Supernatural Friday: Risen Dead: Vampire and Zombie

I will talk about two more well known denizens of the risen dead. Next week, I have to write about more. Today for Supernatural Friday, it is about the vampire and the zombie.

 

People think any person rising after dying is either a vampire or zombie. Vampires drink blood. Zombies eat flesh of the living.

Actually in Eastern European legends from way, way back, vampires not only drank blood, they ate flesh too.  And they didn’t just attack anyone. They went after their ‘dear ones,’ a term you heard about if you read any of The Strain novels, comics, and TV show.  Dear ones, in other words, their family in life.

 

Now vampires were almost entirely unknown to the European imagination prior to 1730, and Johannes Flückinger’s strange report became known as the most thoroughly documented–as well as the most widely circulated–vampire narrative in the world. Following the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718, much of the region now known as the Balkans was ceded to the Habsburg Monarchy by the Ottoman Empire. Along with it came a rich folkloric tradition which quickly merged with European ideas of witchcraft that had gripped the continent for the past three centuries. These stories would be widely reproduced in French, German and, later, in English, to eventually find their way into the hands of an obscure Irish writer and theater manager by the name of Bram Stoker.

 

 Countess Elizabeth Bathory: said to have bathed in virgins' blood to keep her skin supple and young. She was a real person.

Personally, I am sure that vampires were known, as every parts of the world have blood sucking. Flesh eating fiends in their myths and legends, just not called vampires directly.  In European stories, the making of new vampires came through bites or contaminated blood. They had the ability to transform into specific animal “familiars” (especially wolves and bats), and the method of dispatching the undead by murdering them in their coffins while they slept, would all be borrowed directly from Slavic folklore. These individuals thought to be the undead would later be exhumed, the red fluid in and around their mouth or nose would only confirm the original assumption. In actuality, during the normal process of decomposition the lungs become loaded with a dark red sanguinous fluid and the brain liquefies. Depending on the orientation of the body, this liquid would have leaked out as it was acted on by the pull of gravity. Add to this the eruption of sanguinous fluid when a stake is hammered into their lungs (an event that can emit sounds from a low groan to a high pitched scream as gases are forced outwards) and the misinterpretation would be complete.

Rabies can also be a cause for what might be thought as vampirism. The one with rabies would go and try to bit others. This of course, can be attributed to werewolves. It is notable that in the early Slavic accounts there was no distinction between vampires and what we would now call werewolves; in some versions a vampire was simply what a werewolf became after they died.

Other, older, versions of the vampire were not thought to be human at all but instead supernatural, possibly demonic, entities that did not take human form.  Clear foundations for the vampire are in the ancient world, but it is impossible to prove when the myth first arose. Suggestions that the vampire was born out of sorcery in ancient Egypt, a demon summoned into this world from some other. Many variations of vampires are told in myths and tales from around the world. There are Asian vampires, such as the Chinese jiangshi (pronounced chong-shee), evil spirits that attack people and drain their life energy; the blood-drinking Wrathful Deities that appear in the "Tibetan Book of the Dead," and many others.

Finding a vampire can have many ways to do so worldwide.  According to one Romanian legend, you need a seven-year-old boy and a white horse. The boy should be dressed in white, placed upon the horse, and the pair set loose in a graveyard at midday. Keep an eye on the horse as it wanders around, and whichever grave is nearest the horse when it finally stops will be a vampire's grave. Potential revenants can be identified at birth, usually by some abnormality, some defect, as when a child is born with teeth. Children born with an extra nipple in Romania, with a lack of cartilage in the nose, or a split lower lip in Russia are suspect. When a child is born with a red caul, or amniotic membrane, covering its head, this was regarded throughout much of Europe as presumptive evidence that it is destined to return from the dead. Minor deformities were looked upon as evil omens at the time.

It didn’t help that sometimes someone might die after going unconscious and not reviving. These people are buried. Centuries later, there are coffins unearthed and the contents hold a skeleton with its hands at the top, scratches in the wood. Obviously these people revived—not really dead—and found themselves buried. Then they died for real. If any were exhumed by villagers and found this way, I am sure a wooden stake, or more likely an iron stake or knife, was plunged into the chest or even the mouth.  Other ways of killing vampires include decapitation and stuffing the severed head's mouth with garlic or a brick. In fact, suspected vampire graves have been found with just such signs. In 2013, archaeologists in Bulgaria found two skeletons with iron rods through their chests. this pair are believed to have been accused vampires, according to an article in Archaeology Magazine.  You can read the article here.

