Monsters are often warped versions of animals. Wolves, bears, tigers even lizards and birds are common choices, the more dangerous the animal the more likely. So why are there friendly animal turned into monsters? Cats, dogs, horses even rabbits if you think of bad 1970s films. H. G. Wells was a master at this game, making an ordinary chicken into a man-killer in The Food of the Gods (1903). He also gave us killer bats, squids, spiders and ants.
But what about pigs? Funny, pink little creatures who happen to be delicious as well. Killer bacon, is that a thing? Well, let’s be honest, the wild boar of old was no pushover. It was dangerous to hunt with bow and spear. Modern pigs can be dangerous too. Feral hogs have been known to attack humans.
Mythology, as usual, gives us the first pig monsters in the Calydonian Boar and the Erymanthian Boar. These monstrous animals have to be bested by heroes, the Argonauts and Hercules, respectively. Gigantic and fearsome, these chthonic monsters are susceptible to sword and fire like any living creature. It is their size and fierce temper that makes them terrible to deal with.
The hogs of horror literature are another matter. Being part or wholly ghostly, they are terrifying in a way that a rampaging elephantine boar is not. These stories span three ages of horror: the Victorian or Edwardian ghost story and novel, the Pulps and the modern horror novel.
“The House of the Nightmare” (Smith’s Magazine, September 1906) by Edward Lucas White is an odd ghost story. Based on White’s own dreams, the story presents his dream vision as that of the narrator:
“There was a Thing in the room; not a sow, nor any other nameable creature, but a Thing. It was as big as an elephant, filled the room to the ceiling, was shaped like a wild boar, seated on its haunches, with its forelegs braced stiffly in front of it. It had a hot, slobbering, red mouth, full of big tusks, and its jaws worked hungrily. It shuffled and hunched itself forward, inch by inch, till its vast forelegs straddled the bed.
The bed crushed up like wet blotting-paper, and I felt the weight of the Thing on my feet, on my legs, on my body, on my chest. It was hungry, and I was what it was hungry for, and it meant to begin on my face. Its dripping mouth was nearer and nearer.”
The rest of the story is pretty tame stuff. The resident of the house tells about his nightmare, then revels himself to be a ghost. Very odd but only that vision of the monstrous hog is close to terrifying.
The House on the Borderland (1908) by William Hope Hodgson is another hybrid tale. The first part of the novel focuses on the narrator and his sister surrounded by the hideous swinefolk. The second half goes off in a Wellsian mode to see the end of the universe, then returns to the pig men. The first portion is a superb horror tale, the swinefolk infused with great evil:
“Then, all at once, something caught my vision, something that came round one of the huge buttresses of the House, and so into full view. It was a gigantic thing, and moved with a curious lope, going almost upright, after the manner of a man. It was quite unclothed, and had a remarkable luminous appearance. Yet it was the face that attracted and frightened me the most. It was the face of a swine…Beneath me, the spot that I had just left,
was occupied by the foul Swinecreature. It had gone down on all fours,
and was snuffing and rooting, like a veritable hog, at the surface of the arena. A moment, and it rose to its feet, clutching upwards, with an expression of desire upon its face, such as I have never seen in this world.”
William Hope Hodgson would use them again in the last episode of the tales of the occult detective, Carnacki. “The Hog” (Weird Tales, January 1947) has as its client Mr. Bains, who suffers from hallucinary sounds:
‘”It’s just like pigs grunting,” he told me again. “Only much more awful. There are grunts, and squeals and pighowls, like you hear when their food is being brought to them at a pig farm. You know those large pig farms where they keep hundreds of pigs. All the grunts, squeals and howls blend into one brutal chaos of sound – only it isn’t a chaos. It all blends in a queer horrible way. I’ve heard it. A sort of swinish clamouring melody that grunts and roars and shrieks in chunks of grunting sounds, all tied together with squealings and shot through with pig howls. I’ve sometimes thought there was a definite beat in it; for every now and again there comes a gargantuan GRUNT, breaking through the million pig-voiced roaring – a stupendous GRUNT that comes in with a beat. Can you understand me? It seems to shake everything… . It’s like a spiritual earthquake. The howling, squealing, grunting, rolling clamour of swinish noise coming up out of that place, and then the monstrous GRUNT rising up through it all, an ever-recurring beat out of the depth – the voice of the swinemother of monstrosity beating up from below through that chorus of mad swinehunger… It’s no use! I can’t explain it.”
And in Hodgson’s more ironic mode, he has explained it well, indeed.
Carnacki fights the evil presence with his mumbo-jumbo devices like the Electric Pentacle and his copy of the Sigsand Manuscript, but almost fails, as the hog-shaped thing tries to form in our world through the medium of dreams. Again, the swine demon is linked to dreaming and sleep.
Then we arrive at the modern era of horror novels: The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, Stephen King’s Carrie, all best-sellers like The Amityville Horror (1977) by Jay Anson. This novel has a long and strange history. Originally presented as a true story, it sold like hot cakes in the 1970s, was made into several films, of which we get another rendition every-so-often. The tale of the nice family trapped in the haunted house features a pig thing that haunts the youngest daughter, again a creature of size with evil looking eyes:
“Kathy came out of the house with his light and his parka. Standing beneath the window where they had seen the eyes, they searched the fresh, unbroken snow. Then the yellow beam of the flashlight picked up a line of footprints, extending clear around the corner of the house. No man or woman had made those tracks. The prints had been left by cloven hooves-like those of an enormous pig.”
These are not the only examples. Richard Haigh had The Farm (1984) and Graham Masterton Flesh & Blood (1994) and I am sure there are even more recent stories out there. The image of the pig as enemy isn’t hard to imagine despite the cuteness of the pot-belly variety. And I think this comes from the fact that pigs are quite intelligent, more so than your average dog. As authors tend to focus on the eyes of monster hogs we can see that recognition, that there is more lurking there than mere animal stupidity. There is a familiarity that makes characters like Porky Pig or Miss Piggy just a little too human for comfort.
