Episode 19: Small Cat Shenanigans | Show Notes
Amanda’s Notes
amanda’s notes go here
Corinne’s Notes:
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_depictions_of_cats
https://www.terriwindling.com/blog/2019/08/cats
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiby%C5%8D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakeneko
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nekomata
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20190522-the-cat-who-saved-a-japanese-rail-line
Literally no one should be surprised that I proposed we do an episode on folklore about the good ol’ domestic cat. Or, as I put it in my notes because I forgot the word “domestic”- Smol Cats.
I want to start off with one of my favorite cat facts ever: The Norse goddess Freyja had a chariot pulled by two cats. When I was explaining this to my parents (because I give them a preview of whatever I’m researching – by which I mean that I make them listen to me talk enthusiastically about whatever topic is on deck), I made possibly the best quip of my life to my dad when I said “yeah, I don’t know how she ever actually got anywhere”. Having two cats myself I know there’s a reason that the phrase “Like herding cats” exists. Also, kittens were supposedly a common gift to newlyweds in Norse culture. So, that’s me being wholesome! I could spend an entire half hour of me being wholesome about cats because they are my absolute favorite, but instead I’m gonna tell y’all about some of the creepier kitties in Japanese culture (before going right back round to wholesome because I am who I am)
Japan is home to a lot of supernatural creatures, who are often lumped together under the umbrella term “yokai”. In addition to some of the creatures you may be familiar with, like kappa, kitsune, and yuki-onna, which we’ve discussed in previous episodes, there are cat yokai! The overall term for cat yokai is “Kaibyo”, which means “strange cat” (side note, I’m intrigued because at least on the wikipedia page, kaibyo is written out in hiragana, with no kanji).
So one of the kinds of kaibyo is the bakeneko. Bakeneko means “changed cat”. [Note: I got this wrong in the podcast itself. I’ve corrected my notes here] I had a hard time finding English sources to back up what I read about them on Wikipedia, but my inability to read Japanese certainly isn’t going to stop me! Some of the behaviors of bakeneko that were cited ranged from the charming and harmless “dancing around with a napkin on its head”, to being able to transform into people, to some genuinely creepy things like possessing people manipulating the dead. With the wide range of behavior, I’m strongly reminded of what I’ve read about kappa and kitsune, where some are generally harmless and some will absolutely murder the shit out of you.
One story mentioned on the wikipedia page was the tale of Takasu Genbei, whose cat disappeared and then his mom started acting weird. After literal years of the whole family wondering what Genbei’s mom was doing - and seeing a weird cat looking monster when they peaked into her room - Genbei killed the creature that looked like his mom. Turns out it was a bakeneko after all! When they pulled back the floorboards, they found his mom’s skeleton, which looked like it had been munched on.
ONe way that bakeneko differ from yokai like kappa and kitsune is that bakeneko are often believed to be cats that lived a very long time (13+ years seemed to be the most common age I spotted, which means I think technically Patrick is a bakeneko now), or if they grew to be a particularly large size (3.75 kilos was the weight I saw cited, which would also put George firmly in bakeneko territory). Of course, they could also be created by being treated very cruelly–like say, a family deciding to kill their cat because it was 13 years old…
Another common kaibyo is the nekomata. It’s really easy to confuse nekomata and bakeneko, but the biggest difference is that nekomata have two tails instead of just one. Nekomata come in two distinct flavors: wild cats who have become yokai (there’s some evidence that these stories were actually imported from China), and domestic cats who have become yokai, much like bakeneko. The other big difference is that while bakeneko might be the chill kind that dance around with napkins on their heads, nekomata are in fact going to Do A Murder. Or, more likely, engage in necromancy to fuck with their cruel owners. If we’re being honest? I’m kind of on the nekomata’s side.
One really cool thing about the nekomata is actually its name. There are a few ways to write it, which influences how it might be translated. The word “neko” is easy enough- it means cat, and is consistent. However, “mata” might be written as the kanji for “again” - the most common variant, or with the kanji for “forked”. The earliest version just had hiragana, so etymologically speaking it’s a big ol shrug emoji on trying to figure out the meaning! Most modern variants are essentially folk etymology, trying to graft on meaning where the original meaning is lost or obscured. Which I think is neat!
Now that I’ve made myself sad about yokai kitties being created by human cruelty, I’m gonna HARD PIVOT to a wonderful contemporary tale of what I think could be argued as modern myth. Sort of. If you’ve spent any time on Tumblr in the last five to ten years, you’re probably familiar with the story of Tama the station cat. Tama was a calico cat who was made honorary stationmaster of a train station in Wakayama prefecture. And she did SUCH A GOOD JOB! Apparently she started her life as a stray near Kishi station in Wakayama, and was well liked by area folks. But over time, ridership was decreasing, and the guy in charge of the line, Mitsunobu Kojima, had a brilliant idea. He’d been asked by Tama’s former human guardian to look after her, so he gave her the role of station master, to be paid in the form of as much cat food as she could eat. Because she was good natured and very photogenic, ridership started increasing over time. In fact, it’s believed that her presence added billions of yen (the rate translates to about 7 million USD) into the local economy over the course of her lifetime, because people wanted to see this sweet good girl, whose face was put on all the marketing material and had a bed and litter box in the ticket office. Realizing an EXCELLENT marketing opportunity when they spotted it, the owners of the rail line also had a custom “Tama” train made for the line. It has cartoon kitties and FUCKING PLAYS TAMA’S MEOW AT STOPS. After Tama passed at age 16, she was elevated to a deity status at a small shrine outside Kishi station, and is now known as the Honorable Eternal Station Master. Her successor Nitama (Tama the second) has things well under control, and is training her own calico successor, Yontama (Tama the forth). Suntama (tama the third) lives in Okayama, splitting her time between a station there and as acting director of a museum.
Episode 18: Clever Corvids | Show Notes
Amanda’s Notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_Tales
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40315536
http://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/BeFM079.html
http://www.indigenouspeople.net/buffhunt.htm
Much like with last week’s episode where we discussed foxes and their representation in folklore across the world, corvids such as ravens, crows, magpies, etc. are found everywhere on earth except for the very tip of South America and the polar ice caps. Dinosaurs evolved into very smart birds and decided that it’s their world, the rest of us are just living in it.
Also like last week, we’re going to start in the Pacific Northwest with the Raven Tales of the Athabaskan speaking First Nations people. Raven is often shown as a trickster character, able to shapeshift into a human form, and in some versions Raven can even become inanimate objects.
As with many trickster figures in folklore, Raven alternates between hero and antagonist depending on the story. And that is all I have to say about this set of myths. My main intention of bringing this set of stories up is to implore people not to find workarounds to find more information about them. These stories are largely passed down via oral tradition in this area of the world and the First Nations peoples in this region consider them cultural property of the clan or person they originate from and it is custom that these stories not be told by anyone not a member of the clan where the story originated from. While I have no doubt in my mind that I will mess this up eventually, if I haven’t already, I will always do my best to respect the boundaries of closed practices.
Alright, now that we’ve talked about Raven we can talk about another corvid close to my heart, the magpie. Magpies show up in folklore throughout the world, often as gossips and busybodies. For a fun bit of trivia, magpies may be the bird with the most ancient stories associated with them according to researchers at Fresno University. I know this next part isn’t really North America specific but it’s fascinating, this is my podcast, and I’ll get to North American stories about magpies in just a second so we can all calm down some. While magpies are never mentioned by name in the Bible, their place in Western folklore is actually very Biblical in nature. According to some stories, Magpies were banished to the masts of the Ark during the Great Flood due to their chattiness. Like guys, we’ve just watched the literally world swept away and who knows how long we’ll be stuck packed in like this, could you give us one freaking moment of quiet? And there’s a bit of Irish folklore that states that magpies donned their black and white coloring when they mourned the death of Jesus on the first Good Friday. And something to include very quickly because I know that Corinne didn’t cover any magpie related content for this episode so I can steal her international thunder, “magpie” was a longtime slang term for an Anglican bishop due to the robes the bishops wear, and around the same time “magpie nest” was a slang term for lady parts. Take from that what you will.
Going back to North America, the magpie shows up quite frequently in Cheyenne folklore, often relating to food. The one I found most interesting was the story of how the Buffalo Hunt began. In the beginning, buffalo ate man for buffalo were larger and stronger than man and that was the natural order of things.
Hawk and Magpie quite liked humans and wanted to help them in some way. Humans at the time thought buffalo looked like they could be pretty tasty themselves. The animals set up a council, who determined that there would be a race between all animals and humans and the winner would have the right to hunt the others for the rest of time.
The course was very long, winding around the base of a large mountain. The swiftest buffalo, Neika, felt very confident in her ability to win the race. Humans were worried about their own prospects and were on the lookout for anything that might help them reduce their fatigue.
The animals all painted themselves for the race. Magpie painted herself with white on her head and shoulders, water turtle painted red around the eyes, etc. Hawk and Magpie knew they would have no trouble with the race.
As the race went on animals started falling well behind, but their lives were on the line so they continued running. The race was taking hours, and many animals started to run themselves literally to death, culling the field until finally Hawk, Magpie, Buffalo, and Human were the only ones remaining with Human trailing the other three. As they had agreed, Hawk and Magpie dive bombed Buffalo, harrying her and causing her to slow down just enough for Human to pass her and win.
Buffalo accepted their lot, but tasted human meat one last time, storing the flesh in the front of their chests just below the neck, hence why that part of the buffalo is not eaten. And that is my segment!
Corinne’s Notes:
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_depictions_of_ravens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kutkh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvus#Cultural_depictions
Mackay, E. (2011). Of or pertaining to a raven. Ambit, 205, 81–81. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44344264
https://www.terriwindling.com/blog/2013/09/birds.html
https://www.rickclarke.studio/stories-behind-the-pictures/2018/9/27/raven-folklore-and-myth-1
Sax, B. (2010). The Tower Ravens: Invented Tradition, Fakelore, or Modern Myth? Storytelling, Self, Society, 6(3), 231–240. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41949136
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C3%A2n_the_Blessed
Corvids, y’all. They’re pretty great. They’re intelligent and playful creatures, they hold a grudge like no one’s business, and they have my vote to inherit the earth after humanity’s days are done. My opinion is heavily swayed by the fact that they’re often psychopomps, which is the coolest concept ever and also one of my favorite words. When we first posited this topic, I immediately thought of Huginn and Muninn, Odin’s ravens, as well as the ravens of the tower of London. But I knew I needed to dig in a little further before I declared which topics I was going to talk about. And I am glad I did!
I’m going to be a bit self-indulgent first and talk about ravens and crows as symbols of prophecy. Huginn and Muninn, as I mentioned before, were ravens who served Odin. Their names mean “thought” and “memory”, and their job (oh how I love animals with jobs) was to travel the mortal realm to bring information to Odin. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t just the Norse who associated ravens with prophecy. In both Greek and Roman tradition, ravens are sacred to the god Apollo, who is a god of prophecy, amongst other things. In fact, in one story, Apollo gets pissy at a white raven who brings him bad news (a mortal woman he loved was unfaithful to him), so he torches the raven as punishment. This is why ravens are black these days.
Now you may have heard me mention that corvids are often cast as psychopomps as well. As they’re carrion eaters, they have a close association with death. In fact, while I was doing my research, I found several references to one of the raven’s appearances in the Quran- in one of the sutras, Cain is inspired to bury his brother Abel’s corpse after watching a raven bury another raven in the earth.
Combining the raven’s association with death, their association with prophecy AND animals with jobs, I have got to bring up the ravens at the Tower of London, tended to by the yeoman Ravenmaster (which has got to be the coolest job title on the planet). Ravens have been kept at the Tower with their wings clipped and more or less as…. Not pets but uhhh honored guests who can’t leave? since the 17th century. The given reason for this is that King Charles II was informed of a prophecy that if the ravens were to ever abandon the tower that the kingdom would fall. So naturally he decided that ravens needed to be a permanent fixture, and they’ve made a point to try and keep a minimum of six ravens at the tower at all times since. Obviously I needed to learn more about this prophecy! It may partially have come about from a legend from the Mabigonian, a compendium of Welsh myths. In the Mabigonian, the king Bran ordered that his head be buried in the hill where the Tower of London now sits, facing out towards France, so that he could perpetually guard the Island from invaders. To note: Bran is actually the modern Welsh for Raven, and King Bran the Blessed is also closely associated with ravens and the gift of prophecy. Hilariously, his entry in Wikipedia says “not to be confused with Brian Blessed” which is 900% where my brain went when I saw his name because I’m a trashfire of a human being. ANYWAY. My initial Wikipedia dive indicated that this origin story is not NEARLY as old as indicated. During the Victorian era, ravens were kept at the tower largely for aesthetic. It’s much easier to sell tourists on gruesome stories about ravens eating the corpses of executed nobles like Lady Jane Grey or Anne Bolyn when you have handy dandy living props to back up the story. And the legend that the Empire would fall if the ravens left the tower? Comes from 1944, the height of World War II- where the ravens once again had an unofficial job. This time of spotting for German bombers during the Blitz. American scholar Boria Sax wrote an article on the subject called The Tower Ravens: Invented Tradition, Fakelore, or Modern Myth? I accessed a copy of the article through JSTOR and it’s definitely worth the read. Sax contextualizes the tradition of keeping ravens in the tower as a confluence of invented tradition, “fakelore” like Paul Bunyan, and modern mythology- a topic I definitely hope we have an opportunity to explore more of in this podcast.
While I spotted many familiar tales (or twists on familiar tales), I also learned about Kutkh, a raven spirit revered by indigenous peoples of the Russian far east. Among these groups, Kutkh played an important role in the creation of the universe (and in some stories, he actually creates himself, independently of a creator deity), as well as being progenitor of other spirits. There are actually a lot of parallels between stories of Kutkh and stories of Raven in the Pacific Northwest–likely because the communities that developed in Russia and the PNW had opportunities to interact with one another through trade and travel. Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t able to find many sources that seemed reputable for information on Kutkh online. I did, however, find an amazing poem that I’m going to share here that touches on the many roles ravens have played in folklore, religion, and literature.
Episode 17: Folkloric Foxes | Show Notes
Amanda’s Notes:
https://www.britannica.com/animal/fox-mammal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achomawi#:~:text=Achomawi%20(also%20Achumawi%2C%20Ajumawi%20and,California%20in%20the%20United%20States.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/534634?seq=2
http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/06/pacific-nw-how-silver-fox-created-world.html
Alright, foxes in folklore. Buckle up because first we’re going to discuss foxes the animal in an effort to understand why they show up in myths literally world wide. I’ll try to make this part quick because I know no one listens to my segment for facts, people are in it for story time and my research is secondary. I have no illusions.
So “true foxes”, or any animal in the genus “Vulpes” can be found on every continent except Antarctica (and if we’re being thorough here I have to mention that they are not native to Australia and were introduced in 1855 because the British aristocracy can’t go without their preferred blood sports for even a moment) and can be found in every environment with the exception of the jungle/rainforest type biome.
So foxes are everywhere, and boy do they enjoy picking at the scraps that humans leave around, because every animal is an opportunistic feeder when pushed out of its environment. And one reason that foxes are unsettling are the cries they make. Have you heard a fox cry Corinne?
So, to the story time that people actually care about here. We are going to talk about the creation story from the Achomawi people, who traditionally live in NE California and Oregon. And apologies, I’m getting wholesome again this episode. Are you ready?
It begins with “In the beginning, all was water.” A cloud formed and became coyote, then a fog rose over the water and became Silver Fox. And I love this line from the the Journal of American Folklore’s version “They became persons. Then they thought.” Together they thought up a canoe, which appeared and became their home. Together they drifted through the watery world for years, enjoying each others’ company, until the canoe grew old and moss covered. And at that point, great conversationalists though they both were, they were bored.
Silver-Fox decides to tell Coyote to go to sleep, which Coyote does. Silver-Fox then decides to comb Coyote’s fur, and he saves all of the fur that comes off. Once a large pile of fur forms, he balls it up until a putty type mixture forms and then flattens it out. Once it’s as flat as it can get he throws it out across the water and thinks “a tree should go there” and “a shrub should go there”, “a fish should go there” etc etc until the world is formed.
The boat eventually crashes into the land that has formed, waking Coyote up. Naturally Coyote is like “wait, wtf is this?” and Silver-Fox, not wanting to admit what things he did while bored (which like, freaking mood) is like “I don’t know, we just floated here. That’s not weird at all, you’re being weird. I’m going to get out here because you’re being really weird Coyote.”
The two built a sweat tent and then decided that the world was a little boring with just the two of them, so they made little stick versions of all the animals on the earth, stuck them in the ground, and then brought them to life.
In addition to you know, creating the world, this version of Silver-Fox brought fire to the world, helped separate day from night, and in one really fun story argued with Coyote about how long winter should be. See, Coyote thought that there should be 10 moons of winter. Silver-Fox was like, my buddy, my pal, people will literally starve to death if winter is that long. Two moons is long enough for winter. Coyote countered that by saying that people could just eat dirt soup during the winter and that combined with snow would be more than enough to keep people alive. Sir. No. They bickered back and forth for ages until finally Silver-Fox yelled that he was sick of Coyote’s nonsense, there would be one moon each for spring and fall and two moons for winter and that was that. And that is my segment! See, I can be brief.
Corinne’s Notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inari_%C5%8Ckami
Ting, N. (1985). A Comparative Study of Three Chinese and North-American Indian Folktale Types. Asian Folklore Studies, 44(1), 39–50. https://doi.org/10.2307/1177982
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumiho
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huli_jing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsune
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxes_in_popular_culture,_films_and_literature
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynard_the_Fox
https://www.terriwindling.com/blog/2022/01/a-skulk-of-foxes.html
I’m honestly GIDDY about getting to dig into this! Foxes are just really cute okay? Please add them to the list of animals I want to pet, regardless of risk to life and limb.
They also crop up in a lot of folklore around the world! Oftentimes they’re trickster spirits or messengers of the gods, but most stories also highlight their cleverness. Given that foxes are frequently found in urban centers and on the outskirts of human settlements, I’m unsurprised that so many people have stories about these little critters.
Briefly, I would be remiss in my duties as a French nerd if I didn’t at least touch upon Reynard the fox, who was an anthropomorphic fox cropping up in folktales in Europe from the Middle Ages on. In fact, the tales of Reynard/Renart were so popular in France that over time the word for “Fox” shifted from the more latin-related “goupil” to the contemporary “renard”.
Reynard was part of a whole cast of animal characters who frequently popped up in stories especially in France, Germany, and England.
As a linguistic aside, while diving into my research, I found this gem on wikipedia: The word shenanigan (a deceitful confidence trick, or mischief) is considered to be derived from the Irish expression sionnachuighim, meaning "I play the fox."[8]
I feel like fairly obviously as a noted weeb,, I need to have my main focus be three East-Asian variants of folkloric foxes: the kitsune of Japan, gumiho of Korea, and Huli jing of China. Most scholars agree that the Huli jing served as the template or inspiration for both the kitsune and the gumiho (also written as kumiho), so let’s start there:
Huli jing first crop up in the Classic of Mountain and Seas (Shanhaijing), which was written during the warring states period
Depending on the stories at hand, they can be benevolent OR malevolent, much like people.
