SOURCES:
"Shiver in the Pines" by Manly Wade Wellman (Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 1955)
".022 Swift" by Karl Edward Wagner (1980)

Description: “... That third one looked at first glimpse like a big, big man wearing a fur coat; until you saw the fur was on his skin, with warty muscles bunching through. His head was more like a frog's than anything else, wide in the mouth and big in the eye and no nose. He spread his arms and put them quiet-like round the shoulders of Reed Barnitt and Aram Harnam, and took hold with his hands that had both webs and claws....Their eyes picked up the lantern light and shone green, like the eyes of dogs. One of them ... made a little whimpering cry with no words in it. They ran from me into the dark, and I saw their backs bent more than I'd thought possible ... As I watched they sort of fell forward and ran on hands and feet. Like animals...” (“Shiver in the Pines” by Manly Wade Wellman)

NOTES: The Guardian of the Ancients is said to guard a fortune in Spanish goold in the North Carolina hills.

HISTORY: Wellman did not invent these creatures but borrowed them from actual North Carolina folklore. Karl Edward Wagner would use them in his story ".022 Swift" (1980).

INTERESTING LINK

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