Using this site in class

What is here

Twenty-one creatures from four traditions — Slavic, Philippine, Mesoamerican, with the Kalevala to come — each written from named sources, with the collection or the fieldwork identified on the page and the illustrations made from those descriptions rather than from other pictures.

All of it is free to use, copy and adapt in class, including on handouts and slides. You do not need to ask. The terms are on the illustrations page.

Comparing two traditions

The most common task this site is useful for is also the one it is built around. These pieces each set two creatures side by side and work through what is shared, what differs, and why:

• Rusalka and La Llorona — a woman at the water in Russia and in Mexico. Same figure, opposite guilt.
• Leshy and tikbalang — a Russian forest and a Philippine mountain path produce the same trick and the same cure.
• Aswang or manananggal — the one that is most often asked as a question and is really a question about categories.

The genres

Myth, legend, folktale — what separates them, where the distinction fails, and four worked examples from the creatures here.

Starting points by tradition

• Slavic — ten creatures. Baba Yaga is the fullest page; the domovoi is the best one for discussing why a spirit is treated as a relative.
• Philippine — seven. The aswang page explains a category rather than a creature, and the kapre and tikbalang pages are both about how colonisation shows up inside folklore.
• Mesoamerican — four. La Llorona is the most widely known figure on the whole site, and her page is largely about the difference between what the sources say and what is repeated about them.

Two things worth knowing before you use it

The sources are named and the uncertainty is marked. Where we could not confirm something, the claim is absent rather than hedged. The sources page lists what remains unconfirmed.

The illustrations are AI-generated and say so. They are made from the written descriptions on each page, and where a figure's traditional depiction is a colonial caricature we illustrate the attributes and the setting instead of the body. The illustrations page explains the whole policy in a few hundred words.