Paranormal Stories

Paranormal Story – “Ghosts of Okinawa” (Castle of Spirits)

This story comes from an Anonymous writer on Castle Of Spirits. The original story and site can be found here: https://www.castleofspirits.com/ghost-stories/ghosts-of-okinawa.

“The following are just some of my experiences while I was stationed in Okinawa, Japan, from 2011 to 2015. While it is a beautiful island, anyone who has been there can tell you that the spiritual activity is rampant. This is, no doubt, a direct result of it being the site of the final major battle of World War II. Countless thousands of men, women, and children died during this battle on both the allied and Japanese sides. I suspect that many of the Ryukyu spirits (the native peoples of Okinawa) harbor some resentment towards both American G.I.’s still living in their homeland as well as Japanese who had occupied the island.

Many fellow servicemembers I have worked with were very much against the belief in ghosts or the supernatural – until they were stationed in Okinawa. I have heard many wild stories, but I will primarily relay my own.

Upon moving into our house in Okinawa City, we started noticing strange things. The kinds of things you don’t see with western spiritual activity. It seemed far more aggressive. For example, I would often see shadows moving behind me in the hallways in the mirror. More than once my wife and I would hear screaming in the house, only to find nothing on inspection. A baby gate we had installed in the hallway would open and slam shut in the middle of the night waking us up, with no evidence as to what caused it. At one point it appeared that our toddler was interacting with something that wasn’t there; she would often point to nothing and just start chatting away.

I eventually got the gut feeling that it was multiple different entities we were dealing with. I tried to show them through my words and actions that I harbored no ill will towards them, and that I respected their culture, language, and history. One day I had enough because it was starting to terrify us in the house – so I loudly proclaimed that I didn’t mind that they were in our house, but I just wanted them to stop trying to scare us. After that happened, I did not notice anything more nefarious again in the house; only more playful activity which did not bother us.

If anyone is interested in Japanese ghosts, I would highly recommend looking up Yurei or even Yokai for some examples. Some coworkers of mine experienced things like a Rokurokubi (a woman with a long neck who can look into your window on higher floors of a building). One co-worker, who was staunchly and adamantly against the belief in ghosts, eventually had to move out of his house because the activity was too threatening to his family – his child would tell him how a man would come in through the window on the third floor and tell him he was going to rip his skin off, among other things.

I hope this has spurred some interest in Okinawa or Japanese ghosts. Thank you for reading!”

dev55

Paranormal Stories – “True Stories of Monsters and Cryptids”

I found a series of allegedly “true” Cryptid sightings and stories from https://www.liveabout.com/cryptids-monsters-and-weird-creatures-2594778 that I wanted to post a few of here. See the original website for the full set, these are the ones I was particularly interested in reposting:

Cornfield Creature

I used to work at a cheese factory on the edge of a cornfield in southwestern Minnesota. There were a series of days in the summer of ’04 or ’05 where it was so hot that the milk being delivered to us in trucks would evaporate before we got it. It made work easy; the dearth of milk denied us any actual labor, but management wouldn’t let us not come to work, so we would show up and mess around all shift.

I was working nights at the time. It was 2 or 3 a.m., and I was out on the loading dock watching bats fly around the floodlights, because I liked being out in the cool night air. The corn was about as high as my shoulder, so about 5′ 10″.

As I was watching the bats, I looked down at the edge of the cornfield. Something was moving there. It was the size of a small child and very, very skinny. Pale, with something that looked like a head of straight, black hair. It moved in a sort of jerky gait, like someone dancing “the robot” badly. It moved in chunks: legs, then hips, then torso, shoulders, neck and finally head. It was looking back into the cornfield, or at least I felt like it was.

I felt prickly all over. I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was a heron or something at first, but it looked too much like a person. It didn’t move like a person, though. Gradually, step by step, it moved toward me. Letting my curiosity better my fear, I moved toward the edge of the dock, which was raised a few feet off the ground. When I got within a few feet of the edge, the thing looked at me. I was paralyzed. I could have run, but I was stuck somewhere between terrified and intrigued.

