Category: Superstition

Stories of Snake Twins

I’ve been working on episode 11 of my Darna translation project, and I’ve come across something that’s interesting enough to post about on its own: a Filipino folk belief about snakes that seems to have greatly influenced Mars Ravelo’s creation of the villainess Valentina–The Goddess of Snakes.

Episode 11 opens with the discovery of a young boy who is dying of a poisonous snake bite. The adults immediately fetch a woman in the neighborhood named Nena, who is a tawak: a type of Filipino folk healer who treats snake bites (and other animal bites) by suction or by application of their saliva to the bite. As Nena sits down to treat the boy, this conversation happens amongst a few of the bystanders (my translation):

NenangTawak MarsRavelo
From Darna: Story by Mars Ravelo, Art by Nestor Redondo. Image source: Video 48

Woman: Nenang Tawak will cure him for sure! Everyone she’s treated for snakebite has gotten better!

Younger Man: Isn’t that the Nena who was born with a snake twin?

Old Man: Yes, she is! That’s why she’s called “Nenang Tawak!”

Whoa, whoa, whoa: a snake twin?? What is that, some kind of metaphor? I had to stop and find out, for the sake of a proper translation.

Turns out, it’s not a metaphor. Here’s a 2016 video (in Filipino) from the ABS-CBN broadcast news, about an old woman who claims that her mother gave birth to both her and a snake at the same time. She’s also a tawak (they don’t use that term, though); and at about 0:20 into the video, you can see her applying the traditional treatment to a patient (it’s marked as a dramatization).

I’ve also posted a translated transcript to the video, but here’s the summary: when Conchita Encabo (referred to as Lola Conching in the video) was born in 1915 —so she would have been about 100 or 101 at the time of this 2016 feature—her mother allegedly also gave birth to a white snake. Conchita’s father wouldn’t let her mother kill the snake, saying caring for it would bring good luck. They named the snake Wanda, and according to Lola Conching, “She had a face like a person. No hair, and her head was really smooth.” Apparently, the snake also had beautiful gray eyes. Unfortunately, Wanda was killed in a typhoon.

The news feature interviews a man who claims to have witnessed Lola Conching successfully treat a person dying from a snake bite. Conching is said to be friendly with snakes; her husband claims that even now, their house is constantly visited by snakes (good for keeping burglars away!). Conching won’t let her husband kill the visitors, claiming that they are descendants of her twin, and therefore, her “grandchildren.”

Cover of Pilipino Komiks, July 8, 1950. Features Vibora, Valentina, and Kobra on the cover.

If you’ve been reading my Darna translations, you’ll remember that Valentina, who was born with snakes on her head, is also close to snakes, can communicate with them, and was constantly surrounded by them growing up. As we’ll see, except for the snake hair, these are all characteristics associated with people who have snake twins. I wonder if Ravelo at least partially imagined Valentina as an evil counterpart to the benign tawak or kambal-ahas (“twin of a snake”) of folk belief.

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Posted on by Nina Zumel 7

Vincent Price and Hands of Glory

[Update 8/27/2024 – updated Dark Tales Sleuth links]

Over on Dark Tales Sleuth, I’ve revisited a tale from one of the Vincent Price’s Caedmon spoken word recordings that I did an attribution search on way back when.

Hand of Glory

One of the pieces that Vincent Price reads on his 1974 spooky tales album, A Graveyard of Ghost Tales, is a story called “The Ghostly Hand of Spital House,” by Dorothy Gladys Spicer. This is a fun and engaging tale about some bandits who try to rob an inn with the help of a hand of glory : a candle (or candle-holder) made from the hand of a hanged man. Lighting the hand of glory puts all the sleeping occupants of the house into an even deeper sleep, from which they don’t awaken until the hand is extinguished. You can see how this would be a (cough) handy tool for robbers and catburglars to have.

In the post, I also talk about a supposed pre-Colonial Mexican analog to the hand of glory as a housebreaker’s tool: the left arm and hand of a woman who died in first childbirth. While the source for that piece of folklore was not exactly disinterested (it was written by a 17th century Spanish friar), the story does in a way tie in with how Aztecs regarded women who died in childbirth, as equivalent to warriors who die in battle.

