Herbal Wise: The Benefits of Celery

Back in the far away (and very hazy) day I used to dance ballet. Those days were over fast when I realized two things: those (comparatively) huge boobs were not going to work and and my right knee was trouble from the get go. Hey, it was fun while it lasted.

To the point, though, I still have problems with my knee. It pops and pains and I wear a soft brace made from bamboo charcoal fiber most days just to keep the darn thing in line. Recently though, due more to the fact that I often research possible helpful solutions for my daughter's Juvenile Idiopathic (they used to call it "Rheumatoid") Arthritis than any interest in my own uncooperative joint, I have found a surprisingly simple solution. Celery.

It turns out that celery seed has been of long standing assistance to those with joint pain. According to Andrew Chevallier in The Visual Reference Guide to Herbal Remedies, celery is a "... good detoxification remedy, celery stem, leaf and seed stimulate the kidneys to clear waste... especially helping to cleanse salts that accumulate in joints, causing stiffness and inflammation."

Celery seed in particular is of great assistance in this process, and can be found at health food stores and herbalists in capsule form. Both my daughter and I take one capsule daily to the benefit of our sore joints. I won't say that it has completely alleviated our symptoms like some miracle but celery seed has certainly helped.

An added bonus here is that celery seed, and more specifically the juice of the celery stem, can help in detoxifying and moving unwanted fluids along. If you are prone to swollen ankles after a long day at your desk, a nice infusion of celery juice in an evening green tea will help move those fluids along and make you less gargantuan in the lower extremities after a long day.

But Pauline, you say; this is HQ. We're not here to have our piggies de-bloatified by some silly celery tea. What will celery do for us magickly gosh darn it?

Hold your horses, as they used to say. I've got that for you too.

Use celery in your cooking not only to help your dreaming hint at the future but to bring peace and harmony to your home and your family.

Most often, celery - particularly in the form of seed - is used to encourage psychism. Crush and bruise a few celery seeds, then wrap them in a muslin bag or a coffee filter and brew them into a tea with very hot water to help you along in your card, crystal ball, pendulum or other readings. The celery tea is said to open the third eye to visions of the future and what might be the best path for anyone you are reading for - including yourself.

You can make a mojo bag for psychic vision by placing equal parts anise, calendula, poppy flower and celery seed into a muslin or yellow flannel bag with intention. Place the mojo in your pillow case and sleep on it nightly to encourage your psychic ability. Carry it - if you dare - into haunted places to see the ghosties and ghoulies that walk the night. The mojo is best held in your left - receptive - hand for this purpose but beware: this practice can encourage an attraction making an unwelcome entity glom on to you and follow you home. Not a very pleasant experience and one that can only be avoided by proper and careful warding beforehand.

In the end, celery is both a practical and spiritual plant that can help in myriad different ways and on various levels. Use it wisely, and the benefits will be manifest happily. Bonne chance ~

Header: Found on Tumblr; isn't the internet amazing?

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

In the more florid days of anatomists and resurrectionists, people worried about their bodies being exhumed for medical research. Such horrors were only replaced in the Victorian mind when the likes of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein gave way to Bram Stoker's Dracula. A long interval of decades indeed and either way we're dealing with the resurrected dead, aren't we?

Today, for your enjoyment, a poem by Thomas Hood who died in 1845, fairly the height of the post Burke and Hare era of the late 1820s. The poem is told from the perspective of the ghost of a young woman who, dead before she could marry her dear William, returns to him one night to recount the ghastly dismemberment her corpse has suffered. Hood clearly has a wry sense of the issue as well as a dark sense of humor. One wonders what he might have to say about our current culture's zombie craze.

The arm that used to take your arm
Is took to Dr. Vyse
And both my legs are gone to walk
The Hospital at Guy's.

I vowed that you should have my hand,
But fate gives us denial;
You'll find it there at Dr. Bell's
In spirits and a phial.

I can't tell you where my head is gone
But Doctor Carpue can; 
As for my trunk, it's all packed up
To go by Pickford's van.

The cock it crows - I must be gone!
My William, we must part
But I'll be yours in death, altho'
Sir Astley has my heart.

Header: Pendumbra by Enjeong Noh via American Gallery

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

Today of all days, with Krampus behind us, Yule upon us and Frau Holda just about to come in for supper, seems the best choice for a discussion of The Wild Hunt. This mythology spreads from Eastern Europe, down through the Mediterranean, up to Celtic and Nordic lands and clear across the Atlantic to North America. If you've ever heard the famous Stan Jones country hit "Ghost Riders in the Sky," you know how the legend has been kept alive to this day.

The Wild Hunt is a tricky myth to pin down. Because there are legends about swift riding, death-dealing hunts blackening night skies all over Europe and Russia, it is hard to say where exactly the story originated. Most anthropologists now settle on a Teuton/Viking origin, probably due to the fact that the Vikings took their mythology over almost half the earth. Here the leaders of The Wild Hunt are usually Woden/Odin and/or his wife Frigg.

In the stories, which are uncannily similar, a maelstrom of hunters straddling ghostly horses and accompanied by baying hounds rides either across land or, more often, sky at a pace that proves they have no human origin. Sometimes the Hunt was actually seen by humans, sometimes witnessed only as a violent storm and on other occasions never seen but only heard. Almost always, people were advised to hurry for shelter or at least avert their eyes when the Hunt approached. One story tells of a Briton father, caught in an open field with his daughter when the Hunt swooped down, telling his little girl to lift her apron up over her face. By this gesture, the girl was unknowingly giving respect to the Old Gods and - more importantly - avoiding their deadly gaze.

As Christianity infiltrated the pagan nooks and crannies of the North, Woden and Frigg were replaced by  Satan as the leader of the Hunt. It was said that those in the open without proper protection - consecrated medals, crucifixes, or recent communion - would be swept up by the Hunt, carried away breathlessly through the air and dumped in a strange place with no way of knowing how to find home. The Hunt was also a collector of souls; those who saw it sweep over graveyards swore they saw some of the recently dead pulled up and along by the riders. No doubt these were the evil doers, on their way to their just punishments in Hell.

This remaking of godly hunt into a carrion collection party may stem more from Celtic than Teuton myth. It was the Morrigan, that beautiful, blood soaked goddess of sex and death, who collected the fallen souls in the aftermath of battle. She may have been confused with Hel, the Teutonic queen of the Underworld, in the post-Christian mind and the idea of a hunt that featured spectral Amazons may have been thought to include a sort of reaping of souls.

In later centuries, when the fear of Hell was overtaken by more scientific anxieties, the Wild Hunt became something of a children's story that came out particularly around the end of the year holidays. By the 19th century the leader of the Hunt was not the Devil but the devil-esque figure known as Krampus. Krampus was the helper of Saint Nicholas who brought switches to parents to punish their less-than-good children while the good kids got gifts from the saint. In cases of unrepentant bad behavior, Krampus would bundle up the child in his black bag and drag the mischief maker back his cave.

The Hunt is also loosely associated with Frau Holda, a Baba-Yaga type figure who will put children who fall into her magickal well to hard work in her home. Capable children will be sent home with gold; lazy monsters will return to their parents covered in pitch. Holda is often compared to the Italian whitch-lady La Befana who, something like Santa Claus, brings presents to the children of families who feed her when she shows up for supper on Christmas Eve.

As to that American Wild Hunt mentioned earlier, click over and listen to the immortal Man in Black sing it as only he can. Here's Johnny Cash with "Ghost Riders in the Sky" live. Enjoy! And a Happy Yule/Solstice to you all.

Header: Asgardsreien by Peter Nicolai Arbo 1872 via Wikipedia

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

After a bit of thought, I've decided to continue the Friday harbingers of death theme right through to the New Year. Winter, after all, tended to be a time when our ancestors in northern climes would dwell on the passing of life. No wonder, either; when it is dark and cold and there is very little to do outside the home (in agrarian societies at least) one's thoughts naturally turn inward. And sometimes those thoughts included mortality.

