Fearful Folklore: The Rake, and Why Monsters Take Certain Shapes

In the early days of the internet, a new folk horror tale was born. What was it, and why is it so familiar? Let's take a look...

Aug 22, 2025

(Image from https://fictionlibrary.fandom.com/wiki/The_Rake?file=The_Rake.jpg)

Oakfield, Aroostook County, Maine, 01/07/2003

In the pitch-blackness of the forest, something behind you howls.

There’s no time to think about it now. You’re already sprinting through the dense thicket, desperate to escape this hellish place. Your beloved trail camera is clutched tightly in your hand, the only proof you have of the terrible thing you saw. At last, the dim lights of your hometown begin to flicker in the distance. You’ve made it! You’re just seconds away from your home, and streetlights, and safety. The dry, twig-strewn ground gives way to solid tarmac as you cross the road separating the deep, dark woods from the tiny town of Oakfield. There are a little under 700 people here, but that’s enough. There’s only one of It out there. At least, only one that you know of, anyway.

You slow down, easing into a trot as you pass silent houses, your legs aching, your chest wringing with sharp stabbing breaths. Eventually, you reach your home. After a few attempts, your shaking hand manages to slide the key into the lock, then you’re inside and safe.

Sitting down at your kitchen table, you push a button on your trail cam to rewind the footage. You set the camera earlier that evening to snap a photo every fifteen seconds, hoping to catch a glimpse of the wild rabbit and muntjacs that inhabit the woods. Then, you left it in a nice clearing near a small puddle of water. It was only when you returned later this evening that you found out that there’s more in those woods than rabbits and muntjacs. You scroll back through an hour of images, mostly depicting nothing. You have to see it again. You have to be sure. Because if you’re right, then the creature that howled at you through the dark as you ran was no wolf.

You stop. There it is. The photograph that will haunt you for the rest of your life. A photo that will one day go down in the annals of digital folklore as one of the most disturbing cryptid sightings ever. Two huge staring eyes that glow in the dark. Long, emaciated appendages. A gaunt body with ribs poking through the skin. A snarling, gnashing set of teeth. Horror-struck, you turn off your camera and push it away from you. Suddenly, you hear a loud scratching sound at your door, as though immensely strong claws are raking down the wood. You cry out in alarm, and the scratching stops as abruptly as it began. An eternity later, and with no more sounds coming from outside, you eluctantly go upstairs to bed. Sleep won’t come, you know, but you have to try.

Later, you lie in bed, eyes open, bleary and exhausted. Your bedsheets are wrapped around you like a shroud, so tight you can barely breathe, but you cling to them regardless. They make you feel safe. You try to blot the trail cam photo from your memory, but it won’t go. That face, that awful, menacing stare, won't leave you alone. It’s so vivid, it’s almost as though that monster, whatever it was, is in the room with you.

Suddenly, a slight movement in the corner catches your eye. You sit up and flick on the bedside lamp. A dark grey shape sits huddled at the foot of your bed, head bent down, back arched, spindly arms crossed in front of it. All breath leaves your body. You can’t move. All you can do is watch as, slowly, achingly slowly, the monster turns its head and stares at you with bright, glowing eyes.

The Rake has come to visit you.

Suppose you trawl through the fetid wastes of internet horror forums looking for monster stories (and why wouldn’t you, what better way to spend your weekend?), you will quickly come across all the hits. From terrifying cryptids such as the chupacabra and the Dover Demon, to Native American folklore like the Skin-walkers and the Wendigo, to stories of alien encounters at Area 51, you’ll find no shortage of fictive fiends to keep you awake at night. These monsters will come from all over the world and have their origins in a variety of places, including fiction, mythology, false sightings, and, occasionally, true stories (the Kraken myth likely originates from encounters with the bodies of giant and colossal squid species). No matter where you travel or how far back in time you search, you’ll find people making up monster stories. We humans may as well be defined by our obsession with inventing new, menacing creatures to haunt our nightmares. Huh, we really are our own worst enemies. Who needs real monsters when we can invent some and be scared by them?

However, as you scroll through page after page of curios, something might catch your attention. The more monsters you come across, the more you start to see it, as though a jigsaw is slowly being pieced together before your very eyes. Like a detective, you hunt around for more evidence that this pattern in the data is not a fluke or a misreading. To your growing concern, the more you look, the more you find. It turns out that a lot of these monsters have something in common. Several somethings, in fact.

Image from Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TheRake2022.png)

Want to know what I’m driving at? Look up photographs or artists’ impressions of the monsters I listed above. Do you see the pattern? Long legs. Pale, grey bodies. Enormous eyes, shining out in the gloom. A vicious, predatory countenance. These monsters are all spindly, emaciated creatures with bodies built for speed, agility, and silent hunting. And, despite many originating entirely separately from each other, they look almost identical.

Coincidence?

No.

I am unshaken in my belief that coincidences do not exist in folklore. When two separate stories match, there is certainly a reason, whether due to direct inspiration, two stories sharing a source, or some psychological or sociological phenomenon. Which brings us neatly to the matter of The Rake, which is easily one of the creepiest and most unnerving examples of digital folklore.