It moved, its “face” still pointed at me. It ratcheted its body in that disconcerting, jerky movement toward the cornfield and went into it. I tried to watch where the field moved as it passed, but the corn remained perfectly still. I noticed that all the crickets were silent. After a few minutes, nothing happened. I stood out there for an hour, but it never came back. I never saw it again.

— Frank Semko

 

Florida Sea Monster

This story takes place, I think, in the summer of 1995, making me 9 years old. Practically every other year, my family would take a trip to Florida. We would usually go to Disney World, but my mother was getting sick of that, so that year we actually didn’t go to Disney World to my sister’s and my dismay.

On one of these days, we were on a beach. I don’t remember what the beach was called, but the people sitting next to us mentioned it being the bottom tip of Florida. After a while of nothing happening, everybody was either in the ocean or sunbathing silently. A woman sitting to the left of us pointed past us, to our right, asking, “What is that?” We all turned and looked to a surprisingly vacant corner of the beach. There were no people down there, but what was there was something really strange.

We all got up to get a better look, very quickly forming a crowd around it. If I had to describe the creature we saw in one word, that word would be “cartoonish.” I will never forget what it looked like. It was green and looked like a ball of slime about the size of a basketball. It had tentacles resting on the ground around it with two longer tail-like tentacles sticking out of its back. The thing that was the most bizarre and made it look cartoonish were its eyes, which were on stalks that stood about a foot off its body. The eyes looked creepily human and just looked at us in an almost disinterested way. The other strange thing about it was its mouth, which never seemed to close, and where you’d expect teeth were tooth-shaped fleshy protrusions. No one, not even the creature, seemed scared, and after a while it lazily slithered back into the ocean.

There were roughly 10 witnesses to this thing, and we all spent most of our time talking about what it must have been. One idea was that it was a parasite organism for a much larger creature, one also possibly never identified.

— Adam G.

 

The Kitsune (Fox Spirit)

Back in September of 2004, I was hiking in the Arashiyama area outside of Kyoto, Japan. I had decided to leave the touristy area and set off alone in a random direction toward the mountains. I found myself on an old trail through the forest.

After a while, I encountered an old man with a long white beard. He carried a staff and was dressed in coarse blue robes, like a peasant out of a Samurai movie. He saw me and told me to follow him. Being more curious than anything, I walked after him as he led me further into the forest.

He spoke at length about the beauty of nature, how people cut down forests and polluted the Earth, and told me that humans must learn to protect and respect nature. During the whole exchange he never spoke about himself or asked any questions of me. After a while he said he had to leave and showed me another trail, saying I should take it when I wanted to go back to the city. He then left by that trail.

I happened to pass the same place on the way back that evening, so I took the trail the old man showed me. Only minutes later, I ended up completely lost and couldn’t even find the trail itself to retrace my steps. It was getting dark out, and as I shone my flashlight around I noticed an old white fox watching me from nearby. I could have sworn it was watching me with an amused look on its face, but as soon as I shone my light on it, it ran off into the bushes.

I remember reading all sorts of old Japanese stories and legends about fox spirits that can take human form, and I feel like I may have seen one that day.

— Bryan T.

 

Invisible Sprinting Humanoids

Working as a police motorway patrol-woman in Portsmouth, England, I’m frequently confronted with situations that are both bizarre and unnerving. However, the incident that occurred on the 25th of November last year is by far the most unusual of them all. During a routine speed camera set up in the city, around 6.30 pm (at which time it was completely dark,) our speed trap picked up random tracings of nonexistent objects hurtling past at 30 to 40 mph.

The devices are not actually known to malfunction, so we trained the camera on the road surface to see what we picked up. Sitting in the back of the patrol van, we were shocked to discover on the screen that the camera was picking up what can only be described as human figures, running up and down the street approximately 40 ft away from the vehicle, only barely visible through the night vision filter. They were of average height, had a silvery hue, and were sprinting up and down the central reservation (the dividing surface between two opposite lanes on a motorway) repeatedly, and very fast.

