31 Days of Monsters 2014: Catoblepas

The Catoblepas was a disgusting beast encountered in Ethiopia by the Greeks. It had the body of a buffalo, the neck of a serpent,  ridged scales down its back, a flail-like tail and a massive tusked head that was so heavy it could only look down. It's bloodshot gaze was enough to stun a man at fifty paces, and because it fed solely on poisonous grasses and roots, it emitted a stench that could kill and allegedly turn a corpse to stone. It's scales and sheer size made it almost impossible to kill, but since it was fairly docile in nature — only killing passively — it was best to just steer clear of them, and hope they never wandered too near a settlement.

31 Days of Monsters 2014: Harpy

In Greek mythology, a harpy was a vicious half-bird-half-woman monster that punished evildoers, or anyone who displeased the gods. Famously, Zeus set harpies to plague the blind seer Phineas after he revealed too much about the activities of the gods. Dante imagined a place in Hell filled with harpies that punished suicides.

31 Days of Monsters: Echidna, Mother of Monsters

Echidna, daughter of Tartarus (The Darkness) and Gaia (The Earth) is called the Mother of Monsters by the Greeks. With her brother Typhon, she bore an almost endless line of mythology's greatest terrors: Cerberus the three-headed guardian of Hades; Orthrus, his two-headed brother; The Lernaean Hydra; Medusa and her sister Gorgons; Ladon, the dragon protector of the golden apples; The Colchian Dragon, guardian of the Golden Fleece; The Caucasian Eagle, tormentor of Prometheus; The Chimera, The Crommyonian Sow; The Nemean Lion; The Sphynx; Scylla and Charybdis and more. She is described as incredibly beautiful, with the upper half of a woman, and, below the waist, the body of an enormous serpent. She is eternal, and undying, and although her brother was imprisoned within Mt. Etna after the siblings attacked Zeus, Echidna and her children were allowed their freedom as a challenge to all future adventurers.

That wraps up this year's 31 Days of Monsters. I hope you enjoyed the selection this year. Please feel free to drop me a line at any time to tell me what you think. Happy Halloween.

31 Days of Monsters: The Minotaur

The Minotaur was the monstrous, half-human, half-bull offspring of King Minos of Crete's wife and a sacrificial bull. Being a supernatural creature, it grew to crave the blood and flesh of men and was sealed in a gigantic labyrinth designed and built be Daedalus and his son Icarus. Youths were dropped into the labyrinth at regular intervals to feed the beast.