Lore 312: To Serve Man

A lot of folklore is frightening, but some of it is definitely hard to swallow. Let's sink our teeth into some terrifying tales from history today. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by GennaRose Nethercott, research by Cassandra de Alba, and music by Chad Lawson. ————————— ORDER EXHUMED TODAY: aaronmahnke.com/exhumed https://www.aaronmahnke.com/exhumed ————————— Lore Resources: Get Ad-Free Lore: lorepodcast.com/support https://www.lorepodcast.com/support Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music https://www.lorepodcast.com/music Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources https://www.lorepodcast.com/sources Official Lore Merchandise: lorepodcast.com/shop https://www.lorepodcast.com/shop ————————— Sponsors: Chime: Chime is banking done right. Open an account in 2 minutes at chime.com/lore https://www.chime.com/lore. Quince: Premium European clothing and accessories for 50% to 80% less than similar brands. Visit Quince.com/LORE http://www.quince.com/lore for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Gusto: Online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. Try Gusto today at Gusto.com/LORE https://www.gusto.com/lore, and get 3 months free when you run your first payroll. ————————— To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to ads @ lorepodcast.com with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. To advertise on this podcast please email: [email protected]. Or go to: https://advertising.libsyn.com/lore ————————— ©2026 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Aaron Mahnke?

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• 0:45Aaron Mahnke?

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• 1:48Aaron Mahnke?

  They say that long ago, the Kogarasu were crows. But time passed, and somehow the crows just wouldn't die. First, they lived 10 years, then 20, then 100, and eventually the crows weren't crows at all anymore. They were something entirely new. The tale comes from a Japanese scroll from the Edo period, known as the Tosa Ghost Book, which describes 16 different Japanese yokai, complete with colorful illustrations. And in the case of the Kogarasu, those illustrations are essential. Because according to the scroll, when the crows reach 1,000 years of age, they take on a rather singular appearance. They become giants and turn bright blue.

• 2:33Aaron Mahnke?

  Two great clawed hands grow in place of their wings, and their legs fuse into one single foot. And then, the hunger starts. Now, while regular crows eat things like insects and seeds, Kogarasu have a slightly different palate. They have a taste for human corpses. The Tosa Ghost Book goes on to explain how the Kogarasu descend upon graveyards, hunting for a meal. Specifically, they like to punish people who were prideful and rude in their lives by digging them up and devouring their moldering bodies. Appetizing, I know. But are you really that surprised?

• 3:13Aaron Mahnke?

  After all, the Kogarasu is just one of thousands of people eating monsters from around the world. That's kind of what monsters do, actually. It's practically expected. But you know what's not expected? When the creature feasting upon your flesh is none other than a fellow human being. I'm Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

• 3:50Aaron Mahnke?

  It's one of humanity's most enduring taboos, to eat the body of another person. And perhaps that's why it shows up in so many folktales all around the world. In Greek mythology, there seems to be cannibalism everywhere you look. We all know of Cronos, of course, who famously eats his children in response to a prophecy that one will overthrow him one day. But trust me, there's plenty more where that came from. Take, for example, the tale of Thyestes, king of Olympia. As revenge for adultery, his twin brother kills and cooks Thyestes' sons, which Thyestes happily devours, finishing the meal with a satisfying belch.

• 4:31Aaron Mahnke?

  Meanwhile, in another myth, a Thracian king named Tarius served his own son as a meal. And then there's the Libyan queen Lamia, who, cursed with madness after angering Hera, develops a taste for children. And honestly, I could list Greek cannibals all day long, but I'll leave you with just one more extra surreal tale. After cutting down a sacred tree, Erisichthon, king of Thessaly, is punished with insatiable hunger. According to Ovid's version of the tale, he eventually grows so hungry that he devours himself, leaving not a trace behind. Venturing to other parts of the world, many cultures warn about child-eating old ladies who live in the woods.

• 5:15Aaron Mahnke?