Have I intrigued you yet? If you’d like to read some earlier versions of the Spital House legend, give another listen to Vincent Price’s spooky reading, and learn how this relates to aspects of Aztec mythology, then head on over to Dark Tales Sleuth, and check out The Legend of Old Spital Inn.

Enjoy!

Featured Image: Detail of Jacob meets magician Hermogenes, Pieter van der Hayden, after Breughel (1565). Source: Wikimedia.

Illustration of Hand of Glory, annotated as from The Grimoire of Pope Honorius Grimorium Verum Petit Albert by Albertus Parvus Lucius. Source: Wikimedia.

Posted on by Nina Zumel 2

Superstition or Supernatural?

Two stories exploring the border between skepticism and belief. Part of my Women Writers of Folklore and Fiction series.

Two more translations! One by Juana Manuela Gorriti, and one by Emilia Pardo Bazán. This is a kind of matched pair: two stories about the tension between rational explanations and the desire to believe in the supernatural.

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes The sleep of reason produces monsters No 43 from Los Caprichos Google Art Project
The sleep of reason produces monsters, Francisco Goya (1799). Source: Wikimedia

Many marvelous-seeming phenomena in the world are really quite natural; Sir Walter Scott dedicated an entire letter from his Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft to debunking ghost stories of this type. One such example is the tale of the dead club president’s ghost, which has a perfectly rational explanation.

As a story, though, the supernatural explanation is far more satisfying. And that may be the case with Gorriti’s and Pardo Bazán’s stories as well.

Enjoy!

Featured Image: Mandrake. Folio 90 Folio 90 from the Naples Dioscurides (7th century). Source: Wikimedia

Posted on by Nina Zumel 0

The Berbalangs: A Legend of Filipino Ghouls

640px KEPPEL 1853 pg112 FRESH WATER LAKE CAGAYAN SOOLOO

Buried in the pages of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for 1896 is a dry-sounding article called “Cagayan Sulu, its Customs, Legends, and Superstitions,” by one Ethelbert Forbes Skertchly. It starts out as a typical amateur (for I assume Mr. Skertchly was an amateur) anthropologist’s paper of the time would, with a physical description of Cagayan Sulu — now known as Mapun — an island in the southern Philippines, about eighty miles from Borneo, closer to Malaysia than to most of the rest of the Philippines. The paper meanders on, through descriptions of the flora and of the fauna, of the people, their dress, their customs, their industry. Mr. Skertchly gives us a couple of short folktales, including a charming one about a crocodile spirit covered in diamonds. I imagine a typical Asiatic Society member of the time perusing the paper after dinner, the journal in one hand, a brandy or perhaps a pipe in the other, perfectly relaxed. Nothing new here.

But then Mr. Skertchly veers off into a first-person narrative that would be right at home in a collection of classic English ghost stories: the tale of the Berbalangs of Cagayan Sulu.

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Posted on by Nina Zumel 3

Witches vs. Sorcerers: What’s the Difference?

For my Mexican Monstresses series, I’ve been reading a fascinating (but quite academic) book called Bloodsucking Witchcraft (Nutini and Roberts, 1993), about a type of Mexican “vampire” in central Mexico. I put vampire in quotes, because even though this creature sucks blood, both Nutini and Roberts, as well as sources on early Mexican folk belief all the way back to the sixteenth century, refer to it (“her” mostly) as a witch (brujo/a).

A bloodsucking shapeshifter is not what I think of as a witch.

NewImage
Source: Wikipedia

And the European conception of a vampire (which is by definition a revenant — that is, the dead revived) isn’t a witch. But the definition that Nutini and Roberts use, and how they distinguish witch (brujo/a) from sorcerer (hechicero/a) calls out some differences I’d never thought about. Before, I’d always considered the terms somewhat interchangeable, and I think in common usage most people do. But the distinction is interesting, and useful.