Will-o-the-wisps, corpse candles and elf lights are not a phenomena, scientifically speaking, that occur only in the far north. It is there, though, that they seem to have been most often seen and discussed. The scientific explanation for hovering lights that float over the ground in particular areas is methane gas leaking up from under soggy, marshy or even corpse-strewn ground. In specific conditions, this gas will ignite creating glowing orbs of phosphorescent light.

Such explanations meant nothing to our ancestors. In fact, they're rather boring, comparatively.

In France, Germany, Scandinavian countries and the British Isles, these blue-green flickers were thought to be the spirits of the dead. What kind of dead - sad, lonely or vengeful - depended on where the lights were seen and what they did.

Corpse candles appeared most often in graveyards and were thought to be the spirits of the dead either warning the living of coming doom or simply retracing their final path: from their home to their grave. It was said that corpse candles were sometimes seen wandering the path to the graveyard from a house that had not lost a soul. This was a sign that there would soon be a death in that family.

In wilder areas, such as lonely bogs, Will-o-the-wisps were seen bobbing above the soggy ground. These sad, lost souls were said to try to bring themselves company by luring the wayward traveler into the muck. There he or she would be lost to drowning or exposure and the Will-o-the-wisp would not be alone anymore.

In other instances, the lights were lost children. Killed by a parent, stillborn or unbaptized, these little lights which were often said to be white rather than blue, also tried to draw the observer into a deadly situation. They preyed, it was whispered, only on adults and thereby exacted their revenge on the people who had condemned them to everlasting limbo.

In Celtic countries, the Jack-o-lantern was not included among these harbingers of death. Originally carved from turnips, pumpkins being a New World fruit, the effigies of Jack were said to recall a man who made a deal with the Devil and then tricked Old Scratch into letting him keep his soul. Denied both Heaven and Hell at his death, Jack was said to guard humans against his fate by scaring away the Devil's minions. In the New World, though, Jack has joined the army of Will-o-the-wisps looking to take human lives.

In the American south, we're told that wearing your clothes inside out or - more practically - carrying a new, steel-blade knife, will keep Jack from tricking you into following him into the bayou where you might be lost forever.

The Scottish and Irish did not imagine these spooky lights as only male. There they were sometimes known as Joan of the Wad or Kitty-o-wisp. Lost souls came from both genders, after all.

Some literary historians opine that Shakespeare's character Puck, the elfin narrator of his most psychedelic play A Midsummer Night's Dream, was the Bard's attempt at personifying the fabled elf light. They point to one of Puck's soliloquies which begins:

Now is the time of night,
That the graves all gape wide.
Every one lets forth his sprite,
In the church-way paths to glide. 

It seems a thin thread to cling to, at least to my mind, but it also seems hard to know what old Will was about with that play.

On a final, and completely unrelated note, my thanks go out to Undine of The World of Poe blog for her generous nomination of both Triple P and HQ for a Lovely Blog Award. More on that here but, most importantly, thank you dear Undine. You are far too kind.

Header: Danse Macabre from the church of La Ferte-Loupiere via Wikipedia Francais

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

The idea of the return of the dead has always gripped the imagination of human beings. We're afraid of the dead and dead bodies, even in 1st world countries where death and dying are separated and sanitized. Movies about sparkly vampires aside, the popularity of shows like "The Walking Dead" prove that something in us, something primal and outside our technological cage, still understands that those things, those rotting reflections of our own mortality, could rise up and kill us all.

It seems that these kind of thoughts and the stories of ghosts and ghouls that they breed, are more prevalent - or at least more interesting - in the cold, dark climates of the far north. No one tells scary dead stories quite like the descendants of the Norsemen. Here are just two...

In Iceland, where the combination of Viking and Native cultures has spawned some of the scariest monsters imaginable, whispers still flow through communities of things known only as Sendings. These creatures, which are more puppets than self-propelled dead bodies, are made from the bones of the dead. They are put together piecemeal, like Frankenstein's monster, and then sent out to do the bidding of their master. More often than not, that bidding is to kill.

The most famous story of a malicious Sending revolves around a handsome widow who lived comfortably on the sheep ranch left to her by her late husband. Though courted quite seriously by several men in her village, the widow had no interest in remarrying. Time and again she tactfully, but firmly, said no. Then one day she said no to the wrong man.

The notorious wizard of the area set his cap for the widow and, receiving the same answer as every other suitor, he went home to brew up revenge.

One afternoon in autumn the widow was preparing dinner for her ranch hands. Stepping into the dark dampness of her cold room to retrieve some butter, she suddenly felt the hair on her arms stand straight up. The widow turned, and there on the fieldstone wall was a large, black shadow that looked eerily like a spider whose legs were made of human arms. In the very center of the shadowy abomination was a white spot. The thing hissed at the widow but, undaunted despite the racing of her heart, the good woman knew what to do. She pulled out the knife she kept in her apron pocket and stabbed the thing directly in the white spot at its core. The monster squealed out an ear-piercing scream and then scurried through the open door.

An hour later, when she had finally calmed her jangled nerves with a cup of mead, the widow rang the dinner bell and her hands hurried in to their meal. One of them stopped before sitting down at the long table and spoke directly to his employer: "Isn't this your knife, ma'am?" He pulled something from his pocket and it took a moment for the widow to realize what it was. There was her knife indeed, plunged deep into the arm bone of a human being.

These stories have a curious connection with the Scandinavian tales of the ghost in the ground. Unlike the Sending, these creatures are staked down in lonesome areas that people rarely pass. The long wooden poles that hold them to the ground are sometimes encountered by wayward travelers. Thinking the stick might help their walking or serve as a fishing pole, the unsuspecting man or woman will try to pull the pole from the ground. When they do, they invariably hear a quiet voice encouraging them in their chore, although no one is nearby. Listening to the voice is at the very least foolhardy; pulling the pole out of the ground releases the vengeful, hungry ghost, who will of course take the unsuspecting traveler as its first victim.

Such tales in turn bring to mind the mysteries of the so called Bog People. These highly preserved bodies from the far north of Europe almost always appear to have been ritually sacrificed and then dumped in peat bogs or marshes. Many, however, were not just allowed to sink. They were staked down with long poles. One has to imagine to keep them from coming back to prey on their executioners.

Header: Hel's Embrace by Sash-Kash via Deities and Demons

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

On a list of harbingers of death, the doppelganger seems an oddity. Meaning "double walker" in German, meeting one's doppelganger is said to be a sure omen of imminent demise. On the other hand, there have been enough verified accounts of doppelgangers in relatively modern times - with no death in sight - that one has to list the doppelganger as a kind of paranormal activity.

Since ancient times, seeing yourself "in the flesh" so to say was considered a sign that your death was just around the corner. Often the person seeing themselves saw their own corpse rather than a "walker". Pliny the Younger, the Roman historian and pundit, wrote of seeing his body on its funeral pyre not long before his death, one hopes prior to the lighting of the flame. Elizabeth I of England told of seeing herself laid in state not long before she died and almost every American child has been told the story of Abraham Lincoln seeing himself in the same condition before his assassination. But there are other, perhaps even more chilling stories of people actually meeting themselves much like the couple in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painting above.

Over at About's Paranormal Page, Stephen Wagner gives a nice list of some of these. Percy Bysshe Shelley claimed to have seen himself in Italy just prior to his death in a boating accident. Guy de Maupassant claimed to have not only seen but heard from his doppelganger, who, the writer said, dictated one of his last short stories: "Him." When Catherine the Great saw her double walking toward her, she was so distressed that she ordered her guards to shoot at it. She died within the month; there is no record of any injury to that other Catherine.

Johanne Wolfgang von Goethe saw his double while out riding one afternoon. A number of years later, while riding the same road but in the other direction, Goethe realized that he was wearing the same gray suit his double had been wearing when he say it. For some, including Wagner, this points to doppelgangers effectively stemming from a rift in the time continuum. This, logically, leads to Einstein's theory of relativity and the fact that linear time is a veil over truth and all things throughout history are happening right now. Perhaps we are allowed a glimpse of truth only once in a great while, or perhaps our minds are playing tricks on us.