As time went on, worship of fox spirits became very common. In fact, in the Tang dynasty, it was often assumed that villages needed fox demons in order to even be properly established
The Song dynasty actually tried to outlaw worship of fox spirits, but that didn’t really stamp out the practice at all
Chinese fox spirits often take the form of beautiful women, and stories of men taking these fox spirits as their brides are not uncommon
I found an article from the journal Asian Folklore Studies published in 1985 that drew comparisons between Chinese folktales about fox-wives and similar stories from Inuit culture, which tied both to the larger folklore motif you might know better as “swan wives” (Side note: Seriously, get a library card. There’s no way I could afford a JSTOR subscription, but I’m able to access so much research material with my library card)
Going back to “Classic of Mountain and Sea”, the region that Huli jing come from may have been an allusion to the region now known as Korea, so that brings us to Gumiho!
In contemporary Korean folklore, gumiho are largely malevolent fox spirits who can transform into beautiful women and want to eat humans’ hearts and/or livers
Somewhat unsurprisingly, they’re REALLY POPULAR in kdramas. Seriously, the wikipedia page lists SEVERAL examples.
One of the other unique features of gumiho is their possession of something called a “fox marble” or “fox pearl” [“yeowoo guseul” in Korean]. This bead is what gives them their knowledge and power. According to legends, humans can acquire this by making out with gumiho (tongue’s gotta be involved- love that for everyone involved). The fox pearl will slip into the human’s mouth and they need to swallow it before the gumiho can retract it back into themselves.
Interestingly, I was perusing Terri Windling’s blog again, as she’s done several essays on animals in folklore, and she mentioned an essay by folklorist Heinz Insu Finkl that caught my eye. While talking about some traditional Korean stories of gumiho, he made a link between the victims of gumiho who’ve had their energy drained to the victims in Keats’ poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and I just think that’s pretty neat! I’ve linked both Windling’s and Finkl’s essays in my notes.
In addition to their contemporary reputation, quite a lot of older folklore also presents the gumiho as a threat. That said, there are a few variants where gumiho are, if not benevolent, at least not outright villainous. I saw one theory that the reason gumiho are only malevolent these days is due to anti-Japanese sentiment due to Japan’s invasion and colonization of the Korean peninsula.
This brings us to the Japanese variant of fox spirits, the kitsune. You may recall from our cursed nature episode that I talked about Tamamo-no-Mae, a kitsune who was out to kill an emperor. As you might guess from that, sometimes kitsune can be pretty malevolent indeed.
However, like their Chinese kin, the huli jing, kitsune run the gamut from benevolent, to ambiguous, to outright malevolent.
Kitsune are natural shapeshifters, and quite frequently turn themselves into beautiful women. There is something of a theme here, friends.
In addition to being clever shapeshifters, Kitsune are also considered the messengers of the deity Inari. Inari is one of the key deities in Shintoism, and has also carved a place for themselves in Buddhist theology (though both Buddhist and Shinto theologians try to discourage the practice). Inari themselves can be represented by a fox as well (or a beautiful woman. Or a man. Or someone of ambiguous gender, hence my decision to use “they” when talking about them outside of specific myths).
Episode 16: Witches of Folklore | Show Notes
Amanda’s Notes:
https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/exhibits/myth/bellwitch.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Witch
https://www.bellwitchcave.com/
http://www.bellwitch.org/story.htm
I’m honestly embarrassed at how long it took me to come up with an idea for this one, because once I figured out what I wanted to cover it was so freaking obvious. You can’t live in the South and not think of The Bell Witch when you think about witches in American folklore. And let me tell you why.
This story centers around the Bell family in Robertson County, Tennessee. The Bell family moved from North Carolina to TN sometime in the early 1800s, I couldn’t find an exact date in my research. The family was a happy one by all accounts, with a substantial 328 acre farm and father John Bell Sr. becoming an Elder of the Red River Baptist Church.
In 1817 farmer John Bell Sr. was inspecting a corn field on his property (and like, it’s always corn isn’t it? Why can’t there be an American folk horror that starts in a patch of dandelions or something?) when he saw a straight up bizarre animal. Per his recollection, the animal had the body of a dog and the head of a rabbit. So, like any good early 1800s god-fearing farmer would do, he shot at it several times. He then described the entity as vanishing despite being hit at least once.
I do question Mr. Bell’s assessment of the situation here, because he decides that this abomination manifesting in his cornfield is nothing to be concerned about since it vanished. A vanished demon creature can’t ruin the corn at least, you know? He did at least begin to worry that the sighting may have been an omen when that evening after dinner the family started hearing banging on the walls of the house as if several someones outside were trying to break the walls down.
The sounds continued and escalated over the coming nights. The kids began talking about sounds of rats gnawing their bed posts at night, their pillows being thrown around the room, and their bedcovers being pulled off when they were falling asleep, which no thanks.
A few weeks went by with these regular disturbances, and then it got worse. You’re welcome. The family began to hear whispering voices. At this point they couldn’t really make out words, but per the family the whispering sounded like an elderly woman singing hymns. I’m sorry, NOPE. That is not ok.
Then it got even worse! The daughter, Betsy Bell, was apparently public enemy number one here. She reported getting her hair pulled, her face slapped, and regular pinches and punches across her body that left visible welts. So at this point Mr. Bell decided to confide in family friend James Johnston.
The Johnston family were the closest neighbors to the Bells and Mr. Johnston at first believed that the happenings were pranks that the Bell kids were pulling on their parents. Which, fair. Doesn’t explain rabbit dog from earlier, but fair. Mr. Bell was like, nope, this is real. This is real and I’ll prove it to you. So he invited Mr. and Mrs. Johnston to stay the night.
Betsy was left alone that night as the entity decided to slap Mr. Johnston and pull the covers off of him and his wife. Mr. Johnston was a believer then, and told the Bells the next morning that he believed they were dealing with an “evil spirit, the kind that the Bible talks about.” Now, here is where I have to point out that Mr. Johnston was illiterate and his knowledge of the Bible came entirely from what he heard at church. Just saying.
After this encounter the entity’s voice became more distinct. It was the voice of a feeble old woman. The voice began singing hymns, quoting scripture, carried on full conversations with the Bell family, and at one point quoted, word for word, two sermons that were preached that very day thirteen miles apart. Unsurprisingly, word of the haunting starting spreading around the area because we as humans are absolute suckers for a good ghost story.
And the most famous person to hear about this? Why, Mr. Bell’s former commander at the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812, future president Andrew Jackson himself. Jackson heard about the Bell house phenomenon in 1819, two years after it began. So think about that, two years that this family has been living through this nightmare. But you can’t just move away from over 300 acres of farmland, Capitalism doesn’t give a flying fuck about your ghost problem, you need to make money. Of course, hearing about his former subordinate’s trouble probably gave Jackson the warm fuzzies since this man was a monster in many ways, so Jackson brought his entourage to TN to see what was up.
Just as they approached the Bell’s property, the horses got stuck in a muddy embankment. After several minutes trying to free the horses, Jackson joked “By the eternal boys, it must be the Bell Witch!” and laughed. The laugh was cut short as a disembodied voice suddenly told the group they could proceed and she looked forward to seeing them all at dinner. The horses then had no trouble moving forward.
Jackson and his men set up tents in the Bells’ yard, none of them wanting to sleep inside the house after what happened with the horses. That evening as the crew was exchanging war stories and generally hanging out and laughing, one member showed his gun and told everyone that he was a witch tamer and his magic silver bullet could kill any spirit and that’s why nothing had happened since they set up camp, clearly the spirit was too scared of such a big, strong man.
Ooooor, not. Almost immediately after saying that the man began screaming, saying that he was being stuck with pins and being beaten. And like, girlboss it up Miss Witch. The voice then spoke up, saying that there were several frauds in Jackson’s entourage and she would identify the next one the following evening. It’s unclear how long it took the group to decide to leave, but they were sighted in a nearby town the very next morning, and it’s alleged that Jackson himself said “I would rather fight all the British at New Orleans than fight the Bell Witch”. Obviously we don’t have any way to confirm that he said that, but I want to believe.
That same year, Betsy became engaged to a nearby young man, Joshua Gardner. The entity was NOT happy about that. It became increasingly irritated with her, repeatedly telling her that she was NOT to marry Joshua. Betsy and Joshua couldn’t even walk around the property for some alone time without the entity messing with them, yelling at them, pinching them, punching them, splashing river water up on them, etc.
As the haunting continued, John Bell’s health began to deteriorate. Right after the haunting started he began experiencing some muscle twitches and difficulty swallowing that got progressively worse. By the fall of 1820 he was completely housebound, which was…not great for him. The entity kept whispering to him that she was going to kill him. She would slap him repeatedly every time one of his numerous seizures ended and started pulling his shoes off of his feet when he tried to get out of bed.
The morning of December 20, 1820, Ol Jack Bell as the entity called him shuffled off his mortal coil. Immediately following the death, the entity told the family to look in the cupboard. There the family found a vial and dropper filled with a viscous black liquid. For some reason at this point John Jr. put some drops of the mystery liquid on the cat’s tongue, only to have the cat proceed to die minutes later. The family heard the entity start laughing as the cat died, and she stated “I gave Ol’ Jack a big dose of that last night, which fixed him!”. Super classy thing to say to a grieving family, A+ there entity. At Bell’s funeral, when the mourners were leaving the graveyard, the entity started singing a drinking song, slurring her words as if drunk on her own ectoplasmic cocktail, and she did not stop until everyone was gone.
Due to the stress of the continued haunting and her father’s death, Betsy broke off her engagement on Easter Monday 1821. Shortly after she broke off the engagement, the entity showed up to John Bell’s widow and told her that it was leaving now but would return in seven years. As promised, the entity showed back up in 1828 and was a much mollified spirit. As opposed to pinching and poking and banging on walls, she had long conversations with Johnny Jr. about Christianity, philosophy, politics, and the need for a great “spiritual awakening” in the United States. She also made a few predictions that people now think referred to the Civil War. After three weeks having these lovely parlor chats with Bell Jr. she disappeared again, promising to visit again in 107 years because why not.
There are debates about her 1935 visit and whether or not it happened and I don’t want Corinne to be stuck editing a 3 hour episode, so let’s move on to the important thing here, WHO WAS THE BELL WITCH? Well, there are a couple of theories.
The most popular theory, and the one that comes up in most pop culture referencing the Witch, is that the entity was the spirit of Bell’s neighbor, Kate Batts. The story goes that Bell swindled Kate and her husband on a land deal and on her death bed she vowed that she would curse Ol’ Jack. I’m not super convinced. While yes, there was a dispute between John Bell and Kate’s husband Benjamin Batts, in 1818, it was not about land sales. It was, unfortunately, a dispute about the price of a transaction having to do with an enslaved person. It was determined by the Church that Mr. Bell hoodwinked Mr. Batts in the transaction, leading to Bell’s complete excommunication from the Baptist Church he was an elder in. I feel like the fact that the dispute started with Kate’s husband and kept going well after the hauntings, ending with his excommunication, shows punishment enough and not quite enough motivation.
Another theory, at least for everything that happened to Betsy, brings us to sleazeball extraordinaire, Professor Richard Powell. Powell was Betsy and her fiance Joshua’s former schoolteacher, a well known student of the occult, ventriloquism, mathematics, horticulture, and geology. Let’s focus on the ventriloquism. According to contemporary accounts, Powell expressed his extreme distaste for the engagement when it was announced and had shown some…less than appropriate attention to Betsy when he was her teacher. I have no trouble believing that the voice Betsy heard in the garden or near the cave or river was a spiteful Powell trying to end the engagement. That doesn’t really explain the rest of the hauntings, but creeps are opportunistic and poor Betsy deserved happiness. I will die on this hill.
So there are a couple of other theories. The primary one I want to focus on is the idea of arsenic poisoning. Mr. Bell's neurological symptoms are in line with chronic arsenic poisoning, cats don't have the right biological pathways to process arsenic, hence the quick death, and arsenic will burn blue. To further bolster this theory, at the time arsenic was a very popular poison used by enslaved peoples in the area to exact very earned revenge on the landowners.
To this day people claim to hear voices near the old Bell farm property, and candlelight has been seen in the middle of empty fields at night. Photography in the area is especially eerie, showing orbs, floating blobs of mist, and humanoid shapes in areas that were completely open when the photos were taken.
Ultimately, it’s unlikely we’ll ever know the true story behind these hauntings. And isn’t that what makes these stories so fun?
Corinne’s Notes:
https://www.learnreligions.com/witches-in-mythology-and-legend-4126677
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_le_Fay
Thanks in no small part to a mix up in our recording plans, I got to dig into some witches from folklore and mythology! And since I love literary references, I decided to touch on a couple of characters who crop up in contemporary fiction as well as classical myths and folktales!
I’m going to start with Circe, best known from Greek mythology and Homer’s Odyssey.
Our girl Circe was a daughter of the sun god Helios, and lived on the island of Aeaea (guys that is 5 vowels in a row with 0 consonants and I am so sorry for my pronunciation). She’s also the aunt of Medea (another figure said to be a witch in Greek mythology), and depending on the story was a daughter of Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft.
Circe was powerful in her own right, and among other things was noted for her skill with herbs and was gifted at transformation. In many stories set before The Odyssey, there was a bit of a pattern where Circe would fall in love with someone who would rebuff her (usually they were in love with someone else), and then she’d either transform them or the object of their affection into something (either an animal or a monster. You know. You gotta keep up variety, right?)
Now, in The Odyssey, which is where most modern audiences may be familiar with her, Circe transforms most of Odysseus’s men into wild animals when they land upon her island. One of the men is able to evade transformation and goes back to warn Odysseus. This warning, along with aid from the god Hermes, helps Odysseus to be able to free his men from her enchantment. He also is able to outwit her, avoid getting transformed into a wild animal himself, and in at least some stories sleeps with her and fathers three children with her before returning home to his faithful wife Penelope.
Circe has been fruit for A LOT of art over the centuries. There is evidence that she was the topic of plays in Ancient Greece that have been lost to time. She’s been the subject of poetry, paintings, and at least 4 operas. Currently on my TBR pile is the telling of her story by Madeline Miller, as well as the translation of The Odyssey by Emily Wilson- the first woman to translate Homer’s epic poem.
Next up, we have good old Morgan Le Fey. I am an absolute sucker for Arthurian lore, so I’d be remiss if I left her out of this round up. Now, there is a huge variety of Arthurian legends, and they shift characterization around depending on who’s telling the story (and especially why those stories are being told). The earliest versions are staunchly pro-Welsh, for example, whereas when you get to the French fanfic in the 13th century, Lancelot suddenly becomes a whole *thing*, and most of my favorite knights suffer from major character assassination. Ahem.
Anyway, Morgan Le Fey is consistently some sort of sorceress, and is usually somehow related to King Arthur. She makes her first appearance in The Life of Merlin, written by Geoffery of Monmouth in the 1100s. In early stories, she’s largely benevolent. As time goes on, she becomes a much more malevolent figure in stories (Again, the 13th century French have a LOT to answer for).
So now you may be asking, “Corinne, what makes this lady a witch?” No matter which stories you’re reading, Morgan Le Fey is a noted sorceress. Sometimes her talents lie in healing, sometimes in ensnaring hapless dudes. In at least one story, she was sent off to a convent but instead learned sorcery and became Merlin’s lover. Which sounds legit, speaking as a former Catholic School Girl. In most of the stories post Chretien de Troyes (Our French writer who made Lancelot into the hero he is), Morgan was deeply head over heels for Sir Lancelot, who in many stories was in turn pining for Queen Guenevere. In the stories where she’s a full blown villain, she manages to kidnap Sir Lancelot and keep him captive- using all of her magic to try and win him over and turn him into her lover. But since this was written by a dude, she ultimately failed to turn him into her boy toy. When he became sick and near death, she set him free.
ANYWAY! I really love Morgan Le Fey and quite a lot of Arthurian legends. If you’re looking for an accessible starting point, I highly recommend Gerald Morris’s retellings of Arthurian legends. They’re mostly YA and middle grade, but they’re a great introduction to some of the wild stories you can find once you start digging in. I’m particularly fond of The Savage Damsel and the Dwarf and The Squire, His Knight, and his Lady (this one is a retelling of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and has lived rent free in my head since I was 15).
Episode 15: Witchy Accusations | Show Notes
Amanda’s Notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Harrison
So I feel like the obvious place to start with this topic would be The Salem Witch Trials but you could make an entire limited series podcast about that. Maybe if we ever get around to setting up a Patreon or something I can do that as bonus content, especially some deep dives into the political motivations in the community that are glossed over in modern re-tellings.
So instead of going that route, we’re going to talk about something that happened in the colonies 30 years before anyone saw Goody Proctor with the devil and discuss the Connecticut Witch Trials, or the Hartford Witch trials as they are sometimes referred.
These trials took place from spring 1647 until 1670 and included a total of 37 cases, with 11 executions as a result. The first execution was a woman named Alse Young, executed on May 26, 1647, not just the first execution in Connecticut but quite probably the first execution for witchcraft in the colonies at all. We don’t have too much information about her, aside from her execution being recorded in the journals of John Winthrop who was governor of Massachusetts Bay at the time. We don’t have any records of the trial or any specifics of the charges outside of a generic “witchcraft” though I found a couple of theories that make sense to me. There was a flu epidemic ravaging the area at the time, and she was likely married to a John Young who died as a result of the flu epidemic, and if she was indeed married to him she would have been eligible to inherit his property. That real estate is as good a reason as any for someone to want a woman killed because the patriarchy doesn’t give two figs about women’s lives, see the most recent bills put forth TODAY trying to ban abortions even for ectopic pregnancies which is a death sentence for women since there’s literally no way to save an ectopic pregnancy and the resulting bursting of the fallopian tubes can kill you pretty quickly but it’s fine, I’m fine, not at all terrified to be a woman of child-bearing age here in the good ol’ USA.
Moving on, we have Mary Johnson, who was the first recorded confession of witchcraft. She was a house servant and was accused of theft in 1648. After a pretty extensive bout of torture to illicit a confession as she maintained her innocence, she finally confessed to a “familiarity with the devil.” And like….you’re a 1648 community, aren’t you all familiar with the devil? Lots of fear mongering around the idea of eternal damnation? Throughout the interrogations that followed she admitted to having sex with men and devils and murdering a child. Which would have been more believable had there been any unaccounted for children in the area. Surprisingly, she was sentenced to death and the sentence was still carried out June 6, 1650 despite initially being delayed due to her pregnancy.
And lastly I want to focus on Katherine Harrison. Harrison grew up a servant who had a lovely rags to riches story when she married a farmer after coming to Connecticut from England in 1651. On September 3, 1666 (the Devil’s number) her husband died. He left behind a will dated from August of that year in which a large amount of money went to her, with smaller amounts allocated for their three daughters. This inheritance left Katherine one of the wealthiest women in Wethersfield, and Katherine chose not to remarry. Much like with Alse Young, this left her vulnerable to people who were jealous of her wealth.
On October 6, 1668, Mrs. Harrison wrote to the courts to talk about her livestock being vandalized. Her oxen were bruised so severely they were developing broken ribs, her pigs were earmarked, and young cattle were stabbed with the weapons left behind in the stab wounds.