I admit I did not exit the vehicle to investigate, but apparently I didn’t have to. Only about 10 feet away, at the side of the road, one of these silvery entities just appeared on the screen. Female, approximately 6 foot, and standing motionless facing away from the van. She was dressed in scantily clad clothing, not unlike that a young woman on an evening out may wear. I was extremely freaked out, especially considering that leaning out of the window, there was absolutely no evidence of anyone standing that close to the vehicle. As the first vehicle only five minutes from the first sighting drove past, all visible evidence of the entities had vanished. Nothing occurred from that time till the end of my duty at 9 p.m., and yet, when I played back the footage from the camera, the silvery objects and the woman are not on the tape!

Obviously, I did not report the incident, but friends and fellow officers agree that it is highly unusual, and none of them had experienced anything of the like before.

— Cassandra J.

dev55

Paranormal Story – “The Old Frail Woman” (Shadowlands)

This article comes from The Shadowlands, reprinted and shared with permission.

The Frail Old Woman

By Norman17@aol.com

My parents recently bought a nice house on 180 acres. The house itself is not that old-built in the 1950s and sits up on top of a large hill surrounded by trees. Just recently, for no apparent reason, we’ve had a rash of strange happenings.

One day, while practicing her piano and becoming quite frustrated with a particular peice, my littlest sister, Monica, heard a voice behind her saying ‘come on Monica, you can do it. Keep trying.’ She turned around to see a frail old woman dressed in black sitting in a lounge chair. Monica screamed and got mom & dad but the lady was gone.

Not a week later, Monica was taking a shower in mom’s bathroom when she happened to glance in the mirrior only to see the large face of this same woman staring at her. One of the reasons I believe that she wasn’t’ lying is because she ran screaming out of the bathroom, naked, into a gathering of my parents friends.

Over Thanksgiving, while saying grace at the dinner table, our china cabinets and everything in our dining room began to shake violently much to the dismay of our entire family.

During Christmas, we thought it would be fun to hypnotize Monica just for play. She started counting, then started skipping numbers and soon was actually in a different state. It wasn’t 30 seconds later that she started screaming at the top of her lungs that ‘She’s going to kill me!!! She’s got a knife!!! Oh my God!!!’ When my dad finally woke her up, she could only remember a lady with red hair chasing her in our house with a knife.

The final blow was just recently. By final blow I mean it finally convinced those non-believers. My father has a favorite leather chair that he sits in day in and day out. It was in close proximity to a window which my mother opened for some air before a rain storm. Dad, worried about his chair getting wet, told mom not to open the window with his chair there or it will get ruined. The next morning, dad was up early for work and noticed that the den had been re-arranged so that his chair was no longer by the window but instead across the room. Dad left for work, thinking that all the kids did this the previous night. Mom woke up to the same thing and thought dad did it. It wasn’t until dinner time that we discovered the room had been completely re-arranged (down to the magazine placements and table leaves) and not by human hands. We figured it was done between 10pm and 5 am in the morning. Not a sound was heard even though the kids’ rooms are directly below the den and the den floor is hardwood. Mom and dad used to brush it off, but not anymore.

See more from The Shadowlands at www.theshadowlands.com.

dev55

Paranormal Article – “The Ghost of the Smokies”

Here’s a paranormal article/story by Marshall Ramsey as posted on his website.

“In the backcountry of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park is an old wooden cabin. Some say it’s haunted. Some say it’s possessed. Hikers have reported strange sounds and sightings near it for years. Animals won’t go near it. And Park Rangers have logged equipment failures as they have passed by it. No one remembers whose cabin it is — there is no record of it in the Park Service’s files. Unlike most structures in the park, it was not removed when the Park was formed. For some reason it just sits there, never decaying.

The cabin was owned by Oliver M. Sydney, trapper, hunter and storyteller. He was a tall, thin man who possessed the deepest, most piercing eyes of anyone in East Tennessee. He roamed the mountainside, trapping for fur and killing for meat. He built a small, one bedroom Chestnut-log home on his claim in the shadow of Mount LeConte. The timber barons never messed with him. They called him “The Devil,” because of his legendary meanness. He just lived his life in peace trapping and hunting until that fateful day in October 31, 1935. That’s the day when the man from the U.S. Government knocked on his door with an eviction notice.