One of the most famous doppelganger stories - and the one that must be put down to mass hysteria of some kind should we chose to disbelieve it - is that of the girls' school teacher Emilie Sagee. At the age of 32, Mademoiselle Sagee was teaching at an exclusive boarding school in modern Latvia. The year was 1845 and Sagee's students were uniformly pubescent girls between the ages of 9 and 16. The students all claimed to have seen Mademoiselle's doppelganger silently hovering near her on more that one occasion. At one point, the doppelganger stood next to Sagee, mimicking her movements as she wrote on a chalkboard in front of a class of 13 students. On another, the double stood behind Sagee while she ate, again mimicking her movements silently. The occurrences seem to have been relentless although Mademoiselle swore she never saw her double, Sagee did say she felt tired and listless at the exact times that people claimed to have seen her doppelganger. The unfortunate Mademoiselle Sagee, who was always given sterling references for her poise, virtue and teaching ability, went through jobs like socks due to her recalcitrant double.

Doppelgangers are also compared to "sendings," in which a person - a witch for instance - sends out an astral projection of themselves to do some type of errand. As Robert Masello notes in Fallen Angels, this was a handy trick for condemnation in witch trials. No matter how many people had seen the witch elsewhere when the milk overturned or the plague descended, the misfortune could be blamed on her sending out a doppelganger to cause trouble.

In the end, the doppelganger seems far more than a simple harbinger or portend. Outstripping the banshee and the apparition in versatility at least, the "double walker" seems something far beyond our ability to understand even in this most scientific of times.

Header: How They Met Themselves by Dante Gabriel Rossetti c 1864 via Rossetti Archives (where you can purchase various prints of the painting)

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

Over at Triple P today, I did a post involved the good doctor Stephen Maturin from Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels. Being half Irish, Dr. Maturin was very familiar with today's harbinger of untimely death, the Celtic specter known as the Ban-Sidhe: the banshee.

The Sidhe were, in original Celtic tradition, the "old gods." Diminished by Christianity to "fairy folk", the strongest of them road out on dark, stormy nights bringing a bit of the Teutonic Wild Hunt - another foreteller of doom - into their legend. Originally, families had personal Sidhe as well, ancestors who watched over the clan century after century. These too withered away under the Christian yoke, becoming no more than ghosts akin to last week's Shivering Boy. But in Ireland, where Roman Christianity never took a full hold, the Sidhe in general and the familial Ban-Sidhe continued to hold sway.

To this day the banshee is known among Irish families. Certain of the Kennedy clan, for instance, claimed to hear her voice before the deaths of John and Robert. She is imagined as a woman dressed in gray and green with long hair undone and eyes perpetually streaming with tears. Often she is said to be corpse-like and skeletal, her eyes glowing red when she finds the family member whose time has come. In these cases, her churchyard face will appear at each window of a house in turn until she locates her target, then she will beckon with a boney finger and the victim will have no choice but to follow.

This may be the experience only of the one about to die, however.

Most of the living hear rather than see the banshee. In such cases she is heard to keen in a wild, high-pitched voice just outside or near the family home. Her voice is cold and unearthly and once heard, can never be forgotten. Sometimes more than one voice calls out - as was the case with the President and his brother - indicating that a very important individual will meet their end.

As noted too, moving away from Erin did not displace the family banshee by any means. In her book Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland, Jane Francesca Elgee Lady Wilde, the mother of Oscar Wilde, wrote of a well-to-do Irish family in Canada. When an otherworldly voice was heard near their estate one night, no one could find the source. The next day, however, the family found they had indeed experienced a close encounter with their own Ban-Sidhe:

... several persons distinctly heard the weird, unearthly cry, and a terror fell upon the household, as if some supernatural influence had overshadowed them.

Next day it so happened that the gentleman and his eldest son went out boating. As they did not return, however, at the usual time for dinner, some alarm was excited, and messengers were sent down to the shore to look for them. But no tidings came until, precisely at the exact hour of the night when the spirit-cry had been heard the previous evening, a crowd of men were seen approaching the house, bearing with them the dead bodies of the father and the son, who had both been drown by the accidental upsetting of the boat, within sight of land, but not near enough for any help to reach them in time.

Thus the Ban~Sidhe had fulfilled her mission of doom, after which she disappeared, and the cry of the spirit of death was hear no more.

No more, one must imagine, until the next time one of the family faced the arms of our final companion...

Header: The Banshee (La Belle Dame sans Merci) by Henry Meynell Rheam c 1901 via Wikimedia 

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

It seems that in colder climates such as the far north of Europe, Slavic lands and Native high points on our modern maps like Canada and my stomping ground, Alaska, concern for children lost or abandon to the elements is particularly high. In Alaska, for instance, there is a mythology surrounding people - and children in particular - lost in snow storms. They are reported to be seen again and again, calling silently for help. But when the observer looks away, they disappear into the dark, or the endless white of snow. A chilling experience for loved ones still searching for their lost family member.

These visions often hold a sinister promise as well: many of them are consider harbingers of the observer's own demise.

In Siberia, for instance, the legend continues of snow children known as the navky. These are the spirits of children who, under the cover of darkness provided by the dead of winter, were killed by their own mothers, often by starvation or exposure. These stories tell of travelers on cold roads seeing spectral and skeletal children dangling from the branches of leafless trees. They extend their bony fingers to the living and cry out for justice, squealing their mother's name over and over in a deafening, otherworldly voice. The traveler, should he chose not to take up the navky's request and kill the woman named, is doomed to die himself. After Christianity took a firm hold in the area, unbaptized infants were added to the ranks of the navky. In this case, their mothers are just as much at fault and their miserable wailing is just as deadly.

To the west, in the land of the Vikings, stories are told of the utburd. These children were also the victims of infanticide, having been exposed to the winter elements due to deformity, illness or simple lack of care. Utburd, according to Fallen Angels by Robert Masello, actually means "a child carried out" in the ancient Norse language. These dead creatures, like the navky, turned vengeful. But unlike the navky, the utburd are prepared to take action themselves.

Stories tell of an utburd entering its family's dwelling at night. Locks have no meaning for them as they can shape shift to carry out their deadly mission. As smoke or mist they enter through cracks, chimneys or pipes. Once inside, their first order of business is to kill their mother. The utburd is often envisioned as a blue, frozen replica of the child it was. Its strength and ability to do harm is more akin to that of an adult, however.

Once the creature has dispatched its mother, it would return to the place where it had died. There, it would attack any passer-by with speed and terrifying strength. The utburd was said to first call out, like a child in distress, to attract attention. Then, when the curious traveler came near, the spirit would encircle him or her, pulling the unfortunate down into the earth with it. The only hope for those who heard the call of the utburd was to cross running water before it could touch them, or produce a piece of iron. Otherwise, one was doomed just like the vengeful "child carried out."

Child ghosts who have been killed by evil and/or greedy adults can also become a form of psychopomp. The little princes of Tower of London fame, who were said to have been dispatched there so that another could sit on England's throne, are one example. Another less well known but equally dreaded vision is the so called Shivering Boy of Triermain Castle. Located in Northumberland, England, the castle is now mostly a ruin. In earlier times, however, families who inhabited it feared the touch of a child's hand or the sound of a shaky little voice saying: "Cold, cold, forever more." The experience was thought to be a sure sign of imminent death.

A terrible story hid behind the legend of the Shivering Boy. He was said to be a six or seven-year-old orphan set to inherit the castle and its lands some time in the Middle Ages. His father's brother was made ward to the young heir and, wanting the lucrative estate for himself, he locked the boy up and starved him. When the poor thing was too weak to move, his uncle carried him out to the village commons on a stormy winter night. Leaving the child in the blizzard to die, the uncle later told those who found the body that the boy had run away. Thereafter, the Shivering Boy either appeared to those about to die, whispered his complaint to them, or touched them with his icy fingers. Until the castle was abandon, he became its own personal banshee of sorts; an unwelcome portend shunned both in life and death.

