I will be the first to admit that I don’t know a lot about indigenous Australian folklore. I first heard about this particular critter from a Tik Tok of all things. But if this is any indication, Australia’s monsters are about as ready and able to kill you as their actual wildlife.

That creature is the yara-ma-yha-who.

Hold on folks, because this actually gets a bit rough.

The yara-ma-yha-who is vampiric, in the sense that it drinks blood. Beyond that, though, there aren’t really any other commonalities. For one thing, yara-ma-yha-who tend to do their hunting during the day rather than at night. Also, they don’t really look much like people, but more like red bipedal frogs.

Also unlike vampires, they also don’t have teeth, and instead suck their victim’s blood through little suckers on their hands. Which sounds a lot more unpleasant than the fangs, to me at least.

They also don’t actively go after prey, preferring instead to hang out around fig trees and wait for a likely victim to come around. From there, they drop down from the trees and attach themselves to the unfortunate passerby with its aforementioned suckers. After draining the blood, they consume their victim. Then they drink a bunch of water, before going to take a nice nap.

But wait! It gets worse!

After their nap, they throw up the body of their victim, which looks a bit redder and shorter then when they went in. Then they repeat this process until the victim becomes a yara-ma-yha-who themselves.

Did I mention that this is one of those monsters that parents use to scare their children into behaving? Because it seems like that would be pretty effective to me.

I guess what I’m saying is that Australia is terrifying.