The man from the U.S. Government left with a gunshot wound to the leg.

No one was takin’ his land, Oliver swore. He’d stay on that land forever.

He might have been permitted to stay, but the U.S. Government is kind of funny about people who shoot their agents. The don’t like it. So the next day, several more agents hiked up the knoll and surrounded old man’s cabin. He promptly sent them diving behind trees and into ditches with a barrage of gunfire. The Siege of LeConte had begun.

Four days passed and the agents held their ground. So did Oliver. As the world went on its merry way, time stood still in the Great Smoky Mountains. There are few things more stubborn than a mountain man. Oliver M. Sydney was going nowhere.

Or so he thought.

Fred Whitehorse, a tracker from the Cherokee reservation in North Carolina, was brought in to sneak up to the cabin to smoke him out. Fred crawled behind it and then climbed on the roof. Oliver, tired from being awake for so long, did not notice that his chimney had been covered. His cabin quickly filled with smoke.

Oliver came out with guns blazing. But there was only one of him. And a dozen U.S. agents. Oliver M. Sydney was buried where he fell. The Government, not wanting bad P.R., swept the incident under the rug. Reports were burned and careers were threatened. No one was to hear about the mountain man’s death.

So to this day, when you walk by the old cabin in the woods you might see Oliver M. Sydney’s ghost on the front porch and hear his cries. Or if you are a Park Ranger, you might have your radio or phone die. Because the old mountain man was right about one thing — he will stay on his land forever.”

See more on Marshall Ramsey at http://marshallramsey.com.

dev55

Paranormal Folklore – “I Visited a Notoriously Haunted Doll, and Bad Luck Followed Me Everywhere”

It’s not every day that MSN posts an article on a paranormal experience like this. I’ve had it for a little while and got my opportunity to post it. Here it is in full:

fsdfsdf

I’m a relatively superstitious person. I would never walk on someone’s grave in a cemetery, I believe in ghosts, and I’m careful to not walk under any ladders. So while I was on my honeymoon in Key West recently and heard about a ghost tour that involved Robert the Doll — a famously haunted doll that brings bad luck to those who visit him — I was pretty intrigued.

For an inanimate object, Robert is pretty well-known. He’s been featured on several TV shows and is even toted around to various conventions that center on the occult. Eager to see what all the fuss was about, my husband, Chris, and I booked a tour with a company called Ghosts & Gravestones, which included a stop at the Fort East Martello Museum where Robert resides. While the tour was awesome, our brief encounter with Robert was . . . less than ideal. Why? Well, because he “haunted” me for about 36 hours afterwards.

In order to understand the full extent of this, it’s important to know Robert’s sordid past. Originally given as a gift to Eugene Otto, an author and painter, by his grandfather in 1904, the two were instantly inseparable. It’s said that Robert the Doll’s outfit was even modeled after one Eugene wore. As a boy, Eugene would often blame the doll for accidents and misgivings, claiming, “Robert told me to do it.” Seems like somewhat normal little kid behavior, right?

According to our tour guide, the real trouble started when a woman who worked for the Otto family was fired abruptly without cause. But rather than packing her bags and leaving, she reportedly used voodoo to put a curse on the doll as a form of revenge. And while it may seem pretty far-fetched to some, others believe it actually worked.

“Once he was put on exhibit, cameras and electronic devices malfunctioned in his presence, and soon letters began arriving addressed to the doll offering apologies for disrespectful behavior or asking forgiveness.”

As an adult, Eugene became an artist. Considered by many to be “eccentric,” Eugene returned to his family home in Key West with his wife, Annette Parker, after they got married in 1930. And despite being an adult, Eugene’s love of Robert never wavered (legend has it that Robert sat right next to Eugene while he painted). Annette obviously wasn’t a huge fan of her husband’s best friend, and vice versa, so once Eugene died in 1974, Annette left Key West. She left Robert behind in the attic of the home, where he was found years later by the home’s new owners. While strange things had often happened in Robert’s presence before – people hearing voices, noises, and other unexplained sounds – it wasn’t until he was donated to the Fort East Martello Museum in 1994 that his less-than-kind attitude went full-scale.

