In the Lakshadweep Sea lives the Beri. It drifts over the water and looks like a log of wood. However, it is a monster that is asleep. The Beri will only awaken when it is washed ashore. If the island it drifts onto is uninhabited, the Beri is lifted back into the ocean at the next high tide. However, if the island is inhabited, the Beri wakes up.

It so happened that the Beri once washed ashore on Minicoy Island. There, a woman sat down on the Beri, believing it to be a log of wood. According to lore, the Beri will awaken only if a woman sits on it or stands next to it. After a few days, when it has fully awakened, it takes the form of a man and enters the village. And that is exactly what happened. 

The Beri, in the form of a handsome young man, entered the village and introduced himself as a travelling sailor. He then began to seek out the young woman who woke him up and began wooing her. He made her fall in love with him and married her.

Using his marriage as an excuse, he settled down in the village and began to work as a common laborer. However, every night, the Beri would sneak into the cemetery, dig up corpses and eat them. It was careful enough to ensure that it never got caught. After some time, there were no more corpses for the Beri to consume. To gratify his appetite, the Beri induced sickness in the villagers, and slowly, they began to die.

As the number of unusual deaths began to increase, the villagers became suspicious, and the elders set up a night watch without informing the people.

To the people’s horror, they found that the handsome man they had welcomed turned out to be a corpse-eating monster. They all came together to attack and kill the Beri, but it turned into a tall, slimy monster with enormous teeth, and began gobbling people up.

Desperate to save themselves, the people began crowding together and throwing their weapons at the Beri. Realizing that it was outnumbered, the monster finally jumped into the sea and swam away. It slowly turned into a log and went back to sleep until it drifted onto the next island.

A Folktale sourced from Ghosts, Monsters, and Demons of India by Rakesh Khanna and J Furcifer Bhairav.

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