The Wendigo is hungry, always hungry,
and its hunger is never satisfied.
The more it eats the bigger it gets...
And the bigger it gets, the hungrier it gets.
It can grow as tall as the trees,
and still it aches with hunger.
The Wendigo is a being, part beast and part spirit. It is said that the Wendigo haunts the woods at night, preferring to lurk just out of sight of any humans in the area. It watches you, hungry for your flesh, growing hungrier every minute. If it's a particularly quiet night, you may hear the Wendigo calling to you. It whispers your name softly on the wind, beckoning you to come near. If you fall into its trap, the Wendigo will descend upon you in an instant, out of nowhere. And then it will devour you. It will consume you and possess you and you will become the Wendigo, destined to wander the woods, starving and gaunt; never satiated, ravaged with cannibalistic hunger for human blood and flesh.
Or at least that's how I like to tell it around the campfire.
Actually, the Wendigo is a mythical creature in the traditions of the Algonquian tribes of Native Americans. It was believed that humans, particularly those who had engaged in cannibalism, could be posessed by and physically transformed into this malevolent spirit, the Wendigo. People who had engaged in survival cannibalism would sometimes develop a craving for human flesh, even after their rescue when other food was readily available. If other treatment and healing failed to put an end to their unnatural hunger, they were (sometimes voluntarily) executed to prevent them from acting on their insatiable urges to harm and devour others. There is some historical and medical evidence that suggests this phenomenon (but not the creature) was real, and it was called Wendigo psychosis.
Almost creepier than my campfire version, isn't it?