Ways to protect yourself if a vampire comes after you? One of the best ways to stop a vampire is to carry a small bag of salt with you. If you are being chased, you need only to spill the salt on the ground behind you, at which point the vampire is obligated to stop and count each and every grain before continuing the pursuit. Another says that vampires cannot enter a home unless formally invited in. Supposedly, garlic keeps the vampire away and maybe a good thing to post at window. Of course, it would keep many away, not just the blood sucking undead.

 

As for zombies, that was a term a reporter called the ghouls of Night of the Living Dead. Romero thought of them as ghouls, not zombies. A zombie is supposed to be the living dead: people who die and are resurrected, but without their souls. According to legend, a zombi is someone who has annoyed his or her family and community to the degree that they can no longer stand to live with this person. They respond by hiring a Bokor who turns that person into a zombie. They can take orders, and they're supposed to never be tired, and to do what the master says.

Zombies are the product of spells by a voodoo sorcerer called a bokor. The word is believed to be of West African origin and was brought to Haiti by slaves from that region. Slavery was hard and cruel and it coud even be thought that maybe zombies was developed to keep a slave from killing themselves to escape slavery.  To become a zombie was the slave's worst nightmare: to be dead and still a slave, an eternal field hand. There are several ways to destroy zombies in fiction or movies and TV shows (decapitations or gunshots to the head are popular), though according to Haitian folklore the goal is to release the person from his or her zombie state, not to outright kill the person. There are several ways to free a zombie; feed the zombie salt; others say that if a zombie sees the ocean its mind will return and it will become self-aware and angry, trying to return to its grave.

The word "zombi" —spelled for years without the "e"— first appeared in print in an American newspaper in a reprinted short story called "The Unknown Painter" in 1838.  Then William Seabrook wrote about seeing "voodoo" cults in Haiti and the concept of the zombi to many readers. Several film scholars believe the book was the basis of the classic 1932 horror film White Zombie. The most famous studies of Haitian zombies was ethnobotanist Wade Davis' 1985 book The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombies, and Magic. Wade studied the case of Clairvius Narcisse, a man believed to have been turned into an actual zombie through a combination of drugs (including puffer fish venom and toad venom) in order to mimic death. Then they gave him the hallucinogenic drug tetrodotoxin to keep him in a zombie-like state.

 

Next week, I will post more undead creatures of legend. Since I have Marscon next weekend and will be out of town Thursday, I will post it a day early, on Thursday morning.

Supernatural Friday: A Ghoulish Friday in October

"They are neither man nor woman

They are neither brute nor human

They are Ghouls"

— Edgar Allan Poe

 

When George Romero's Night of the Living Dead came out, the press called the undead in that film zombies. Except Romero never coined them that way. Instead he had called them ghouls. Which would be the right term, as zombies are connected to voodoo and people are drugged and controlled, and are not flesh eating monsters.

What are ghouls? A ghoul is a legendary evil being that robs graves and feeds on corpses.  It is one who shows morbid interest in things considered shocking or repulsive and supposedly lives in burial grounds. In Arabic folklore, ghouls are a type of jinn that could change their shapes but had one unchanging feature: donkey's hooves for feet. Even more horrible, it kills young children and even can lure unwary folk into abandoned places. By extension, the word ghoul is also used derogatorily to refer to a person who delights in the macabre, or whose profession is linked directly to death, such as a gravedigger.

Ghoul is from the Arabic ghul, from ghala "to seize." It is even thought to come from Gallu, a Mesopotamian demon. In Sumerian and Akkadian  mythology, the Gallus (also called gallu demons or gallas [Akkadian: gallû]) were great demons/devils of the underworld. Their job was to haul off unfortunate victims to the underworld and even accompanied Istar when she headed down to the underworld.

The ghul is a fiendish type of jinn believed to be sired by Iblis, known to the Devil in Islam. A ghoul is a desert-dwelling shapeshifting demon that can assume the guise of an animal especially a hyena. It lures unwary people into the desert wastes or abandoned places to slay and devour them. The creature also preys on young children, drinks blood, steals coins, and eats the dead, taking the form of the person most recently eaten. In the Arabic language, the female form is given as ghouleh and the plural is ghilan. In colloquial Arabic, the term is sometimes used to describe a greedy or gluttonous individual.