Header: The ruins of Harbettle Castle in Northumberland from geograph.org.uk via Wikipedia

Samedi: Ghost Stories

The ghost story I'm about to tell is an old favorite down New Orleans way. It tells of a young woman who was the Devil's mistress, and the horrible fate that awaited her when she strayed from his bed. But the Devil gets a bit of his own back as well. Retold in writing a number of times, most famously in the Depression era collection of stories Gumbo Ya~Ya edited by the irrepressible Lyle Saxon, I was pleased to see it included in a library book brought home by my middle school daughter called Spooky South by S.E. Schlosser. The story is best told by someone who witnesses the haunting rather than by a detached third person, at least to my mind. So here is my version of "The Devil's Mansion" as told by young Arlette Panelle whose Maman knew a lady that lived there...

I'm old enough to sit at table with my parents, but not old enough to debut in society, and it's just now that Maman's best friend Madame Larendon moves into the biggest house on Rue St. Charles. There are rumors about the house and always have been. Folk say it's haunted and I have even overheard the servants' gossip about deaths and ghosts. Maman crosses herself and holds tight to the golden crucifix around her neck when our coach goes by the mansion. But no one will tell me what was wrong with the house. In the daylight, gleaming white and windows clean, it looks like a lovely place. I suppose I didn't think about it until Madame moved in.

Maman and Madame have been friends forever. My mother is from an old Creole family that claims men who stood on the line with Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. Madame Larendon is a Beauregard; her father is the famous General Pierre Gustav Toutant - the Little Creole. I was born after the war, but heard nothing but praise for the old man. When Madame's husband moved the family into the mansion on St. Charles, my mother was a bit upset. After all, Madame is in the family way at last. How could Monsieur make her move in such a state? Or is it the house that troubled Maman?

When the Larendons had lived in that old mansion awhile, our whole family is invited over for supper. I'm the eldest and of course expected to keep my four brothers in line. I imagined we'd be seated in the kitchen. Was I surprised when Madame had set a place for me at the head table. But what is even more shocking is that that table is set in the back dining room, a small rotunda where the family would normally break their fast in the morning. Madame called it cozy but it is, in fact, cramped what with Monsieur's older sons and all. When Papa inquires about the main dining room, Monsieur Larendon mumbles something about renovations. No one says any more on the subject.

We manage to finish without spearing one another with out meat knives, and we ladies retire to the back parlor for coffee and cakes. I'm not allowed coffee, but Madame makes up for is with warm milk. I'm bored with all the talk of fall fashions from France and who is marrying who and the scandalous painting of Madame Gatreau. When no one is making the least attention, I sneak out of the parlor. I'm determined - just red-head determined - to find  out if the main dining room really is being renovated. What if the haunting takes place there? I pass through the foyer and find a lamp at the bottom of the enormous staircase. Picking it up, I slide the dining room door open and enter the dark room.

The room is chilly and the furniture is covered with white sheets. Maybe Madame is renovating. The whole place smells musty and a breeze - seemingly from nowhere - makes the crystal chandeliers ripple and sing like a cold spring. I shiver; my late summer gown hardly covers my arms and goose flesh starts to rise. Nothing happens in the oppressive darkness, like sticky molasses. I turn to push the door back again and then I am made of marble. I literally can't move, other than to turn my head.

As if by a switch, the chandeliers glow with candles. The sheets are gone and a man and woman sit at the long table, the food before them making my mouth water despite the way I glutted myself at supper. The couple is dressed in ancient clothing; the man's cravat is so high he can hardly move his head, and the woman's gown is a scandalous sheath that accentuates every curve of her gorgeous figure. Her breasts spill over the lilac satin. The two are talking, but I can't hear a sound. Even the clink of china and silver is not to be heard.

As I watch, the woman's fair face darkens. Her onyx eyes flash and she stands up so abruptly that her chair falls to the ground. She is yelling now, screaming soundlessly at her supper companion while twisting her long, white, linen napkin in her hand. To my horror, she runs to him, whips the napkin round his neck, and chokes him clear to death. It is hard to believe her tiny hands can be so strong, but he falls to the floor as white as the linen around his neck.

A moment later and blood begins to drip from those slender hands. The woman, who has not seen me before this moment, begins to wipe her hands on her dress as her eyes cast their gaze on me. The blood keeps flowing, not from her but from some unseen source, and she wipes and wipes, staining the delicate satin with globs of purple gore. Finally she offers her hands to me, her mouth open in an unheard scream. It's worse not to hear than to hear. I drop the lamp and cover my ears but the specter just keeps screaming.

And then the world goes black.

I spend two weeks in bed, shivering with a fever no one understands. Finally, Maman answers my only question: what happened in that house?

A beautiful octoroon became the mistress of the Devil just after the Americans came to Louisiana. There was so much mischief for the Devil to do then, what with smugglers and pirates, bootleggers and new money, that he couldn't settle down with his gorgeous doxy. So he set her up in that mansion on Rue St. Charles and told her not to betray him. But she was bored and had a wondering eye. Soon enough she took a rich young Creole as a lover, and they supped in splendor every night in that grand dining room.

The Devil heard of his cocotte's betrayal and he met the young man on the levee one fall afternoon. "You can have her," he told the startled boy. "Marry her; I'll make you a gift of ten million silver reales if you do. But you must promise to always live under the names of Madame and Monsieur Elle."

Delighted, the couple celebrated with a feast. It was only then that the girl's beau told her he had changed his name. She knew the awful truth of that name. It was not Elle but L; L for Lucifer, a name that would brand the couple as infamous no matter where they went. The gorgeous octoroon saw red and, in her uncontrollable rage, she killed the young Creole before supper was done.

Seeing her crime, she lost her sanity and imagined blood on her guilty hands. As she tried to wipe it away, the Devil appeared and killed her. He carried the bodies of the octoroon and her lover to the roof of the mansion. There, in the yellow light of a full bayou moon, he butchered and gutted them whence he proceeded to feast on every part of them but their skins. And here my mother spares me not a word, even telling me that the stray cats ate the lovers' discarded flesh.

But the Devil had forgotten one detail - and isn't the devil always in the details? He'd promised Our Lord and Savior in the desert long ago that he would never, ever do his worst under the light of a full moon. And so, as he ate with the fluids of his kill running all over his hands and arms, he began to stick to the roof. Before the Devil knew it, the bodies of Madame and Monsieur L had molded his visage to the top of the gable above the front door of the mansion on Rue St. Charles. And there he sat, a living, motionless gargoyle. A reminder to all of New Orleans how evil once ruled their glorious, sunken city.

I recover at last. Ten days later we hear the awful news; Madame Larendon has died in childbed. But Monsieur lives on in that nasty house until his own death just after my wedding. Then another acquaintance, Madame Jacques, moves into the mansion on Rue St. Charles. She too sees that horrible incident replay itself and yet she stays for some time. At last, after the birth of my first child, she vacates that hated house too. And so it stands empty, with the Devil grimacing down at all who pass, and the story only whispered from one person to another while the foolish octoroon and the Creole boy suffer night after night after endless night...

The story ends long after Arlette's time. Though no one can say exactly where on St. Charles the Devil's mansion really was, everyone is sure it was demolished in 1930. And isn't that a curiously specific detail for a so called fable?

Header: Mansion on St. Charles Street in New Orleans via Wikimedia

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

After spending the last three Fridays with the harrowing tale of Agnes the miller's daughter, I for one am ready to turn to lighter fare. And what could possibly more feather light and squeaky clean than the good folks at Disney explaining the origins of Hallowe'en? That's right; nothing. This video was originally released in 1984; essentially when dinosaurs roamed the earth. See if you recognize any of the cartoon clips used in it and in particular watch for the footage from the original Haunted Mansion; that alone dates this thing.

A word of warning: Just watch the video and ignore the comments - they are worse than the creepy looking hooded Druids in the video. Trust me.

Samedi: Ghost Stories

Today's story comes, not from my family tradition, but from my husband's. My father-in-law grew up in the south-east of Pennsylvania where coal mining is a long-standing profession and a burden at the same time. The seams run deep in that most northerly portion of Appalachia, and even those - like my father-in-law - who never went down into the darkness, were touched by the gritty stories that came out of the collieries.