  The most famous Western example is, of course, the witch from Hansel and Gretel, but she's not alone. For example, in Romanian folklore, we have Mumapaduri, a forest-dwelling, child-eating madwoman. Or Baba Yaga from Slavic folklore, of chicken-legged house fame, who also enjoys a baby or two as a treat. Now, while these sorts of boogie women definitely serve the obvious purpose of scaring children away from dangerous wooded areas, some had more sinister uses as well. Just look at Baba Yaga. She was often portrayed with visibly Jewish physical features. And given what we learned in our episode about blood libel, stories about Jews eating

• 5:55Aaron Mahnke?

  children were spread for very specific political reasons, that is, to deliberately foster antisemitism. But back to Hansel and Gretel for a moment. As it turns out, many of the fairy tales that we know and love today have lesser-known versions with cannibalistic plot points. Little Red Riding Hood, for example. Everyone knows that a wolf eats people in that one, but did you know that some variants feature the wolf chopping the grandmother up, bottling her blood, and then feeding all of that to Red under the guise of wine and meat? In fact, in an Italian/Austrian variation, Little Red even eats her grandmother's teeth after being told that it's rice. And meanwhile, in The Grimm Brothers' rendition of Snow White, the evil queen doesn't just

• 6:40Aaron Mahnke?

  want to get the fairest of them all out of the way. No, she demands the huntsman bring back Snow White's liver and lungs so that she can eat them, of course. Naturally, the huntsman isn't super comfortable with this plan, and he brings back a boar's organs instead, which the queen gladly feasts upon, believing them to belong to her stepdaughter. In another German fairy tale called The Juniper Tree, a little boy is cooked by his evil stepmother who feeds his flesh to the child's clueless father. Oh, and it features a terrifying little ditty with the lyrics, "My mother, she killed me. My father, he ate me. My sister, she buried my bones." You know, a cheerful lullaby to sing to kids before bedtime.

• 7:24Aaron Mahnke?

  So that's the first story, stories of innocent people being fed human flesh unaware, about evil cannibal witches and queens devouring child flesh for fun. But there's another category of cannibal lore as well. Cautionary tales in which, as punishment for a misdemeanor, you yourself may be transformed into a horrible, man-eating beast. Everyone's favorite, the Wendigo of Algonquin folklore, is another perfect example of this. Wendigos were originally humans, that is, until they ate human flesh and turned into a tall, gaunt monster destined to stalk and haunt human prey forever. In Hindu folklore, Brahmins who did bad deeds in life are doomed to become Brahma Raksha

• 8:07Aaron Mahnke?

  when they die, evil horned beings who eat none other than the flesh of their fellow Brahmins. Meanwhile, in Japan, eating human flesh can lead a person to become a sort of hungry ghost known as a Jiki Ninki, who looks mostly human, except for their razor-sharp teeth that they use for peeling skin off their favorite snack, which is dead bodies. Now, these may only seem like scary stories, but they had a very real purpose. In times of famine, when people may have been tempted to seek less acceptable means of sustenance, the threat of becoming a monster dissuaded them from turning to cannibalism, even in desperate circumstances. And I know what you're thinking: Was that really necessary?

• 8:49Aaron Mahnke?

  After all, how often were people actually eating one another? Well, I'm sorry to tell you, but it was kind of a lot.

• 9:09Aaron Mahnke?

  The skeleton was 100,000 years old, but archaeologists could still see the cut marks clear as day. Gouges cut deep into the bone, suggesting that the muscle had been carved away with a blade. Yes, there was no doubt about it. This Neanderthal had been eaten. And it turns out, we've been making a meal of each other for pretty much our entire existence as a species. Now, in Western media, cannibals are usually portrayed as racist caricatures. Savage, primitive islanders capturing and eating unfortunate white visitors. But in reality, no one was more down with eating human remains than white Europeans themselves.

• 9:50Aaron Mahnke?

  I've talked in the past about medical cannibalism, the practice of chowing down on body parts as some kind of miracle cure. But just as a refresher, the reason why we don't have very many Egyptian mummies remaining in tombs and museums today is because Europeans ate them all. And yes, you heard that right. Basically, medieval Europeans believed, perhaps incorrectly, that ancient Egyptians had mummified their dead using a waxy, black, asphalt-like substance called bitumen. They also thought that bitumen was a cure-all medicine. And so, putting two and two together, Europe figured, hey, why don't we grind these bitumen-covered mummies into powder to mix into drinkable tonics and tinctures?

• 10:33Aaron Mahnke?

  Which is exactly what they did and continued to do all the way into the 17th century. And the irony is astounding. Here you had a white population that famously portrayed people of color as cannibalistic savages while literally eating those very people's dead bodies. You cannot make this stuff up. Now, exocannibalism, that is, the practice of eating outsiders, did extend beyond Europe. Just not in the way that King Kong movies might have you believe. Usually, exocannibalism was performed during times of war, when victorious armies would eat the enemy dead. By reducing the opposing side to nothing more than a game animal, in a symbolic way, it showed dominance in battle.

