The biggest mistake in the text comes when Van Helsing says, “The Nosferatu do not die like the bee when he stung once (p.287).” Van Helsing uses Nosferatu as a synonym for Vampire. However, Nosferatu actually means “Plague of Rats.” It is a Slavonic word derived from the Greek word, “Nosophoros,” which means: Plague carrier. Romanians use the word Nosferatu in conjunction with vampires, because Old World vampires were believed to be the cause of plagues like tuberculosis and the Black Plague. However, Stoker used this erroneous information only because of one of his folkloric sources, Emily Gerard’s travelogue entitled, The Land Beyond the Forest (1885). Gerard’s book captures the feel and look of Transylvania/Wallachia/Romania very well, but Emily did not speak the language well and as such assumed Nosferatu and vampire were interchangeable words. In her text she writes, “More decidedly is the Nosferatu, or Vampire, in which every Roumanian peasant believes as firmly as he does in heaven or hell…even a flawless pedigree will not insure any one against the intrusion of a vampire into their family vault, since every person killed by a Nosferatu becomes likewise a vampire after death…(p. 185-186).” Because Stoker was determined to add every possible folkloric reference he could find to his text, he accidentally perpetuated a mistake that continues in the Western World to this day, as we see in films, books and even role-playing games. However, if you go to Romania, or any Eastern European country…the two words are still exclusive. The true Slavonic word for vampire remains “Stirgoi.”

One of the most overlooked and important details about Dracula is that Stoker did expressly plan for his vampire to be Vlad the Impaler himself. However, when Stoker set out to right his vampire tale, he had no knowledge of Vlad. The Book was going to be called, The Un-Dead until the day he ran across a set of old books in the British Museum Reading Room (Florescu, 150). Stoker become fascinated with The Impaler Prince, and quickly gathered all the information he could find on Vlad. The sources ranged from texts written during Vlad’s life, like The Story of a Bloodthirsty Madman Called Dracula of Wallachia, written by the poet laureate Michel Beheim in 1463 for the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, to speaking with actual well-known experts on the leaders of Western Europe, such as Arminus Vambery (Florescu p. 7; Wolfe; P.291), who as thanks, was placed into Stoker’s novel as an ally of Van Helsing. Stoker’s own letters and journals that he made over the seven years it took to write Dracula are now housed in the Rosenbach Foundation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I myself have been lucky enough to read through them. In one journal entry Stoker writes how he came across a book by William Wilkinson which he checked out of the Whitby Public Lending Library. In fact, Stoker even recorded the call numbers of this book and others he checked out about Vlad (Florescu, 148.)! Within Wilkinson’s book, Stoker found information about Vlad’s betrayal by the boyars and his brother Radu. Stoker notes how important details like this are, so he can place them in the Count’s life. And so Stoker does at the beginning of Chapter 3 when he has the Count say, “Who was it but one of my own race who at Voivode crossed that Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground? This was a Dracula indeed! Woe was it that his own unworthy brother, when he had fallen, sold his people to the Turk and brought the shame of slavery upon them (p. 41)” Dracula goes on ranting about the greatness of this Dracula for another page or so. But unbeknownst to the casual reader, or to Harker, the Count is actually speaking about himself, but must refer to himself as a separate person, so as not to reveal his true nature to Harker. Thus Stoker has managed to give Vlad real immortality, by transforming him into the Undead Count that shall never be forgotten by the race of man.

Yet, Dracula/Vlad is not the only real life person carried over into this novel. Parts of Dracula actually tell the history of Bram Stoker. You see, many of the characters in the book are based on real people Stoker knew or was fascinated by. Obviously we have the Count and Vlad, but every main male character has a real life counterpart. Harker’s real life counterpart is scene designer Joseph Harker (1855-1920) who Leonard Wolfe tells us was the scene designer or the Lyceum Theatre where Stoker worked (p.1). As well, Stoker mentions the real Harker in is book, Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving. In this biography/memoirs, Stoker mentions Harker only is passing by saying he was a great painter and did many of the sets of Shakespeare plays at the Lyceum (p.110, 156). Quincey Morris was a very important character to Stoker. He was one of the few Americanophilles in England in the 19th century. He was good friends with Walt Whitman and Mark Twain whose work he defended across the Atlantic to his fellow Europeans (Wolfe, p.78). Stoker published a pamphlet entitled, “A Glimpse of America,” which he called America, “a nation not merely like ourselves—the same in blood, religion, and social ideas, with an almost identical common law, and with whom our manifold interests are not only vast, but almost vital (Wolfe, p.78).” Quincey was added to Dracula to basically spite the Anti-American sentiment that was all around him. Quincey was based on Joaquin Miller, an American frontier poet who was writing the same time as Stoker. Miler moved to England where he was renowned for his rustic cowboy look and his outfits. Morris reputedly talks similar to how Miller spoke. As well, Stoker based Quincy on John (not David) Bowie. Stoker has him not only wield the knife that bears Bowie’s name, but he too dies of knife wounds while fighting off Mexican soldiers at the Alamo. Stoker changed his death at the hands of one “foreign enemy” to that of Dracula’s gypsies. Finally, the most interesting character is that of Abraham Van Helsing. Mina describes the good doctor as being,

“A man of medium height, strongly built, with his shoulders set back over a broad, deep chest and a neck well balanced on the truck as the head is on the neck…the head is noble, well-sized, broad and large behind the ears…big, bushy eyebrows…The forehead is broad and fine, rising at first almost straight and then sloping back above two bumps or ridges wide apart; such a forehead that the reddish hair cannot possibly tumble over it, but falls naturally back and to the sides. Big, dark blue eyes are set widely apart, and are quick and tender or stern with the man’s moods. (p. 226-227).”

Why is this important? Because it is the very description of Abraham Stoker himself! Stoker gives the character his first name, and like Stoker, Van Helsing has archaic knowledge and insights into both the realms of the Vampire and Tepes himself. As well, through Stokers letters to friends and families and diary entries we are given subtle hints that he is playing the part of Van Helsing in his novel. Many of his friends and heroes are transformed into characters in his novel, why not the author himself? Many other authors have picked up on this idea, from Leonard Wolfe (p.148), to J. Gordon Melton (653), to even Famous Dracula Scholars Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally (p.147-148). So now, not only has Vlad the Impaler achieved immortality through this classic novel, but many of Barm’s friends live on as well.

Another important piece of folklore that Stoker included that the Western word has forgotten is that of the Blue Flame and Walpurgis Nacht. In the beginning of Stoker’s novel we see comments about St. George’s Day (Western name for Walpurgis Nacht) and during Harker’s ride on the coach, the blue flames are encountered (p. 17 and p. 29). Walpurgis Nacht, for Eastern Europe is quite simply, the most Evil Day of the year. Montague Summers comments, “Upon the eve of the saint, the powers of vampires, witches and every evil thing is at its height. (p. 313).” Stoker has a woman warn Harker about this evil night when she says, “It is the eve of St. George’s Day. Do you not know that to-night, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway (p. 7-8)?” And the young lady is right. On this day, Vampires can not be killed…by ANY means. Stoker found this information on many sources, chief probably being Gerard’s text again especially because she ties the legend of Walpurgis Nacht together with the legend of the blue flames. She writes, “For in this night (so say the legends) all these treasures begin to burn, or…’to bloom’ in the bosom of the earth, and the light they give forth, described as a bluish flame…serves to guide favored mortals to their place of concealment (p.230).” But the blue flame has appeared in other novels and on days other than May the 5th. Ann Radcliff and “Monk” Lewis have incorporated the blue flame into their novels as well (Wolfe, p.29). But for Eastern Europeans, May the 5th is a very important day. After all one may find great riches, or one may find their death at the hands of the undead. Knowing this now, it is no wonder the peasants tried to prevent Harker from traveling to the castle of Dracula.

Stoker added his own little pieces to the vampire mythos as well. Most notable of these is the vampire bat. The vampire bat was first found by Spanish conquistadors in Mexico and South America in 1760 (Melton, p. 41; Abrams, p. 55). As they were not native to Europe, before this discovery it would be hard to find a reason to link the un-dead to our only flying mammal. However, after this discovery, bats became a symbol for the undead in the mid 18th century. The even appeared on the cover of Varney the Vampire, a popular “Penny Dreadful” in England. Yet Stoker was the first to make the logical conclusion that perhaps vampires could both control and transform into a bat. This idea caught on like wildfire amongst vampire fans and writers and has never left the public consciousness about vampires since.

Although this is just a light dabbling into the folklore and hidden secrets that Bram threw into his novel, we can see how rich this text is in regards the old legends of the vampire. Many of the legends Western society was not aware of, and has since forgotten remain alive in this book. Stoker felt it was exceedingly important to make sure the old tales stayed alive, and that every facet of the tales were necessary to create vivid picture of the count, the life and powers of the Un-dead and the land which he hailed from. Because of the seven years of research and care Stoker put into this novel, he has created one of the most influential books in literary history, as well as one of the most famous. Yet if one tries hard enough, it is obvious that Stoker wrote Dracula on many levels. It is much like reading Gulliver’s Travels; once you know the hidden commentary placed into the novel, it reads as a very different tale indeed.