This tale tells of a young man named Daniel whose family had, since time-in-memorial, been coal miners. Dan had no desire to descend into the pits, but time and circumstance caught up with him. When things went bust in Hazelton after the coal miner's strike, Dan lost his job as a clerk at the company store. He and his young wife Mary had just bought a small cottage along the main road and Mary was expecting in the fall. The bosses brought in men they knew would side with them if trouble arose again and left the hard-scrabble job of mining to the upstart locals.

Dan had no choice. He gathered up his uncle's gear and followed his two brothers into the mine.

Dan's brothers, Lew and Jerry, were both older and Lew had made his way up to the more lucrative position of fire boss. They took their baby brother under their wing knowing that their long dead parents - God rest their souls - would haunt them if they didn't look after Danny. Lew made sure Dan worked at Jerry's elbow in the bottom pit where you had to stoop all day for the low ceiling and you stood in water up to your ankles.

The two were happy together though, telling jokes and reminiscing, and they always tried to stop for dinner just when Lew could join them. They'd pull the cold roast or chicken that their wives wrapped in waxed paper out of their dinner pails and chuckle together as they ate. One evening, after Dan had been in the mine for some weeks, Jerry ventured to ask a question.

"You ever heard of the death watch, Danny?"

Lew's expression changed. His dark brows met over his falcon nose. "Jerry..."

"He should hear about it. What if - "

"Jerry!" Lew's voice echoed down the seam.

"What's the death watch," Dan asked through a mouthful of baloney. "Some of you stand up for us all?"

"Nothing like that. It's a watch." Lew pulled his pocket watch out of his threadbare tweed coat. "Lost they say by an old timer."

"A-yeah," Jerry continued. "He got blown to bits in the closed seam when Dad and Uncle Hugh were here. They found every scrap of him, but not his watch. Now they say, men about to die here a ticking that doesn't match their own watch. Within twenty four hours..." Jerry made the sound of dynamite ripping the earth in two.

"Enough, Jerry." Lew could see the terror on his youngest brother's face. "Nerry ya mind, Danny," he took another bite of his apple. "Didn't I say I'd look after ya? Wouldn't Ma and Dad want it that way?"

"God rest their souls," Jerry and Dan said simultaneously. "Besides which," Dan added. "You're pulling my leg and no mistake. I never heard Dad speak of - "

Just then the whistle blew. "Dinner's done," Lew said, closing the lid on his pail. "Back to work you loafers."

And so the days turned into months and years. Dan came not to love his job but to tolerate it. Seeing Mary happy and his son David growing by the day made it worth the while. But stories started to pile up of men who had died, and then men Dan knew became part of those stories. Henry in the three seam was buried in a cave-in after telling his partner that he'd heard a weird ticking sound. Henry, it was revealed after his death, had never carried a watch. Then Henry's partner said he heard the ticking too and sure enough a day later an explosion took his life.

No one talked about it much, the death watch: how it had no set pattern, how it popped up all over a ten acre mine, how it didn't spare young or old, how death stalked them all. The men just went to the funerals and held their hats in their hands. But everyone kept their ears peaked for that dreaded sound: tick... tick... tick...

Dan continued a non-believer, though. The very idea of a death watch made him wonder if too much time in the mine made a man go daft.

Three weeks after Henry's partner's funeral Dan found himself on his own. Jerry was sick in bed with the influenza and Dan didn't mind pulling double work. The sickness was bad. Men died just as surely of flu as they did of cave-ins. "There's been no sign of that horrible sound though," Dan murmured to himself as he shuffled to his spot. "Jerry will be -"

"Dan!" The sound of his brother's voice almost made him drop his dinner pale. "Danny! You gotta go home."

"Lew, what the hell?"

"You gotta go home," Lew said through gasps for air. "You gotta go home."

"Is it Mary? David - "

"No," Lew shook his head. "Listen now. I heard the watch on my rounds this morning. Before dark, Dan. I heard it. The watch ticking right here."

"Lew, com'on now. I can't miss a day's wage on a -"

"I heard it!" Lew's voice echoed down the seam. "Go on now. You're sick, you hear? Fever. Tell Mary too."

Dan saw the sheer terror in his brother's onyx eyes. "OK," he nodded, picking up his pail. "OK." With that he left, straight up the lift and home.  He ran through the heavy, gray fog of a fall morning, wanting nothing more than to hug his wife and son and sit near the hearth in his cottage.

But when he got there he found the place empty. After looking around he saw a note. Mary's writing was lovely and small: "Gone to Jerry's. He's worse than ever. David is with my Ma. ~ M."

Dan panicked. His brother, his closest brother, was near death and here he was home from work over a stupid legend. He pulled on his coat and ran out of the cottage, straight down the main street toward the train tracks. His brother's house was just on the other side but...

The coming train had tripped the lever and the barriers were down. Dan hesitated. The fog was thick but he couldn't see the train's light. Surely he could make it. Why stand here and wait? He dipped under the barrier, stepped onto the ties and -

Witnesses would later say that they thought the 7:30 flyer seemed to come out of nowhere that morning, straight out of the fog and gone. It wasn't until a search party, looking for Dan after his brother died after noon, found his boot near the tracks that the truth was discovered. He'd been hit by the train, and all that remained was his left foot and ankle in his boot on one side of the tracks. And his silver watch on the other.

Header: Men Leaving a Colliery by Gerald Palmer c 1914 via Wikipedia

Samedi: Ghost Stories

I'm watching The Walking Dead marathon on AMC in anticipation of Sunday's season three opener. I'm a junky for this stuff. Anyway, it's late and big, fluffy snowflakes float down outside my window but a ghostly tale couldn't hurt. So here's a repost of a NOLA tale set in the infamous Parish Prison. What could be more appropriate?

For anyone who has studied, hunted or read about ghosts, it goes without saying that places like prisons are often more susceptible to haunting than other structures. The negative energy built up in prisons and penitentiaries cannot be denied and the wraiths that haunt these types of places are often as twisted and malevolent as they come. This is certainly the case in today's ghostly tale.

The story comes from Parish Prison which once stood at the corner of Saratoga and Tulane in New Orleans. This story made its way into the New Orleans Daily Picayune on my birthday, January 23rd, back in 1882. The brief article indicated that fourteen separate suicide attempts had occurred in the prison the prior year, all committed by inmates of cell number 17. Those who managed to survive told horrible stories of a pale woman - sometimes she was said to be a seductive redhead, other times a silent nun - who appeared in their locked cell and tortured them mercilessly all night long. She went about her grim work while wearing a pleasant expression and a tender smile.

When the prisoners' bodiees were examined, they revealed agonizing burns in the shapes of hands and fingers. The authorities, realizing something was up but unsure what to make of it, stopped using cell number 17. The haunting calmed, but only for a few weeks. Soon enough the redheaded haint was back, this time in cell number 7. Six women killed themselves over the course of a three month period.

Now the officers who worked at Parish Prison began to claim they had seen the ghost, but she appeared to them as a beautiful, regal woman. Employees dubbed her "The Redheaded Countess" and it was at this time, when the article was written, that the warden of the prison claimed to have met up with her on the back stairs. Captain Bachemin swore he passed the Countess; she smiled at him and touched his arm, searing his flesh right through the sleeve of his uniform.

While the story is certainly intriguing, it is impossible to verify over 100 years later. As the storyteller in Gumbo Ya~Ya ends the tale: the captain met the specter, or so he claims...

Header: Red-Haired Man from Swank Magazine c 1958; art by Charles Copeland via Mid-Century ~ it really has nothing to do with the story but it has a nice, creepy vibe, don't you think?

Samedi: Ghost Stories

Today's story comes to us from the Arkansas. Yes, I am duty bound by familial ties to speak of it the way my ancestors would have when their associate and then spy for Spain Jean Laffite went off into its wilds to map out the U.S. settlements there abouts circa 1816. My Aunt Bette used to only refer to the state above Louisiana as "the" Arkansas, and that with a disparaging tint to her voice. Sorry Razor Back fans; I can only say that it's in the blood.