• 11:16Aaron Mahnke?

  But here's the thing, most cannibalism practiced across the world isn't violent at all. In fact, it's a gesture of love. Endocannibalism, or the act of consuming members of one's own community, is a time-honored means of caring for the dead. Take, for example, the funerary tradition from Brazil's Huare people. There, when someone died, it was seen as cruel to leave them to rot in the cold, unforgiving ground. Instead, the community would consume the body, giving the dead a new home within the living. And this was usually done not by the deceased's immediate family, but by friends and acquaintances. It was a way of supporting the next of kin. By making the lifeless body disappear, it helped to ease the family's pain.

• 12:01Aaron Mahnke?

  The Huare continued this practice all the way into the 1960s, when they were forced to stop by Christian missionaries. In other cases, consuming a person's body is said to help their spirit rest in the afterlife. For the Amahuaca tribe in Peru, this involves cremating the dead before mixing the ashes into a corn or cassava beverage to be drunk by the deceased loved ones. The process assures that the person's spirit will pass on, rather than lingering on earth, which is vital because a spirit stuck on earth can hurt or even kill the living. Meanwhile, among the Huay of Papua New Guinea, mortuary cannibalism is tied to the concept of "nu," an essential life essence.

• 12:42Aaron Mahnke?

  Every part of the body, from spit to fingernails and flesh, contains this nu. And while alive, you're constantly gaining and losing more of it based on your actions. When a parent raises a child, their nu begins flowing out of them and into their offspring. And when that parent dies, the child will eat their body, completing the transfer of nu between generations. Of course, not all cannibalism is voluntary. Sometimes, it's a desperate bid for survival. Just look at the Donner Party of the 1840s, or the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, or the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes in 1972.

• 13:23Aaron Mahnke?

  In all of these cases, people were faced with a stark choice: cannibalism or death? And they chose to live, even if it meant defying one of their culture's greatest taboos. But then again, there are some moments in history when choosing death might have been the better option.

• 13:58Aaron Mahnke?

  Deep in Siberia sits a small, unassuming patch of land called Nazino Island. At only two miles long and a third of a mile across, you would think that this swampy, flood-prone spot in the middle of nowhere would have been completely irrelevant to history. A non-place, unmemorable. Except, well, it is remembered, just not by its actual name. You see, Nazino Island is better known by another title. They call it Cannibal Island. But let's rewind. It was the winter of 1933, and Joseph Stalin had big plans. He wanted to industrialize agriculture, for one, a policy that many peasants fought back against, much to his chagrin. Why did they oppose the measure, you might ask?

• 14:43Aaron Mahnke?

  Well, because it had prompted a massive famine, and they just so happened to be starving to death. Then, on top of that, Stalin required everyone in major cities to carry a special passport. The catch? He only gave you one if he liked you. No passport meant that you had to vacate your home within 10 days. And surprise, surprise, people weren't stoked on that either, with many refusing to leave. In short, there were a lot of people getting in Stalin's way, and he needed them gone. By spring of 1933, 90,000 people had been arrested in Moscow and Leningrad alone. The prisons were completely full, with starvation and typhus running rampant. It became clear to Stalin that they were going to need somewhere else to store these pesky dissidents.

• 15:28Aaron Mahnke?

  Somewhere like a remote Siberian gulag. Now, this is neither here nor there, but it is a fun fact. Gulag is actually an acronym. It stands for, and bear with my Russian here, Glavne Upravline La Guerre, which was the arm of the government that oversaw all these camps. Anyway, by mid-April, nearly 500,000 people occupied the Soviet Union's gulags. And on the afternoon of May 18 of 1933, 5,000 deportees were sent to a shiny new gulag, a little place called Nazino Island. And let's be clear here, these weren't hardened criminals that they were rounding up. The deportees were regular people, just unlucky enough to earn a side-eye from Stalin's goons.

• 16:11Aaron Mahnke?

