The Creatures of Supernatural

Up until Season 4 of Supernatural, we only had demons to contend with. However, with the end of the world drawing nigh, an angel named Castiel pulled Dean out of Hell, leaving him permanently marked. Though heavenly beings, the angels of Supernatural are far from pleasant, in fact, they can be pretty nasty!

Angels are under orders from God, but many of the lower down ones have been getting their orders from other levels of angels. In one episode, a woman discovers that she is an angel who chose to become human. However, with all the hoopla brewing, she finds her Grace again and becomes an angel once more, but not before having one last fling with Dean in the back of the Impala . . . rather un-angel-like behavior!

There are specific markings that can keep angels away, but for the most part, they are able to come and go as they please, inhabiting humans because their true form causes people's eyes to burn out. Their true voices are so high pitched that they break glass and no one can understand them, so they need to take human form and possess someone in order to talk to humans.

It is possible to kill an angel, but exactly HOW this is done is never really explained in the show.

Demons are the reason Sam and Dean Winchester are hunters. A demon fed its blood to Sam as a baby and killed his mother. The demons originally come from Hell in the show, but even when sent back through an exorcism or something similar, they can eventually come back. They also have special powers and can pin people against walls, throw them across rooms, etc. without touching them.

Demons possess humans and make them temporarily immortal, but when the demon is exorcised, if the human has withstood major injury during the possession, they will die. Originally, the only way to get rid of a demon was to read them the exorcism rites, but as the show progresses, it turns out that a special gun, the Colt, can also kill demons (as well as any other supernatural being). Later, in Season 3, a knife appears that kills demons. Both of these weapons have the added disadvantage of killing the host, as well. In the fourth season, Sam has learned to use his demon power to kill the creatures outright, without harming the possessed human.

There are 3 types of demons in Supernatural. The most common types have black eyes. The demon that killed Sam and Dean's mother had yellow eyes and was commonly referred to as the YED (Yellow Eyed Demon). And finally, Lilith, one of the most powerful of the fallen angels, has white eyes. None of the demons show off their eyes, but they blink and their eyes appear completely black to show us that they are demonic.

A djinn is a creature much like an evil genie. In Supernatural, the djinn fed on people's lifeforce while providing them with an alternate reality. While this perfect life might have seemed ideal, it wasn't real and staying in it would cause the death of the person, in this case, Dean.

The Djinn can be killed with a knife dipped in lamb's blood.

A field god is an old country deity that can provide great weather and abundant crops. In Scarecrow, the god took the form of the title character, a scarecrow, assembled from body parts, which came to life once a year to kill.

The downside to these gods is that they need their annual sacrifice or things begin to go terribly wrong. The townspeople in Supernatural would send unsuspecting travelers to their doom every year, but in this episode, Dean rescues the travelers and is captured himself.

The only way to destroy a field god is to burn the plant it is attached to, in this case, an old apple tree. When this happens, the god is killed permanently.

Ghosts are almost always restless spirits who were either too evil to pass on or who have unfinished business. Supernatural actually deals with several types of ghosts, including those who have no idea they are dead, poltergeists, and death echoes.

In nearly every case, it is necessary to salt and burn the bones of the person doing the haunting. That means digging up a grave and exposing the rotted corpse to burn it. However, this doesn't always work. If a piece of DNA was left behind, such as the little girl's hair on a doll in Providence, then that must also be destroyed. Iron can be used to dissolve a ghost temporarily, as can rock salt from a shotgun blast, but the ghosts always return with these methods. Standing inside a ring of salt will prevent ghosts from reaching you, but again, this can only last so long.

Methods used to kill or get rid of ghosts on Supernatural include the typical salt and burn technique, luring the ghost onto hallowed ground, scaring the ghost to death, melting silver leftover from the ghost's hook hand, and giving the ghost what it wants.

The Lady in White is a ghost based on tales told worldwide of women who, in an act of desperation, kill their children. Later, feeling horribly guilty, they kill themselves. The reason for this temporary insanity is usually that their husband has cheated on them. Once they are dead, the women come back as ghosts that haunt roads, looking for rides from men. They try to convince the men to be unfaithful and when the guy breaks down, the Lady in White kills him.

In the pilot episode of Supernatural, Sam finds himself being harrassed by Constance Welsch, the local Lady in White. He gets rid of her by driving into her house and letting her dead children drag her away.

Real life legends of this type include La Llorona in Mexico and La Dama en Blanca in South American countries.

These nasty hobgoblins are similar to boogeymen and capture naughty children. The only way to kill them is through a very strong jolt of electricity. This is how Dean ended up nearly dying . . . he accidentally got himself with 10,000 volts while killing the raw head that had captured two small children.