Note that in the following discussion, I’m referring to witchcraft and sorcery in the folk belief sense of anthropomorphic supernatural beings, not in reference to Wicca or other modern Neopagan religions.

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Posted on by Nina Zumel 9

Chatting with the Books Spirits Again

I meant to put up a Halloween post this year, continuing the book-scrying theme that I started last year. Alas, the last couple of weeks have been ridiculously busy, and I missed the date. But today is All Saints’ Day, and tomorrow is All Souls’ Day, also known as Day of the Dead or Dia de los Muertos — a time to remember and honor those who have gone before us. So I can still put up a book-scrying post, as a way of honoring writers from the past and the wisdom of the words that they’ve left to us.

Besides, it’s fun.

Here’s the procedure: write down the question, close my eyes, open the book at random, and point. Read the sentence or paragraph at my fingertip.

This year I chose The Book of Fantasy, edited by Jorge Luis Borges, Silvina Ocampo, and A. Bioy Casares. It was a glorious mistake, this choice, because I really have just barely the time to squeeze out this post, but I haven’t read the book in a long time, and now I want to…

Skull book

So here we go.

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Posted on by Nina Zumel 4

The Wearing of the Green (or not)

March is here: St. Patrick’s Day is the 17th, when everyone (here in the States, at least) can pretend to be a little bit Irish… .

In honor of the occasion, here are some fun Ireland folklore facts to share with your friends over that pint of Guinness.

NewImageSt. Patrick and Shamrock. St. Benin’s Church, Kilbennan, County Galway, Ireland
Image: Andreas F. Borchert, Wikipedia

St. Patrick is as Irish as the Potato.

That is to say: by adoption only. Potatoes are a New World vegetable, originating in South America and not introduced into Ireland until the late 1500s or early 1600s (some say by Sir Walter Raleigh). By the 1700s they had become a staple food in the country. Likewise, the man known today as St. Patrick was not born in Ireland, but in Britain. The Catholic Encyclopedia says he was born at Kilpatrick, near Dumbarton, Scotland, in 387. Biography.com says he was born in England to “a Roman family of high social standing” in 385. Either way, according to his own writings, he was kidnapped by slavers and taken to Ireland, where he lived for six years before escaping and returning home. He eventually entered the priesthood and was sent back to Ireland as a missionary, where he preached and converted much of the country to Christianity. By the seventh century, he was thought of as the patron saint of Ireland.

There’s a theory that some of the legends associated with St. Patrick were originally associated with another cleric, Palladius, who was the first Christian bishop to Ireland, in 431 (a year before Patrick arrived). Palladius wasn’t Irish, either; he was Gaul (French).

Incidentally, there’s a famous folktale that links St. Patrick to the shamrock: supposedly, Patrick was preaching to the locals, and meeting with hostility and incredulity. To make his point, the saint plucked a clover from the earth and said to them

‘Is it not as feasible for the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as for these three leaves thus to grow upon a single stalk?’ Then the Irish were immediately convinced of their error, and were solemnly baptized by St. Patrick.

As simple as that. The quote is from Edward Jones, “Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards” 1794, as quoted by Nathaniel Colgan in “The Shamrock in Literature,” 1896. The folktale can’t actually be dated any earlier than the early 18th century; it’s not in Patrick’s writings, nor in any early Lives of the Saints.

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Posted on by Nina Zumel 4

Revenge of the Rats! The Legend of Hatto

Sometime in the tenth century, so the story goes, a great famine hit the Rhine valley. The summer and fall seasons had been so wet that the grain rotted in the fields before the farmers could harvest. As winter hit, they ran out their food stores; they were starving. Desperate, they turned to Hatto, the wealthy Archbishop of Mainz, whose granaries were filled to overflowing.

Some stories say that Hatto charged the people such a steep price for the grain that they began to rebel. Some stories say he was just sick of their begging. Either way, Hatto finally announced that everyone without food should come to his barn on a certain day, and he would give them grain.

On that day, people came from all over the countryside, and filled the bishop’s barn until it couldn’t hold a single more person. Then Hatto ordered the barn doors locked and set fire to the barn, burning all the peasants to death.

