Never let you down: The Elevator Game

Do you like being trapped in a small space? How about in a small space in an unfriendly dimension? If so, this month’s post is for you! 

I’ve decided to try something experimental to teach you about the wonders of the Elevator Game–a try-at-your-own-risk, internet “ritual” that was born cerca 2008 and has seen an uptick in the past couple of years. 

The goal of the game is to get to another dimension, and then (of course) to get home. All you need to play is:

1. Yourself (you must play alone),
2. A 10+ story building with an elevator that services at least 10 floors, and
3. To follow the “rules” of the game. These include pressing the floor numbers in a specific sequence, among other things.

Let’s play here live. Instead of reading this post in order, press the button at the end of each section to travel to the next floor in the sequence. 

As we go, we’ll discuss what you can expect to happen, and outline any of those other pesky “rules” that might be helpful for staying alive.

Sound good? Scroll down to start on the first floor.

Floor 1

Here we are! You can start the Elevator Game at any time of the day, but you must start the game on the first floor. You must only call the elevator using the “up” button. And, to reiterate, you must be alone. 

Before you step in, take a long moment to familiarize yourself with the lobby around you. How many lights does it have? What is the exact pattern along its walls? What does it smell like? How do shoes sound scuffed against its floors? It will be important that you remember every detail later. Maybe life-or-death important. 

Now, let’s step inside. Once you’re in, do not get off the elevator at any point until we reach our destination or until you return safely to this lobby. Got it?

Going up!

4

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Floor 1

Back at the lobby at last! Thank god. Only…are you sure it’s your lobby? Take a look around. Take a listen around. A smell around. Is anything…off? No? Are you sure? 

Remember how I told you to pay attention when you got on? Just because you’ve exited the ritual doesn’t mean that you’re back where you belong. So…are you sure? Because once you step off the elevator, that’s it. 

If you’re not sure, you’re going to need to start the ritual all over again, completing the sequence again and again until you are.

Also–you’re still remembering not to acknowledge the woman, right? Even though she’s getting a little closer?

I’m sure-GTFO

4

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Floor 2

A few fun elevator music facts:

• “Muzak” is an official brand name, not unlike Kleenex or Chapstick
• 7-Eleven weaponized it in the early 90’s to deter teenagers from loitering around their stores
• The tunes are deliberately calibrated to hack into your brain and manipulate your emotions. Its inventors found it especially helpful, for example, to lull people into a sense of docility as they hurtle hundreds of feet through the air in a small metal box. 

Going up!

6

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Floor 2

At this point, you may hear someone scream your name. Not to worry. It’s time to go to floor 10, our ultimate destination, for the first time. We’re not in the other world quite yet, but I assure you: we’re close.

10

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Floor 3

Good choice. Though that woman’s laughter is going to stick with you for a long time, isn’t it? 

Hit 1 to go to the first floor and get the sweet hell out of here. What’s that? It’s not working? Hit it again. Again!!

1

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Floor 4

Enjoy the elevator ride and this little box you’re trapped in. Claustrophobia impacts about 12.5% of adults at some point; fortunately, it doesn’t impact you. You don’t mind that you can’t stretch your arms out without hitting either wall. Nor that if this box was airtight, you’d run out of oxygen in less than 2 days. 

Also: You’re still alone, right? You have to be alone this entire time, until the moment when you’re not.

Going down!

2

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Floor 5

When the doors open on 5, a woman might get on. 

If she does, do not look at, speak to, or acknowledge her in any way. Even if she looks like someone you know. Especially if she looks like someone you know.

She may try to get you to break the rules. She’ll say that there’s been an accident and ask for your help. Or she might scream obscenities into your ear. Or she might simply stand in silence, staring until the urge to look at her becomes almost unbearable. 

Don’t do it. Do not so much as glance at her feet. 

Now is the moment of truth. You’re going to press floor 1. Only, if the ritual has worked, the elevator isn’t going to go to floor 1. It’s going to floor 10. 

She’s watching you. Press the button.

1

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Floor 6

Did you know that incidents involving elevators and escalators kill about 30 and seriously injure about 17,000 people in the U.S. each year? Elevators specifically cause almost 90% of the deaths and 60% of the injuries. 

Passenger elevator deaths were categorized as follows:

• Falls (60%)
• Caught in/between (21%)
• Other (19%)

“Other,” you say? “Other” meaning what?

Going down!

2

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Going up…

Can you feel your stomach jump? It’s working! Are you really sure you want to do this, though? I haven’t mentioned yet what’s on floor 10. 

If you hit any button other than 1 or 10 before you reach the 9th floor, you can still back out. In fact, I will go so far as to recommend that you back out, since the other thing I haven’t mentioned is that it’s a little unclear if you can ever really come back after visiting floor 10. 

We’re passing 8 now…what’s it going to be?

3

10

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Floor 10

You will see floor 10 now as it is in our world: ordinary enough. Maybe a little quieter than you would like it. And your blood might be pumping a little faster now, because we’re about to get to the part of the game that people really, really don’t like.

Ready?

5

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(Floor 10)

The elevator doors slide open into darkness. The 10th floor is completely deserted. Other than that and the fact that all the lights are off, it looks almost normal. 

Well, you’ve gotten this far, haven’t you? Why don’t you get off?

“Where are you going?” asks the woman. Or maybe she shrieks as your feet cross the threshold. She’s prone to do either–she’s wily that way. You’ve remembered not to jump and look at her right? Even though it’s just you and her here, alone in the dark?

That loneliness is a sign that you’ve made it. This other world is many things, but it’s not populated. As you move down the hall past tightly shut doors, you realize that your cell phone and watch are no longer working. That’s too bad, because at this point, you are really craving some light. 

Hold on–there’s light there, coming through the window. It’s red–a searing red, but not a red that’s warm. It’s–well, it’s coming from a cross. A blazing red cross, glowing way off in the distance.

Except wait: There’s a red cross down the hall now, too, bright in the black. Or was that where you saw it originally? Has it been there all along? It’s closer than the other one. A lot closer.

What’s that? You want to go home? Well, better get back to the elevator, then. Only…which elevator was it? It’s important that you take the same one. Do you remember the one that you took? I can see you’re a little dizzy. Maybe a lot dizzy. Well, hurry back. You’re going to have to execute the ritual in reverse, if you ever want to get home. The hall is tilting merrily, but I’m sure you’ll find the elevator before you pass out. 

(Don’t pass out, by the way. If you do, you’ll never get home.) 

See you’re back in the elevator now! Well, an elevator. The woman is there waiting for you, but I get the feeling that she might be waiting in every elevator, don’t you? I think she might be smiling. But don’t look! Execute the ritual in reverse now, go on. 

What’s that? You don’t remember the numbers? I didn’t tell you to write them down? Oh. Sorry about that. I know the room is spinning and all, and there’s a pretty heavy ringing in your ears, but I’m sure you can figure it out. Go on. Press the right button, just as soon as it holds still. 

1(?)

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Home at last!

Only–are you? You were supposed to move laterally, not upward, right? Oh, well. I’m sure it’s no big deal. When you go to sleep tonight, I’m sure you’ll wake up in your own bed, and not in the hallway on the 10th floor. 

Maybe I should have given you more detailed instructions for this game right from the top. Or been a little more clear that people who have played this game often don’t end up in the greatest of places, even if they seem to have made it out. 

You see, even if you think you’ve played the game right, if you break a single rule, you’ll end up in a world that seems like yours, but is not. A world that will turn on you by degrees. Many report a feeling of being followed, of seeing and hearing strange sounds, of developing a slow, uncontrollable shake. And if they’ve gone and looked at the lady from 5–whew. God help them. They’ll continue to look at her for the rest of whatever remains of their lives. They’ll spot her in a busy crowd. On their street. Outside their window. 

