Oh! Thank you for this cool tip!

I already had two Maltese Monsters in my List, the fat slug bogeyman Kaw Kaw and the well bogeyman Il-Belliegha (which is kinda replaced later by the Marabbecca which is very similar but with an earier name) but now I’ve found a couple more jewels for my collection!

It seems the Maltese have used a lot of Greek Mythology, as Cyclops, Minotaur, Hydra and many more are used in Maltese myths as well, just a little bit different, and in the case of the Hydra, a lot cooler too. 

While I can’t buy this awesome book myself (the Netherlands are boring, no bookstore sells such cool myth books, and I don’t dare to pay online as hackers made that very annoying last time I did) I do want to show some cool pictures and names i’ve found online about his book:

So all the art comes from this Maltese Bestiary book by Stephen D. Mifsud. The text comes from a page that introduces the creatures in some top 10′s about Maltese monsters.

This one’s a screamer, literally. The Golfu (‘Screech Owl’) is a large owl with the power to (also literally) petrify its victims with its scream. Don’t piss the Golfu off, because it will go Medusa on your ass and turn you into a statue.

My own text: Really cool, this could become a upgrade for the owl-like Lechuza or a cool variant of Harpy.

Chilling at the bottom of certain town’s well (particularly Gozitan ones), the only way to deal with an mħalla is to block up the whole thing (and probably move to another village).

My own text: Maltese people really fear Water Wells don’t they? Lots of monsters come from down the earth and from wells. But this one looks really awesome! Could be a related creature for the Marabbecca.

Għaġeb tal-ilma: The serpent, which lived in water but could happily slither along the land, was said to be the physical embodiment of the seven deadly sins. It looks like St. Paul never really got to these as the flesh-eating serpent had a notoriously venomous bite.

My own Text: this is a jewel, the only thing is its name, which is kinda too difficult for an English thing, while more creatures have diffficult names, this is with a lot of “ and -’s in it so it becomes something I can’t type all the time. The idea of a hydra with 7 sin heads is awesome though, and while I already had the Zmey with 3 sins in its 3 heads (pride, envy and greed) I think this is cool for the balaur.

Put simply, this was a shark that’s the size of a whale. Not really much to add on to that, but we shall anyway - gotta kick you while you’re down. Although probably related to the Megalodon (i.e. crazy, terrifying, prehistoric shark), as recently as 1956 the Silfjun resurfaced. A retired Englishman swimming in St Thomas Bay was dragged down to the depths by a monster shark, large enough to split a fishing vessel in two, much to the horror of the student who witnessed the whole thing happening.

My own Text: So Megalodon has a mythology counterpart, awesome! Though the Isonade is also megaladon-sized, or even bigger, this could be just the megalodon, as that is a monster on its own.

Not to be confused with the Ba'baw, a Gawgaw is a monster whose only crime was being born on the 24th of December at midnight. A curse for being born at the same time as Christ, the Gawgaw transform into a zombie-like creature, shambling through the streets late at night on Christmas eve. Many born on this day fight off the curse by staying up all night and counting rice.

My own Text: This one is a bummer though, on another site about maltese myths I read the Gawgaw or Kawkaw was a fat slug-like bogeyman that swallowed its children-victims whole in its impossible big maw (much like the pokemon swalot) and it could slide under any door and any surface, it could scent bad behavior and trauma in its victims. But this entry just reduces the creature to a zombie… I hope the Ba’baw is actually the kawkaw I read about before. Or the people on wiki are just putting on wrong (but awesome) information.