Akhlut, Hunter From the Depth

After exploring the famed Kelpie, let’s discover a more exotic being for this week. The Akhlut is a monster hailing from the legends of the Inuit’s inhabiting the arctic regions. Like most of the supernatural creatures of the area, the Akhlut is more of a spirit than a creature, only taking physical form when active.

The Akhlut is quite a badass spirit. He is generally portrayed as a mix between a wolf and an orca. If you don’t find this awesome, nothing will meet your expectations! However, being the mix of two predators means that this creature is not to be messed with. It is considered extremely dangerous by the Inuit tribes.

The spirit is known to be quite ravenous, preying on anything that it can find, but it seems to have a taste for human flesh. The Akhlut would only take physical form when it is hungry, which is about all the time. Most of the time, it would attack isolated fishermen or travellers sleeping close to the seashore. However, it is not unheard of that when the Akhlut is particularly hungry, it could go further inland and raid a camp to grab a quick snack.

Just like with most ancient mythologies, the spirit has numerous original stories, but I’m only going to share the one I find the funniest. Well, as funny as a ‘sea predator hunting humans’ can get. The Akhlut was originally a human who was obsessed with something, and he became insane and turned into a monster. (If that sounds familiar, you know your folklore!)

In more detail, it was a guy who loved the sea, like really REALLY loved it. He took it to the point that the rest of his tribe found him creepy and eventually banished him. Once out in the wilderness, he encountered a pack of wolves and just like any mentally disturbed person would do, he decided to become one of them. This mainly made him really pissed off at his old tribe since wolves are rather vengeful creatures. After some time, he remembered that he was utterly obsessed with the sea, so he decided to go live there, morphing into a part wolf part orca creature. The Akhlut turned into a land/sea monster out of sheer spite.