wendigo

1. (mythology) A malevolent and violent cannibal spirit found in Anishinaabe, Ojibwe, and Cree mythology, which is said to inhabit the body of a living person and possess him or her to commit murder.Examples: "Through the pine woods of Keewaydin, / Over the snows of Shebandowan, / The Wendigo roams in the winter's frost / And pursues to destruction the hunter. / Yet no man can meet with the Wendigo, / No man can face him or see him; / Only his track in the snow is seen, / And lost is the hunter that sees it. […] The heart that ne'er quailed on the war-path / Turns to stone at the name of the Wendigo."; "The Windigo is a flesh-eating, wintry demon with a man buried deep inside of it. In some Chippewa stories, a young girl vanquishes this monster by forcing boiling lard down its throat, thereby releasing the human at the core of ice."; "The noun windigo [Ojibwa wīntikō, Cree wīhtikōw] refers to one of a class of anthropophagous monsters, “supernatural” from a non-Algonquian perspective, who exhibit grotesque physical and behavioral abnormalities and possess great spiritual and physical power."Synonyms: wetiko, wihtikow, witigo, witiko