In stories and films, I think Gollum as closest to the idea of a ghoul, and wouldn't be surprised this is what Tolkien had in mind when he wrote him into The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Supernatural Friday: The Dead Don’t Stay Dead Anywhere You Look!

 

 

 

“Ghosts are a metaphor for memory and remembrance and metaphorically connect our world to the world we cannot know about.”

                                            ~Leslie What

 

 

Many of us think about spirits 365 days a year, but there are those who began to think of them as soon as pumpkins start to appear in grocery stores and the cooler autumn breeze kicks the leaves changing color off the trees. Those same people want to hear scary ghost stories, and if those tales have a basis in fact, well, that’s all the better.

Humankind has been fascinated with the dead since the time of the cavemen, their shaman telling them tales around a blazing campfire built to keep the dark  and worse away. Some cultures honor their dead and welcome their ancestors to come visit them, bringing them foods and gifts. Just like Mexico does with their Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos). More than 500 years ago, when the Spanish Conquistadors landed in what is now Mexico, they encountered natives practicing a ritual that seemed to mock death. It was a ritual that the indigenous people had been practicing for at least 3,000 years. A ritual the Spaniards tried with no success to eradicate. 

 

 

The Aztecs and other Meso-American civilizations kept skulls as trophies and displayed them during the ritual. The skulls were used to symbolize death and rebirth. The skulls were used to honor the dead, whom the Aztecs and other Meso-American civilizations believed came back to visit during the month long ritual. The Spaniards thought death of as the end, while the natives embraced it, as to them it was only the beginning. Not separating death from pain and wealth from poverty, unlike in Western cultures.

 

Not able to kill this barbaric ritual, the Spanish merged it with “All Saint’s Day” and “All Soul’s Day,” the first two days of November. When the natives celebrated it for a month, always falling on the ninth month of the Aztec Solar Calendar, approximately the beginning of August. Festivities were presided over by the goddess Mictecacihuatl, known as "Lady of the Dead.”

 

 

Nowadays, people don wooden skull masks called calacas and dance in honor of their deceased relatives. They placed wooden skulls on altars dedicated to the dead. Sugar skulls, made with the names of the dead person on the forehead, are eaten by a relative or friend. Families would also visit the cemetery where their loved ones are buried. They decorate gravesites with marigold flowers and candles. They bring toys for dead children and bottles of tequila to adults. They sit on picnic blankets next to gravesites and eat the favorite food of their loved ones. Strangely enough, in Richmond, Virginia, families would come to town and visit their buried dead at Hollywood Cemetery, picnicking by the graves. Today, in the contract, it is stated that when you purchased a gravesite there, no picnics are allowed there!

 

Honestly, the dead may haunt the graveyards, but they don’t stop there, but paranormal activity has been cited in homes, schools, hospitals, prisons, amusement parks, so many places. And they don’t wait for Halloween or Day of the Dead or All Soul’s Day, but any day of the year works for those who passed away.

 

After all, the dead don’t stay dead anywhere you look!

Supernatural Friday: Día De Los Muertos, or the Day the Dead Come Home

Día de los Muertos is “Day of the Dead” in Mexico, coming right on the heels of Halloween. Festivities are abundant in death. The typical Halloween festivities have death as something to be feared. But in the Día de Muertos, death — or at least the memories of those who have died — is something to be celebrated. It is one of the biggest holidays in Mexico.

During the time of the Aztecs, a month long summer celebration was overseen by the goddess Mictecacihuatl, ‘the Lady of the Dead.’ When Spain conquered the Aztecs, Catholicism became the dominant religion and the customs became intertwined with the Christian commemoration of All Saints' Day on Nov. 1. Sounds not unlike what had been done with Samhain.

Specifics of the celebration vary with each region, but one of the most common customs is the making of elaborate altars to welcome departed spirits come back home during this time. Vigils are held. Families often go to cemeteries to fix up the graves of their departed relatives. Festivities also include traditional foods such as  sugar skulls and pan de muerto (bread of the dead), usually concealing a miniature skeleton.