In many rural areas along the Mississippi River, Arkansas for instance, the landscape is dotted with hunting shacks. These are used only during "the season", at least for the most part, and to a large degree they are not furnished with the finest amenities. They are "shacks" more than cabins or homes, meant to be used for a brief time and then closed up to the next round.

This is the case in my adoptive home as well. Here in Alaska, hunting shacks are not unusual out in what locals call "the bush." While they may be hundreds of miles from one another, they are not all that uncommon and, in some cases, are literally open to all who happen upon them. In these instances they are as spare as they probably sound, but they are better than sleeping out in the raw environment of hunting season which encompasses the short, cold months of September and October. It's not January, of course, but it can be pretty bleak.

All that said, this story translates beautifully to Alaska. What happens in the bush stays in the bush for the most part. And none of what happens in this story would make an "old timer" do much more than shake his or her head...

Around the night fire the talk turned to the cabin by the lake. It had been there for ages as far as anyone knew, its timbers gray and its moss-covered roof sagging. No sane hunter had the gumption to go inside, even though it was in sight of the fire. The stories of men driven mad by the screams and wails of long dead souls were too numerous to ignore. The ancient cabin was haunted; everyone said so. No one wanted to challenge the idea if they could possibly avoid it.

No one, that is, but the grizzled hunter known as Old Pete. Pete had come up from Montana ten years ago and had soon put his tracking talents to good use showing greenhorns the best place to find a slow bull moose. He had a good reputation as a guide but a bad reputation as a companion. Old Pete was obnoxious, and when talk around the fire turned to the shack he spoke up right away.

"I'll stay up there all night," Pete said, standing up and planting his feet wide. "But I'll need money to do it."

How much money was settled on quickly - fifty dollars seemed reasonable - and the men laid out their cash. Pete also took a slab of good bacon and six cans of beer and, shouldering his pack, he hiked the short distance to the shack.

"Haunted," he mused, standing in front of the dark, low lump that would be his home for the night. "I'm more haunted than you are." And then he went in.

With his flashlight Pete could see that the place wasn't much. There were a couple of chairs and sleeping ledges built of pine. He smiled when he saw a stone hearth already laid with kindling and wood. Someone had been here and failed to light a fire; Pete wouldn't be so foolish.

When the fire was crackling, Pete unfurled his sleeping bag and put his little cast iron pot on the flames. "Time for bacon," he said and he threw the slab in the pot. Settling back in a chair, he cracked a can of beer and smiled. It was a quiet night, and not too cold. "Dinner and then to bed. Fifty dollars easy."

As Pete relaxed, he heard a shuffling sound along one wall. He didn't think too much of it; shrews and voles loved to hole up in places like this for the winter. Hell, he'd even run into a raven in a place like this once. He took a long swig of his beer, and turned the sweet smelling bacon with his fork.

The shuffling noise grew louder but Pete was comfortable. He opened another beer and thought how glad he was not to be a rodent. As he settled further back he heard something else; something like a voice...

"Smells good, Mister."

Pete sat up. "What?" He called out: "Is that you, Len?"

"Ain't Len," the voice whispered. Hissed, really. "Smells good, Mister."

The voice made Pete's skin crawl. It was like a snake or a roach, dry and sneaky. "This isn't funny," Pete called. "Len; this isn't - "

Pete saw a shadow, dark and small, move from a corner and jump - he swore later it jumped - right into his cast iron pot. The bacon let out a hiss and some steam and then he heard that voice again. But this time it came right out of the fire. "Thanks for dinner, Pete."

Old Pete looked carefully at his pot and he saw two eyes staring back at him over the rim. They were as red as the hot fire and as he looked, unable to move or blink, he heard that voice again: "My friends and I are grateful."

Suddenly a howling, squealing, groaning and screaming came right out of the wood that the shack was built from. It was as if a hurricane raged outside, but the night remained calm. Pete clapped his hands over his ears as the sound pummeled him like punches. He screamed right back, loud and long. All the same he couldn't hear himself. These noises would drive a sane man crazy.

Pete jumped up, grabbed his pack and, leaving his pot and sleeping bag behind, burst out of that old shack and ran toward his companions' fire.

When he reached them they stood up, shocked by Pete's sudden return and riveted by his appearance: from head to toe Pete was as pale as new fog - even his brown hair had turned white.

"Holy Hell, Pete;" Len asked. "What - "

"Here," Pete threw the money at his friends. "You keep it. I'm goin' home. Don't go in there. Don't none of you ever go in there!"

Old Pete left the hunt, called for the plane and paid the extra for the unexpected lift. He went to work on the North Slope and never went back to hunting ever again.

Header The Old Hunting Shack by Les Kouba via Alliance Art Publishing

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

As Hallowe'en draws nearer, our thoughts turn to ghoulies and ghosties and witches in pointy hats. My thoughts personally turn to the real "witches" of yesterday and today who were and are tortured, persecuted and either killed or driven to kill themselves. Imagined or real, these "servants of Satan" most typically come with female bodies and the fact that such persecution continues to this day all around the world is a sad commentary on just how far "civilization" hasn't come.

In honor of those who have lost and will lose everything to religious zealots, the next few installments of Chthonian Histories will be dedicated to the true story of a simple German girl who was given up by her unfortunate family, questioned, tortured and murdered in 1600.

Agnes was the daughter of a poor miller and his unfortunately ugly wife. They ran what was known as "the convent mill" in the village of Tettenwing in Lower Bavaria. Their mill did not thrive as it was considered haunted. Stories flew about their village that linked the mill itself, the miller and his family to everything from the sending of nightmares to causing plague. It was only travelers that patronized the mill and a traveler with grain to grind was an unusual occurrence in depressed times. The mill fell into disrepair. Local gossips whispered that the miller's wife was an ogress. And a witch.

The one bright spot around the mill was the miller's only surviving child: Agnes. Unlike her parents, Agnes was beautiful. At somewhere around the age of 16 in 1600, Agnes was the object of many a local farm boy's affection. Much to their mothers' dismay, these local sons brought Agnes gifts and got into brawls over her. Every now and then the sheriff would stop by to tell the miller to keep his daughter "in line." As if her beauty was something she could control. As if she put a spell on all the farm boys.

One summer day the sheriff came again, but this time he came with unfamiliar and well dressed men on horseback. They had come to search the house, they told the miller, for signs of "witchery". He and his family had been accused of practicing the dark arts for "these thirty years and more." That included his ogress wife and his enchantress daughter.

The miller protested, of course, but to no avail. It did not take long for the thugs that came along with the fine gentlemen to find a second hearth, built under the kitchen stairs. It was concealed behind a door and on it was a "pot containing a stiff paste, a congealed liquid, or something of the kind. That was no doubt witches' ointment."

The pot was confiscated, the miller and his family put in chains, and Agnes, along with her aging mother and father, was on her way to the notorious Falcon Tower in Munich.

The local judges went to work right away, subjecting Agnes to long, verbal interrogations but finding her "recalcitrant" and unwilling to confess to any knowledge of witchcraft or the devil. She informed the head judge, Wangereck, that she knew people called her parents ogres. All the same, the accusation was unjust and "would never be shown to be true of her, either."

Wangereck, intuiting what would truly break the young woman's spirit, put her in a dank cell for two months while he worked her parents over. The miller died after several rounds of the torture known as strappado (illustrated above). His wife, Anna, was also subjected to the heinous dislocation of various joints. Like her husband, she endured not only the horrible position of hanging from her wrists with her arms behind her back, but she also suffered the misery of having weights tied to her ankles to pull her knees and hips loose.

Anna confessed in a stream of wild babbling. She was returned to her cell where her swollen joints made it impossible to move from the straw bedding.

Meanwhile, Wangereck returned to lovely, recalcitrant Agnes...

