened to drag his dead wife through the trees to the Micmac cemetery - one of his friends tried to follow, but was scared off by the Wendigo laughing.
The Wendigo reanimated Rachel Creed's body and she walked back to Louis' house and killed him that night, completing its vengeance against the townspeople.
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon[]
A young teen girl named Trish McFarland stumbled off her route in the woods while she hiked with her family. She got increasingly lost and had numerous breakdowns. The Wendigo then took advantage of that, pursued her, and intended her to be its next victim.
During the course of her journey, the Wendigo left grisly omens through the woods, such as mutilated deer. Three supernatural messengers came to Trish in the woods, such as the Subaudible, (her family's view of God) another messenger in the form of her science teacher, and a prophet of the God of the Lost, which was the Wendigo. The Wendigo's Prophet said that resisting the pull of the Wendigo was useless and that the Wendigo was irresistible: All who resisted, were met with death. Trish denied ending up as food and persisted in trying to escape the forest.
Eventually, through sheer will, Trish found a way out, and ended up on a motorway through the woods, but was accosted by the God of the Lost; the Wendigo, in the form of a grizzly bear, which then attacked her. Trish threw her walkman at it, but the Wendigo was shot at briefly by a hunter and retreated after it saw that it had met its match. Trish was then subsequently rescued while the Wendigo remained in the woods and waited for more victims.
In Films[]
Pet Sematary (2019)[]
The Wendigo as seen in Pet Sematary (2019).
In the 2019 adaptation, the Wendigo is once again the source of dark forces that haunt the titular cemetery. True to its portrayal in the book, the Wendigo has a powerful presence over Pet Sematary, so much that its existence was explicitly documented in the accounts pertaining the said burial ground.
Other than resurrecting the deceased who buried someone at Pet Sematary, Wendigo briefly made its presence known to a grief-stricken Louis Creed as he was carrying the exhumed body of his 9-year-old daughter beyond the ruins of the Pet Sematary to the ancient resurrection grounds that lie deeper in the woods. As he passes through Little God Swamp, the mist closes around the Wendigo's towering form before it disappears. Though Creed is able to see the glimpse of it, he is unsure what he just saw (which is exactly how it plays out in the novel).
