Sign up for a free recipe e-book →

, ,

The Legend Behind the Film: Pet Sematary – Wendigo

Published by

on

The Legend Behind the Film: Pet Sematary – Wendigo

A lot of us love our movies and with the remake of a 80`s classic, Pet Sematary, I decided to re-watch the original and straight away, I asked myself about the Micmac Indians that were mentioned in the movie.

In the movie the Micmac Indians were the ones that used the stone circle as a burial ground and in the movie the circle was able to bring the dead back to life. OK, so these circles we see today, may not be able to bring back the dead (to my knowledge) but I have never heard of the Micmac Indians so I had a brief look at the facts.

Micmac or Mi`kmaq

One thing I noticed was differing spellings of the name for these Indians and it is said Mi`kmaq is preferred as Micmac and can be seen as colonially tainted. The history of the  Mi`kmaq before European contact is very little but they had a long pre European contact history.

The Mi`kmaq are said to be the first of the Indian  peoples in north america to establish trade with the Europeans.

Movie Legend

So in the movie Pet Sematary, the Indian burial ground marked with a medicine wheel is where the dead animals and people can be buried and brought back to life. It was said the ground became sour when the Indians dug up human remains to eat, during a harsh and long winters and by doing this they were cursed by a Wendigo spirit and in turn cursing the very ground to become evil.

Wendigo Legend

So in the movie it is said a Wendigo cursed the land leading to the land becoming sour and the dead reanimating with a Wendigo curse.

After searching information on the Wendigo the folklore about these evil spirits is more terrifying than we see in the film.

The North American Indian tribes including the Mi`kmaq had many stories of the Wendigo and in some of these stories the Wendigo is a terrifying spirit that can become visible. Some say this evil spirit appears at 15 foot in height with a ash grey appearance looking gaunt and bony and forever hungry. It was told among the communities that if you are to eat human flesh you will be cursed by the Wendigo.

So could the Wendigo reanimate the dead? Well it is said some people after eating of human flesh were possessed by the Wendigo, this as lead to an actual condition given to people that resort to cannibalism when in reach of normal food supplies, this has been named Wendigo phycosis. So the more a Wendigo eats the bigger, stronger and more powerful it becomes and we are talking supernaturally and physically powerful. Powers that give the wendigo control over animals, the weather and with age becomes a shaman with mystical abilities including summoning and controlling beasts from the surrounding lands.

So in short with a list of abilities like this, it wouldn’t be a surprise if one of these abilities is to reanimate the recently deceased animal or human to zombie like status.

The Movie inspiration

The inspiration for this movie came about when Stephen King rented an house on a very busy road in Orrington while teaching for a year at the University of Maine.

This busy road claimed the lives of a number of pets to the point the children in the area created a pet cemetery near Kings home. Kings daughter lost a cat to this road and his son also had a close call, with all these events it inspired King to write this novel. Stephen King after completing this novel believed he had gone too far and too dark with the story line and if it wasn’t for needing a final story for his contract he may have left it unpublished.

I for one I`m happy he did publish this novel.

John Williams

One response to “The Legend Behind the Film: Pet Sematary – Wendigo”

  1. Nafre de la Toundra Avatar
    Nafre de la Toundra

    Thank you for sharing your discovery of the Wendigo myth’s Indigenous origins, and more specifically, giving a face to the Mi’kmaq referred to in King’s novel and the films.
    I’d like to add a few details that, as someone part Wolastook (Malecite, cousins of the Mi’kmaq) and whose mother comes from Maine, I think need correction… not to your blog, but to King’s retelling:
    1. Where the story takes place–Penobscot Valley–is not Mi’kmaw territory, but (surprise) PENOBSCOT (Pαnawάhpskewi). Their neighbours to the East would have been the Passamaquoddy, then the Wolastokiyik, then finally the Mi’kmaq, who are more located on the Gaspésie peninsula, the St-Lawrence coast of New Brunwick and the whole of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Though the Mi’kmaq were allied with these Nations, as well as the Abénaki, in the great Wabanaki Confederacy, they did not occupy any part of present-day Maine.
    2. The Mi’kmaq did have a in their legends a Wendigo-like creature. Yet, he was not called “Wendigo”, a English-phonetic word derived from either an Ojibwe, Cree or Huron word. The Ilnu (Naskapi) up in norther-eastern Québec and Labrardor call him “Atshen”; the Wolastokiyik, “K’wakw”; the Saulteaux of Manitoba, “Wendago”–and the Mi’kmaw, “CHENOO”.
    So, why did he choose “Wendigo”? There is something to the word, which sounds like an icy menace carried on the breeze, doesn’t it…? More probably, he had read Algernon Blackwood’s 1910 novella “The Wendigo”, an undeniable classic–but also significantly detached from Indigenous folkloric reality.
    Apart from all of that, I think King was spot-on for his choice of folkloric monster to provide substance to his tale–which like the rings of the “sematary” and the “burial ground” are concentric and denote related layers and depth of meaning, but also, a perverse interconnectivity: and it is the breakdown of the family. Much interpretation of the myth centers on cannibalism–and the word “wetiko” is often translated as “cannibal”, though the origin actually is associated to the night owl’s call. Far more subtly–and relevantly–at the heart of almost every historical “wendigo” phenomenon that has been documented, from the Jesuit relations of 1661 to Swift Runner in the 19th century, from the old folktales to yes, King’s novel, the Wendigo’s true sin is framed in one thing: the destruction of the family. In fact, the cause of the individual’s transformation into a wendigo or possession by a wendigo’s spirit, was dangerous individualism; and the most powerful way to defeat a Wendigo was with a family’s love (https://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/ne/al/al49.htm) or at the very least, by correcting violence brought about by a family member.
    Frigid hails from the Nunavut tundra… which some say, is the icy land of refuge of the Wendigoag…

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment

Hello,

I’m Charlene

Welcome to Paranormal Hauntings, my cozy corner of the internet dedicated to all things paranormal. Here, I invite you to join me my journey into everything paranormal!

Let’s connect

Join the fun!

Stay updated with our latest tutorials and ideas by joining our newsletter.

Recent posts