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.

Autumn is the perfect time to gather around the old electric hearth we call a television set

and watch the 2014 Cartoon Network animated series over the Garden Wall.

In this much-beloved show, we follow brothers Wirt and Greg through a woodland world of

folkloric intrigue, vintage Halloween vibes, old New England charm, and heartwarming

whimsy.

Created by animator Patrick McAil, it features the voice talents of Elijah Wood,

Melanie Linsky, Christopher Lloyd, Tim Curry, and more.

Over the Garden Wall is loaded with silliness and humor,

but it's not without its spookier moments,

and its chief antagonist, an entity known only as the beast, really stands out as

an avatar of pure darkness. He appears throughout the series as a shadowy, antlered figure

with glowing eyes, and I'm not going to spoil everything here, but we eventually learn

that this entity feeds on the despair and sorrow of children and other individuals

lost in the woods.

The beast is an entity fittingly shrouded in mystery, but we can identify various points

of possible inspiration and connections to related traditions.

As is often the case in Western animation, we of course must acknowledge the devil as part of the antagonist DNA.

But there are other more obscure notes as well.

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