In 1668 she was tried as a witch following several testimonies. I don’t want to get too in depth here because everybody had something to say about Mrs. Harrison and I don’t want to make Corinne edit a two hour episode, but here are a few:
Michael Griswold claimed Katherine called his wife Ann a “savage whore”
John Welles claimed that Katherine put a spell on him that made him unable to move as if his legs were bound when he went out to bring his cattle back home
Thomas Waples claimed that Katherine was known to using a spindle too frequently, and it was known that women used spindles during their Sabbath
Richard Montague accused Katherine of gathering bees because he saw a swarm of bees follow her from a neighbor’s property to her own
Several people accused her of being an accurate fortune teller
Oddly, Katherine was released from jail in early fall 1669, prompting 38 townsmen to file a petition. In October that same year a jury found her guilty of witchcraft given the testimonies I talked about, but on October 20th the execution was stalled. In May 1670 she was ordered to pay her fees and flee the colony for good. It’s not known what happened to her after that, but good on her for avoiding execution!
Corinne’s Notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendle_witches
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_the_early_modern_period
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Stewart,_5th_Earl_of_Bothwell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Duncan
https://qz.com/1183992/why-europe-was-overrun-by-witch-hunts-in-early-modern-history/ (note, this is behind a paywall)
As I mentioned last episode, I am generally ignorant of the history of witches and witchcraft in Europe. Most of my knowledge is based around things like Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (which honestly I loved reading. Should really get around to seeing a performance of it sometime).
Before we get into that, I do want to touch on the Early Modern European Witch Hunts, which inform much of our modern narrative on witches and their history. First and foremost, many of the accused would not have considered themselves witches by modern standards. That belief that many of those who were persecuted actually comes from First Wave feminist scholarship. There is some scholarly evidence that at the time, unmarried women were becoming a larger percentage of the population, and in societies where women couldn’t own property or head up households, it could have been placing an economic strain on communities. So there is that. While much of what I’m covering is what was happening in Europe during the late 16th through 17th centuries, a lot of the laws that governed who was accused of witchcraft and how they were tried have their roots in the Middle Ages and the Inquisitions. The Dominicans have A LOT to answer for, holy shit.
And re: The Burning Times- I’m so sorry but that’s largely a myth. While some accused witches were burnt at the stake, that wasn’t the only form of capital punishment that victims suffered, and in fact not all were executed! Some got to look forward to such exciting punishments as flogging, imprisonment and sexual humiliation (such as having to sit on red hot irons so they wouldn’t have sex with the devil–which. YIKES).
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s dig into one of those folks who were accused of witchcraft!
Our first place of interest is Pendle Hill in Lancashire, England, home of the Pendle witches. This was an extremely well known case during the reign of King James I. The are around Pendle Hill was predominantly Catholic, which could have caused some general consternation, just due to that particular point in history– Important note- Catholicism had been banned, brought back, and banned again as the state religion in England during the reigns of King Henry VII, Mary, Queen of Scotts, and Queen Elizabeth I. When King James I came to the throne, he was also generally anti-Catholic but also EXTREMELY into the occult and obsessed with witchcraft and witch trials. There’s a reason The Scottish Play was written during his reign, y’all.
Anyway, the Pendle Witch trials took place in an area that would have been considered back-ass-wards if only because many of the people in the area still practiced Catholicism. In fact, everything went down specifically because at the time it was common for justices of the peace to search for “recusants”- or people who were still secretly practicing Catholicism, attending mass, and otherwise not being good ol’ Church of England goers. All told, 12 members of the Pendle community were charged with witchcraft and having used that witchcraft to murder 10 other people. 10 were found guilty and hung, one died while in prison waiting for trial, and one was found innocent. The accused were:
Elizabeth Southerns (or Demdike)- a widow in her 80s
Elizabeth Device - Demdike’s daughter
James and Alizon Device - Demdike’s grandchildren
Anne Whittle (or Chattox)- another widow in her 80s
Anne Redferne - Ann Whittle’s daughter
Jane Bulcock
John Bulcock - Jane’s son
Alice Nutter
Katherine Hewitt
Alice Grey- the one member of the Pendle Witch trials found not guilty
Jennet Preston
All of these people may have been traditional healers, using herb lore and charms or talismans to help members of their communities. However! The Demdike and Chattox families kiiiiinda hated one another so a lot of the accusations came from those six people. The overriding thought was that they were each trying to squash the competition. Some of the accused did in fact believe that they were witches and had used their power to cause harm to others, while other members of the group maintained their innocence. As was not uncommon, a lot of confessions were got via torture.
Also, making a quick pop culture connection here, fans of the book and mini series Good Omens may hear some familiar sounding names. Alice Nutter was, according to Neil Gaiman, the inspiration for Agnes Nutter, whose prophecies foreshadow a lot of the story, as well as the surname for Anathema Device.
While going down a rabbithole of research, I learned about Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell. So our good dude here was a member of Scottish nobility in the late 16th century, and was a cousin of James I (who, confusingly, was also James VI when he was *only* the king of Scotland. I kept having to double check my research to make sure I was talking about the same dude). If you recall from our last episode when I talked about the Pendle Hill witchcraft trials, King James was EXTREMELY superstitious when it came to witches. Poor Francis Stewart ran afoul of this superstition after James was epically cockblocked by the universe. James was intended to marry the princess of Denmark, but her ship was consistently delayed due to terrible storms. Also the woman he’d picked to become one of her ladies in waiting was also drowned during a storm. So King James asked his cousin Francis, as head of the Scottish Navy, to go fetch his future bride. Francis was like, “dude no, that will be irresponsibly expensive!” so James raised funds and sent his own ship to go collect Princess Anne. There happened to be some witch trials going on in Copenhagen at the time, and one of the accused indicated that the storms had been summoned to fuck with King James, and another accused said they’d been working with Francis. So clearly this means Francis Stewart was a witch and was using his great powers from his pact with Satan to cockblock the king (Side note: Francis Stewart had ALSO recently been arrested for trying to overthrow his cousin. So yes he was def conspiring against the Scottish crown, but probably not girlbossing it up with Satan). Regardless, James and Francis fucking hated one another, but Francis Stewart was largely able to evade being executed for little things like engaging in witchcraft and conspiring against the throne. The Wikipedia page about him is A TRIP, y’all.
Speaking of a trip, I’m going to also fill you in on Helen Duncan, the one of the last people in the UK arrested for witchcraft. In 1944. Okay well technically that was one of three times she was arrested for witchcraft. She was also arrested in 1933 for fraudulently summoning spirits, and again for the same in 1956. Mrs Duncan would host “seances” and purported to speak to spirits. She also claimed to produce ectoplasm from these spirits, which was mostly fabric, light paper, and other sundry bits and bobs that she’d spit out of her mouth. These fake summonings were actually illegal according to the Witchcraft Act of 1735.
Now, the reason her story is interesting to me personally is that second arrest in 1944, for which she served a one year sentence. At the end of 1941, during WWII, the ship HMS Barham had been sunk off the coast of Egypt. While not an extremely closely guarded secret, the ship’s sinking wasn’t mentioned to the general public. Helen had gotten wind of the story and decided that she could TOTALLY PROVE that she was a legit psychic by incorporating a “ghost” from the sunken ship into her act. Which, let’s be real here, took some balls of steel. The woman had already been arrested once for falsely summoning spirits. Unfortunately for her (but fortunately for me because y’all know I love crazy stories), she made several mistakes–from making a uniform hat that would have been period inaccurate for navy men to be wearing to y’know, casually revealing a quasi- state secret.
Episode 14: Cursed Nature | Show Notes
Amanda’s Notes:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/witches-tree
https://louisvillehistorictours.com/the-witches-tree-louisville/
https://loutoday.6amcity.com/the-legend-of-louisvilles-witches-tree/
https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/kentucky/witches-tree-ky/
Apologies in advance, Corinne, because you will never look at Old Louisville, aka where I spent most of my free time during high school, aka the most haunted neighborhood in the United States, the same way again. For today, I bring you the tale of the Louisville Witches Tree.
In 1889 the thought of witches and evil magical practices wasn’t any sort of fringe belief. Everyone believed in that shit here in Kentucky, even in the at the time incredibly wealthy Old Louisville neighborhood.
At the corner of 6th Street and Park Avenue there stood a majestic maple tree. It was a pretty well known rumor that witches and voodoo practitioners used that tree as a popular middle of the night meeting spot for their dark practices.
And side note before we get back to the Witches Tree, I was a little confused about voodoo being listed in this. I assumed it was a racist shorthand for any black witches in the area because I have very little faith in 1889 Kentucky (or 1889 anywhere in the US if we’re being honest). But then I did some digging, and I found out that voodoo did in fact make it to Kentucky at the very least by 1848, it’s assumed through slave trade along the Mississippi from New Orleans to Louisville. Originally voodoo practices were noted amongst enslaved people primarily in the form of practices believed to make it impossible for the plantation owners to flog them. I have no doubt that more of the religious practices were brought up as well, and this is just what white people were trusted to learn but I’m still working on finding some more resources on the way these beliefs traveled throughout the country. Though voodoo being a closed practice it’s proving difficult, and I am respecting that boundary.
But back to the Witches Tree! In 1889 city festival planners wanted to chip down the tree for a May Day celebration and announced as much. The officials were warned by the witches not to do so, including the ominous “If you do this you will regret it. If you do this blasphemous thing, beware the 11th month.”
Despite that warning, the wonderfully enlightened city planners cut the tree down and put a Maypole up in its place. In response the witches announced they placed a curse on the city but as days turned to weeks, and weeks to months the general public forgot about the curse.
Don’t worry though, the witch wasn’t lying when she said beware the 11th month. On March 28, 1890, 11 months to the DAY that the tree was chopped down, a tornado so destructive it was called “the Storm Demon” swept through the city, destroying mansions, churches, bourbon warehouses, tobacco warehouses, and claiming at minimum 100 lives. And as if that wasn’t spooky enough, one single bolt of lightning struck the witches tree’s stump during the storm.
And after a couple of months people noticed something very strange. In the very spot where the lightning struck new growth showed up. Today there is a twisted, gnarled, Tim Burton looking tree in its place. People seek the tree out and leave beads, flowers, and other trinkets in the hopes for good luck. But don’t even THINK about stealing from the tree, lest you incur the wrath of the initial curse. I’ve included a picture here which I’ll show you Corinne, and I’ll make sure to have pictures on our socials when this episode comes out. Also Corinne, we are SO going to visit this tree and leave a gift.
[Note: Corinne was going to copy an image of the witches’ tree to the notes, but they’re all copyrighted. The Atlas Obscura link has some good images though!]
Corinne’s Notes:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/killing-stone-split-evil-spirit/
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/sesshoseki-killing-stone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chambal_River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draupadi
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/chambal-river
OKAY y’all we are finally breaking a little bit free of the euro-centric narratives I’ve been focusing on because this story has EVERYTHING: kitsune, cursed stones, cursed stones breaking and possibly freeing kitsune, and different variants on the legend–also it was on twitter last week.
If you missed the latest possible sign of the end times, in early March, a stone known as Sesshoseki (or ‘the killing stone’) cracked in half in the town of Nasu, Japan. The stone was said to be where the spirit of an evil 9-tailed fox demon was imprisoned. Now, if you’re familiar with Japanese mythology (or, you know, watch anime), you’ll know that a fox demon, or kitsune, is considered more powerful the greater number of tails it has. 9 tails is like, A Really Big McFuckin Deal. This particular demon had walked the earth disguised as a beautiful woman named Tamamo no Mae. She was working with a Daimyo who was trying to overthrow and murder the emperor. I saw a few different names regarding which emperor she was seducing, which daimyo she was working with, and the name of the warrior who ultimately killed her, so I’m leaving this a little vague here. After she was killed, her body was transformed into Sesshoseki. The reason the stone was called “the killing stone” was because anyone who approached it died. Now, according to at least one legend, this Sesshoseki is not the -original- Sesshoseki. That stone was broken into many pieces by the Buddhist monk Gen’no after he exorcized Tamamo no Mae’s spirit. BUT many people believe the Sesshoseki in Nasu is the real deal, not the least of which reasons is because it’s in an area known for volcanic activity that sometimes leaks hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide, which will ABSOLUTELY kill you. Somewhat understandably, especially given *all this* [i am gesturing vaguely at the entire world], people are spooked that a possibly malicious kitsune spirit has been freed after 1000 years of being imprisoned in a rock.
To be fair, according to experts at the historical site where Sesshoseki rests, the rock had developed cracks over the years, and it’s not entirely impossible that water could have seeped in and frozen, thus causing the rock to crack. But also, it could def be a malignant fox demon. I’m not writing anything off entirely this year.
Another cursed place I found as I was googling is the Chambal River in India, which runs through Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh- yes, all 600 miles of it is cursed. Or rather, it was considered cursed for a long time (earliest source I read about was the Mahabharat). In the Mahabharat, the river was known as Charmanyavati. The heroine Draupadi is very nearly disrobed after one of her 5 husbands loses a dice game. In her fury and shame, she curses the river so that anyone who drank its waters would be filled with a thirst for vengeance.
Due to this, very few people were willing to settle along the river despite it being, again, a major river in the country of India. It did, however, often host bandits in the river valley, up until about the 1970s. Since there was comparatively little human habitation and activity in the area, it is filled to the brim with unique fauna, including gharials, Gangetic river dolphins, and hundreds of other species. There are at least two wildlife sanctuaries that run along the river.
Episode 13: Winter Myths | Show Notes
Amanda’s Notes:
https://americanfolklore.net/folklore/2010/07/presumed_drowned.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bunyan
Winter myths! The bulk of my segment today is going in a different direction than you probably thought. Today we are going to learn about America’s lumberjack hero, Paul Bunyan.
First, some etymology on the name because I know this will make you happy Corinne. So, you could go the route that Bunyan sounds similar to bunion, the foot element. But I prefer the theory that it’s derived from the Quebecois expression “bon yenne!” which is an expression of astonishment.
Paul Bunyan first showed up in print March 17,1893, with the line “Paul Bunion is getting ready while the water his high to take his drive out” though it’s believed that his story was circulating as an oral tradition for at least 30 years previously. Which, thinking about it, puts it right around the end of the Civil War, which proves to me that the Civil War did a number on the collective American psyche. That line makes no sense, right? But it’s assumed that the line was a sort of inside joke, adding credence to the theory that Paul Bunyan tales existed prior to this, enough to be a reference that people would understand with no issue.
So what does Paul Bunyan have to do with winter? Paul Bunyan, as the story goes, was a giant, though his parents weren’t and they were as shocked as anyone at his size when he was born. He was so large that when he rolled over in his sleep he caused earthquakes, and if his ax trailed on the ground as he walked it created canyons in his wake.
We can’t talk about Paul Bunyan without talking about his bff, Babe the Blue Ox. When Paul was a young boy it was snowing, but a weird sort of snow. The snow, you see, was blue. It was so blue that Paul braved the bitter cold to go outside and see it up close. Once outside, he found a baby ox lost and shivering in the snow. Paul brought the near frozen ox inside and placed it in front of the fireplace. To his shock, the ox remained as blue as the snow when it thawed. Paul named the ox Babe and the two became inseparable.
What I love about the Paul Bunyan myth is that it falls under what some academics call “fakelore”, stories that began as tall tales and were repeated in the style of traditional folk stories as a way to keep groups entertained around the campfire. Unlike with traditional folk stories, the people telling the story have never been trying to make sense of natural phenomena via stories of giants and massive oxen. Paul Bunyan stories have always been fun stories to tell around the fire in the darkest nights of winter to push through until spring.
And because this was entirely too wholesome, I would like to quickly move on to a story that allegedly happened in Newfoundland in 1914, the story later popularized in the US as our collective appetite for ghost stories grew and grew.
A ship sailed up through the ice off Newfoundland in 1914. A group of 250 men were aboard, and on March 30th, ice still filling the sea, the chill in the air enough to take your breath away, 77 men left the ship to hunt seals. A mighty storm of freezing rain came seemingly out of nowhere while the men were out, lasting two days. The storm was so severe the men could not make it back to the ship for those two days. After the storm broke, a search party left the ship. 72 of the 77 men were found dead, having succumbed to the elements, with 5 of the men missing and nowhere to be found. The ship sailed home as the missing men were presumed drowned and was considered unlucky.
Some brilliant beaurocrat decided that the way to break the curse was to keep the ship off the ice the next year, tear it apart, and rebuild it, because every once in a while we as a species reinvent the ship of Theseus.
Two years after the fatal storm the ship set sail again. Again on March 30th something happened to the ship. It met up with another ship, the Terra Nova. A deep, impenetrable fog rolled in at dusk. The original ship could hear Terra Nova blowing its whistle, which was the signal that men were still out on the ice. Our original ship joined in, blowing their whistle as well throughout the night in the hope that they could help guide these men back to the ships through the fog.
The next morning a crewmember sailed over to the Terra Nova for some business. The captain of the Terra Nova greeted him and asked him what time his men had shown back up to the ship. Our crewmember was confused, none of the men from our Theseus were out on the ice. But the captain and crew of the Terra Nova swore up and down that through a break in the fog at 10pm the night before they saw five men board our original ship.
Confused, the crewmember went back to Theseus and told his captain what had happened. The captain pulled him aside and told him that the night before he himself saw five men board the ship, all wearing tattered, wet clothes, and he could see directly through the men’s bodies. The captain had been aboard the ship those two years prior and swore up and down that he recognized those men as the five men whose bodies had never been found.
And that’s my segment!
Corinne’s Notes
https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/mythology-winter-0011697
https://folklorethursday.com/christmas/top-10-snow-queens-and-winter-hags-from-around-the-world-2/
https://hyakumonogatari.com/2013/12/18/yuki-onna-the-snow-woman/
Okay so my initial thought process for winter mythology went thusly: “Winter mythology, right. Winter is…cold. Russia is ALSO cold. My friend Yuli is Russian! I should ask Yuli for Russian folklore about spooky winter stuff!” Alas, that didn’t pan out, as Yuli couldn’t think of anything that fit the bill, and warned me that if I did find anything, Russian folklore tends more towards tragedy than horror, but also they’d gladly help me with any pronunciation. Thus, I had to turn to my old buddy Google to get the ball rolling.
Google IMMEDIATELY reminded me of a classic favorite in the Clements-Tychonievich household, the Japanese Yuki-onna. Yuki-onna means “Snow Woman” in Japanese, and is a yokai that one commonly encounters in the winter. My husband frequently calls me a yuki-onna after I do things like tuck my very cold feet under his legs or put my cold hands up his shirt. For some reason he does not appreciate this, despite being an actual furnace of a human. He does not want to share his warmth with me, alas.
