Gurumapa (Nepal)

Gurumapa is a mythical child-eating ogre from a popular folktale of the Newar people. To this day, Newars are said to prepare an annual feast of rice and buffalo meat for this fabled ogre. 

The folktale begins with a man named Kesh Chandra, an idler who gambled away all his assets. With no money left, he went to live with his sister, who kindly provided him with food and shelter. However, being a gambling addict, he stole a precious metal dish from his sister, the very one she used to serve him meals, and sold it to get money to gamble, hoping to turn his luck around. But fortune did not favor him, and he lost everything once again.  

Ashamed and penniless, he returned to his now furious sister. To teach him a lesson, she served him rice directly on the floor. Deeply humiliated, Kesh Chandra packed the food in a handkerchief and left.  

As he wandered aimlessly, he felt hungry. He found a place to sit and unwrapped his meal, only to discover that the rice had already spoiled, crawling with maggots. Desperate, he spread the rice on the ground, hoping it would dry while he took a nap. But when he woke up, he found that the pigeons had eaten all of it. Overwhelmed by his misfortune, he broke down in tears.

Moved by his sorrow, the pigeons took pity on him and miraculously transformed their droppings into gold. Overjoyed, Kesh Chandra scooped up as much gold as he could, but there was too much for him to carry all alone.  

At that moment, an ogre named Gurumapa appeared. A massive ogre with protruding fangs, Gurumapa had been drawn to the scent of human prey. Realizing the danger, Kesh Chandra quickly addressed Gurumapa as “uncle”, making the monster feel a sense of kinship to him. 

At this point, the story diverges into two versions. In the first, Kesh Chandra coaxed Gurumapa to help carry the gold back to the village, promising to provide the ogre with daily shelter and lavish meals in return. In the second version, Kesh Chandra told Gurumapa that it could eat any misbehaving child so long as the parents called the name Gurumapa out loud in frustration. 

In either case, the ogre started snatching children away to devour, becoming a threat to the community.

Find out more about Gurumapa in Ghosts, Spirits and Paranormal Entities from Asian Folklore and Mythology (Book 1).