I was a child when I first encountered the image, and too young and idealistic to even wonder if it could be fake. That photo haunted me throughout my childhood. I saw it on some website or other dedicated to Creepypastas, the colloquial name for internet digital folklore. The picture was part of a series of shots supposedly from a trail camera somewhere in the American Wilderness. The slideshow came with a description claiming that these were a set of real photos by an animal tracker, which had unwittingly captured something sinister living in the woods. Digging a little deeper led me to the original stories of the Rake. According to (very recent) legend, sightings of a strange, emaciated being with long., spindly appendages, and two glowing eyes creeping into their houses at night and sitting at the foot of their beds. The most chilling account reads as follows:

‘At about 4am, I woke up thinking my husband had gotten up to use the restroom. I used the moment to steal back the sheets, only to wake him in the process. I apologized and told him I thought he got out of bed. When he turned to face me, he gasped and pulled his feet up from the end of the bed so quickly his knee almost knocked me out of the bed. He then grabbed me and said nothing.

‘After adjusting to the dark for a half second, I was able to see what caused the strange reaction. At the foot of the bed, sitting and facing away from us, there was what appeared to be a naked man, or a large hairless dog of some sort. Its body position was disturbing and unnatural, as if it had been hit by a car or something. For some reason, I was not instantly frightened by it, but more concerned as to its condition. At this point, I was somewhat under the assumption that we were supposed to help him.’

Unknown artist’s depiction of The Rake (image found on https://monster.fandom.com/wiki/The_Rake)

You can see why this account caught people’s attention. It validates the irrational fear we all have of waking up in the middle of the night, only to find something in our room with us. Admit it, you’ve had that exact anxiety as a child.

The woman’s account continues. She states that upon their noticing the creature, it leapt forward and stared straight into the eyes of her husband, before darting uncannily quickly into their daughter’s room and attacking her. The two parents then chased the Rake out of their home, and the woman’s husband drove their daughter to the hospital. On the way, they took a wrong turn, and the car plummeted into the nearby lake. This is how many examples of digital folklore end, with a mysterious death loosely but unprovably associated with a monstrous encounter. The story filled me with dread. What if I wake up one night and see a grey shape huddled at the foot of my bed?

As it turned out, I was wrong to worry. Years later, my interest in creepypastas matured into a more academic curiosity, and I re-explored the Rake phenomenon with a little more rationality. In doing so, I quickly found that the entire thing was a fabrication, of course. It began in 2003 when an anonymous 4Chan poster asked other users to contribute physical characteristics for a new monster1. For anyone unaware, 4Chan is a controversial social media site dedicated to two things: spreading fascism and inventing digital folklore (see my Slenderman essay). From here, things get muddy. I managed to find the supposed earliest source for the Rake stories (linked below), but it’s difficult to trace exactly how the story grew and spread.

panda6.net » Horror Theater – The Rake

Unlike the Slenderman, we don’t know who created this story, and most articles on the Rake either list its origins as unknown or treat the story as though it’s real23. As a result, I’m unsure where the above image came from. Allegedly, it's from a piece of promotional material for a game, but I’ve yet to find the direct source for it. Nevertheless, I can reassure you that it, and any other images of The Rake, are fabrications. I don’t even know where the name ‘Rake’ came from. I made up the idea that it’s from its claws raking across a door. It’s a good name, mind you. Rake. Whoever came up with it knew how to instil fear with just one word.

Several accounts of brushes with the Rake can be found across the internet, notably the YouTube series EverymanHYBRID4. The story that opens this essay is my personal contribution to the legend. Remember, this is how folklore is born: people hear a story, then spread their versions of it. The Rake, though originating just twenty-two years ago, is a prime example of digital folklore.

None of this answers my primary question, though. Why do so many of these monsters carry the same description? Do they all share a common source? Is there some real monster lurking in our woodlands, creeping through the thicket on willowy legs? Many have associated the Rake with other American folk monsters such as Skin-walkers; others nod to its similarities with the Slenderman, perhaps the most famous digital folk story ever. It’s easy to see why; their physical characteristics are uncannily similar. Why is that? Let’s find out…

A Cultural Mold

Over the last few years, many have noted the striking physical similarities in recent movie and television creatures: A Quiet Place, Cloverfield, Stranger Things, The Host, and the recent Monsterverse franchise all contain monster designs with elongated limbs, bony bodies with ribs showing, grey clouring, insect-like movements, sunken in eyes, or no eyes at all, and biomechanical body shapes56. I thought of a few others myself, including the Future Predator design from the ITV show Primeval (2006-2011), and the stick-think three-legged alien in Steven Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds (2005). Many attribute this overlap to groupthink, or that designers are literally emulating older, successful designs. This makes logical sense; after all, you can trace many iconic monster designs back to the Xenomorph from the Alien film franchise (1979-). At the time, the Xenomorph was so unique and original that it inspired countless writers, directors, and artists when making their own monsters. There’s also 2007’s Cloverfield monster, which was designed as a direct counter to the typical Kaiju, which are large and bulky (think Godzilla). That might explain these similarities. Designers are simply emulating other iconic designs. Perhaps the Rake was so inspired.