Reapers are Death. Unlike the traditional idea that there is only one death, in Supernatural each area has its own reaper. These are the ones who take life when time is up. They tend to be quite matter of fact and calm in the face of unhappy customers, like Dean when he refused to leave his body in the first episode of Season 2, In My Time of Dying.

You supposedly cannot kill a reaper, but in Death Takes a Holiday, Season 4, several demons are doing just that and manage to kill one reaper before Sam and Dean, in spirit form, are able to stop them.

Shapeshifters are supernatural creatures that can change to look like anyone they want. They not only appear as that person, but can also "download" their memories and emotions to truly be like the person they are imitating, but only so long as the person is alive. This effectively fools just about everyone.

In Skin, the shapeshifter is turning into men and murdering their wives, leaving the husbands and boyfriends to be charged with murder. The shapeshifter ends up as Dean and is killed by Dean, causing FBI reports to include his death certificate.

Nightshifter shows us a shapeshifter who is using his power to rob jewelry stores and banks. When Sam and Dean get trapped inside a bank trying to help the man who is searching out the shapeshifter (which he thinks is a manbot), they appear to be in cahoots and are wanted by the FBI.

Shapeshifters can be killed easily enough. They are identifiable by the lens flare that occurs when they look directly into a camera, as seen in the photo above.

Strigas appear in human form most of the time. They live for thousands of years and can only be killed while feeding, which they tend to do in spurts every 25 years.

They feed off the lifeforce of humans and prefer children, since they have stronger lifeforces . . . this usually results in the children falling into a coma and never awaking. The striga usually enters children's rooms through the window and converts into a hideous creature by night.

When Sam and Dean were small, Sam was nearly killed by a striga and in Something Wicked, 25 years later, they have to face it again.

The Trickster is a god that thrives on creating chaos. They can create things out of thin air, but these are more than illusions, they actually appear and can vanish again in a puff of smoke. In general, they use their powers for entertainment, albeit dark entertainment, purposes.

In Tall Tales, the Trickster caused people to die or be punished for being jerks. Sam and Dean thought they killed the Trickster, but the thing they killed was only an illusion.

Later, in Mystery Spot, the Trickster returns to cause Sam to relive the same day over and over again, watching Dean die hundreds of times, completely powerless to stop it from happening. The only way to kill a trickster is by stabbing it through the heart with a wooden stake.

This creature can take any form. It is a Tibetan "thought form" and is developed from stories that people believe. The more people that believe, the stronger the tulpa becomes.

In Hell House, the tulpa took on the form of a male ghost, the story of which was invented as a prank and published on a popular website. Thousands of people read and believed the story, creating a tulpa of extraordinary power. Sam and Dean had to work to change the story so they could actually kill the creature.

Vampires are fairly standard in the world of supernatural beings. They drink human blood and are usually killers, though the Winchesters run into one group that is not bloodthirsty at all.

The vampires of Supernatural are affected by silver, but not by daylight, but the main way to kill them is to cut off their heads, which Dean does with much gusto. A human is turned by drinking vampire blood . . . in Fresh Blood, Deacon turns pretty girls by offering them a new "high", a vial of his own blood. New vampires are very unstable and only want to feed. Also, the Supernatural vampires have a full set of sharp fangs that extend when they feed or fight, unlike the usual two fangs that we see in most vampire movies.

Werewolves are human most of the time, but turn into wolf-human mixes during the full moon. During this time, they are not usually aware of what they are doing and tend to bite unsuspecting people. The bites, if they don't kill the person, will convert them into another werewolf.

Werewolves can be killed with silver bullets. In Heart, Sam is forced to shoot the girl he has fallen for when he and Dean are unable to cure her. Madison is completely unaware that she is a werewolf until the boys prove it to her and is willing to die in order to save the ones she would kill otherwise.

The wendigo is based on native folklore. A man left alone with the dead begins to eat human flesh and takes on special longevity powers, but at a cost. He transforms into a terrible creature that can move at the speed of light and craves human meat.

Wendigos can mimic human sounds still and they prefer to capture their food and eat it alive, slowly. They usually feast on hunters or campers in remote areas where the disappearances can be mistaken for bear attacks. These creatures prefer dark, hidden places, like the mine tunnels where Dean is taken by the wendigo.

These creatures can be killed with fire.

Zombies are dead people brought back to life through witchcraft. While they don't feature zombies much in Supernatural, they do exist and appear in two different episodes.

In Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things a young man brings his crush back from the dead using the black arts. What he doesn't realize is that he has released something very evil. His undead girlfriend begins to murder everyone she knew in life. It takes a special ritual to put a zombie back into the tomb!

The zombies in It's the Great Pumpkin Sam Winchester were more like the bumbling undead we know, crawling out of their tombs, resurrected by the witches trying to bring back their master.