STRAHE STRAHE (DIVOVI, DŽIGANTI, DŽINOVI, GIGANTI, GOROSTASI, KOLOSI, ORIJAŠI)

gigantic creatures who, as it is believed in Medjimurje, the northernmost part of Croatia, come out during cloudy and foggy weather, at dusk or in the night. This makes them similar to gigantic creatures called Mraki (''the dark ones'').

Walking silently, they appear at all times of the year as a vast funeral procession of giants with a black horse carriage and men in long dark coats with indistinct faces and hats. Whoever sees them, dies instanlty or goes mad. Straha is also imagined as a raving coachman driving a large carriage pulled by a wild horse foaming at the mouth and with hot breath (here it is identified with the Thunderer). All the strange pits, hollows and rifts in the hilly part of northern Medjimurje are connected to the accidents of these carriages. Straha always sneaks behind travellers travelling alone or late at night. It comes alone or in a pair, between fifty and one hundred metres high, wrapped in a white sheet with a candle in its hand.

Strahe from Medjimurje remind of sluggish, often lazy and stupid giants and giantesses, i.e. huge and proud hajde. They can all move mountains. They don't attack humans unless they get really angry. There used to be a large number of giant cannibals just as there were huge, hairy, one-eyed and horned Wild men or Zviceri who used to devour each other. Pesjanek or P(e)soglavec, the guardian of Hell's gates, a lower, nature demon was similar to them. He was also a one-eyed cannibal.

People from Medjimurje who fought in the First World War spoke of cavalry of fire which appeared at dusk at the battlefield. This fiery cavalry of dead soldiers is the same as the gigantic, cursed army of the dead of which it is said in some parts of Croatia that they will fight the living on Judgement Day. Among Croatian mythological creatures there is also svećarec (''the candle man''), a huge man of extraordinary strength who walks around at dusk or in the night with a candle or a lamp in his hand. If his light is turned out in front of somebody's house, it means someone from that house is going to die within three days.

In Dubrovnik it is spoken of morski čovik (''the man from the sea'') a huge humanlike monster who occasionaly comes out of the sea screaming. It is actually a kind of a water man of whom it is said in a legend that, among other things, he is tall, heavy an strong. The forest vedi from Podravina are hairy and strong as water men. Similar to dwarves they have great knowledge (the Croatian word ''veda'' means ''holy knowledge'') and they live to be older than one hundred years. They put their dead in hollow trees.