But that’s not you. You followed all the instructions to a T; you never looked at or acknowledged that woman with the brown hair and polka dot dress and blue eyes that struck you right in your guts, and, if you visited the 10th floor, you flawlessly executed the trip in reverse (1-6-5-10-2-4-1. Or was it 1-4-2-5-10-6-1? 1-5-10-4-6-2-1?). Right? 

Right. 

What do you think–was it worth it? Or next time, are you taking the stairs? Share your thoughts in the comments below. 

IMAGE CRED: Derrick Treadwell of Unsplash. Thank you very much!

17 stories below: Myths of the Moscow Metro

In the very first post on this blog, now 6 (!) years ago, I mentioned my strange encounter with a security guard deep in the Portland subway system. It was that encounter that helped to encourage me to write this blog in the first place. 

Subways have always been a fascination of mine. Living abroad as a kid, I have memories of pressing my face against the windows of the London and Tokyo metro systems and imagining all kinds of things lurking in the darkness beyond. When I moved to New York City, one of the first things I did was to look into legends of the “mole people” living in hidden cities in abandoned parts of the MTA (it turns out there are some, but often they are just people that needed help). 

So really, it was only a matter of time before I got to a post like this. I’ve never been to Moscow, but have heard about the beauty of its metro system, as well as about the host of urban legends connected to it. I’ve also had a great time watching my husband play Metro Exodus while attempting to learn to crochet (really, the humanimals are a lesser horror), so it felt like this full moon was a perfect time to take a look. 

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What lies beneath

Exhibit A.

The Moscow Metro system (or Metropolitén) opened in 1935, and is considered to be one of the most beautiful underground systems in the world. Many stations practically double as underground art museums. The whole thing was built during the Stalinist era, with an eye toward showing off Soviet power. All of the metro’s gilded sculptures and murals are impressive enough. But dig into legends, and you’ll discover that these stations deep beneath the surface might be only just the surface. 

“Metro-2” is a second, hidden train system said to be buried below the one that the people of Moscow use every day. Also constructed by Stalin in the 1930’s, it was built to accommodate Soviet citizens in case of war, offering protection 45 stories below Moscow’s streets. Legends about what this “metro system” is vary. It could be a handful of tube lines connecting different cities, a secret passageway for officials, or even an entire hidden city complete with food and swimming pools.

A supposed Metro-2 entrance.

While Metro-2 is shrouded in secrecy, some officials haven’t denied its existence. In 1991, the US Department of Defense wrote a report about an extensive underground installation network linked by subterranean transit under Moscow and its suburbs, which sounds an awful lot like Metro-2. 

There are many tales of enthusiasts disappearing when they’ve gone looking for it.  The “diggers” that have come back report hearing the sounds of KGB boots around alleged Metro-2 entrances. One even said that her friend was shot when they got too close. 

So it is very possible that there really is a Metro-2. As Atlas Obscura points out, Russian leaders have a history of impressive subterranean projects. The Metropolitén is one itself, but Metro-2 might be something more. 

Welcome to the underworld 

You know how you probably shouldn’t build a house above a burial ground? Well, you might not want to build a subway station (or multiple subway stations) below one, either. But that’s what the Metropolitén constructors did. 

Ghost stories abound. There have been encounters with people from out of time–Muscovites, Civil War soldiers, people on horseback. Staff have reported bloodied WWII soldiers wandering around Sokol station in the wee hours of the morning. A girl in a bright dress who ran into the tunnels to escape a group of drunkards still peers out of the dark. A conductor who was burned into a charred husk wanders the tracks in a rage, seeking revenge on his supervisors that blamed him for the accident. 

On September 9, 1999, just after midnight, five women riding in a car on the orange line suddenly lost consciousness. A male passenger filmed the face of a young woman peering at them from outside the train. One year earlier to the day, a young woman had lost consciousness at a station along that line, and fell under an approaching train. 

Going down…

The most haunting (😏) story involves your worst fear re: escalators. In 1982, a loosened chain on one in the Aviamotornaya station resulted in the stairs suddenly pulling apart. Some people plummeted into the 150-foot shaft beneath them; others were ground into the machinery. Still more were killed as the commuters stampeded over each other in an effort to escape. Meanwhile, the escalator kept running. The workers responsible for keeping an eye on it were absent. 

All in all, there were about 30 dead. So now, naturally, gore-covered ghosts wander the station, terrified and missing their hands.

A dark zoo

A biological cornucopia!

Ghosts aren’t the only thing wandering around the Metropolitén. Much like there are supposedly alligators in the New York subway system, Moscow’s boasts massive, radioactive rats. These glow in the dark, and will maul railway workers that get separated from their group. 

Tourist sites report that the Metropolitén “is also rumored to be filled with extraordinary flora and fauna,” to the point that university groups will travel down into it to get interesting things to study. 

In a less uncanny twist, there are (and this is 100% real, yo) dozens of stray dogs that will ride the subway with you. These cuties (and fatties, if this video is to be believed) have mastered the complex system as well as any commuter, and will go back and forth from the suburbs into the city center in search of food and friendly pets. No word on how they fare against radioactive rats.

Train to nowhere

The Metropolitén looks something like a spiderweb, with strands criss-crossing and radiating out of a circle that holds it all together. It is on that circle that, in the wee hours of the morning, a silent ghost train runs. Its cars are styled like the ones from the 1940’s. Depending on the night, they are either full of grim, grey-suited passengers, or are glaringly empty. The train stops at every station, but only rarely do its doors open to let the living aboard. 

Better nab a seat. It’s going to be a long ride.

Much has been made of this train. Some say that it ferries the souls of people who died building the metro under Stalin. Others say that the train’s purpose is not to transport old souls, but to collect new ones. 

There is a Youtube video claiming to show the train at the Polezhaevskaya metro station.* In the video, a semi-transparent train drifts into the station, lights glowing in the dim. A “mysterious” (and very difficult to see, IMHO) man gets off, while living passengers continue about their business unawares. Then the train pulls away, disappearing as if it was never there.

One thing is certain: if you’re on the platform late at night, and an old, ghostly train does pulls up, and its doors do open, it would be best to stand away from the platform edge. Even if you’re not stupid enough to straight-up walk in, if you stand too close, its passengers might make your choice for you. 

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So what do you think? Would you descend into the world of the Metropolitén? Or would you prefer to take the bus? Let me know in the comments below. 

*The video was later used to try to prove the existence of a Chinese ghost train, but it seems like it was originally used for the Russian one. It’s fun to pretend that it’s totally not using the classic double-exposure trick that’s the oldest in the book.

IMAGE CRED: Abderrahman Ait Ali for the fancy ceiling; Anakin (not the pod-racer) for all the underground; Sansculotte for the real (I think) Aviamotornaya escalator; and Kucharek for the ambient inside of a car. 

Hippity hoppity: the Jiangshi

Adios, 2020! This year sure has sucked. Speaking of sucking, it’s time to pay another visit to a monster we know and love: the venerable vampire.  I do try to cover lesser-known monsters on this blog, but seriously, variations of the vampire are everywhere (see here and here and here and here and here). This Chinese iteration is well-known in the East, but less so out here, so I figured we’d give it a shot.

Also, it’s hilarious. And terrifying.

Hop to it 

You’re probably wondering about all the hamfisted word plays on hopping. Thanks to good old rigor mortis, the Jiangshi (僵尸 or 殭屍, literal translation “hard corpse”) wakes from its eternal slumber to find that its legs are too stiff to walk. So instead, it makes due by moving around via little, pogo-stick-like hops, arms outstretched for balance, grasping for its victim’s face. 

Typical Jiangshi attire, sans the mold.

