Legends of the Hidden Horde

Lance Martin
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Science Fiction
  • Updated Semiweekly

Legends of the Hidden Horde is a dark folklore podcast for anyone searching the night for cryptids, mythical creatures, and the old warnings we stopped believing. Hosted by Lance Martin, each short episode is an atmospheric retelling drawn from the record: oral history, older accounts, and the edge cases collectors usually skip. Not a monster-of-the-week joke. Not a hunt for proof. A lantern held up to the thing the village already knew by name. Cryptids and folk monsters from every reach of the map. Skinwalkers and swamp things. Penanggalan and sluagh. Forest guardians, lake beasts, night birds, yokai, and the Appalachian stories that never made the tourist brochure. Bigfoot is in the woods. So are the names Bigfoot crowded out. New episodes through the season. Come in if the dark already has your attention.

  1. 3d ago

    Episode 60: The Sluagh

    In episode 60 we stand on the west side of a house in the Hebrides, where the Atlantic has already taken the sun and the window is the only argument left. This is the Sluagh . The word is older than the monster. In Old Irish slúag means host, army, or crowd. In the Scottish Highlands and Islands it hardened into sluagh na marbh, the host of the dead. In Ireland the cousin-word is slua sí, the fairy host, a whirlwind of the Aos Sí that can lift a person and set them down somewhere they did not agree to go. These are not the same telling, and they should not be nailed together to make a cleaner creature. What follows keeps the Scottish host of the unforgiven dead at the center, and names the Irish edge where the same word still means the Good People on the move. SOURCES https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sluagh https://www.irishfolklore.com/creatures/sluagh/ https://spookyscotland.net/sluagh/ https://archive.org/details/carminagadelicah02carm https://archive.org/details/superstitionsofh00camp

    Episode 60: The Sluagh

  2. 5d ago

    Episode 59: Penanggalan

    Tonight we go under the floor of a Malay house on stilts, where the night smells of river mud and woodsmoke. This is episode 59 the Penanggalan. The name comes from tanggal, meaning to take off, or to detach. The Penanggalan is not a corpse that learned to walk. In the older Malay telling she is a living woman who has learned, or been forced, to leave her body behind. These stories belong to Malay communities in what is now Malaysia, and they have cousins that must not be flattened into one monster: the Krasue of Thailand, the Kasu of Laos, the Ahp of Cambodia, the Leyak and Kuyang of the Indonesian islands, the Ma Lai of Vietnam, the Manananggal of the Philippines, all have the  Same hunger, but they are not the same creature. What follows stays with the Malay Penanggalan, and names the edges where the tellings part. Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penanggalan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikayat_Abdullah https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/monster-mythology-penanggalan https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvjk2ttc https://thehorrorcollection.com/penanggalan-witch-who-detaches-head/ https://godsandmonsters.info/penanggalan/

    Episode 59: Penanggalan

  3. Oct 1

    Episode 58: Leshy (Lesovik)

    In Episode 58 we head deep into eastern Europe where the elders will tell you that the forest north of the last fence does not begin with trees. It begins with etiquette. A woman from a Vologda parish, speaking to a collector more than a century ago, put it without poetry. You do not enter loud. You do not whistle. You ask. Bread and salt if you have them. A word if you do not. Les-lesochek, dai nam gribochok. Forest, little forest, give us a mushroom. Then you take what was offered and you thank the room you were allowed to stand in. The room has a landlord. In Russian he is most often Leshy Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leshy https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Леший https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leszy https://ru.ruwiki.ru/wiki/Леший https://bigenc.ru/c/leshii-cbc5e5 https://cultura-russia.ru/article/leshij https://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/ruwiki/357 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Mythology_of_All_Races/Volume_3/Slavic/Part_1/Chapter_7 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15554120251397689 https://www.doi.org/10.1177/15554120251397689 https://oldfolklore.com/leshy-the-guardian-spirit-of-the-forest/ https://allthatsinteresting.com/leshy https://occult-world.com/leshii/ https://www.thoughtco.com/leshy-4774301 https://wierni-ojczyznie.pl/artykuly/245-leszy-kim-byl-slowianski-wladca-lasu-i-dlaczego-budzil-lek

    Episode 58: Leshy (Lesovik)