Before the day happens, an area of the house is cleaned up and the furniture removed to make room for the altar. The altar consists at a minimum of a covered table, and usually a few crates or boxes are added to it and covered to create open shelves and other raised display areas. The coverings used can vary from plain to vibrantly colored oil cloth. The altar is then set up with the appropriate ofrendas (offerings). The offerings placed on the altar usually consist of a wash bowl, basin, razors, soap, plus other items the traveling spirit can use to clean-up after the journey. Pictures of the deceased are also placed on the altar as well as personal belongings for each person and any other offerings the deceased may enjoy such as a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of tequila. Candles are used to help light the way for the spirits along with other decorative items such as papel picado (tissue paper cut-outs) wreaths, crosses, and flowers. Certain Dia de los Muertos dishes are also placed on the altar to help feed and nourish them too. Some of these offerings can consist of the four main elements of nature — earth, wind, water, and fire. These are represented by movable or light-weight items such as tissue paper cut-outs (wind,) a bowl of water, candles (fire) and food (crops, earth.)

To have your own Day of the Dead, here is a recipe to make your own the Pan de Muerto.

1/2 cup butter

1 1/4 cup water

6 cups flour

2 packets dry yeast

1 teaspoon salt

3 teaspoons whole anise seed

2 tablespoons orange zest

3/4 cup sugar

4 large eggs

Glaze (see below)

Bring all ingredients to room temperature (except for the water which should be very warm) before beginning.

In a large bowl, mix together butter, sugar, anise, salt and 1/2 cup of the flour. In a seperate bowl combine the eggs and the water. Add the egg/water mixture to the first mixture and add in another 1/2 cup of the flour. Add in the yeast and another 1/2 cup of flour. Continue to add the flour 1 cup at a time until a dough forms.

Knead on a floured surface for about 1 minute. Cover with a slightly damp dishcloth and let rise in a warm area for 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Bring out dough and punch it down. Remove about 1/4 of it and use it to make bone shapes to drape across the loaf (see below.) Or divide the dough into smaller pieces to create other bone shapes. Let the shaped dough rise for 1 more hour.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes for smaller loaves and up to 45 minutes for larger loaves.

GLAZES (After glaze is applied you may decorate with additional colored sugar.)

Bring to a boil- 3/4 cup sugar and 1/2 cup fresh orange juice. Brush on bread and then sift some additional sugar over the top.

Mix 3 tablespoons orange juice concentrate and 1/3 cup sugar with 2 egg whites. Brush on bread during the last 10 minutes of cooking.

Bring to a boil- 1/4 cup piloncillo, 1/4 cup sugar, 2/3 cup cranberry juice and 2 tablespoons orange zest. Brush on bread after bread has cooled.

BONES: The most common bone decorations are very simple. Sometimes it's just a matter of forming ball shapes and pressing them into the loaf in a line. You could also take a piece of dough, roll it into a long cylinder and place a ball at each end. You can get much more detailed if you like, but even a slighly "knobby" looking loaf will get the idea across.

Supernatural Friday: Having Dead Family Members Over for a Dumb Supper

A séance is a good way to communicate with those who have crossed into the spirit world. It’s also perfectly fine to talk to them at other times. You may find yourself walking into a room and suddenly reminded of someone you've lost, or catching a whiff of a familiar scent.

But this being Halloween (or Samhain if you prefer), why now have a dumb supper? Wait, you ask, a supper for those who can’t speak, or are stupid people? No, the word "dumb" refers to being silent. It is all about a way of honoring family dead and ancestors. The origins of this tradition have been fairly well debated -- some claim it goes back to ancient cultures, others believe it's a relatively new idea. Regardless, it's one that's observed by many people around the world.

Pagans do it. Even in Mexico, they have been doing this on Day of the Dead for a long time—bring food to the graves of their dead, or inviting them to their homes. Though they don’t have to be silent about their Day of the Dead.

In many cultures, ancestor worship is an ancient practice. It is usually found more in African and Asian societies, yet more and more Pagans of European heritage are beginning to embrace the idea. They would build an altar to honor their ancestors, with photos, heirlooms, and even a family tree sheet. It can be left up all year long, or only out at Samhain.

Why hold a Dumb Supper on Halloween night? It may be even a unique idea for a Halloween party with a few friends (the living, not your dead guests). This is the night when the veil between our world and the spirit world would be the thinnest. We know for sure the dead will hear us speak, and maybe even speak back. It's a time of death and resurrection, of new beginnings and fond farewells.

