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What this episode is about
Part 2 of my series on the real myths behind the monsters of The Witcher goes into the forest, to the first male creature in the series and maybe the first one that is not a monster at all. In the game it is called the Leshen. Most of what you think you know about how it looks is made up.
The face that never existed
The Leshen in The Witcher 3 (2015) has a body of wood and moss and a deer skull with antlers. That face has almost nothing to do with Slavic legend. In 2025, Tomasz Majkowski, Magdalena Kozyra and Aleksandra Prokopek showed in Games and Culture that it is a modern invention. Sapkowski himself mentions the creature only in passing. Today there is even a Leshen monument in Bolków.
Lord and shepherd of the forest
The real Leszy, in Russian Lešij, from les, “forest,” is the master of the forest’s household. The wild animals are his herd, and he leads the wolf packs. He changes shape, stands as tall as the trees in his own forest, and gives himself away through things that are the wrong way around: no eyebrows, no shadow, clothes buttoned the wrong way.
Leading people astray, and the science
His best-known trait: he makes people walk in circles and lures them with imitated voices, laughing and clapping. To escape, you turn your clothes inside out and switch your shoes. That people really do walk in circles when they have no landmarks was shown in 2009 by a team led by Jan Souman at the Max Planck Institute in Tübingen, published in Current Biology.
The pact
People did not fight the Leszy, they negotiated with him. Herders and hunters made pacts, brought bread and salt, and promised moderation: take no more than you need, don’t boast, don’t defile the forest. At its core, an ecological lesson.
How the guardian became a devil
With Christianity, the Leszy was recast as an “unclean force” and given horns and hooves. A legend from the Olonets region says the fallen angels dropped to earth, and those that landed in the forest became forest spirits. This demonized Leszy is the ancestor of the game monster.
The horned lord everywhere
Pan for the Greeks, Silvanus for the Romans, the Wild Man: almost every culture living at the edge of large forests has a male lord of the woods. The forest gave people their living and could also kill them, and the Leszy gave that boundary a face and a law.
Frequently asked questions
What is a Leszy?
The lord and shepherd of the forest in Slavic tradition, neither good nor evil, who leads travelers astray and demands respect.
Does the Leszy really look like the Leshen in The Witcher?
No. The deer skull with antlers is a modern invention for The Witcher 3.
More in the lexicon: Leszy.
About this episode
He’s one of the most iconic creatures in “The Witcher 3”: the Leshen, a towering forest terror with a deer skull and antlers. But in Part 3 of our four-part series on the real myths behind the monsters of “The Witcher,” we uncover the truth: that face is largely invented – a modern “invented tradition.”
We dig up the real Leszy: the master and shepherd of the forest, neither good nor evil, who leads travellers astray, makes pacts with shepherds and hunters, and punishes greed. We follow the famous “leading astray” motif all the way to a genuine scientific study on walking in circles (Souman et al., Current Biology, 2009), watch Christianity turn the guardian into a horned devil – and ask, at the end, why we summon this forest monster back today.
📖 Further reading & sources:
• Tomasz Z. Majkowski, Magdalena Kozyra & Aleksandra Prokopek: “The Invention of Leshy,” in: Games and Culture (2025)
• Alexander Afanasyev: Poetic Views of the Slavs on Nature (1865–1869)
• Sergei Maksimov: Nechistaya, nevedomaya i krestnaya sila (1903)
• Dmitry Zelenin: Ocherki russkoi mifologii (1916)
• Kazimierz Moszyński: Kultura ludowa Słowian, Vol. II (1929–1939)
• Aleksander Gieysztor: Mitologia Słowian (1982)
• Linda J. Ivanits: Russian Folk Belief (1989)
• W. F. Ryan: The Bathhouse at Midnight (1999)
• Jan L. Souman et al.: “Walking Straight into Circles,” in: Current Biology 19 (2009)
• Vic Tandy & Tony Lawrence: “The Ghost in the Machine,” in: Journal of the SPR (1998) – infrasound