Folkloric Foot Fetishes
Written by Phillip LaPalme, Illustration by Phillip LaPalme, Edited by Willow Coyle. All Rights Restricted.
As I’ve continued to research the legends and lore of Central America, it has become evident that there is a myriad of descriptions of backwards feet amongst the folkloric entities. In digging further, it quickly became apparent that this odd feature is displayed in stories the world over. From India to the Pacific Islands, West Africa to Central and South America — Everyone has stories of creatures possessing backwards feet.
Now, backwards feet aren’t the only podiatric anomalies you’ll find in folklore — Everything from chicken/rooster feet, (literal) duck feet and cloven hooves can be found in oral tradition and literature in every corner of the globe. But where did this strange trait come from and what does it mean?
Back(wards) in the Day
Let us explore different foot phenomena from around the world, cultural beliefs regarding feet and the lore thereof to see if we can discover any answers...
In his First Century, 10 volume scholarly work The Natural History, Pliny the Elder relates some accounts of creatures and peoples with backwards facing feet. Pliny describes a race of human-like beings called the Abarimon who hail from the Himalayas (or perhaps, modern-day Hindu Kush), and though they resemble humans, they have backwards feet. He goes on to mention other examples of this deformity and considers the beings possessing this trait to be native to India. Interestingly enough, India has a very high prevalence of Clubfoot, even today. Clubfoot is a congenital birth defect causing the child’s foot or feet to turn in and under with the sole facing backwards. This condition is treatable if addressed early on; however, there is a propensity for relapse and many parents in India are unable to afford the corrective procedures for their children. Clubfoot is one of the most common congenital orthopedic anomalies and was described by Hippocrates all the way back in the year 400 BC. Every year, approximately 220,000 children are born with Clubfoot with 50,000 of those affected in India alone — 150 children are born with this defect in India every day. Although many devout Hindus actually worship children born with congenital defects, this is certainly not the case in many other areas of the world. Could the prevalence of Clubfoot in India be an origin for some of these stories?
Podiatric Propaganda?
Let us now consider Paganism and its absorption into Christianity. In her article Farewell Pan: the Rise of Satan in Christian Imagery, Nicole Tubman states, “… Christian missionaries seeking to convert the Greeks took what was already established and fit it to their own narrative. The great god Pan, in a few hundred years, went from a revered guardian of shepherds and hunters, to a demon, to finally, the Dark Angel himself”. Pan’s transformation through religious manipulation, appropriation and ultimately control-tactics gave way to a slew of cloven-hoofed demons, tricksters and malevolent entities in folklore. But why were the hooves an important feature in the subsequent lore?
In an episode of the podcast, Stuff to Blow Your Mind entitled Incu-Succubi: Demon in the Halls of Sleep, host Robert Lamb states, “God would surely not allow demons to create, like, a perfect facsimile of the human form. Surely there’ll be some out, there’ll be some loophole, right? And so you see this idea that the Incubi or Succubi can replicate, you know, a fetching male or female specimen completely except for one detail and generally it’s the feet”. In a later episode entitled M.I.B. Or N.I.B., Robert has this to say about demons and their feet, “…The idea here was that while demons could take on alluring forms to tempt sinners to greater sin, their guise could not be complete because otherwise it wouldn’t be fair to the faithful, you needed there to be a tell”. A “tell” is some feature you could identify to recognize a demon in disguise and flee to safety — A convenient device for anyone hoping to make it out alive in a potentially deadly encounter. We can see how much of the lore the world over (particularly areas where Christianity was forced upon the natives), would pick up the characteristic of cloven-hooves. Let’s delve into a couple of stories that illustrate this…
Devilish Intentions? Or Christian Inventions?
After the “invention” of what we now know as Satan, many stories of cloven-hooved figures popped up around the world. In an article for the Australian podcast, Mysterious Universe (one of our personal favorites!), Brett Swancer relays a story of a stranger in black whose feet give him away as something… other than human. In 1683 there was a peculiar incident in which a mysterious visitor dressed all in black and apparently with cloven-hooves instead of feet came up to the Tavistock Inn, of Poundsgate, England, upon a black steed and asked for directions to Widecombe-in-the-Moor in Dartmoor. The frightened staff did as was asked, and a few days later a ball of fire apparently smashed into the nearby church of St. Pancras to bounce about wildly, supposedly killing a few people and a small dog. Although this has been blamed on an errant bit of ball lightning, some have said that it was the power of the Devil”.
