With thoughts of sugarplums dancing in your head, you may not be worried about what goes bump in the night during these long winter months. However, Santa Claus and Jack Frost aren’t the only characters that come with the cold, dark winter.

Throughout history, several mythical creatures and monsters have scared generations of people who were getting into the Christmas spirit. Winter brings not only cheer and happiness but fright and terror to those who still believe in ancient myths of ice monsters and wicked snow creatures.

While most of us are getting ready for winter with holiday preparations and hand warmers, others are anxiously awaiting the arrival of a wild assortment of monsters. Here is a collection of evil winter creatures you definitely don’t want to run into this holiday season.

10 Yuki-onna

Just because she’s pretty doesn’t mean you should ask her in for a drink. Yuki-onna (“snow woman”) is a myth with apparent sightings documented as far back as the 14th century. The Yuki-onna is said to be an evil being taking the form of a beautiful woman.

With long, dark hair and skin so pale that it appears transparent, she is a beautiful woman at first sight. Many say that she does not even have feet as she glides around during harsh snowstorms and blizzards. She appears to travelers who are lost or stranded in bad weather and kills them with her frigid breath, leaving behind nothing but frost-coated corpses.

Some say that she is able to manifest as a woman holding a baby, enticing well-intentioned strangers to help her and her poor child out of the storm. As soon as a mortal touches her baby, that human being is frozen on the spot. While her beauty is enticing, it is known that she can be identified by her eyes, which strike fear into the heart of any mortal if he is unfortunate enough to gaze into them.^[1]

9 Chenoo

Chenoos also take a humanlike form, and yet they are much more frightening. Of course, this may be because they are human-eating giants. Maybe the most terrifying thing is that they were once mere humans, which essentially makes them really tall, overweight cannibals with a lack of proper hygiene.

Occasionally, an evil spirit will possess a human, turning him into a Chenoo. More often, however, a human is turned into a Chenoo as a result of such a heinous crime that it is believed one cannot remain human after it is committed.^[2]

This crime?

Cannibalism. Yes, almost every Chenoo was once just a man-eating human. Due to this crime, it is said that the heart turns to pure ice, triggering the change from human to monster.

Unlike most other evil creatures, though, a Chenoo can return to its human form. To do this, the heart must either be extracted or thrown up by the Chenoo itself. Then the icy heart must be destroyed by being completely melted. When the Chenoo has its heart replaced by a human heart, it turns back into a human.

The lesson here? Don’t eat other people!

8 Ijiraq

An Inuit shape-shifter, the Ijiraq preys on small children and those with naive hearts. No one knows what an Ijiraq looks like in true form as it is invisible when not shape-shifting into its decided form. As a result, they are very hard to spot.

They can appear as any sentient being they desire, making their tactic similar to guerrilla warfare. It is said that they live in a world between the living and dead. This world cannot be reached by mortals.

If a human were to be near their home, the human is suddenly confused and gets turned around, ensuring their evil stomping grounds are never discovered. However, these beasts can take children with them and then feast on the kids with their shape-shifting friends.

Ijiraqs lure children far away from their villages where these monsters will abandon, hide, or eat the children. If the child is spared as a meal, he still will never be able to find his way home, making his death drawn-out and cruel.^[3]

The only hope for surviving such an encounter is listening closely. When an Ijiraq arrives, a humanlike whistle is heard. Yet there is no source. If you hear this upon meeting someone, it is a good sign to run as it’s probably a shape-shifter looking for its next tasty meal.

7 Nuckelavee

This creature is the centaur from your worst nightmares. A crude depiction of a creature similar to a centaur yet much more sinister is what people typically believe that a nuckelavee looks like. They have two heads with one giant red eye that resembles flames.

Most disturbing, perhaps, is the fact that they have no skin and you can see their black blood coursing through their twisted veins. A demon that roams the snow-laden grounds of Scotland’s uppermost northern isles is confined during the summer months, which only makes it more eager to cause pain and suffering during the winter.