Florescu, Radu & Raymond T. McNally. In Search Of Dracula. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994.

Gerard, Emily. The Land Beyond The Forest. New York, NY: Harper and Bros., 1888.

Marigny, Jean. Vampires: Restless Creatures of the Night. London, England: Harry N. Abrams, 1994.

Melton, J. Gordon. The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead. Detroit, MI: Visible Ink, 1994.

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. London, Jarrold, 1966.

Stoker, Bram. Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving. 2 vols. New York: The MacMillan Co., 1906.

Summers, Montague. The Vampire: His Kith and Kin. Rpr. New Hyde Park: New York University Books, 1960.

Summers, Monatgue. The Vampire in Europe. Rpr. New Hyde Park: New York Univeristy Books, 1961.

Wolfe, Leonard, ed. The Essential Dracula: The Definitive Annotated Edition of Bram Stoker’s Classic Novel. Middlesex, England: Byron Preiss, 1975.

The Biggest Supernatural Hoax of the 20th Century

I can’t remember who I was with. It was either when I saw SAW in Australia with my friend Karma, or when I came back and saw the terrible Blade: Trinity with Matt Yeager, but at one of those two movies, a trailer for an upcoming film made me pause. Yes, that’s how insane this week has been. I can’t even remember that one detail.

The trailer was for the upcoming film: The Amityville Horror. This film is a remake of the original from the 1970’s which was base don the book by the same name.

What bothers me is that the trailer stated that the Amityville Horror is based on a true story. In fact, the truth about the Amityville house was debunked 25 years ago, but thanks to some great PR and urban legends, the tale is still considered true. I myself have spent a night in the house, and I can tell you it’s about as scary as an episode of Donna Reed or My Three Sons.

I thought since this column is all about the truth behind legends, what better topic could I cover today that sharing with you the true history of the Amityville Horror…

America’s most famous Haunted House is steeped in over twenty-five years of controversy. From the murders that started the publicity about the house, to the debates over whether or not the hauntings were nothing more than an elaborate hoax, the Amityville house has become a part a major part of American folklore.

One of the few aspects of the Amityville house that is considered fact by all sides is that on November 13th, 1974, one Ronald DeFeo Jr, rose from his second story room at 3am after watching a movie called, White Keep, and picked up a.35 Marlin rifle. From that point DeFeo brutally murdered his father and mother, Ronald Senior and Louise, and then moved on to murder his two brothers and sisters as well. In all, six people were murdered that early morning, and the eventual aftermath would send a 2 and a half story Dutch Colonial house into the annuals of Parapsychology.

Police reports state that all six bodies were found in bed. The sheer mystery behind how an entire family could sleep through gunshots made by a high-powered rifle is only the start of the controversy. AT DeFeo’s trial, two different psychiatrists argued heavily over the state of Ronald Jr’s sanity. Even after Ronald was given six consecutive life sentences for the murders he had committed, he continues to give the same eerie defense. Ronald admitted he had killed his family. And that he felt no remorse for the crimes. But insisted something had gotten inside him and forced him to kill the family he swore he loved. Was Ronald actually possessed by something from another world?

Many people believe DeFeo was actually possessed, but just any many feel that DeFeo’s defense attorney, William Weber convinced DeFeo to use the possession defense in hope of making a lot of money from a book deal. In fact, there are book contracts between the two men, and DeFeo was also slated to receive a percentage of book sales from the Lutz’s, whom we will meet later, as well as money from Hanz Holtzer’s book Murder in Amityville. Today, DeFeo sings a different story and claims he was tricked into perpetrated into a hoax by the aforementioned parties into making them rich. Yet is this because he truly was tricked, or simply bitterness that they made money of his psychotic murders? The truth about DeFeo’s actions may never be known, but those six murders were the starting point for the story that would eventually become knows as, The Amityville Horror. To Holzer’s credit, his book, Murder in Amityville, is more concerned with the court case and documentation of what occurred during the trial than the actual hauntings.

On December 18,1975 George and Katherine Lutz moved into 112 Ocean Avenue in the small town of Amityville. The house in question had six bedrooms, a huge yard and a swimming pool. But best of all was the price. Only $80,000. When they queried how such an incredible house could cost next to nothing, the broker explained that a year before, that house had been the sight of a mass murder. The Lutz’s, claiming they were not superstitious people, bought the house and moved in with their three children, Daniel, Chris, and Melissa, as well as their dog Harry. On January 14, 1976, a mere 28 days later, the Lutz family fled the house in fear, vowing never to return. What had happened?

It all started after the Lutz’s priest, Father Ralph Precario aka Father Ray aka Father Mancuso had blessed the house that strange supernatural events began to take place. Father Ray also claimed a deep masculine voice warned him to leave the house when he sprinkled holy water upon the floor. He then suffered from a strange sickness that plagued him until he transferred to another parish.

As for the Lutz’s they encountered stranger and more horrifying events over the next four weeks. The family began to see ghosts floating through their home. Windows across the house would break in unison. Swarms of flies would hover in the Children’s bedrooms. There would be extreme temperature changes, a ghostly parade every night, oozing slime from the walls, marked changes in personality, along with the stereotypical strangely appearing wounds and gashed, horrid smells and unexpected bouts of illness.

The Lutz’s also began to encounter Poltergeist style activities. Items would fly across the house violently and suddenly. Their telephone would repeatedly disconnect. And strangest of all, young daughter Melissa began talking to a demon only she could see that she named “Jodie.” It also was in the shape of a pig. Kathleen began to have psychic dreams were she saw the murder of the DeFeo family unfold, along with visions of Louise having an affair with the artist who painted the DeFeo family portraits. Interestingly enough, there was no evidence to show Louise having an affair. Another odd contradiction between the hauntings and reality was when George grew out his beard and hair, which they claimed made him look like Ronald DeFeo Jr. In actuality, Ronnie’s hair did not go past his neck. Even with these inconsistencies, the family began to live in a world of fear. The children refused to go to school. George refuses to go to work. Eventually, the family left the house and their worldly possessions behind in a desperate attempt to escape the evil that they believed lived within the house.

Soon after, the Lutz’s told their story to professional author, Jay Anson, whose book called, The Amityville Horror was published by Prentice-Hall in 1977. It was released as a non-fiction book. Although Anson had never visited the house, and made errors throughout his book, from minor mistakes about meteorological data, to utterly false floor plans of 112 Ocean Avenue being included in the book, it became a best seller and also became the basis for of the of highest grossing film of 1979, which had the same title as Anson’s book. This also set off a spree of Haunted House movies, books, and True Stories, including Smurl house.

Even if the story told by Anson and the Lutz’s was true, credibility was lost when John G. Jones wrote not one, but TWO sequels to the Amityville horror. These books were also credited with being “True” stories, yet Jones was not able to get the name of the children correct, calling them Greg Matt and Amy, instead of Danny, Chris and Melissa. Nor did Jones accurate state what George Lutz dud for a living, calling him an air traffic controller, instead of the manager for a surveying company.

More cracks began to appear in the Lutz’s story. A large one comes from the fact they claimed their house was built atop an abandoned well where the Shinnecock Indians would leave their sick and insane to die from exposure to the elements. In fact, the Shinnecock Indians lived nowhere near what would become the town of Amityville. All Indians on Long Island, which is where Amityville is located, were actually Montauckett. Although these Indians DID bury their dead in shell mounds along water, but there are no records of Sanitariums or Indian Burial grounds where 122 Ocean Avenue is located. The only Indian burial grounds around Amityville are now dumping grounds. As well, Native Americans are known to care for their injured and dying, and wouldn’t abandon them in a well. Other rumors of a satanic magician named John Ketchum living where the Amityville house now stands, an ancient cursed cemetery standing where the house now does, and the like were all proven false.

The infamous red room that the book and movie claimed was a “gate to hell” and where Ronald DeFeo jr. practiced black magic in was nothing more than where the DeFeo children kept their toys. Brunswick Hospital had no record of every seeing Danny Lutz whose hand was supposed smashed by a window controlled by the spirits in the house. George’s claims that the house was constantly freezing was proved not to be the work of ghosts, but nature as they lived on the water’s edge, and also had a heater that known to be faulty, even when the DeFeo’s lived there.

Worst of all for the Lutz’s is that many of their witnesses began to admit falsehoods about the case and book. Father Decorator admitted under oath during a civil case that the majority of the story was false. William Weber, the man who cooked up the entire “possession” defense for DeFeo appeared on a radio show in 1979 where he firmly stated the entire story was created in the Lutz’s kitchen over a few bottles of wine. After he came up with the idea, the Lutz ran with the tale and refused to share any of the profits with him. Weber sued for what he felt was his share of the book and movie profits, while the Lutz’s countersued to validate their tale. During that trial, both Lutz’s passed a lie detector test, but the results were of course inadmissible in court. The suit eventually ended with Judge Jack Weinstein finding verdict in favor of Weber, believing the Lutz’s had created a hoax with the sole intent of getting a book published.

