DEMONS
Myth and Legend have given us accounts of various beings that have terrified us over the years. The goblins and bogeymen, are the most common fears of children. Also, Vampires and Werewolves and Zombies, oh my.
Vampires
are corpses that are neither dead nor alive, and rise from the grave at night and suck the blood of the living. They gradually drain the blood of their victims, who then become vampires themselves. The legendary home of the vampire is in Eastern Europe, mostly Romania. In the province of Transylvania, the most famous of all vampires, Count Dracula was created by Bram Stoker resided. Like the legendary vampires, Dracula changed into a wolf or a bat, and could become a vapor.
To ward off the vampire with garlic or a crucifix is only temporary. Plunging a stake through their heart is more permanent. But it needs to be beheaded and burned too.
People have believed in vampires since the earliest recorded times. In a book called Antidote Against Atheism written in the 17th century by Dr. Henry Moore tells the story of Johannes Cuntius of Silesia in central Europe. Cuntius' dead body was scratched by a black cat before his funeral. Cuntius was reported to have reappeared and to have drunk blood.
The ancient Greeks and Romans believed in a female vampire called a lamia who seduced men and sucked their blood. Later the Greeks had another word for the vampire--vrukalakos.
The vampire grew up in Romania and Hungary around the start of the 16th century. The word comes from a Slavonic term that came into existance after 1730. At that time, reports of vampires were numerous in Eastern Europe. The accounts were picked up by travelers who wrote about the vampires, and that spread all over Europe. In the 19th century horror writers spread the vampire tale.
A French monk Dom Augustin Calmet published one of the earliest studies of vampires in 1746. He wrote:"We are told that dead men...return from their tombs, are heard to speak, walk about, jinjure both men and animals whose blood they drain...making them sick and finally causing their death. Nor can the men deliver themselves unless they dig the corpses up and drive a sharp stake through these bodies, cut off their heads, tear out the hearts, or else burn the bodies to ashes. It seems impossible not to subscribe to the prevailing belief that these apparitions do actually come forth from their graves."
One explanation for the persistent belief in vampires is that of a premature burial. Vampire stories arose when a disarranged or bloody corpse (from a grim death struggle within a coffin or vault) had been dug up for some reason.
Werewolves
Another way to look at the Werewolf
In a forest of Western France sometime around 1598, an archer and a group of armed men came across the mutilated and torn body of a boy. The men approached the body, then caught sight of what appeared to be two wolves running off. The men chased after the wolves, but found they had caught, not a wolf, but a man dressed in rags with matted, verminous hair and beard. They noticed that his hands were still stained with fresh blood, and his nails clotted with human flesh. The man turned out to be a wandering beggar named Jacques Roulet, and was brought to trial at Angers in August of 1598.
Roulet confessed:"I was a wolf."
"Do your hands and feet become paws?"
"Yes, they do."
"Does your head become like that of a wolf?"
"I do not know how my head was at the time; I used my teeth."
To reach a verdict, the court had to decide whether Roulet was a werewolf or a lycanthrope, which is related but different. A werewolf is a living person who has the power to change into a wolf. The workd comes from Old English wer meaning man, and wolf. A lycanthrope is someone suffering from a mental illnes that makes him believe he transforms into a wolf. This word comes from the Greek for wolfman. The court showed Roulet a compassion rare for its time. They decided he was mentally sick and sentenced him to a madhouse for only two years.
Reports of werewolves have been documented since ancient times. In the 5th century B.C.E. Herodotus wrote:"Each Neurian changes himself once a year into the form of a wolf and he continues in that form for several days, after which he resumes his former shape."
A story from the Middle Ages tells of a Russian noblewoman who doubted that anyone could change into an animal. One of her servants volunteered to prove her wrong. He changed into a wolf and raced across the fields, chased by his mistress's dogs, which cornered him and damaged one of his eyes. When the servant returned to his mistress in human form he was blind in one eye.