So I headed over to Hyakumonogatari.com because it never fails me and found a fantastic overview of this winter yokai. For one thing, there are several names for yuki-onna, but with a pretty common theme, the kanji for snow (which is read as “yuki’), and some term for a woman (“onna” is Japanese for woman). Other variants include Yuki Musume (snow daughter) and my new favorite, Yuki Joro, which means snow hooker. According to hyakumonogatari.com, it can be difficult to tell which are variants of the same yokai, and which are their own unique thing. As a a rule though, yuki onna appear in winter, dressed in a light, white kimono that is clearly not heavy enough for the weather and have very pale skin. Most variants also have very dark hair, though in some stories, the yuki onna’s hair is as white as the rest of her. Most prefectures of Japan have their own versions of the story. Notable exceptions include Okinawa, which is unsurprising, and Hokkaido which sort of is (for those unfamiliar with Japanese geography, Okinawa- also known as the ryukyuan islands- has a climate similar to Hawai’i, and Hokkaido is in the far north. Both locations are also home to minority ethnic groups in the country as well).
There are A LOT of variations in yuki-onna stories from across Japan. The common theme is that she appears in the winter when there’s snow on the ground. It might be the first snowfall of the year, it might be on the cusp of spring, or it might be during a blizzard. In any event, she’s perhaps not a yokai you would want to spend time with.
Here’s one variant that caught my eye, this is directly from Hyakumonogatari.com and I’ve linked to the source here:
From Ibaraki, Fukushima, Akita, and Fukui prefectures:
In Wakayama prefecture, they also have stories about “Yukinbo”- another snow-related yokai. This particular yokai is typically a young boy who only has one leg, which he uses to hop around trees. While this honestly sounds super adorable to me, it’s actually not! It’s thought that stories about Yukinbo explain what we call “tree wells” today- a phenomena where the snow around trees and other plant life melt faster than the snow around it. If you get stuck in a tree well, you may have a hard time escaping it, which is uhhhhh not a good thing if it’s winter, ya know? Apparently this is a thing skiers know to be wary of and is just one more example of why skiing is the actual worst.
After I spent some time reminding myself that yuki onna are a thing, I went back on my search for winter myths. And I was rewarded in my search for slavic folklore! I learned about Snegurochka (sne-GOO-rochka)
Snegurochka is usually depicted as a beautiful young woman with pale skin (are y’all seeing a trend here because I am seeing a trend here) and hair that’s either braided up or very curly. In one story, an old childless couple sculpted a young girl out of snow and started sort of jokingly referring to the sculpture as their child. Ded Moroz, whose name usually gets translated to Father Frost, overheard, and being a kind supernatural dude, he pulled a Pygmalion and brought the snow girl to life, where she lived happily with her family for a time. Eventually she fell in love with a young man in her village. Ded Moroz came to her to warn her to be careful, but this is folklore we’re talking about so of course she didn’t heed his warnings. In the spring she went to be with the young man she was in love with and melted away. Ded Moroz did re-form her, and she stays with him and helps him fill a sort of Santa Clause like role in Russia. So, as Yuli said, not scary, just tragic. Tangentially, Yuli also told me about a children’s pop up book about Snegurochka they had growing up from the Soviet era, which sounds amazing.
Episode 12: Selkies | Show Notes
Amanda’s Notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedna_(mythology)
http://www.native-languages.org/legends-seal.htm
http://www.native-languages.org/inuitstory2.htm
So I know we’ve titled this episode “Selkies”, but that word is so evocative of a pretty Euro-centric mythology. So I am focusing on some seal related myths in the Americas, primarily focusing on Inuit mythology today.
Amongst the nations of the Northwestern coast of the Americas, seals are incorporated in various bits of artwork and buildings. For the Nootka and Makah peoples, seals are associated with skill and safety in rough waters and because of this association have been incorporated into sailing superstitions, especially amongst people on whaling boats. In the Inuit culture, seals are seen as a symbol of such innocence that in Inuit translations of the Bible the Inukitut word for seal replaces the word “lamb” in order to convey the same message. I’m not sure if that hits as hard for our listeners who didn’t spend years of their lives in religion classes in Catholic schools, but the level of innocence that conveys can’t be overstated. And also this is why translation is such an impressive skill set.
So my main focus today is the goddess Sedna, lady of the underworld. Sedna has a few different origin stories, based on where we’re focusing on as she can be found in myths from Greenland, NW Canada, and Alaska. There’s a common thread in all of these stories, let’s see if you can find it, and oh my goodness apologies in advance Corinne.
In one story she is the daughter of the Creator-god Anguta. Sedna has a mighty hunger that causes her to attack her parents. Anguta is filled with such rage he immediately takes her out to sea and throws her over the side of the kayak. She clings to the kayak, causing him to cut off her fingers. She falls to the underworld and becomes the goddess of the monsters of the deep sea. Her fingers become the seals the people hunt, thus bringing the hunger thing full circle.
In another story she channels her inner Lone Bird, if Lone Bird was a snarky bitch. She is so dissatisfied with the men her father (not Anguta in this version. Actually, she rarely has a mother and her father rarely has a name as far as I can tell) has chosen for her. Any guesses what our girlboss does? She marries a freaking dog, Corinne. And look, I love a grumpy/sunshine romance where the hero is the sunshine and the heroine is the grump, but I can acknowledge that a literal golden retriever is perhaps taking it too far. That’s my hot take of the day. Yet again her father gets so angry that he throws her into the sea. When she tries to climb back into the boat he cuts her fingers off. She falls to the underworld, her fingers become seals and walruses. When she is displeased hunting drops off so the shaman must go out into the ocean and comb her hair. Remember, she has no fingers, she can’t do it herself. Once she is content, as we all are after a good spa situation, the seals and fish come back.
In the most detailed version I was able to find, Sedna and her widower father lived a quiet life. She was an absolute stunner so naturally everyone around wanted to marry her, but she was all like, nah I’m a ten and you’re an Ohio five at best. At the breaking of the ice in spring a fulmar, which is a type of Arctic sea bird (your welcome) came to her and started singing to woo her. “Come to the land of birds where there is never hunger, and my tent is made of the most beautiful skins. You shall rest on soft bearskins, my fellow fulmar’s feathers shall clothe you, your lamp will always have oil, your pot will always be full of meat.” She is convinced and follows the fulmar across the sea. And like, after the past couple of years I get it. Sounds like a sweet deal.
But as I have never said in my life but will say from now on, never trust a bird. After a long journey, exhausted and ready to relax on her new bearskin rug our heroine is sorely disappointed. The promised bearskin rugs are fishskins full of holes, her bed was made of walrus hides, and instead of tasty tasty caribou meat she is fed small fish. Pretty soon afterwards she regrets what happened and sings out for her father to come rescue her. But this is the point in the story where it decides to be realistic so of course he doesn’t hear it. He does, however, set sail to visit her a year later in the summer. He is furious with what he sees, so he kills the fulmar and whisks Sedna away in his kayak.
The other fulmars came back and saw their dead cousin, which is why their mournful cry exists to this day. They immediately start hunting Sedna and her father, the waves roiling under the furious flapping of wings. The seas got so bad that Sedna’s father feared the boat would overturn. Hoping to save his own skin, he throws Sedna over the side of the boat. She clings to the side, because duh. He cuts off the first joints of her fingers, which fall into the seas and become whales, the nails turning into whalebone. She grips tighter. He cuts off the next joint, which fell into the sea and became seals. She gripped even tighter. Her cruel father cuts off the rest of her fingers, which turn into ground seals.
At this point the fulmars believed she had drowned so they flew off, which led to the seas calming. Sedna’s father let her back into the kayak, acting like there should be no hard feelings. When they got back to their village her father fell asleep. Sedna called her dogs and had them gnaw off her father’s hands and feet. Her father cursed her, the dogs, the hut, anything he could for this. The ground opened up and Sedna, her father, the dogs, and their home were pulled down into the underworld where Sedna is now mistress.
And that cheery note is the end of my segment!
Corinne’s Notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selkie
https://books.google.com/books?id=DLmoKKkxAX0C&pg=PA121#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=H_3ZAAAAMAAJ&q=Seal-Skin
http://echoes.devin.com/selkie/selkie.html
https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2016/12/selkies-sex-and-the-supernatural/
https://www.vikingrune.com/selkies-folktale/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOXHcaHJRss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0O7KE4yi6k
First and foremost, selkies are some of my absolute favorite mythical creatures, probably because a lot of the media around them are just so WILDLY tragic. I’m a total sucker for a good tragedy–blame early exposure to Shakespeare.
“Selkies” usually refer to a shapeshifting creature that transforms between a humanoid and seal form. Most European selkie myths span between Scotland and Ireland on up to Iceland and Norway, where there are Nordic variants on the myth.
But strictly speaking, selkie means seal. Or rather, it’s a diminutive variant of the word in Scots. (silkie is another common variant, and there’s some discussion over whether or not it has to do with how soft seal fur appears to be. Side note, I absolutely want to pet a seal even though I know it’s a terrible idea. I will probably die trying to pet something I shouldn’t), And not all folklore about selkies involves therianthropes. In Scotland, for example, eating seals was something of a taboo. It was only done in times of great need, and the consequences could be dire. There’s a story of a man who lost his sheep after he ate a seal. His sheep had been penned on a hill with other sheep from the village. All of his were swept away by tides, and everyone else’s sheep were fine.
However, the better known versions of selkie stories involve some dude finding a sealskin and taking it home, and then later finding a beautiful, naked woman and bringing her home and marrying her. The man keeps the sealskin hidden from his wife, who eventually finds it and returns to the sea. This version of the tale crops up in Ireland, Scotland, and Iceland! I’ve actually linked a translation of one of the Icelandic versions here, and I think it will be familiar to anyone who’s heard of selkies before.
There are stories about male selkies taking human lovers as well! I feel like they’re not as commonly known, but I’ve definitely heard ballads involving human women wanting to marry Selkie men. These stories typically have a happier ending for all involved, with significantly fewer feelings of betrayal and complicated consent issues.
There are a few different takes on where selkies come from, and I’m going to share a few of my favorites, some based in mythology, some based on people trying to explain things that they didn’t have the technology or medical knowledge to explain:
Okay so probably my FAVORITE explanation is that selkies are actually fallen angels. According to some traditions, when God cast out the rebellious angels who sided with our good good GirlBoss Satan, the ones who landed on the earth became what we know as fairies, and the ones who landed in the sea became selkies.
In Norway, there was a common belief that the Finns (by which they meant indiginous Sami people), especially their shamans, could just turn into seals?? Because reasons?? And Magic???? I saw a reference in a book called The Good People about a tale where a Norseman stabbed a seal and then later had his knife returned by a Finn who had a scar from the knife wound. So like. That’s a thing I didn’t know until I did this research
One explanation I’ve seen was that when vikings invaded Orkney, the fur-wearing invaders were somehow mistaken for seals transforming into people
OR intermarriage between the residents of Orkney and Sami and Finn women, who used sealskin kayaks and wore furs
Another variant of this is dark-haired, shipwrecked Spaniards. No I did not make that up.
One of the more science-y leaning explanations I’ve seen is that people were trying to explain syndactyly, which is a condition that causes “webbing” between people’s fingers. Before our understanding of medicine got stronger, a common explanation for any sort of abnormality or deformity was to blame the Fair Folk. So if you had webbed fingers, clearly your mom banged the fae.
Selkies are also HUGE fodder for ballads and stories, If you’re looking for some song suggestions, I highly recommend Heather Dale’s “The Maiden and the Selkie”, or Talis Kimberly’s “Still Catch the Tide” (Seanan McGuire has a gorgeous cover on her Stars Fall Home album). I have 100% added links to both of those songs in the show notes because I have problems. Dear listeners, please feel free to talk to me about Selkies ad nauseum because I will not get bored
Episode 11: Lunar Myths | Show Notes
Amanda’s Notes:
https://www.assignmentpoint.com/arts/literature/lone-bird.html
https://aminoapps.com/c/mythfolklore/page/blog/the-moon-rabbit/MNBn_Weckugk6ql107eNjEpeP2g1mYZX7b
To start with, a quick reminder that this topic came up when we covered mermaid stories and I found the legend of Lone Bird. So naturally that’s where we’re starting today. Ugh, I love this story so much. This is a legend from the Mi’kmaq nation, which is located in the Northeast, starting in Massachusetts and Maine and going as far North as Nova Scotia.
Lone Bird was a gentle girl who lived with her mother and father, both considered kind and good people. Lone Bird, as is usual in stories like these, was clever, had a great singing voice, and was absolutely drop dead gorgeous. Just beyond beautiful.
Of course, because of her beauty, lots of men wanted to marry her. Her parents were thrilled with this, Lone Bird definitely was NOT. She declared “I shall never marry!”. Her parents patted her on the head like “ok, sure you won’t. Whatever you say dear.” and waited for her to change her mind. And waited. Aaaaaaand waited.
After a few years she still hadn’t changed her mind because it turns out women actually do know what they want. But Lone Bird’s father could not handle that because obviously his biggest priority as a father had to be to make sure she would be some other man’s responsibility before he died. So he invited all of the men in the village to compete in a race, winner would get Lone Bird’s hand in marriage.
The day of the race EVERYONE showed up. The whole village was out in force, the Elders in place to judge. Well, almost everyone. Still stating that she would never marry, Lone Bird sat in her parents’ lodge and refused to take part in the whole rigamaroll. But, not one to take his daughter’s feelings into account, Lone Bird’s father continued with the race which, well. Here we go.
Two men tied in the race. Fair enough. So they had a jumping competition where, bizarrely they both jumped exactly the same height in the air. So we finally get some evidence of Lone Bird’s father living up to his kind reputation when he asks Lone Bird to pick between the two men. She, surprising literally only her father, thanks the two men for their time but declines to marry either.
At this point her father gives up on getting her to marry anyone but her parents continue to worry about her being lonely. Years pass, and she can’t handle her parents’ sadness.
One night she takes herself out to the shore of the lake nearby and looks up at the moon. “If only I could love you, I would never be lonely.” The moon reached down and brought Lone Bird up in an embrace.
When her parents noticed she was missing that night they called to the Great Spirit for news of what happened to their beloved daughter. Great Spirit directed them to look up at the moon, where they saw Lone Bird’s smiling eyes and knew she was at peace.
To this day when the flowers bloom and the birds begin to build their nests you can look up and see Lone Bird’s eyes smiling down at the earth, wishing peace and contentment upon all she sees.
Corinne’s Notes:
LUNAR MYTHS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rabbit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e
https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/festivals/chinese-new-year-legends.htm
https://medium.com/@gogochart/6-chinese-new-year-myths-d64bb0ce571e
https://www.terriwindling.com/blog/2014/12/the-folklore-of-rabbits-hares.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20070706235057/http://ignca.nic.in/jatak003.htm
I will not lie, at least part of my research into lunar mythology involved me chanting “MOON RABBITS MOON RABBITS” to myself. I am who I am and there’s no helping me. One of the primary reasons we chose to jump on lunar mythology now was so that we could have an episode up in time for Lunar New Year (Xin nian kuai le!)
However, some of the best known figures from Chinese lunar mythology, the moon rabbit (or moon hare) and the goddess Chang’e are better known for their roles in the Mid Autumn festival. So while I’ll still cover them, I’ll also touch on some folklore specific to the new year.
As I researched the reasons for some of the Chinese New Year traditions with which I’m familiar, I learned a lot of them are actually to keep demons and other scary monsters away! For example, the little red envelopes of money that children receive are to protect them from a demon known as Sui. Sui would touch children on the head at New Years and cause them to have extremely high fevers. Even if the child survived, they would often be debilitated in some way, usually in the form of mental illness. So the story goes that one family gave their child some coins wrapped in red paper to play with in an effort to keep the kid awake so that Sui would stay away. The kid happily spent time wrapping and unwrapping his shiny coins before ultimately falling asleep. When Sui went to harm the child, the coins shone brightly and scared him away. This method of defeating him was spread far and wide, and is one of the reasons that this gift of money is sometimes called yā suì qián, or “suppressing Sui money” (I am embarrassingly bad at tonal languages, My Chinese teacher despaired at my pronunciation in college, I’m so sorry if my mispronunciation means I said something bad).
OKAY now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, on to lunar myths, especially the moon rabbits! It’s a bit of lunar pareidolia that some of the regions of the moon make a shape similar to that of a rabbit or a hare. Stories about lunar rabbits are most common in East Asia, though there are some striking parallels between the stories from India and China to some Aztec myths.
As noted writer and editor Terri Windling noted in the hares and rabbits entry of her “into the woods” essay series from 2014, hares and rabbits are frequently associated with the moon across cultures, which is something I was entirely unfamiliar with. I guess it should be less surprising that there’s a sort of symmetry to one of the Buddhist Jakata stories and a myth about the Aztec god Quetzelcoatl.
In one of the Jakata, the story goes that a hare (who is an incarnation of a bodhisattva, of course), a monkey, an otter, and a jackal had decided that they were going to perform acts of charity for poor beggars. The other animals found food to bring (fish from the otter, mangoes from the monkey, a lizard and some stolen treats from the jackal), but the hare was like, “all i can find is grass and that won’t do!” so in an act of extreme charity, he decided he’d sacrifice himself as a meal. Lord Sakka, who was king of the devas, heard about this and was like “woah whoah woah, this seems a bit extreme” but goes to the hare in the guise of a beggar, I guess to test his resolve? The hare is like “okidoke! This is legit!”, shakes himself to get rid of any bugs, and flings himself into the “beggar’s” fire. Surprisingly, the hare does not catch fire and burn up, and Lord Sakka is so impressed with the hare’s selflessness that he put an image of the hare into the moon so that all would be reminded of his piety.
Across the world in Mexico, the Aztecs have a remarkably similar story. To quote the wikipedia article on Moon Rabbits, the god Quetzalcoatl, then living on Earth as a human, started on a journey and, after walking for a long time, became hungry and tired. With no food or water around, he thought he would die. Then a rabbit grazing nearby offered herself as food to save his life. Quetzalcoatl, moved by the rabbit's noble offering, elevated her to the Moon, then lowered her back to Earth and told her, "You may be just a rabbit, but everyone will remember you; there is your image in light, for all people and for all times."
And I honestly have a lot of feelings about that? It’s such a gentle story! There are also other stories from Aztec mythology that also involve rabbits or hares chucking themselves into fire for various reasons (including to give light to the moon) and the darkness in the shape of the rabbit is to denote the smoke from those fires.
Also in one part of the Journey to the West, apparently Sun Wukong fights the rabbit in the moon? Because reasons????
In Chinese mythology, the rabbit in the moon is often closely associated with the goddess Chang’e. Chang’e is the goddess of the moon (fun fact, she used to be known as Heng’e but her name was changed because one of the characters used became taboo, thanks to the emperor Wen of Han). Traditionally, she is a beautiful woman who was married to an archer named Houyi. Houyi had been gifted with a potion (or potions) of immortality for having shot down extra suns that were making the world too hot. Depending on the story, the reasons change, but at some point, Chang’e takes the potion of immortality and flees to the moon, whether that’s to thwart her husband’s foes, because she stole his potion and fears him after he becomes a tyrant, or because she’s waiting for him to be able to join her.
If we’re leaning into the tragedy and Chang’e and Houyi were separated by external forces, Houyi sets up altars with all his wife’s favorite things and is joined by others moved by pity for his loss. If it’s a version where she flees with the potions of immortality because Houyi got a villain arc instead, the people are grateful for her sacrifice and set up altars with offerings for Chang’e– providing a template for how people celebrate today. Obviously there is a lot more to celebrating mid-autumn festival than that. It’s also a popular time for matchmaking! And there’s a pastry known in the West as a moon cake that’s eaten during the festival, which often includes sweet bean paste, egg yolk, meat, or lotus seed paste. Let me tell you. It is not a western idea of a cake. I’ve tried it- we got to have moon cakes that had duck eggs in them. It’s very different. Not unpleasant, but maybe not something I’d seek to eat for funsies.