  4. Sep 29

    Episode 57: Popobawa

    In episode 57 we cover a legend that includes nocturnal assault, paralysis, and, in some tellings, sexual violence. Those elements are named because they are how the story has been told on the islands. They are not staged for thrill. Pemba does not sleep the way maps think an island sleeps. The maps call it the Green Island. Clove and coconut. Coral rag under red soil. A channel of water between it and Unguja that looks, from a dhow at dusk, like a dark ribbon someone forgot to tie. The people who were raised under those trees do not treat the night as empty air. Night is a room. Some rooms you do not enter loud. In Kiswahili the old word for a certain class of spirit is shetani. Sometimes people say sheitani. Sometimes they say jini. Sometimes they say pepo. The terms are not souvenirs. They sit inside a living Islamic and pre-Islamic coast, where the Qur’an names unseen beings and the islands have always known that not everything with a will has a body you can hold. A mganga can bargain with many of them, and Elders say there are some even a mganga cannot send home. One of those has a name that is not a court title. It is a shape thrown on a wall. Popobawa. Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popobawa https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/popobawa https://www.academia.edu/694054/The_politicisation_of_Popobawa_changing_explanations_of_a_collective_panic_in_Zanzibar https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272202097_The_politicisation_of_Popobawa_changing_explanations_of_a_collective_panic_in_Zanziba r https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270393629_Killing_Popobawa_collective_panic_and_violence_in_Zanzibar https://www.tzaffairs.org/1996/01/popobawa-is-dead/ https://www.tzaffairs.org/2018/01/reviews-80/ https://katrinadalythompson.com/books https://indianapress.indiana.edu/product/popobawa https://archive.org/details/popobawatanzania0000thom https://muse.jhu.edu/article/679581 https://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/29507 https://african.wisc.edu/about/katrina-daly-thompson-2/ https://godsandmonsters.info/popobawa/ http://www.zanzibar-travel-guide.com/bradt_guide.asp?bradt=1847 https://skepticalinquirer.org/newsletter/skeptic-raping-demon-of-zanzibar/ https://www.jmplumbley.com/2017/04/11/the-popobawa/ https://oldfolklore.com/popobawa-the-shadow-spirit-of-zanzibar/

    Episode 57: Popobawa

  5. Sep 24

    Episode 56: A-Hool

    Science is very good at things that sit still, leave bones, or emit a consistent signal, but it is weaker at rare, intelligent, landscape-scale phenomena that may actively avoid us. Folklore may be the only dataset we have for that class of event. Treating it only as metaphor or only as cryptozoology both flatten it. This is Lance, your host of legends of the hidden horde. In Episode 56 we wade through the oral histories and climb into the shrouded mountains of West Java.  Tonight we drag one more story out of the dark before it disappears forever. On Gunung Salak the night does not fall so much as it thickens. The mountain stands on the old border of Bogor and Sukabumi, a silver name, Salaka, and a living spine of Sunda. People come here to climb, to pray, to cut rattan, to listen. The ones who were raised under it do not treat the slopes as empty stone. They treat them as a house with rooms you do not enter loud. Puncak Manik. Kawah Ratu. Water falling into black bowls. A forest that is said to listen. The name of the thing that hunts the rivers is not a court title. It is a sound. A-hool. Sources https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahool https://cryptidarchives.fandom.com/wiki/Ahool https://karlshuker.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-ahool-and-olitiau-giant-mystery.html https://www.goodnewsfromindonesia.id/2022/05/12/mengungkap-misteri-ahool-kelelawar-raksasa-yang-menghuni-gunung-salak https://www.biologyonline.com/articles/ahool https://atozmonsters.com/ahool/ https://salakhalimunmountain.com/kawah-ratu-and-puncak-manik-sacred-places-of-gunung-salak/ https://bogor.viva.co.id/kabar-bogor/398-misteri-dan-mitos-gunung-salak-gunung-angker-di-jawa-barat https://giranusa.com/misteri-gunung-salak-kisah-angker-legenda/ https://mythlok.com/urban-legends/orang-bati/

    Episode 56: A-Hool

  6. Sep 22

    Episode 55: Sasabonsam

    The forest does not begin where the last farm ends. Among the Akan it begins where human time thins: where the hoe is not welcome, where the path forgets its name, where the great trees keep a calendar older than any stool. On those days the earth herself is said to rest. Most Asante name her Asase Yaa, Earth born on Thursday. Among the Fante she is often Asase Efua, Earth born on Friday. Either way the rule is the same. Do not till. Do not bury. Do not walk the deep bush as if it were a storeroom. Leave the green alone so the spirits may walk it without being crowded by hunger. Kwaku Mensah knew the rule. He had been named for Wednesday, and Wednesday men are said to be restless. He was a hunter of the old line, the kind who still poured a little drink at the base of an odum before he set a snare. His grandfather had taught him that some animals carry sasa, a lingering, ill-reconciled spirit that can turn on the person who kills them without rite. His grandfather had also taught him another name, spoken only after the children were asleep. Sasabonsam. Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasabonsam https://godsandmonsters.info/asanbosam/ https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/monster-mythology-sasabonsam https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Af1935-1212-1 https://www.asafoflags.com/post/folktale-creatures-sasabonsam https://www.graphic.com.gh/features/features/hat-of-a-devil-in-the-palace-of-bodwesango.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asase_Ya/Afua https://www.britannica.com/topic/Asase-Yaa https://www.crazyalchemist.com/bestiary/sasabonsam/ https://oldfolklore.com/sasabonsam-the-iron-toothed-tree-vampire-of-akan-forests/