  They grabbed a family man who had stepped out to buy cigarettes, a Kremlin firefighter who was accidentally carrying the wrong ID, a communist youth member arrested while leaving the opera, and even a pregnant woman, married to a Russian naval officer, who made the grievous mistake of visiting a train station. All of them shipped off to the gulag. And if that sounds eerily familiar to anything in the present day, well, you said it, not me. After weeks crammed into trains and riverboats with barely any food, the prisoners were finally dumped on Nazino Island. And what awaited them there? Why, that would be nothing. No buildings, no resources, just a cold, swampy strip of land in the middle of nowhere,

• 16:55Aaron Mahnke?

  where they were expected to make their own shelters and somehow grow their own food. Unfortunately, not only were these mostly city people with no clue how to do any of that stuff, but at least a third of them were so weak and emaciated, they couldn't even stand. And then, it began to snow. Now, okay, maybe I'm being a bit unfair about Russia's generosity here. They did provide the Nazino prisoners with some rations. But by rations, I mean one pound of flour per person. Not a container, mind you, loose flour. The lucky ones caught it in their hats or their shoes, but there was still no way to cook it, nor anything to mix it with, except for dirty river water, which quickly led to dysentery.

• 17:38Aaron Mahnke?

  Many died in the first couple of days. Some of starvation from the journey, others executed by trigger-happy guards. Corpses began to pile up, and what do you know? Within only two days of arrival, many of those corpses found themselves relieved of their fleshiest bits. Cannibal Island had begun to earn its name. Now, at first, it looked like standard survival cannibalism, that is, people consuming parts of the already deceased out of pure desperation. But 11 days after survival, three young men were arrested for killing a man in order to eat him. When asked whether he'd ever consumed human flesh, one of them replied, "No, I only ate livers and hearts." Other similar arrests soon followed.

• 18:23Aaron Mahnke?

  And that was that. The precedent for violence was set. And look, I wish that I could tell you that's as bad as it got, but it isn't. And I know it's hard to fathom what could possibly be worse than murdering and eating people. Well, unfortunately, there's an obvious answer to that: eating them without the murder part. Yes, the residents of Nazino Island began devouring people alive. Now, I'm gonna tell you what happened as plainly as I can, but fair warning, it is gruesome, so if you want to step away, now would be the time. In one incident, a local Ostiak Siberian woman who lived near the island recalled meeting a deportee whose legs were freezing cold and wrapped in rags. The reason? All the flesh had been carved off her calves.

• 19:08Aaron Mahnke?

  "They did that to me on the island of death," she said. "They cut them off and cooked them." Another Ostiak woman recalled passing the island, presumably by boat, and seeing something swaying in the distant trees. Drifting closer, she realized what it was: human flesh wrapped in rags and hanging from the branches. No one was safe from the terrors of Nazino. In other stories, a young guard fell in love with one of the girls who'd been sent to the island. He did his best to protect her, but one day, his duties took him away. When he returned, he found her tied to a poplar tree, her breasts, muscles, and flesh carved away. But worst of all, the girl was still alive.

• 19:51Aaron Mahnke?

  Suffice to say, officials tried to downplay the absolute horrors occurring at the Gulag, but clearly, things were not working out, which, yes, may be the understatement of the century. In early June, they decided enough was enough. The government relocated the island’s prisoners to a number of other Gulags, which, while the conditions weren’t much better, at least didn’t involve mass-scale cannibalism. 5,000 human beings arrived at Nazino mere weeks prior. By the time the authorities finally intervened and relocated them, only half of them were left.

• 20:44Aaron Mahnke?

  Humans are capable of overwhelming cruelty and immense kindness, and somehow, both extremes are on full display here, in the controversial act of consuming another person. On Nazino Island, we learned just how monstrous people can be when pushed to the limit of survival. Their hunger and fear took over, leaving humanity behind. But then, we have examples like the rituals of the Wari people, graciously taking their dead neighbors into their bodies as an act of loyalty and love. Polar-opposite intent, united by the same action, which just goes to show, perhaps there is no such thing as an inherently good or evil act. Maybe it all comes down to context.

• 21:30Aaron Mahnke?

  And speaking of context, we wouldn’t even know about the circumstances on Nazino Island if not for one single person. You see, in July of 1933, Communist Party member Vasili Veliko was sent to make a report about how successful the resettlement project in the Nazino area was going. But instead of singing the Gulags praises like he was supposed to, Veliko wrote a 20-page report on the horrific deaths on Nazino and the terrible conditions of the survivors, emphasizing that many of them should never have been deported in the first place. And he sent his report straight to the Kremlin, where an internal investigation found that Veliko’s report was true.

• 22:11Aaron Mahnke?