Though that image is hardly intimidating, the Jiangshi’s calf power is something to be feared.  It can hop very quickly and be on you in a moment. And you don’t want it anywhere near you. In varying states of decomposition (not unlike a Western zombie), a Jiangshi is often covered in fuzzy green or white mold. Its nails are long, curved, and black, its tongue wild and impossibly long. Its eyes bulge hungrily from its skull, serrated teeth stretching forward like that of a shark. A single breath from it will kill you dead.

Though often dressed in fancy Qing official attire,* Jiangshi have lost all humanity. They cannot speak and operate on base instinct, ravenous beasts hunting for prey.** Similar to the Edimmu and other vampires of old, the Jiangshi traditionally feed not off of blood, but qi–a person’s life force. Though blind, they can sniff the living out, or jump on them by detecting their breathing. Like other vampires, they operate only in darkness, hopping out of their hiding places in caves and other abandoned places to haunt the night. 

It’s just a hop, skip, and a jump…to DEATH

The Jiangshi was formed independently of the Slavic vampire, first showing up in written records during the Qing Dynasty in scholar Ji Xiaolan’s Yuewei Caotang Biji (閱微草堂筆記, c. 1789 – 1798).  Ji Xiaolan notes that as with many undead creatures, there are multiple ways a Jiangshi can be created. These include but are not limited to:

• Neglecting a corpse, especially if it is left out to absorb the yin energy of the moonlight;
• Having a funeral but failing to bury the body, leaving it open for lightning to strike it or a pregnant cat to leap across its coffin;
• Death by unpleasant means;
• Transmission of the Jiangshi “virus” through biting;
• Sorcery; and 
• The deceased just being kind of a dick who doesn’t want to leave this earthly plane.

Quick, grab the virgin piss!

With so many paths to Jiangshidom, it’s a wonder the world isn’t vibrating under the force of a million hops. Fortunately, just like there are multiple ways to create Jiangshi, there are multiple ways to keep them at bay. Some of these are even incorporated into day-to-day life, like the feng shui convention of nailing a 6-inch panel of wood along the bottom of a house’s threshold, preventing any Jiangshi from getting inside (I guess they don’t hop very high). My other favorite countermeasures include:

• Glutinous rice, which I kept seeing on Jiangshi-warding lists without elaboration. I finally found something that indicates that since sticky rice is used as a way to draw poison out of the living, it can also be used against Jiangshi (or maybe a living person turning into a Jiangshi). No word on how to encourage someone whose main diet is human lifeforce to eat a ball of carbs…fortunately, some lists have it that throwing a ball of rice at the vampire will suffice.
• Tacking a piece of paper with a spell written on it to the Jiangshi’s forehead. Watch your fingers!
• Dropping a bunch of coins on the ground, turning the Jiangshi into Count von Count. 
• The urine of a virgin boy (presumably in a squirt gun).
• Holding your breath.
• “Broom.”  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Bounce, baby out the door

The Jiangshi is fun in its own right, but what I love most about this vampire myth is that it’s based–just a little–in reality. 

The story goes that the original Jiangshi were created by accident. Way back when, families of migrant workers who died far away from home used to pay “corpse drivers” to bring the bodies of their loved ones back for burial. It’s said that for convenience’s sake, the drivers would bind the hands, knees, and ankles of a batch of corpses and then animate them with magic, teaching them to hop themselves home. The driver would then shepherd them under the cover of night, synchronizing their hopping to the beat of a drum. He’d ring a bell at intervals, warning the living away from the bad luck of setting eyes on the unholy undead.

You’d think that was a wild story, but it’s not far off from the truth. There really were corpse drivers who brought deceased workers the long way home under cover of night. But they didn’t (to my knowledge) animate them with magic. Instead, they tied a row of corpses upright along a pole strung between two men’s shoulders–one at the front, the other at the rear. The men would then ferry that load. Naturally, the pole would bounce under the weight of all that flesh, giving the corpses the appearance of hopping when viewed at a distance. It must have been almost as much of a sight to behold as would a Jiangshi itself.

These days, the Jiangshi can be found not only on dark roads, but in movies and anime and cosplay conventions around the world. The 1980’s Mr. Vampire comedy-horror series ensured their place in our collective memory for generations to come. 

That is, if a broom doesn’t get them first.

Count yourself lucky I don’t come after you with a Roomba.

With all that calf work, how does a new Jiangshi avoid shin splints? Share your theories in the comments below. 

*The common depiction of Jiangshi as Qing officials may have originated with said officials’ reputation (at least among the Han Chinese) for being kinda bloodthirsty.

**At least, traditionally. Most of what I’m covering here is the more traditional Jiangshi–more recent movies have taken inspiration from your Twilights and such, making Jiangshi occasionally into more romantic, blood-sucking figures. But I digress.

IMAGE CRED: Wikimedia Commons for the Qing official; Anna Toss for the impassioned attack; Steve Halama for the exuberant hop.

Full moon AND Halloween AND 2020 edition: Thinning the veil

Happy Halloween, everybody! Of course the year that the stars aligned so that there was a full moon (and a Blue Moon!) on Halloween had to be 2020. It is truly a year of enormous things. For this special occasion, I wanted to do something a little special. Let’s talk about Halloween itself, specifically as it relates to The Veil.

If you read this blog, you’re probably the type of person who already knows about Halloween’s origins, but I’ll cover them just in case. Halloween is one of the last truly pagan holidays the U.S. has left. We inherited it from the Celtic Samhain (pronounced sow-wen), the October 31st-November 1st celebration that represents the Celtic New Year. During Samhain, people did (and do) a lot of stuff the broader U.S. still does today: carve faces into produce, bob for apples, dress as demons, crowd around fires, etc. Samhain is the time to harvest what you can from the previous year, and then step back to watch it die. 

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

As you know, winter brings no small amount of danger. But Celtic tradition has it that the change to winter is even more dangerous. On Samhain–on Halloween–the veil between this world and the next lifts, and horrors walk. 

Rather than exploring a specific monster, let’s explore lots of them at once by poking at that gauzy boundary. It will be a bolt of fun!

More chiffon than chenille

People familiar with Spiritualism have probably heard the term “beyond the veil” or “the veil is thin” or some such. This is what the mediums are talking about. “The veil” refers to the border between our physical, logical plane and the ineffable. As the name “veil” suggests, that border isn’t super sturdy. Things can (and do) get through–from our side, and from theirs.

These crossings are assisted by the fact that the veil varies in its thickness. Beyond Samhain, you might experience a thinning of the veil between waking and sleeping, around sunrise or sunset, visiting charged places like cemeteries, or even viewing art. You might notice a pattern here: the key to these thinly-veiled spots is that they are places between places. As the sun sets, it is neither day or night. The cemetery houses both the living and the dead. Art is both emotion and physical output–you get the idea.

Fog is another veil-thinner, because it’s…between needing an umbrella and not?

I should note that a thin veil isn’t all bad. Some actively seek it out. Thinning veils are said to help psychics get a boost in their powers, allowing even ordinary people to better intuit or learn things. They also help us feel close to those who have passed, if not talk to them directly. There’s a lot of wisdom behind the veil. Useful things. Things that can change us for the better.

Of course, there are also some decidedly not useful things.

At the junction between summer and winter, between life and death, it’s easy to see why the veil around Samhain diminishes into no barrier at all. And with no barrier, there’s nothing to protect us from what’s beyond.

Pay no attention to the horror behind the curtain

Samhain honors the inevitability of death; it is a time to remember the dead and to be touched by them. But play your cards wrong, and you can end up among those remembered. 

In trying to talk to grandma, you might instead call up something much less friendly–something that doesn’t go away when it’s told. Many mediums point out that even if you don’t run afoul of a straight-up evil spirit, ghosts can be as nasty and deceitful as any stranger in real life. Also as mercurial–you might run into one that seems fine, but then you let on that it’s dead, and it loses its XScreamSnickersBar™. 

I’m good on any inter-veil wisdom, thanks.

