"The emaciated spirit preys upon minds in sleep. It finds the savage hunger within its host. It incubates in that red space. The craving curse. The greed virus. Transmitted down the generations. Every morning, the victim wakes up hungrier, more covetous. Those they hate, they want to devour out of spite. Those they love, they want to devour out of lust — to become a locket containing a gory cameo. 'After all,' whispers the spirit, 'Someone in your belly can never leave you.' The first mouthful of fellow flesh transforms the soul-sick wretch forever. More sickness than species, their accursed metabolism is a torture: however much they consume, they can never be sated. The black hole can only widen. It is a cycle of feast, famine, and fury. The cycle stretches the beast's unnaturally long lifespan..."
— The Buzzing, The Secret World
"What I have been told and what I've read from others is that the creature — or spirit in some cases — is not, like, a generic horror movie monster like a vampire or a werewolf or something. It is actually a rather important part of the folklore and mythology of Algonquian-speaking Native American tribes. It has, over the years, been co-opted and appropriated by non-natives to become something of a generic creature, when that is not the case about it at all. They exist less as something that jumps out to yell "boo" and more cautionary tales; moral stories about community and warnings of greed; very personal symbols of people and history… or especially in the last few centuries, representations of white colonialism killing or screwing over tribes. To even say the name of it can be taboo among the tribes."
—Lewis Lovhaug, explaining the significance of the character and the controversy surrounding modern invocations of it, Atop the Fourth Wall
