Today is a special edition of Random Links of the day. Filled with creepy goodness! In this edition we take a look at everything from suspected real world Vampires, Jack of the Lanterns, King Charles being related to Vlad the Impaler, Real World Zombie Bunkers and more!
The original Lantern used by Jack was a Turnip, not a Pumpkin
Now the following Ghost Story Anthology comes from an amazing occult writer on here named Neptune’s Dolphins. Neptune’s Dolphins is the best at all the subjects he writes about. And I guarantee if you follow this writer you will not regret it!
Zombie CSU:: The Forensic Science of the Living Dead by Jonathan Maberry is one of the best comprehensive books on what a real Zombie would be like. It goes deep into the Fringe Science of how such a creature could exist. From Folklorist, And Award Winning Novelist and Writer Jonathan Maberry
I mean, is anyone really surprised? It’s the British royal family. These Colonizing Bastards probably have Ted Buddy in their bloodline somewhere as well.
I declare that September is early October and that therefore NOW is the time to begin Halloween until the third of November and beyond lol. So here we begin.
All manner of Spirits, evil, neutral, and some good wander the night
The feast of Saint George the Dragon Slayer is normally a good Feast. But on the Eve or vespers of a Saint’s day, evil spirits and evil witches gain their strongest powers. It’s their way to mock holiness. But contrary to popular belief it isn’t just evil spirits out tonight. All sorts of beings are out.
Werewolves
Werewolves are out and about on this night. Some of them are good and others are bad. Some of them are shape shifting witches who learned to transform. Some are people who were cursed. And some gained an ability from a relative to enter Wolf form.
Who knows what they’re up to tonight? At least the Romanian version of Werewolves. In North America they’re active on St. Mark’s Eve not St. George’s Eve.
The Blutbad Holly Clark, from the Tv series Grimm. It basically means “big bad Wolf”
Will-O’-the-wisps
A Ghost Orb from Malaysia
Then of course we have Will-O’-the-wisps also known as Ignes Fatui (giddy flames). Also known as Ghost Lights and Corpse Lights. These are spirits that take on the form of the classic ghost orbs you have probably seen or heard of from television. Not only do they exist in European culture. But also in some indigenous American cultures.
But not all Will-O’-the-wisps are ghosts.
In Mexico they are normally Hags or Demon Witches. Practitioners of black magic who delved so deeply into the darkness that they became demons while still alive. In death they get even stronger. This is not to be confused with the title of Hag used by some Covens. This specific hag is not a human witch.
Hags in the form of fiery Will-O’-the-wisps
It refers to a whole class of formally human witches who became demons or demon-human hybrids through sinister practices.
But most of these lights are associated either with Faeries or with deceased human souls. The main belief in Europe, is as follows. When Saint George’s Eve comes around, the dead, and even spirits associated with treasures (which includes a few demons) will appear as flames or lights. These lights will then hover around places where there’s buried treasure. Really brave (or greedy) people will venture out at night hoping to find such spirits.
And then either dig up the treasure then and there. Or mark the place somehow to find it again the next day.
Corpse Lights, spirits of the dead in Orb form
Granted, this is a dangerous practice because the spirit could kill, curse, or even possess the would be treasure hunter. Something I recommend is to never steal treasures from spirits. My Native Shaman had been haunted by a spirit who buried money with her dead father. We never knew how they acquired this money together. But we figured it probably wasn’t legal.
But we let his soul stay with that money. My family had a similar run in with the spirit of a dead land owner from Spanish colonial times. The house they lived in had previously been his property. But the treasure was under some kind of Boulder. And no matter what was done, the rock wouldn’t break.
Not even with drills. My grandmother who practiced magic, correctly concluded that the treasure would never belong to us.
A Faerie creature with its ball of light behind it
Some of these spirits are dead pirates or road thieves who buried their treasures prior to death. Perhaps even being captured and hanged before they could enjoy their stolen bounty. Or sometimes regular people who hid their treasures to feed their families later. But had died before revealing their locations.