During the summer, the Sea Mither, or spirit of summer, is able to keep these demons at bay because they live underwater then and only emerge when the Sea Mither can no longer control them. It is said that the breath of the nuckelavee is toxic, and just one faint breath can kill even the strongest of men.^[4]

The nuckelavee has been blamed for past famines and droughts within the surrounding villages. The villagers used to say a prayer each time its name was uttered as they were terrified that the nuckelavee would torment them for speaking such taboo.

6 Mahaha

The Mahaha is another Inuit demon that terrorizes the Canadian Arctic. They are extremely gaunt yet muscular, with strength unimaginable. They have ice-blue skin that appears to be stretched so tightly around their bodies that their bones are visibly protruding. The creature’s head hangs low as its large, sullen eyes peer at its victims from behind the stringy hair falling over its face.

The Mahaha is always smiling and giggling as it thoroughly enjoys the torture of its victims and becomes giddy upon having a new one. This monster has inhumanly long fingernails that resemble knives. With these nails, the Mahaha “tickles” its victims to death. This tickling is merely shredding the victim bit by bit.^[5]

The mark of the Mahaha is just as unsettling as the sight of the creature itself. Every last victim of the Mahaha is left with a twisted, evil smile bared as the corpse lay frozen after the attack. The sight of a victim alone was enough to strike fear into the hearts of generations lost long ago.

5 Pal-Rai-Yuk

Yet another Inuit creature, the pal-rai-yuk is purportedly a giant sea monster that resides in the bays of the Alaska Key Islands. This sea creature has a snakelike head that protrudes from the water almost 3 meters (10 ft). Although its upper body resembles a snake, it is said to have thick fur, six legs, three dorsal fins, and two heads. Each head has a long, slimy tongue ready to eat up.

Despite its size, the pal-rai-yuk is known for being able to whisk its human victims right off docks and piers so quickly that no one but the victim even notices. If one is crazy enough to try to set up a playdate with this monster, it is rumored that the creature can also be summoned.

To call the pal-rai-yuk, one must tap on the bottom of a wooden pier. If you’re feeling a little crazy, you can even summon it via the bottom of a wooden kayak. While this monster stays in the water throughout most of the year, it is able to “swim through the earth” with the aid of snow during the winter months.^[6]

4 Kogukhpak

One of the oldest Yupik mythological tales is the story of the Kogukhpak. Over 40,000 years ago, it was believed that mammoth carcasses were actually the corpses of these subterranean monsters. These massive creatures were said to have large tusks like a mammoth. Yet, they had bulbous bodies and legs like frogs.

As the Sun was the only thing that could kill them, they lived underground for most of the year. The winter solstice is the only time that they can emerge from the earth to hunt and ignite the fear of the locals.^[7]

Those mammoth skeletons were rumored to be from the foolish Kogukhpak that stayed out a little too long during their solstice solitude and were evaporated as soon as the smallest bit of sunlight touched their round, bulging bodies.

3 Qiqirn

While some believe it to be a vampire dog or a hellhound, the Qiqirn is typically known as a large, evil, spirit dog. It is very easily distinguished from a regular dog as it is completely bald with the exception of its paws, the tip of its tail, and the area around its mouth.

These spirit dogs approach travelers during the winter months when they are alone at night in unknown lands. When the beasts get close enough to the traveler, he will suffer endless fits until liberated from the pain by death.

While this may seem awful, it is easy to ward off a Qiqirn as they are known for being just as skittish as they are fierce. As long as you can identify the beast, you can escape its wrath. Simply shouting the name of the being sends it running with fear.^[8]

A Qiqirn feeds off the unwitting and feels threatened when its intended victim knows its intentions.

2 Wendigo

Native to the northern forests of the Atlantic coast, wendigos are humanlike, man-eating monsters from Algonquian folklore. Known for its striking height of 5 meters (15 ft), this creature is typically associated with famine and hunger as well as the disappearances of many villagers long ago.

