Yara-ma-yha-WHO, did you ask?
I don't know who was the owner of that little book of stories of demons around the world but that slim dog-eared volume had it's place well hidden among the Agatha Christie Collection in my grand-fathers bedroom. I borrowed it occasionally and it kept me well fed with demons and frightening tales which I then used to frighten people with.
The Yara-ma-yha-who is a demonic creature found in Australia. According to legend, the creature resembles a little red man with a very big head, a large mouth with no teeth and suckers on the ends of its hands and feet.
The Yara-ma-yha-who lives in fig trees. Instead of hunting for food, it waits for an unsuspecting traveler to rest under the tree. The creature then drops down and uses its suckers to drain the victim's blood. After that it consumes the person, drinks some water, and takes a nap. When the Yara-ma-yha-who awakens, it vomits the victim, leaving it shorter than before. The victim's skin now also has a reddish tint to it that it didn't have before. It repeats this process several times. And at length, the victim is transformed into a Yara-ma-yha-who itself!!!!
No, I will not leave you with an image. Sometimes the most frightening ones come out of our own heads. Instead, I will leave you with a quote from one of my favourite authors of all time.
“The 3 types of terror:
The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it's when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm.
The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it's when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm.
And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It's when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there's nothing there...”
No comments:
Post a Comment