Before walking into the museum to get a peek at Robert, the tour guide gave us some strict rules to follow: you must greet and introduce yourself to Robert; if you want to take a photo of him, you must ask first; and you can’t leave the museum without saying goodbye. While a bit weird, that all sounded doable to Chris and me, so we did as we were told. After snapping a few photos, we learned about what happens to people who don’t follow the rules or poke fun at Robert. A nearby TV showed thousands of letters from people from around the world who experienced terrible luck after rubbing the doll the wrong way.

According to some of the letters, visitors have been met with all kinds of misfortune, from getting burned by hot water to missing their flights to — yep — even getting divorced. “Once he was put on exhibit, cameras and electronic devices malfunctioned in his presence, and soon letters began arriving addressed to the doll offering apologies for disrespectful behavior or asking forgiveness,” says the website. “Letters continue to arrive daily.”

As a respectful visitor, I thought I was off the hook. I followed the rules and was genuinely interested in learning about him. But boy, was I wrong. I made ONE comment about a grown man carrying around a doll, and my fate was sealed. As soon as I woke up the next day, the bad luck began. First, our flight home was delayed. Then, we were forced to rebook our flight because the plane was too heavy, resulting in us having a five-hour layover and getting transferred to another connecting flight. While both of these things were annoying, I also knew they happen sometimes. It couldn’t have been because of a doll, right?

I realized that Robert might actually have had it out for us when we finally landed back home around midnight. The problem? Our luggage never showed up. We were told to go home and that the suitcase was probably on the next flight in. Fast forward to the next morning — still no sign of the bag. And no one on either airline that we used could locate where the suitcase was. It was simply missing without a trace. Frustrated and near tears, we decided to give into our superstitions and write letters to Robert in the hopes of reversing whatever bad luck he gave us and finding our lost bag.

My Letter

jhjgfdh

 

Chris’s Letter

mmbnvbndfgh

After sending them, we went to bed and promptly called the airlines at 9 a.m. when they opened. And guess what? We were immediately told where our bag was: back in Key West with an airline we didn’t fly with. While things were still somewhat up in the air, our luck seemed to completely change as soon as we apologized to Robert. Coincidence? Maybe. But do we regret writing letters to a doll just to be sure? Absolutely not!

I had heard of something similar called Pele’s Curse, which is the belief that if you take anything natively Hawaiian ⁠— like a rock or sand —

out of Hawaii, you’ll have bad luck until it’s returned. And if you look into it, you’ll find thousands of accounts from people who did just that and experienced such severe bad luck that they sent the lava rocks back to the island immediately. So, we knew we couldn’t be too careful.

Although I might be pushing my luck writing this story —God knows I don’t need anymore bad juju! ⁠— it’s been said that Robert loves to be the center of attention. Fingers crossed this keeps me in his good graces!

This article comes from https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/tripideas/i-visited-a-notoriously-haunted-doll-and-bad-luck-followed-me-everywhere/ar-AAFO0ef?li=BBnbklE#image=1.

dev55

Paranormal Folklore – “Straw Hat Man”

This article comes from Castle of Spirits, reprinted and shared with permission.

I’ve been keeping this to myself for really most of my life but an image keeps popping into my memory, an image from my childhood which I had initially blocked out. I sort of believe in the unknown like ghosts and extraterrestrials and stuff but this entity I saw was something I’ve never understood or even knew about until now.

 Let me take you back to 1995 when I first discovered this strange being at my childhood home in Forest Park, GA. It was just a regular day at the house. My dad was at work and my brothers and I were home alone. (Which was a recurring event since babysitters couldn’t stand to be in the house due to strange occurrences that seemed to be ghostly in origin.)