(The tale of Agnes the miller's daughter continues next Friday. The majority of my research is indebted to the book High Road to the Stake: A Tale of Witchcraft by Michael Kunze, translated from German by William E. Yuill)

Header: Interrogation by Bessonov Nicolay via InquisitionArt (please note that Nicolay's art, while brilliant, is very realistic and very graphic; viewer discretion is advised)

Samedi: Ghost Stories

There's a chill in the air and the smell of smoke. Night comes earlier and creatures great and small are preparing for the bleak months ahead. Hallowe'en is in the offing; that can only mean one thing: it's time for Saturday ghost stories. Gather round and let me tell you of the things that go bump in the night. And so we shall honor those whose day it is, the King and Queen of the Dead, Baron Samedi and Maman Brigitte.

This story originated somewhere in the southeastern United States. Often claimed by the Gullah coast of Georgia, that claim is just as often contested by the bayous south of New Orleans. It plays on the ancient belief that dogs can see supernatural beings in general and ghosts in particular. I tell it in my own voice, imagining myself back on the old homestead down Rigolets way when I was a teenager. The place was my father's Aunt Bette's house, rickety and creaky and full of it's own spirits no doubt. It's gone now, but I remember the two short summers I spent there every time I tell these stories.

My Aunt once told me, when I was just fourteen, that dogs can see ghosts. I didn't think much of it at first, but she would often point to her big mutt when he jumped or barked or howled for no apparent reason and say: "There; Gator sees a spirit." It did get me wondering about it when I went back home to California.

Two summers later, I was back at Aunt Bette's and I asked her to tell me more about dogs seeing ghosts.

"Oh, people can too," she told me. "How," I asked. "All you do is run your finger over a dog's eyelashes and then run that wet finger over your eye," she made the motion as she spoke, smearing her thick eyeliner a bit. "Y'all will see all the spirits round this bayou. But be warned." My Aunt paused here, and looked at me with a serious stare. "Some of 'em ain't that pretty."

A few nights later, after supper, I was on the porch with Gator. He was snapping at a fly that got through the screens and then all of a sudden he stopped, looked straight out into the dark and howled. The sound was high pitched, like a hurricane wind through broken glass. The hair on my neck stood up; the hair on Gator's did too. I don't know what came over me but before I could think I wiped my finger over Gator's one good eye and then swiped it over both of mine.

I turned my eyes back to the dark. "Any spooks out there," I called. "Cause my dog and I can see you all."

I didn't see a thing except dark beyond the porch light. The only noise was the song of frogs.

Standing up, and still quite without thinking, I opened the porch screen and stepped down to the ground. Gator came with me, his one good eye still peering out toward the water and his tail between his legs.

"You spirits out there?" My bravado was more for myself now. The dark was thick and I could spy a mist rising from the dead cypress trees in the water. "I can see you. Show yourselves."

As we watched, Gator and I, that mist took form. Rising up before us, like a reanimated corpse coming straight out of its tomb, was the white incarnation of a dead woman. She wore old fashioned clothes that were dripping with water and moss. Her face was like a skull and as we watched her right arm raised up from her side and her bony finger pointed straight to us. Her jaw dropped and a scream, so piercing I thought my eardrums exploded, emanated from her open mouth.

Where a moment before we had been glued to the ground, Gator and I sprang into action at the same time. We jumped back up onto the porch, ran into the house and dove under the afghan that always hung over the back of it. There we huddled together, shivering even though it was 90 degrees outside.

My Dad and my Aunt, who had been in the kitchen having a little after supper something, heard the screen door slam and came into the front room. When Aunt Bette saw Gator and me quivering under her blue and white afghan, she must have known what was going on. "Just leave 'em, Jack," she said when my Dad starts asking what we're up to. "I think I scared your girl with my ghost stories."

Dad went back in the kitchen but Aunt Bette turned back the afghan and whispered: "You better wash your face well tonight. Especially those green eyes. Gator and I can tell you, there's a lot more gruesome specters in the corners of this old place."

Aunt Bette went back to the kitchen and I ran upstairs, my eyes closed until I reached the bathroom. I scrubbed my eyes with soap, and that's no lie. They were red for a week, but it was better than ever, ever seeing a ghost again.

Header: Danse Macabre via Gutenberg online

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

On Tuesday, I mentioned that the plant calamus can be used to ward off poltergeists.  These "noisy ghosts" have troubled human beings at least since the dawn of civilization.  There are written records from ancient Sumer and Egypt that hint at people being burdened by the loud, boisterous activities of what we now call poltergeists.  It is popular to imagine now that all this bizarre rapping, tapping, poking and throwing of objects is kindled by psychological rage.  Usually, I hasten to add, that of an adolescent girl. 

Just as many of us scoff at our ancestors' opinions on things like this, I feel it is important to realize that they would dismiss our opinions in turn.  In many cases, our ancestors didn't try to define what the cause of the trouble was, they just reported what occurred. 

That is the case in this interesting passage from the writings of the right Reverend Joseph Glanvill.  Writing in 1662, the Reverend describes an incidence of poltergeist activity in the town of Tedworth, England.  None of it, I will say, sounds very pleasant:

Having one night played some little tricks at the master's bed, [the poltergeist] went into another bed, where one of the daughters lay.  There it passed from side to side, lifting her up as it passed.  At that time there were three kinds of noises in the bed.  They endeavored to thrust at it with a sword, but it still shifted and avoided the thrusts still getting under the child when they offered at it.  

The night after, it came panting like a dog out of breath.  Upon which, one took a bedstaff to knock it, but it was caught out of her hand and thrown away.  The room was presently filled with a bloomy noisome smell, and was very hot, though without a fire, in a very sharp and severe winter.  It continued in the bed panting and scratching an hour and a half, and then went into the next room, where it knocked a little and seemed to rattle a chain.  

At no point does Reverend Glanvill refer to the cause of this dreadful disturbance as anything but "it".  Though he does call upon God's mercy to request relief for the troubled family, he is not pinning the poltergeist activity on the Devil, the dead or even the girl who is most troubled by the problem.

What the poltergeist might be remains an unspoken mystery.  It is certainly one we can delve into in the future, as well.

Header: Untitled painting of a ghoulish entity by Jeffrey C. Jones via American Gallery

Samedi: The Black Dog

I was poking through my books, looking for inspiration for a Halloween short story contest that a friend told me about, when I remembered the story of the churchyard guardian known in European folklore as the Church Grim.

I first heard a similar tale in Haiti, where it is believed that the first person buried in a churchyard will become its guardian, looking after those buried there to ensure that bokors do not use the body parts - or indeed the whole bodies - of the dead for evil purposes.  This is also the origin of the legend of the Church Grim in both Celtic and Teutonic lore.  It seems reasonable to imagine that the belief translated to Haitian Voudon through either French belief, or the superstitions of indentured servants brought from Ireland.  Perhaps curiously, the Church Grim is not much part of New Orleans Voodoo lore.

In Northern France and the British Isles, the Church Grim was also considered a guardian of a churchyard but it came in the form of an animal, most often a black dog.  The ancient belief that the first person buried in a churchyard would become its guardian led to concern for the soul of that dead person once Christianity took hold.  How would they find their reward in Heaven - or punishment in Hell or Purgatory - if the soul was tied to earth?  The solution was to bury an animal in the churchyard first, sometimes unfortunately while the poor thing was still alive, to have it take up the position of protector of the dead.

As noted, people of Celtic descent usually chose a dog for the duty; the larger and blacker the dog, the better.  With the advent of Catholicism, the dog's duty expanded from guardian against witches and sorcerers to protector against the Devil.  It was said that a churchyard that had a Grim was the best place to be buried, for the angry spirit of the dog would keep the Devil from dragging your soul off to Hell.  Whether or not that meant you got a free pass to Heaven is left out of the folklore, however.

In Teutonic countries, the legend remained essentially the same but the animal differed.  In Sweden, during the vary early days of Christianity, a lamb was sometimes slaughtered and buried under the altar stone of a new church.  This lamb, often black, was from then on referred to as the kyrkogrim who defended the dead against the Devil.  Meanwhile, in Denmark and Hanover, the Grim came in the form of a black, female pig.  Known as the kirkegrim or "grave-sow" she did the same duty on her graveyard turf.

All of these sacrificial animals get a bit of their own back in the end.  It was universally believed that seeing the Church Grim, and in Celtic countries hearing its howl or bark as well, was a certain sign that death awaited the beholder. 