Somewhat amusingly, when the Apollo 11 mission was rocketing towards the moon, we get this absolutely amazing exchange between Houston and astronaut Michael Collins:
Ronald Evans (CC): Among the large headlines concerning Apollo this morning, is one asking that you watch for a lovely girl with a big rabbit. An ancient legend says the girl named Chang-O has been living there for 4,000 years. It seems she was banished to the Moon because she stole the pill of immortality from her husband. You might also look for her companion, a large Chinese rabbit, who is easy to spot since he is always standing on his hind feet in the shade of a cinnamon tree. The name of the rabbit is not reported.
Michael Collins (CMP): Okay. We'll keep a close eye out for the bunny girl.[note 2]
Episode 10: Wartime Occult Practices | Show Notes
Amanda’s Notes:
[need to add those here]
Corinne’s Notes:
WARTIME OCCULT PRACTICES
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/nostalgia/spy-who-hoodwinked-nazis-sorcery-13098320
https://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/faith-belief-and-superstition
https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/2318
I definitely grumbled a bit when I started researching this because I feel like it’s pretty common knowledge that Hitler and his compatriots were deeply into the occult and I really did not want to talk about Nazis. I just didn’t. And of course, A LOT of what came up in a basic Google search was, in fact, about Hitler and his bros. HOWEVER!! Then I found an article about members of British Intelligence used the occult beliefs of the Nazis against them! Which is Delightful and I’m gonna learn y’all about it.
The Story, in Bullet Points:
This was largely the brainchild of one Cecil Williamson, who was a noted occultist in the UK
Knowing full well that a lot of high level Nazis were HELLA superstitious, Mr Williamson decided to seriously fuck with them to play on their superstitions.
Together with British Intelligence, Cecil Williamson came up with Project Mistletoe. This included doing things like putting together a coven to perform rituals to keep the Nazis out–all of this in effort to make sure that key members of the Third Reich BELIEVED that Britain was gathering occult forces against Germany
Apparently one of these rituals was based on a ritual that had actually been performed during the Napoleonic war!
In addition to spooking Nazi generals with reports of occult ceremonies, Cecil and the rest of MI6 also took advantage of a popular belief in astrology.
There’s a (possibly apocryphal) story that Cecil Williamson was instrumental in luring Rudolph Hess to the UK
The actual plan was reportedly designed by Ian Flemming. This name may ring a bell to you–Ian Flemming is the guy who gave us James Bond
Cecil’s role was to help write astrology reports indicating that it was a Super Good Idea for Hess to fly to the UK to speak with the king.
Spoiler: He did not speak to the king, he got arrested by The Home Guard
Rudolph Hess maaaaay have just decided to defect? However I fully choose to believe that he truly believed the stars were aligned for him and got fucked over
And a note on that Napoleonic ritual: the only source I can find on this is from writing by Gerald Gardner, the founder of modern day Wicca.
As a whole, there’s not a ton that can confirm how much of this actually took place, but we do have writing from Gerald Gardner (who claimed to be involved with the ritual in Operation Mistletoe, as well as Ian Flemming).
Episode 9: Satanic Panic | Show Notes
Amanda’s Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/31/us/satanic-panic.html
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/18/997559036/americas-satanic-panic-returns-this-time-through-qanon
https://nypost.com/2021/03/29/lil-nas-x-prompts-satanic-panic-with-new-video-montero/
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/642372/satanic-panic-history-1980s
https://www.vox.com/2021/5/25/22356338/satanic-panic-america-sarah-marshall
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Remembers
To start with, I think we can all agree that the American public likes a good moral panic and the 80s had us primed for it. More and more women were leaving the home and entering into the workplace, children were spending more time away from the family unit as a result, Reagan’s policies were leading to more violence and drug use in cities, and the Southern Strategy as a political tactic was out in full force from the GOP. Even before the “repressed memories” started coming out in therapy sessions across the country, Americans were being fed a diet of panic via the media and messaging from the politicians we, at the time, still trusted to tell us the truth.
The publication of the book “Michelle Remembers” in 1908, co written by the eponymous Michelle Smith and her therapist (eventually husband, sooooo ethical right?) Lawrence Pazder in Canada is widely considered the spark that lit the flame that turned American moral panic on its head. In this book, Michelle Smith, with the help of Lawrence Pazder’s now VERY discredited “recovered-memory therapy” technique, recovers memories of being abused in Satanic ritual ceremonies. This is all after Michelle started seeing Dr. Pazder in 1973 to treat her depression brought on after suffering a miscarriage. Per the book, in one session Michelled told Dr. Pazder that she had something she needed to tell him but couldn’t remember what it was. After 600 cumulative hours of hypnosis therapy, in addition to other therapy techniques, Michelle told Dr. Pazder about memories of Satanic Rituals she claimed to have been forced to attend by members of the Church of Satan beginning in 1954 when she was 5 years old, culminating in an 81 day long ritual in 1955 that the book alleges summoned Satan himself to earth and involved the intervention of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and the Archangel Michael who erased the scars and memories Michelle had of her abuse until “the was right”.
I’m not going to go too in depth this episode about how the book was thoroughly discredited, from no one being able to find records of the car crash mentioned in the book, the mention of the Church of Satan being removed from the book when Anton LeVay threatened to sue for libel, the fact that attendance records show that Michelle didn’t miss any school during the 81 day ceremony, and the fact that I’m sorry, a secret cult that has allegedly existed for centuries and has the power to conjure my Girlboss Satan is not going to be outwitted by a five year old. It’s just not. But safe to say it has been THOROUGHLY debunked.
I’ve covered the McMartin Preschool trial previously, which Dr. Pazder was a consultant for, so I won’t go into that here. Several similar witch hunts happened throughout the country at various preschools as the collective panic swept through every inch of American suburbia. By 1987 Dr. Pazder claimed he was spending one third of his professional life consulting on ritualistic abuse cases in the United States. You know, because he’s an “expert”. I saw a good description of the phenomenon, it was like an outbreak map in a pandemic movie, but it’s daycare Satanic abuse charges, and the map turns red slowly and then all at once.
The cultural fervor surrounding the Satanic Panic died down mid-90s but it’s back, baby! Now we have the QAnon mania sweeping through the country. And I just love this quote from “The Satanic Panic in America” on Vox, QAnon started as “sanctuary fanfiction about how Donald Trump is actually doing a good job”. Which makes sense, you vote for this horrific man because you believe that Hillary Clinton kills babies in the basement of a pizza place, and admitting that you are wrong is very anti-American, so your brain has to latch on to anything that tells you that no, YOU are the good person, your vote didn’t doom the country.
Given what we know about the environment surrounding the “original” Satanic Panic” in the 80s, it’s no surprise that the QAnon movement really gained momentum during the beginning stages of Covid when most of us were in lockdown. It’s almost a comfort to people to imagine that the world isn’t a random terrible place where bad things can just happen to good people. Obviously there must be a secret cabal of evil doers manipulating the world for their own nefarious purposes.
QAnon conspiracies reinventing anti-Semetic blood libel accusations aren’t the only bits of reinvigorated Satanic Panic we have going on in the country today. The debut of Lil Nas X’s music video for his song “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” sparked a thankfully short lived burst of moral outrage online due to the video showing Lil Nas X giving Satan a lap dance, amongst other “immoral” acts. After this video dropped he also launched his own shoes, red Nike’s (though Nike has completely distanced themselves from the shoes) with pentagrams and the promise that each shoe is imbued with a drop of human blood. Of course people went straight to Twitter to claim he was part of the “new world order” indoctrinating children.
So, I straight up love this song and this video and everything Lil Nas X was doing. This black man in America who was forced to out himself after his first song made it big, has made a music video basically telling the Christian Church “fine, you don’t want me? Let’s see what I can do on my own.”
And that brings me back to Satanic Panics showing up in America in times of progressive shifts in National opinion. We have the hippy and women’s liberation movements in the 70s leading up to the Satanic Panic of the 80s, we have the Me Too movement and a push for worker’s rights and healthcare reform leading to an explosion in QAnon followers. You have a gay black man owning his power and taking back the agency stolen from him leading to Twitter harassment.
Basically, whenever the patriarchy starts to feel threatened we bring back the Satanic ritual abuse boogeyman to reign us in.
Corinne’s Notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satanic_ritual_abuse_allegations#cite_note-4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An%C3%ADsio_Ferreira_de_Sousa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamira_child_emasculations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Ellis_(childcare_worker)
Okay so first and foremost, this topic MESSED ME UP. Seriously, this research gave me nightmares, and I had to talk it out with my therapist. Unfortunately, when you research Satanic Panic outside of the US, most of what you find is about ritual satanic abuse, and it can be incredibly triggering to read about. If you look at show notes for this, almost everything I cite is from Wikipedia because I could not bring myself to dig more deeply into the topic. This was deeply upsetting to me, and I will not be offended if you choose to stop listening here. So as a heads up, content warnings about child murder, sexual abuse, genital mutilation, and torture.
The first case(s) I want to look at took place in Brazil, where members of the Superior Universal Light, a cult based out of Argentina, were accused of the murder and mutilation of several children between 1989 and 1993.
Anyway, what would typically happen is that young boys would be lured away, drugged with chloroform and then sexually and physically abused and their genitals removed, allegedly for religious or magical ceremonies. Some boys were able to escape, though terribly injured. Several other boys died; their bodies would typically be found days later. In some cases, children vanished and were never found again, and are assumed to have been victims.
Eventually several members of the cult, including a doctor who allegedly performed the castrations and mutilations. In addition, there were rumors that the children’s other organs would be removed to be sold on the black market, but I found no corroboration on that in what research I did. The accused doctor is still alive and serving a 77 year sentence, though he has continually proclaimed his innocence.
From what I read, it appears that the evidence against most of the accused was largely circumstantial, as not much forensic evidence was gathered and at least one victim’s body disappeared from police custody.
While several people were put into prison for the series of murders, there’s also apparently some doubt that the cult was involved at all--another man, Francisco das Chagas Rodrigues de Brito, was arrested and claimed to have killed 42 boys, including several in the region where the murders I discussed took place.
Side note- if you read any of the news article links I’ve put into the show notes, there’s a lot of exoticism in the reporting that honestly makes me uncomfortable.
Next up we’re taking a jaunt to Christchurch, New Zealand for what is BASICALLY a rehash of the McMartin preschool trial. The main victim of this particular clusterfuck was a man named Peter Ellis. He was, at the time, the only male teacher at the creche where he worked and bisexual- or possibly gay? It sounds like he had relationships with both men and women, but had a preference for men. The article wasn’t 100% Clear. So like he was Obviously A Predator in the eyes of 1990s Concerned Christchurch Parents.
Much like McMartin Preschool, you have children being interviewed multiple times by people who did not have backgrounds as child psychologists who took their stories at face value. Mr Ellis and four of his female coworkers all ended up being accused of both physical and sexual abuse. The case against the female coworkers was eventually dismissed, but at that point the womens’ careers had been ruined as well.
Peter Ellis was found guilty on sixteen counts of “sexual offences”, though he maintained his innocence until his death 24 years later.
Ellis appealed on a number of occasions, and while some charges were dropped, the overall “guilty” findings were held in place. He served 7 years in prison, and was never eligible for early release because he would have had to admit guilt in order to do so.
The most recent appeal started in 2019, just before Peter Ellis passed away from bladder cancer. Typically appeals in New Zealand end if the defendant has died, however, this appeal proceeded despite Mr Ellis’s terminal diagnosis. To quote the Wikipedia article, On Ellis' behalf, lawyer Robert Harrison said the appeal should proceed because it was an issue of public importance and addressed a systemic issue in the justice system.[66] Justice Joe Williams noted "this a very western idea that on demise you have nothing to protect", pointing out that tikanga Māori held that "an ancestor has even more reputation to protect".
This most recent appeal wrapped up in October of 2021, and the final decision is pending.
Episode 8: Holiday Folklore | Show Notes
Amanda’s Notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_controversies
So first thing’s first, let’s take a quick look at how December 25th became the official date for Christmas. In the 2nd century AD, a historian named Sextus Julius Aficanus recorded in his work Chronographiai that the appearance of the archangel Gabrial to Zechariah in the Gospel of Luke must have taken place on the observance of Yom Kippur sometime in October because “the worshippers were praying outside of the Temple and not within as only the priest could enter the Temple at this time to conduct the proper rituals.” The Gospels also state that Jesus was six months younger than his cousin John the Baptist, which would mean Jesus was conceived in March (the Feast of the Annunciation) and born in December. Further, it’s believed by some that in 274 A.D. the Roman Emperor Aurelian established the festival Dies Natalis Solis Invicti in order to compete with the Christian feast of Christmas as Christianity gained popularity in the empire.
https://www.thespruceeats.com/origins-of-eggnog-760173
When we think of Christmas in the United States we think Santa, commercialism, and food. Importantly, boozey food. I wanted to do something a little different today and focus a bit on some food related traditions, starting with my least favorite Christmas beverage, eggnog.
The exact origins of eggnog are unknown. We know that a similar drink existed in 13th century England where an egg, cream, and wine (usually a fortified wine like sherry) drink known as “posset” was popular amongst aristocrats and used to toast to prosperity as eggs and cream were foods associated with the wealthy
The drink we know as eggnog today is a purely American invention. We don’t know the origin of the name. It may derive from “nog”, an Old English word for strong beer. It may derive from the word “noggin”, which was the word for a small cup used in the 16th century. And my favorite is it may have been a cost saving measure when printing became a common means of distributing information. American colonists referred to thick drinks as “grogs”, so the theory goes that in the winter time the colonists drank “egg and grog” which got mashed together in print as eggnog.
The first written use of the word occurred in 1788 in an article in the New Jersey Journal which described a young man with a voracious appetite who enjoyed “thirty raw eggs, a glass of egg nog, and another of brandy sling”. So there you have it folks, Gaston lived in New Jersey. Shocker.
When eggnog made it to the colonies, the sherry was replaced by the much easier to obtain Caribbean rum. The cheaper rum and readily available supply of milk and eggs in the colonies turned posset into eggnog, a drink for people of all classes.
Eggnog is so American, in fact, that George Washington himself allegedly had a recipe. The recipe is as follows:
“One quart cream, one quart milk, one dozen tablespoons sugar, one pint brandy, ½ pint rye whiskey, ½ pint Jamaican rum, ¼ pint sherry - mix liquor first, then separate yolks and whites of eggs, add sugar to beaten yolks, mix well. Add milk and cream, slowly beating. Beat whites of eggs until stiff and fold slowly into mixture. Let set in cool place for several days. Taste frequently.”
Now tell me Corinne, did you notice was what missing in this recipe? The number of eggs! 19th century cooks determined that a dozen eggs should do the job. I’m assuming with the amount of liquor in this recipe that Washington’s cook must have had a couple glasses before writing the recipe down, that’s why the eggs were left off of the EGGNOG recipe.
https://nationaltoday.com/national-cookie-exchange-day/
https://www.grunge.com/119815/things-normal-100-years-ago-strange-now/
Now on to the best part of Christmas - the cookies! First, a very brief history of cookies as we know them today. Is this folklore? I would argue yes, because food is tied to culture and also because cookies are delicious.
Prototypical cookies came into being in Persia in the 7th Century, which makes sense as Persia was one of the earliest empires to get ahold of sugar. After crusaders established the spice trade sugar and the cookies people were using it to make began to spread throughout Europe, leading to sweet cookies becoming available for purchase along the streets of Paris in the 14th century.
Cookie recipes started showing up in cookbooks in the 1500s and baking became a serious profession in the 17th century, with cookies becoming works of art. In the late 17th century, Dutch immigrants brought over not only their traditional cookie recipes, they also brought over the tradition of the Christmas cookie swap. The first recorded swap occurred in New York in 1703. From there the tradition caught on all over the colonies, with our buddy George Washington serving his famous eggnog at cookie swaps at Mount Vernon.
As the US expanded throughout the continent, American geography began to uniquely influence cookies. Oranges from the West coast and coconuts from the South began to show up in cookie recipes as railroads opened up cheaper trade routes across the nation. And The United States gets to lay claim to one of the most wonderful baking accidents ever when in the 1930s Toll House Restaurant owner Ruth Graves Wakefield thought chocolate chips would melt into the batter as she baked her cookies.
We can’t discuss cookies in America without talking about our offering to Saint Nick, milk and cookies on Christmas Eve. The roots of this tradition go back to ancient Norse mythology. During the Yule season, children would leave food out for Odin’s eight-legged horse Sleipner, in the hopes that Odin would leave gifts in return. Over the centuries this tradition has evolved. In countries where Santa traditionally has horses instead of reindeer children leave carrots and hay for the exhausted animals in exchange for chocolate coins, cocoa, oranges, and marzipan. So more like what I think of as Saint Nick’s day here in the US (maybe just amongst Catholics? I genuinely don’t know. Louisville is its own weird microcosm of Catholic traditions). In traditionally British colonies children often leave out sherry and mince pies, Swedish kids leave rice porridge, Irish kids leave a pint of Guiness, and French children leave win for Pere Noel and carrots and hay for his donkey.
For the beginning of American history, if children left anything for Father Christmas it was related to whatever cultural background their family came from. This changed in the 1930s with the arrival of the Great Depression. It was at this time that the traditional milk and cookies became commonplace. It’s something out of a Christmas movie, in a time of such economic hardship parents found a way to teach their children that it was important to give to others and to show gratitude for the gifts they received.
http://blog.draperjames.com/2015/12/have-a-very-southern-christmas/
Lastly I just want to go through a quick list of interesting Christmas traditions in the American South.
You know how here in Louisville you see houses with the single candle in the window? Did you know that’s not a ubiquitous decoration around the world? Because I didn’t! The candles trace their roots to Colonial Williamsburg where they symbolized loyalty to loved ones who couldn’t make it home for the holidays.
In Louisiana, people light Christmas Eve bonfires to light the way for Pere Noel and his reindeer. At these bonfires there are tailgate-like feasts where people wander from fire site to fire site visiting with everyone. And of course, the booze and food are everywhere.
Outer Banks, NC didn’t get the news about the 1752 switch to the Gregorian calendar for several decades, so they continued celebrating Christmas on “Old Christmas”, January 6. Old Christmas is still celebrated today, with parties, oyster shoots, and the arrival of “Old Buck”, a bull who plays pranks on people.
And lastly, in Lenox Square Mall in Atlanta kids line up for a ride on the Pink Pig tram that tours the winter wonderland set up in a Macy’s. This has been going on for nearly 60 years, I have a picture here for you Corinne, and I’ll make sure to post this on our site and socials for our listeners as well because it is truly a design choice.