Other names joined in the suit of the Lutz’s. Jim and Barbara Cromarty, who moved into the house after the Lutz’s, encountered no evidence of paranormal activity. The house was quiet as any other building. However, due to constant barrages by the media, tourists and assorted wackos, the Cromarty’s sued not only the Lutz’s, but also Anson and Prentice-Hall for 1.1 million dollars. The matter was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

Father Ralph also sued the Lutz’s and publisher for invasion of privacy and distorting his words and involvement in the entire affair. He too, received an out of court settlement.

It should be noted that the Lutz’s were the only family to ever have a problem with the house. Families before the DeFeo’s and after the Lutz have reported no bizarre happenings during their stay in the building.

Although one cannot prove whether or not the Amityville house was actually haunted, it is quite easy from all the facts gathered that the story was at the very least, filled with embellishments. What is most important is not the debate of whether or not the Amityville house is a gateway to the netherworld, but that in 1974, six people died because someone snapped. If people truly did try to profit from the death of innocents, then they are far worse than the beings they claimed terrorized them for merely a month.

Sources

Anson, Jay. The Amityville Horror. New York: Bantam Books, 1977.
Auerbach, Lloyd. ESP, Hauntings and Poltergeists: A Parapsychologistâ??s Handbook.
New York: Warner Books, 1986.
Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits, The. New York:
Checkmark Books, 2000
Holtzer, Hans. Murder In Amityville. New York: Belmont Towers, 1979.
Holtzer, Hans. Ghosts: True Encounters with the World Beyond. Black Dog: New York,
1997.
Jones, John G. The Amityville II: The Possession. New York: Warner Books, 1982.
Jones, John G. Amityville: The Final Chapter. New York: Jove Books, 1985.
Kaplan, Stephen K. The Amityville Horror Conspiracy. New York: Toad Hall Inc., 1995.
Morris, Roberts L. The Case of the Amityville Horror.Ã Review of the Amityville Horror
appearing in Kendrick Frazier, ed., Paranormal Borderlands of Science. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1981.

Web Pages

The Amityville Murders: http://www.amityvillemurders.com
Amityville: The Web Site: http://www.jarrett.nu/amityville/main2.html
City of Amityville: http://www.amityville.com/
The Hoax in Amityville: http://chatanuga.topcities.com/Amityville.html
The Amityville Horror No Hoax page: http://members.tripod.com/~AmityvilleHorror/
The Amityville Horror Movie page: http://www.amityvillehorrormovie.com

The Mummy’s Curse

I thought it would be fun this week to cover the origins of this recent bit of folklore. The Curse of King Tut can be traced back to our most famous of mummies, King Tutankhamun. King Tut was a mere child when he died as Pharaoh; only 18 years old in 1320 BC. Famous Egyptologist and Archaeologist Howard Carter and his benefactor Lord Carnarvon finally opened the tomb on Nov, 26th, 1922 to find the greatest collection of Egyptian treasure (and by that I mean of both historical and monetary value) ever unearthed. Everything from furniture to weapons, to the preserved corpse of King Tut himself were found. However, once the tomb was opened, a straight set of events began to unfold, from disease to accidents, began to affect those associated with the dig. Was there in fact a curse upon the tomb?

Before we go into the occurrences, I want to bring up that nowhere in the tomb was there any commentary about a curse. None whatsoever. The entire theory of a mummy’s curse came from English Spiritualists and Occultists and over the years, the average joe has begun to believe there actually was some obscure curse written in hieroglyphics on a pyramid wall somewhere. But in fact, this is not so.

Although the tomb was opened on Nov 26th, The official opening ceremony would be held on Nov 29th. With newspapers and scholars around the world paying attention to this momentous occasion, Carter and Carnarvon began to exhume the tomb. Carter ended up spending from Christmas 1922 until the year 1930 removing goods from the tomb and cataloguing them, where they can now be seen in the Griffith Institute at Oxford University. Lord Carnarvon stayed at the tomb and continued his work there.

On March 6th of 1923, Carnarvon was bitten on the cheek by a mosquito. He cut the bite while shaving and it became inflamed and infected. Carnarvon but iodine on the cut and rested for a few days. When he felt better, he accompanied his daughter to Cairo, where he hoped he would be able to get medical supervision to look at his wound.

A week later Carnarvon had a fever and the blood poisoning in his cut caused him develop pneumonia. Carter came to his Lord’s bedside, as did Carnarvon’s wife and Son from other parts of the British Empire. Eventually Carnarvon died and the official cause was labeled Typhoid Fever.

Now here is where all the mumbo jumbo and controversy starts. A friend of Carnarvon, an American romance novelist named Marie Corelli believed he had not died from the bite but that the Lord has accidentally poisioned himself while handling items from King Tut’s tomb. She quoted Lord Carnarvon’s book, The Egyptian History of The Pyramids, where it stated many items in Egyptian pyramids and tombs contained secret poisons that would catch a grave robber unaware and cause him to suffer painfully before finally letting him die.

Now this is a reasonable belief. After all, it was in the realms of both the possible and credible. Could the mosquito bite have just been timed with the poison interacting with Carnarvon’s system? Or was it merely another death caused by a mosquito bite, an affliction that is quite common in the middle east even to this day?

But then of course Arthur Conan Doyle had to stick his nose into things again. Remember Doyle? Remember the Fairy incident I wrote about a few weeks ago in an earlier column? Well yeah, Mr. “OMG! I believe in everything and anything supernatural and I will do anything to prove these things exist” got involved and became the catalyst for the Mummy’s curse. Hard to believe this nut job wrote the Sherlock Holmes novels.

Now to be fair to Doyle, there were other writers suggesting the possibility of the Undead wreaking vengeance from beyond the grave on Carnarvon, but those were relatively quiet and dismissed. However on April 6th, the day after Carnarvon died, Doyle told the American Press, which then relayed it to the London Morning Post that he believed Carnarvon’s death was caused by. “An evil elemental.” I wish I was making this up, but I’m not. Doyle then launched into a diatribe about how all Egyptian tombs were protected by the occult and spiritual forces and how we are ignorant of what powers the Egyptians had in those days and what form the power of the elementals could take.

And with that we have the origins of the Mummy’s curse. But it gets worse. On April 7th, Doyle continued to flap his gums, stating he knew of another person who had fallen prey to Egyptian Black Magick, his friend Fletcher Robinson, who wrote for the Daily Express newspaper and also helped Doyle write the most popular Sherlock Holmes story ever, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Doyle claimed Fletcher had been investigating the British Museum’s mummy of an ancient priestess and whether or not it “exuded an evil aura.” Doyle claimed to have warned Fletcher not to investigate the mummy, but he was ignored and then Fletcher met with an untimely death. Of course, like Carnarvon, Fletcher died of typhoid fever, but Doyle insisted this was the work of elemental spirits and that typhoid was merely the power of the elementals guarding the mummies.

Newspapers and credible sources for the most part reported Doyle’s ramblings, but paid them no credible heed. Most people believed it was either Carnarvon had a brush with a hidden poison trap in the tomb, or he died from something akin to Malaria thanks to the mosquito bite. But as time went on, more and more peculiarities came to light about Carnarvon’s death.

First off, there were no mosquitoes in the Valley of the Kings, where King Tut was buried. And there never had been. For Carnarvon to have been bitten, it would have to have been in Luxor, where Carnarvon was staying during the excavations of the tomb. At the same time, it was proven than two mysterious things happened when Lord Carnavon died. The first was that the second he died, the entire city of Cairo lost electrical power for five minutes. British officials and newspapers and the Cairo hospital were able to confirm these events did coincide at the exact same time. As well, the son and 6th Earl of Carnarvon reported that at 2am on April 5th, Carnarvon’s dog Suzie, howled at the top of its lungs and dropped dead when it was it perfectly fine health.

And Doyle’s theories began to gain favor with people around the world. Perhaps there WAS a curse on the tomb of Tutankhamun.

At this point, every crackpot out there began to state something about the curse. Spiritualists were claiming to have warned Carnarvon about meddling with the Pharaoh and releasing dark powers onto the world. A clairvoyant named Cheiro wrote that he was possessed by the spirit of Egyptian Princess Makitaton, seventh daughter of the Pharaoh Akhnaton, and that s/he had tried to warn Carnarvon about a plague that would inflict him if he removed a single object from Tut’s resting place.

And newspapers began to run the false tale stating that not only did Carnarvon know there was a curse on the tomb and proceeded anyway, but that the entire excavation team knew, and that their greed and lust for fame won out, and so the team ignored all the warnings they had received. Which was in truth, none.

Another false story that came about was that supposedly the team came across an inscription over the enterence of the tomb. It was supposedly translated by a concerned Egyptologist and leaked to the press. “Death shall come on swift wings to whoever toucheth the tomb of the Pharaoh.” Again, pure crapola. But like the mainstream press of our day, those of the 1920’s ran wild with this story, embellishing it and never bothering to actually look for facts. The story eventually grew to Carnarvon removed the tablet and hanging his own coat of arms in its stead. Why would he do that? It makes no sense. The man held ancient Egypt with great respect and awe, not contempt. Just sad.

