"Wouldn't marry the pres-i-dent"

The National Film Board of Canada has a Vimeo channel. Want to get lost in a land of cinematic wonder, we ask, rhetorically? It's one of the best places on the Web to spend some time being entertained and educated.

Here's a great example of what NFBC does with its money, and reader, we think that's money well spent.


Mr. Frog Went A-Courting from National Film Board of Canada on Vimeo.

And we highly recommend Blinkety Blank by Norman MacLaren (1955).

Cranium Not Included

Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” may be the birth of American fiction but the lore of a headless horseman roaming the woods of upstate New York was not his original creation. Mind, we do not begrudge Irving for taking an urban legend and running with it toward lasting fame. Shakespeare himself re-purposed myth and legend for many of his great works.

Headless horseman folklore varies slightly from region to region. One German variant (there are several) casts the specter as a benign force, whose appearance warns hunters to take the day off, lest tragedy befall them.

Most Celtic stories lean on more sinister depictions of the rider from the great beyond. By far the most gruesome of these is the Irish dulachán (dark man) who carries his own head tucked under his arm and wields a whip made from a human spine. A human spine!

Irving perhaps combined some of these iterations to arrive at his famous Hessian soldier who died in an unnamed battle during the American Revolution. And thanks to numerous paintings, illustrations and a really terrific Disney cartoon, most of us Yankees envision a black-caped, barrel-chested horror on a sturdy black steed, ready to lob a flaming Jack-o’-lantern at timid Ichabod Crane.

That’s pretty much what’s happening in the U.S. Postal Service stamp from 1974:

Designed by Leonard Everett Fisher

For no extra charge we offer two more artistic interpretations of the Headless Horseman:

By Abigail Larson

Cover art by Gil Kane and Ernie Chan

[Tip o' the jack-o'-lantern to Weird Tales for the Larson and Kane/Chan artwork.]

Witch Folklore From the Midwest

Mysterious Heartland "focus[es] on unsolved mysteries, true crime, ghost stories, folklore, and books and movies about those topics." Yah, sure, you betcha!

Tradition holds that most tales of witchery in the United States center around New England, thanks to Salem, Massachusetts and those buzzkilling Puritans who pretty much thought everyone who wasn't a Puritan fellated the Devil on a regular basis. Only the sweaty bayous of Louisiana rival New England in terms of black magic stories set in the U.S.

But Mysterious Heartland editor and writer Michael Keen says hold on to your scrapple for five minutes. The American Midwest has some witch lore too. And he dug up ten good ones. Now, most of them read as pure urban legend, and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with having a few new weapons in your ghost-story telling arsenal next time you need to scare your nephew.

Read Keen's list and enjoy the common themes it shares not just with other witchcraft yarns, but scary stories in general. There are false accusations, angry mobs, ghosts, curses, and lots of evil revenge. Sound familiar?

Yooper?

Are You Ready to Ragnarok?

Remember back in Nov 2013, we alerted you to the Norse historical and mythology enthusiast in England who, per their calculations, predicted that Ragnarok was near, so they blew a ceremonial horn to mark the approaching end? No?

Then the Awful Fight Began
by George Wright, 1908

Oh well. It won't matter anyway because Feb 22 the fall of Asgard begins. That is, assuming the predicted date is correct. Hurry up and read about it. We haven't much time.

***

Bonus Bigfoot News!

Since we're all doomed, let's take a moment and embrace the snake-oil charm of self-proclaimed Bigfoot hunter Rick Dyer's touring show. To sum up: Dyer claims he killed a Sasquatch two years ago. He preserved the body and is now touring the United States, charging a fee to those who want to take a peek at the beast.

We could be offended at Dyer's claim. There's no chance of it passing the typical baloney detecting questions. But if Dyer wants to revive the medicine show to make a few buck off of believers and non-believers alike, why waste the energy? The Typing Monkey would put good money on the possibility that Dyer's story becomes a musical in a couple years.

Witch Fight!

Anybody with their compass pointed in the right direction knows that Feb 2, 2014 was Imbolc. Yes, it was also Groundhog Day and the day the Seattle Seahawks won the Super Bowl.

While most of us were either tuning into the game, or doing anything else, spring -- real spring, not that Gregorian calendar impostor due in March -- quietly stepped onto the season cycle and began pedaling.

And we get it: It's ugly cold out across North America and throughout the Northern hemisphere nobody's about to step outside in tank top and sandals to sip iced tea and feel the sun's heat.

But do go out when you can and have a look around. Trees and bushes are budding. Bulb flowers are rocketing through the soil, arms of defiant green reaching for daylight that grows longer each evening.