Image from CBS46 Atlanta’s website
Corinne’s Notes:
https://www.wales.com/about/culture/mari-lwyd
https://rhinwedd.cymru/blogs/news/the-story-of-mari-lwyd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mari_Lwyd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoodening
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Tup
I would be remiss if I didn’t start out my section on Christmas folklore without digging into Mari Lwyd (MAH-ree Looeed). Apologies in advance, my Welsh pronunciation is sketchy as hell, despite having spent several months with the language on Duolingo…
If you’ve been on Tumblr at all in the last 5 years, you may be familiar with Mari Lwyd already. She’s an INTENSELY creepy horse skull on a stick, decorated with lights, streamers, baubles, holly and ivy, and a long white cloth to hide the person operating the horse skull. Because of course the horse skull is usually rigged up so it can open its mouth and snap at people. This is not viscerally terrifying at all. Nope.
Depending on which translation you’re using, the name Mari Lwyd translates to “Gray Mary”, “Gray Mare”, or “Gray Mane”. The “gray mare” or “gray mane” names may be a reference to a horse from Celtic folklore who could travel between the realms of the living and the dead. “Gray Mary” as a name is meant to tie the figure to the Nativity story. It’s thought that Mari Lwyd comes from pre-Christian religious traditions, but there’s not any strong evidence to support this belief. The earliest writing we have about the tradition comes from the 1800s, because Christians were bitching about the “pagan practice”. Despite this, and earlier folklorists trying to make that connection between Mari Lwyd and pre-Christian Wales, the prevailing theory these days is that it originated in the 16th or 17th century during what was a massive hobbyhorse craze. There are similar practices in other parts of the UK (more on this later because wtf British Isles)
Despite her somewhat macabre look, Mari Lwyd is a harbinger of good luck to all whose home she enters. During the time between Christmas and Twelfth Night, Mari Lwyd and her crew (which, according to several sources I found, include characters like Punch and Judy) travel around the village and stop at homes to sing a song about why she should be allowed to enter. The family at home sings back reasons why she may not, and this goes back and forth until the family runs out of reasons. The whole crew then goes inside to eat and drink and the household will be rewarded with good fortune for the coming year. That said, Mari Lwyd is a bit of a trickster, and will try and take stuff from the house, snap at people, and chase them around. Which would probably make me pee myself in fear because the horse skull is REALLY CREEPY to me.
Mari Lwyd’s heyday was largely in the 19th century, and things started to slacken off during the early to mid 20th century- whether this was from cultural changes, religious pressures, Britain’s tendency to squash Welsh culture, etc. fewer towns and villages were bringing Mari Lwyd around. But in the mid to late 20th century (and how weird is it to talk late 20th century because y’all that was my childhood), there was a revival of the tradition. In fact, in order to keep this tradition alive in the 21st century and beyond, Wales’ Folk Development Organization got funding to create curriculum and a “flat pack” Mari Lwyd to educate school kids on the tradition and keep it alive.
And remember how I said there were similar traditions in other regions in the UK? Buckle up because it’s weird. There’s apparently a whole thing about “hooded animals” in Britain at Christmas. In Derbyshire and Yorkshire, you find “Old Tup” (sometimes “Derby Tup” or the “Derby Ram”), which is a similar construction, though in this case it’s a ram’s head instead of a horse head, and one of the crew members is a “butcher” who sometimes “slaughters” Old Tup???
In Kent, there’s something called the Hoodening, which is yet another creepy hobby horse character. This creepy ass horse is treated as more “horselike”, and its attendants are a “waggoner”, a “jockey”, etc. This particular tradition has largely died out in its “original” form, dating back to around World War 1. However, it’s been somewhat revived and incorporated into Morris Dancing
Episode 7: Mermaids | Show Notes
Amanda’s Notes:
For a bit of background, before I focus on North American myths, tales of creatures similar to mermaids extend as far back as 7,000 years ago to the Babylonian fish-tailed god Oannes. Mermaid related myths can be found in cultures all over the world.
The Mishibizhiw, or the Great Lynx, is a creature from the mythologies of the native inhabitants of the Great Lakes region of North America. According to the Sioux people, it’s a monster from the underworld that resides in creeks and rivers. It has the body of a buffalo, but with paws for easier swimming, one eye, horns, dorsal fins, a spiked tail, and scales.
A Chippewa tale has the Mishibizhiw living on an island of mud between two lakeside villages. The locals were said to avoid the island out of fear of the creature, but two girls decided to take their chances crossing the lake and encountered the monster. During the encounter the girls chopped off its tail with one of their oars. The tail turned into a solid piece of copper, and as long as the tribe possessed the copper they had fantastic success in fishing and hunting.
The Ojibwa people believed that each lake had its own Mishibizhiw which controlled the conditions of the lake. It could cause still waters or lead to waves, whirlpools, and rapids. And because little kids love monsters regardless of where they are in the world or in history, at least one tribe had a children’s game similar to tag where one child was the Mishibizhiw chasing the other children around. Which I just love, it’s like the kids making games out of Covid now. I swear, every few hundred years we just re-invent Ring Around the Rosies.
https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/mermaid-tales-from-native-tribes-abound
Moving on to a myth from the Mi’kmaq nation, who traditionally live in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and down through parts of Main and Massachusetts (see, I didn’t forget that I’m supposed to cover US folklore), the story of Lone Bird. Lone Bird was a beautiful woman who lived with her mother and father on the shores of the Atlantic. Lone Bird found a cove of five beautiful maidens swimming and playing in the water. A quote from the book Spirits, Fairies, and Merpeople: Native Stories of Other Worlds by C.J. Taylor, states “They were lovely, it is true, but they looked nothing like human maidens, for humans do not have pale skin, spotted with silvery scales. They do not dress their hair with strands of seaweed. And though maidens adorn themselves with necklaces of bright shells, humans have legs. Their bodies do not end in long fish tails.”
There are so many more stories with Lone Bird in them, and if we do an episode on folklore related to the moon I will definitely revisit her because I want to discuss her stories as an exploration of love and happiness and parental expectations. Just trust me, worth it.
https://www.prairielandparanormalpodcast.com/blog/sfna548h6j3wf4z4u3mr1js1mvrn6r
Moving westward by...not that much, let’s meander over to VeVay, Indiana on the banks of the Ohio River. Indiana wouldn’t be my first guess for a state with a mermaid myth, given the complete lack of a coastline, but here we are with the Ohio River Mud Mermaids. By the way, apparently VeVay is only about an hour away from us, depending on traffic. The more you know….
Starting in 1891 sightings of grotesque creatures lurking on the shores and sandbars of the Ohio started. They were often spotted as a pair, frolicking in the water and hanging out on partially submerged tree stumps. A description from the Cincinnati Enquirer says “The beast is about five feet in length...Its general color is yellowish. The body between the four legs resembles that of a human being. Back of the hind legs it tapers to a point...The extremities resemble hands and are webbed and furnished with sharp claws...it is devoid of hair...Its ears are sharp-pointed and stand up like those of a dog.”
The only named witness I was able to find was a stain on our state, Kentucky Confederate Captain J.M.Ozier. He claimed that the pair consisted of a male and a females and that he had been menaced by the male, which makes me team mud mermaid.
Another news report read “On the sand bar of the Ohio River reside two nondescript creatures horrible in appearance and habit. They are amphibious in nature and resemble in appearance huge lizards with human features. When partly submerged in the yellow waters of the Ohio (sidenote, it’s strangely comforting to know that the Ohio was disgusting in the 1890s too), they are strangely like human beings. Of what species of animal they are no one knows, for it is impossible to get near enough to them to judge correctly.”
After this, all reports just...stop? There have been no sightings since. Some modern day cryptid enthusiasts believe that these creatures may have been deep sea creatures who were swept through to the Ohio and eventually made their way back to the sea. I discount that one entirely because...why would a deep sea creature be amphibious? It makes no sense.
I am torn on what theory I have. I know that in the late 1800s newspapers would create sensationalized news stories to drive up sales during news slumps, up to the point of completely fabricated stories when they felt like it. So that feels plausible to me. But! I also like to believe it’s some drunk people partying down by the banks of the Ohio and mistaking huge catfish for eldritch mermaids. I want to believe.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/manatees-mermaids-columbus/
And lastly, we can’t talk about North American mermaid myths without discussing manatees. In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And in 1493 he claimed he saw mermaids. We know now that he most certainly saw manatees, especially with how he and several of his crew talked about the “mannish faces” on the mermaids in the New World.
Now, I want you to imagine a manatee. Now think about how desperate you would have to be to look at a manatee and think “ooo, sexy lady”. And sure, a year at sea with only your coworkers for company would be enough to switch up your idea of what is and isn’t attractive.
Now, given the dehydrated, half starved, cabin fever affected points of view it almost makes sense. Manatees are mammals, give birth to live young, and are incredibly curious. Manatees can do what is called a “tail stand” where they bring their head above water with their tails straight down, which feels like something straight out of classic mermaid art.
And to close out this segment, I would like to read you an excerpt from Spanish Jesuit missionary and naturalist Diaz Acosta Facundo’s 1590 description of the manatee “There is the so-called manatee, a strange kind of fish, if one can name fish to an animal, whose cubs are born alive, and with milk they are raised and eat herb in the fields; but indeed, usually resides in the water. Due to the mentioned reasons, they eat it as a fish, but when I ate it in a Friday it almost had scruples, because the color and flavor seemed like nothing but veal chops or knuckle chops, the slices of this fish. Is big as a cow.”
And that is my segment!
Corinne’s Notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mermaid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merfolk#jiaoren
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kappa_(folklore)
https://bookriot.com/mermaids-from-around-the-world/
https://hyakumonogatari.com/category/kappa-stories/
https://www.pri.org/stories/2021-07-27/mermaid-diving-making-splash-china
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/mermaid-diving-courses-china-are-growing-fast/
MERMAIDS!!!!! Who didn’t wanna be a mermaid as a child? I’m sure this correlates to The Little Mermaid being one of the first movies I ever saw. Since I’m trying to make sure I look beyond Western Europe for my folklore, my first entry is the Hai Ho Shang of China.
According to descriptions, Hai Ho Shang has the body of a fish and the head of a human man-- usually described as being like a buddhist monk with a shaved head. According to the references I could find (major shout out to Bookriot here), Hai Ho Shang is a big fan of bringing down entire ships and drowning the crews. You can keep him away by burning feathers on deck, or performing a dance to the sound of a ritual gong.
I also found some references to jiaoren in Chinese mythology. Jiaoren often gets translated into English as “shark people”. These merfolk are noted for the fact that they cry pearls, and that they are said to weave extremely fine silk. Mentions of them crop in Chinese literature as early as 6th century CE. The scholar Edward Schaefer drew connections between jiaoxiao, or mermaid silk that the jiaoren weave to the very real “sea silk”, which is spun from filaments secreted by pen shell mollusks. The silk itself is extremely fine and rare, and typically produced in the Mediterranean region. So it would have made its way to China via various trade routes.
Extremely unimportant side note: as I began researching merfolk in Chinese mythology, I saw a lot of links cropping up about the rising popularity of “mermaids” in China. Much to my delight, they’re talking about people who take freediving classes and learn to swim with a monofin like the professional mermaids down in Florida. Apparently it is HUGELY popular in China at the moment. This immediately sparked an entire afternoon where I searched for anywhere in the tri-state area that offers classes. I have yet to find them, but if I do, I’m so sorry to my husband in advance because this is an all-consuming obsession.
Also, I thought it was important to highlight more traditional “half fish/half human” merfolk first because y’all I have been given permission to GO OFF RAILS.
The wikipedia article for mermaids mentioned a few more liberal variants, including one of my very favorite creatures from folklore. We’re going to jaunt from China to Japan and talk about kappa.
Kappa are a kind of aquatic Japanese yokai (which usually gets translated to “demon”). Not going to lie, I largely became familiar with them as a teen because I was an anime fan and also a huge nerd. Kappa are said to be humanoid, with a turtle-like shell on their backs, and a depression on the top of their heads that’s filled with water. The Wikipedia page has an image of a netsuke carved into the shape of a kappa, and let me tell ya, it gives me real Gollum vibes.
By This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. See the Image and Data Resources Open Access Policy, CC0
According to folklore, Kappa can range from mostly harmless pranksters to just… really malevolent. We’re talking a range from “trying to get an upskirt on women walking too close to the river” (which is actually really icky still) to “raping and murdering”.
One common pastime of kappa was drowning people to remove something called a “shirikodama” from the victim’s anus. The shirikodama is a mystical organ that is somewhere either just inside the butthole or up in the intestines, and kappa really wanted it. Our buddy at hyakumonogatari.com has a really interesting writeup on this particular phenomenon and I highly recommend it.
When they’re not feeling murderous, they’re apparently good friends to have, and some legends mention that kappa were skilled healers, and taught humans how to set broken bones.
One of my favorite bits of kappa lore is that kappa can be appeased by cucumbers! If you’ve been to a sushi restaurant, you may be familiar with kappa-maki, or a cucumber roll--named for the kappa’s love of the vegetable. In Edo (which was what Tokyo was known as pre- Meiji era), people would carve the names of their loved ones into cucumbers and put them into waterways to keep their families safe.
Very important note for fellow research nerds: If you’re in Louisville, get yourself a library card! I found out during this research that I can access JSTOR through the library! Not a Louisville resident? You should absolutely check out what research tools are available through your local library!
Episode 6: Occult Court Cases | Show Notes
Amanda’s Notes:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1997-04-14-9704140113-story.html
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1997-07-27-9707260304-story.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillelid_murders
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-occult-in-american-history_b_774765
So, we can’t talk about occult court cases in the United States without doing at least a quick overview of the McMartin preschool trial, aka Satanic Panic Nonsense. Trigger warnings abound for the remainder of my segment. We are dealing with child death, sexual abuse, and psychological grooming.
In 1983 one of the preschooler’s mothers, Judy Johnson, reported that her estranged husband and McMartin preschool teacher Ray Buckey had sodomized their son. She believed this was the case because her son had painful bowel movements. It’s unclear whether her son admitted to the abuse when Judy asked him or if he denied that his father was doing so at this point in time. Though I will say, young kids just like agreeing with adults. If you see serious or excited enough about what you’re talking about most kids will be like “yeah, I’ll agree and get praised. Hooray!”.
In addition to the abuse charges, Judy told the police that the preschool staff had regular sexual encounters with animals, that staffmember Peggy “drilled a child under the arm” and that Ray “flew in the air”.
Despite the ridiculousness of some of the charges, Ray Buckey was arrested, questioned, and ultimately released due to lack of evidence. The police then sent out the following letter to around 200 parents at the school:
September 8, 1983
Dear Parent:
This Department is conducting a criminal investigation involving child molestation (288 P.C.) Ray Buckey, an employee of Virginia McMartin's Pre-School, was arrested September 7, 1983 by this Department.
The following procedure is obviously an unpleasant one, but to protect the rights of your children as well as the rights of the accused, this inquiry is necessary for a complete investigation.
Records indicate that your child has been or is currently a student at the pre-school. We are asking your assistance in this continuing investigation. Please question your child to see if he or she has been a witness to any crime or if he or she has been a victim. Our investigation indicates that possible criminal acts include: oral sex, fondling of genitals, buttock or chest area, and sodomy, possibly committed under the pretense of "taking the child's temperature." Also photos may have been taken of children without their clothing. Any information from your child regarding having ever observed Ray Buckey to leave a classroom alone with a child during any nap period, or if they have ever observed Ray Buckey tie up a child, is important.
Please complete the enclosed information form and return it to this Department in the enclosed stamped return envelope as soon as possible. We will contact you if circumstances dictate same.
We ask you to please keep this investigation strictly confidential because of the nature of the charges and the highly emotional effect it could have on our community. Please do not discuss this investigation with anyone outside your immediate family. Do not contact or discuss the investigation with Raymond Buckey, any member of the accused defendant's family, or employees connected with the McMartin Pre-School.
THERE IS NO EVIDENCE TO INDICATED THAT THE MANAGEMENT OF VIRGINIA MCMARTIN'S PRE-SCHOOL HAD ANY KNOWLEDGE OF THIS SITUATION AND NO DETRIMENTAL INFORMATION CONCERNING THE OPERATION OF THE SCHOOL HAS BEEN DISCOVERED DURING THIS INVESTIGATION. ALSO, NO OTHER EMPLOYEE IN THE SCHOOL IS UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR ANY CRIMINAL ACT.[8]
It’s worth nothing that Judy Johnson was hospitalized for acute paranoid schizophrenia and was found dead in her home in 1986 due to complications from chronic alcoholism before the preliminary hearing in this case concluded. Evidence of her mental illness was withheld from the defense for three years.
Children’s Institute International, an LA based abuse therapy clinic run by Kee MacFarlane interviewed several hundred kids from the preschool. MacFarlane was a fan of questioning tactics that were pretty leading, asking the kids to play pretend and re-enact supposed events. By 1984 it was claimed that 360 children had been abused. Due to the nature of the interview tactics, only 41 of those children testified in front of the Grand Jury and fewer than 12 testified at trial.
Michael Maloney, a clinical psychologist reviewed the videotapes of these interviews and called them “improper, coercive, directive, problematic and adult-directed in a way that forced the children to follow a rigid script.”. Transcripts of the interviews showed that the adults running the interviews had far more speaking time than the children.
Some of the accusations were flat out bizarre. Children claimed they saw witches fly, flew in hot air balloons, and were taken through a series of tunnels under the preschool. Surprising no one except for QAnon followers, no tunnels were found. And really, what is it with conspiracy theorists and the belief that Satanists use secret underground tunnels to abuse children? I need to do more research to see if the MacMartin situation is the genesis of this belief or if this is yet another anti Semetic belief dressed up every few generations like pretty much every other conspiracy theory out there.
To continue the bizarre accusations: orgies at car washes, children being flushed down toilets to secret rooms where they were abused, and abuse at airports. And look, I know 9/11 hadn’t happened yet, but I have trouble believing any prosecutor would look at that claim and think “yes, this is a reasonable case, where children are abused in public at airports and NO ONE NOTICES”.