    Episode 55: Sasabonsam

  7. Sep 17

    Episode 54: Bunyip

    There is no single bunyip. There are hundreds of languages on this continent, and the English word is a loan that flattened them. Episode 54 stays with names and stories that nations have put in public: Wemba-Wemba and Wergaia banib, Ngarrindjeri Mulyawonk, Dharawal gu-ru-ngaty, Wiradjuri mirree-ulla. It does not invent a Dreaming. It does not treat a newspaper sketch as law. A billabong at night does not reflect the sky so much as swallow it. The word itself is Wiradjuri, water left behind when a river changes its mind. After flood, a loop of current becomes a still eye in the trees. Waterbirds work the edges. Murray cod hold the dark. Reeds tick. Then the boom comes, a sound too low for a frog and too wet for cattle, and the camp goes quiet in a way that has nothing to do with sleep. That sound is where the English word bunyip likes to live. The word itself is thinner than the thing. Linguists trace it to banib in Wemba-Wemba and Wergaia country of western Victoria, along Dhungala, the Murray. Wadawurrung speakers near Geelong are also named as a source. In English it got printed as devil, evil spirit, impostor, humbug. Those glosses are what a colony does to a word it cannot carry. On Country the being is older than the gloss: a water power that keeps law at the lip of the hole. Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunyip https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/murray-river-bunyip-australia-swamp-monster https://wordoftheweek.com.au/bunyip-word-origin/ https://www.murraybridge.sa.gov.au/tourism/things-to-see-and-do/family-activities-and-attractions/bunyip https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0015587X.2025.2452770 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0015587X.2022.2104518 https://www.latrobesociety.org.au/LaTrobeana/LaTrobeanaV17n1.pdf https://www.suebutler.com.au/the-feel-of-a-word/2023/9/1/the-feel-of-a-word-bunyip https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/strange-creatures/australian-bunyip.htm https://oldfolklore.com/bunyip-the-water-guardian-and-dread-dweller-of-the-billabongs/ https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Aborigines_of_Victoria/Volume_1/Chapter_20 https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/tetrapod-zoology/tales-from-the-cryptozoologicon-bunyip/

    Episode 54: Bunyip

  8. Sep 15

    Episode 53: Dobhar-chú

    Glenade does not announce itself. It lies in a long green trough in north County Leitrim, pinched between the Arroo mountains and the Dartry range, with Benbulben’s bare forehead watching from the Sligo side. The lough is small by tourist maps. A mile of dark water. Half a mile across. Pike and perch and eel in the weed. White-clawed crayfish in the stones. Cars take the Bundoran road and never look down. The people of the glen always looked down In the National Folklore Collection, the school copybooks of the 1930s, when children still wrote what the old people would actually say, the teacher at Ahanlish set down a sentence that still feels like a nail in a door: The one legend that is known to all the children as well as the older people of the glen, and firmly believed, is that of the Dobhar Cú. Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobhar-ch%C3%BA https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4602723/4598437/4626430 https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4602749/4600955/4634687 https://www.sligoheritage.com/archdabharchu.htm https://www.leitrimobserver.ie/news/features/334274/the-tale-of-leitrim-s-own-loch-ness-monster-the-dobhar-chu.html https://hollywoodentertainmentnews.com/paranormal-news/the-dobhar-chao-trailing-irelands-mysterious-master-otter-part-1-glenade-lake-and-a-gravestone-shukernature/ https://folklorethursday.com/folktales/this-irish-cryptid-casts-otters-in-a-whole-new-light/ https://www.historicmysteries.com/myths-legends/dobhar-chu/38817/ https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/irish-mythical-monster-dobhar-chu https://www.tonyoneill.org/2017/04/12/glenade-lake-and-the-legend-of-the-dobhar-chu/ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dobharch%C3%BA Patrick Tohall’s 1948 paper, “The Dobhar-Chú Tombstones of Glenade, Co. Leitrim,” Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, is the core description of the Congbháil slab.

    Episode 53: Dobhar-chú
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About

Legends of the Hidden Horde is a dark folklore podcast for anyone searching the night for cryptids, mythical creatures, and the old warnings we stopped believing. Hosted by Lance Martin, each short episode is an atmospheric retelling drawn from the record: oral history, older accounts, and the edge cases collectors usually skip. Not a monster-of-the-week joke. Not a hunt for proof. A lantern held up to the thing the village already knew by name. Cryptids and folk monsters from every reach of the map. Skinwalkers and swamp things. Penanggalan and sluagh. Forest guardians, lake beasts, night birds, yokai, and the Appalachian stories that never made the tourist brochure. Bigfoot is in the woods. So are the names Bigfoot crowded out. New episodes through the season. Come in if the dark already has your attention.

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