We don't report this in a desperate grab for anything to stave off winter gray. We share this old world information because if you relax and let it in, the feeling of spring is there. Nature is waking up.

Here are two versions of a song written and made famous by Scotsman Donovan. The test of good songcraft is how well a composition holds up to different interpretations. The original has the nip of autumn about it that, when combined with the chorus, recalls October.

But Lou Rawls and his band find the Hammond B3 funk under the pile of leaves and loosen the tune up, adding considerable warmth:

[courtesy of marmalade166]

While Super Session takes it further still, opening the song up into a lengthy California stoner jam that skews closer to simmering blues and jazz while still landing, like Rawls, on the secret funk rhythm that has always been the backbone of the song:

[courtesy of jaquenuno]

Neither of these has anything to do with the Imbolc, but we dig 'em and used this post as an excuse to share. Happy spring to you.

Solstice Time Is Here

The Earth has tilted just so, throwing the northern hemisphere into winter. And on December 21, that tilt will reach it's furthest point before leaning back for a long, slow journey toward spring.

Since it's unlikely that anyone at The Typing Monkey's Seattle office will be awake and/or sober when the true solstice occurs at 9:11 a.m. on the 21st, we are here now to acknowledge the event.

Cultures around the globe have various ways of celebrating the shortest day of winter, raging and kicking against the dark, eating and drinking as if they might not survive the cold, because for centuries, surviving the winter wasn't guaranteed.

You know what? Let's just look at this supernatural winter scene by Jason Bennett:

Check out more of Mr. Bennett's work via his generous online portfolio. And if that's not enough, here's a (probably late 19th century) illustration of Father Christmas riding a Yule goat. Oh yeah!

TL;DR -- More Typing, Less Monkey

In scouring the unpaved service roads, blind alleys and drainage ditches of the information superhighway to put together this year's Halloween Frenzy, we accumulated a few items that, while strange or even a little scary, didn't fit within the tasteful orange and black boundaries we try to maintain.

That doesn't mean we don't want to share them. So welcome to our clearance sale.

First up is an ultimately sad tale all the way back from January of this year, so if it's a rerun to you, we apologize. But this tale of vorarephilia is fascinating. Canada's National Post reports of a man who sought help at a Toronto psychiatric hospital in 2012.

The man expressed a desire to be consumed by a "large, dominant woman." He wanted to be eaten. Most cases of vorarephilia involve the diagnosed party as wanting to eat others. So this man's case proved unusual and worth further study. There's so much more to this story, including a puzzling end.

***
From strange consumption to mass consumption: On October 10, Truth Dig reported on a horrible prediction from this year's Chocolate Industry Network Conference in London. The forecast for chocolate does not look good friends. Evidence mounts.

One day, future generations will only know of the confection through a few perverted tales and perhaps a candy wrapper on display in a temple somewhere. We try to make light of this situation because as the adage goes, sometimes laughing is the only alternative to tears.

***

All mythologies have end-of-days stories. Norse mythology tells of Ragnarok, the ultimate battle of the gods against the giants that will result in the death of Odin, the all-father, and the plunging of Midgard [that's Earth, y'all -- ed.] into endless dark, cold winter.

As it turns out, some Norse scholars in England think Ragnarok is about to commence, and they blew a symbolic horn to mark the beginning of the end, which should arrive 100 days from Nov 15. Thanks, guys!

Read all about it on the Daily Mail site, which features a ton of video ads, so adjust your volume accordingly. [And a tip of the antlered helmet to the supremely wonderful Walt Simonson for the late-breaking news lead.]

***
We end this three-course feast of strange with a chewy dessert called The Bus. It's been making the rounds at comics, writing and art blogs for the past couple months, and with good reason. It's a series of short comic strips by Paul Kirchner. We know nothing more about it or him. We could look him up and find out, but frankly, the mystery just adds to the charm of The Bus.

So Much to See

Sometimes we see blogs, Tumblrs and other stops on the web and wonder why we even bother. Then we remember, we bother because if we weren't here to pass the links on to you, who would?

At least that's what we tell ourselves at night before drinking enough cough syrup to fall asleep while listening to old radio dramas.

Imagine some sort of brass fanfare here. Now look!

Can you even stand it?! Yeah, exclamation points. Journalism-degree-be-damned. If ever there was a still from a Disney cartoon that merited a freak-out, this certainly makes the grade.

This is just a smoked pepper corn amongst the bounty of spicy offerings at the Graves and Ghouls Tumblr.

It's run by a woman named Cat who has another Tumblr worth your time, Vintage Gal.