TRUE Egyptologists played down the curse aspect. But even then, superstition began to weed out science and fact. Arthur Weigall, ex-chief inspector of Antiquities for Luxor wrote a correspondence to the Daily Mail in which he recited passages from a 1923 book (which of course was published AFTER Carnarvon’s death), which had a chapter called, “The Malevolence of Ancient Egyptian Spirits.” He reiterated the Fletcher Robinson incident, along with other unlucky Egyptian artifacts which had brought their previous owners doom. Weigall even included a story about Carnarvon’s canary and how it was eaten by a cobra that somehow got inside the cage on the day the tomb was opened. And of course Weigall ended the letter by saying,

“I have heard the most absurd nonsense talked in Egypt by those that believe in the malevolence of the dead; but at the same time, I try to keep an open mind on the subject.”

In April of 1926, Dr. Douglas Derry of the Cairo medical school reported finding a blemish on Tutankhamun’s mummy in the same spot on the face as Carnarvon’s. Weigall again had to interject his own comments saying, “… I must admit that some very strange things - call them coincidences if you will - have happened in connection with the Luxor excavations.”

And of course now that Scientists and Egyptologists were commenting that the curse was real, everyone started believing in it. The British Museum began received scores of packages containing Egyptian artifacts from people who feared they would be cursed in a similar fashion. At least the Museum gained from all this hoopla.

Now you’re probably wondering how all this spread from just one man’s, even a famous and well respected man, death. Well, Carnarvon wasn’t the only person that died or suffered misfortune from the excavating team.

A few months after Carnarvon died, his half brother, one Col. Aubrey Herbert, died of septicemia after a minor operation. He had nothing to do with the excavation by the way. Next on the hit list was Egyptologist Evelyn White. He committed suicide in a taxi cab in Sept 1924. It was rumoured he was part of the curse becauseMAYBE he had removed fragments of Egyptian artifacts from a monastery in Egypt and he feared the Curse. I personally think it because his parents named a boy Evelyn. There was even a note found reading,

“I know there is a curse on me, although I had leave to take those manuscripts to Cairo. The monks told me the curse would work all the same. Now it is done.”

Almost everyone who died in an odd way was being added to the curse’s list of victims. A friend of Carnarvon, Millionaire George Jay Gould died 24 hours after being shown the tomb of Tut by Carter from a sudden fever? More poison? The press didn’t think so. He was labeled a victim of the curse.

The New York Times reported on March 26th, 1926, “Sixth Tomb Hunter Succumbs in Egypt.” This latest death was the Director of Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre, Professor Georges Benedite. Georges tripped and fell in the tomb and quickly contracted pneumonia. Again, it would seem poison traps would be the case. Instead, Dr. JC Mardrus, the man who translated The Arabian Nights voiced that Georges had been stricken by an attack from unknown forces which the ancient Egyptians were obviously able to control.

By 1934 the curse had supposedly logged the following victims: Lord Carnarvon, his two half brothers, Evelyn White, Benedite, a Dr. Archibald Reed, who died of exhaustion after examining the Tutankamun mummy, Howard Carter’s assistant, who died of pleurisy, Carnarvon’s secretary, who died of a heart attack, the Secretary’s father, Lord Westbury who died of a suicide after hearing his son had died from the curse. A small 8 year old boy who was crushed by Lord Westbury’s hearse, Prince Ali Kamal Fahmy Bey of Egypt, who entered the tomb and was murdered while visiting England, an unnamed British Museum employee who suddenly dropped dead while labeling objects from the tomb, and finally Mr. Arthur Weigall himself, who helped perpetuate the belief in the curse, who died of a fever like so many others. The curse even lasted longer than any of the people who had anything tangentially related to do with the excavation. In 1976, the Director of Antiquities for the Egyptian National Museum died while treasures from Tut’s tomb were being moved to England.

But a rational and skeptical mind notices that the curse claimed almost no one from the actual dig. None of the workers, and not the man responsible for its unearthing, Harold Carter. The worst thing that happened to Carter was he developed gallstones later in life. He finally died of a heart attack in 1939, but lived to be well over 60. Carter’s friend and fellow excavator Callender died at roughly the same time and age, and some members, like Lady Herbert and Richard Adamson, lived until the early 1980’s. As these were the people who first entered the tomb and defiled it, why would they have survived for so long if the curse was real?

All of Carter’s experts who helped him find and excavate the tomb lived until they were in their seventies. Dr. Derry, who reported the blemish on Tut’s face and did the unwrapping of the mummy lived to be 87 and simply died of old age. You’d think he of all people would have suffered as well. When looked at with a fine eye, the curse only seemed to affect those remotely associated with the excavation while not affecting any of the principal players, save Carnarvon, at all.

The truth is, there was no curse. That simple. The only time curses were ever found in Ancient Egypt were in private tombs, never in Pharaoh tombs, and in Tutankamun’s day, they were totally unknown and nonexistent.

In fact the complied list from 1934 was dissected and shown to be unsubstantiated innuendo and heresy, by the very man who wrote it, Hebert Winlock. The list he complied was purposely to show that the newspapers were not fact checking and merely spewing pabulum to the public. Carnarvon was known to be sick before he entered the tomb and went in against his doctor’s wishes. Even after the bite was infected, Carnarvon ignored doctor’s orders and remained heavily active in the excavation. It’s no wonder he died knowing this. Evelyn White and Carnarvon’s half brother had nothing to do with Tutankhamun in any way. Carter’s assistant too was very ill before entering the tomb. Prince Ali was murdered by his wife, who shot him for cheating on her. No items from Tut’s tomb actually went to the British Museum, so there’s no way an attendant could have died from them, and Weigall was not part of the expedition and was linked only to the curse because he had commented on it.

Every single death that was linked to the Curse had some evidence that it had come from something else, either a prior sickness, to being made up by the press, to newspapers randomly taken a person who died and linking them to the curse somehow.

In all the curse of King Tut is a great piece of folklore lacking any substance. More than anything it proves why the average person should remain skeptical to the mainstream media, as even back in the 1920’s, journalists were willing to make up stories to sell papers and gain renown, rather than actually reporting news. A sad commentary on the media that it’s been style over substance for almost a hundred years, if not longer.

Cooking

I know. It wouldn’t be a Nyogtha without a recipe/cooking bit, right? I decided to go with a treat (again, sticking to the Holiday cliches). As a gift to you guys, I went with my favorite dessert to make for parties. It’s healthy and yet crazy delicious. Enjoy!

Poires au Gingembre aka Ginger Baked Pears

Ingredients

4 large pears
1 1/4th cups heavy cream
1/4 cup superfine sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of ground nutmeg
1 tsp grated gingerroot

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly butter a shallow baking dish.
2. Peel the pears, then cut them in half lengthwise and use a sharp knife to remove the cores. Arrange, cut-sides down, in a single layer in the baking dish.

3. Mix together the cream, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger and pour over the pears.

4. Bake for 30 minutes, basting from time to time, until the pears are tender and browned on top. The cream will also be thick and bubbly. Cool slightly and serve.

Closing

Well, this was fun. Sometimes nostalgia can be a good thing. I’ll be back in a week or so with reviews of the new Castlevania collection for the PSP, and Dementarium for the DS. Have a great Halloween. Your Sub-Cultural Icon sure plans on it.

Cyberdog, for those of you who are unaware, is a major outlet of Cyber-esque clothing. PVC, rubber, UV refractive clothing, LED embedded clothing and more. It tends to be a little on the pricey side, but the clothing is both highly stylized and attention getting. You can take a look at their online store and learn more about the company at http://www.cyberdog.net.

Psychedelic Trance has its roots in both Goa and Suomistyge aka Spugedelic Trance. This is a little bit fascinating from an sociological point of view, as Goa Trance is primarily East Indian Trace, while Spugadelic is Finnish. On a whole, Psy trance can be distinguished from the general umbrella of Trance we have here in the States by two key factors. The first is that Psy trance is generally faster than normal Trance. The average BPM for a Psy Trance song is between 135 and 150. The second key characteristic of Psy Trance is that it tends to be more melodic. One could even say it has a touch of Darkwave in it. This comes from the more New Age Goa style fusing with the more punky feel of Suomistyge.

CDV4 is a compilation album mixed by Oforia, aka Ofer Dikovsky. Offoria is one of the best known DJ’s in the Israeli Psy Trance scene. This of course means little to those of us in the Western Hemisphere, but it does appear Cyberdog went for one of the A names in the genre. The CD is only an hour long and contains ten tracks, each from a different group. The tracks are:

1) Homeless by Fatali

2) Inner Bright by Timelock

3) Merlin (Infected Remix) by Infected Mushroom

4) Virtual Space by Basic

5) Magic by the Freak Show

6) Return of the Machines (Future Prophecy Rmx) by Oforia featuring Bwicked

7) Unreal by Atomic Pulse vs. Cyrus the Virus

8) Feel the Vibration by Future Prophecy

9) Strike Twice by Echotek vs. Atomic Pulse

10) The Prophecy by Astral Projection

Oforio did an excellent job of blending all ten tracks together to where it the entire album feels like one very long song. Each track blends seamlessly into the next, while still having a distinct sound and feel to them. For example, Unreal has a more traditional trance feel to it, with heavier beats and a definite cyber influence. The track before it, Return of the Machines, is noticeably slower and the percussion is faster and lighter. Yet the two blend seamlessly into each other. The shift in styles and rhythm is subtle and actually helps one to appreciate the individual tracks once one perceives where the breaks are.