‘I’faith, ’tis an excellent bonfire!’ quoth he,
‘And the country is greatly obliged to me
For ridding it, in these times forlorn,
Of rats that only consume the corn.’

Then Hatto went home to a good dinner, retired to bed, and slept like a baby.

The next morning, the servants ran to the Bishop and reported that ten thousand rats had eaten all the corn in the granaries, and were now converging on the Bishop’s palace. Terrified,
the Bishop had himself rowed out to his stronghold, a tower on an island in the middle of the Rhine. The rats dove into the river, swam to the island, swarmed the tower, and ate the bishop alive.

NewImageIllustration from the Nuremberg Chronicle, by Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514)
Image: Wikipedia

Down on his knees the Bishop fell,
And faster and faster his beads did he tell,
As louder and louder drawing near
The gnawing of their teeth he could hear.

And in at the windows and in at the door,
And through the walls helter-skelter they pour,
And down from the ceiling and up through the floor,
From the right and the left, from behind and before,
From within and without, from above and below,
And all at once to the Bishop they go.

They have whetted their teeth against the stones,
And now they pick the Bishop’s bones:
They gnaw’d the flesh from every limb,
For they were sent to do judgment on him!

The poem that tells this tale is called God’s Judgment on a Wicked Bishop, by English poet Robert Southey. The legend itself is an old one.

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Posted on by Nina Zumel 20

Advice from the Book Spirits

I wanted to do something different and fun for my Halloween post, not just review a book or point you to a good short story. But what?

Then I thought of M.R. James’s short story, The Ash Tree. In the story, after the mysterious death of the Lord of the Manor, a clergyman friend of the victim resorts to the old superstitious practice of “drawing the Sortes“, or bibliomancy.

…it came into my Thoughts, as at such moments of Helplessness we are prone to catch at any the least Glimmer that makes promise of Light, to make trial of that old and by many accounted Superstitious Practice of drawing the Sortes: …

“I made, then, three trials, opening the Book and placing my Finger upon certain words: which gave in the first these words, from Luke xiii. 7, Cut it down; in the second, Isaiah xiii. 20, It shall never be inhabited; and upon the third Experiment; Job xxxix. 30, Her young ones also suck up blood.”

This being an M.R. James story, the sortes were quite prescient — I’ll let you read the story and find out what the bible passages were hinting at. I linked to it above; it’s nicely creepy. Anyway, it occurred to me that some book-scrying silliness might make for a fun post, albeit not terribly spooky. But it’s a nice change from a Ouija Board.

BookPhoto: Nina Zumel

So I’ve picked a few questions to throw Out There, and picked a book to scry from. I didn’t want to use the Bible — I’m still enough of a Catholic girl that it would feel sacrilegious. Given the theme of this blog, and my more recent reading activity, The Weird Compendium would have been the perfect choice, but I only own it as an ebook, and I really wanted to physically flip through the book and point. So I settled on American Gothic Tales, instead.

The procedure: write down the question, close my eyes, open the book at random, and point. Read the sentence at my fingertip.

Here we go:

What’s the outlook for my blog in the coming year? Will I get lots of engaged readers?

A man was speaking on the station Jim had chosen, and his voice swung instantly from the distance into a force so powerful that it shook the apartment.

Now that sounds hopeful. I think the blog will go gangbusters over the next year! The quote is from John Cheever, “The Enormous Radio”.

Will I get Freshly Pressed again?

The Head’s main street dimmed, dimmed, and at last was gone.

Not so hopeful. But at least I got my fifteen minutes of fame once. Quote from Stephen King, “The Reach”

Will the Giants take the World Series?

Viola imposed on her lover but a short probation.

Umm. Yeah. I think that means “yes, but the Tigers will still put up a little bit of a fight.” We’ll find out soon enough. Go Giants! The quote is from Henry James, “On the Romance of Certain Old Clothes”.

UPDATE: And the Giants sweep it! Viola’s probation was short, indeed.

What should I spend more time on this coming year? Writing or dancing?

She turned and tried to hold the baby over in a corner behind the stove.