Now we move on to legend of The Man with the Chicken Feet, which claims that many a year ago, there were community dances held in villages, towns and cities where locals would wear their finest garb and dance the night away. (Sounds pretty normal so far...) On one particular night, a local girl glimpsed a handsome man from across the dance floor. After some time the man approached her, asking her for a dance. As the stranger was a skilled dancer, she and the crowd were swooning but at one point she glanced down at his feet which she immediately identified as chicken feet! She screamed, fainted and with that, the stranger vanished. Upon recounting the event to her parents they informed her that the man was actually the Devil himself! It should be mentioned that this girl had snuck out of the house to attend this local dance — yet another Christian cautionary tale to control their youth's wild propensities?
Enter the Cryptids into the Sordid Mix... There are also numerous descriptions of cryptids that sport, not backwards feet, but reversed legs like that of a dog. There’s the popular Dogman, a bipedal Werewolf-like creature whose knees are reversed in a canine fashion. More peculiar is the Not-Deer (as in, "umm... that's not a deer!") described as looking exactly like a regular deer, only it walks upright on its hind legs, arms at its side and, you guessed it… Its legs are backwards. Additionally there are the Pale Crawlers...The most famous being the Fresno Nightcrawler. (If you aren't familiar with this somewhat "creepy pasta"-esque cryptid, here's a good video from the folks at Curious Archive that gives you the rundown) These freaky guys are described as a humanoid anywhere from a few feet in height (or length, given its crawling nature), up to 8 feet! Most accounts of the Pale Crawlers describe the creature as having 4 long, spindly legs which it crawls on; though some accounts report a bipedal creature with no arms. Despite some variations, both types report backwards legs. Accounts of these cryptids are purely anecdotal, with a scant bit of blurry video footage... making it hard to investigate or research, but they seem to fall in line with much of the legends and lore of other creatures around the planet. Perhaps some of these entities being witnessed today are what others have described throughout history. It’s possible that the feature of backwards legs led to the idea that some of these characters had backwards feet.
So... What's the Deal with all of this Foot Fascination?
Could the origin of backwards feet in lore have its footing in Clubfeet? Perhaps the transformation of cloven deities into Christian devils is the answer. Or, could the variations be a worldwide game of telephone, having lost much of the context in the process? Perhaps Eastern and European folklore morphed with that of other cultures during conquests and emigration/immigration. There’s also the possibility that there are actual cryptids out there who have evolved to have backwards feet and/or legs to throw humans off their trail for survival or trickery. Maybe those aforementioned cryptids are supernatural entities that sparked the tales we hear. Typically, in these cases the best answer is “D: All of the Above”. Though there are no concrete answers regarding the origin of these terrible tootsies, we do know one thing: People either love or hate feet.
References for Further Enjoyment:
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/04/strange-tales-of-encounters-with-the-devil/
https://themisadventuresofareader.com/2019/04/04/folklore-thursday-the-man-with-the-chicken-feet/
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/stuff-to-blow-your-mind/id350359306?i=1000378047160
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/stuff-to-blow-your-mind/id350359306?i=1000471153654
https://www.culturesofwestafrica.com/feet-in-reverse-fantastical-beings/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/04/strange-tales-of-encounters-with-the-devil/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abarimon
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0137:book=7:chapter=2&highlight=abarimon
https://globalclubfoot.com/cure-international-india-national-program-update/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759597/
http://www.postaugustum.com/en/farwell-pan-the-rise-of-satan-in-christian-imagery-2/
https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Fresno_Nightcrawler
https://www.reddit.com/r/Thetruthishere/comments/a46qh4/what_in_hell_did_i_just_see_some_kind_of/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2021/07/bizarre-and-spooky-cases-of-pale-crawler-humanoids-in-residential-areas/
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/08/bizarre-accounts-of-the-pale-crawlers/