As well, the faster nature of this form of trance coupled with the stronger emphasis on synthesizers found in this sub sect of the genre creates an interesting duality for the CD. The entire compilation is not only very easy to dance, but the Goa influence on the album also makes this CD surprisingly relaxing as well. You can play it as background music and it manages to be quite soothing, even with the sped up tempo. One can’t really comment on the vocals, as nearly all of it is digitized sampling.

As Psy Trance is primarily a Commonwealth and Israeli music trend, it’s hard to say how someone Stateside will react to it. If you tend to be a fan of club style music or something a little more experimental yet upbeat, Cyberdog Volume 4 is probably a good first taste, as you’re getting multiple bands with a unifying mix via Oforia. If you’re one that generally eschews the club scenes and especially the more techno or goth style ones, that this is probably not the import for you to pick up. Europeans familiar with the myiad version of Trance to be found over there, you’ll find Cdv4 is a pretty good CD. There isn’t a bad track on the disc if you like this style of music, and many trance fans will appreciate the different levels one can appreciate this album on. And that’s not even taking into consideration the fact most fans of Psy trance are generally hepped up on E and stimulants while listening to this genre.

At 14 quid, Cdv4 is a pretty pricey CD in this age of MP3 downloads. It’s generally going to be a purchase for fans of the musical genre or of Cyberdog itself. The music style (as well as the outlet of distribution) may be a little too obscure for American audiences, but if you have the chance to listen to even a track from the CD, you really should. Hearing it just might offset both the trouble of tracking this CD down, as well as the cost.

Link: Cyberdog

This week I thought I’d talk about something most Americans can recognize by name, but very few can give you any real details about it. I’m talking about the Hatfield-McCoy feud. Yes, the Hatfields’ and McCoy’s are real people, and like most bits of American folklore, most people prefer to stick to the skim instead of learning what the entire event was about.

The Hatfield-McCoy Feud

The Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s have become a metaphor for feuds, grudges, and other long standing rivalries. It’s also assumed that both clans were nothing more than bumbling hillbillies with guns. This is somewhat true as both families were nestled along the Kentucky-West Virginia border. The Hatfield’s dwelled in West Virginia and the McCoy’s made their homestead in Kentucky. Both families were amongst the first to settle the Tug Valley, and although their homes may look like rustic log cabins only fit for the inbred today, they were actually prosperous farmers, although a good deal of both families’ incomes came from moonshining. Both families were still considered hillbillies by those that knew of them though, which is a bit odd as the Hatfield’s actually had a decent amount of political power in the region. Mayhaps it’s equivalent to the Pat Buchanans or Jerry Falwells of today.

Bad blood between the families can be found as far back as 1863, but it wasn’t until 1878 that the feud truly began in earnest. All the bloodshed and insanity that started in that year and lasted for three decades can be traced back to the most unlikely of possessions: a pig. Now, get those crazy Hillbilly deviant sex jokes out of your head. Back in 1878, and especially in the Appalachian region of the United States, pigs were very expensive and valuable. The pig wandered over from the Hatfield’s land into the McCoy’s, and the McCoys considered this a good excuse to settle up the border dispute between the families. In other words, the pig went on to McCoy land, and this it is now a McCoy pig. The Hatfield’s in return, claimed the border between the property was incorrect and also called the McCoy’s thieves. The case went to court, and the judge ruled in favor of the Hatfields, mainly in part to the testimony of a mutual relative between the two families, one Bill Staton.

Now due to the previously mentioned bad blood between the families, it took little time for this to escalate into a far bigger deal than it should have been. In June of 1880, Staton was killed by two of the McCoys, Sam and Paris. Thus began madcap violence. In 1881, in a Romeo and Juliet type of scenario, a young McCoy named Roseanna fell in love with a Hatfield named Johnse. Needless to say both families were up in arms. Literally. Roseanna would run away to live with the Hatfields for a time before returning home. When Johnse went to visit her, he was kidnapped by the McCoys and saved when Roseanna fled to the Hatfields and helped them organize a rescue party. After he was saved from mob justice, Johnse would eventually leave Roseanna while she was pregnant with his child for his first cousin Nancy. Ew.

The peak of the feud occurred in 1882 when three McCoys, Bud, Tolbert, and Pharmer would get into a verbal fight with Ellison Hatfield. The McCoys would snap and brutally murder Elison by stabbing him 26 times in the torso, and then finishing him off with a shot to the head. The leader of the Hatfields, Devil Anse, was Ellison’s brother, and ended up killing all three brothers himself.

The feud would claim several more lives as it ebbed and flowed between 1882 and 1887. Then Perry Cline would enter the picture. Perry was a lawyer and a distant relative of the McCoys. Perry, at the request of his cousin Randolph McCoy, had murder indictments issued for the murder of the Hatfields from five years before and Cline would request extradition of the Hatfields into Kentucky. Due to legal red tape, the process was going slowly; too slowly for the McCoy’s liking. Thus the McCoys riled up fellow Kentuckians, and a massive raid was organized, leading to several Hatfield friends, relatives, and supporters being dragged into Kentucky. As you can imagine, this didn’t sit well with the Hatfields at all, and so they retaliated by burning alive two McCoy children in the McCoy family home on January 1st, 1888.

After all of this, the feud was no longer between just two inbreeding and farming families, but it had blown up into a feud between West Virginia and Kentucky as a whole. Both state’s Governors called in their respective National Guards to halt the raids on each other’s territories, and the Governor of West Virginia, E. Willis Wilson even accused his Kentucky counterpart of violating the extradition process and secretly approving of the McCoy’s actions. West Virginia would end up fighting the Hatfield’s extradition all the way to the Supreme Court. In May of 1889, the Supreme Court sided with Kentucky and the Hatfields were forced to stand trial for murder. Oddly enough, the murder trial did not revolve around the original murders in 1882, but instead of the burning of the two children in 1888. Eight Hatfields went to trial, and all eight were found guilty. Seven were sentenced to life in jail, while the eighth was executed by hanging in a public display in the town of Pikesville, Kentucky. An interesting note here is that it was illegal to hang people in Kentucky at this time.

From here the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys would peter out until 1891 when both families finally agreed to end the feud once and for all. When all was said and done more than a dozen family members were killed, with the majority being McCoys.

Over the past century the feud has become infamous and shown up on everything from Bugs Bunny cartoons to a Family Feud reunion where the descendents of both clans played each other in a best 3 out of 5 series, with the winning team getting a prize winning hog. Although the feud can easily, and some might say cruelly, be summed up by calling it “Two packs of Hillbillies fussing over a pig”, the feud ended up encompassing not just two families, but two entire states and eventually the highest court in the land. If you’re interested in learning more, I suggest either the hour long documentary the History Channel released on DVD a few years back, or getting one of two books. The first is called, Hatfields and the McCoys by Otis Rice, and it’s a quick 150 page read that is both informative and entertaining. The second is, Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900. This one is more than twice the length of the first and has a more scholarly bent. Either way, both are an excellent read on the subject.

This has been this week’s Nyogtha folks!

Folklore

Since this Nyogtha is running concurrently with my review of Barrow Hill, over in the Games section, It thought it was only right to focus on a bit of British folklore this week. Nothing from Cornwall itself though, as doing that would ruin the big special feature of the game I think everyone reading this should run out and buy. Instead, I’ve chosen to talk about a British ghost that was all the rage in the 18th century, but is largely forgotten today. As juvenilia aside, it’s known as, “The Case of the Cock Lane Ghost.”

Between the years of 1762 and 1764, skeptics and eye-witnesses fought publicly with each other and the whole spectral drama would eventual culminate with a massive trial. Just like the Amityville Horror, except with more dapper clothing and posh accents I surmise.

The whole story begins in the year 1740. The first principal character is a man by the name of Kent who worked as a stockbroker. Yes, they had stockbrokers back then. Kent would end up rented a home on Cock Lane with is in West Smithfield, which in turn, is a suburb of London. Kent’s landlord was one Mr. Parsons. Mr. Parsons was a clerk for a nearby church. Kent would settle into the Cock lane home with his sister in law, Fanny. Fanny was living with Kent since his wife/her sister died in childbirth a year before and both consoled the other for losing two family members at once. Eventually said consoling would blossom into getting it on, and finally love. Although Fanny and Kent did not marry, they did make out new wills, naming each other as their sole heirs.

You’d think this alone would be the catalyst for the ghost story, but it’s not. See, what would happen is that Parsons would need to borrow money from the man renting his house. How often does that happen in these times, eh? Only a little while later, Parsons and Kent would end up having a huge argument, the details of which are not recorded in the eventually 1894 documentation of the entire Cock Lane ghost affair. Kent would move out of the home in a huff, and then sued Parsons to get his money back. Two years would go by with no contention of the suit. However, during this span, Fanny would contract smallpox and die. Her remains would be buried in a vault outside St. John’s church.

