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Monsters and Spirits of World Folklore
Every region has its own cast of things that come out after dark. These ten are among the best travelled, and each one says something about the place it came from.
About this topic
Folklore creatures are usually practical. They explain a noise, a rock formation, a death in the family, or a rule that children need to follow near water. That is why so many of them are tied to a specific landscape: the mountains behind the village, the seals on the rocks, the path across the bog. The ten here come from Ireland, Iceland, eastern Europe, Japan, the Philippines, Ghana, Haiti and the Himalaya. Several have been borrowed since by films and novels, usually with the original rules quietly dropped, so the questions stick to what the traditions themselves describe.
Questions & answers
Monsters and Spirits of World Folklore: all 10 questions and answers
Every question in this quiz is listed below with its correct answer and the reasoning behind it. Play first if you would rather not see the answers — or read through as a study sheet.
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1In Jewish folklore, what is a golem?
- A A spirit that takes possession of a living person
- B A demon that waits at crossroads
- C A ghost tied to the house it died in
- D A figure of clay brought to life to serve its maker Correct
Answer: D. A figure of clay brought to life to serve its maker
Why: The golem is shaped from earth and animated by writing or by a name, and the stories usually end with it having to be stopped. The best-known version attaches it to Rabbi Judah Loew of sixteenth-century Prague, though that telling was only written down some three hundred years later.
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2In Irish folklore, what does the cry of a banshee announce?
- A A change in the weather
- B The birth of a child
- C A death about to come in the family Correct
- D A theft of livestock
Answer: C. A death about to come in the family
Why: She is heard rather than seen, keening near the house before the death arrives. The name comes from bean si, woman of the fairy mound, and she was traditionally said to attach herself to particular families rather than to places.
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3In Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga's hut stands on what?
- A A pillar of ice
- B A pair of chicken legs Correct
- C A raft of floating logs
- D The back of a great turtle
Answer: B. A pair of chicken legs
Why: The hut turns to face visitors and has to be asked politely to turn its back on the forest. Baba Yaga herself travels in a mortar, steering with the pestle and sweeping away her tracks with a broom.
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4In Haitian folklore, what was a zombi originally described as?
- A A dead person raised to work under someone else's control Correct
- B A spirit that steals children at night
- C A ghost that cannot find its own grave
- D A living person cursed never to sleep
Answer: A. A dead person raised to work under someone else's control
Why: The older folklore is about the loss of will and forced labour rather than about eating anyone. The word reached English in the 1920s through travel writing, and the flesh-eating version people picture now dates only from the film Night of the Living Dead in 1968.
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5In Japanese folklore, how is a tengu usually pictured?
- A A river creature with a dish of water on its head
- B A shape-shifting raccoon dog
- C A pale woman who appears in snowstorms
- D A long-nosed or bird-like spirit of the mountains Correct
Answer: D. A long-nosed or bird-like spirit of the mountains
Why: Early accounts treat tengu as dangerous troublemakers, while later ones make them protectors of the mountains and formidable swordsmen. The other three describe the kappa, the tanuki and the yuki-onna.
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6In Scottish and Irish folklore, what does a selkie do?
- A Lures travellers off the path with a light
- B Washes bloodstained clothes at a ford
- C Sheds a sealskin to take human form Correct
- D Appears as a horse and drowns its rider
Answer: C. Sheds a sealskin to take human form
Why: In the usual story a man hides the skin so the selkie has to stay with him, and she leaves for the sea the moment she finds it again. The other three describe the kelpie, the will-o'-the-wisp and the bean-nighe.
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7In Icelandic and Norwegian folklore, what happens to a troll caught in daylight?
- A It has to grant a wish
- B It turns to stone Correct
- C It shrinks to the size of a mouse
- D It loses the power of speech
Answer: B. It turns to stone
Why: The rule gives local guides an explanation for the strange rock stacks along the coast and in the highlands, which are often named after trolls caught out by sunrise. Tolkien borrowed the same rule for the three trolls in The Hobbit.
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8The yeti belongs to the folklore of which mountain range?
- A The Himalaya Correct
- B The Andes
- C The Rockies
- D The Alps
Answer: A. The Himalaya
Why: The creature appears in Tibetan and Sherpa storytelling long before Western climbers took an interest in it. The nickname Abominable Snowman came from a journalist in 1921 loosely rendering a Sherpa term reported by an Everest expedition.
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9In Filipino folklore, the aswang is best described as what?
- A A guardian spirit of the rice harvest
- B A giant who carries mountains
- C A serpent that swallows the moon
- D A shape-shifting creature that preys on people at night Correct
Answer: D. A shape-shifting creature that preys on people at night
Why: Aswang is really an umbrella term covering several kinds of creature that differ from island to island. The most striking is the manananggal, which separates at the waist and flies off with only its upper half.
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10Anansi, the trickster who appears as a spider, comes from the folklore of which people?
- A The Yoruba of Nigeria
- B The Amhara of Ethiopia
- C The Akan of Ghana Correct
- D The Zulu of South Africa
Answer: C. The Akan of Ghana
Why: Anansi wins by talking rather than fighting, and in many stories he is how the world got its stories in the first place. The tales crossed the Atlantic with enslaved West Africans and survive in the Caribbean as Anancy.
Frequently asked questions about Monsters and Spirits of World Folklore
How many questions are in Monsters and Spirits of World Folklore?
Monsters and Spirits of World Folklore has 10 questions and takes about 6 minutes to finish. It is rated Easy and sits in our Mythology & Folklore category.
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Each of the 10 correct answers adds 10 XP, up to 100 XP for a clean run. Wrong answers cost you nothing, and your full question-by-question review is shown at the end.
Are the answers to Monsters and Spirits of World Folklore explained?
Yes. All 10 questions carry a written explanation of why the correct answer is right, so the quiz works as a study sheet as well as a test.
Can I replay Monsters and Spirits of World Folklore?
Yes, as often as you like. The questions and the answer options are reshuffled on each run, and you can use Practice Mistakes afterwards to retry only the ones you missed. No account is needed to play.
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