In the folklore of French and Belgian Ardennes and of Bavaria, the croqueur d'os ("bone muncher" in French) is a scavenger imp who lives in graveyards. With one very strong arm allowing him to tear off and the other arm flat as a shovel allowing him to dig, he creates tunnels in which he lives and gets around and exhumes corpses (whose clothes, be they in good condition or in tatters, he steals to dress in), fresh or decayed, to eat them ; like his name indicates his favorite part is the skeleton, which he munches with no difficulty with his mighty teeth and jaws. He also likes viper venom of which he makes an alcohol that only his species can drink for obvious reasons, and he makes with the skin of a mole perchments on which he writes the history of his people, of his life, of his family.

Croqueurs d'os © Ardennes and Bavarian folklore
Drawing © me