A gallery of monsters. From Top Left to Bottom Right: Xenomorph (Alien), Clover (Cloverfield), Future Predator (Primeval), Demagorgon (Stranger Things), Alien (A Quiet Place), Martian (Various War Of The Worlds adaptations).

This, however, doesn’t go deep enough for me. The question remains: why these designs? Why these features in particular? Why are certain monsters like the Xenomorph more inspirational to artists and writers than other designs?

Fear of Famine

For me, the most striking visual feature these monsters share is their emaciated appearance. IT’s interesting to me, since if you asked one hundred people to name physical qualities that would frighten them, I doubt ‘skinny’ would appear once. Yet, these monsters are all grossly thin, sometimes looking like slender bones wrapped in grey skin. I believe this emaciation is terrifying due to its association with famine. This would have been a common evolutionary fear for our ancestors (and sadly, many people living today), who did not have easy access to food. In times of trouble, parents would have to watch as the flesh fell from their young, their arms and legs growing thinner and thinner, their ribs becoming exposed, their eyes becoming sunken in. Emaciation is proof of famine.

I’m not just pulling this idea out of nowhere. There are many mythical monsters tied directly to the concept of starvation (e.g., the Wendigo7 and the Fear Gorta8), meaning that this fear of famine has indeed permeated different cultures. There’s also the evolutionary theory for disordered eating behaviours, which states that pathological avoidance of food and the denial of hunger are behaviours designed to encourage migration when food is scarce9. Accounts online have also expressed that this is the reason why certain monsters frighten them1011. Perhaps these monsters stir deep-rooted evolutionary fears in us, a fear that compels us to avoid emaciated-looking beings.

The Uncanny Valley

If you’re not already familiar with the uncanny valley, here’s a brief synopsis. Facsimiles of human faces or bodies often induce feelings of fear or revulsion in people looking at them12. If you’ve ever seen those lifeless animatronic sex dolls, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It happens because an inhuman-looking human is likely either diseased or dead, and we instinctively avoid them so as not to fall ill ourselves. This is similar to our fear of famine and why emaciation frightens us.

This psychological phenomenon is most associated with robotics, as attempts to make humanoid robots to make them feel familiar and comforting end up causing the opposite response. A designer or artist can take this concept and use it to create a monster. Most of the mentioned designs are somewhat humanoid and possess many characteristics of human bodies. Crucially, they do not have enough of these characteristics to be recognisably human, and many other features are deformed (e.g., elongated and distended arms and legs). These creatures end up looking… well, off. The Rake is a good example. When you look at the original image, you can see an almost-human shape, canny, but distant simultaneously.

No Expression

Lastly, we can look at the monster’s face. As I discussed in my previous essay on the Weeping Angels (see below), facial expressions are a vital method of spreading information to others. If there’s a problem, a concerned look is all it takes to alert the rest of the tribe. Silent communication. What does a featureless or semi-featureless face give off? Nothing, that’s what. That unease, the not-knowing how to discern what the ‘thing’ in front of you is thinking, immediately sets off alarm bells. This is why, when trying to create a frightening creature, the removal of common mammalian facial features such as eyes, nose, prominent ears, and lips causes the face to seem distinctly unfamiliar. This feeds back into what I discussed in the last paragraph. A face missing some features will look uncanny.

In short, it is no coincidence that emaciated, featureless grey shapes are a staple of cryptid, mythic, and film monsters. The Rake is how I first noticed this phenomenon, but it is merely a symptom of a wider psychological and evolutionary fear embedded in all of us. We naturally fear famine, expressionless faces, and distinctly inhuman-looking humans. Pair that with a fear of finding something sinister in our rooms, which is also evolutionary (after all, who wants to wake up to find a bear in their cave?), and you get The Rake story. Take these concepts and give them to an artist, and you get a Xenomorph or a Cloverfield Kaiju.

Unlike Slenderman or the Backrooms, the Rake has never quite caught a foothold in the zeitgeist, existing mostly as a creepypasta that terminally online people like me think is well-known. It has no film adaptation in the works, nor has it had any real-world impacts (though, given the Slenderman stabbings in 2014, this is probably a good thing). This is likely the first time many of you have even heard of it. Perhaps the reason for this is that it’s so similar to other cryptids and folk legends. There’s the aforementioned Dover Demon, an emaciated grey humanoid, the Enfield Horror, an emaciated grey humanoid, and wendigos, which are emaciated grey humanoids. I could go on, but I think you get the gist. With so many similar monsters, it’s easy for a creepypasta like the Rake to slip between the cracks.

Regardless of its less-than-famous status, I do feel the Rake is worth discussing. It was the whole reason I noticed that certain characteristics appear in so many monsters, after all; plus, it’s just a nice, scary story with a legitimately creepy image to go with it. If the Rake story keeps any of you up tonight, then I’ll consider my job done! Also, if you like this story, try creating a little Rake tale of your own. Feed the folklore with your own version and let it spread further and wider. And if you need a physical description, don't worry. This essay has got you covered.

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