by Editor
on November 28, 2014
The Fox sisters—Kate (1838–92), Leah (1814–90), and Margaret (or Maggie) (1836–93)—were famous mediums in Rochester, New York who started the Spiritualist Movement.
When We Began Talking To Ghosts
Acording to the central belief of the religious and philosophical movement known as Spiritualism, not only is it possible to contact the spirits of the dead, but such contact can be beneficial, with the living receiving comfort, information, and advice from the departed. These communications frequently are exchanged through the intercession of facilitators known as mediums—people who have a special sensitivity for talking to, hearing, and even seeing spirits. Traditionally, spirits speak through a medium during a ceremony called a seance, which usually involves several people including the medium sitting around a table in the dark. However, contemporary mediums can give “spirit readings” in almost any setting, and people can even contact spirits on their own through such means as a Ouija board.
Spiritualism traces it roots to the Rochester area of upstate New York, where in 1848 three sisters, Kate (1838–92), Leah (1814–90), and Margaret (or Maggie) (1836–93) Fox, began claiming they could communicate with people who had died. Kate, the youngest Fox sister, was the most prominent medium of the three, and she allegedly received paranormal messages through coded knocks or “rappings” that she elicited from spirits during group sessions in houses that supposedly were haunted. These sessions—the first seances—became extremely popular, and soon a number of charismatic mediums including the Fox sisters were making a living traveling the country and helping people speak to the dead. By the early 1850s, seances had caught on in other English-speaking countries as well, especially in Britain, and the simple “table rappings” soon evolved into elaborate performances involving musical instruments that played by themselves and visible spirits who floated in the air. [continue reading…]
by Editor
on November 26, 2014
Anonymous Chalk Drawing Of Slenderman. Photo:MDL70
He’s Not A Ghost—Though He Could Be A Demon
In fact, Slender Man is no more and no less than the good, old boogeyman. He’s just been refurbished a bit for the internet culture.
Dating back no further than 2009, the Slender Man myth involves a supernatural being who follows in the well-worn phantom footsteps of solitary, ghoulish, and predatory characters produced in cultures throughout time, and across the world. Wherever they’ve originated, these outskirts-dwelling fiends invariably kidnap and feast on children—in fact their very purpose among many groups is to scare kids into behaving.
In some countries, the local Slender Man/boogeyman-like legend is called the “Sack Man” because of his habit of stuffing children into a cloth bag in order to drag them away. Europe is full of Sack Men—though they also occur on other continents. A man who grew up in Arizona’s Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community during the early 1900s once told us that adults there used to frighten children with tales of a witch who would remove their heads and gather them into a sack if they misbehaved at night. [continue reading…]
by Editor
on November 26, 2014
An Illustration For Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” Painted In 1793-1794 By Swiss Artist Johann Heinrich Füssli
They Once Were Equally Haunting
Perhaps we should call it folkloric evolution. Or maybe we ought to see it as a spontaneous paranormal makeover. But whatever term we use, it’s clear that fairies are viewed far differently today than they were hundreds of years ago. Back then, they weren’t always radiant, or even particularly friendly; in fact, in some places they were associated with graveyards, and the dead.
In his book The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts, author Owen Davies tells us that as late as the 1800s, especially in Scotland but perhaps also in a few other areas of Britain, there was frequent confusion concerning what was a fairy, and what was a ghost. Both “were considered by some to be departed spirits who lingered on the earth.” [continue reading…]
by Editor
on November 19, 2014
Illustration For The Scottish Ghost Story, “The Winding Sheet.” Image By George Brisbane Douglas, 1856-1935
A Shroud, By Any Other Name
Why does a person “dress up” as a ghost by cutting eye-holes in a bed sheet and then draping that sheet over his or her head? Does a traditional ghost really wear sheets?
Well, people in the English-speaking world have been “doing” ghosts in just this way for hundreds of years, and there is a good reason for it. In Britain, until relatively recently, a wooden coffin was a post-mortem luxury that was far too expensive for many people. In fact, only the relatively well-to-do could afford coffins in which to bury the remains of their departed loved ones. That meant that the corpses of poor people—and there were a lot of those—had to go coffinless. [continue reading…]
