Chapter 1

Hello everyone! I’m posting this in honor of the Halloween Season. It’s really not anything that could be posted for the SOL Halloween Writing Contest, because it’s NOT a story. More like a compilation of myths and legends (and maybe facts?). So when your hear that knock on the door and you open it to see all the cute little ghosts and witches (and a few superheros), smile as you hand out the candy. As for my costume? I plan to just wear a cute “cat ears” headband and draw whiskers on my face, since I’m working.

Abrazos y besos! - Krista

The first witch to confess to riding a broom or besom was actually a man: Guillaume Edelin, was a priest from near Paris. He was arrested in 1453 and tried for witchcraft after publicly criticizing the church’s warnings about witches.

The Shezmu (also known as Shesmu, Schezemu, Schesmu, Shesemu, Shezmou, Shesmou, Sezmu and Sesmu) is the ancient Egyptian demonic god of execution, slaughter, blood, oil, wine and perfume. Like many of the gods of Ancient Egypt, Shezmu was of a complex nature. He had qualities of both light and darkness, but this was not the reason that he was known as a ‘demon’. To the Egyptians, like other African gods, demons were not necessarily evil in nature. Often they were quite helpful. Instead, the term “demon” was given to Shezmu because he was one of the lesser deities, and due to his relation to the underworld.

Shezmu was the demonic god of red wine, slaughter, and sometimes perfumes or oils. The link between blood and the crimson color of wine is clear. Shezmu was known to destroy wrongdoers, gruesomely putting their heads in winepresses to remove the blood. He was known as the ‘Executioner of Osiris’. Shezmu followed the commands of The God of The Dead, and therefore was sometimes given the title ‘Slaughterer of Souls’. He initially seems to be a fierce underworld deity, but Shezmu was quite helpful to the dead. Although he was a harsh executioner of the wicked, he was also a great protector of the virtuous. Shezmu offered red wine to those who had passed on. Other than wine, he was in charge of earthly objects such as embalming oils, and perfumes. Among the gods, his job was to use the bodies and blood of the dead to create sustenance for Unas. Osiris was the one who ordered the use of the wicked one’s blood to be turned to wine. He was sometimes given the title ‘Demon of the Wine Press’. On a darker note, Shezmu’s affinity with the color red linked him to evil. Crimson was a feared and hated color among the Egyptians. Not only is it the universal color of blood, and therefore death, but it was the color of the god of chaos, Seth. Since it was also the color of the setting sun, red was associated with the coming darkness and the reign of Apophis the serpent demon. He appeared to have the head of a lion, fangs and mane drenched in blood. It is said he wore human skulls around his waist like a belt.

Cannibal dwarves have a long oral history among the Arapaho, Gros Venture, and Cheyenne Nations. Legends report that these little people are bloodthirsty, child-sized creatures. Also known as Teihiihan, which means “strong” in the Arapaho language, cannibal dwarves surprisingly fierce fighters who are fast enough to outrun an Arapaho warrior. While cannibal dwarves might be insanely fast and strong, they’re also a bit dense. According to one story published in the Handbook of Native Mythology, a warrior was captured by a cannibal dwarf, so to delay the inevitable, he tried to strike up a conversation. Noticing dwarf hearts hanging on the walls around him, the warrior asked what the gruesome organs were. The dwarf told him that they were the hearts of his relatives, who were out hunting at the time. The warrior then pierced the hearts one by one. The dwarf wasn’t sharp enough to realize that piercing those hearts would kill his family. With a final stroke, the warrior pierced the heart of the dwarf who was holding him captive last, and the dwarf who wanted to eat him immediately dropped dead.

In the early 1980s, Sam and Judith Haney were one of several couples who purchased homes in the Newport area of Houston, Texas. However, when Sam went about having a swimming pool dug in his back yard, an elderly black man showed up at his door to report that he was about to dig up human remains. The reason he knew the remains were there was because he had buried them years before when the land was still a cemetery. Proceeding to dig, it was not long before Sam came upon two bodies just where the old man said they were. There were two pine boxes, each with the indentation of a skeletal form. Sam immediately called the Sheriff and county coroner who conducted an official exhumation. Most of the bones had turned to powder, but twenty-five fragments were found, some so brittle they disintegrated when touched. Two wedding rings were discovered on the frail fingers of the exposed skeleton. Local research revealed the remains were Betty and Charlie Thomas, who died during the 1930s. The land had been set aside by the original property owner years before as an African-American cemetery and sold after it had been forgotten. Construction crews destroyed and eliminated all traces of it during the building of the sub-division. However, the dead would not rest. One night, Judith Haney discovered her clock glowing and sparking. She’d also hear her sliding door open and close as if someone was there, but she never saw anyone. Her shoes once vanished and turned up inexplicably outside over Betty and Charlie’s grave, now since re-interred elsewhere.