Now normally when a mutual friend of two people feuding dies, it puts a standstill to all the fussing. But Parsons and Kent turned into a non inbred version of the Hatfields and the McCoys. Parsons sunk low enough to spread a rumour that Fanny didn’t die from smallpox at all. Instead, Kent KILLED her to claim possession of all that she owned as he was listed as her sole heir.

This slander went on for about a year until Parsons turned it up a notch. Now he was saying that not only had Kent killed poor Fanny, but that her ghost haunted the home they once both resided in. Parsons’ own twelve year own daughter would claim to have seen Fanny’s ghost who told her that Kent did indeed poison her for her fortune. Supposedly the house on Cock Lane was also the site out loud booming noises in the middle of the night that first started the night after Fanny perished.

This still was not enough for Parsons. He then brought in a well respected gentleman known to many in London and invited him to see the ghost firsthand. The gentlemen would see Elizabeth shaking and frightened, saying the ghost had just visited her. He also would bear witness to the loud boomings that Parsons’ reported, along with tapping sounds emanating from Elizabeth’s bedroom. The gentlemen (whose name I am not privy to) agreed to come back the very next night with his clergyman and others in order to get to the bottom of the haunting. This would turn out to be Parsons’ undoing.

The next night, nearly two dozen people would come to the house on Cock Lane. All agreed to stay until the ghost materialized. Of course it never did. Parsons said this was because it would only appear before Elizabeth due to her natural innocence and goodness, but it could communicate with everyone else with yes or no answers to questions asked via the booming noises. This is where the “One knock for yes, two for no” stereotype/cliché in ghost films and stories originated from.

A few hours later, Parsons and Elizabeth said the ghost was “ready.” The inquiry into the invisible thumping ghost began and according to the rapping being accepted as definitive answers, the ghost stated that Kenny was poisoned and could only rest if Kent was hanged for his crimes. Like I said, Parsons went from just Pissed-Offville and bought a first class ticket to Psychoticmotherf*ckerland.

Although this might seem obliviously insane and fake to us, this was 250 years ago, and was the first documented case of things we now take for granted supernatural-wise, so people were more trusting and naïve back then. Faking a ghost to kill your enemy killed so you don’t have to pay him 50 quid? That’s straight out of a Scooby-Doo episode.

With these people having witnessed proof of an authentic tormented spirit trapped between worlds due to an unjust murder, the story spread through London like bad teeth and even worse food. Tourists and the curious began to flock to Cock Lane, and Parsons being Parsons, began to charge admission into his house so that they could hear the ghostly tap-tap-taping.

Slowly but surely Parson’s false ghost began to unravel as holes in the stories “it” told began to become apparent. First up came the fact the ghost of Fanny promised it would follow Elizabeth everywhere. It would also stalk anyone who went to Fanny’s vault for any reason. Even examining the body. Members of the committee took this as a threat to Elizabeth who was brought to a clergyman’s house. Of course the ghost did not appear.

The second crack was when some people took Fanny up on her other threat and entered her vault. No appearance of a ghost, no noises no anything. The third strike against Parsons’ fraudulent ghosts was when some committee members asked Kent to confront the ghost. Kent agreed. Guess what? Nothing happened. He went right down into the vault with a score of witnesses and it was as silent as well…the grave. Kent even confessed he was hoping there WOULD be a ghost of Fanny so he could see her one last time.

By this time, few people still believed in Fanny’s ghost. To quell the rising sentiment against him, Parsons’ started a new rumour. This one was that the reason Fanny’s ghosts didn’t appear was because Kent had taken her body away in the middle of the night and thus she could not appear. In response, Kent had them open Fanny’s coffin. Lo and behold, she was in there, completely intact, Well, as intact as a decomposing body can be. Everyone present at the opening made a written account and charges of fraud were filed against Parsons, Elizabeth, and other people Kent suspected were in on the flimflam. Every single one was found guilty on all charges and Parsons had to pay retribution that was far more than he owed Kent in the first place. Oops. He also got two years in prison and was forced to stand in the pillory.

Ah for the days was just was swift and true and not a case of, “Whoever has the most expensive lawyer wins.”

13 Plugs

In Games, I reviewXyanide, Williams reviews 99 Nights, and Mark B reviews yet another pretty but overall awful game by Squaresoft.Gaspshockhorror.

In Culture, Carla talks vanity press.

In Music, Gloomchen tackles Jessica Simpson, while Josh Clinton reviewed the MTA Music Awards. MTV has music again?

In Wrestling, Eric S.talks RAW and Kevin Wilson goes back to NJPW, circa 1990.

In Movies, Tom Pandich sat through The Wicker Man, while Travis Leamons got to watch This Film Has Not Yet Been Rated

In TV, Murtz reviews Prison Break, and Josh Clinton scares me by showing me Road Rules is still around. What’s next? Is The Maxx or Liquid Television back?

In Sports, Daniels bitches about the Rex Sox.

Closing

Sorry kids, no food stuff this week. It took me 11 hours just to churn out these four pages. UI wasn’t feeling it this week. Chalk it up to being back on review status of video games. Our sneak peak of V3 will find the 49th issue of Nyogtha talking about feuding Hillbillies. See you then.

One of the most famous cases in undead folklore is that or Arnod Paole. It happened approximately 300 years ago and shows that even as America was starting to strongly considering dumping British tea into the ocean and becoming its own nation, that on the other side of the planet, vampires were still not considered myth and legend as they are today, but were deeply rooted in reality.

The oldest recorded records of this case are…well, they’re not in English. In 1732, Regimental Field Surgeon Johannes Fluchinger recorded the events of the outbreak of vampirism he was witness to, and it instantly became a best seller. This work, entitled Visum et Repertium was eventually translated into French in 1746, and eventually Augustine Calmet would make a literal translation of Flickinger’s work into English in 1850. As no doubt, very few if any of my readers possess The Phantom World by Calmet, I’ve reprinted the original document here exactly as it was translated 150 years ago. It’s a fascinating look at how humanity hgas changed its views of things in just a century and a half.

After it had been reported that in the village of Medvegia the so-called vampires had killed some people by sucking their blood, I was, by high decree of a local Honourable Supreme Command, sent there to investigate the matter thoroughly, along with officers detailed for that purpose and two subordinate medical officers, and therefore carried out and heard the present inquiry in the company of the captain of the Stallath Company of haiduks, Gorschiz Hadanack, the bariactar and the oldest haiduk of the village, as follows: who unanimously recount that about five years ago a local haiduk by the name of Arnod Paole broke his neck in a fall from a hay wagon. This man had, during his lifetime, often revealed that, near Gossowa in Turkish Serbia, he had been troubled by a vampire, wherefore he had eaten from the earth of the vampire’s grave and smeared himself with the vampire’s blood in order to be free of the vexation he had suffered. In twenty or thirty days after his death some people complained that they were being bothered by this same Arnod Paole; and in fact four people were killed by him. In order to end this evil, they dug up this Arnod Paole forty days after his death—this on the advice of their Hadnack, who had been present at such events before; and they found that he was quite complete and undecayed, and that fresh blood had flowed from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears; that the shirt, the covering, and the coffin were completely bloody; that the old nails on his hands and feet, along with the skin had completely fallen off, and that new ones had grown; and since they saw from this that he was a true vampire, they drove a stake through his heart, according to their custom. Whereby he gave an audible groan and bled copiously. Thereupon they burned the body on the same day to ashes and threw these into the grave. These same people say further that all those who were tormented and killed by the vampires must themselves become vampires. Thereupon they disinterred the above-mentioned four people in the same way. Then they also add that this Arnod Paole attacked not only the people but also the cattle, and sucked out their blood. And since the people used the flesh of such cattle, it appears that some vampires are again present here, inasmuch as, in a period of three months, seventeen young and old people died, among them some who, with no previous illness, died in two or at the most three days. In addition, the haiduk Jowiza reports that his stepdaughter, by the name of Stanacka, lay down to sleep fifteen days ago, fresh and healthy, but at midnight she started up out of her sleep with a terrible cry, fearful and trembling, and complained that she had been throttled by the son of a haiduk by the name of Milloe, who had died nine weeks earlier, whereupon she had experienced a great pain in the chest and became worse house by hour, until finally she died on the third day, At this we went the same afternoon to the graveyard, along with the often-mentioned oldest haiduks of the village, in order to cause the suspicious graves to be opened and to examine the bodies in them, whereby, after all of them had been dissected, there was found:

1. A woman by the name of Stana, twenty years old, who had died in childbirth two months ago, after a three-day illness, and who had herself said, before her death, that she had painted herself with the blood of a vampire, wherefore both she and her child—which had died right after birth and because of a careless burial had been half eaten by dogs —must also become vampires. She was quite complete and undecayed. After the opening of the body there was found in the cavitate pectoris a quantity of fresh extravascular blood. The vasa of the arteriae and venae, like the ventriculis cordis were not, as is usual, filled will coagulated blood, and the whole viscera, that is the pulmo, hepar, stomachus, lien, et intestina were quite fresh as they would be in a healthy person. The uterus was however quite enlarged in place, wherefore the same was in complete putredine. The skin on her hands and feet, along with the old nails, fell away on their own, but on the other hand completely new nails were evident, along with a fresh and vivid skin.

