Hey everyone, Welcome to another installment of Harry Potter Theory. Today we’re going to be discussing the misunderstood origins of Dementors—the wizarding world’s enigmatic wraith-like creatures known for guarding Azkaban and sucking out souls.
Specifically, we’ll be taking a look at my theory on how Dementors were first created. Dementors, towering 3m tall, are sinister cloaked beings with dark grey scabby skin. These malevolent creatures symbolize the embodiment of unhappiness and despair—they are commonly known as the guards of Azkaban prison, responsible for ensuring that all of the darkest witches and wizards inside do not escape.
Dementors were originally created by J.K. Rowling as a way of representing depression, and so Rowling, having experienced depression herself, wanted to create a creature that personified all of the negative aspects.
Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places. They glory and decay and despair. They drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them.
Even Muggles feel their presence, though they can’t see them. Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory, will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself—soulless and evil.
You’ll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life. But J.K. Rowling isn’t the only creator of the Dementors—there has to be an in-universe answer as well. So, where did they come from?
Echristus: The Father of Dementors?
Now, when you look up this question, most places will point you towards a dark wizard named Echristus—a man that is considered by many to be the father of Dementors, but I’m here today to put a spin on that.
Echristus isn’t particularly well known, but he certainly marked his place in visiting history as he was a practitioner of the worst kinds of dark arts imaginable. Very little is known about him, other than the fact that he was alive during the 15th century, and that he was evil—pure evil.
No one even knows his nationality, and if it was known, I’m sure no one would want to claim ownership of him. He was that bad. Echristus was the original inhabitant of the island fortress of Azkaban, what we now know as the prison that holds some of the darkest witches and wizards within its walls.
While traveling in the 15th century, Echristus stumbled upon the island, which at the time had no infrastructure to speak of. When he first arrived, it was just a regular island. But it didn’t take long for Echristus to corrupt the island, and turn it into his own little dark arts experiment.
Hoping to keep the location of the island, which was located in the North Sea, a secret, Echristus kicked things off by placing concealment charms on the island, meaning that no one would be able to intentionally find it.
After placing the concealment charms on the island, Echristus began his dark arts experiments by luring Muggle sailors to the island, then torturing and eventually murdering them. It has been said that before ever stepping foot on the island, Echristus was mad, but that after spending some time there, he became totally insane—completely losing touch with reality.
He became so wrapped up and enthralled in his dark arts that he lured poor sailors to the island to witness it first-hand. In his madness, it has been speculated that Echristus either unwittingly or perhaps intentionally created what we now know to be Dementors.
But beyond this speculation, there is absolutely no information on how Echristus created them. We also know that no one visited the island until Echristus died, the reason for this being that his concealment charms weren’t lifted until his death.
The Mysterious Island of Azkaban
And so, when he died, the giant island—which Echristus had enlarged—simply appeared out of nowhere, prompting the Ministry of Magic at the time to investigate. Those who entered to investigate refused afterward to talk of what they had found inside, but the least frightening part of it was that the place was infested with Dementors.
Many an authority thought Azkaban an evil place that was best destroyed. Others were afraid of what might happen to the Dementors infesting the building if they deprived them of their home. The creatures were already strong and impossible to kill—many feared a horrible revenge if they took away a habitat where they appeared to thrive.
The very walls of the building seemed steeped in misery and pain, and the Dementors were determined to cling to it. Experts who had studied buildings built with and around dark magic contended that Azkaban might wreak its own revenge upon anybody attempting to destroy it.
The fortress was therefore left abandoned for many years, a home to continually breeding Dementors. The prevailing theory for why Echristus was the one to create Dementors is that he was found dead on an island full of them.
A New Theory: Patient Zero
But that doesn’t reveal any aspects related to how he created them. Here’s what I think: Echristus created one Dementor. And this one Dementor took it from there. We know that Echristus performed dark arts experiments deemed unimaginable.
We also know that he lived on the island in secrecy for many, many years—occasionally luring sailors there via his concealment charms. I think the first sailor that he lured to the island became patient zero.
I think this one sailor, for as long as Echristus remained on the island, became his go-to for any and all kinds of twisted dark arts experiments. I think one poor man must have been on the receiving end of it all, enduring years and years of torture from an incredibly sinister dark wizard.
And I think that it was this man that eventually, in a roundabout way, birthed a Dementor. Let me explain. In the Harry Potter universe, witches and wizards subject to trauma at a young age can manifest what is called an Obscurus, making them an Obscurial.
This Obscurus is a dark and powerful force created as a result of a young witch or wizard suppressing their magical abilities. Basically, instead of learning to control and express their magic, they bottle it up—leading to the creation of an Obscurus.
The Birth of a Dementor
Basically, the trauma and fear is significant enough to create a powerful dark parasitic force, and these Obscurus are nothing to scoff at—they’re incredibly powerful, very hard to contain, and entirely unpredictable.
