In Jewish folklore, what is a golem?

A figure of clay brought to life to serve its maker

A spirit that takes possession of a living person

A demon that waits at crossroads

A ghost tied to the house it died in

In Irish folklore, what does the cry of a banshee announce?

A death about to come in the family

In Haitian folklore, what was a zombi originally described as?

A dead person raised to work under someone else's control

A spirit that steals children at night

A ghost that cannot find its own grave

A living person cursed never to sleep

In Japanese folklore, how is a tengu usually pictured?

A long-nosed or bird-like spirit of the mountains

A river creature with a dish of water on its head

A pale woman who appears in snowstorms

In Scottish and Irish folklore, what does a selkie do?

Sheds a sealskin to take human form

Appears as a horse and drowns its rider

Lures travellers off the path with a light

Washes bloodstained clothes at a ford

In Icelandic and Norwegian folklore, what happens to a troll caught in daylight?

It shrinks to the size of a mouse

In Filipino folklore, the aswang is best described as what?

A shape-shifting creature that preys on people at night

A guardian spirit of the rice harvest

A serpent that swallows the moon

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Mythology & Folklore Easy ⚡ 10 Questions ⏱️ ~6 Mins +100 XP

Monsters and Spirits of World Folklore

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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.

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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.

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Monsters and Spirits of World Folklore: all 10 questions and answers

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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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