 So yeah, we kind of had a ghost but that’s not the story here. Because as one of my brothers would reveal to me in my adult years, it was all made up. Now, I know what you’re thinking. If he made that up then surely the Straw Hat Man was another myth. My response is: he admitted that he had nothing to do with this image and don’t call me Shirley.

 The reason I don’t believe the Straw Hat Man is a myth my brother created is that I actually saw him. I never saw the supposed ghost and only experienced different tricks that my brother employed to fool me into believing in him.

 Anyway, I was hanging out with my brothers in their room and we were playing games like the Batman game and then we played a card game. And we were talking and just entertaining ourselves while our dad was gone. We liked to play games when we were alone or go into the forbidden dining room where we’d play the piano and play all the vinyl records our dad owned.

 Before we got ready to go to the dining room, my brothers were half way out the bedroom door when I noticed something in the corner of my eye. I went to the window and pulled open the blinds and there he was standing and staring straight into my soul.

 Now, he didn’t necessarily look like a spirit but he certainly didn’t look human. I remember the yellow straw hat, his crooked pale hands, his black pants and I distinctly remember him tipping his hat in my direction. It was chilling. He smiled and then he was gone. It felt like a lifetime that I was looking at him looking at me. My brothers came in at that point and told me to hurry up and I just sort of forgot about the sighting.

 Until a few weeks ago when I woke up from the worst nightmare ever. He was back. He was looking in at me while I was sleeping. It was so meta. He smiled at me. I know what he was doing because I was watching myself sleep and saw him looking at me until he noticed me floating above my body and put his crooked finger to his lips as if to silence me. The nightmare ended when when he reached in to shake me awake.

 After that dream, I found it very difficult to shake what had happened. It was like he seeped back into my subconscious and weaseled his way back into my memory. So I decided to call my brother and ask him about the strange goings on in Forest Park, starting with the ghost. That’s when he told me about making it up just to play with us. Then I mentioned Straw Hat Man and he confessed to also seeing him at a different time when he was alone. I was shocked. I thought I was the only one. But it turns out it was real. He saw him and I saw him and he would tell me if he made it up because he told me about the ghost.

 You can believe what you want but I know what happened. If anyone else has seen this thing (my brother says it’s a shadow man which I don’t believe), let me know in the comments. I really want to find out if others have had this experience and I really want to know what it was since it’s basically been haunting me my whole life even when I didn’t know about it.

See more from Castle of Spirits at www.castleofspirits.com.

dev55

3,500+ Occult Manuscripts Made Available Online For Free

http://www.openculture.com/2017/12/3500-occult-manuscripts-will-be-digitized-made-freely-available-online.html

From the article: “Many a writer, like Brown, has found inspiration among the Ritman’s more accessible works (though, sadly, Borges, who was blind in 1984 and died two years later, could not have appreciated it). Now, thanks to the Da Vinci Code author’s magnanimity, a new generation of scholars will be able to virtually access, for example, the first English translation of the works of 17-century German mystic Jakob Böhme, which librarian and director Esther Ritman describes as “travelling in an entire new world.”

In an introductory essay, the Ritman notes that academic interest in occult and hermetic writing has increased lately among scholars like W.J. Hanegraaff, who tells “the ‘neglected’ story of how the intellectual community since the Renaissance has tried to come to terms with ‘esoteric’ and ‘occult’ currents present in Western culture.” That those currents are as much a part of the culture as the scientific or industrial revolutions need not be in doubt. The Hermetically Open project opens up that history with “an invitation to anyone wishing to consult or study sources belonging to the field of Christian-Hermetic Gnosis for personal, academic or other purposes.” Look for the digitization project to hit the web in the coming months.”

dev55

Celtic Origins of Halloween, Samhaim, Zoroastrianism and more.

One of my friends with a major paranormal interest, Mr. John Easter, submitted this for inclusion on my site here. The following is his text.

The popular holiday of Halloween has its roots and origin in the Celtic holiday of Samhain. It is truly fascinating that how Halloween and many other ancient Indo-European festivities, have been preserved untouched in Mazda-Yasna or Zoroastrianism with the original ancient beliefs behind them.”

