SOURCE: "The Demon of the Hartz" by Thomas Peckett Prest (The Calendar of Horrors, 1835) .

DESCRIPTION: "...Among the various legends current in that wild country, there is a favourite one which supposes the Hartz to be haunted by a sort of tutelar demon, in the shape of a wild man, of huge stature, his head wreathed with oak leaves, and his middle tinctured with the same, bearing in his hand a pine torn up by the root. It is certain that many persons profess to have seen such a man traversing, with huge strides, the opposite ridge of a mountain, when divided from it by a narrow glen; and indeed the fact of the apparition is so generally admitted, that modern scepticism has only found refuge by ascribing it to optical deception." ("The Demon of the Hartz" by Thomas Peckett Prest)

NOTES: The Demon of Hartz is a tall, hairy creature that wields a tree as a club. It has a way of appearing, doing the unsuspecting victim a favor such as give them great wealth then leaving. The gift in turn then causes the receiver's doom. Before that doom finishes the demon shows up to laugh at the dying.

HISTORY: Written by the man who gave us Varney the Vampire, this much shorter tale is well-told. It is set in the Hartz Mountains (Transylvania) where Marryat's famous "The Werewolf" (1839) is set. The creature reminds me of the legend of Bigfoot or the Sasquatch.

Not really?

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