23 Eyebrow-Arching Facts About Legendary Monsters

Welcome to Monsters 101. No sharpening wooden stakes in class.
23 Eyebrow-Arching Facts About Legendary Monsters

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Hey, look, it's October, when a reader's fancy lightly turns to horror. To kick things off, we asked our readers to dig into (or up) well-known, beloved monsters and find out what makes them tick. What are their histories? Why do they behave the way they do? What gave them their weaknesses and strengths?

(Not that we want to form a party and hunt them down later, or anything.)

The Blob was allegedly based on a real event. UCLA L0GUST AIR CONDITIONER ONDITIONED WATCH PEPAIRNS The sticky, crystal-filled, fog-emitting blob in q
Haitian zombies could have been druggedup GRAuN slaves. A voodoo priest uses a chemical called tetrodotoxin to put victims into a zombie-likestate. Th
CRACKED C A Jackalopei's antlers are not actually hornsb Those are cancerous tumors created by the Shope papillomavirus.
Ever wonder why Vampires have no reflection? It's because mirrors were originally backed with silver. Some say vampires are sensitive to silver becaus
23 Eyebrow-Arching Facts About Legendary Monsters
Zombies are slow and shambling because of a single movie's choices. George Romero made the zombies in 1968's Night of the Living Dead slow and shambli
Gremlins get their mischievousness from fed-up WWIl pilots (and might be named after beer). GREMLINS THINK IT's FUN TO HURT YOU USE CARE alwayps Briti
CRACKED.COM There are two theories for why witches wear pointy hats, but both say it's a symbol of hate. One theory says it comes from the Jewish hat
The reason werewolves transform during the full moon might have to do with their bodies reacting to plasma projected from the moon, which is stronger
King Ghidora's multiple heads were inspired by Yamata no Orochi. Japanese legends describe Orochi as a dragon or snake with eight heads, which some sc
Vampires CRACKED COM were actually cataleptic people trying to escape their coffins in the Middle Ages. Cataleptic episodes, loss of consciousness and
The Creature from the Black Lagoon... ...was modeled after the Academy Award with an added set of gills around its body. CRACKED COM
The white sheet ghosts most likely were inspired by the old tradition of burying people in white shrouds.
Why are witches often depicted with warts? Because warts were considered the Devil's Mark during the Witch Panic cRA of the 1600s. Those thought to be
Q: How did Grim we come to depict the Reaper with a scythe? A: The Great Plague happened. Where: Asia and Europe When: mid-1300s Death toll estimation
Dragons breathe fire because of the way medieval art depicted hell, scholars say. In medieval art, the entrance to hell was a monster's giant mouth, b
Why do banshees scream? In Irish myth, a banshee's scream foretold a death in the house, and can be linked to keening, or traditional funeral wailin
Zombies didn't develop a taste for brains until 1985's Return of the Living Dead. The movie explains that zombies feel themselves rotting, and eating
A lich's phylactery, or soul jar, has roots in Russian folklore. In Russian mythology, Koshchei the Immortal was a powerful wizard who attempted etern
Vampires fear garlic and sunlight probably because rabid people do. Research says the vampire myth might be based on rabies. In the Balkans, 18th-cent
Before sirens were turned into sexy murderous mermaids... ...they were bird-women, sent by the underworld to guide sailors to their imminent death thr
Ghosts are transparent because of a 200-year-old fad. In the late 18th and early 19th century, translucent images were a common sight, since optical s
The only reason witches have green skin is because it looked good on film. In MGM's The Wizard of Oz, producers wanted an unusual skin color to portra
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