Windigo Historian Ridiculed For References to Vince Weiguang Li Beheading / Cannibalism

In recent weeks, Edmonton ethno-historian Nathan Carlson has been called everything from a raving lunatic to an egomaniac trying to raise his own profile by exploiting a horrifying tragedy.

"It's been terrible," he said yesterday. "I can't believe the things people have been calling me."

Carlson is one of the world's leading experts on what he calls Windigo phenomenon, a condition where people believe they have been possessed by a Windigo, a mythological native monster with an appetite for human flesh.

Carlson was horrified last month over the beheading and alleged cannibalism on a bus bound from Edmonton to Winnipeg and its parallels to the Windigo phenomenon.

Less than two weeks prior to the incident, the accused killer - Edmonton newspaper carrier Vince Weiguang Li - had delivered issues of the Edmonton Sun featuring an extensive interview with Carlson, detailing his studies of grisly accounts of beheadings and cannibalism by Albertans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

But when Carlson said in a nationally-circulated interview that he was horrified that Li might well have read the feature just days before the bus attack, Carlson became the object of ridicule on some Internet discussion boards.

"Windigo? Really? This is a joke, right? Does Carlson honestly believe this? *sigh*" sneered one poster.

"The Windigo business ... has no place in the news," wrote another.

"The devil made me do it has never been a strong defence for violent crime. I don't blame you for being ashamed of your bretheren believing in Windigo.

"As Canada slides down the slippery slope of immorality, get used to hearing about more evil spirits released into your earthly plane, above the 49th parallel," wrote another on U.S. discussion board.

"People thought I was saying the bus killing was caused by Windigo possession," Carlson said.

"But what I really said was there might be a connection between the article and the incident."

He was afraid that the article might have put ideas in the head of someone already seriously mentally ill, not that anything supernatural had occurred.

Windigo Historian Ridiculed For References to Vince Weiguang Li Beheading / Cannibalism
Windigo Historian Ridiculed For References to Vince Weiguang Li Beheading / Cannibalism