Ghoulish Greetings all! In honor of the spooky season, we will be taking a darker and spookier tour of Oz and its surrounding areas to experience the scarier and more terrifying horrors in Oz. In this post, I will showcase some more notable regions in Oz and its surrounding areas that feature hostile, wicked, deadly, psychopathic, and straight-up villainous inhabitants in Oz and its surrounding areas, even the underground areas. 👻 At each stop of our spooky tour, I will showcase what I consider to be the most blood curdling version of these deadly denizens; then, at the end of the post, I will also include some honorable mentions to this listicle. So, get all your flashlights, spell books, witch repellents, and all around useful essentials for handling the most fearful entities in all of the Oz-verse. ☠️ Kalidahs Starting off in Oz, the very first and most terrifying experience we have in Baum's world is the Kalidahs. These hybrid predators of tiger, eagle, and bear found Dorothy and her compatriots in the Munchkin forests. These bellowing beasts have been featured in quite a number of adaptations, where some are comedic and some are down right spooky. Above, the Kalidahs from the game, Fiction Fixers: The Curse of Oz have the most menacing appearance to me, especially rocking those black mohawks! Which version creeped you out the most? Let me know in the comments below. Deadly Desert & The Wheelers Moving outside of Oz, we will have to carefully cross the Deadly Desert. In Baum's third book, we are introduced to this insidious area of Oz along with some very shocking residents called Wheelers. It is not really stated outright what happens to you in the books when you cross the desert, but there have been many interpretations out there that have given a glimpse into what could happen. In Disney's Return to Oz, I saw the most horrible version of what could happen to someone if they step foot onto this cursed sand as what happened to one of the Wheelers. Check it out for yourself (above). Does that mean the sand is made up of various denizens of Oz? That's just disgusting! Not feeling good about crossing that desert now? Well, we will use Ozma's magical (and ever-expanding) rug to get us across without hopefully not stepping on anyone we know. Eek! 😬 Phanfasms In the areas surrounding Oz, there are some absolutely terrifying realms other than the Nome King's realm. In the south-western side of the Deadly Desert is the realm of the Phanfasms, where the citizens are hybrid creatures of half-human and half-predator animal. These creatures first appear in Baum's sixth book, The Emerald City of Oz, as one of the Nome King's alliances. They were truly a terrifying breed and appeared in the game, Emerald City Confidential (seen above), as by far the most ruthless version of these life-destroying denizens. Run for your lives! 😱 Growleywogs Another alliance that the Nome King had was that of the Growleywogs. These monstrous beasts ate anything in sight, including people, and lived in the south-western area beyond the Deadly Desert. There have been a couple representations of these creatures, but I think Amazon's Lost in Oz, by far, did the most terrifying version of these beasts since they truly are meant to be absolutely horrifying (seen above). Underground Oz Baum's fourth book is by far the darkest book in the Dorothy saga (the first six Oz books), in my opinion, as the protagonists visit Underground Oz and its tumultuous and fear-inducing residents. They first come across incredibly hostile and cold-hearted 🍆 🥔 🥒 vegetable 🥕 🥦 🌽 people, known as the Mangaboos, that want to kill Dorothy and her companions for breaking rules that were unknown to them. (Note: that is a pattern amongst many of the villages, towns, regions, and areas in and around Oz that you will see time and time again). They also come across sound-triggered sociopathic wooden gargoyles and murderous invisible bears. Each of these are excruciating and horrendous experiences for the protagonists as well as for the reader. Underground Oz is really unlike anything in Oz but definitely makes you grateful once you get back to safer and more comfortable areas like the Emerald City. Scoodlers Hopefully, you have kept your wits about you on this life-threatening tour of Oz and its incredibly insidious inhabitants. Since all of these inhabitants live in Oz and its surrounding areas, these denizens have been around since the birth of Oz. Anyways, let's continue our tour and head back toward land. Uh-oh, we have ended up in the realm of the Scoodlers. They love their soup and will put any ingredient into it, including people. Scoodlers are the epitome of two-faced beings: their light-colored side and their-dark colored side, and will do anything to please their queen, including murder! 🔪 Dorothy and her companions come across them in Baum's fifth book, The Road to Oz. Beasts of the West (Honorable Mention) Noting a couple honorable mentions, over in the west of Oz, the protagonists of Baum's first story then come across some more terrifying predators sent to "attack" them. That moment felt more horrifying to me than the witch herself because she had the ability to control crows, wolves, bees, Winkie (or "Vinkus") soldiers and flying monkeys in a way that benefitted her. Some of those beasts could rip you apart if it suited her and that is really what she wanted. Not a truly terrifying group of animals but definitely not beasts that you want to instigate. These scenes are featured in various adaptations; however the illustrations by Greg Hildebrandt above are by those most terrifying (I mean, those wolf eyes?!?). Could you handle these angry beasts? Let me know in the comments below. Man-eating Plants (Honorable Mention) Escaping from the Scoodlers lands us on the alternate yellow brick road, where we will run into my honorable mention of terrifying creatures in Oz: the man-eating plants. These blue-leafed plants were introduced in Baum's The Patchwork Girl of Oz. If you stood still long enough, they would devour you whole at which point you would have sing or whistle to get yourself out of it. Not truly terrifying but just the name man-eating plants doesn't make you want to go near them. Well, now we are safe back in the Emerald City, we can relax and leave all those denizens in our memory. A great way to safely revisit these Horrors of Oz and bring them to your neck of the woods is to check out the many adaptations listed above. There are tons of spooky and haunting elements in this land as much of it is still very much unexplored as well as tons of areas, villages, and towns that were also not very kind to the protagonists in many of the Oz books. But, I wonder, who are the denizens of Oz that give you the heebie-jeebies? Let me know in the comments; and until next time, we'll be seeing you somewhere into the Oz-verse.
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May 2024
AuthorMy name is Vinkus Ken and I have been a long time fan of many things in Oz and how their world truly does emulate much of ours. Did you know that they have a flag of their own? Or did you know that they have a law about only having 9 jurors in their courts? Also, Oz has a court system! I like to introduce facts that seem meaningless and bring meaning to them by comparing them to our world. So, come along on this journey and enjoy the ride. |