First of all, make your dining area sacred, either by casting a circle, smudging, other method. Turn off phones and televisions, eliminating outside distractions. This is a solemn and silent occasion, not a carnival—a time of silence. You may wish to leave younger children out of this ceremony. Ask each adult guest to bring a note to the dinner. The note's contents will be kept private, and should contain what they wish to say to their deceased friends or relatives.
Set a place at the table for each guest, and reserve the head of the table for the place of the Spirits. Although it's nice to have a place setting for each individual you wish to honor, sometimes it's just not feasible. Instead, use a tealight candle at the Spirit setting to represent each of the deceased. Shroud the Spirit chair in black or white cloth.

No one may speak from the time they enter the dining room. As each guest enters the room, they should take a moment to stop at the Spirit chair and offer a silent prayer to the dead. Once everyone is seated, join hands and take a moment to silently bless the meal. The host or hostess, who should be seated directly across from the Spirit chair, serves the meal to guests in order of age, from the oldest to youngest. No one should eat until all guests -- including Spirit -- are served.

Menu choices are up to you, but because it's Samhain, you may wish to make the traditional Soul Cakes. Other food to serve: apples, late fall vegetables, and game. Set the table with a black cloth, black plates and cutlery, black napkins. Candles should be your only source of light. Black ones if you can get them. Realistically, not everyone has black dishware sitting around. So it's perfectly acceptable to use a combination of black and white, although black should be the predominant color.

Duties of hosting a Dumb Supper, is to make sure that no one speaks. That makes a host's job very tricky. It means you have the responsibility of anticipating each guest's needs without them asking you in verbal terms. Depending on the size of your table, make sure each end has its own salt, pepper, butter, etc. Keep an eye on your guests to see if anyone needs a drink refill, an extra fork to replace the one they just dropped, or more napkins. 

When everyone has finished eating, each guest should get out the note to the dead that they brought. Go to the head of the table where Spirit sits, and find the candle for your deceased loved one. Focus on the note, and then burn it in the candle's flame (you may wish to have a plate or small cauldron on hand to catch burning bits of paper) and then return to their seat. When everyone has had their turn, join hands once again and offer a silent prayer to the dead. Everyone leaves the room in silence, but before they walk out the door, they should stop at the Spirit chair, and say goodbye one more time. This includes you too.

Like ghost stories or watch TV shows with paranormal investigations? Check out my latest ghost book, Haunted Richmond II. It’s available at Schiffer, Amazon, BarnesandNoble, Books A Million and your local indie bookstore (if not in, they can order it, or order through their online website).

Return once more to haunted Richmond, where no building is safe from supernatural happenings. Visit Stories Comics, which holds more than just comics within its walls. Step back in time at Henricus Historical Park where you'll be welcomed by dead colonists, Civil War soldiers, and other haunts. Discover that not only is the Richmond Vampire out for your blood, but the Werewolf of Henrico waits for you beneath the full moon. It seems that the War Between the States is still being fought between ghostly Confederate and Union soldiers at Cold Harbor, Sailor's Creek, Parker's Battery, and Petersburg Battlefield. All this… plus a sea serpent, a lost city, ghostly cats, Bigfoot, a UFO, and haunted churches, parks, and colleges. So be sure to plan your visit now to a very paranormal Richmond. The dead don't stay dead in this town!

For fiction stories, my collection of short dark fantasy tales, Spectre Nightmares and Visitations is at Amazon or Genreconnections.com in print or eBook.

Many things scare us. But the most fearful things are those that infect our nightmares and visitations. Monsters from the closet or from another planet. Ghosts that haunt more than houses. Werewolves are not the only shapeshifters to beware of. Children can be taken from more than the human kind of monsters. Even normal things can be the start of a heart-pounding terror. Prepare to step beyond the pages into Spectre Nightmares and Visitations. Just tell yourself that they're only stories.

Everything Dark Poem

(Do not take this poem and post elsewhere as it is copyrighted to the blog's author, but do share the link)

Everything Dark

      by

Pamela K. Kinney

Night wind

Blowing,

Mist

ghosting the land.

Trees cloth in

gypsy colors,

At dark,

shift to shadows.

October witchery

Haunting,

Other-worldly.

The dead walk,

Undead rise,

Specter nightmares.

Monsters costume

as us;

We,

costume as fiends.

Trick,

Or treat?

Who cares?

October dressed

In autumn finery,

With magic,

Switches to

cemetery shroud.

The 31^st is now

A knock at

the door.

Don’t answer!