In short, ghosts are whack. You have to be careful who you’re talking to, and how you talk to them. A long list of protective steps is recommended, even for first-time dabblers. 

Then there are the fairies. Oh, yes–I’ve covered at length before how very not-Tinkerbell-y the fairies of European lore can be (and lots of other cultures’ lores, for that matter). When the veil thins, they all come through. There are fairies that will steal your soul to pay their Halloween tithe to hell, or that simply keep it as a collectible in a jar. You can be drowned, turned into a husk of a human, cursed, kidnapped, or have your children kidnapped or even murdered for the slightest offense.

You might run into the Wild Hunt, or the Sluagh, or the Fachan–a chain-wielding, fur covered monstrosity with body parts sticking out of its stomach, so hideous that one look can stop a man’s heart. Or you could bump into a Red Cap, a fairy that looks like an innocent old man but is unstoppably fast and strong and will hack you to bits with a scythe. A monster specifically associated with Samhain is Yr Hwch Ddu Gwta, a tailless black sow that wanders around with a headless woman and devours souls. There is truly no shortage of fun. 

See you on the other side

So it’s 2020. There’s a full moon, a blue moon, and lots of SourPatchZombieKids™ goin’ down. How bad could this Halloween be? 

Everything’s f i n e.

First off: The veil is thin indeed. HiggyPop’s Forecasted Paranomal Activity barometer shows it at a mere 30.7% of its full strength, which means we’re at Threat Level Severe. Tonight during the witching hour (3:00 AM), it might drop down to 0%. To make things even more exciting, this is the year that the UK HAUNTED team has for some reason decided to attempt to break the Guiness World Record for the #WorldsLargestSeance, streaming it live so that countless amateur mediums can join in from home. With all of that psychic energy flooding past whatever tatters remain of the veil, what could go wrong?

Me? I’ll be deep in the woods by the time you read this, camping in the dark mountains on what promises to be a very exciting night. I have one flashlight and no extra batteries.

What could go wrong, indeed. 

If the veil were a shower curtain, what kind of shower curtain would it be? Fabric? Vinyl? A map of the U.S.? Share your thoughts in the comments below. 

IMAGE CRED: All images to the good miscellaneous artists free on Canva.

Backseat driver: Bride of the 13 Curves

Anyone with even a passing interest in urban legends and folklore will know that ghost bride stories (especially in the U.S., which I am most familiar with) are a dime a dozen. Certainly there are some practical reasons for this–white wedding dresses double nicely as ghostly attire, so anyone seeing a pale apparition is likely to think “bride” (though I guess they could also think “guest wearing a hotel robe” and or “toga-sporting frat bro”). But I suspect the root of all these legends goes deeper than that. Weddings are extremely emotionally charged. More pointedly, weddings are (according to historical sexist assumption) extremely emotionally charged for women, since of course we could have no other goal in life other than to get married and pop out babies. Frustrated emotions are a great recipe for hauntings. Add in some more sexist stuff about women being more ~mysterious~ and ~emotional~, thus being more ghost-like even in life, and it’s not a shocker that ghost bride legends grow like weeds. 

That these legends are so common (and so irritating in their implications) is why I have ignored them on this blog so far (except for a passing story here). But having recently been a bride myself (#COVIDwedding), I figured that it was about time that I gave one a shot.

Seatbelts: You gotta wear ’em

Okay, so this legend is also pretty typical in that it starts out with a car crash. 

Marcellus, New York is a little town not far from Syracuse, with a population of about 6,200. It’s a scenic area full of hills, valleys, and winding, winding roads (I once ate Burger King on a road trip down one of these roads, and regretted it bitterly). The windiest of these is Cedarville Road, an unlit, rapidly twisting mile of asphalt through thick woods that has earned the moniker of “the 13 curves.”

Like this, though not this road exactly.

Regardless of how you feel about the veracity of ghost stories, this road can legitimately be dangerous. A woman died there in a 1941 collision, and 2 more girls died in 1959 when their toboggan slid onto the road and met with a station wagon. The officer responding to that scene had trouble standing up straight, the road was so icy. Even discounting weather conditions and the fact that the road is infamously dark, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see that quick switchbacks + speeding cars can equal disaster. 

Naturally, such a disaster is said to have befallen our veil-toting protagonist, sometime between 1900s and today. The legends vary, but generally speaking say that a buggy, car, or motorcycle was carrying newlyweds down Cedarville Road when, around the 6th curve, the husband lost control of the vehicle. It spun out and smashed into the creek, killing the bride, groom, or both. Regardless of who died when, the groom didn’t see fit to stick around. But the bride sure did. 

Why did the ghost bride cross the road?

The script for 13 Curves bride sightings varies as much as the origin legends, but the most basic follows the experience of Msmarymac, who relates what happened when they were driving down the expanse of road one night with a friend:

Blood and glowing eyes not shown here.

“While making our way around the sixth curve, a dim glowing white shape appeared in the road ahead of us. It slowly made its way from the left side of the road to the right. When it got right in the middle of the road, it stopped and turned towards us. It was about the height of an average woman, but it was not very well defined––it was more of a staticy blur than a clear image. It did have a red glow up near where the head would approximately be on a human being.

I slowed the car to a near halt, amazed at what I was seeing. “Do you––“ I started to ask.

“Yeah, this is nuts,” my friend responded before I could even finish the question.

Just after our exchange, the shape darted to the right, off the side of the road, disappearing. We hightailed it out of there.”

There are also fun tales of people checking their rearview mirror out of habit, only to find a blood-covered woman staring at them from the back seat. That alone is enough to cause someone to crash, but 13 Curves bride also enjoys darting out at random into the road. Some say that her goal is to make an already dangerous road more, trying to create crashes so that others can suffer as she has. 

The woman of your dreams

So we know that at least 3 people have died on Cedarville Road. Is there evidence of a couple dying there as well? Something other than hearsay on which we can base this story?

In short, no. The William G. Pomeroy Foundation highlights that while we have written histories of the other deaths, nothing shows up about the demise of a newlywed couple, which is odd since something as juicy as that would have surely made the news. Their article suggests that the whole thing can be traced back to a deliberate hoax, wherein a local woman wanted to get back at some “smart aleck” teenagers. She enlisted the help of her daughter to dress as the bride, and then drove the teens down the 13 Curves and scared the bejeezus out of them. 

But that doesn’t seem to matter. Regardless of how little the 13 Curves bride legend is based in reality, it continues to have legs. People flock to the road at night in an attempt to see the ghost, particularly around Halloween. Locals seemingly do as much as they can to encourage them. A sign sits at the top of the road telling the bride’s story, and homeowners near it set up frighteningly realistic decorations that look like the bride, even dressing up as her themselves to see if they can’t scare some passerby. 

You yourself could go on a drive to see the ghost this Halloween–it’s a socially-distanced activity perfect for the whole family. 👌 Even if there was no ghost to begin with, who’s to say our collective subconscious hasn’t brought some shade to life?

Collect them all! What is your favorite ghost bride story? Anyone know of any that actually involve a ghost groom (I Googled for that in vain)? Share your thoughts in the comments below. 

PHOTO CRED: Strong Unsplash representation this month; a big thanks for the not-technically-the-road-but-a-road by Lauren Coleman on Unsplash and creepiest-Creative-Commons-bride-I-could-find-that-was-not-a-zombie by Joel Overbeck on Unsplash.

Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody–

Sleepovers! Those are a thing that used to happen, back in the days before COVID-19. The ones I experienced growing up were pretty stereotypical. There was ice cream, sleeping bags, attempts to reproduce music videos, and, of course, dares. More often than not, these dares included one many American girls might be familiar with: the dare to lock yourself in the crapper and invite a ghost to kill you. 

I had always assumed that the Bloody Mary “game” was just shallow fun, with no real meat behind it in terms of meaning or actual sightings. Hot damn, was I wrong.  

