A yearly tradition of mine is to draw a batch of monsters for each day leading up to Halloween. It started off with just the classic spooks, but has since gone on to cover everything from mythological beasts to literary nightmares to unsung creepy things I think deserve more attention.
Halloween '25
Alp
The Alp is a mischievous sprite who loves to play pranks, though its idea of a "prank" is tying hair into knots with its tongue, crushing small animals, rocking a chair all night long, re-diaper-ing babies, and draining cows dry (the Alp really loves its milk!). More than anything, though, it loves causing nightmares: the Alp sneaks into a victim's bedroom, sits on their chest and grows heavier and heavier the worse the dreams get. The Alp may also help itself to some delicious bodily fluids obtained straight from the victim's... chest.
Fortuitously there are many ways to repel an Alp, such as by shoving a lemon in its mouth, stealing its hat, sleeping with scissors in you bed, or inviting it for coffee in the morning. Alternatively one could find and plug up whatever hole the Alp crawled in, since the sleep paralysis demon is bizarrely incapable of using any other exit other than where it entered, though this tends to turn the Alp... human! Some victims become inexplicably infatuated with their former tormentor, going so far as to marry and even have kids with it, up until their "beloved" convinces them to unplug that old hole — at which point the restored Alp flees, never to be seen again, the sham marriage evidently one last prank.
These man-eaters are so voracious they oftentimes bite themselves during their feeding frenzies. It doesn't help that their eyes are located under their arms.
Traditionally, it takes a century for an object to gain a soul, but in these more disposable times the discarded are aging prematurely...
Long long ago, men and women had a dispute over whether they really needed each other, and eventually split into two separate societies. Things took a turn for the worse when the women began amusing themselves with inanimate objects and giving birth to unnatural monsters known as the Anaye (Alien Gods).
The Binaye Ahani (Eye Killers) were a set of siblings "fathered" by a cactus(!!!) and left in a cave to die. These Anaye not only survived but developed the curious ability to fire lightning out of their eyes that turned whatever they hit into gemstones. Over time, people would be lured to their grotto by the promise of riches only to be turned into gems themselves, which of course just made the cursed cavern all the more enticing.
Eventually the heroic Nayenezgani (Monster Slayer) was tasked with stopping the Eye Killers. During their fight, he threw salt into the fireplace (the Binaye Ahani retaining enough of their humanity to build themselves a proper home instead of living in a bare cave), which blinded the beasts long enough for Nayenezgani to kill them all.
Only the best of the best of our Master's Great and Terrible Horde earn the privilege, the honor, of their very own draconic steed. It takes years, decades even, of loyalty, brutality, cunning, and—
—Oh you got ate! Errr, ah, umm... guess, hrm, I guess you weren't worthy after all. Yes, yes, glory to the vigilant dactyl for keeping the Horde pure.
The product of the unholy union between the good Queen Ana of the Keshalyi and the evil King of the Loçolico (fairies and the damned, essentially) and also a magpie-brain pie, Melalo is the source of all maladies of the mind. This one target wasn't enough for the contagious corvid, and unfortunately Melalo decided the best solution was to convince his dad to have more kids...
Melalo also tears out human hearts with his claws. This has nothing to do with his disease schemes, he just loves eating hearts!
Lilyi is the second demonic child of Ana, the good Queen of the Keshalyi, conceived when the evil King of the Loçolico forced himself (and a fish cooked in donkey milk) upon Ana at the behest of their hated son, Melalo. The foul fowl took his slime eel sister as a wife and promptly spawned all manner of horrid disease-spreading children of their own, all the while convincing his father to sire more kids (one of them is just bound to be "normal," right?).
His parents may have been technically married, but Melalo was a complete bastard.
Lilyi was a direct source of illnesses herself, specifically everything that the word "discharge" is applicable to. How appropriate for her hagfish form, though Lilyi used a jellyfish-like strategy of stinging her victims with tendrils instead of the Myxini method. A small blessing, I suppose.