Past candy time,

Everything dark

Now; it’s scary time!

Supernatural Friday: Ghosts Are Here Now!

 

Summer is almost at an end as Labor Day weekend is upon us. Fall is not far away. Many of us think about spirits 365 days a year, but there are those who began to think of them as pumpkins start to appear in grocery stores and the cooler autumn breeze plays with the leaves changing color on the trees. They want to hear scary ghost stories, and if those tales have a basis in fact, well, that’s all the better.

Humankind has been fascinated since the time of the cavemen, their shaman telling them tales around a blazing campfire built to keep the dark and things away. Some cultures honor their dead and welcome their ancestors to come visit them, bringing them foods and gifts, like Mexico does with their Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos). More than 500 years ago, when the Spanish Conquistadors landed in what is now Mexico, they encountered natives practicing a ritual that seemed to mock death. It was a ritual the indigenous people had been practicing at least 3,000 years. A ritual the Spaniards would try unsuccessfully to eradicate. The Aztecs and other Meso-American civilizations kept skulls as trophies and displayed them during the ritual. The skulls were used to symbolize death and rebirth. The skulls were used to honor the dead, whom the Aztecs and other Meso-American civilizations believed came back to visit during the month long ritual. The Spaniards thought death of as the end, while the natives embraced it, as to them it was only the beginning. Not separating death from pain and wealth from poverty, unlike in Western cultures.

Not able to kill this barbaric ritual, the Spanish merged it with “All Saint’s Day” and “All Soul’s Day,” the first two days of November. When the natives celebrated it for a month, always falling on the ninth month of the Aztec Solar Calendar, approximately the beginning of August. Festivities were presided over by the goddess Mictecacihuatl, known as "Lady of the Dead.”

You can learn more about the Aztec calendar and see what it looks like at http://www.azteccalendar.com/azteccalendar.html
 

 

Nowadays, people don wooden skull masks called calacas and dance in honor of their deceased relatives. They placed wooden skulls on altars dedicated to the dead. Sugar skulls, made with the names of the dead person on the forehead, are eaten by a relative or friend. Families would also visit the cemetery where their loved ones are buried. They decorate gravesites with marigold flowers and candles. They bring toys for dead children and bottles of tequila to adults. They sit on picnic blankets next to gravesites and eat the favorite food of their loved ones. Strangely enough, in Richmond, Virginia, families would come to town and visit their buried dead at Hollywood Cemetery, picnicking by the graves. Today, in the contract, it is stated that when you purchased a gravesite there, no picnics are allowed there!

Honestly, the dead may haunt the graveyards, but they don’t stop there, but paranormal activity has been cited in homes, schools, hospitals, prisons, amusement parks, so many places. And they don’t wait for Halloween or Day of the Dead or All Soul’s Day, but any day of the year works for those who passed away.

After all, the dead don’t stay dead anywhere you look!

 

Haunted Richmond II Book Blurb:

Return once more to Richmond’s haunted places and check out its interesting and sometimes scary legends, too. There may be no building safe in this town, as you may find that even a comic shop like Stories holds more than comics within its wall. Step back in time at Henricus Historical Park as the dead colonists, Civil War soldiers and other haunts welcome you to take a tour. Discover that not only is there the Richmond Vampire out for your blood, but the Werewolf of Henrico waits for you beneath the full moon. It seems that the War Between the States is still being fought between ghostly Confederates and Union soldiers at Cold Harbor, Sailor’s Creek, Parker’s Battery, Petersburg Battlefield, and other Civil War sites in Richmond and its surrounding counties.

All this, plus a sea serpent, a lost city, ghostly cats, Bigfoot, haunted churches, parks, colleges and more, await your visit to a very paranormal Richmond and its surrounding counties.

The dead don’t stay dead in this town!

Whichello Chapter:

There are ghostly tales told about Whichello. Also known as the “Tall House,” at 9602 River Road. Legend tells of a skeleton of a former owner buried seven feet beneath a large fireplace in a parlor to the right just as you entered the house. The other story concerns a treasure supposedly hidden within the house or somewhere on the grounds. The treasure is a reason that the wainscoting on the fireplace is no longer there—treasure hunters.

It is thought that the land it is on belonged to the Randolphs of Tuckahoe. That one of the family members gave the land to his barber, a Frenchman named Druin, who I turn, gave it to his daughter, Catherine Woodward. It was she who had Whichello built in 1827, though it is also said it may have been built by the next owner, Richard Whichello.