There are GIFs on both, which tend to bug our wonky eyes, but that's one broken match in the factory full of joy. And please know there are ladies in various states of undress on both blogs, so don't get fired on our watch, okay?

Monsters All the Time

Need near-daily doses of hideous horrors, creeping corpses and fantastic phantasms? [Who wrote this, Stan Lee? -- ed]

Get thee to Monster Crazy and Monster Brains.

Yeah, we talk about both blogs a lot, and link to them in the Monkey Love section. But that's because they are excellent portals to art both high and low, and all of it geared toward monsters. What are you even still doing here reading this?

Oh fine, here's a sample of one of many great things you'll see at Monster Crazy:

Now get going.

Naked Came the Sasquatch

Bigfoot's about as scary as Bela Lugosi's bunion cream, but as lasting bit of folklore and the poster beast of cryptozoology, the hairy bastard's charm is irresistible.

Therefore, it's entirely possible that the news of an "explanation" for the Yeti, aka the Abominable Snowman, has already made it's way to you.

The diet version of the tale is that a bit of fur, thought to be sloughed off from the Snowsquatch, is probably that of a rare polar bear that once wandered the Himalayas, the mountainous region of Asia that gave rise to the legend of the Yeti. Read all about that here.

But a far more interesting bit of Sasquatch news broke this past week as well, and didn't stir up nearly the attention that it should have.

A naked 20-year-old man attacked a 58-year-old man with a rock in the backwoods of Oregon and it took police 90 minutes to find the victim and his attacker. All the while, the victim held the dude in the nude at bay with his hunting rifle.

The cherry on this sundae? The clothing-optional assailant claimed he was descended from Sasquatch. Despite his self-proclaimed lineage, he was still arrested like any other human who strips and assaults people in the forest.

Ain't Got No Head

Two very different takes on the Headless Horseman of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

First, Frank Frazetta:

That man could draw horses like few others. For real. You know why Maurice Sendak decided to use monsters in Where the Wild Things Are instead of his original plan for horses? Because he realized how hard it is to draw horses.

Second is Kate Beaton's knee-slapping script-flip of Ichabod on the run:

Read the short strip here.



[A doff of the Jack O'Lantern to Weird Tales for the Frazetta art.]

Diana, Huntress of Bus Drivers

Ciudad Juarez in Mexico City may have a costumed vigilante, and she means business. The story, if it's true -- and this news report give it a squinty eye -- concerns direct and violent retribution against bus drivers in the city.

What did transit workers do to bring down the hammer of old-world justice on themselves? For years, it's believed that some drivers have been raping and killing female passengers, leaving their bodies in the desert.

But someone calling herself Diana, Huntress of Bus Drivers, alleges she's responsible for the recent shooting deaths of two drivers in the area. Each driver got two shots to the head, and police are investigating.

Read the story and cross your fingers that Diana has her targets straight. Her press release is chilling and righteous. And as has been pointed out elsewhere, if the police there put as much effort into stopping the rapes and murders of women as they are in attempting to find Diana, there'd be no need for Diana.

[Hat tip to The Stranger for the lead.]

The Sasquatch Phonetic Alphabet

Last week, you may have heard about the Greek-tragedy level death of two women, friends who got lost hiking in Roque Bluffs State Park in Maine. They were rescued, and got back into the minivan belonging to one of the two women, and promptly drove off a boat launch, into Englishman's Bay.

It was a foggy, rainy night, and they were probably quite shaken by the previous event. The story fascinates -- was death simply there to collect them, no matter what? The strange, sad details are reported in the Portland Press Herald.

We didn't come here to talk about that, but had to mention it on the off chance you missed it. For some reason, the story really sticks with us.

***

In far lighter news, linguist and writer Karen Stollznow wrote a piece for Scientific American's blog, about the language of the Sasquatch. That's right: The alleged language spoken by the crypto-zoological simian said to roam the remote mountain forests of North America.

Stollznow, being a scientist, demands extraordinary proof for the extraordinary claim. It's a gentle beat down, if such a thing can be, but still a surgically precise beat down.

The article led us to the vast sea of YouTube clips that contain portions, or the entirety, of the "Sierra Sounds recordings." Which, you may have guessed, are field recordings of the Sasquatch language in use, by a Sasquatch.

Read Stollznow's baloney-detecting exercise, 'cause it's fun. Fall down a well of Bigfoot videos on  YouTube at your own peril.