Bathroom roulette

Let’s start out with an introduction. The Bloody Mary legend is young-ish, with first written mentions dating back to the 1970’s. It’s unclear where exactly it came from, but it does seem to have some ancestry in older British traditions of catoptromancy (such as one where a girl would walk up a flight of stairs backward in a darkened house, holding a candle and a hand mirror that would show either the face of her future husband [score!] or her own skull [eat more healthily and avoid cigarettes and fast-moving buses!]). 

Behold this place of horror!

For those uninitiated, the game goes something like this:

1. Go into the bathroom, shut the door, and turn the lights off. 
2. Look at whatever you can see of yourself in the darkness in the mirror.
3. Repeat “Bloody Mary” aloud three times, keeping your eyes on your reflection.
4. Bolt before Bloody Mary coalesces in the glass.

The details of the rules vary. Some say you’re supposed to spin while you say her name, others that you need to have the water on or have a single lit candle below the mirror. You can say “Bloody Mary” a bunch of times (way more than three), or for good measure add “I killed your baby!” You can do it by yourself or in a group. Sometimes, you have to flush the toilet before you leave.

Even if you escape that vision in the mirror, you might experience “signs” of Bloody Mary for the rest of the day–a bloodied knee on the playground. Splattered ketchup across your shirt. A dead bird on the way home from school. 

And if you don’t escape her? If a woman drenched in blood, or headless, or simply very dead does coalesce before you, either over your shoulder or in place of your own reflection? Bloody Mary can scratch you, show you a sign of your own impending death, or reach out of the mirror, grasp your shirt, and drag you through. 

Gory histories

So this is all good and well. But as a kid I never stopped to ask: who is this Bloody Mary ghost supposed to be? It turns out that there are three generally-cited possibilities.

Erzsébet Báthory

“I’m so bored while not murdering” Bathory

The first and least likely (IMHO) is Erzsébet Báthory, the infamous Hungarian noblewoman who tortured and murdered a metric butt-ton of women in the late 1500s (possibly as much as 650, though it’s possible that Báthory was a victim of a conspiracy to steal her property and tortured/murdered much fewer). Legend has it that she bathed in her victim’s blood to preserve her youth. 

It’s all very grisly and memorable. But Erzsébet (or, anglicized, Elizabeth) is “Erzsébet,” not “Mary.” What’s more, her life doesn’t resonate with the Bloody Mary game in a way that the other candidates do, as we shall see.

Mary Queen of Scots

Bearing it all pleasantly.

The second candidate is Mary Queen of Scots, who was an unlucky contender for the throne against Queen Elizabeth I. After a life spent mostly imprisoned and struggling for power, Mary was beheaded in 1586. She went to her death bravely, even making jokes, but the executioner botched the job horrifically. 

The first swing buried the axe into the back of Mary’s skull. The second went into her neck, but didn’t sever it. Finally, the P.O.S. executioner just sawed away at the sinew attaching Mary’s head to her body, blood sluicing everywhere, Mary’s faithful dog still clinging to her skirts, trembling. Job finally finished, the executioner held her severed head aloft, crying “God Save the Queen!” But he’d only grabbed Mary’s wig, and her head fell out and smacked to the floor. 

In short, there is plenty about the scene that makes it easy to believe that Mary might come back as a vengeful ghost. But for me, she’s not as strong of a contender as Elizabeth I’s half-sister, Queen Mary I. 

Queen Mary I, “Bloody” Mary

Queen Mary I actually was nicknamed Bloody Mary, thanks to her burning some 300 Protestants at the stake. Those killed included many vulnerable poor and disabled people. One victim was even pregnant–the trauma of the burning made her give birth, but her newborn was simply tossed back in the fire with her. 

Those arms are definitely long enough to reach out and pull you over the sink.

Hard as it is to empathize with someone who could order that, Mary I wasn’t the only monarch to do so, and much of the vitriol against her seems to stem from misogyny and cruelty against her frumpiness. She was a miserable woman. Her father was King Henry VIII, who famously annulled his marriage to her mother in order to marry Anne Boleyn, who gave birth to the much prettier and more charming Elizabeth I, who Mary would forever be compared unfavorably to. She was plagued throughout her life by terrible menstrual pains and irregular periods. She married someone ten years her junior whom she was madly in love with, but who was indifferent to her. 

Desperate for affection and political security, Mary hoped, at least, for a child. But when she finally got pregnant–the happiest point of her life–people whispered that it was all a fake, that her growing stomach contained nothing but a tumor. That was cruel enough, but then, when Mary went to give birth, nothing happened. Her stomach deflated, and no baby came out. The vicious rumors were right, but not through any fault of her own. She’d wanted to be pregnant so badly that she’d tricked her body into believing that it was, leaving her with nothing but very public humiliation and hate. 

A common plight

Why do I think that Queen Mary I is mostly likely the Bloody Mary? Because in addition to actually being nicknamed that and killing a bunch of people, Queen Mary I’s problems with fertility and periods dovetail perfectly with the game of Bloody Mary itself. 

Think about it: the game is played mostly by girls. In a bathroom. Looking at your own reflection, you’re summoning another woman that’s covered in blood. It’s frightening, sometimes painful. And in some cases, you take pains to flush the toilet before you leave. 

As scholar Alan Dundes points out, when you look at what goes into the game, it’s hard not to see Bloody Mary as a handy way for pre-pubescent girls to process the oh-so-taboo prospect of getting your first period, and all of the horror that entails. Enter Mary I, Queen of frustration, pain, and blood. Who better to teach you about the importance and terror of periods than the woman whose problems with them made her life a living hell?

The monster in the mirror

So there is all of that. Bloody Mary is a surprisingly nuanced allegory for something almost all girls have to contend with. But clever though that allegory might be, here’s something even more fun: sometimes, Mary isn’t an allegory at all. Given the right conditions, shrieking slumber party participants will actually see another face in the mirror. 

A 2009 study of 50 test-naive individuals revealed that after less than a minute of gazing into their reflections in dim light, so-called “strange-face illusions” began–for every single participant. From Giovanni Caputo, the author of the study:

“The descriptions differed greatly across individuals and included: (a) huge deformations of one’s own face (reported by 66% of the fifty participants); (b) a parent’s face with traits changed (18%), of whom 8% were still alive and 10% were deceased; (c) an unknown person (28%); (d) an archetypal face, such as that of an old woman, a child, or a portrait of an ancestor (28%); (e) an animal face such as that of a cat, pig, or lion (18%); (f ) fantastical and monstrous beings (48%).”

Obviously in the context of Bloody Mary, we are interested chiefly in this last one. Caputo himself seems puzzled by it, especially as he tries to put together what exactly is happening with these illusions. As he puts it:

“The disappearance or attenuation of face traits could be linked to the Troxler fading that occurs in the periphery while staring at a central fixation. However, this explanation would predict that face traits should fade away and eventually disappear (Wade 2000), whereas the apparitions in the mirror consist of new faces having new traits.”

Maybe, he postulates, this “strange-face” illusion thing is just a misfiring of the brain’s face-processing mechanism–with the dim light and the fixed attention, it’s freaking out and scrambling and deforming your own face. Seems simple enough. And yet…

“Frequent apparitions of strange faces of known or unknown people support the idea that the illusion involves a high-level mechanism that is specific to global face processing. On the other hand, the frequent apparition of fantastical and monstrous beings, and of animal faces cannot, in our opinion, be explained by any actual theory of face processing. Neither constructive approaches nor top down accounts seem to provide adequate explanations.” 

God, I love me some weird stuff that science can’t explain. And I love me some weird modern rituals that get at the ID of our brain, and some dramatic and twisted histories. Who would have known that plain old Bloody Mary would have all three?