Two trials were conducted for the McMartin preschool case. The first lasted from July 13, 1987, to January 18, 1990,[29] while the second lasted from May 7, 1990, to July 27, 1990.[30][31]
The first trial opened on July 13, 1987. During the trial, the prosecution presented seven medical witnesses. The defense attempted to rebut them with several witnesses, but the judge limited them to one in order to save time. In their summation, the prosecution argued that they had seven experts on this issue, when the defense only had one.[23]
In 1989, Peggy Anne Buckey's appeal to have her teaching credentials re-instated after their suspension was granted. The judge ruled that there was no credible evidence or corroboration to lead to the license being suspended, and that a review of the videotaped interviews with McMartin children "reveal[ed] a pronounced absence of any evidence implicating [Peggy Ann] in any wrongdoing and ... raises additional doubts of credibility with respect to the children interviewed or with respect to the value of CII interviewing techniques themselves." The following day the state credentialing board in Sacramento endorsed the ruling and restored Buckey's right to teach.[36]
Perjury by confession witness[edit]
In October 1987, jailhouse informant George Freeman was called as a witness and testified that Ray Buckey had confessed to him while sharing a cell.[37] Freeman later attempted to flee the country and confessed to perjury in a series of other criminal cases in which he manufactured testimony in exchange for favorable treatment by the prosecution, in several instances fabricating jailhouse confessions of other inmates. In order to guarantee his testimony during the McMartin case, Freeman was given immunity to previous charges of perjury.[citation needed]
Acquittals[edit]
On January 18, 1990, after three years of testimony and nine weeks of deliberation by the jury, Peggy McMartin Buckey was acquitted on all counts.[11] Ray Buckey was cleared on 52 of 65 counts, and freed on bail after more than five years in jail. Nine of 11 jurors at a press conference following the trial stated that they believed the children had been molested but the evidence did not allow them to state who had committed the abuse beyond a reasonable doubt.[38] Eleven out of the thirteen jurors who remained by the end of the trial voted to acquit Buckey of the charges; the refusal of the remaining two to vote for a not guilty verdict resulted in the deadlock. The media overwhelmingly focused on the two jurors who voted guilty at the expense of those who believed Buckey was not guilty.[39]
Second trial and dismissal[edit]
Ray Buckey was retried later on 6 of the 13 counts of which he was not acquitted in the first trial. The second trial opened on May 7, 1990, and resulted in another hung jury on July 27, 1990. The prosecution then gave up trying to obtain a conviction, and the case was closed with all charges against Ray Buckey dismissed. He had been jailed for five years without ever being convicted of committing any crime.[4][26][40]
Contemporary media coverage erred on a pretty non-critical acceptance of the prosecution's claim, led by the reporting from Wayne Satz, who was in a romantic relationship with Kee MacFarlane from the Children’s Institute. You also have the editor at the Los Angeles Times, David Rosenzweig, who was engaged to the lead prosecutor Lael Rubin.
The case lasted seven years total and cost $15 million, making it the most expensive case in the history of the US legal system.
Now, the Satanic Panic around the preschool didn’t end there, we just don’t have time to cover the parents who continued to look for evidence of underground tunnels and the nonsense around that. I highly recommend people look up “the Finders” and go down that rabbit hole (no pun intended).
Ok, so now that we covered the light-hearted case where it’s almost guaranteed that nothing bad actually happened to the alleged victims are you read to be horrified and depressed?
Corinne’s notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booty_v_Barnaby
To be honest, this was supposed to be an All Amanda Episode, but we so desperately needed to lighten the mood that I pulled up the above link and just summarized the wikipedia page. Won’t lie, it gives me constant giggles to even think about this case. Thank you, British law for giving us this gift.
Episode 5 | Vampires Around the World
Amanda’s Notes:
https://dc.etsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3896&context=etd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_vampire_panic
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-new-england-vampire-panic-36482878/
https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2020/01/vampire-reports-in-colonial-american.html
https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2020/01/americas-first-vampire-investigators.html
https://pelicanstateofmind.com/louisiana-love/jacques-st-germain-louisiana-vampire/
In “Southerner as Other: Exploring Regional Identity through the Southern Vampire” the authors state that “Vampires tend to manifest in places with rich historical presence and lands that have been host to social anxieties.” This essay focuses, as you would assume, on vampires as they appear in folklore and history in the American South. It makes sense that a region with such a violent history would have folklore so monstrous and universal.
I think most people understand that Louisiana, specifically New Orleans, is a vampire hotspot as far as authors and urban legends are concerned. Today I would like to focus on Jacques St. Germain, also known as Comte St. Germain, The Infamous Louisiana Vampire. I’m stepping on Corinne’s territory here to start, as the name suggests our buddy Jacques first came on the scene in France in the 1700s. Among the real life historical figures who claim to have known him are King Louis XV, Casanova, and Voltaire. To quote Voltaire “He is a man who knows everything and who never dies.”
Records show that he was born in 1710 and died in 1784 but people claim to have seen him as recently as 1970, most famously years after his death when he was seen by multiple people at Marie Antoinette’s execution. Reports say he spoke at least six languages, never aged, could play the violin beautifully, and was such a skilled alchemist that he could grow diamonds.
A record shows he died in Germany in 1784 after a life spent throwing lavish parties all over Europe, ending his life as a confidant to Prince Hesse. Note how I said “a record”. The one record of his death was written by a priest under the king’s orders. It’s rumored he did not die and instead travelled to the West.
Some 200 years after Comte’s death, an immigrant from France named Jacque St. Germain showed up in New Orleans and moved into a house off of Royal St. Dude, could you try to be subtle? He was known for his knowledge, wit, and how he spoke of events a few hundred years in the past in STUNNING detail. He also, much like he did back in France, threw lavish parties with high profile guests. It’s been noted by people who claim to have been at his parties that he never ate the food.
Everyone makes mistakes eventually, even seemingly ageless vampires. One night he invited a woman to one of his big, Gatsbyesque parties. He asked her to join him on the balcony where he tried to bite her neck. She was a badass and was able to move around him and jump right off the balcony. People on the street came over to help her and noticed blood trickling down her neck.
When police investigated, what they found became the stuff of legends. There were clothes from multiple time periods in each closet, most stained with blood. No food, no plates, no utensils anywhere. The bottles that guests believed were red wine were in fact filled with blood. Jacques St. Germain never returned to the house but people around the world claim to see him from time to time. Hopefully he learned how to disguise his name better.
So because I can’t ever keep myself to one story, now I would like to turn our focus on to Appalachia. Going back to the paper I referenced earlier, there are several academics who compare the geography of Appalachia to that of the Carpathian mountains and state that the similarity made it easy for more traditional vampire myths to transfer over.
In addition to the geographical similarities, a study conducted by Berea College here in KY found many social parallels between the regions. “Different highland regions may also show similarities in the social, cultural, political, and economic dynamics between the highland region’s insiders and outsiders.” The forests of Appalachia inspire the same sort of dread as the villages in the Carpathians, playing on the basic human fear of the unknown.
Interestingly, the role of Christianity in Appalachian vampire folklore is twisted compared to the traditional “Dracula” style stories. Playing on the area’s fear of the corruption of religious beliefs, Vampires in the region tend not to be affected by “traditional” weapons like crosses, holy water, and silver. Vampires in the South in general and Appalachia specifically represent the corruption of Christian theology through the inclusion of non-Christian religions and a perverted deification of the undead.
Moving on north of the Mason-Dixon line, let’s quickly touch on America’s first vampire investigators. Moses Holmes, born 1727, was an important figure in Willington, Connecticut, holding multiple public offices throughout his life. He pushed for the remains of children who had died of “mysterious causes”, aka tuberculosis. It’s not mysterious. Children can die of respiratory illnesses too. Modern medicine is a gift and if anyone listening isn’t vaccinated for Covid yet WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?
The first doctor at the exhumation was Miner Grant who was really more of an apothecary than a true doctor. The second was Jeremiah West who was a surgeon in the Continental Army during the revolutionary war. The three men looked over the children, heard the stories of how quickly they succumbed to their “mysterious illness”, and immediately took to the papers in New Haven to make a strong statement about the prevalence of vampirism in the area. Again, tuberculosis isn’t vampirism. Covid isn’t caused by 5G. Just...appreciate scientists and admit that people who study these things know more than you.
Corinne’s Notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_folklore_by_region https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adze_(folklore)
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/monster-mythology-adze
https://occult-world.com/adze/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiangshi
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/vampires-europe-new-england-halloween-history
https://www.vice.com/en/article/akwkgj/highgate-vampire-history-sean-manchester
Vampires or their analogues are found throughout the world. We’re all pretty familiar with Dracula, who has his roots pretty firmly in Eastern European mythology, so I’ll give him a pass for now. Some of the examples that caught my eye instead were:
The Adze (pronounced “ads”), from Ewe folklore (the Ewe peoples mostly live in what today is Ghana and Togo)
The Adze is often thought to take the form of a mosquito, a firefly, or a ball of light. It will drink the blood of men and women, but likes children best. These days, it seems that the adze prefers to possess its victims, and a lot of misfortunes are attributed to possession by an adze.
Scholars believe that when the Ewe settled into the tropical, coastal region of Africa, the Adze became an explanation for malaria (esp given that one of its forms is a mosquito). Once Christian missionaries (sigh) brought Christianity to the region, the Ewe combined their traditional beliefs with those of Christianity, and you begin to see adze take on a more demonic role in stories and folklore.
It’s important to note that adze are a very real part of contemporary Ewe culture. People feel very strongly about them-- Atlas Obscura interviewed people who indicated that Adze are still active today (usually thought of as witches), and those they interviewed were reluctant to talk about them
Next up are the Jiangshi from China! These guys are very popular in East Asian storytelling (especially Hong Kong cinema) and they’re super fun because y’all they HOP to get around.
They originate in the Qin Dynasty, and as such are typically represented by someone wearing the robes that a Qin bureaucrat would wear. At the time, it was very important to be able to have loved ones’ bodies returned to their families for proper burial, which was a challenge when conscripted soldiers were dying on far off battlefields or if laborers died while working far from home. So in order to bring their loved ones home, families would hire Taoist priests who were essentially necromancers to reanimate the body (kinda) and hop the corpse back to its loved ones. The unique hopping motion is because a) rigor mortis would have already set in and b) the necromancers would bind the corpses’ wrists and ankles.
This is all well and good but if the necro fucks up, then you’ve got a reanimated corpse on the loose, which is… not great? Jiangshi aren’t like western zombies. They don’t want to eat your brain. And unlike western vampires, they’re also not big on sucking blood. Instead they drain victims’ life energy (qi). Getting your qi drained is a way to become a Jiangshi yourself. Other ways to make a Jiangshi include improper burial, death by suicide, and of course magic or possession.
Also, I fuckin lied about staying away from European vampires because I would be REMISS if I didn’t talk about the Highgate Cemetery vampire in London, because it is a bonkers story. I honestly don’t even care about the vampire himself. In the Highgate area of London in the late 1960s and early 1970s, around Highgate cemetery, there had been several reports of a mysterious figure roaming the area. In fact, some school girls even reported seeing someone rise from the dead. Finally, a few animal corpses were found drained of blood. Enter two members of the occult scene in London- Sean Manchester and David Farrant. Both men were convinced that there was in fact a vampire, and both were sure that they alone could vanquish this threat to the area. Also, they fuckin hated one another. Their antics reached a fever pitch in 1973, when they challenged one another to a “wizard’s duel” on parliament hill. Alas, their duel never actually happened and they remained enemies until Farrant’s death in 2019.
Episode 4 | Occult Games
Amanda’s Notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouija
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorcism_of_Roland_Doe
https://nerdist.com/article/history-behind-the-ouija-board/
https://www.liveabout.com/how-to-use-printable-ouija-board-2593142
Instead of my usual shallow dives around a few different stories, today I am going to discuss the origins of everyone’s favorite Hasbro board game, the Ouija board. Ouija boards are also known as spirit board or talking boards. And the history of the ouija board’s use in the occult is as American as apple pie and capitalism.
A precursor to the modern day ouija board and the inspiration for it’s creator is fuji, aka planchette writing which shows up in historical documents of the Song Dynasty in China circa 1100AD. Fuji involved special rituals and supervision and was used as a means of necromancy and communication with the spirit-world. It was forbidden by the Qing Dynasty sometime in the early 1700s.
In 1890 business man and attorney Elijah Bond, inspired by what he read about fuji and the growing spiritualist movement in America, had the idea to patent a planchette sold with a board on which the alphabet was printed. He was issued US patent 446,054 on February 10, 1891.
US Patent 446,054
His employee, William Fuld, took over talking board production. In 1901 he started production of his own boards, called them “Ouija” and claimed he invented them. He claimed that he learned the word Ouija from using the board and talking to an ancient Egyptian spirit (you can’t have a late Victorian spiritualist NOT talk to someone in Egypt, right?) and that the word was an ancient Egyptian word meaning “good luck”.
When competitors started flooding the market, our buddy Mr. Fuld got clever. In 1919 he introduced the “Mystifying Oracle”, a literal exact replica of the existing Ouija board that sold for less money. He also launched a line of Ouija jewelry, and Ouija oil for rheumatism. Man, that Egyptian spirit really gave him some high quality information, didn’t he?
Ouija boards, a children’s game invented by an American businessman and marketed by an American con man, have been believed to deliver on their promise to communicate with the spirit-world. Here’s a quick list of authors who claim the ouija board helped them complete their work, aka my new tbr:
Emily Grant Hutchings claimed that her novel “Jap Herron: A Novel Written from the Ouija Board” was dictated by Mark Twain’s spirit. This novel was published in 1917.
Pearl Lenore Curran claimed that for over 20 years she communicated with a spirit named Patience Worth, transcribing several novels as dictated by Patience.
William Butler Yeats’s wife was a regular ouija board user, and her experiences inspired the bulk of his work.
In 1982 poet James Merrill released an apocalyptic 560 page epic poem called “The Changing Light at Sandover” which documented two decades of messages dictated from the ouija board during seances hosted by Merrill and his partner David Noyes Jackson.
And of course, we can’t discuss ouija board use without talking about what everyone really wants, demonic possession. And while I don’t 100% believe that this is possible, I also refuse to use Ouija boards as anything other than decor because these stories creep me the fuck out.
We have the most famous case, a 14 year old boy in Maryland in the late 1940s possessed by several malevolent spirits and exorcised by a Roman Catholic priest. This boy, who is referred to as “Robbie” was introduced to the ouija board by his aunt who was a spiritualist. After said aunt passed, the family started experiencing strange noises, furniture moving on its own, and objects flying whenever Robbie was nearby. According to the traditional story, which of course isn’t substantiated by any available evidence, a Catholic priest conducted an exorcism on Robbie at Georgetown University Hospital.
During the exorcism, the boy slipped a hand out of his restraints, broke a bedspring off, and used that to slash the priest’s arm which halted the ritual. He was then transported to The Alexian Brothers Hospital in St. Louis where three priests assisted. During this exorcism the bed shook on its own, the boy spoke in a guttural voice, and words like “evil” and “hell” appeared in blood all over the boy’s body. The exorcism was successful though, and he went on to lead a normal life. And this, my friend, is the story that inspired “The Exorcist”.
More recently, November 2014, 35 students in Bolivia were hospitalized due to trances, excessive sweating, and rapid heartbeats after playing with a ouija board.
Corinne’s Notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyakumonogatari_Kaidankai
https://hyakumonogatari.com/what-is-hyakumonogatari/
https://theghostinmymachine.com/2018/04/18/dangerous-games-sara-sarita-sister-sister-ritual-mexico/
https://www.scaryforkids.com/sara-sarita/
Y’all i’ve been really good at like, trying to dig into the socio-cultural WHYs of stuff so far. But honestly all of this CREEPS ME OUT!
I jumpstarted my research with a book Amanda recommended to me: Dangerous Games to Play in the Dark, by Lucia Peters. It’s got a great bibliography for references. But also: pre-teen girls. WHY Y’ALL GOTTA BE SO SPOOKY? And I do include myself in this. I was definitely playing with ouija boards and summoning Bloody Mary at sleepovers (sorry mom and dad, i know it was forbidden but also i was an idiot child)
One of the few games I learned about that didn’t seem to have originated with ~The Youths~ (and is also less viscerally horrifying) is Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai, most commonly referred to as Hyakumonogatari. This game originated in Japan in the late 17th century, and is believed to have first become popular among samurai as a way to prove how bold they were. The basic premise is that you light 100 candles in a dark room and start telling scary stories. As each story is told, you blow out a candle. This summons more and more spiritual energy. After the 100th story is told and the final candle is blown out, something or someone will have been summoned.
In one story about the origins of this game, a group of young samurai played the game, and as the last candle was being blown out, they saw a shadowy hand reaching for them. Some cowered away in fear, while one, braver than the rest, drew his sword and took down the offender- a lil spider friend. (to be fair to the creeped out samurai, i too would be afraid of a spider. Too many legs, yo).
One really cool aspect about this, as was explained in Zack Davisson’s site hyakumonogatari.com is how the recent development of printing helped to spread the game across Japan. The stories people would tell tended to be very short and were often about local supernatural phenomena. With printing presses, people across the country could have access to even more spooky stories with which to play Hyakumonogatari. One particularly famous book (Shokoku Hyakumonogatari - 100 tales of many countries) contained stories from other countries--all said to be completely true.
The other game that caught my eye is “el juego de sara sarita”, which originates in Mexico. Depending on which version of the story you’re following, you’re either summoning the daughter of Satan himself OR the spirits of two young girls who were murdered and justice was never served. So like. That’s horrifying, thank you Mexico.
Anyway, this is a game that requires two people, and two coins, and questions you want answered. The two participants start by asking “Sara Sarita can I enter your game?” and then toss their coins. If both land heads up, go ahead and start playing, if both land on tails, that’s a no. You’re allowed to keep asking though. If it’s one heads up and one heads down, that’s a maybe. You can play, but proceed with caution. Especially because Sara Sarita will straight up lie to you, so like, take that as you will. Once you start playing, ask yes/no questions and continue tossing coins. The responses will be based on the same coin toss patterns. When you want to leave the game, you MUST ask permission to quit, or bad shit will happen to you. Don’t stop until you get a yes. Apparently this is really hard, and players report having to toss coins for quite a while before they’re permitted to leave.
Episode 3: Graveyard Ghosts | Show Notes
Amanda’s Notes:
https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/kentucky/ghost-stories-ky/
https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/kentucky/haunted-cemeteries-in-ky/
https://definition.org/spooky-abandoned-cemetery-kentucky-disturbing-past/
https://blindpigandtheacorn.com/appalachia-through-my-eyes-pretty-graveyards/
http://www.louisvilleghs.com/LGHS_MASTER/SUB/Stories/EasternCemetery/EasternCemetery.html
https://frightfind.com/grandview-cemetery/
For this episode I am sticking much closer to home. I am going to take us all on a tour of the most haunted cemeteries in our Old KY Home. It turns out that our lovely state is mega freaking haunted. Just wall to wall ghosts, and unsurprisingly they love to hang out in cemeteries.
To start I want to talk about Baker Hollow Road Cemetery in Marion, KY, so Corinne, I am blaming your sister for this. The first cue that we should maybe walk away and forget this cemetery just off of Baker Hollow Road exists, is that there are many reports of the cemetery just...not being where it was that last time people went there. Now, I think this is because two separate cemeteries, Baker Cemetery and Phillips Cemetery, are both referred to as the Baker Hollow Road cemeteries, Baker Hollow Road being the dividing line.
People report experiencing a feeling of overwhelming sadness, often to the point of tears, as soon as the cemetery comes into view. If you are “lucky” you may see a large black dog with eyes that glow. It may appear to be limping but, you know, maybe don’t get out and pick it up? Reports state that often it’s shadow will contort into something demonic before the beast disappears.
As creepy as that sounds, the hell hound is the least of your worries. There are reports of localized weather pockets leading to rain directly over the cemetery, unexpected fog rolling in, whispers all around, and people have even reported hearing the voices of deceased loved ones who aren’t buried anywhere near Baker Hollow Rd. On the side of the road people report seeing hanged men swinging from the trees, Confederate soldiers walking by, and rustling noises coming from the woods. People report being plagued by nightmares for weeks after visiting, even if they don’t experience anything while at the cemetery proper.
Next we’ll get a little closer to home with Grandview Cemetery in Elizabethtown, KY, often referred to as “The Gates of Hell”. The origin of this cemetery is a mystery, there are no records of it being built, and while Elizabethtown itself was established in 1795 there are several graves dated prior to that.