  Several local officials were quietly fired, and the report was buried in the archives, which is where it remained all the way until the 1980s, when the story came to light for the very first time. The fact is, if it weren’t for Veliko’s defiant report, we likely would never have learned about the atrocities at all. But he chose to speak up, and as a result, he prevented thousands of people’s stories from being swept under the rug of history. So you see, it’s not good that matters, not evil, just each individual one of us choosing to do what’s right and to speak the truth. After all, there seems to be multiple ways to serve man.

• 23:09Aaron Mahnke?

  Thank you for joining me at the dinner table today, as we explored some of history’s most questionable meals. But I hope you save room for dessert, because there’s one more piping-hot story on the menu, ready to be served. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.

• 23:26Speaker 02

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• 24:15Aaron Mahnke?

  Suyang was under siege. The year was 757 in the Tang Dynasty in China, and anti-Tang rebels had been at Suyang’s door for months. The city was a strategic place to attack. Located on a major canal, if the rebels managed to take Suyang, the entire region would likely fall soon after. In other words, the Tang soldiers were willing to do anything, and, I mean anything, to prevent that from happening. But there was a problem. Like I said, the siege had already been underway for months, and food was running low. Food that the defending soldiers sorely needed in order to be strong enough to hold off the rebels. The first thing to go was the grain supply, and so the soldiers chewed on tea leaves,

• 24:59Aaron Mahnke?

  paper, and tree bark to keep their hunger pains at bay. Then, they killed and ate their horses, and when the horses were gone, they turned to rats and birds. And finally, when the rats and birds ran out, Commander Jiang Xiong issued an order. He told his troops to start eating civilians. And there it was, a formal, official order documented by history for a defending army to kill and eat the very civilians of the city that they were supposedly defending. And apparently, Jiang Xiong led by example. “You men have lacked food for a long time,” he said, “yet your loyalty has not faltered in the least. I regret that I cannot cut off my own flesh to feed you, but how could I watch the troops

• 25:42Aaron Mahnke?

  go hungry for the sake of a single concubine?” And then, Jiang Xiong dragged his own beloved concubine out in front of his assembled army, killed her before their eyes, and offered her body up as meat. The soldiers wept at the sight, but they had no choice. He had ordered them to eat her. What options did they have? Now, of course, one woman wouldn’t be enough to feed an entire army, and so Jiang Xiong ordered his army to eat all the women and girls in Suyang. And once again, they followed those orders, systematically killing and eating an entire gender. And still, the siege wasn’t over. Once there were no more women in Suyang, the soldiers were directed to begin on old

• 26:26Aaron Mahnke?

  men of the city, and after the old men were gone, they ate the young boys. But alas, none of it would be enough. The rebels succeeded, and finally, the city of Suyang fell, taking Jiang Xiong along with it. Only days later, a relief force arrived and drove the rebels out, but to their horror, there was very little left to defend. Between 30,000 and 50,000 people had been cannibalized. According to some sources, only 400 civilians remained alive.

• 26:58Aaron Mahnke?

  Now, you might think that Commander Jiang Xiong probably shouldn’t have systematically killed and eaten an entire city’s worth of innocent people. But history is a funny thing. The victors tell the story, as they say, and in the case of the Siege of Suyang, that would be the Tang Dynasty, who did manage to remain in power, despite the death toll. So what story did Tang supporters tell about the bloody events of those fateful months? Why, it’s simple. Commander Jiang Xiong was commemorated not as a cannibal, but as a war hero and a martyr.

• 27:48Aaron Mahnke?

  This episode of Lore was produced by me, Aaron Mahnke, with writing by Jenna Rose Nethercutt, research by Cassandra De Alba, and music by Chad Lawson. Folks, it is official, my brand-new creepy history book, Exhumed, is finally here. Available in hardcover ebook and an audio version narrated by me. Exhumed is 300 pages of brand-new material exploring the strange and twisted roots of the New England vampire panic and its star player, Mercy Brown. Longtime fans of Lore and my other show, Unobscured, can think of Exhumed as a brand-new season of Unobscured, all about the subject of the very first episode of Lore. Grab your copy today. Head over to aaronmahnke.com/exhumed, and I’ll put the link to that in the description for this episode.

• 28:33Aaron Mahnke?

  Don’t like hearing ads on Lore? There’s a paid version on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free. Paid subscribers also get weekly mini-bonus episodes called Lore Bites, and Patreon members specifically get discounts on Lore merch and access to my inbox. Learn more about how you can support the show over at lorepodcast.com/support. Follow the show on YouTube, Threads, Blue Sky, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.