According to oral tradition in southern France, a matagot is a cat who can bring evil or riches to its owner. If you stumble across a matagot, offer it a chicken to lure it to your home. Carry it home without ever looking back. Then give the cat the first bite of every meal and keep it well-fed and happy. In return, the cat will bring you riches. Failure to meet these requirements will have the opposite effect and if you should […]
Magic
296 posts
Sometime in the Middle Ages, we have a lazy lout of boy named John Lambton, treasured son and heir to the Lambton Estate in County Durham, England. One fine Sunday, our John chooses to skip church and go fishing instead. Needless to say, this decision leads to turmoil and death. While fishing, he catches a squiggly, small white worm. He doesn’t like the looks of it, tosses it in a handy well on the way home, and forgets all about […]
A two-fer day––female and male water sprites. Though each one can appear in either gender, generally, Korrigans are female and Kelpies are male. Korrigans originated in Breton and are beautiful women with long hair, red flashing eyes, and a penchant for killing their lovers. They may be druidesses killed by Christians because they bear a particular hatred for priests and churches. Their main function is to lure men to their deaths. They can predict the future, change shape, and occasionally […]
Purported to be the thirteenth child of witchy Mother Leeds, the Jersey Devil emerged as a bouncing kangaroo-shaped, bat-winged baby in 1735 in the in the Leeds Point section of what is now Atlantic County in New Jersey. Before flying up the chimney, the critter killed the midwife. Then it flew circles around the town and finally disappeared into the forest. That’s one version of the legend. Sightings have been reported since then with a lull after a clergyman […]
It’s Monday and what better way to start the workweek than to remind you how much worse things could be. If you lived in Mexico in the fifteenth century, you had about a 1 in 5 chance of winding up as a human sacrifice. Your horrible job may be killing you, but at least it will do it slowly over twenty or thirty years. So you’ve got that going for you. The Aztecs were a fun loving group who enjoyed […]
Hanoko san is a Japanese toilet ghost—one of many such specters, it seems, who haunt bathrooms all around the world. Back in the day, the only creatures lurking in the school bathroom were people skipping class or smoking or both. We were a rowdy lot, but not supernatural in any way. If your elementary school has a girl’s room on the third floor, go to the third stall, and knock three times. If you ask, “are you there, Hanoko san?” […]