Activity was not preclusive to the Haneys. A dozen of their neighbors also reported lights, televisions and water faucets turning on and off, and unearthly sounds and supernatural apparitions. Ben and Jean Williams reported that near their flowerbeds, sinkholes appeared in the unmistakable shape of a coffin. They would fill them in, only to have them reappear a few days later. Random shadows also slid along their walls accompanied by whispers and a putrid smell. Their granddaughter, Carli, who lived with them, reported that during the blazing heat of summer, she would encounter bone-chilling pockets of ice-cold air. “It would be very, very chilly and you’d have this feeling of foreboding, or just, you know, like something wasn’t right,” she said. “Anywhere in the house you’d have a feeling that you were not alone. Somebody was watching you. It terrified me to be in the house by myself. The toilets used to flush on their own. As the water went down I could hear what was almost like conversations. You could hear people murmuring to themselves. It was a presence or spirit or something there. Something that wanted to be heard. Wanted me to know that it was there.” Jean added: “I absolutely believe that all of these things happened to us because we were on the graveyard, and that we were simply going to be tormented until we left there.” Ben Williams also encountered things. He described encountering two ghostly figures in his home as he came home from the graveyard shift. They went straight into the den and headed down the hall where they vanished. Meanwhile, the Haneys were suing the developers and ended up losing their case and filing bakruptcy. The Williams followed with legal action, but the developers wanted proof that the cemetery had even existed. Jean started digging up her backyard for more remains but shortly thereafter her daughter, Tina, died after trying to help her. Jean believed her death was caused by supernatural forces. She and Ben ended up losing their entire investment and escaped to Montana, later moving back to another neighborhood in Texas. However, back in their old neighborhood, none of the current residents have reported any paranormal activity. No one has ever been able to explain what happened to the Williams or the Haneys.

Background: Research shows that many of the bodies were buried by Jasper Norton. He told the Haneys that their home and a dozen others were built at Black Hope. The deceased were mainly former slaves with the last burial in 1939 and as many as 60 people were interred there in paupers’ graves. The Haneys decided to fight in court to sue the builder for not disclosing that their home was built over a cemetery. A jury awarded them $142,000 for mental anguish, but a reversal ruled on legal grounds that the developers were not liable. The verdict was thrown out and the Haneys were ordered to pay $50,000 in court costs.

The Underground City Of The Lizard People- Deep beneath the heart of Los Angeles’ financial district, hundreds of feet below the huge downtown edifices that house banks, corporate offices, and government agencies, lies another city remembered only in obscure Indian legends, an underground world built by a strange race that vanished five thousand years ago. At least that’s what mining engineer W. Warren Shufelt claimed in the January 29, 1934 edition of the Los Angeles Times.

The Leshy (also Leshi; Russian: леший, IPA: [ˈlʲeʂɨj]; literally, “[he] from the forest” is a tutelary deity of the forests in pagan Slavic mythology. As the spirit rules over the forest and hunting, he may be related to the Slavic god Porewit. According to East Slavic folk-calendar, October 14 is the last day when the Leshie roam their woods before hibernation. Therefore, these forest spirits become very aggressive, and even animals avoid them.

The Vampire of Lugnano: The skeletal remains of a child with a stone in its mouth point to an ancient form of ritualistic vampire burial. The eerie practice, which echoes similar rituals performed across Medieval Europe, was designed to prevent the deceased from rising from the grave as a vampire or other undead horror.

During the 5th century, Italy was struggling with a deadly malaria outbreak and this particular cemetery had been set aside for the babies and children who were most vulnerable. The people of the time feared that the bodies might come to life again, spreading the disease further. The 10-year-old has come to be known locally as the ‘Vampire of Lugnano’.

“This is a very unusual mortuary treatment that you see in various forms in different cultures, especially in the Roman world, that could indicate there was a fear that this person might come back from the dead and try to spread disease to the living,” said bio-archaeologist Jordan Wilson.

In another part of the cemetery, a young girl’s body had also been weighed down with heavy stones.

“We know that the Romans were very much concerned with this and would even go to the extent of employing witchcraft to keep the evil - whatever is contaminating the body - from coming out,” said Professor David Soren from the University of Arizona.

A deildegast is a creature in Norwegian folklore that was thought to be the ghost of a man who had stolen land by moving boundary stones. It was believed that the deildegast could shapeshift into an owl, whose eerie shrieks would pierce the nightly silence.

The Pocong, is a spirit wrapped tightly in its burial shroud, leaps through the night, seeking release. Bound in death, it haunts the living, searching for someone to untie its shroud and finally find peace.

A kind of psychic vampire, the tikoloshe (or tokoloshe) is a creature of the Xhosa people of Lisotho and the southernmost African plains. Like many supernatural beings in Africa, the tikoloshe is a mixture of vampire and demon, and has a strong association with witches and sorcerers.

In many Xhosa legends the tikoloshe is a demon that looks like a baboon and has a connection to water. It’s described as short, bulky, and has a high forehead and balding head, it walks around during night or day swinging its long arms like a monkey. But it has many powers and can shapeshift if it chooses to. It can take human form, which will make is look almost normal since some of its monkey-like traits will still show. It may also take the form of a big black bird-like creature with a skull head so that it can fly over villages in search of victims.

The tikoloshe is known for its ravenous sexual appetite, so most of its victims are women. This creature doesn’t feed upon blood, instead on the energy of a person, leaving them weak and sickly. If the tikoloshe feeds too often on a single person, it can result in the victim’s death.

When it’s feeding time, the tikoloshe will approach a village woman at any time of the day in human form. It will greet her in a friendly (sometimes overly friendly) manner, maybe offering to help her carry something in return for sexual favors. If she says no, the beast reverts to its original horrific form and leaps on her before she even has time to react (the tikoloshe are very fast), then it proceeds to rape her and feed on her life force.

Like other creatures, the tikoloshe can be used by magicians against their enemies. Such partnerships are usually the result of a pact made between the witch and creature. In return for helping the witch, the tikoloshe may ask for her cow’s milk, food, lodging or sex with the witch as payment. If the witch is male, the creature will ask for the same items, but instead it will want the man to find a woman for it to sleep with. Sometimes when doing the magicians evil deeds, it will take on the form of the skull-headed bird (hili) instead, spreading disease wherever it goes. It’s said that the touch of the creature’s claw can create a lingering sickness that even the most powerful magician can’t dispel.

In some versions of the legend, it is said that one can catch a tikoloshe by luring it with blood and milk. Once it is close the local witch doctor or herbalist can then trap it and destroy its powers.