Wendigos have an ash-gray skin tone with inhumanly sullen eyes. Their lips are said to be dried out and always covered in blood. While they have a humanlike torso, they have unnaturally long limbs with razor-sharp claws at each end. Their heads are a human-wolf hybrid with horns above the forehead.

Known as “the spirits of lonely places,” wendigos lure lone victims away from others with an imitation of a human voice. The creatures offer warmth and shelter. Once a human is successfully trapped, the wendigos continue to feast on the victim’s flesh. It is said that the putrid smell of their breath reeks of death and decay.^[9]

These creatures can also possess humans. If a person is too greedy, he could be susceptible to wendigo possession and develop an insatiable craving for human flesh himself.

1 Kallikantzaroi

Ever met someone who tried extremely hard to be the best at something, but he could never seem to achieve his goal?

In the mythical world, that is a kallikantzaros of Greek mythology. No matter how hard they try at being evil, they are just no good at it.

These tiny, gnomelike creatures spend their lives working from home, which just happens to be the center of the Earth. They spend the year hacking down the tree of life, which holds up the Earth, in an attempt to end mankind.

They have one flaw, though. During the 12 days of winter solstice, kallikantzaroi can come to the Earth’s surface, something they cannot resist. While they are not inherently evil, they do wreak havoc on humans’ homes and villages when let out.^[10]

People would ward them off by setting colanders on their doorsteps before nighttime. Kallikantzaroi are known for being incredibly dumb, so much so that they cannot even count to three. It is believed that they will waste away in front of the colander trying to count all the holes until sunrise, when they are forced back into the Earth.

When these annoying creatures finally return to their home, they will find that the tree of life has completely restored itself. They spend the rest of the year trying to hack it down again until they can come to the surface once more.

Mary I of England was the only surviving child of King Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine. As the Catholic queen of a country that had fallen into religious conflict and established a breakaway church, she saw it as her duty to bring her subjects back under the “true” religion. This led her to persecute hundreds of Protestants after she came to power.

Overshadowed by her sister and successor, the Protestant Elizabeth I, Mary has largely been pushed aside in the public’s imagination. Today, most people associate her reign only with the Marian persecutions, and her chilling moniker, “Bloody Mary,” is probably more famous than she is. But as with most historical figures, there’s more to her story.

Here are ten reasons Mary wasn’t as evil as we’ve been taught.

10 Born into a Divided Family

Mary’s mother was Catherine of Aragon, a Spanish princess who’d been betrothed from a young age to young Arthur of the House of Tudor, then heir to the English throne. Shortly after the marriage, Arthur, in typical medieval fashion, succumbed to an untimely death, leaving the teenaged Catherine a widow in a foreign land. Arthur’s father, Henry VII, was also widowed and considered marrying Catherine himself but eventually proposed she wed his younger son and new heir, the future Henry VIII.

Negotiations over the marriage took so long that by the time it happened, Henry had already succeeded his father, and Catherine was in her twenties. It was into this tangled mess that Mary arrived in 1516 after several failed pregnancies. Her birth came at a time when royal parents were not exactly on the up and up regarding daughters being equal to sons. Altogether, Catherine gave birth to six children, including three sons, but none survived except Mary. The absence of a male heir eventually completely pulled Henry VIII away from his family.^[1]

9 Traumatized as a Teenager by Her Father

With no male heir, Henry VIII grew increasingly obsessed with the topic, seeking desperately to find an explanation for his lack of sons. Renaissance enlightenment principles aside, he concluded that by taking his brother’s widow as his wife, he’d broken the laws of God and been cursed with no heirs, even though the marriage had been sanctioned by the Vatican. Whether he legitimately believed this or simply found it a convenient pretext to remarry, only he knew.

