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Dracula (1931)

Renfield has arrived in Transylvania to do a job for a particular Count that resides there.  However once he enters Dracula’s home, he falls under the spell and soon turns to serve the Count.  Dracula then travels to England where he seeks a bride and finds a few women to grab a taste of.  But Van Helsing will attempt to stop him but could it be too late?

Frankenstein (1931)

Dr. Henry Frankenstein has become obsessed with the subject of what it is that creates life. Intent on proving that he can create life itself, he and his assistant Fritz have been digging up corpses from graves and trying to assemble a man from parts, with the intent of bring it to life.  But once he does it, he realizes he can’t control the creature and soon must seek to destroy his very creation.

Wolfman (1941)

Larry Talbott has returned home to his family’s estate after an 18 year absence however not everything is as he left it.  Seems some werewolf stories are running about and when Larry and 2 ladies go out for fun, they run into a wolf.  Larry saves the life of Gina but her friend Jenny isn’t so lucky.  Larry gets bit the battle by the creature but the next morning the wound is gone and so is the wolf, with only the body of an old gypsy man in its place.  The police begin to investigate but Larry soon convinces himself that he’s now a werewolf.  Trouble is, there are more dead bodies popping up that could prove it.

Them (1954)

After several people in the New Mexico desert wind up dead, the police and FBI investigate and are shocked to find gigantic ants, whose mutations were caused by the first atomic bomb explosion nine years earlier. They manage to destroy the nest of ants, but not before two winged queen ants have hatched and escaped the nest. Now they the US Government has to find the creatures before the breed and destroy the entire continent.

The Fly (1958)

Andre Delambre is playing around with his new invention, a teleportation device.  Soon he decides to change from inanimate matter to actual human matter and does using himself.  But something goes terribly wrong and Andre ends up merging with a fly that accidentally got into the chamber.  He will try and do everything he can to change himself back but it may not work and he might instead start taking on the characteristics of a giant fly.

The Flesh and the Fiends (1959)

It is 1828 and local surgeon/professor Dr. Knox relies on grave-robbers to supply him with fresh bodies for his anatomy lectures. Irish immigrants Burke and Hare initially can’t believe that hadn’t previously struck upon this idea to earn money before.  But once they start finding bodies…they realize it’s a “cash cow” and they soon start finding alternative ways to find bodies…including murder.

Psycho (1960)

Phoenix office worker Marion Crane is fed up with the way life has treated her. She has to meet her lover Sam in lunch breaks and they cannot get married because Sam has to give most of his money away in alimony. One Friday, Marion is trusted to deposit $40,000 by her employer into the bank. Seeing the opportunity to take the money and start a new life, Marion leaves town and heads towards Sam’s California store. Tired after the long drive and caught in a storm, she gets off the main highway and pulls into “The Bates Motel.”  Once she checks in, the owner will make sure she won’t check out.  But Marion’s actions have ensured that Norman is gonna have a few more visitors.

Mr. Sardonicus (1961)

A man digs his dead father up to retrieve a lottery ticket and in the process is scared into a skull like frozen grin for years.  His cruelty is only exceeded by his cunning as he forces his wife from an arranged marriage to trick a former love and brilliant doctor to try and heal him.  I dark an surreal story with castles, torture and atmospheric evil.

Night of the living dead (1968)

John and Barbara are out to say some prayers for their father when out of nowhere comes “the living dead.”  John is disposed of and Barb ends up at an abandoned house.  Soon enough she is joined by Ben and a few stragglers in the basement.  7 people against the world.  The “Living Dead” surround the house and eventually make their move.  The 7 must work together to defeat these beasts, but that will be just as hard as killing their attackers.

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The story of Frankenstein has always been one of my favorites.  I love the romanticism and mysticism that surrounds it.  I also love science so it’s really a match made in heaven.  We all probably know the story of Frankenstein, which I won’t go onto here, but as usual I wanted to know more.

There is truly an actual Frankenstein’s Castle.  I am sure you are stunned to find out that there is indeed such a place.  The real castle is located in Germany and was originally a seat of politics and learning built by and maintained by the German Nobles and Lords of the 1200’s through the 1600’s. Connections between the novel bearing the Frankenstein name and this real local are hard to prove and are rather controversial.  One of its former residents bears some hard to overlook semblances to the well known story.  This is the fellow I want to focus on today.

Johann Konrad Dippel was a German Alchemist and Physician who was born at the actual Castle Frankenstein in Germany.  

The facts surrounding Dippel are sketchy due to age and record keeping of the day.  What is known is  that Dippel was both a prolific author, mostly on topics of Theology, and  a medical anatomist.  Records show he experimented quite frequently with dead animals, to which he was said to be an “avid dissector”.  He actually wrote a dissertation called Maladies and Remedies of the Life of the Flesh, in which he claimed to, have discovered both the Elixir of Life and the means to exorcize demons through potions he concocted from boiled animal bones and flesh.   Many of Dippel’s countrymen regarded him as a dark sorcerer and reasoned that he had a pact with the devil to exchange his soul for knowledge of the dark arts.  In any event there is only a tenuous possibility of any connection between Dippel and Mary Shelly who wrote the novel.

 Dippel’s stories and reputation may have traveled to Mary Shelly’s ears via her stepmother, who had a relationship with Jacob Grimm of Grimm’s Fairy tales fame.  It seems Grimm needed his tales translated and the translator chose was from the villages near the now famed Frankenstein’s castle. Rumors about Dippel included stories that he performed gruesome experiments with cadavers in which he attempted to transfer the soul of one cadaver into another. While experiments with cadavers and soul-transference were common among alchemists at the time, thus making it possible that Dippel pursued similar objectives, there is no direct evidence to link him to these specific acts. There is also no evidence to the rumor that he was driven out of town, when word of his activities reached the ears of the townspeople.