The Moroi are a type of Vampire that falls under two distinct categories. One is a physical psychic vampire that drains the energy of the living. The other is a non-corporeal Ghost Vampire. Much like the Asian Hungry Ghost, feeds on the energy of living creatures. Moroi are often the subjects of debate.
In one story they are mortal Vampires. In another a vengeful ghost who feeds off of energy. Sometimes the Moroi are said to be demonic spirits who possess the living. This includes animals such as Bears. Living Vampires also become undead Vampires in death.
This is probably why the Moroi appears as all three types of creatures. In death they may have the option to become a regular parasitic ghost. Or a demon.
Their Parents
StrigoiMort are a type of witch vampire. In fact the word itself is actually for witches. Simply it has become so associated with these vampires that extra terms have been added to tell the difference. From the Latin word Strix for witch. Italian Strega.
And Slavic Shtriga. In order to differentiate from a human witch or wizard they use different terms. Such as Strigoi viu, or Strigele, living strigoi or living witch. The undead vampire witch are called Strigoi Mort or dead witch. In Romania dead evil witches tend to become vampires.
However, it’s all confusing. Because some argue that a Strigele is like a Moroi. That it is unholy and will become a vampire witch in death. But to me that’s just Christian bias. They think witches are all satanic.
Obviously not all Romanian Witches become these creatures. There are several types of benevolent witches that use sorcery to fight these creatures. And even create talismans and amulets for protection. In several legends, Romani people (Gypsies) have played key roles in fighting and defeating vampires and other demons. There are legends of Gypsy vampire hunters as a matter of fact.
But that’s a rabbit hole for another day.
Strigoi Mort are immortal and also have magical powers. They are said to control the Moroi. Some legends state that the Moroi are the living children of two Strigoi who mated. So these vampires are interrelated. Why the immortality isn’t passed on isn’t explained.
Because they are also witches, they have a wide variety of powers. From invisibility to shape shifting. The Strigoi are thought to originally have come from Dacian religion. The belief that these are condemned souls. They were unworthy to enter the heavenly Kingdom of the God Zalmoxis.
And thus spend their eternity as vampires. From the Dacians, the Romanians inherited these creatures.
Conspiracy
From LP Bestiary
It’s said that the forces of evil meet at the boundaries of their cities or towns at sunset. These could be vampires, evil human witches, evil werewolves, or straight up fallen spirits from hell. Here they plan and plot what they are going to do to people until next St. George’s Eve. The Vampires steal life essence from people and animals to power themselves up. When doing this, they also steal skills or abilities the animals or human has for themselves.
For instance, if they feed on the energy of a venomous snake, they will produce the same venom. And the poor snake is left with nothing. If they feed on a computer programmer, they will gain his or her knowledge of programming. And the knowledge will vanish from the minds of their victims. And still yet it can be something else too.
Let’s say your talents are something else. Maybe you have a special charisma with someone of the opposite or same sex. This vampire can take away your charm for themselves to mate. And you’ll be as charming as a penny on the road.
“May.—I found that my landlord had got a letter from the Count, directing him to secure the best place on the coach for me; but on making inquiries as to details he seemed somewhat reticent, and pretended that he could not understand my German. This could not be true, because up to then he had understood it perfectly; at least,
He answered my questions exactly as if he did. He and his wife, the old lady who had received me, looked at each other in a frightened sort of way. He mumbled out that the money had been sent in a letter, and that was all he knew. When I asked him if he knew Count Dracula, and could tell me anything of his castle,
Both he and his wife crossed themselves, and, saying that they knew nothing at all, simply refused to speak further. It was so near the time of starting that I had no time to ask any one else, for it was all very mysterious and not by any means comforting.
Just before I was leaving, the old lady came up to my room and said in a very hysterical way:
“Must you go? Oh! young Herr, must you go?” She was in such an excited state that she seemed to have lost her grip of what German she knew, and mixed it all up with some other language which I did not know at all. I was just able to follow her by asking many questions. When I told her that I must go at once, and that I was engaged on important business, she asked again:
“Do you know what day it is?” I answered that it was the fourth of May. She shook her head as she said again:
“Oh, yes! I know that! I know that, but do you know what day it is?” On my saying that I did not understand, she went on:
“It is the eve of St. George’s Day. Do you not know that to-night, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway? Do you know where you are going, and what you are going to?” She was in such evident distress that I tried to comfort her, but without effect. Finally she went down on her knees and implored me not to go; at least to wait a day or two before starting.