Reports of Satanic activities in the woods surrounding the cemetery predate the cemetery’s founding, which has led to the theory that the spirits and phenomena in the cemetery are the result of truly diabolical influences. People report a feeling of extreme dread as soon as they step foot on the property. Once that dread sets in people have reported unexplained bleeding from their mouths and noses. Some report their companions speaking in tongues until they are several miles away from the cemetery grounds.
There are patches of grass that become black with no explanation and glowing orbs hovering over the gravestones. Mysterious screams come from out of nowhere both day and night. And creepiest of all, in my opinion, was the dead animals that started showing up in 2003. Dead cats, dogs, deer, birds, and a baby calf were all found mutilated. Local animal control said there was no evidence of animal cruelty though they also couldn’t say what sort of animal could be capable of such mutilation.
Let’s take a quick detour now to Pikeville Cemetery in Pikeville, KY. On May 2, 1891, Octavia Hatcher was pronounced dead after a long battle with malaise and illness following the death of her infant son. She was buried, mourned, and left six feet under. Several people in the town were struck by the same illness, appeared dead, and recovered. Ms. Hatcher’s husband was distraught and ordered her body unearthed, where the town made the grisly discovery that Ms. Hatcher was not dead at the time of burial. Her face was frozen in a scream, claw marks on the lid of the coffin, and the ends of her fingers worn and bloody. People report seeing her wander through the cemetery, often tending to her son’s headstone. Surprisingly, given the nature of her death, people report a feeling of calm when they see her.
Ok, now a little closer to home! My favorite place to go for a walk, Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, KY. This is America’s oldest Victorian style cemetery still accepting new occupants. Goodness, that’s a weird way to phrase this, isn’t it? It’s a 296 acre cemetery and arboretum that has several big Louisville names buried there, such as Harland Sanders (the Col. himself, you’re welcome fried chicken fans) and Muhummad Ali. Fun fact! There are bees being kept at Cave Hill and they loooove the flowers around Muhummad Ali’s grave. People have reported seeing glowing lights, hearing whispers, and seeing translucent figures. I can’t say that I’ve ever experienced this, but I will say my son thought the headstones that looked like stones stacked on top of each other were “wow” and “yay”!
And finally, my favorite cemetery, if by favorite we mean “holy hell why is this within walking distance of my HOUSE?!?”. Eastern Cemetery, right next door to Cave Hill in Louisville, KY. This cemetery was founded in the 1800s and is notable for being one of the first non-segregated cemeteries in the nation. And...that’s where the good stops with this one. The owners were big fans of money. And the best way to get money without spending money in a cemetery is to just...bury people on top of other people. There are 16,000 graves and records of 136,000 people buried there. And there are almost certainly more, in the 1980s the remains of over 70 babies were found buried less than one foot below the ground, no headstones anywhere.
And that was creepy enough, right? Well, get ready. Located in the back of the cemetery is the grave of Ada B. Armstead, died August 29, 1895. Her tombstone is inscribed with a pentagram and the words “I’ll live again.” This is known as the witch’s grave. People report ghostly figures, orbs, and the figure of a woman who tends to the area of the cemetery where the infants were buried.
Corinne’s Notes:
GRAVEYARD GHOSTS notes
https://www.authenticvacations.com/the-haunted-history-of-highgate-cemetery/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_Paris
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Innocents%27_Cemetery
https://www.lesmysteresdelarenarde.fr/index.php/2017/10/29/cimetiereduperelachaise/
https://amyscrypt.com/paris-catacombs-death-underneath-paris/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Père_Lachaise_Cemetery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust
I started doing research centered around Europe, identifying potential stories to share. I really wanted to include Highgate Cemetery in London, but really that will be better for some other episodes
Next I moved to Paris, a city I adore. While I found some vague information surrounding Pere LaChaise, I was really struggling to find anything more concrete. Until I realized something. I speak French. There was literally no reason to limit myself to English language sources. This gave me some great keywords to start researching. So! In no particular order, we’ve got:
The Catacombs: Final resting place of the remains of more than 6 million dead. The actual ossuary is only a small fragment of the network of tunnels under Paris; much of what is considered the catacombs is from old quarries.
During the late 18th century, the cemeteries of Paris were overfilled. Places like Saints Innocents (cemetery of the holy innocents) were literally collapsing into other structures, and poor burial practices meant that bodies weren’t decomposing properly and were a major health hazard, so millions of remains were exhumed and taken to what is now the ossuary.
It’s actually been a passtime for awhile now “cataphiles” to explore the catacombs and to host parties and the like. Once, authorities found an entire theater under the city.
Cataphiles have a patron ghost, which I find delightful. A man named Philibert Aspairt, who was a caretaker at a local hospital went into the depths with a single candle, apparently in search of a stash of liquor. Somehow his light went out and he was lost in the caverns. His body was found just over a decade later, not far from where he entered. He’s now considered a guardian angel of sorts for those who explore the catacombs, keeping them from harm. On the anniversary of his death, it’s said he enjoys blowing out people’s lights and whispering in their ears
Cimitiere Pere Lachaise: founded in 1804, it was ALSO developed because of the uhhhh… overpopulation of French cemeteries. Despite an “english garden” type layout, it wasn’t considered a fashionable place to be buried. Desperate to “liven up” the place (oh god this is so many puns please stop me), the owners started re-interring famous people like Moliere there, which helped to spark interest. The cemetery is now the final resting place of 300,000 souls- a number which jumps to 2 or 3 million when you factor in the Aux Morts ossuary on the cemetery grounds.
Pere Lachaise has a lot of famous dead folks on its grounds, and there are commensurately some pretty famous ghosts who lurk in the place.
Jim Morrison of the Doors is said to show up in photos near his gravesite; but I honestly think the reason he’s buried there in the first place is super sad. He died in Paris, and no one in the US claimed his body.
Marcel Proust also wanders the cemetery. He and his lover had intended to be buried together, but due to homophobia, their final wish was denied and they were buried separately. Proust’s ghost is said to be searching for his lover so they can be reunited
Not to be a spoilsport, but while Marcel Proust was absolutely a gay man, I cannot find any reference to this lover, though Wikipedia points out that he was in a relationship with a composer named Reynaldo Hahn, and that he seemed to be infatuated with Alfred Agostinelli, his chauffeur and secretary
There are some other cool stories out of Pere Lachaise, but I want to make a detour out of Paris entirely. Hold on ‘cause we are off to Najaf, Iraq, and Wadi-us-Salaam cemetery.
It’s one of the largest cemeteries in the world, and is the final resting place of more than 5 million people. Imam Ali, first of 12 Shia imams, is buried there, and graves near the shrine are especially coveted. The cemetery has been in continuous operation for over 1400 years
According to the gravediggers who work there, it’s also extremely haunted, and they have very high turnover due to paranormal activity. The gravediggers refer to an entity called Tantal, Bzebza, or Ghreria
One man reported feeling like he was struck in the head, and since then has been unable to walk straight and he feels “like the ghost still haunts his body”
Another gravedigger reported being slapped in the face by a corpse he was burying- which should have been impossible since a) she was dead and b) she was tied in a shroud
According to the gravediggers, the ghost (or possibly ghosts?) only come out at night.
Episode 2: Hitchhiking Ghosts | Show Notes
Amanda’s Notes:
She’s pretty and pale and she just wants to get home.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanishing_hitchhiker
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pele_(deity)
So first off, I need to say that if you Google “hitch-hiking ghosts” almost the entire first page of results is articles about the ghosts on the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World. So that’s fun. I had much more success searching “the vanishing hitch-hiker”.
From my research, the hitch-hiking ghost first appears in American lore in the 1920s, though similar stories appear around the 1870’s, about the time that automobiles started replacing horses as the primary mode of transportation.
So, what I find really interesting is how the legend changes across the country. In Appalachia, specifically North Carolina, you have the legend of “Lydia” or “Annie”, depending on who’s telling the story. In this area you see a teenage girl alone on the side of an empty road, looking for a ride home. When she gets into your car, she shivers. Usually at this point in the story you offer her your jacket. She’s pleasant enough, but when you get to the destination you notice she has completely vanished.
So, in the SE United States you get the ghost who genuinely just wants to go home. Sometimes you find the jacket you gave her draped over her gravestone.
We can thank folklorists Richard Beardsly and Rosalie Hankey for most of our accounts of the various hitch-hiker archetypes. They broke the hitch-hiker phenomenon into the following four categories:
Stories where the ghost asks for a lift to a specific address, which you see mainly around the SE as we discussed earlier
Stories where the ghost is an old woman prophesying the future. These are a midwestern take on the idea, especially prevalent in Chicago. These ghosts have told people all sorts of useful information: the exact date of VE day in WWII, calamity’s at the World’s Fair, and one warned that the Northerly Island in Lake Michigan would sink below the surface. That last one still hasn’t happened, btw.
Type C Beardsly and Hankey don’t believe are natural folklore. This is the one I’m sure we’ve all heard before. The girl wants to go to a dance, gets in your car in her prom dress, disappears. They figured this was too uniform across accounts to fit with the other archetypes
And one I was unfamiliar with, the stories where the ghost ends up being a local deity
The most famous version of archetype D comes from Hawaii. The Goddess Pele is said to wander the roads near Kilauea, sometimes as a beautiful young woman, sometimes as an old woman with white hair, sometimes by herself, sometimes with a small white dog. The common thread is she is always dressed in red. If a car stops to help her she disappears, and that driver is then to warn the community that the volcano is going to erupt soon.
And of course, road deaths are in fact gender neutral! One story out of Anthem, Arizona tells of an unlucky young man on Black Canyon Highway. He was hitch-hiking on his way to Phoenix when he was struck by a car. He can now be seen on the side of the road, holding a lantern, looking for a lift to Phoenix. Those who have offered him a ride have seen him disappear from the backseat, those who don’t see him evaporate in the rearview mirror.
http://www.echoesofthesouthwest.com/2016/06/anthem-hitchhiking-ghost.html
Corinne’s Notes:
Vanishing Hitchhiker general notes:
http://bernd.wechner.info/Hitchhiking/vanish.html
https://asianethnology.org/downloads/ae/pdf/a1754.pdf
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%208%3A26-39&version=NIV
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1495651?seq=1
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0015587X.1994.9715874?cookieSet=1
https://www.bustle.com/entertainment/ghosts-in-ishinomaki-japan-unsolved-mysteries
https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/the-ghosts-who-hailed-cabs/224927/
The stories we know of as “vanishing hitchhiker” ghosts are global, and arguably go back to biblical times, though the “hitchhiker” part is somewhat debatable. In places that don’t have the “car culture” you still find stories of ghosts catching a ride to get somewhere that they need to be. So, a few examples from across the globe:
BIBLICAL VERSION! Y’all there are hitchhiking ghosts in the freaking bible. St Philip gets whisked away by god to travel with an Ethiopian man. He discusses theology with him, the Ethiopian man asks to be baptized, St Philip does so, and then is whisked back to wherever he was originally? I guess??
New International Version: Acts 8:26-39
A frequent variant we see in more global versions is taxi drivers who pick up ghostly fares, I’m highlighting three, one from the 1940s, and the other two are much more contemporary
There is a Korean variant from the 1940s about a taxi driver picking up a young woman from outside a crematorium. She claims she hasn’t got her purse and asks to go in to her house to get money she owes. He waits and waits, and she doesn’t come back. He knocks on the door…. Blah blah blah
Next is from Shillong in India. I found an analysis of this particular story told among the Khasi people of Northern India from an article by Margaret Lyngdoh at the University of Tartu, Estonia. Similar story of multiple taxi drivers reporting that they picked up a young woman who disappears when they get to the location she requests
Notably, these stories only started after a particularly violent murder that upset the entire region.
To quote the article, On 6 September 2002, a twenty-three-year-old pregnant woman was killed by her husband; on 8 January 2008 he was sentenced to life imprisonment.1 Soon afterwards, the story of a young woman hailing taxis, and then vanishing mysteriously from them, began to make the rounds in Shillong.
Last but not least is Ishinomaki, Japan, after the Tohou earthquake in 2011. The ghosts that cab drivers report picking up in the region are only a very small handful of the supernatural reports coming from the region in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami.
In the case of both the reports from [Region in India] and Ishinomaki in Japan, these reports both come after traumatic events that rattled the entire community.
As has been pointed out especially in the case of Ishinomaki: “Collective trauma creates collective reactions seeking healing, a sense of safety and hope,” Dr. Charles R. Figley, chair in disaster mental health at Tulane University, told the media company Ozy. “It is not uncommon for fellow survivors of catastrophic loss and dislocation to have common reactions, be they paranormal sightings, sounds or smells ... Ghosts, for some, are more tolerable than the void created by death."
This is wild speculation on my part, but in these more contemporary versions, it seems to me that part of what was wounded is the identity of the region itself (i.e. a young, soon-to-be mother from a traditionally matrilineal culture being brutally murdered, or the sheer devastation of an entire region)--> what you think of as “home” is caught up in the trauma. And then you have ghosts trying to get back to a home that isn’t theirs anymore.
Episode 1: La Llorona | Show Notes
Amanda’s Notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Llorona
https://www.legendsofamerica.com/gh-lallorona/
https://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/wailing-woman
On moonlit nights she wanders, damned to do so for all eternity. Hair blacker than coal, dress as white as her hair is black, she walks the river bank crying for her children. There is no one accepted origin story for the La Llorona myth. Early colonial texts suggest that the myth of the wandering weeping woman predates the Spanish conquest of the Americas, but looking at the evolution of the stories we can tell that the dynamic between the Spanish conquistadors and indigenous women became irrevocably intertwined. Side note: fuck Cortes, fuck Columbus, we live on stolen land and everything about this country has been built on torture and death. Moving on.
I’m sure Corinne will go into more detail about the role La Llorona plays in Mexican and Central/South American folk tales, today I am going to focus on her appearances in the Southwestern US, though she has been seen as far north as Montana. To quote legendsofamerica.com, “The tall, thin spirit is said to be blessed with natural beauty and long flowing black hair. Wearing a white gown, she roams the rivers and creeks, wailing into the night and searching for children to drag, screaming, to a watery grave.” So, you know, that’s pleasant.
There are several accepted origin stories for La Llorona. I found it interesting that she is often named Maria, which makes sense, Maria being a common name. This could have been any woman in the community post-colonization. In one version Maria was a single mother of two children. She loved to go to the local dance halls and dance with all the men. She was incredibly beautiful and caught everyone’s eyes. She would don her best white dress and dance the night away with rich and poor men alike. But man, those kids of hers were really cramping her style.
Even within this one story there are two versions of the end. They both agree her children were found drowned. Whether she drowned them herself in a rage or they wandered off and drowned due to her neglect is up in the air. Regardless of how exactly they died, in the days following she regrets her actions.
She begins wandering near the river where her children drowned. She doesn’t eat, she doesn’t sleep. Her beautiful white dress ends up in tatters. She ends up so gaunt that from a distance she appears to be a skeleton. In the end she drowns herself in an attempt to be reunited with her children.
There’s a fun variation from South TX that doesn’t include water, which I guess makes sense in a more deserty area? The woman, Maria again, promised her first born son to the priesthood in exchange for the priest performing her marriage. Once her children were born she realized she didn’t want to give them to anyone. It’s unclear from my research what happens next, but eventually she shows up to see her house in flames, her children trapped inside. She runs in to save them but it’s too late. Her burned face transforms into that of a donkey to mark her for all eternity as one who insulted God.
Ok, on to the sightings. People who claim to have seen her hear her calling for her children. Her face can be that of a donkey like we just discussed, a blank stretch of decayed skin where a face should be, or my personal favorite: eyes dark and sunken in, too large for her face, a mouth that stretches down to her neck, an abyss wailing for her child and for your fate should she reach you.
In most of the SW she’s relatively harmless to adults, just creepy as fuck. But children? Hoo boy, keep your kids away from rivers in La Llorona’s territory. She will drag them down as deep as the river goes saying “oh my children, where shall I take you now?”. Complete speculation on my part, but I like to think she doesn’t do that as much out of malice as she’s making sure her children have plenty of friends in the afterlife. Which hopefully provides just, so much therapy to these violently murdered kids.
Now, I personally agree with the historians who believe that the La Llorona myth is a way for parents to keep their kids away from bodies of water, or a way to explain child deaths without explaining harsh realities about fully human monsters to children.
Another thing that jumps out at me, and for full disclosure I have found zero articles backing me up on this so wild speculation incoming, is how similar to modern descriptions of post-partum depression and/or post-partum psychosis this is. The rage leading someone to kill their own child and the grief and horror after the fact? So much easier to blame this on a monster than to admit that it could happen to you.
Corinne’s Notes:
Started down the usual Wikipedia rabbit hole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Llorona
Followed that to: Simerka, Barbara (2000). "Women Hollering: Contemporary Chicana Reinscriptions of La Llorona Mythography" (PDF). Confluencia. 16 (1): 49–58.
Carbonell, Ana María (1999). "From Llorona to Gritona: Coatlicue in Feminist Tales by Viramontes and Cisneros" (PDF). MELUS. 24 (2): 53–74. doi:10.2307/467699. JSTOR 467699.
Connection to La Malinche - a figure from Spanish conquest - She was Cortez’s indigenous (Nahua) mistress/interpreter: La Llorona is sometimes conflated with La Malinche,[10] the Nahua woman who served as Hernán Cortés' interpreter and also bore his son.[11] La Malinche is considered both the mother of the modern Mexican people and a symbol of national treachery for her role in aiding the Spanish.[12]
Historically, Dona Marina (la Malinche) did not murder the child she bore to Hernan Cortes, but in at least one retelling of the myth (The Legend of La Llorona, Rudolfo Anaya, 1984) she sacrifices her children to the gods (essentially to secure the future of Mexico) in a way to directly tie her story to that of La Llorona.
In Venezuela → https://steemit.com/writing/@unclerasta/the-legend-of-la-llorona-a-legend-from-venezuela
Most widely known story is woman hooks up with soldier, has his kid, he abandons her. In a fit of despair bc the baby is crying so much, she kills it. Realizing what she’s done she starts screaming and crying, which alerts the neighbors. The other people in the town (somewhat understandably) start yelling and threatening her due to the horrific nature of the crime, and off she runs to Los Llanos, never to be seen again. She targets those who have been unfaithful to their lovers, and is said to spirit away neglected children and chase after mischievous ones.
Apparently in Venezuela you make ghosts and spirits leave you be by yelling swears at them and that might be my absolute favorite thing ever?
Many instance of the story includes a woman of lower social status than her lover, frequently these women are indigenous, while their lovers are European/Aristocratic in nature
Barbara Simerka notes research by Pamela Jones- Chicano students at University of Oregon’s versions of the tale most often place the lover as a catalyst for La Llorona murdering her children (either bc he betrays her or she neglects the children in favor of him) whereas Mexican immigrants with whom Jones worked (through a WIC center) cite the woman’s perceived inability to care for her children as the catalyst (i.e. she can’t afford to feed them, has no one to look after them while they work, etc)
→ interesting side note, research by Ed Walraven shows how, as people have migrated from rural areas to urban, you get variants where La Llorona haunts dumps or landfills instead of creeks and rivers- i.e. leaving infants in dumpsters.