It became a tavern, a stop on the way to Richmond or Charlottesville or Lynchburg for travelers. A few years later, Catherine’s daughter, Eliza Anne Woodward Winston, sold the place. Some say this was done in 1838 and yet, there is also a reference to a sale in 1845. Either way, an Englishman, Richard Whichello, bought it. Whichello gained wealth with the inn. Stories arose that he ran cock fighting there and gambling, neither supposedly honestly.

In 1850, there was a man from out west who drove cattle to Richmond to sell and afterwards, stopped on way back at the tavern. After having dinner, Whichello invited him to the ‘country store.’ This was a crossroads barroom, only a few steps from the inn. Both indulged in a game of poker. In the end, Whichello had winnings from what the drover earned for the sale and the other man was broke.

The tale doesn’t end here. Seems the next morning Whichello was found in his bedroom—dead—his head beaten in by an axe.  The money he’d won was missing. As for the drover, the man was gone. Of course, the drover was never found.

Friends of the deceased didn’t know where to bury the body. They worried if they planted him in the cemetery, his slaves out of anger from the mistreatment done to them, might dig him up and do unmentionable things to the remains. That’s where the body beneath the fireplace came into play. In secret, after digging a hole in the east chimney, they put him in there and walled it up. After that, stories arose that the murdered man’s phantom was seen, apparently guarding his treasure that the murderer never got.

Many tried to find this buried cache, including one old African-American called Uncle John in the 1930s. From what I heard, it sounded like he either used a drowsing rod or a metal detector. John never found a single coin. Uncle John claimed he had come closed to the box, but that the spirit booty vanished, as he told to the owner of a tea room ran in the place in the 1930s, Mrs. Joseph Crenshaw.

Even if the wealth did not exist (I feel the drover take off with the money), there was the paranormal activity seen and heard over the years. There was a mysterious clicking noise, like a telegraph key might make and yet, nothing ever found to prove what it was. Customers to the tea room complained of a strong feeling in the building. Mrs. Joseph Crenshaw had requests for a meeting or even a séance in it. One Richmonder who came told her she saw a little girl that was handing over a flower to one of the other visitors. The visitor admitted the description fit her niece.  Another ghost seemed was an old African-American woman that sounded like Mrs. Crenshaw’s nanny she has as a child. The medium did say she saw a man in hunting clothes and apparently lived in Whichello.

At one point Mrs. Crenshaw approached the owners of the horse that could predict things, Lady Wonder. When Mrs. Crenshaw asked the horse where the treasure might be, the animals typed out ‘chimney.’ When asked exactly where, the horse answered, ‘east.’  Mrs. Crenshaw asked for a more definite location and the hose typed 'up ten feet'. The woman went home and attempted to see if she could find the treasure, but never did.

By spirit writing, Mrs. Crenshaw was told by Richard, that his wealth was buried outside, about hundred feet from the house. Beneath earth about five feet and under a small board fence, she had to look toward the east when she left the back steps and count until told to stop, stepping back three steps. Did she take this advice and find the cache? There is no word one way or the other. The owner of the property in the middle-1930s says they never had any activity, nor the owners later, the DeVilbisses.

Though there are those in the area who say that activity still happens there, even if the current owners say no. Those driving along River Road claim to see a man in riding clothes standing near the woods, on the lawn.  Though I went that way on January 27, 2011, I saw no on as I drove past.

Does he still search for his treasure himself, or is all gone, maybe by his murderer himself? I believe this is so and that is why he haunts the property, for not being able to stop what happened to him.

Next time you pass Whichello, glance aside and maybe you will see a spectral figure in hunting clothes entering the house.

 

If you want to read more from Haunted Richmond II, you can now purchased it anywhere, inluding at your local indie bookstore and Barnes and Noble. If it is not in, the bookstore can order it in for you. Or find it online at Schiffer Publishing, Amazon, Books A Million Online and at Indiebound.org.  And if you live in the Richmond, Virginia area, I will be doing a book release party for it at Book People in Richmond, Sunday, September 23rd, 3-5 p.m.

And the following Saturday, September 29th I will be speaking at the free paranormal conference event, Parscon at the Exchange, held at the Exchange Hotel Museum in Gordonsville, Virginia, plus have a table there to sell and sign copies of Haunted Richmond II and my other three ghost books 11 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.