It was all very ridiculous but I did not feel comfortable. However, there was business to be done, and I could allow nothing to interfere with it. I therefore tried to raise her up, and said, as gravely as I could, that I thanked her, but my duty was imperative, and that I must go. She then rose and dried her eyes, and taking a crucifix from her neck offered it to me.
I did not know what to do, for, as an English Churchman, I have been taught to regard such things as in some measure idolatrous, and yet it seemed so ungracious to refuse an old lady meaning so well and in such a state of mind. She saw, I suppose, the doubt in my face, for she put the rosary round my neck, and said,
“For your mother’s sake,” and went out of the room. I am writing up this part of the diary whilst I am waiting for the coach, which is, of course, late; and the crucifix is still round my neck. Whether it is the old lady’s fear, or the many ghostly traditions of this place, or the crucifix itself, I do not know, but I am not feeling nearly as easy in my mind as usual.
– Excerpt from Chapter 1 of Abraham “Bram” Stoker’s Dracula
Things to watch out for
Beware of the things that hide in the deep shadow
There will be an influx of Calling Ghosts or Calling Spirits. This is an umbrella term for paranormal entities across a wide spectrum that are well known for calling out your name. Sometimes they even make themselves sound like people you know, women and children or animals in trouble. This is all to lure you away to a secluded spot for nefarious purposes. Don’t fall for it.
In Cuba we’re even warned to never answer a voice calling your name unless you know who it is. During this time, there are vampires who call out your name to try and get you to answer. Avoid being outside especially on the road or sidewalk. But as stated before, this is a time when evil spirits congregate and plan out what they are going to do for the rest of the year. So watch out.
This is the first Eve of Saint George. But there’s another in May. So be prepared. The best way to protect yourself is with garlic which wards off evil spirits. I use garlic salt.
Best of both worlds. Spirits try to enter homes through every nook and cranny. Vampires for instance can enter through keyholes. So make sure you have warded your home and yourself. If you think all of this is old superstitions and nonsense, then good luck.
– M
Sources :
1) Vampire Universe : The Dark World of Supernatural Beings that Haunt us, Hunt us, and Hunger for us by Johnathan Maberry (2006)
I have decided to give an online Treat for this Halloween two online versions of masterpieces written by Bram Stoker. This was supposed to be in the original Dracula. But for some reason, Stoker took it out. I think that was a monumental mistake. Because without a doubt this was so good that it should have been a book in and of itself.
It’s a short story talking about Jonathan Harker’s journey to Castle Dracula. But…..he fucks up, majorly. Because he journeys there on Walpurgis Night, a Night celebrated on May 1st by Devil Worshippers. It’s actually the Christian’s version of the Celtic Beltane feast. They claim it belongs to St. Walpurga.
But according to legend, satanists supposedly congregate with the Devil and his demons on this night. Which also means that the dead rise. A sort of Halloween in Spring kind of deal. And to make matters worse, Harker takes a charming stroll into a cursed town on the same night. How does he survive? Listen and find out!
Here I give it to you, read by a YouTuber named HorrorCraft
And as a Bonus I give you Dracula, read by Christopher Lee (RIP)
Also, it seems that there was a “spiritual sequel” called Dracula’s Child which was written by Author A.J. Barns. It promises to be quiet good. Here’s a review of it.
This is a story I actually told someone else about a few years ago. She posted it on her wordpress site under the same title. The reason I’m not linking back to that site is that I was not a seasoned practitioner of magic then. And I wasn’t a Santero. I made some mistakes in the telling of the story that only now after deep study I know better now.
I just saw someone’s video about a ghost in the form of a disembodied head. I decided to share my own family’s tale with you. Years before I was born, my mother and her family came to this country. This was when Jimmy Carter negotiated with Castro to allow families of political prisoners to be freed to US custody. My uncle came to this country believing the streets were paved with gold.
