A tale featuring mysterious, quirky, mountain-dwelling beasts!

THE DESRICK ON YANDRO is a short fantasy-horror story written by pulp horror, sci-fi, fantasy author Manly Wade Wellman (May 21st, 1903 – April 5th, 1986), who created the wonderful evil-vanquishing character John, often referred to as Silver John or John the Balladeer. John roamed the Appalachian mountains with a silver-stringed guitar, which helped him to ward off evil (because the Devil and evil in general doesn’t like silver!) John speaks in a dialect that sounds authentic for the region, and Wellman’s turn of phrase in these stories lends a lyrical, poetic-folksy vibe to the narratives. THE DESRICK ON YANDRO was the second story about John to be written by Wellman, and it was first published in the June 1952 issue of THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION. 

The yarn sees John agree to accompany a rich, pushy, unpleasant man called Mr. Yandro on a trip to Yandro Mountain, a mysterious place where Yandro’s grandfather, Joris Yandro, had courted a pretty witch, Polly Wiltse, who lived in a desrick atop the flat, wooded mountain peak. John and Mr. Yandro reach a cabin in the valley below the mountain, where Mr. Yandro is told by an old woman called Miss Tully that, seventy-five years ago, his grandfather had used Polly Wiltse’s witch-powers to locate gold on the mountain and then he had run away with the treasure, abandoning Polly.

Mr. Yandro, it seems, intends to trudge up the mountain and coerce the ancient Polly Wiltse into giving him more of the gold.

Miss Tully warns Mr. Yandro that ‘scarce animals’ live up on the mountain, creatures like the Toller – the hugest flying thing there is: its voice tolls like a bell, to tell other creatures their feed’s near. And she talks about the Flat – a critter that lies level with the ground, which can wrap around people like a blanket. Miss Tully mentions a furred beast called the Bammat, but Mr. Yandro suggests the old woman is referring to the Behemoth. Tully says that the Behemoth is from the Bible, and the Bammat is different, something hairy, with big ears and a long wiggly nose. Mr. Yandro laughs at this, saying that Miss Tully is referring to the extinct Mammoth. The old woman continues, telling Mr. Yandro about the Behinder – which is always hiding behind the man or woman it wants to grab, and she describes the Skim – a living thing that kites through the air, and she explains what the Culverin is – a creature that can shoot pebbles with its mouth.

Mr. Yandro just sneers at all this talk of weird animals. The next day he and John make their way up the mountain trail. John notes that it wasn’t folks’ feet that had worn that trail, it was hoofmarks… and soon John starts noticing things peering from the foliage, such as a big, broad-headed Bammat, a creature with white tusks like ‘bannisters on a spiral staircase’. But Mr. Yandro is oblivious to the things lurking amongst the trees until it is too late, and then, finally, he discovers that all these unlikely beasts really do exist… 

THE DESRICK ON YANDRO is an enjoyable tall tale, with John playing something of a passive role, even though he is the narrator. But once it is explained by Miss Tully that the bitter witch Polly Wiltse had created a special song with the power (if it is heard by a member of the Yandro family) to draw a male Yandro relative back to her desrick, it becomes apparent that John has indeed played a very important function in the story: he happens to be singing this very song at a rich folks’ gathering at the start of the story, which triggers Mr. Yandro’s urge to seek out Polly.  

When John and Mr. Yandro reach the desrick (an old term for a kind of cabin that’s made of strong logs with loophole windows), Yandro is set upon by various creatures, and he is chased into the witch’s desrick, never to be seen again. It is inferred that the old, haggard Polly Wiltse doesn’t care which generation of the Yandro family she punishes, just so long as they resemble the man who’d wronged her all those years ago.   

I love the menagerie of uncanny critters that pop-up in this story. The Culverin has many legs, and has a needle-shaped mouth from which it spits a pebble at Mr. Yandro. The Behinder, which is a variation on the Hidebehind creature featured in lumberjack lore, is not explicitly described by John because it is too terrible a thing for anyone to want to remember properly. Several of the Skims are seen and they seem to be living frisbee-things, whilst the Flat resembles a black, broad, short-furred carpet rug! The specific look of the avian Toller isn’t gone into, we are simply told that it makes gong-gong-gong sounds.  

Wellman wrote a whole bunch of short stories about John, plus five novels. In 1972 the movie WHO FEARS THE DEVIL, aka THE LEGEND OF HILLBILLY JOHN, was released. This was a movie about Silver John’s adventures, and it was set within the same supernaturally-flavoured backwoods milieu of a bizarre rural Appalachia, just like in the books. Two of Wellman’s stories, O UGLY BIRD! and THE DESRICK ON YANDRO, were incorporated into the film’s script. 

The section of the movie that is based on THE DESRICK ON YANDRO story features actor Harris Yulin playing Mr. Yandro. In the film the character likes to dress as an undertaker. This part of the movie boasts some nicely-lit night shots, and it adds scenes that weren’t in the original story, involving Susan Strasberg playing the old hag witch Polly Wiltse, who pretends to be an attractive, still-young woman. The movie also includes John’s dog, called Honor Hound, which accompanies him on his trek up the mountain (the dog isn’t in the short story). This segment of the movie is certainly engaging, but (no doubt because of budgetary reasons) all the quirky folklore creatures are not shown! In the movie adaptation, John and Mr. Yandro simply mention such creatures as Behemoths and Behinders, and there’s an off-screen roar heard at one stage… but we NEVER get to see the folkloric fauna, which is a damn shame!

Fortunately, the part of the film inspired by the O UGLY BIRD! story does show the monster! The filmmakers bring the feathered fiend to the screen as a Ray Harryhausen-style flying, fiendish animated fowl! The Ugly Bird scenes add a lot of much-needed action and fantasy thrills to the production, and they’re definitely my favourite moments in the film. The quirky & creepy-looking puppet was designed and made by key animator Harry Walton, who did 85% of the animation, with Gene Warren Jr. providing animation for four shots. 

Despite the omissions in the DESRICK portion of the plot, and the rather loose directorial style, WHO FEARS THE DEVIL/THE LEGEND OF HILLBILLY JOHN remains an easygoing, episodic, folksy fantasia that’s fun to watch, even if the film lacks the specific atmosphere of the Wellman stories.   

The film WHO FEARS THE DEVIL is reviewed in Imaginator magazine’s FOLK HORROR SPECIAL EDITION. You can find out more about this folk-tastic magazine HERE!

I first read THE DESRICK ON YANDRO short story within the pages of ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MONSTER MUSEUM. This anthology book had stories about such beasts as a slimy blob-creature and intelligent ants, but it was the YANDRO tale that lodged itself in my memory.

The DESRICK story is also featured in various books that collect Wellman’s Silver John short tales together – JOHN THE BALLADEER,
OWLS HOOT IN THE DAYTIME AND OTHER OMENS, and WHO FEARS THE DEVIL?

Mike Mignola’s and Richard Corben’s comic book tale HELLBOY: THE CROOKED MAN was heavily inspired by Manly Wade Wellman’s Appalachian-set Silver John pulp-fantasy-horror stories. I really enjoyed the 2024 movie adaptation – it’s well worth seeking out!