But my point is this: the whole Obscurus-Obscurial process demonstrates to me that when the stresses are significant enough, magic can birth or create new dark magic. And I think that the original Dementor was birthed or created from a man whose soul was continually tormented for years and years.
The sailor may not have been magical himself, but he was certainly subjected to his fair share of dark magic, so it’s not all that surprising that it would have had some sort of magical outcome. The man tortured on Echristus Island would have been stripped of everything—his dignity, his hope, his sanity, and eventually his very soul.
He would have experienced the entire range of negative emotions associated with being a human, making him the perfect breeding ground for a Dementor—which, of course, represents all of those things—hopelessness, despair, etc.
Alternative Theory: The Tormented Soul
The alternative to this theory is that the Dementor wasn’t birthed from the man, but was instead created from the man’s soul. After years of enduring Echristus’s torturous experiments, the final nail in the coffin came when Echristus cast a spell that ripped his soul out of his body.
Ever heard of Avada Kedavra? We know that the killing curse leaves its victims soulless, but what this suggests is that the soul still exists—just outside of the physical body. I happen to think that one poor sailor’s tormented soul had endured so much that when it was ejected from the body, it manifested into a dark and powerful depressive force—a Dementor.
The Soul and the Afterlife
The existence of a soul is a somewhat abstract concept, making it quite difficult to define. However, the generally accepted concept of a soul is that it’s a kind of immaterial spiritual essence—an actuating cause of an individual’s life.
It’s what makes us tick, and it certainly has no scientific explanation. It’s the soul that Dementors feed on. It’s pieces of soul that Voldemort imparts into objects, and it’s the soul that Avada Kedavra purportedly rips out of the body.
The soul is what keeps our corporeal form earthbound, and that’s why it plays a significant role in the conversation surrounding the wizarding afterlife. You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working.
But you’ll have no sense of self anymore—no memory, no anything. There’s no chance at all of recovery. You’ll just exist as an empty shell, and your soul is gone forever. Lost. Harry Potter very much perpetuates the idea that ultimately, the physical body is merely a shell—a vessel that merely transports the vital life force within.
A Parasitic Dark Force?
And because the soul is immaterial, it exists forever—just like Dementors. If we are to go by one of my theories, we can reasonably conclude that Dementors are either:
a. Parasitic dark forces created as a result of torture and other horrific conditions, or
b. Actual tainted souls of individuals that have been subjected to copious amounts of dark magic.
But whichever theory you choose, I still think that Echristus was only responsible for creating one Dementor.
The rest of them—well, that was up to the first one—patient zero. Let me explain. The Dementors possess a powerful ability known as the Kiss. This Kiss is capable of extracting the victim’s soul from their very body, leaving them as just a shell of their former selves.
Conventional understanding of the Kiss would suggest that once it’s performed, the soul is extracted and pushed into a sort of void—nowhere to be found. But I think that once the soul is ejected from the body, it turns into the very creature that pulled it down in the first place—a Dementor.
Breeding and the Dementors’ Environment
The physical shell of the victim remains as just a physical shell—but it’s their soul that’s transformed. Dementors are known for having a strong impact on their surrounding environment, mainly characterized by a chilling decrease in temperature, diminished light, enhanced darkness, and instilling despair and hopelessness in nearby living beings.
Harry experiences this first-hand in the books. An intense cold swept over them all. Harry felt his own breath catch in his chest. The cold went deeper than his skin. It was inside his chest. It was inside his very heart.
Harry’s body. He was drowning in cold. There was a rushing in his ears as though of water. He was being dragged downward, the roaring growing louder. The Dementors by virtue of being Dementors, create the perfect environment for breeding.
And what better creature to understand human despair than another human? Or at least, what used to be another human? How else could we expect a dark creature to understand the full range of human emotions?
The Ministry’s Classification of Dementors
The Ministry of Magic classifies Dementors as non-beings, also known as non-human spiritus apparition—a classification which refers to creatures formed out of human emotions. And this sounds like a perfect description to me.
There’s only one mention of Dementors breeding in the books, and it occurs during an exchange between Fudge and the Muggle Prime Minister in the Half-Blood Prince. Even the weather was dismal—all this chilly mist in the middle of July.
It wasn’t right, it wasn’t normal. But, said the Prime Minister, with a sense of dawning horror, didn’t you tell me they’re the creatures that drain hope and happiness out of people? That’s right, and they’re breeding.
That’s what’s causing all this mist. And if we’re to believe that Dementors breeding creates mist, then their attack on Harry on the train would support the idea that breeding just means attacking people, or perhaps animals, and sucking out more souls.
During his encounter with the Dementors on the train, Harry experiences the following: a thick white fog was swirling around him, inside him. But I’m gonna leave it there for today. What do you think?
Do you agree with any of my theories? Do you have any theories of your own for how Dementors are created? Let me know down in the comment section below.