2. There was a woman by the name Miliza (sixty years old, incidentally), who had died after a three-month sickness and had been buried ninety-some days earlier. In the chest, much liquid blood was found, and the other viscera were, like those mentioned before, in a good condition. During her dissection, all t e haidukes who were standing around marveled greatly at her plumpness and perfect body, uniformly stating that they had known the woman well, from her youth, and she had, throughout her life, looked and been very lean and dried up, and they emphasized that she had come to this startling plumpness in the grave. They also said that it was she who had started the vampires this time, because she had eaten the flesh of those sheep that had been killed by the previous vampires.

3. There was an eight-day-old child who had lain in the grave for ninety days and was similarly in a condition of vampirism.

4. The son of a haiduk, sixteen years old, was dug up, having lain in the earth for nine weeks, after he had died from a three-day illness, and was found like the other vampires.

5. Joachim, also the son of a haiduk, seventeen years old, had died after a three-day illness. He had been buried eight weeks and four days and, on being dissected, was found in a similar condition.

6. A woman by the name of Ruscha who had died after a ten-day illness and had been buried six weeks previous, in whom there was much fresh blood not only in the chest but also in fundo ventriculi. The same showed itself in her child, which was eighteen days old and had died five weeks previously.

7. No less did a guy of then years of age, who had died two months previously, find herself in the above-mentioned condition, quite complete and undecayed, and had much fresh blood in her chest.

8. They caused the wife of the Hadnack to be dug up, along with her child. She had died seven weeks previously, her child—who was eight weeks old —twenty-one days previously, and it was found that both mother and child were completely decomposed, although earth and graves were like those of the vampires lying nearby.

9. A servant of the local corporal of the haiduks, by the name of Rhade, twenty-three years old, died after a three month-long illness, and after a five-week burial was found completely decomposed.

10. The wife of the local bariactar, along with her child, having died six weeks previously, I noticed a profuse liquid blood, like the others, in the chest and stomach. The entire body was in the oft-named condition of vampirism.

11. With Stanche, a haiduk, sixty years old, who had died six weeks previously, I noticed a profuse liquid blood, like the others, in the chest and stomach. The entire body was in the oft-named condition of vampirism.

12. Milloe, a hiaduk, twenty-five years old, who had lain for six weeks in the earth was also found in the condition of vampirism mentioned.

13. Stanoicka, the wife of a haiduk, twenty years old, died after a three day illness and had been buried eighteen days previously. In the dissection I found that she was in her countenance quite red and of a vivid color, and as mentioned above, she had been throttled at midnight, by Milloe, the son of the haiduk, and there was also to be seen, on the right side under the ear, a bloodshot blue mark the length of a finger. As she was being taken out of the grave, a quantity of fresh blood flowed from her nose. With the dissection I found, as mentioned often already, a regular fragrant fresh bleeding, not only in the chest cavity, but also in venriculo cordis. All the viscera found themselves in a completely good and healthy condition. The hypodermis of the entire body, along with the fresh nails on hands and feet, was as though completely fresh. After the examination had taken place, the heads of the vampires were cut off by the local gypsies and then burned along with the bodies, and then the ashes were thrown into the river Morava. The decomposed bodies, however, were laid back into their own graves. Which I attest along with those assistant medical officers provided for me. Actum ut spra:

(L.S.) Johannes Fluchinger, Regiment Medical officer of the Foot Regiment of the Honourable B. Fursstenbusch.
(L.S.) J. H. Sigel, Medical officer of the Honourable Morall Regiment.
(L.S.) Johann Friedrich Baumgarten, Medical officer of the Foot Regiment of the Honourable B. Furstenbusch.

The undersigned attest herewith that all that which the Regement Medical officer of the Hourable Furstenbusch Regiment had observed in the matter of vampires—along with both of the medical officers who have signed with him—is in every way truthful and has been undertaken, observed, and examined in our own presence. In confirmation thereof is our signature in our own hand, of our own making. Belgrade, January 26, 1732.

[End transcription]

So what have we learned from all this? Other than the fact in 1732, run-on sentences and a lack of paragraphing was considered acceptable for published literature. You can make the claim that because this all took place in a “suburb’ of Belgrade, Medugna, Yugoslavia that is just wacky backwards eastern European thinking. However, that’s instantly nullified when you realize that the French and English were taking this serious even up until 1850. 1850 people. The USA had been a country for almost a century, and people were still willing to accept vampirism as a realistic threat to humanity. Fluchinger’s published pamphlet would go on to influence many “vampirologists” such as the aforementioned Augustine Calmet and Giuseppe Davanzati, as well as Montague Summers.

What has changed in the past century to change the majority of people walking the earth today to be skeptical instead of unconditionally believing in the undead? Primarily it has been advancements in forensic medicine and a greater study of what truly happens to a human corpse once a person has expired. For centuries, it was considered uncouth, morally and ethically wrong, and also often times illegal to disinter, dissect or study a corpse. Thus most of what we thought happened to us when we die was conjecture or came from seeing an exposed corpse where the sun and animals could get it. Of course in 1850, we didn’t have mass produced automotives either, and we’re now at the dawn of space tourism, so it’s amazing how so much can changed in just 150 years.

13 Plugs

In Culture, Carla gets a nice interview, while Mr. Kennedy gives you Wacky Religious Trivia. Wallace teaches you how to get drunk, and my god, with Nyogtha, that was four, yes FOUR Culture articles last week. Holy crap!

In Games, I of course am the only one contributing with both a preview of Barrow Hill and a transcription detailed Hulk Hogan’s addiction to Pokemon

In Music, Gloomchen reviews Slayer.

In Wrestling, Neeley says goodbye, and Hatton has another Rabblecast up.

In Movies, Mike Noyes reviews Street Fighter: the Animated Movie for IP, saving me from having to do it ala Capcom’s request. Also, Pandich sat through Pulse. Ha ha ha.

In TV, Cavanagh reviews the third Beavis and Butthead collection. Let me know which set “Prank Call” in on, as that’ll be the only one I buy.

In Comics, Maolis interviews some guy I never heard of who wrote some comic I never heard of.

In Sports, check out IP Sports Radio.

Cooking

I get asked to do a lot of vegetarian and vegan recipes here in Nyogtha. The truth is, I rarely make either. At the same time I go into hippie supermarkets like the one I live a block away from for organic ingredients and nearly crap myself in rage at the cost of simple, easy to make products. Truly, vegans get ripped off. That’s why this week I thought I’d tip my hat to them and give them a recipe to make their own vegan chocolate chip cookies, thus saving them from the 2 dollar per cookie charge at most vegan bakeries and also save them from the fact most vegan cookies suck ass and just too cake like to truly be called cookies. Please note this recipe calls for margarine, but outside of vegan cooking, I would never ever use it.

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup rolled oats (do not use quick drying oats)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons/1 1/2 sticks margarine, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup tahini (this is a sesame seed paste you can buy at most supermarkets. Just ask for it.)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 1/2 tablespoons vanilla extract
3 cups bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips.

1. Position the rack in the center of the oven. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. mix the flour, oats, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl and whisk until mixture is uniform throughout. Set mixture aside. Grease a large baking sheet with a dab of margarine on a crumpled piece of wax paper or the wrapper from the margarine itself. Set aside.

2. Beat the margarine and tahini in a large bowl with an electric mixture on medium speed. Beat until smooth and mostly creamy. This will take about two minutes. Add the sugar and beat once more until the mixture is thick and smooth. This will take about a minute as well. Next add the maple syrup and vanilla. Beat once more until the syrup and vanilla are incorporated evenly into the mixture. Remove the mixer.

3. Stir in the flour mixture with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula. Stir until mixture is uniform throughout and you cannot see any traces of the flour mixture. DO NOT BEAT. ONLY STIR. Now stir in the chocolate chips.

4. Scoop out a rounded tablespoon of the dough and roll it into a ball between your palms. Place on the prepared baking sheet and continue rolling balls of dough, spacing them 1 1/2 inches apart on the baking sheet/ press the balls with your thumb, just to flatten slightly. Bake until light brown and firm to the touch. This will take about 12 minutes. Cool the cookies for two minutes on the baking sheet, then transfer them to a plate lined with paper towels. Let the baking sheet cool before you start the next round of cookies as when you are done, this mixture will allow you about four dozen cookies.

Closing

That’s it for this week, and to be honest this month. I’m taking a two week hiatus from IP as I get things ready for the launch of two new sections. It means I’ll be writing, but you won’t see any evidence of it until September. See you then!

This week I thought I’d focus a bit on food folklore. Even thought I don’t drink, I realize most people do. More importantly, I realize that far more of Western Culture is based on the concept of getting shitfaced than the average person realizes. I though I’d spend this week taking a look at the folklore of ales, beers, wines, and assorted other liquors to show how they have influenced Western Culture.

1. Oktoberfest

Although we now have a worldwide concept of Oktoberfest as a drinking festival that goes on for a fortnight in Munich, the origins of this festival are quite different from the, “Let’s drink booze and eat bratwursts.” tradition it has become.