But he came up. He reached across the stove and tightened his hands on the baby.

I think this means — especially in the context of this story, Raymond Carver’s “Little Things” — that I should split the difference. Which is the answer I wanted, though I hope things turn out better for me than they did for the baby in the story…

You can get advice from the Book Spirits too, and you don’t even need a paper-and-glue volume. Poet Reb Livingstone has set up a Bibliomancy Oracle online — just click and see what her favorite literature has to say to you.

Have fun, and to any readers on the East Coast or in Hawaii: stay safe from the storms and tsunamis. I hope you all enjoy the upcoming All Hallow’s Eve, no matter how you choose (or don’t choose) to celebrate it.

Posted on by Nina Zumel 11

Vampires in Rhode Island: The Shunned House

The October issue of Smithsonian magazine has an interesting article on the nineteenth century vampire scares of New England. These scares tended to happen in remote, rural, agricultural regions in or near southern Rhode Island, beginning in the late 1700s and going on as recently as 1892. Much as in Eastern European vampire scares, a recently deceased person would be blamed for the further illnesses of people in the region, and the body would be exhumed to check for evidence of vampirism.

Once a vampire was “discovered,” the New Englander’s way of dealing with it was a bit different from the usual holy water and staking that we are used to from the movies. Instead, the heart would be removed from the exhumed body and burned. Some communities believed that inhaling the smoke from the burning heart was a cure for the still-living victims of the vampire’s life-sucking. Others believed that feeding the ashes from the burning heart to the vampire’s victims would cure them. Often, the “vampire” would also be beheaded.

The real vampire? Tuberculosis. TB is a wasting, draining, disease, characterized by fever and a hacking cough; the victims visibly become paler and more emaciated as the disease progresses. It’s also very contagious. Early outbreaks of TB hit New England in the 1730s and became the leading cause of death in New England by the 1800s. Not surprisingly, vampire scares coincided with TB outbreaks.

The last, and one of the most famous, New England vampire cases was that of Mercy Lena Brown, of Exeter, Rhode Island. Mercy’s mother died of tuberculosis in 1883, followed soon after by the Browns’ oldest daughter. Mercy’s brother Edwin got sick in 1890, and left for Colorado Springs, hoping that the change in climate would improve his health. Lena didn’t get sick until 1891, and died in January of 1892, at the age of nineteen. By that time, her brother had returned to Exeter, extremely ill.

The people of Exeter believed that one of the Brown women must be a vampire who was feeding on the rest of the family (and from them, probably, on to the rest of the community). They forced Lena’s father, George Brown, to have the womens’ bodies exhumed. The evidence seems to be that George didn’t believe in the vampire theory (the bacterium that caused TB had already been discovered, in 1882), but he gave in to his neighbors. The bodies were exhumed. The bodies of Lena’s mother and sister were in advanced states of decomposition — they had been dead for almost a decade — but Lena’s body, which had only been buried for two months, still showed evidence of fresh blood in the heart. She must be the vampire!

The neighbors took out Lena’s heart and liver and burned them. They fed the ashes to Lena’s brother Edwin. It didn’t work; he died two months later.

A reporter from the Providence Journal was present at the exhumation. His story caused an outrage in the more urban parts of New England. It was picked up by an anthropologist named George Stetson, who eventually published his research in the American Anthropologist, and the story spread all the way to Europe.

NewImageIllustration from H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Shunned House”
Image: Project Gutenberg

Some people believe that Mercy Lena was the inspiration for the character of Lucy in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (which was published in 1897, the year after Stetson’s article). She is definitely referenced in H.P. Lovecraft’s short story “The Shunned House,” which he wrote in 1924. It was published posthumously in 1937, in the magazine Weird Tales.

Mercy should have known better than to hire anyone from the Nooseneck Hill country, for that remote bit of backwoods was then, as now, a seat of the most uncomfortable superstitions. As lately as 1892 an Exeter community exhumed a dead body and ceremoniously burnt its heart in order to prevent certain alleged visitations injurious to the public health and peace…

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Posted on by Nina Zumel 8