Thursday Things: Happy Halloween Edition
31 October 2024. Vol 6 No 44. By Dan McGirt. #273
Thursday Things is here! This week we’re Halloween haunted by a host of ghosts, ghouls, witches, and vampires.
If you enjoy this edition, please click the heart icon in the header or at the end of the post to let me know.
Boo! I am the scary Halloween dog. I am so scary. You are scared. Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash
Vampires of Poland
Vampires are perhaps the best known monsters in popular culture. I’ve read there are more vampire movies than movies featuring any other kind of monster. I don’t feel like looking that up right now. But it sounds plausible.
The same is probably true of novels, comic books, and other entertainment media. Vampires rule! Dracula and company are hard to beat for visceral thrills, chills, and drama.
Yet we often forget that in times past, vampires weren’t considered entertainment — vampires were believed to be a real threat to life and soul. Real enough that the most extreme measures would be taken to protect against them.
No one was more hardcore in fighting the vampire menace than the people of Medieval Poland.
The mysterious mass grave of 450 vampires found in Poland
The 2023 discovery of a mass burial site of 450 individuals in a sleepy Polish town is testament to that fact – especially since many of the cadavers were dismembered as part of anti-vampiric rituals and practices popular at the time.
They had a whole procedure.
The mass grave was stumbled upon by roadworkers in the hamlet of Luzino in northeast Poland, who were excavating the land to expand the thoroughfare. During the course of their labours, they unearthed the remains of hundreds of individuals near a church.
There you are, doing your shift working on the road crew when suddenly, your shovel starts hitting skulls. Yikes!
So far, so normal. However, the extraordinary thing about the discovery was the rituals that had been performed upon the cadavers after death. Some of the skeletons had been decapitated, with the skull then placed between their legs, while others carried coins in their mouths. More still had piles of bricks placed around their head and limbs.
Okay, start taking notes. This will be on the test!
‘It was believed that if someone from the deceased's family died right after the funeral, they could be a vampire,’ explained Maciej Stromski, an archaeologist summoned to the site. ‘That is why after the burial the grave was dug up and the deceased's head was cut off, which was then placed at the feet.
Head off. Got it.
Apparently, the coins were inserted into the mouth of the deceased as a means of warding off vampires (who regard silver as anathema), as well as sealing their soul inside their body and paying for their passage to the underworld.
Be sure to tip your vampire to go away.
And this isn’t the first time gruesome vampire graves have been found in Poland:
In 2008, several decapitated skeletons were found at a burial site near Gliwice, with others having holes drilled through their legs or bricks inserted into their mouths. Then in 2022, a 17th-century female vampire was found near Bydgoszcz with a sickle placed across her neck and a padlock securing her big toe.
You can’t be too careful.
In any event, after careful study and documentation the possible vampires of Luzino were reinterred. May they rest in peace.
Witches worldwide
Vampires may reign at the top of the spooky A-list. But witches are not far behind.
I wouldn’t technically call witches monsters (Baba Yaga excepted) since witches are people. There are certainly “real life” witches to be found among us who go about their business the same as anyone else, not bothering anyone. Harmless, friendly, and not scary at all.
But this is Halloween. So those aren’t the witches that concern us.
We want scary witches! Wicked witches! Curses, spells, black cats, broomsticks, bubbling cauldrons, the whole newt!
Let’s have a look, shall we?
While belief in some form of blood-sucking undead monster of the night exists in many cultures around the world, though not always by the name of vampire, belief in evil witches is even more pervasive.
Witches are everywhere!
To say that witches are universal doesn’t mean belief in them has been recorded in all cultures, or that, where recorded, widespread public accusations, witch-hunts or moral panics ensue.
Well, where’s the fun in that?
What the universality of witchcraft does reveal, however, is our persistent and enduring tendency to imagine the existence of evil people, either next door or somewhere in the next valley, who constantly strive to harm us by supernatural means. Thus, the same ideas crop up time and again in places that are otherwise culturally different and geographically distant.
I must warn you this is our obligatory serious item that goes into the anthropological and psychological origins of pervasive human belief in witches. There’s a little cognitive science, some evolutionary biology, and even a cameo by Jung!
If that’s your jam, click to the article and read the whole thing. It is an interesting essay. But if you’re not up for that, here’s the bottom line spoiler:
According to the evolutionary psychologists, witchcraft belief evolved as a psychological mechanism that aided survival in small-scale Palaeolithic communities by alerting people to the possible existence of internal or external human enemies behaving maliciously in unseen ways.
From this perspective, even though most of us in the modern world no longer live the way our Paleolithic ancestors did, the propensity to believe in invisible evil internal or external threats among us still remains.1 Witches will always be with us in one form or another until we, humanity, outgrow that tendency.
I can’t believe that stupid dog got the top spot. Photo by Hannah Troupe on Unsplash
Monsters on parade
Enough of that serious stuff. Bring on the scary monsters!
10 Spine-Tingling Spirits From Around the World
From succubus chickens to hyena hybrids, here’s a list of 10 strange and terrifying creatures from around the world that you should make sure to avoid.
Succubus chicken? Yep.
Lidérc/csodacsirke // Hungary
The most traditional form of the lidérc (“cocodemon”) is a csodacsirke (“miracle chicken”), which hatches from a black hen’s first egg incubated either under your armpit or in a pile of manure. The creature then haunts you with erotic dreams or even takes on a human form to become your lover—but similar to succubi and incubi, it drains you of your blood and life source. It’s not all bad, however, as they can also act as a familiar, completing tasks for you and locating treasure. (Perhaps the pros in this case don’t quite outweigh the cons, though.) This creature is such a prevalent part of Hungarian collective consciousness that the Hungarian word for nightmare is lidércnyomás.
Meanwhile, in the Amazon, you have to look out for the…
Chullachaki // Peruvian and Brazilian Amazon
Derived from the Quechuan words chulla (“odd”) and chaki (“foot”), the chullachaki is a dwarf-like spirit that roams the Amazon preying on lost travelers. It can shapeshift, often taking on the form of someone you know to trick you into following it deeper into the jungle. Once you’re stuck with no hope of finding your way out, it enthralls you, capturing your soul and trapping you in the jungle forever.
There is, however, a simple way to avoid this outcome: Scope out its feet. A chullachaki will have one foot that looks like a human’s and one that resembles an animal’s. To escape, you must shout its name, at which point it will show its true form and run away, leaving mismatched footprints in its wake.
There is zero chance that I can pronounce “Chullachaki” correctly, so I’m just going to not follow anyone into the jungle.
There are eight more fiendish spirits from around the world to meet in this article, including the terrifying Madam Koi Koi, “said to be the ghost of a vengeful teacher who haunts boarding schools in Nigeria.”
Now that’s scary stuff.
Read the whole thing … if you dare!
Did I hear something? Halloween dog? Is that you? I just hope it’s not the chuka, chaka, chilla … that thing.
Photo by John Silliman on Unsplash
And with that I wish every Happy Subscriber a suitably spooky and fright-filled Halloween!
Thank you for reading!
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Especially in election years.