Reading About Reading: Demoniacs and Things Under the Bed

Josephine Livingstone's "When Nuns Puked Nails" reviews the book The Devil Within by Brian Levack. The book examines the phenomenon of demonic possession, concentrating on the act's heyday in the 16th and 17th centuries. Her review was published on Prospect magazine's blog.

Livingstone manages to get in a little more literary critique into a book review than most of us are used to, thanks to Prospect allowing for more muscular writing than mainstream media makes room for these days.

Not having read Devil Within, we have no basis for debate with Livingstone, but it's clear she enjoyed the book and her review makes us want to read it. Especially this portion of her review:
"Popular apocalyptic thought—the strong suspicion that the final battle between good and evil was under way—made possession seem reasonable, even expected. The devil (or his attendant demons) taking control of your body was like the forces of evil saving seats at the cinema by putting coats on them."

And she points out that much of the Catholic procedure of exorcism at that time followed what amounted to a script, with even the possessed (usually a woman) knowing their role in the event.

On a similar topic, Peter Stanford reviewed Medusa's Gaze and Vampire's Bite: The Science of Monsters by Matt Kaplan, for The Telegraph. Stanford never uses the term "fortean" but he's nearly there regarding his admiration for Kaplan's approach to answering the question: Why do we want to believe in monsters?

Kaplan, at least per Stanford, doesn't pass judgment on any of the believers, nor does he insist that the psychological or scientific "answers" are the only truth. If that's not in the spirit of Charles Fort, then let's fold up the internets and go home.

Kaplan's book shot to number one with a silver bullet on The Typing Monkey's reading list.

'Zat You, Santa Claus?

Last year, Smithsonian published a slideshow of 24 depictions of Santa Claus that are not the typical Jolly Ol' St. Nick we imagine today when the old feller's name is mentioned.

You could vote as to which was scariest, and we didn't bother to look to see which creepy Santa won. What was far more interesting was that most of the frightening-elf Santas were pre-20th century or rendered by European artists.

That shouldn't be a surprise if you've read even a little bit about the folklore of Santa Claus, or paid attention to traditions still in play in northern Europe, where the Krampus terrorizes kids to let them know the world isn't always going to tussle their hair and give them a piece of hard candy just because.

Here are three of our favorites:

Santa Claus, in this storybook image from the 1870s, looks like a mad badger-man, and he's carrying the switches normally associated with Black Peter and Krampus. Look out kids! (That little punk about to dip into Santa's bag is going to get a right-good beating.)

For the photo below, we'll just quote what Smithsonian had to say:

In the 19th and early 20th century, a popular tradition for Pennsylvania Germans was to go belsnickling on St. Nicholas Day, or December 6. This meant that at least one person in a neighborhood—the “belsnickle”—would dress up, usually in raggedy clothes and a mask, and visit the homes of their neighbors, delivering either candy or coal to the children.

Bellsnicking, sure. St. Nick's cool by us, but is that Cthulhu on the left?

And finally, we give you a detail Will Crawford's illustration of Santa Claus from the cover of a 1912 issue of Puck, a humor magazine.

Crawford's illustration, titled "Hands Up!" has the caption: "As Santa looks to some of  us."

Take a good long look at the whole gallery here. And if you have a chimney, consider building a big fire come Christmas Eve.

Today in Vampire News

Let's get the sillier of these two news items out of the way first:

The movie-rating board of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has officially endorsed the film Twilight: Breaking Dawn 2 due to a strong family values message.

The board, which is officially called the Catholic Initiative for Enlightened Movie Appreciation, or CINEMA, says the film "brings into focus the value of marriage, the need to protect life in the womb and the importance of family."

We don't really have any comment on this. Catholic residents of the Philippines are free to watch this final installment of the Twilight series without guilt now, and that's cool.

The news doesn't affect anyone at TMI headquarters beyond the fact that we've now strung a piece of red twine between three pegs on our "conspiracy speculation board" -- the Catholic Church, Stephanie Meyer's Twilight books and the Mormons -- all connected now. We're keeping an eye on you all.

***

The second item concerns the frightened populace of the Serbian village Zarozje. News outlets are generally reporting the story as "news of the weird" or with an implied wink. That's to be expected.

The report concerns an dilapidated shack above the Rogacica river, long believed to have been the home of Sava Savanovic, a man also long believed to be a vampire who would attack and exsanguinate anyone bold enough to take their grain to the nearby mill.

Curious tourists have braved visits to the shack, but the family that owns the property and the shack have not kept the place up due to their fear of Savanovic. The shack recently collapsed, prompting the population of Zarozje to fear that the vampire is now on the loose, seeking a new home and a hot meal.