All in all I see lots of fun connections here and I thoroughly enjoyed finding out that there may have been a real person at the center of one of my favorite stories.  Happy Halloween!

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http://www.coopernundrums.com/2009/10/something-druid-this-way-comes/

Traditionally fall in general is a time of year when I post more than usual.  This is probably because it’s the time of year when I find myself the least busy. Today I wanted to start of this months posts with something I think you will find interesting related to witches.

Your basic haunted house witch is actually a creation of the commercial machine.  Real “witches” laugh at these images because of their inaccuracy and sheer ridiculousness.  Like all things commercial, these images do have some basis in fact and history.

Some scholars say is it possible that the witch’s hat is an exaggeration of the tall conical “Dunces Hat”, popular in the royal courts during the 15th century.  These pointed hats were a fashion icon seen all around the city of London when it was seen as the fashion capital of Europe. You have probably seen these hast in pastel pinks and blues usually with a flowing sheer cloth hanging from the point.  Since it took much longer for news to issue back in these times, it took a long time for fashion to trickle into the country. Usually by the time these fashion trends landed in the outlying villages they had already become out of fashion in the city.  City folk called Country folk “pagani” which means country dweller. This is a slang term that would be much the same as calling someone a “hick”, today.

As fate would have it, pointed hats soon became considered something only the pagani would wear. These folks were often herbalists or farmers wives who lived in the country and understood the land.  Since they were wise to the ways of nature and could grow and harvest herbs, the pointed hat became associated with the “Wise Woman” or “Witch”.  By Victorian times, the tall black conical hat worn by an old crone became readily identifiable as symbols of wickedness in illustrations of children’s stories and fairy tales.

During this same period the Christian church chipped-in and associated pointed hats with the horns of the Devil, by which time they frowned upon their use.  This served to further demonize this hat style.

Today most contemporary witches go bareheaded or wear ritual headgear such as headbands with a crescent moon or other religious symbols on it.  Normally the symbol is positioned on the forehead.  During rituals in which the Goddess and Horned God are represented, the high priestess may wear a headband or a crown, while the high priest may wear a helmet with horns or antlers.

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    Of course, the reason ostensibly given for Saturday night Halloweening is that it will keep the holiday from interfering with Sunday night church activities.  If we follow this strange logic when Christmas or some other holiday falls on a Sunday, shouldn’t we also designate it for another day for the same reason, to eliminate any possible distraction for church-goers?  That would be crazy, right?

     I cannot resist thinking that every day must feel like Halloween for Christians. After all, they imagine angels and demons at war for their “souls,” and worship assorted spirits with which they claim to be able to communicate.

    Typically, when Halloween falls on a Sunday it simply means double the fun, and people can usually expect trick-or-treaters two nights in a row. When TN residents were asked how they felt about the age-old debate on the News Channel 5 website, answers were mixed but the majority who commented preferred keeping the Halloween hoopla on Halloween.  

    The city of Mt. Juliet Tennessee where I live has officially decided to keep the holiday on its proper day and observe the fun on October the 31^st 2010.  This is a rather progressive move considering I live where the majority of the folks are religious by diffusion.

   Happy haunting all!

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    Wiki tell us that a scarecrow is, traditionally, a human figure (or mannequin) dressed in old clothes and placed in fields by farmers to discourage birds such as crows or sparrows from disturbing and feeding on recently cast seed and growing crops. These can be many different shapes and sizes often having cans, strings or metal wires dangling from them to make extra noise when the winds blow.

    The first scarecrows in recorded history were made along the Nile River to protect wheat fields from flocks of quail. Egyptian farmers put wooden frames in their fields and covered them with nets. The farmers hid in the fields and scared the quail into the nets.

    In Medieval Britain scarecrows were actually live boys around 9 years old or older. Known as bird scarers or bird shooers, they patrolled wheat fields carrying bags of stones. If crows or starlings landed in the fields they would chase them off by waving their arms and throwing the stones. When The Great Plague killed almost half the people in Britain in 1348 landowners couldn’t find enough bird scarers to protect their crops so they stuffed sacks with straw, carved faces in turnips or gourds, and made scarecrows that stood against poles.

    Native American tribes throughout North America used scarecrows to protect their corn crops. When Europeans began to settle in North America in the 1600s they stood guard in their fields to protect the crops they needed for survival.

     By the 1700s, the growing American colonies needed more and more grain and farmers decided that neither farmers nor bird scarers were protecting the crops well enough. Towns all along the Atlantic coast offered bounties for dead crows. So many crows were killed that in the 1800s a new problem arose. Corn borers and other worms and insects which were once eaten by the crows were now destroying more corn and wheat than the crows had. Towns stopped offering bounties and farmers went back to making scarecrows.

    Immigrants who moved to the United States during the 1800s brought with them a variety of ideas for making scarecrows. In Pennsylvania, German farmers built human looking scarecrows called a bootzamon or bogeyman. His body was a wooden cross and his head was a broom or mop top or a cloth bundle stuffed with straw. The bootzamon wore old overalls, a long-sleeved shirt or coat, a worn woolen or straw hat, and a large red handkerchief around his neck. Sometimes a second scarecrow was built to keep the bootzamon company. A bootzafrau or bogeywife, dressed in a long dress or coat and wearing a sunbonnet on her head, was placed on the opposite end of the field. The bootzamon and bootzafrau guarded cornfields, strawberry patches, and cherry orchards.

    Scarecrows can be both scary and fun, they make an excellent craft project and a super subject for research since their evolution seems intertwined with our own. We are very lucky to have such a great fall icon to delight and spook us.

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