Had any fun times gazing into a dark mirror? Maybe you haven’t looked close enough. Give it a try and share your hallucinations (…?) in the comments below. 

IMAGE CRED: Wolfmann for the bathroom; Public domain for Bathory; Public domain for Mary Queen of Scots; Public domain for Mary I; Susanne Nilsson for the candle.

Ghosts of the Revolutionary War: Fort Mifflin

Happy hangover-after-Independence Day! In case you haven’t gotten enough America, I’ve got a themed post for you. I hope you like history. And ghosts. 

Authentic reenactments

Fort Mifflin from above.

Fort Mifflin, located on “Mud Island” in the Delaware River just south of Philadelphia, is a historic landmark that attracts thousands of school groups, history buffs, and curious tourists each year. Visitors walk one of the only remaining Revolutionary War battlefields and see barracks, hospital grounds, gunpowder rooms, and more. They learn from uniformed guides and reenactors how 200+ men gave their lives in 1777 so that Washington could make his escape, and then how the fort morphed to be used in the Civil War, WWI, WWII, and others. 

One of these visitors included a woman who was especially impressed by the casemates, a fortified area that was constructed after 1777 in order to protect soldiers from any future bombardments. The casements are dark and dank, with few windows and so many bugs that they were deemed unsuitable for habitation not long after they were built. But during the Civil War, Fort Mifflin housed people there anyway, using the cave-like rooms as makeshift prisons. Awed by this more atmospheric section of the fort–and the excellent tour guide that presided over it–the visitor went immediately to pass on her compliments to Dori McMunn, then Executive Director of Fort Mifflin on the Delaware. Pleased, McMunn asked her if she could give a description of her guide, so that McMunn could pass along her compliments. 

“She said, ‘oh, he was a younger gentleman,’ which would have made sense. And I said to her, ‘well, how was he dressed?’ And it happened to be Rev War day, okay, so all my guys were dressed in Revolutionary War uniforms. She said, “Oh, he’s in a Civil War uniform, a nice blue uniform with the hat and everything.’

And I’m thinking, ‘There’s nobody in there like that.’”

Not wanting to disturb the woman, McMunn merely thanked her and sent her on her way. But as soon as she was gone, McMunn went into the casements to look for the mysterious man. As she had suspected, they were empty–just the moisture on the ceiling and the bugs on the walls. There was no sign of any man there at all. 

It wouldn’t be the first time guests would come with enthusiastic compliments about “reenactors” that weren’t part of the staff–including more reports specifically about the Civil War fellow. Fort Mifflin’s caretaker also got word of someone giving tours in the powder room, again with guests offering compliments on “how good he was, and how authentic he looked.” Spoiler alert: There was no one giving tours in the powder room. It seemed that the human tour guides were getting a helping hand.

A second kind of history

Unnerving though these appearances were, it is likely that no one was surprised by them. There is a history of odd things happening around Fort Mifflin, not only to visitors, but to staff and more sanctioned reenactors. 

A closer look at what I believe are the officer’s quarters at Fort Mifflin.

Take a former tour guide, who slept in the officer’s quarters for a few nights. Every morning at 3am sharp, the man was awoken by a rapping on his door. There was no one outside. The guide knew–and probably laid very still in his bed knowing–that 3am happens to be the time which those at the fort used to switch shifts for the next watch.  

Or take a story from a reenactor that chose to spend the night in the casements. He fell asleep with a fire in the fireplace and the door locked from the inside. Some time later, he started awake. There was a man in his room, a soldier in Revolutionary War gear, warming himself by the fire. When the reenactor looked twice, the figure was gone. His door was still locked. 

He wasn’t the only one to get a surprise. As The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in 2009, “re-enactors who spent the night at the fort reported seeing ‘black, pajama-like shadows’ that spooked them so bad they fired blanks from their period firearms at them. Some saw jiggling doorknobs, a figure peering from an unoccupied room and a hissing shadowy figure. At night’s end, ‘I was picking up trash when I heard the most pleasant woman’s voice in my ear say: ‘Thank you!’’ said re-enactor Ryan Rentschler, who was so unnerved that he ditched the fort sleepover to camp out in a friend’s van.”

To some staff, the occurrences are so common as to almost become old hat. There are numerous accounts of interrupted work, such as the deliberately-closed door to the blacksmith shop repeatedly opening itself on a hot day (staff presumed that 18th-century “Jacob the blacksmith” was feeling stifled). Once a dark figure disappeared into one of the buildings at closing time, only to leap out at the guide that went to hunt them down. Pencils and files spontaneously going missing from office drawers. Windows spring open in the dead of winter. You get the idea.

200-year-old celebrities 

On top of all of these are the handful of personalities who are regulars. One is “The Lamplighter,” a man with black hair and a white puffy shirt who drifts through the soldier’s barracks, carrying a long pole with a dim candle at the end to light lamps that disappeared some 200 years ago. 

Fort Mifflin as darkness falls.

Another is Elizabeth Pratt, or, less kindly, “the Screaming Lady.”  Legend has it that she was a wife living in the officer’s quarters that had a nasty falling out with her daughter. Before they could reconcile, the daughter got sick and died. Mad with grief, Elizabeth took her own life shortly thereafter. Unfortunately, her anguish didn’t die with her. There have been reports of her screams echoing from the officer’s quarters, to the point that neighbors have called the police. She is also sometimes seen by children peering out the window of her old room, one hand to her forehead, perhaps hoping to see her daughter among the kids outside. 

Perhaps the most sinister ghost is that of the “Faceless Man.” During the Civil War, Private William H. Howe was arrested and held at Fort Mifflin on two charges: desertion and the murder of the officer that went to arrest him. Howe admitted to the desertion, but never to the murder. Nevertheless, it was his fate to become the only prisoner to ever be hanged at Fort Mifflin, a black bag over his head. Supposedly, the grass still refuses to grow at the site where he died, and he is still floats around the casements–a man whose face, even in death, cannot be seen. 

“History lives” at Fort Mifflin

Far from trying to quiet these stories, the Fort Mifflin on the Delaware nonprofit organization has chosen to lean into them. And why not? Ghost hunters have helped to raise nearly 40% of the site’s budget. You can go on candlelight ghost tours and even book private overnight stays today. I myself might try to, provided the pandemic ever clears up.

If we’re lucky, we might get a more intimate glimpse into the past than the lovely grounds and educational materials alone can offer. As the Philadelphia Ghost Hunters Alliance’s Lewis B. Gerew II noted, “It’s great to have a piece of history actually interact with you.”

Which war would you most like to interact with a ghost from? Share your preferences in the comments below. 

IMAGE CRED: Big thanks to Surfsupusa for Fort Mifflin from above, Larry Lamb for a closer look at the buildings, and Charles Homler for Fort Mifflin at night.

Love (of sugar) never dies: the haunting of Fiorello Dolce

During this whole self-isolation pandemic apocalypse thing, I have noticed two things about myself: 1) I miss eating out way more than I thought I would and 2) I have more of a sweet tooth than I thought I did. Based on what I’m seeing around the internet, it looks like I’m in good company. And in the case of Long Island patisserie Fiorrello Dolce, that company includes beings from beyond the veil.

Glazed and confused

Fiorello Dolce was founded in the summer of 2006 by Gerard Fioravanti and Steven Marinello. It’s a cute, modern shop situated at the far end of a little strip of stores in Huntington, New York. All of their pastries are made from scratch, using only butter and the freshest ingredients they can find. Executive Pastry Chef Fioravanti has an impressive pedigree, having studied at the French Culinary Institute in New York City and baked pastries with famous pastry chefs and for famous celebrities (including David Bowie!). He brought all that knowledge to Fiorello Dolce and ensured its success with legendary croissants, flourless chocolate cakes, and “frenangles” (a proprietary cross between a french croissant and a bagel that looks painfully good). In short, the launch of Fiorello Dolce was great; totally normal. 

