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Lore 312: To Serve Man

August 9, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

The Darkest Taboo

In a Japanese scroll from the Edo period, the Tosa Ghost Book, there is an illustration of a creature called the Kogarasu—a crow that lived so long it transformed into something else entirely. After a thousand years, these crows grew to giant size, turned bright blue, developed clawed hands in place of wings, and fused their legs into a single foot. Then the hunger began. They developed a taste for human corpses, descending on graveyards to dig up and devour the bodies of people who had been prideful in life. The Kogarasu is just one of thousands of man-eating monsters from folklore around the world. But as Aaron Mankey explores in this episode of Lore, the most disturbing stories are not about monsters at all—they are about human beings eating other human beings.

Cannibalism in Folklore and Fairy Tales

Cannibalism appears everywhere in ancient mythology. In Greek tales, Kronos eats his own children. King Thyestes unknowingly devours his own sons, cooked and served by his twin brother as revenge. The Libyan queen Lamia, cursed with madness, develops a taste for children. And in Ovid's telling, King Erysichthon is punished with insatiable hunger and eventually devours himself, leaving nothing behind.

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What you'll learn

  • 1 (03:06) **The Universal Taboo of Cannibalism** - Aaron introduces cannibalism as one of humanity’s most enduring taboos and begins cataloging its appearance in global folklore.
  • 2 (06:50) **Cautionary Tales of Transformation** - A second category of cannibal lore: stories warning that eating human flesh can turn you into a monster.
  • 3 (08:26) **The Archaeological Evidence of Ancient Cannibalism** - Aaron pivots from myth to hard evidence: humans have been eating each other for as long as we’ve existed.
  • 4 (10:40) **Endocannibalism: Eating the Dead as an Act of Love** - Not all cannibalism is violent; in many cultures, consuming a loved one’s body is a sacred funerary rite.
  • 5 (12:26) **Survival Cannibalism in History** - Aaron briefly notes famous cases of people forced to eat the dead to survive: the Donner Party, the Franklin expedition, and the 1972 Andes plane crash.
  • 6 (13:20) **Nazino Island: The Gulag That Became Cannibal Island** - The episode’s central, most horrific case study: a Stalinist gulag where cannibalism spiraled out of control.
  • 7 (17:55) **The Worst of Nazino: Eating People Alive** - The horror escalates as Aaron describes victims being consumed while still conscious.

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Show Notes

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.

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©2026 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

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