Monster of the Month

February 2026

Black Annis: February’s Hunger at the Edge of the Firelight

February is the cruelest month of winter, not because it is the coldest, but because it is the harshest.

By February, the novelty of snow has vanished. The holidays are over. Decorations are boxed away. Resolutions falter. Winter no longer feels dramatic or beautiful. It feels exhausting. Food stores run low. Patience wears thin. Darkness lingers just a little too long each evening, and the firelight does not stretch as far as it once did.

This is the month when old fears creep closer to home.

Where January belongs to the vastness of winter itself, February belongs to what waits just beyond the door. To hunger. To proximity. To the things that watch from the tree line while families huddle closer together inside.

In English folklore, that presence has a name.

Black Annis.

A Face in the Dark

Black Annis is not a queen like the Cailleach. She does not rule seasons or command storms. She does not shape mountains or freeze rivers. Her power is smaller, narrower, and far more personal.

She lives at the edge of human spaces.

Folklore describes her as a night hag with a blue or black face, sunken eyes, and iron claws capable of tearing flesh and bark with equal ease. Her hair hangs in matted ropes. Her body is often wrapped in skins, sometimes animal, sometimes human. She does not hunt openly. She waits.

Her home is not a castle or a cave deep in the wilderness. It is a hollow tree. A dark den. A place close enough to villages that children can wander too far and never return.

Black Annis is not winter itself. She is what winter leaves behind when resources grow scarce and fear sharpens.

February’s Monster

There is a reason Black Annis belongs to February.

Historically, February was the most dangerous time of year for many communities. Stored food was dwindling. Livestock were thin. Illness spread easily in cold, enclosed spaces. The excitement of winter had long since faded, replaced by monotony and quiet desperation.

February was when people disappeared.

Children sent to gather firewood did not come back. Sheep vanished from the edges of fields. Travelers went missing on roads that felt familiar. Black Annis explained those losses in a way that felt tangible.

She was not distant or abstract. She was near.

The Skin Walker at the Edge of the Village

One of the most disturbing aspects of Black Annis folklore is her use of skin.

Stories claim she wore the skins of her victims as clothing. In some tellings, she used animal hides to disguise herself. In others, she took human skin, particularly from children. These details were not included for shock value alone. They reflected a deeper fear of imitation and proximity.

Black Annis does not appear as a roaring monster charging from the woods. She appears as something half familiar. A shape that might be a person crouched beneath a tree. A figure wrapped in too many layers. Something that could almost belong, if you do not look too closely.

February is the month when that fear resonates most strongly. Everyone is wrapped in coats. Everyone moves more slowly. Faces are hidden beneath scarves and hoods. It becomes easier to imagine something slipping through unnoticed.

The Hollow Tree

Black Annis is often associated with hollow trees, especially ancient oaks.

Hollow trees have always carried symbolic weight. They look solid from the outside, but inside they are empty, rotting, and unstable. They are shelters for animals, but also traps. Places where something can hide without being seen.

In folklore, children are warned not to play near hollow trees. Do not crawl inside. Do not shout into them. Do not throw stones to see what answers back.

Black Annis waits there.

She listens.

In winter, when leaves have fallen and the woods should feel exposed, hollow trees remain dark. Snow gathers around them, softening the ground and muffling sound. A child’s footsteps disappear easily. A scream can vanish into the branches.

A Predator of the Vulnerable

Black Annis does not prey on the strong or the prepared. She hunts the vulnerable.

Children. Stray animals. The lost. The hungry.

In some stories, she snatches lambs from fields and eats them raw. In others, she steals children who wander too far from home. There are versions where she rocks stolen infants to sleep before devouring them, blending maternal imagery with horror in a way that feels deeply unsettling.

This is not accidental.

Black Annis represents the fear that care and cruelty can wear the same face. That something can appear nurturing while hiding hunger beneath it. In February, when families are exhausted and tempers are short, that fear feels uncomfortably close.

Fear as a Teaching Tool

Like many folkloric figures, Black Annis served a purpose beyond entertainment.

