My List of Favorite Mythical Creatures

Said to be golden, this enormous hind was a sacred creature of the Greek goddess Artemis. It also had golden antlers, hooves made of bronze or brass, and it could outrun an arrow in flight. One of the labors of Hercules, son of Zeus, was to capture the hind. Having taken almost a year to capture the female hind, Hercules completes his third labor, leaving his aunt, Hera, furious of accomplishing yet another difficult task.

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Little is known about this ghostly whale. The Bake-kujira is a Western-Japanese yōkai or ghost and is supposedly a large, ghostly and skeletal cetacean usually accompanied by strange birds and fish. It isn't known to be a malevolent spirit, but it causes a curse and general misfortune to the places it was spotted. One legend tells us a fisherman tried to wound it with a harpoon but it sailed right through the phantom-whale as it floated away.

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Anansi is a centaur-like creature having a bottom half of a spider. It is said to be part of Akan or West African folklore, being also a symbol of slave resistance and survival, and a common character in the stories of slaves taken from West Africa to work in the treacherous New World. 'Anansi' is also a word for 'spider' in the Akan language. Being also a cunning creature, Anansi is known to bear skill and wisdom in speech.

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Found regularly in Mayan mythology, Camazotz was a bat god, resembling a gargantuan mutated bat, associated with the night, death, and sacrifice. In the K'iche' language, 'camazotz' signifies 'death bat' ('kame'= death; 'sotz'= bat), hence its symbolism. In the cultural narrative of Popol Vuh, two heroic twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, encounter creatures that seem to be Camazotz' disciples, and hid inside their own blowguns to wait until the sun rose and the monstrosities disappeared.

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Deriving from Celtic legends, a bugbear was a type of hobgoblin-like creature used mainly to frighten disobedient children. Its name could derive from Middle English, Old Welsh, Old Scots, or even German. In other legends, a bugbear is described as a creepy bear, and not a hobgoblin hybrid, that hid in medieval England's woods and scared the children. They were described this way in an English translation of an Italian play around 1565, named 'the Buggbear'.

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The Alkonost was a bird from Russian mythos having the head of a woman. Her voice is amazingly beautiful, but those who hear her singing forget all of their memories and want nothing more than to hear the Alkonost's splendiferous voice. It is said that she lives in the underworld with her counterpart, the Sirin, who, unlike the Alkonost, would only sing songs to saints, and those who weren't would forget everything then die.

Picture from 'ancient-origins.net'

According to Japanese and Chinese legends, Bai Ze was a "bovine or monstrous felid creature with nine eyes and six horns, arranged in sets of three and two on both its flanks and its man-like face". Apparently the Yellow Emperor (Huang Di) had encountered Bai Ze while he was patrolling in the East. The emperor wrote his sightings in a book called 'Bai Ze Tu'. The book itself no longer exists for certain reasons, but fragments from the original copy have been written in other texts.

Picture from 'chinawhisper.com'

In heraldry, the Allocamelus, or Donkey-Camel, has the head of a donkey and the body of a camel. Nowadays, it is more commonly known as a llama. The English Eastland Company had first used it as a crest, and then later on by the Russia Company. *sorry if this was a disappointment for myth-lovers, and that the Allocamelus was just a llama, but as one of my favorites, I think it deserves a spot in this list of mine*

Picture from Wikipedia

Adlets are a hybrid in Inuit mythology of a dog and a human. These vicious creatures run with alacrtiy, and are often portrayed as always having conflicts with Inuit men, leading to battles. The word 'adlet' used to describe these canid creatures most likely comes from the word 'ad', which signifies 'below', denoting 'those below'. Also called 'Erqigdlet', these monstrous Adlets are also much taller than simple human beings, and some rumors even depict them as cannibals.

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Most commonly known as a Zodiac sign, Capricornus is a mythical creature having the upper part of a goat, and ending with a tail of a fish. Being mostly known as the Zodiac sign, the Capricornus has never appeared in a myth or legend, representing only a constellation and barely being noticed as a mythical creature. As a personal though, it resembles enormously the Hippocampi, the half-horse half-fish creatures of Greek mythology.

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