Whatever the truth of the story is -- and surely this vivid folk tale sprang up for some reason -- can you imagine living there? The mayor of Zarozje himself has recommended garlic rubbed and/or displayed on windows and doors, and crosses throughout the home to protect locals from Savanovic.

We visited the Sava page of Zarozje.com and found this haiku-like arrangement of text:

"Dobro dosli

Dragi posetioci,
ova stranica je u izradi.
Posetite nas opet."

Thanks to a Web translation engine, we now know that this simply says "Welcome. Dear visitors, this site is in the making. Please visit us again." Yes, we hoped it was some sort of poem or perhaps an incantation to keep Savanovic at bay. Alas.


[A deep bow to the Fortean Times for these.]

The Spanish Inquisition-ers Must Have Really Been Bored

In a serendipitous bit of Web surfing -- where intent and chance run wild in the brain -- we've been reading a bit about the Basque witch trials of the early 17th century. The Wikipedia article is a fine a place as any to start, and should the subject stimulate your brain, there's more to read on the Web and in print.

The Basque witch hunt was the largest of any perpetrated by the Spanish Inquisition, with estimates of nearly 7,000 people in Basque Country investigated, accused and/or tried.

And as is often the case, minorities were targeted for persecution. Women were the primary victims, as midwives and herbalists, steeped in the non-Christian [and totally compelling -- ed.] folklore of the region, faced accusations. But plenty of men and children were charged as well, including Conversos, descendants of the Jews and Moors who had converted to Christianity.

It ended as quickly as it started, but not without a body count.

Though not directly inspired by the Basque witch trials, the late 18th century painting "Witches' Sabbath" by Francisco Goya, intentionally recalls medieval and early Renaissance beliefs in what went on during a black sabbath:

You'll pardon our modern eyes for thinking that with the exception of the creepy skeleton baby, this looks like "Awesome Storytime With Uncle Goat" and not some heinous gathering of ill intent.

***

Bonus witchcraft-y weirdness!

Major Thomas Weir, a 17th century Scottish soldier who, at 70, suddenly claimed not only to be a warlock, but to have engaged in all manner of taboo acts with his sister Jean. All of this flew in the face of their very public life as devout Christians. As their confessions continued, the claims grew even stranger, and both were executed, despite any compelling evidence beyond their claims.

A BBC documentary made in 2007 examines the likelihood that Maj. Weir was largely the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

It's Them $@#% Goblins Again!

The animators at Screen Novelties do good work. And The Typing Monkey has swiped their content before to show you why we think that.

Here's another great piece of stop-motion and puppet animation work Screen Novelties crafted, inspired by Wladyslaw Starewicz's seminal work. It's both sweet and creepy, and that's not easy to achieve.

Check it:


You like? Here's a link to their Vimeo page for more, more, more.

A Bedside Grimoire

As you've no doubt read, heard or seen by now, a historian of early Christianity at the Harvard Divinity School has gone public with the story of an aged piece of papyrus with Coptic script referencing Jesus and his wife.

It's an interesting item, a good story and, if legitimate, something that might force many Christian churches to rethink some of the tenets they've been following for about 1,500 years.

However we're going to use that tale of a lost text as a launching point to talk about another lost text recently resurfaced, The Long Lost Friend. It's a new translation of John George Hohman's Der lange verborgene Freund ('The Long-Hidden Friend') -- a book of practical magic originally published in 1820.

Hohman was an immigrant and published his book in America, with translations making the rounds quickly, as many in and out of the frontier took quickly to the book's German folk medicine and Native American herbal remedies, as well as the easily recited/copied incantations to keep witchcraft and evil at bay.

Friend is practical magic, don't forget. It's not some spell book with oogy verses in dead languages that will bring monsters forth from the bowels of Hell. The spells all apply directly to the things that any reasonable person in the still-wild United States would want to protect.

Friend was so popular for a time that both the medical establishment and clergy in the United States worked hard to discredit Hohman and his text. A major reason for their disdain was not just the medicinal recipies and magic that cut into their respective businesses, the doctors and preachers were defending themselves, as Hohman often derides both in the book.

Read Stefany Anne Golberg's review of Daniel Harms' translation of The Long Lost Friend. Her take casts Hohman's work as America's first (and finest?) self-help book. She might be right.

"Who will do that now?"

The BBC News Magazine recently published a sad, strange story about women in Ghana who are accused of witchcraft. The accused are usually old and the assignment of guilt, just as it was across 16th century Europe and the American colonies in the 17th century, springs from coincidental events that have nothing to do with the women.

In a kinder, gentler twist, the Ghanan women have taken to living in witch camps. Read the whole thing here.