Although Mary was already being educated as heiress presumptive, Henry remained vehemently opposed to a female successor. First, he appealed to the Pope to dissolve his marriage to Catherine. When that failed, he enlisted allies to continue with annulment proceedings domestically, undertook a secret marriage to his mistress, Anne Boleyn, and appointed himself Supreme Head of the Church in England. To uphold the claim that his marriage to Catherine had never been valid to begin with, he delegitimized the teenage Mary and removed her from the line of succession, all before Anne’s first child had even been born.^[2]

8 Humiliated and Forced to Wait on Her Baby Sister

In 1533, Anne gave birth to Elizabeth, her first and only child with Henry. Having been stripped of her royal titles, Mary was further humiliated by being made an attendant to her infant sister, who had replaced her in the line of succession. To make matters worse, Mary’s mother, Catherine, by this point, had been banished from court, and mother and daughter were officially forbidden from communicating.

For years, Mary refused to cave to pressure to accept her illegitimacy and recognize her father as head of the church, a testament to her strength of character in the face of what must have seemed insurmountable odds. Eventually, she did make those pronouncements but sent a secret message to the Pope explaining she’d done so under duress. Despite what Elizabeth’s birth and position represented for her, Mary loved her sister and was influential in getting her back on good terms with their father after he executed Elizabeth’s mother, Anne, for treason.^[3]

7 Spared the Life of Her Usurper

After Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, gave birth to a son named Edward, Mary assumed she’d never be queen. If all went according to Henry’s plan, Edward would succeed him and have sons of his own. And Mary would live the life of any ordinary princess. Edward did become king but lived only a few years after that, dying in his teens of a respiratory illness, having neither married nor had children. Although their father had reinstated Mary to the line of succession, Edward again removed her as he lay dying, not because he didn’t want a female heir but because he didn’t want her to undo the work of the Reformation, in which he’d been brought up.

Edward and Mary’s sister Elizabeth had also been raised Protestant, like Edward, but legally it would’ve been inadvisable to exclude only Mary, who held the stronger claim as the eldest. To this end, he also bypassed Elizabeth and instead designated his Protestant cousin, Jane Grey, as heir. After Edward’s death, Jane’s reign lasted a matter of days, with Mary rallying supporters and marching on London. Knowing Jane had only followed orders, Mary spared her life. Tragically, Jane remained a pawn in the conspirators’ dealings and eventually was put to death to thwart further attempts to unseat Mary.^[4]

6 Courageous and Trailblazing for the Time

Although feminism wasn’t exactly a hot topic in Mary’s time, her life was as close an example to it as we might expect for a sixteenth-century queen. In one of her most daring moments, Mary fled to a loyalist outpost as soon as she heard that her brother, Edward VI, was near death. If she’d remained nearby, she’d have been imprisoned and prevented from ascending the throne by Edward’s supporters, spelling the end of the Tudor dynasty. She was bold, decisive, and politically astute in an era when women were chiefly praised for modesty and obedience.

As Henry VIII’s eldest surviving heir, Mary based her claim to the throne on legitimacy, sidelining the topic of religion. This gained her support from both Catholics and Protestants. Both the common people and gentry came to her side, and Jane Grey’s government fell apart within days. Not long after Mary’s proclamation, Parliament passed an act enshrining the full and absolute power of the crown irrespective of gender, establishing equal rights between kings and queens regnant.^[5]

5 Guided by the Religious Conventions of Her Time

Today, we’d be horrified at the idea of burning someone at the stake for any reason, let alone their religious beliefs. But Mary grew up in a time when the importance of practicing the true religion was a matter of salvation. She believed her brother’s death proved God wanted a Catholic on the throne. Seeing the Pope as God’s representative on earth, she rejected the title of Supreme Head of the Church.

