Leshy

And then, like, as your vision kind of keeps twisting, you see this, like, black lake, just, like, almost looks like ichor, just black going across a moonless sky into darkness.

And then you see this creature that looks like, you've never seen it before, but for player knowledge, it looks like the Leshy that you had seen, just kind of staring over you, but it's all shadows.

You can't see, like, what it's made out of.

And then you just pull your hand away.

What's I absolutely love this time of year, and there are a few games that I love to revisit every spooky season.

So first up, you're going to hear Hold Music from Kentucky Route Zero and Leshy's Theme from Inscription.

Then we'll move it on over to Mallard's Tomb from Night in the Woods and Friends in the Shadows from Creature Kitchen, which is one of my new favorite creepy cozy games.

We'll close it all out with the theme from Slay the Princess, which I think goes really nicely into the restless town from Dredge.

Have you cut down any trees lately? You better stop cutting down all those fucking trees.

The Lorex may seem like a cute little Dr. Seuss nursery rhyme, but the Leshy is the real creature that inspired the story of the Lorex.

And if you've not heard of the Leshy, I believe it could be the creature that is responsible for most of the missing 411 phenomenon.

If you're unfamiliar with the missing 411, A lot of the cases share one commonality.

Somebody goes missing in a national park or in the woods that is mostly an experienced hiker, an experienced hunter, just an all-around outdoors person.

Bad weather comes in.

There's unexpected fog.

The Leshy is a creature that is king of the forest, essentially the guardian of the forest.

Some people think that the hide-behind might just be the North American name for a concept that exists in Slavic culture called the leshy.

And for those of you who have been listening to us for a while, you may remember that we actually talked about leshies last year in episode 211, The Belarusian Bigfoot.

But for those who don't remember, the Leshy is basically a forest deity from pagan Slavic mythology.

He's thought to be the ruler of all the smaller forest beings.

He appears as a masculine humanoid with shapeshifting powers.

The Leshy can shrink to the size of a blade of grass or grow as tall as the tallest tree in the forest, which might explain why some people say, oh, I saw a six-foot hide behind.

Oh, I saw a three-foot hide behind.

because the leshy has the ability to shapeshift its size.

Now, in folklore, entities like this are known as the genius loci, the protective conscious spirit of a specific place.

In Slavic mythology, it would be called a leshy, a forest guardian that can alter its size from the height of a blade of grass to the canopy of the tallest fir.

In British lore, the woods themselves are often portrayed as having a slow, deliberate consciousness.

The fact that this creature looked so haggard and moved with such painful effort raises a haunting question.

It was a tiny humanoid figure, but its body was not made of recognizable flesh.

The hiker described the creature as looking remarkably like a green, leafy artichoke.

Its body was covered in thick, overlapping, fleshy green scales or leaves, perfectly mimicking the rough, damp foliage of the Mendip underbrush.

It was a masterclass in elemental camouflage.

I have been yelled at about this pronunciation online before.

I believe it's Leshy is the folk character, this demon warden of the woods that, that becomes the, uh, one main male character.

So she goes to him- ... to desperate to try and make a bargain, and he's basically like, "Listen, like, if you work in my sentient house for a year, I will grant you whatever wish that you want.

I'll take your magic away, okay?" And so she's like, "Great, I'll do it." And so she starts doing it, but the problem is that what he really needs help with is magic stuff.

Like a ghost.

Or in Russia we have leshy.

... rules the forest and can possess.