This is an IHeart podcast.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is The Monster Fact,

a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing on mythical

creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.

We've been talking about mantaray's on Stuff to Blow Your Mind recently, so I thought it was

high time to discuss a selection of creatures that captivated me many years ago

when I first picked up a copy of Carol Rose's Giants, Monsters, and Dragons, an encyclopedia

of folklore legend and myth.

If you've listened to the show for any amount of time, you've heard me champion this book

a lot.

My copy is well-worn.

Rose compiles an exhaustive, if inevitably incomplete encyclopedia of mythic,

folkloric, legendary, and literary creatures, and early on I was captivated by some of the Chilean

creatures listed in its pages, several of which relate to hides and bladders. Not only are some of these possibly connected to observations of mantas and other rays,

Manta even has its own listing.

She describes the Manta as a giant sea-going monster from the folklore of Chilok, Chile.

Perhaps she means Chilohe Island. It's just the creature is described as,

quote, a flat extended skin like a cow's hide with eyes around the perimeter, four more on top

where a head would have been and tentacles and tail with claws. So this creature is said to attack

swimmers, folding around their bodies and pulling

them into the depths to consume them. Rose shares that some have speculated that the tale might

...