And that, you have to admit, is a pretty good story.

Header: The Church Grim via Trapped by Monsters (see the sidebar)

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

The vast, Saharan desert has always held its mysteries, some of them straight out of any chthonian nightmare.  One of these survives to this day in the form of Aisha Kandicha or Quandisha, the camel-legged succubus.  Aisha, like so many other demonic ladies of the religious "Big Three", was once a revered mother goddess who has become a symbol of that most feared item on the Judeo-Christian-Islamic taboo list: female sexuality.

According to legend and some modern day accounts, Aisha is a djinniya or female spirit, who romes the desolate mountains of northern Morocco.  She is said to have beautiful hair and a stunning face that can make a man forget what he is up to and follow her into the shadows.  There, sadly, she will reveal herself in her true form: below the neck she sports long, heavy breasts, the wings of a bat, the talons of a hawk and the legs of a camel or goat.  The wayfarer is done for at this point; Aisha will tear him to bits and he will never be heard from again.

Most curious of all the legends of this frightening harpy is that she is a creature of water.  Despite her desert haunt, her name - Aisha - can be translated as "loving to be watered."

Patricia Monaghan in The Book of Goddesses & Heroines tells us that, despite how it may look on its face, there is in fact no paradox here.  Aisha is most probably yet another demonized form of the great Phoenician goddess Astarte whose name meant exactly the same thing to her people.  The true meaning of the name has been lost however, for the water Astarte loved was the life-giving seed of her consort, Haman.  Monaghan speculates that Astarte's worship may have traveled to Morocco with colonists from Carthage, which itself was a Phoenician settlement.  Aisha's second name - Quandisha - may be a corruption of Qadesha, the holy temple prostitutes who served Astarte.

Once again, a figure who embodied sexuality as joy has been transformed into a monster, representing sexuality as misery and death.  Aisha even has a consort of her own, an evil jinn whose name is strangely familiar: Hammu Kaiyu or Qaiyu.

Modern reports of Aisha sightings continue to this day.  Disappearances in the Moroccan mountains continue to be blamed on her as well.  But don't take my word for it.  Click over to the Destination Truth blog and find out what Josh Gates and his team found - or didn't find - in their search for yet another goddess turned demon.

Header: Aisha Kandicha via Unexplained Mysteries 

Jeudi: Great Spirits

In my 7th grade creative writing class I wrote a short story about a creepy vampire lady who lived in a cave under a Gothic castle by the sea and, in an act of revenge that reached across generations, sucked the blood from the children of the family that lived there. Her name was Lamia and she was the result of two prominent features in my teenage life at the time: Greek mythology and Dark Shadows in syndication. If I had still been watching Star Trek the whole thing would have been different.

To this day I am fascinated by the tale of demonization and old gods becoming new monsters behind the ancient story of the Greek Lamia. My hackneyed prose of so many years gone by aside, I believe it still resonates today. According to the Acadian cultures of Greece, Lamia was a serpent goddess. She may have migrated to the mainland from Crete, where the Minoan’s worshiped a goddess of earth, death and rejuvenation in the form of a snake. Patricia Monaghan tells us in her Book of Goddesses & Heroines that “This Lamia seems to have been honored at mystic rituals similar to those of Demeter at Eleusis.” This heyday was not to last, however.

Once Zeus became king of the Greek gods and Hera his tortured queen, Lamia joined the ranks of so many other goddesses demoted from divinity to doxy. Lamia was then said to have been a breathtakingly beautiful woman and Queen of Libya. Desired by Zeus, he whisked her off to a northern cave and promptly sired several children on her. Abandon by her lover, Lamia was eventually tracked down by the miserable, perpetually jealous Hera. Finding Lamia and her lovely offspring, she forced the former queen to eat her own children. In some versions of the story, one of Lamia’s brood, Scylla, was spared although changed into a monster by Hera.

Driven mad by this grisly punishment, Lamia wandered the countryside howling like a stray dog. Denied shelter or help of any kind, she changed into a ravening beast of sorts who would slip into people’s homes and quietly suck the blood of sleeping children. She left these mortal babes as dead and mangled as she had her own half-god offspring.

According to the mythology, Lamia could present a beautiful face should the child wake up as she approached, and delight it with a lilting song just before she chose to strike. In fact she was a hideous, Gorgon-like half-snake who could take her eyes from their sockets while she slept so that she would never be caught unawares.

Eventually, as Monaghan points out, Lamia became a kind of bogey man that Hellenistic mothers would use to frighten their kids into behaving. The original meaning of her name was even lost and it is now translated as “greedy one.” Thus a powerful goddess was reduced to a name used to keep the brats in line. A very far fall, if ever there was one.

 Finally, some changes are on the horizon for me and HQ. There will probably be a bit of a hiccup in posting for a week or so but the news is good and, as always, I appreciate your input and support. More to come, hopefully sooner than later.  

Header: Photograph by Rahvis c 1947 via Mid-Century

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

Most people have a passing knowledge of the Hellenistic underworld that was embraced by the Romans when they conquered Greece.  At the very least we know the name of the place and the god who ruled it: Hades.  The actual evolution of Ancient Greek chthonian beliefs bears looking at as it heavily influenced Jewish, Christian and Islamic portraits of what becomes of a soul after death.

Originally, Greek mythology envisioned an underworld similar to the realm of the Mesopotamian goddess Ereshkigal.  Here the dead had diminished to nothing more than shadows.  They could not speak, hardly moved and ate dust.  There was no real outline of what the underworld looked like and there were certainly no specific areas with names and functions.

This changed with the widespread availability of the works of Homer.  In the Odyssey, Homer has his hero travel to Hades which he finds by sailing to the west.  Here, what remains of the dead are called eidolon, which is perhaps clumsily translated as “shade”.  They chirp quietly and flit from place to dark place like injured birds.  Everything good about life is denied them, and they long for even the most difficult existence on Earth.

When Odysseus slaughters two sheep and pours out their blood in a trench to appease the needy shades, they leap forward:

From this multitude of souls, as they fluttered to and fro by the trench came a moaning that was horrible to hear.

Contact with fresh blood would give the sad shades a momentary memory of the life they so desperately longed for.

In Hades, Odysseus also found a grove of poplars sacred to Persephone the underworld queen, a field of the pale lilies known as asphodels (which were, interestingly enough, a staple of the peasant diet in Greece) and the rivers Acheron and Styx.  The three headed dog Cerberus is at the gate, keeping the unfortunate eidolon from trying to escape, and Eurynomus, an indescribable creature that would tear off men’s skins, crouches in the shadows.

Homer also tacked on other features to the classical Greek underworld that were more in keeping with the way the average Greek imagined things might be in Hades.  Odysseus witnesses three men tortured eternally for crimes against the gods.  There is Tantalus, forever hungry and thirsty but unable to reach the food and water just in front of him.  Sisyphus hefts a huge bolder up a hill, only to have it roll back down so that he must return to the bottom and begin again.  Homer also writes of Tityus, whose punishment is the same as that of Prometheus the fire-bearer; vultures appear each day and rip Tityus’ liver from his side only to have the wound heal and the torture repeated over and over again.

As time went on, other writers added to the list of tormented souls in Hades until the pit of Tartarus, where those who had done evil were tortured in all manner of gruesome ways, became a staple of Greek belief.  Along side Tartarus grew the Elysian Fields, where the righteous dead would know the joys of life for all eternity or until they were called to drink the waters of the river Lethe, “forgetfulness”, and be reincarnated on Earth.

The fact that what we would now call Heaven and Hell were within sight of one another in Greek mythology did not escape early Christian theologians.  Certain authors, including Augustine, speak of the damned having to watch the joys of Heaven as part of their torment.  Medieval writers and artists, whose sadistic depictions of Hell border on the psychotic, added to this idea by picturing the souls in Heaven enjoying the suffering of the damned.  That, of course, is a very wide leap in philosophy from the days when all that stood ahead of us was eternity as an eidolon.

Header: Orpheus in the Underworld by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, 16^th c