Here, have some pastry imagery.

Then one day, when Fioravanti was working alone in the kitchen, the quiet was shattered by a voice shrieking his name. Startled, Fioravanti checked the tires of the cart he was wheeling–that shriek must have been them squealing, because there was definitely no one else around. But the tires seemed fine. It must have just been a weird fluke. 

But then there was another weird fluke: a new employee–who claimed to have some psychic abilities–told him almost immediately upon their arrival that there were definitely ghosts in the shop. By now Fioravanti was beginning to become concerned, and shared his concerns with Marinello. Marinello scoffed them off, until a bunch of buckets spontaneously crashed off the shelves right in front of him. Then one morning when Fioravanti was baking blueberry muffins, he saw a “white shadowy light” blur past him out of the corner of his eye. 

Over the next months came the real fun stuff. Oven doors opened by themselves. Untouched timers turned off before their time, causing batches of cookies to burn. Spatulas whispered and tinkled on their racks. A rolling rack shifted itself over a foot. Security cam footage revealed a roll of paper towels luxuriously unrolling itself in the dead of night–a feat no one could replicate even with the flow of the air conditioner. 

One morning, the crew came in to find the front iPad blasting music, skipping songs after a few beats as if someone were searching for something they liked, until at last landing on “Blue Monday” by New Order and cranking the volume. Though there was no one behind the counter, security footage showed the screen lighting up and the password being typed in again and again. It only went dark with Fioravanti rushed over to turn it around.

That was it. Fiorello Dolce were totally haunted.

A calculated whisk

Despite the bizarre circumstances, business continued as usual. After all, there was nothing threatening about the disruptions–just a little startling (such as when one employee stepped into the walk-in refrigerator and jumped at a clap behind her, only to whirl and find that no one was there). But everyone was curious about what was up.

By happy circumstance, Giovanti met a ghost hunter, who then brought in a medium. They photographed orbs, found cold spots, and got repeated off-the-chart readings around the spatulas. Overall the energy they picked up was good-natured, which the staff was doubtless happy to hear. But there was something different about the alleyway immediately outside the back of the store–a sinking feeling of dread, foreboding. The medium quickly turned back inside.

Image of alleged ghost orbs–not of Fiorello Dolce’s, though Fiorello Dolce has many.

Research revealed that the bakery was built on land that used to contain nothing but wetlands and run-down rowhouses–the poorest (and roughest) neighborhood in Huntington. The medium picked up one ghost telling him that his name was Eddie. Sure enough, after more research it turned out that a man named Eddie had been murdered in that very alley back in the 1970’s, which might explain the weird vibes. Fortunately, every other ghost the medium connected with seemed to have a less violent past.

It seems like Giovanti has brought in a few mediums over the years to try to figure this thing out, but the results have been no different. He even tried hanging up medicinal sage one night, to see if that would drive the spirits away. The next morning, the sage was on the ground. The ghosts were here to stay. 

For old time’s cake

So does working in a haunted bakery freak Giovanti or his staff out? Apparently not. You can see in the security camera footage that when strange stuff happens, everyone seems to take it in stride. 

I’m sorry/you’re welcome.

This might be because the team attributes many of the ghostly presences to family members who have come back to hang around and “help out.” Mediums have picked up staff’s grandparents, mothers, aunts. Giovanti has even mentioned that he recognized the face of an old landlord in one of the orb pictures–an elderly gentleman who loved the bakery and was always eager to offer tips on how things should be done. 

So all in all, this is a positive haunting–spooky, but not scary (except, maybe, for that alleyway). It’s often joked that the ghosts are just there because they miss the sweet scent of baking treats.

In the meantime, the haunting press seems to be good for business; Giovanti is even planning to write a book. Fiorello Dolce was closed due to the coronavirus, but seems to have recently opened once again. I’m sure that Huntington–and all its ghosts–will be glad to have them back. 

What pastry would you return to the mortal plane for? Share your favorites in the comments below.

IMAGE CRED: None of these images are from Fiorello Dolce proper, but as usual, wanted to set the tone (without infringing on copyright). Thank you to Welleschik for the unholily-delicious-looking assortment, mystery Wikimedia contributor for the orbs, and Stu Spivack for the plastic bag cream puff.

Piss off, coronavirus: 3 monsters weirder than the times we live in

Hey everybody. I hope that you all are doing well out there and are practicing social distancing, washing your hands, and covering your face when you go out so as to not inadvertently kill anyone. I’m writing this in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, at the current U.S. “epicenter” in NYC, and things are getting pretty weird right now. 

The news is frightening enough at the moment. So instead of digging into a pestilence monster (too real…), I wanted to share a couple of monsters I’ve come across on my wanderings through the internet that will hopefully make you chuckle. TO DEATH.

1. The Vampire Watermelon (and its nemesis, Vampire Pumpkin)

A real vampire watermelon with tell-tale “blood spots.”

We have the Roma people to thank for this one. Basically the legend goes that if you leave watermelons or pumpkins out for 10 days under the full moon (or around Christmas? Or just leave them in a place where they are in a position to “fight one another”?), they will grow a bad temper and an insatiable thirst for blood. 

Vampiric fruits look much like regular fruits, but will roll around and make growling noises (“brrrl brrrl,” to be precise). Also, they may attempt to infiltrate your house and murder you. You can protect yourself by going all metal on them and boiling them alive, then scrubbing them with a broom, and then burning that broom to ash. No word on whether you can then use the carcass to make pumpkin pie or watermelon jello shots.

Depending on how long this social distancing thing goes on, I may attempt to create my own vampiric produce on my patio next month. Perhaps I can pivot my talent for making plants dead into making them undead. 

2. Gulon the Pooper

Possibly the best image of all time.

Raise your hand if you’ve been eating more than usual lately. Keep your hand raised if your favorite snack is the flesh of your enemies. Now keep your hand raised if you like to squeeze yourself between two trees to force the poop out of your butt like a Play-Doh Fun Factory Machine in order to make room for round two. 

The Gulon does all of the above. It is a cryptid hailing from Scandinavia, where I can only assume it is a national treasure. A notorious glutton, the Gulon is about the size and shape of a dog, with the head and claws of a cat and the tail of a fox. Many dismiss its legend as people from the Middle Ages getting overexcited about seeing a wolverine. I myself like to think that the Gulon is real, and probably an ancestor of my cat.

3. Bakezōri, the sandals that stand up on their own

A depiction of the fiends (sans eyeballs).

Truly, being shut in in a small apartment offers an olfactory cornucopia. Mostly the smells here have been good (like everyone else, we’ve been baking a lot of bread), but occasionally some less savory scents creep in. The Bakezōri is born of a neglected sandal–arguably the footwear (outside maybe of ballet flats) that smells the worst.

The Bakezōri is a type of Japanese Yōkai in the family of Tsukumogami–household objects that have been ignored for so long by their owners that they take on a life of their own (perhaps this is might be why Marie Kondo is so insistent about getting rid of your old crap). Basically what happens is that the much-beleaguered thong sprouts arms, legs, and an eyeball, and then runs around the house at night yelling nonsense and making mischief. 

Come to think of it, this monster may also bear some relation to my cat. 

***

That’s all I have for now. Stay safe out there, and keep others safe by going “out there” as little as possible. We’ll see you on the other side.

Really, which would win in a fight, though–a Vampire Pumpkin or a Vampire Watermelon? Perhaps I should cultivate both and set up a Produce Fight livestream so as to make a little cash on the side. Place your bets in the comments below. 

IMAGE CRED: Ke4roh for the malevolent melon; Whatever 16th-century scholar that took the time to painstakingly paint individual poops coming out of the Gulon; Jippensha Ikku for the sandal chase.