 

“The Gaels, like the Zoroastrians believed that the border between this world and the Other-World became thin before the New Year; it thus allowed the spirits to reach back through the veil that separated them from the living.”
-Celtic Origins of Halloween and Zoroastrian Beliefs and Festivities by Herbad Ardeshir Farahmand

 

Some near death experience reports describe Hell as being in an Earthbound state as a ghost. There are exceptions, such as in ancestor veneration, but many of the ghosts and other undead beings that are recorded in folklore from all over the world are usually described as hostile or sad as well as being in an unnatural or even Hellish like state.

“But what if one level of hell existed right here on the surface- unseen and unsuspected by the living people occupying the same space? What if it meant remaining on earth but never again able to make contact with it?”
 -Visions of God: From the Near Death Experience p. 131 by Dr. Ken R. Vincent

 

Taken from Return from Tomorrow by George Ritchie and Elizabeth Sherrill

 

“The psychiatrist George Richie (1998, pp.37-41) who had an NDE(near death experience) in 1943 tells of visiting hellish realms invisible but on the earth-plane, as well as tours of other realms where people were trapped because of their own desires.”
-Scientific Investigation of the “Dark Side” by Dr. Ken R. Vincent

 

Gathic Avestan “Druj” means malicious falsehood, the opposite of “Asha” or goodness, and the essence of evil in the wickedest, vilest, deepest, and un-holiest sense. It is a close cognate of Vedic Sanskrit “Druh” which means affliction, hurtful, hostile, injurer, foe, fiend, demon, and evil power. “Druh” is also the opposite of “Rta” which is the Vedic Sanskrit cognate of Gathic Avestan “Asha” and means order.

 

Old Norse “Draugar” and Middle Irish “Aurddrach” refer to undead beings and are related cognates of Gathic Avestan “Druj” and Vedic Sanskrit “Druh” through Indo-European roots. Other related words include Old English “Dreag”, meaning ghost, Scottish Gaelic “Dreag”, meaning ghost lights or “fiery death-warnings”, Old Persian “Drauga” and Persian “Dorug”, meaning lies, German “Trug”, meaning fraud or deception, and English “Trick”. Possibly even English “Darkness”, which derives from Old English “Deorc” meaning obscure, gloomy, sad, cheerless, sinister, and wicked.

 

“Aurddrach” means ghost. “Abhartach” is a similar word that refers to an undead dwarf in an Irish legend who is described as one of the “neamh-mairbh” or walking dead. “Draug”, singular, or “Draugar”, plural, are ghoul like beings described in the Norse/Icelandic sagas. Including Eyrbyggja Saga, Saga of Grettir the Strong, Saga of Erik the Red, Saga of King Hrolf Kraki, Saga of Egil & Asmund, Saga of Hromund Gripsson, Njal’s Saga, Laxdaela Saga, Gisli Sursson’s Saga, and Floamanna Saga.

 

Draugar are related to ghasts in Swedish lore, Nachzehrers in German lore, and revenants in English lore. Draugar are particularly similar to the vampires in Slavic & Romanian lore and to both the Rakshasas and the undead beings in Hinduism & Indian lore. They are also similar to the ghouls in Arabian lore and to the Dybbuks in Jewish lore. Whether described as physical ghoul like beings or non-physical ghost like beings the undead are mentioned in the lore of numerous countries and cultures and on every continent.

Draugar were thought to be very greedy, cruel, and wicked people in life. As undead they injure and terrorize both human and animal life in the Norse sagas. This does seem to be connected to the Dregavants, the followers of Druj and the living injurers of human and animal life, who fall back into the House of Druj after their deaths, which is described as a Hellish state for their souls in the Gathas. Frawardin Yasht 12 states that the guardian angels help prevent Druj from gaining power over the physical world or corporeal life.

