One weird misconception that’s propagated is that the Acheri, the disease-causing ghosts of little girls that live in the mountains and react to the color red, are Native American. For instance, as in the image above by Robert Ingpen from the Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were, which has somehow ended up without attribution on Wikipedia.
Except they aren’t.
Acheri are Indian. As in from India, such as in Kumaon in hilly Uttarakhand.
How this came about is unclear, but I think hypercorrection of “Indian” coupled with an appearance in the EoTTNW (plus a suitably haunting artwork) led to the American version being popularized.
Forgive my silly nerdy question, but was this the inspiration for the D&D monster called the Achaierai? It was purely the similarity of the names that caught my eye. The monster in question certainly doesn’t bear a close resemblance to the ghostly girl you described.
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Pure coincidence I say.
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Well it was a thought. The only other tenuous connection I could think of was that the Achaierai’s main mode of attack was a toxic black cloudy breath weapon.
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Fair enough
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What does EoTTNW stand for?
I’m not familiar with this abbreviation.
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Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were
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Oh, I get it now 😛
I think, as it’s not a common abbreviation it’s a bit confusing that you only use it once.
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I’m a huge fan of unnecessary and single-use acronyms (UASUA)
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