Oktoberfest began in 1810 and was in fact originated as a wedding party! Max Josef, the king of Bavaria threw a lavish bash to celebrate the marriage between his son, Prince Ludwig, and the princess of Saxe-Hildenburghausen, Therese. The party was not focused on booze, but was actually a large horse racing event that forty thousand people attended. People celebrated the wedding, the horses, and gave thanks to their God for such a bountiful harvest. This would-be one time event became so popular that it the King declared it a yearly event for his people. In fact, contrary to the modern version of the festival, there was NO BEER at all at the first Oktoberfest. It was not legal at the time and wouldn’t be until 1880, seventy years later.

Of course once beer was available for purchase in Bavaria, it took off. The next year, 1881, someone (whose name is lost to history) began selling brats at Oktoberfest, and the rest is history. Both proved to be so popular with the attendees, that they became forever linked with the event, surpassing the original themes of horse racing and marriage. In fact the dance halls for wedding receptions evolved into what we now know as…beer halls.

Hard to believe a simple combination of yeast, hops, and barley could change the meaning of a large annual event, eh?

Slang

Various terms of jargon and slang have their origins in tavernspeak.

Although few people use it in modern times, the term “wet your whistle,” originates back to British Pubs. In olden days, pubs would have whistles embedded in the rim of the ceramic mugs that would be served to patrons. When a customer wanted a refill, all they had to do was use the whistle in their mug and the barkeep would refill it. It’s unknown why this practice stopped, although two obvious hypothesis involve poor hygienic conditions of the time, and/or the sheer annoyance of allow a building full of drunkards to have whistles.

Another term that spawned from the Western world’s love of hooch is actually, “honeymoon.” Bet you didn’t see that one coming. Indeed, honeymoon was not originally intended to be the time when a newly married couple goes off to have a vacation filled with sex and adventure. It was still marriage related however.

Way back when, most weddings were performed at the beginning of a lunar cycle. Honeymoon referred to that first month of the marriage where both groom and bride would drink honey mead. This first month of the wedding was, “the honeymonth” and the mead was drank because at the time, mead was believed to promote fertility in the woman and give the man a better chance at producing a boy instead of a girl. Eventually honeymonth became “honey mone” about four hundred and fifty years ago. It was first used in the English language by writer Richard Huloet in 1552. The creator of the dictionary, Samuel Johnson eventually gave us the spelling and definition we now today, and the rest is history.

A very common term we all use even today has an obvious origin from the liquor lexicon. It’s, “groggy.” Grog is a form of watered down rum. Back in 1740, the British Navy has a man by the name of Admiral Vernon. Vernon felt that both the naval officers and the rank and file were getting too inebriated and thus ordered Rum, the drink of choice for seafarers to be watered down to keep his men as sober as long as possible. For some reason, the sailors began to refer to Vernon as, “Old Grog.” Eventually grog would also come to be applied to the drink of watered down rum itself, and from there, as it was harder to get drunk off of grog, you instead became, “groggy.” Now groggy refers to sleepy or tired, which is an understandable evolution of the word.

In 1721, Thomas Trotter wrote a poem about the origins of grog.

A mighty bowl on deck he drew.
And filled it to the brink;
Such drank the Burford’s gallant crew,
And such the gods shall drink,
The sacred robe which Vernon wore
Was drenched within the same;
And hence his virtues guard our shore,
And Grog derives its name

Finally, let’s take a look at the almost but not quite archaic phrase, “mind your P’s and Q’s.” Have you ever wondered what the P’s and Q’s are? In fact, they are “pints” and “quarts.” Minding your P’s and Q’s was a reference in English pubs to make sure you don’t get drunk and unruly.

American vs. English beers

Now I’m sure this topic will create both some “You rock” and “you suck” email. Before we cover this topic, realize again that I DO NOT DRINK, so none of this is opinion but facts based in chemistry, food science, and research.

The question at hand is simply, why do Americans drink their lager cold, and the English drink it warm? There’s a simple answer and a more complex answer. The simple answer is that American brewing is patterned after the cheaper and lower quality lagering of the Germans. The complex answer…well, read on.

If you’re not an astute world traveler, you may not know that the Americans serve their beer cold, while the English tend to serve there between 50-60 degrees F. There are several reasons for this, but they all come back to brewing practices. As I said before, Americans primarily brew beer in a German fashion. They lager beers that are slowly bottom brewed in cold temperatures and thus need to be served that way to preserve what little flavour they have. No, that’s not an insult. The American style of brewing beer really is fashioned after the light pilsner style beer that was first widely produced in cities like Milwaukee and St. Louis.

English beers need to be served warm because, as shocking as this may be to everyone reading this, British beer is brewed not to get drunk as cheaply and quickly as possible, but it’s actually brewed for flavour. Yes ladies and gentlemen, the nation that practices alcoholism as a competitive sport brews their alcohol for taste. American beers, on the average actually have a higher alcohol content in them, but in terms of flavour (and yes, flavour is actually something you can measure like temperature or height), American beers have far less taste. And when you factor in the fact that the colder an alcoholic product is, the less taste it has, this is compounded even more with the American brewing style. British beers were quite simply, originally imbibed at higher temperatures to preserve maximum flavour.

Basically the Americans get loaded faster, while the British get more flavour. To best honest had you asked me before I started researching going off only stereotypes and being a non-drinker, I would have said the opposite in a heartbeat. See, Nyogtha educates even ME!

And to end this debate, I’ll confirm a rumour I’ve heard people debate upon. YES, American Guinness is brewed differently than true UK Guinness. Guinness original/Extra Stout, which is as close as modern Guinness in the Western world comes to the original recipe, has an ABV (alcohol per volume) percentage of 6% in America, but 4.25% in Ireland and England. If you want the real thing of Guinness, you have to get Guinness Foreign Extra Stout. A limited amount is sold in Ireland, but it’s primarily sold in China, the Carribean and West Africa.

That my friends, is your food & beverage folklore for this week.

Cooking
It’s been a very warm summer here in Minnecrapolis, so I’ve been trying not to use the oven much. My goal this week was to make something that doesn’t involved heating up your home too badly. I could have done a salad, but I felt that was a cop-out. Instead, chose something simple that most people like: Good ol’ Chocolate pudding. This is not the Jell-O instant crap (with all due respect to Bill Cosby). It’s simple to make, takes very little time, and it’s quite delicious.

Ingredient
2 Cups plus 2 tablespoons Milk
3/4th cup sugar
4 ounces milk chocolate, chopped up
3 large egg yolks (ONLY THE YOLKS!)
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 ounces semi-sweetened chocolate, turned into shavings
1 Cup Sweetened Whipped cream (see below)

Alex’s Note: I haven’t used store bought whipping cream in almost decade since I watched an episode of Emeril Live and he showed how quick and easy it is to make it. It’s better for you and tastes so superior, I thought I’d give it to you as a bonus recipe here instead of forcing you to use…ugh, Cool Whip.

Ingredients
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 teaspoons sugar

1. Combine all the ingredients into a medium size mixing bowl. Take an electric mixed and whip until soft peaks form within the mixture.

That’s it!

Now back to the pudding.

1. Get a medium-size non-reactive saucepan. A non-reactive saucepan is simply one made of ceramics, stainless steel or glass. Take the 2 cups of milk and the sugar and mix them together over medium high heat. Then bring to a boil and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Now reduce the heat down to medium (I know, lots of temp changes), and add the chopped up Milk chocolate. Whisk until the chocolate is completely melted. Remove from the heat and set aside.

2. Take the egg yolks, the cornstarch and the 2 remaining tablespoons of milk and using a whisk, combine them all in a mixing bowl until smooth. Slowly add in the chocolate mixture while whisking. Pour the newly combined mixture back into the sauce pan and cook over medium heat until the mixture starts to thicken. This will take about 3-4 minutes. Remove from the heat. Add the vanilla and butter. Stir until the butter has completely melted.

3. Pour the mixture into a class bowl. Press a piece of plastic wrap down over the surface to prevent skin. Let cool completely. Place in fridge and let it sit for 4 hours. Remove the plastic wrap and beat with a whisk until smooth.

4. Serve with optional whipped cream and chocolate shavings after spooning pudding into dessert bowls.

13 Plugs

In Games, yours truly takes a hands-on look at the upcoming, Barrow Hill and Mark B reviews Prey.

In Music, Gloomchen talks Amy Lee, and KDP bails on his Korean students.

In Wrestling, Eric S. sat through modern ECW while I just pop in a tape of New Jack killing himself. Also, Jeff Hardy returns to the WWF. Cheer up MM! At least Hardy will get titles shots now and be a multi time tag champ again!

In Movies, Mr. Kennedy shows Shyamalan to be a repetitive hack with only one plot ala Joss Whedon. Oh and Good Fellas doesn’t make the 50 Club, but Pulp Fiction does. Only at Inside Pulse folks!

I don’t watch TV

In Figures, we now have Married With Children toys. WTF? Isn’t that like two decades too late? PK also shows us Survivor Series 1997 figures. LET IT DIE PEOPLE!

Moodspins hasn’t been updated since May.

In Comics, Burnside learns even Simon Furman hates Hot Rod. Optimus > Rodimus baby!

Closing