One of my favorite books that I read to my daughter (I’m stealing it the first chance I get) is A Dignity of Dragons by by Jacqueline Ogburn and Nicoletta Ceccoli.
What this book does is address the much needed names for collective nouns of mythical creatures. What the heck is a collective noun? Well, back in the nineteenth century, Victorians got awful bored with out any television or internet. They played a game where they thought up clever names for groups of animals. The idea was to get a name that encompassed the spirit of the animal. Some of my favorites are a crash of rhinos or a flamboyance of flamingos. Get the idea?
Jacqueline Ogburn came up with all sorts of collective nouns for mythical creatures, like: a bolt of hippogriffs, a splash of mermaids, and a dazzlement of Quetzalcoatls. I wanted to continue this trend, only with creatures from horror. Specifically classic monsters. Here’s what I came up with.
- a stumble of zombies
- a coffin of vampires
- a howling of werewolves
- a bolt of Frankensteins*
- a tanna of mummies**
- a caldron of wiches
- a clang hunchbacks
- an ectoplasm of phantoms
- a haunting of ghosts
- a glow of will-o-whisps
- a bottle of djinn***
- a trample of kaiju****
- a decapitation of headless horsemen
- a tinker of gremlins
- a hunger of ghouls
- a husk of scarecrows
- a marrow of skeletons
- a translucence of invisible men
- a beaker of mad scientists
- a lever of henchmen
- a scream of victims
- a probe of aliens
- a circuit of robots
If you can think of any to add to the list (no serial killers or the suck, just classic monsters) then add to the comments below.
Tim Kane
*Yes I know that the doctor is actually Frankenstein, but in the sequel it called the Bride of Frankenstein, and she’s intended for the monster, so… Let’s just settle on Frank as the monster’s name.
** Tanna leaves were a device introduced in the later mummy movies as a way of controlling the creature.
*** I know lamps are more common, but a lamp of djinn sounds weird.
**** This is the name for the giant Japanese monsters like Godzilla and Mothra. Go ahead, check out the wiki site.