Snoligoster
I wasn’t going to do this one later, but realized it has a connection to the Snallygaster. Not only similar names, but the connection to racism. Although, this one comes from the swamps of Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana instead of Maryland. I’ll get to the racist part at the end, but let’s see what this thing actually is.
This is a large aquatic reptile with a spike on its back, thick hair, and no limbs. It moves by using its propeller-like tail to get through the water. The Snoligoster uses its tail to throw a victim onto the spike and make a collection of bodies. Since it’s tail is made of boney plates, it can burrow into the ground and uses the tunnel to scrape its meals off. Instead of eating them whole, they grind the corpses into mush and eats them like a slurpee. As time went on, they would develop a more crocodilian head.
Now, I tried to find more about this beast, but things got strange. A story said that it eats ‘shadow flesh’ of men, but I couldn’t figure out what that meant. This was stated in a 2015 book about fearsome creatures from lumberjack lore. The Snoligoster now knows the difference between a good shadow and an evil shadow. If it impales an evil person, they eat that shadow and a person will feel just fine. I don’t know what this means because I assume the person is dead and not feeling anything. So, what could the ‘shadow flesh’ come from?
This is a personal theory. Originally, the Snoligoster story involved a man hunting down a runaway slave in Florida. He found the slave impaled on a skinny tree that turned out to be the Snoligoster’s spike. People left the creature alone because they felt it would serve as a warning towards evil-doers and any slaves who wanted to escape. Here we have the racist origins of a creature that has been pulled away from that concept, but won’t be able to shed it entirely. I think the ‘shadow flesh’ was originally a reference to it eating slaves in order to prevent them from escaping. It’s no different than the Snallygaster being used to scare African Americans into staying indoors at night.
Legends of Windemere 
Amazing how these mythical creatures were used to instill fear and prop up racism.
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Yes. Very sad 😔
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Not that surprising though.
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Nope, not at all, given the times.
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Another one I’d never heard of. I’m so glad giant evil spiders and robots are equal opportunity killers.
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They’re so thoughtful in that way.
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I think you are right about the “shadow flesh.”
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Thanks.
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I’m intrigued as to what shadow flesh is. The shadow part implies it’s something not real, or only loosely tied to reality.
It’s so sad that it was used in a racist way, though.
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The original might have just meant that it eats a person’s shadow. Though, I think it has more to dark with slaves.
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The shadow eating does sound intriguing. How can someone be alive if their shadow was eaten?
You may be right about the folklore just trying to keep slaves from running away, though. In a lot of early pulp novels from the turn of the 20th Century they have blacks being excessively superstitious. Not sure how anyone got that idea.
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Wonder about both of those things. I think nearly every group has their own superstitions. For some reason, people think blacks have more than others. That in itself is probably a superstition born from racism.
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This is interesting. I understand the desire of the day to scare slaves, but the story is so outrageous.
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I guess it helps if the people you’re trying to scare haven’t been educated. Easier to trick them into being afraid of things and manipulate them.
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