Instead what they encountered was racism, greed, and drugs in America. He took this reality the hardest. He was an honest immigrant before. He became a cop in this country. But after witnessing the corruption in the American police he just became another dirty cop.
He figured there was no reason to even try being a good man. He became rich from drugs sales as a result. People believe in that Tony Montana bs that Cubans were all drug dealers before they got here. The truth is, drugs had already hit Florida hard before our people came here. Simply many Cubans fell into this life to feed their families.
Now why am I talking about this? Because my uncle was friends with a man who would hit on my mother. And unbeknownst to us and him, he would one day become the subject of this family ghost story. I won’t be mentioning names and I changed my mother’s name. I’m sure people will say this is made up. But hey people will believe what they want to believe.
This one friend of my uncle started to hang around the house a lot. My mom was a teen then, not that he cared. He was married and had tried to get my mother to become his mistress. When he was rejected again and again he would talk behind her back. He told her brother that she was pursuing him.
And that it was causing a rift in his marriage. My uncle having believed this, called her a whore and tried to hit her. My grandma intervened and told him that his “friend” was a lying sack of shit. Still he believed this man over his own sister. My grandmother was or Bruja witch in the Santeria practice.
Her Santeria was mixed with other ancestral magics. And my mom had inherited the gift of sight from her. My mother was able to interpret dreams and pass on messages. One night she dreamed that this man crashed his plane in the mountains somewhere. He was thrown out of the cockpit of the plane through the windshield.
He was instantly impaled by a nearby tree. It took hours until someone found him before he was taken to a hospital. Where he died shortly thereafter. Then right before she woke up, she saw ribbons of many different colors. The dream frightened her and she told my grandmother because she couldn’t interpret it on her own.
Grandma quickly interpreted the ribbons as being the Necklace of Flags. In Santeria we wear multicolored beaded necklaces. They are magically prepared by a Santero or Santera with special rituals. They embody the energy of the Orishas or Gods of the Yoruba pantheon in Nigeria. To wear these necklaces is to be protected.
The Necklace of Flags has the beads of every major Orisha. The combined power of the nacklace of flags can protect the wearer from evil. My grandmother told her she had to tell him about the dream. Because if anything happened to him, she would feel guilty afterwards. When she saw him in her home again, she told him the whole story.
Then the explaination of what the necklace he needed was for. He laughed and accussed her of attempting to bind him with magic.
“¿Me estas tratando de amarrar? (You’re trying to bind me?) You really think you can be rid of me that easily? I know magic and especially the Afro Cuban religion inside and out. Your tricks won’t deceive me little witch,”
At this point, my mother got so mad that my grandma had said her face reddened. She looked him square in the eye and said,
“You know what? You’re an idiot and an asshole. Wear the necklace or don’t. I don’t care what you do. But don’t you ever speak to me again,”
After my grandmother chased him out of their home she hadn’t seen or heard from him for about a week or so. Later another relative answered the phone.
“Rosi, some man says he is so and so and wants to know the color of the beads you mentioned,”
My mom replied,
“Tell him to go to Hell. Don’t answer anymore of his calls,”
The relative explained that he was persona non grata in this home and then hung up on him. Apparently he was supposed to fly a shipment of drugs to another country. As far as I can tell, this is what happened after he was dismissed. He began having engine trouble in the air. He couldn’t just land because he was near the mountains.
He crashed just as my mother said he would. He was propelled from the glass of the windshield. He was impaled by a branch of a tree on the mountain. He stayed alive in agonizing pain. Finally, an indigenous man found him and got help.
But by the time they took him into the town hospital it was too late. He was fatally wounded and died on the operating table. Doctors said he shouldn’t have lasted that long. Hearing this account, I wondered if the family spirits had something to do with this. In the dream he seemed to be cursed to die a slow death.
My grandmother practiced a very strange form of Santeria. It wasn’t pure. There was some necromancy as well as some Spainish witchcraft. Witchcraft from Spain rather than Latin American magic. These spirits were very violent.