The traditional home of the werewolf is the forests of France. Reports of werewolves reached epidemic proportions in the 16th century. As many a 30,000 cases were listed between 1520 and 1630.
Many stories have surfaced about the werewolf. Including movies. My personal favorite story is the book by Robert R. McCammon, The Wolf's Hour, where the werewolves are merely creatures of survival. Click on the link to go to Amazon.com, and read reviews about it.
Zombies
The walking dead. Neither ghost nor person, the zombie is a body without soul or mind raised from the grave and given a semblance of life through sorcery. Haiti is the home of the zombie with it's past of voodoo religion.
Voodoo is a combination of African, Roman Catholic, and some American Indian beliefs plus traditional occult practices from Europe. Its roots are in Africa, and voodoo began with the arrival in Haiti of the large numbers of African slaves. The thousands who died during or after their journey were continually replaced. The majority came from areas dominated by the Yoruba-speaking people. These groups had a strong belief in the gods. Torn from their homeland and their families, transported under appalling conditions to a strange land, the slaves carried with them their traditions, their belief in magic and witchcraft, and the memory of the gods and ancestors they worshiped in Africa. In Haiti this was to form the basis of voodoo. The new religion became a solace and a force for a suffering and uprooted people. Voodoo grew strong and eventually more sinister.
Voodoo is a formalized religion with its own gods and forms of worship. But it also has a sinister side. That side is the voodoo of magic, sorcery, and superstition, of monsters, murder, and raising the dead.
The voodoo sorcerer, or bokor, communes with the dead and practices on behalf of himself and his clients.
Then there is the hungan, or voodoo priest who is known to use magical powders and herbs as aids to possession during a voodoo ceremony.
One story involves a young girl who rejected the advances of a powerful hungan. he stalked off, muttering threats about her future. The girl soon grew ill and died. She was buried in a coffin that was too short for her, and her neck had to be bent to fit her in. During this time, a candle near the coffin was overturned, burning the girl's foot. Years later, people claimed to have seen the girl, alive and was clearly recognized by her stoop and the burn on her foot. It was said the jealous hungan made her into a zombie, and kept her as a servant in his house until so much attention was drawn to her that he had to set her free.
A common reason for creating zombies is revenge. At other times, zombies provide cheap labor. Sometimes they are chosen victims of a pact with the forces of evil who demand payment in human souls for services rendered. When a Christian talks of selling a soul to the devil, a voodoo follower sells the soul of another. In return for power, wealth, or another favor, he must pledge the sould of one nearest and dearest to him. When there is no one else left to sacrifice, he surrenders his soul. Then his body becomes a zombie.
Once people become zombies they can never escape from their deathly trance unless they taste salt (a symbol of white magic). They become aware of their fate and, knowing they are dead, will return to their grave forever.
Zombies are known for their expressionless and downcast eyes, their blank faces, and shambling walk. They appear not to hear when spoken to, and their own speech is uttered in a nasal twang that is almost incoherent. Often consisting of grunts or guttural noises deep in the throat.
Real Monsters
Most recently, clowns have played perverse parts in the scary scene. This may be attributed to movies and books like, It by Stephen King, and one of the worst perverse humans, John Wayne Gacy, The Killer Clown, dressed up as a clown for children's parties. He also tortured and murdered boys, and buried them in his cellar.
Capable of great tenderness and humanness, man has also shown himself capable of unspeakable and iniquitous cruelties toward his fellow humans. The most horrible of all demonic creatures is that of the rapist and child molester. The cowardly creature who preys on the physically weaker. Beginning as far back as the first human crawled on the face of the earth, man has committed the most heineous crimes toward his fellow man.
To date, there have been so many sadists and perverse human beings and many yet to come. For this reason we must look over our shoulder and under the bed for those hidden demons that are created to crawl this earth. Beware. Do not put your trust in anyone!
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