Old Folklore, Superstitions And Beliefs

[Rising Dead Man]

What are some you know? Wasn't there one about ghouls that would sneak into cemeteries and feast on corpses? Share any old legends or superstitions here!

[Haunt Master]

Ghouls eat people? So I' wondering if you can BECOME a ghoul and corpses eaten is like the blood sucked in oblivion?

[Pumpkin_Man]

Well I did read this post the last time I was hear and I wanted to give it some thought before I responded to it.

There are all kinds of stories about the Chicago area which is where I grew up, and about my home town where I live now, but one of my favorite stories is totaly unique to Mt. Greenwood, the neighborhood where I was born and grew up.

Mt. Greenwood is located on the very outskirts of the City of Chicago, just barely within it's boundries. It's the home of the only working farm within the Chicago city limits. That was not allways so, however. Prior to 1920, Mt. Greenwood was the town of Mt. Greenwood.

Anyway as the story goes, bums and hoboes would hang out there back then because the Chicago police couldn't hassel them, and Mt. Greenwood being a small town didn't have police officers on every corner. These bums or hobos would often break into peopls garages, barns or sheds, seeking shelter from incliment weather. Buildings that look abandoned or not often used were the prefered targets. Sometimes kids would also play in these buildings, and the hobos would chase them away.

Over the years, a Mt. Greenwood folk tale sort of grew up around this situation, long after the hobos left Mt. Greenwood. Somehow, perhaps through the vivid imagining of a frightened child, bums evolved into wearwolf like creatures that seeked out old garages to make their homes. Many were the times some friend of mine or another kid would point to an old wooden garage and say "there might be a bum in that garage.' If you happened to be near one of these bum possessed garages after dark, and the bum came out, you would be kidnapped by this creature and made into his dinner.

One time my younger sister and two of her friends were playing in the neighbors garage, and there was a huge aly cat higing in the loft, but it's tail was showing. The girls caught sight of this cat's tail, thought it was a bum, and it scared the absolute <deleted> out of them. My dad and the neighbor wen tinto the garage and discovered it was just a big old black cat looking for a place to sleep. A bum perhaps, but certainly not a wearwolf.

Mike

[Rising Dead Man]

Ha ha! Good Story!

[Haunt Master]

Bravo, PM!!! That's a longest story I've ever read here!

I believe you've learned about this since you were a kid.

[Pumpkin_Man]

That's when I did learn about it, and I was terrified of the bums when I was 5 years old. Then my younger sister was really afraid of them as the "lor" spread even further. Mt. Greenwood was very much like a small town in many ways, so it had a lot of quirks about it that you did not find in your typical Chicago neighborhood.

It was also, believe it or not, a "red light district" before it was anexed by the City of Chicago. However, there was little or no sign of that past by the time I was born.

Mike

[Rising Dead Man]

So I read somewhere in a book that people used to believe it was werewolves that would go into graveyards on full moon nights and have a lovely feast.

[Pumpkin_Man]

This may have been something that was contrived by a tv show, but according to a legend that I heard, on certain nights fo the year, a mysterious blue flame will burn right over the spot where a vamire had burried his treasure. The nly problem is, it was also highly probabal that the vampire who owned that reasure was not far away from it.

Mike

[DemonSlayerMau]

Well...I know that the original original vampires weren't the pale, attractive and deceptive creatures portrayed in Hollywood. They weren't even killed by the sun. That's another hollywood thing.
People found dead bodies that were recently deceased and saw they had bloated bellies, because all the blood rushes to one area. But people thought the dead were getting up out of their graves and feasting on people's blood. They put the stake through their hearts so they wouldn't be able to come out of their graves again.
The original vampires were more of a darker color and more decomposed looking.

I also think the idea that werewolves change at the full moon was popularized by the movie industry. I think prior to the whole werewolves thing, I think back in the 1800s you were more likely to hear stories about werecats...but I'm not too sure about that. They did believe witches could turn into cats...but to me a werecat is like a werewolf. Something that looks like an anthromorphic animal. Sure, it's shapeshifting, but there's two different kinds if you ask me. A full transformation, and a partial transformation. I consider most werewolves to be a partial transformation as opposed to transforming completely into an animal.

[Pumpkin_Man]

Killing a wearwolf with a silver bullet was also purely a Hollywood invention. But I think the myth about vampires comming to life at night time is based in authentic lor.

Mike

[DemonSlayerMau]

It may be, but sunlight actually killing them is a Hollywood myth. I think putting the stake through the heart never actually kills them, it just prevents them from getting out of their graves.

[Pumpkin_Man]

That is quite correct. The "vampire hunters" of authentic vampire lor had an entire ritual they had to observe which included staking the vampire so he couldn't escape the grave, and decapitating the vampire to destroy him.

Mike