Fantasy man: the Rake

The internet, as we well know, is whack. It offers an unimaginable amount of information, and also an unimaginable amount of B.S. I’m going to be straight with you from the start: the Rake is total B.S. We know where the legend came from. We’re able to track its growth. But like so many monster myths, though the Rake started out simply enough, he’s taken on a life of his own.

The Rake: an origin story

We can thank the folks over at 4chan for the Rake’s existence. Back in 2005, they decided to create a new urban legend. After toying with it under the name “Operation Crawler,” they landed on something similar to the Rake the internet knows and loves today: 

The creator of the Rake, probably.

“Here’s what we’ve got so far: Humanoid, about six feet tall when standing, but usually crouches and walks on all fours. It has very pale skin. The face is blank. As in, no nose, no mouth. However, it has three solid green eyes, one in the middle of its forehead, and the other two on either side of its head, towards the back. Usually seen in front yards in suburban areas. Usually just watches the observer, but will stand up and attack if approached. When it attacks, a mouth opens up, as if a hinged skull that opens at the chin. Reveals many tiny, but dull teeth.”

As Rake stories developed and got passed around, the subconscious of the internet whittled him into something more elegant: a pale, hairless, naked man (sans genitals, because I guess that would be a little distracting from the terror) with pits for eyes and long, sharp fingers. Those fingers–which cut his victims open–are how the Rake got his name (alas, he is not secretly a cocky womanizer). 

The Rake went from 4chan to LiveJournal and then back again, his legend taking on the form of a standard story, complete with epistemological mini-stories nested within. The story opens in the summer of 2003, with local news stations in upstate New York reporting sightings of a “strange, human-like creature” before an apparent media blackout. People involved in the sightings banned together to try to find answers. Together, they accumulated a group of documents spanning back to the 17th century that detail encounters with the Rake. 

There is a suicide note from 1964, a mariner’s log from 1691, a (somewhat repetitive) translated Spanish journal entry from 1880:

“I have experienced the greatest terror. I have experienced the greatest terror. I have experienced the greatest terror. I see his eyes when I close mine. They are hollow. Black. They saw me and pierced me. His wet hand. I will not sleep. His voice (unintelligible text).”

The coup de grace is an account from 2006. In it, a woman describes waking up in the middle of the night. Sure that her husband has gotten out of bed to go to the bathroom, she tries to steal the sheets, only to find out that he is still next to her:  

“When he turned to face me, he gasped and pulled his feet up from the end of the bed so quickly his knee almost knocked me out of the bed. He then grabbed me and said nothing.

After adjusting to the dark for a half second, I was able to see what caused the strange reaction. At the foot of the bed, sitting and facing away from us, there was what appeared to be a naked man, or a large hairless dog of some sort. Its body position was disturbing and unnatural, as if it had been hit by a car or something.”

The Rake looks at them, and then scrambles over, peering closely into the husband’s face. Neither of them dare move. Then the Rake dashes down the hall toward the childrens’ room. The woman screams and hurries to follow, but is too slow. By the time she gets there, her daughter is covered in blood, and the Rake is gone. Her husband frantically rushes their daughter to the hospital, but loses control of his car on the way and ends up in a lake, killing them both.

Obsessed over whether the Rake has visited again or not, the woman sets up a digital recorder near her bed. After weeks of nothing, she finally catches the Rake’s voice, shrill and high-pitched. With horror, she realizes that she’s heard it before, that he had said something to them that night, though she didn’t register it at the time. She can’t bring herself to listen to the recording, to find out what he might be saying now. She lives in terror of waking to find his face in hers. 

Son of a Rake

The Rake stories hit a nerve and started to spread. A Rake-themed Tumblr account was created in December 2010, and then the story moved onto into the big leagues: CreepyPasta and Unexplained Mysteries. Youtube “sightings” and doctored photographs exploded over the internet. New theories began to emerge: the Rake is a proxy of Slenderman. The authorities know about the Rake, and have attempted (and apparently failed) to flush him out of the woods. 

A (not great quality) image of the image you will always see when you look up the Rake.

There was even a detailed explanation of how the Rake reproduces, which involves french kissing, a pupua launching down the human’s throat, and a full-grown Rake bursting forth some months later (the author notes that this is “scientifically no stranger than seeing the presence of horse hair parasites living inside a praying mantis by placing it in water,” but offers no explanation of how they might have come upon this information). 

In short, the Rake was lit. But as soon as he became lit, something strange started to happen: people came forward with very Rake-like stories that predated the original 4chan monstrosity. This new “Rake” was just a name to them, a convenient way to categorize the disturbing things they had seen. From someone on r/Humanoidencounters, who claims they didn’t hear about the Rake Creepypasta until 2016:

“[I] woke up at 3 am to the feeling of something watching me. I felt extremely uneasy. I rolled over to look around the room and my eyes locked onto something standing beside my mom. It was extremely tall but looked as if it had a broken back and couldn’t stand up completely. It was slouched over and had extremely pale skin and bones sticking out under the skin everywhere due to how skinny it was. It had long claws hanging from both hands. It’s face was sunken in and eyes were completely black holes. A few greasy hairs were visible on its head. It had no clothes but also no genitals or nipples.

I was HORRIFIED. I rolled over and covered myself up head to toe with the cover. I refused to move or look out the rest of the night even though I was fully awake. Eventually, my mom finally woke up that morning. She immediately started complaining of her side hurting. She raised her shirt to look and found huge claw marks down her side. It was three deep wounds which were extremely inflamed and still bleeding. I felt horrible knowing that thing did that to her while I lay beside her hidden.

A couple months later I saw the creature again. Although, not as horrible as the first experience. I was woken up to the creature slouched on the floor on my side of the bed. It was watching me sleep. I covered myself up again immediately but this time got the courage to peek out and found it still looking at me. I’m not sure when it went away because I didn’t dare look again.”

And from someone on the Rake Tumblr:

“It was around 4:09 at night and I woke up from hearing scratching noises outside I was so scared but I got up and looked out the window the sun was starting to come up and birds were starting to chirp and all that. So I closed my window and pulled down the curtains. Just as I was turning around I see this naked man that was a very pale grey with huge hands and very long claws it sounded like it was weeping and then I stepped on a broken floorboard and it creeked and the thing slowly turned its head and what I saw has scarred me for life. Its eyes we’re pure white and had a bright glare to them and it’s teeth we’re very long I quickly turned around and about 5 mins of pure silence I got the guts to grab a baseball bat that was next to me and beat the crap out of it until it died but when I turned around all prepared to smack it in the head with my weapon it was gone. I was shocked and I dropped the bat and ran to my bed and buried my face into my pillow crying my eyes out because I could not believe what I just saw.”

Suddenly, the line between the fiction of the Rake and real, off-Photoshop encounters blurred. The Rake, born of 4chan, had become something bigger.  

The Rake returns

So what are we to make of all of this, if these pre-4chan Rake witnesses swear up and down that their accounts are true? This is the internet, and as we know, no one ever lies on the internet. 

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

The Rake could be explained away by science. Many accounts involve someone waking up in the middle of the night and seeing something standing over them. This might make the bulk of “real” Rake sightings easy to dismiss as colorful episodes of sleep paralysis. Factor in errant camera fluff for those non-bedtime encounters, and we’re all squared away. As I mentioned above, there is something nicely primal about the Rake. Any of us might imagine up a monster like that on our own.

Or, even more scientifically, there could really be a naked dude with eye bags, scoliosis, and acrylic nails going around to stand over people’s beds. It would be easy to confuse that dude and the Rake; anyone could be forgiven for mixing them up. Someone should really get on straightening that out. Surely it would put everyone’s mind at ease.

Who would win in a rap battle: the Rake or the dastardly rake Lord Byron? Share your opinions in the comments below.  

IMAGE CRED: B_A / CC0 for the very convincing hacker, terrapin227 for the Rake; and Don LaVange for the rake.