She was a warning.

Do not wander alone at dusk. Do not stray into the woods. Do not trust unfamiliar figures near the village. Stay close to the fire. Stay together.

These warnings mattered. Winter was not forgiving. A wrong turn could mean death. A moment of carelessness could end a life.

Black Annis gave that danger a face.

She made fear specific, which made it easier to remember.

From Goddess to Hag

Some scholars believe Black Annis may have roots in older mother goddess traditions. Over time, as belief systems shifted, powerful female figures associated with nature and fertility were diminished and distorted. What remained were fragments of reverence twisted into fear.

Her association with trees, skins, and the consumption of life points toward a figure tied to cycles of death and renewal. Yet by the time her stories were being told around winter fires, she had become something else entirely.

Not a goddess.

A cautionary monster.

This transformation mirrors the way winter itself is viewed. What once was sacred becomes something to endure. What once commanded respect becomes something to survive.

Black Annis in the Modern World

Black Annis translates disturbingly well to contemporary horror.

She does not need forests untouched by civilization. She thrives in greenbelts behind suburban neighborhoods. In abandoned lots. In neglected parks where children still cut through on their way home.

Her hollow trees become storm drains, abandoned buildings, and culverts. Places people do not look too closely. Places everyone assumes someone else is watching.

In a modern reinterpretation, Black Annis wears discarded coats, mismatched gloves, and layers of clothing scavenged from donation bins or lost and founds. She blends into the margins of society. People notice her only long enough to look away.

Missing persons cases pile up quietly. Runaways. Transients. Unhoused individuals. The kinds of disappearances that rarely make headlines.

Black Annis thrives on that silence.

February’s Particular Terror

There is something uniquely unsettling about February horror.

It is not flashy. It is not dramatic. It is quiet and persistent.

The cold seeps in through cracks. Darkness lingers at inconvenient hours. People grow impatient with one another. Kindness becomes a little harder to summon. Fear becomes less sharp but more constant.

Black Annis belongs to that emotional landscape.

She does not strike suddenly. She waits until people are tired. Until vigilance fades. Until someone thinks, just this once, it will be fine.

The Edge of Safety

What makes Black Annis especially effective as a February monster is her proximity to safety.

She does not invade homes directly. She waits just beyond them.

At the edge of the yard. At the end of the street. Just past the tree line where porch lights no longer reach.

She is the reason parents call children inside before dark. The reason paths through the woods feel different in winter. The reason you feel watched even when you cannot explain why.

In February, when the world feels smaller and more enclosed, that boundary becomes painfully thin.

Hunger Without End

At her core, Black Annis is hunger.

Not the dramatic hunger of starvation that leads to madness, but the quiet, gnawing hunger that persists even when fed. The hunger that never satisfies. The hunger that consumes because it can.

This makes her deeply human in an uncomfortable way.

She is what happens when need turns into appetite and appetite turns into identity. She does not eat because she must. She eats because she is.

February understands that hunger.

Why She Endures

Black Annis has survived centuries of storytelling because her fear never became obsolete.

Children still wander. People still disappear. Woods still feel different at night. Hunger still exists in wealthy societies, just hidden more carefully.

She adapts easily.

She does not require belief to exist. She requires neglect. Exhaustion. Assumption.

She thrives in the spaces people stop paying attention to.

A Monster for the Shortest Month

February is the shortest month, but it often feels the longest.

It is a month of waiting. Waiting for warmth. Waiting for light. Waiting for relief.

Black Annis embodies that waiting.

She waits in hollow places. She waits for footsteps to slow. She waits for hunger to outweigh caution.

And when she moves, it is quiet.

February Belongs to Her

If January taught us to respect winter as a force beyond our control, February reminds us that survival is not guaranteed simply because we endured the worst of it.

February is when people let their guard down. When they assume spring is close enough to stop worrying.

That is when Black Annis steps closer.

Not roaring. Not chasing.

Just watching from the dark, patient as hunger itself.