For Mary, finding herself on a throne she thought she’d never ascend was a vindication of her beliefs. To allow England to continue its course of separation from the Vatican would’ve been an affront to her duties as sovereign. Protestants who refused to convert back to Catholicism paid with their lives in a gruesome manner, but everything Mary had been taught told her it was her obligation to root out heresy in her dominions.^[6]

4 No Different from Other Monarchs of the Age

Giving someone the title “Bloody Mary” conjures up images of a cold, ruthless killer. And though you might argue the shoe fits, the truth is Mary was no different from other monarchs of the time when it came to eliminating disobedient subjects. In pursuit of his ambition to leave his marriage and father sons with other women, Henry VIII, who never quite reconciled his Catholic upbringing with his zeal for reform, put both Catholics and reformers to death, including death by burning.

Mary’s successor, Elizabeth I, not only executed many of her own subjects but even put to death a fellow queen. While it’s true that Mary’s infamous burnings reached almost 300 in a short period, Elizabeth once ordered over twice as many executions after quashing a Catholic rebellion early on in her rule. Of course, neither sister ever reached the dizzying heights of their father. By the end of his 36-year reign, Henry VIII had executed an estimated 57,000 people, a bone-chilling average of 1,500 death sentences a year. Among the victims were two of his own wives. And these numbers leave out what was happening in other parts of the world whose leaders were often even more brutal.^[7]

3 Counter-Reformation Was Popular During Her Reign

Since it was ultimately unsuccessful, it’s easy to imagine Mary’s attempt to re-Catholicize England as unpopular, but the truth is it wasn’t. Of course, those who subscribed to the principles of the Reformation were opposed, but Mary came to the throne less than a quarter-century after her father’s break with Rome. At that time, the question of religion in England was far from resolved, with Catholics still outnumbering Protestants.

Before Mary even set out her religious policy, news of her accession brought the revival of Catholic Mass in churches across the realm. She was no tyrant either—Parliament largely supported Mary’s policies and repealed most of her brother’s and father’s reforms. Eighteen months into her reign, England was fully realigned with the Catholic Church. Had Mary produced an heir, the child would’ve been raised Catholic, the Reformation may have fizzled out, and the restoration would’ve gone down in history as a cornerstone of her reign.^[8]

2 Laid the Groundwork for Some of Her Successor’s Achievements

Mary’s reign has largely been characterized by historians as ineffective and backward-looking, but these are oversimplifications. The two biggest “failures” of Mary’s reign—attempting to re-Catholicize England and the loss of the historically English territory of Calais in France—are often judged out of context (as we’ve already seen concerning the restoration). Future English monarchs presided over the loss of territories much more extensive than Calais, but it didn’t define their reigns, nor was it seen as evidence of their unsuitability.

In fact, Mary was a conscientious monarch who worked tremendously hard. Although her marriage to a foreigner was initially unpopular, she ensured her rights as queen were not ceded to her husband. During her reign, she undertook reforms in the navy as well as in coinage and the militia, reendowed several hospitals, and established a groundbreaking trading company with Russia. A revised customs book increased crown revenue and remained in effect through the reign of her successor. She also had plans drawn up for currency reform, which were carried out after her death.^[9]

1 Died Too Soon to Consolidate Her Policies

Despite having suffered from ailments of the reproductive system for years, Mary was eager to birth an heir and secure the succession. In 1554, she married the future Philip II of Spain, but the union produced no children. Although Mary was genuinely in love with her husband, by the time it was apparent she wouldn’t become pregnant, he’d retreated to his own dominions abroad. His absence affected her greatly, perhaps eliciting bitter memories of abandonment from her youth.

Only five years into her reign, Mary died during a flu epidemic at 42, having spent the last months of her life suffering from the same chronic disorders that had plagued her since adolescence. With no heir of her own, she had no one to carry on her legacy, and her reign proved much too short for her policies to take effect. Although considered illegitimate by Catholics, her sister Elizabeth was crowned in 1559 and soon reestablished the Protestant church. Her reign has largely gone down in history as a golden age, in sharp contrast with Mary’s.

It’s often said that history is written by the victors. Mary I of England, whose motto as queen was “Truth, the daughter of time,” would probably agree.^[10]