 

“In Norse mythology the bridge/or link to the Aesir’s realm is inaccessible to the wicked and is only open to the noble souls. Also, in the Zoroastrian holy writings the vile because of their own actions (destroying the world of men/mortals) and lack of vision are unable to cross over the bridge and are cast back into the domain of lies that have consumed them through all ages. (Yasna 46.11 and Yasna 51.13)”
-The Concept of the Illuminating Bridge in Zoroastrian Faith, Norse Mythology and the Al-Sirat in Islam by Herbad Ardeshir Farahmand
dev55

The Shadowlands – Uncle Mike

This article comes from The Shadowlands, reprinted and shared with permission.

Uncle Mike

 Interview by Dave Juliano

 I interviewed the owner of this haunted house located in southern New Jersey about 12 years ago. This is the story she told of some incidents in her house and others with her family. This house is on a quiet street in a small town.

 It started in the early sixties , when Joan’s brother Mike started dating a wild girl whom the family called Reds. One night out, Mike and Reds were joy riding around Philadelphia. Both of them were intoxicated. Reds kept telling Mike to drive faster and faster. His speed still did not satisfy she reached her foot over and stepped on the gas pedal, Mike lost control and slammed into a utility pole. Reds was killed in the crash and Mike was seriously injured. He was even unable to attend the funeral. He was ordered to remain at home in bed. When the family returned from the funeral they went up to Mike’s room. As soon as they walked in the door Mike began to describe exactly what Reds was wearing in the coffin, down the rings and other jewelry. The family asked him how he knew all this since he wasn’t there. He told them that Reds had just been there to visit him.

 Years later Joan’s son, Bobby, was supposed to ship out to Vietnam on the following morning. His Uncle Mike told him he would stop by in the morning to give him a lucky coin that would bring him good luck and protect him. His Uncle was very persistent about Bobby getting this coin. The next day, The whole family was there to see bobby off at the airport except for his Uncle Mike.. As they waited for him to arrive Bobby bought his 2 young sisters Raggy Ann dolls. His Uncle never showed up and Bobby had to leave without the lucky coin. When Joan arrived home her neighbors told her to put on the TV and watch the news. She turned on the TV and the scene was of her brother Mike laying dead in the street. He had been killed while attempting to rob a bank, he was trying to steal a coin collection.

 One night while Bobby was on guard duty near the front lines, He saw a figure approaching him in the distance. He called out for the person to identify themselves. Bobby had never fired his gun at a person before and He was hesitating. The figure was even closer in an instant and he recognized it, it was his dead Uncle Mike. His Uncle told him to turn around and he spun around to be face to face with a North Vietnam soldier with his bayonet raised. He fired instantly killing the enemy soldier. He quickly turned around but his uncle was gone. Joan received many letters form men in Bobby platoon who told of mines not going off, shells veering off in opposite directions, etc. All of these occurred when Bobby’s life was in danger. His uncle had failed to give him the lucky coin, so he was protecting him from beyond.

 During the war the sisters had started sleeping in Bobby’s room. This was the same room that Red’s had visited years before. One night they both awoke to find the Raggy Ann dolls sitting up in bed laughing at them.

 After the war Bobby went to work as a bus driver. On one late night run he got the feeling of his Uncle’s presence just like in Viet Nam. He heard his Uncle say “turn around”, he did and there was a man with a knife ready to stab him. He overpowered the man and called the police. Bobby still has times when his Uncle Mike appears to aid him.

 The day before I conducted this interview Joan’s grandchildren were over and were playing in the room that was once Mike and Bobby’s room. They ran downstairs to Joan and her friend and claimed someone was watching them as they played. The women went upstairs to look. The room was very cold, but they found no intruder. The girls said they were being watched form the closet. Joan showed the girls there was nothing in the closet, she even stood inside to point this out. As she stood in the closet, she looked up and noticed a small hole in the ceiling above the closet door. She inspected the hole and found a box full of old clothes and things. Among them were the Raggy Ann dolls that had come alive years before.

 For the skeptics among you, I met Joan through my Mother at our Church. She became a good friend of the family and later became our town’s mayor. I also know Bobby, he was my football coach. Real people, real story. 

See more from The Shadowlands at www.theshadowlands.com.

The picture in the article here isn’t related to post, I just need some eye candy. Got it from Google Images.

dev55