And if you were dumb enough to mock them, they would retaliate. I believe this man was cursed to death by them. They must have been sick of his shit. He probably saw or felt something bad to have called her and asked for the specific necklace. Otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered calling before his flight.
Later on my mother started experiencing some stranger than normal paranormal activity. My grandmother brought her to her godfather. He was a Babalawo or priest of the God Orula. The priest told her that the man’s vengeful spirit was around her at all times. He hated her for not talking to him one last time and blamed her for his death.
But he was also obsessed with her. He became an Eggun Buruku or dark ghost. She constantly had to do rituals and prayers to ward him off. Fast forward years later and she was now dating my father. When they would sit on the couch he’d try to put his arm around her.
And something kept pushing his arm off. One day he asked,
“Why do you keep pushing my arm away? Are you upset with me?”
My mother nonchalantly replied,
“Oh that’s the spirit of some asshole who tried to date me years ago. Just ignore him like I do,”
My dad almost laughed. He didn’t actually believe in the supernatural back then. But he went along with it. He went from skeptic to believer almost overnight. This thing would follow him to his car and then flip through the radio stations to annoy him.
Everytime he tried to go to a specific station it would change again by itself. He thought it must have been a glitch. He also told me that it started to follow him home. He had the errie feeling sometimes that someone was in his car with him. Just staring at him with the most profound hatred he had ever felt.
One day when visiting my mother, he used the bathroom. But as soon as he turned on the light, he saw a disembodied head. It had intestines protruding from the bottom of it. And it screamed in his face. He screamed and fan out to tell my grandmother and mother and he never used the bathroom there again.
My mother must have been worth it to him. Because he kept on dating her. Eventually my mom got baptised into my dad’s church and the paranormal activity seemingly stopped. A few years later, as I grew into a man I made a conversion of my own. I began to practice magic, study various religions, and apprenticed in Santeria.
My mother wasn’t thrilled. She went from being a seer to a bible thumper. But just as she found her path in Christianity, I found mine in the old religions. I began reading Jonathan Maberry’s book “Vampire Universe,”. At this time I was helping paranormal groups as a consultant on magical things.
A traditional female Penanggalan
Or things that were just plain weird. I was researching the book for something else then I saw the word Penanggalan. I found out that this creature is seen in different cultures in Asia. All with different names but it’s the same creature. Penanggalan is the name in South East Asia.
I read that it is a floating head with intestines. A sort of hybrid of a demon and a ghost. It’s considered a form of vampire. This was the thing my father saw. The legends even state they scream at people when they fly in the air.
You can get a quick crash course in the lore here :
But, all accounts I have read thus far says they are all women. Men don’t usually turn into these things. And my family is Cuban. The only thing I can think of is that in Cuba there is a large Chinese community. And many Chinese Cubans brought their religion to the island.
So there are people who mix Santeria with other religions. I theorize that some spirits have the ability to control the spiritual politics of certain people or areas. For instance, this country belongs to Native Americans. Now you’d think you would bump into native spirits more than anything else. But a person or community’s beliefs play a role in what kind of spirits are around their homes or areas.
In Cuba for example, you’ll find indigenous spirits as well as dead slaves and non human African spirits. You’ll also find spirits of the Chinese religion in areas dominated by Chinese Cubans. And they wander those areas as if those were their home continents or countries. Maybe this man practiced a variation of Santeria with another religion. Maybe of Asian origin.
Or he had aligned himself with evil spirits that came from that culture when he was alive. And maybe one of them was a Penanggalan. The truth is I don’t know. This is all theory. But it’s the only explaination I have as to why this guy who was Latin American turned into a monster from Asian lore.
What I do know is that my father left his church because he was a skeptic. And he got scared straight to Christianity as soon as he realized that these things were real. He has zero knowledge of Asian religion or culture. And I have never bothered to tell him about this. Why would I? Just telling the story or hearing my mom talk of it upset him.
Somehow I think saying “it’s a demon ghost vampire from Asia,” won’t put his mind to ease. Especially since it raises more questions than answers. But I often wonder if that entity could still be out there. Waiting to get my mother back.
Adventures of A Mage In Miami 