Personifications of death exist in all cultures, throughout all of recorded history. In some cases, the Reaper has even given people talismans that made them immortal. With the crook of one boney finger, he can break your bonds to the living world forever.Īfter the Reaper has collected your soul, he will serve as a psychopomp, a guide who helps you find your way into the next realm.Ī few stories describe heroes who have managed to trick the Grim Reaper or convince him not to take their souls.

Most stories claim that the mere presence of this specter will begin to draw the soul from the body. His signature, and most mysterious, skill is the ability to separate souls from the body. The Reaper has an important job and special skills to match. He ends suffering for people who are old or sick, and he prevents overpopulation. The Reaper kills people because it is their fate to die. Assassins kill people without caring about their fate. Some people might think that the Reaper, like an assassin, is despicable because he ends lives without so much as a flinch. He always meets his deadlines, and he is rarely distracted from or persuaded not to do his job. His job is to collect souls when they reach the end of their time on earth, and he is extremely diligent about getting his work done.

The Grim Reaper’s appearance might send a chill down your spine, but he’s not as evil as he looks!Ībove all else, the Reaper is a hard worker. Most legends paint the Reaper as a skeleton-white bones and an empty skull-but a few claim that nothing but a dark void lurks beneath the cloak. Finally, he may travel on the back of a ghostly white horse or in a chariot pulled by white horses.įew people have glimpsed the figure beneath the black cloak and lived to tell the tale. The specter might also carry an hourglass, which he uses to measure the amount of time left in a life. In the Reaper’s case, it is used to harvest souls at the end of life. The scythe is traditionally used to harvest crops at the end of fall. In his hand, the Reaper carries a scythe, a long pole with a curved blade fixed to the top. It is usually loose and tattered, so that bits of black flutter in the wind as the Reaper moves. The cloak wraps all the way around the specter’s body and shrouds his face beneath a deep hood. The Reaper’s look starts with a long, black cloak. Unlike earlier personifications of death, the Grim Reaper has a ghoulish appearance that has made him a favorite Halloween costume for generations.

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