Every culture/region has stories and myths about the things existing there. What are the ones you find the most spooky and/or interesting?
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In Bengali folklore, we have this thing called Nishi. It’s a nocturnal spirit that wanders around, and calls people by name. She’ll knock on your door, and call you by name. If you answer, you’re placed under her control. And she’ll take you to some remote location, and kill you. It’s also said that if she calls you 3 times, and you hear all 3 calls, there’s no way you can resist answering her.
In my childhood, sometimes people would be found passed out in the forests, and it’d be attributed to the Nishi. I think that they were just drunk/high, and went along with it when the others said it was Nishi.
There’s a Hindi horror comedy movie named Stree on a similar folklore from another part of India. It’s pretty good, would recommend it.
Oh, half way through your reply I thought about stree. Great horror comedy but the twist at the end doesn’t make much sense to me.
Yeah. It seemed like a desperate attempt to stage a sequel.
Bro it’s 11:30PM and now someone is surely coming to call me by my name. I’m scared 😶🌫️
… Headphones
Would people knock on your door and say your name at night just to fuck with you?
You bet they did.
There’s way too many to list in South East Asia I’m not even sure where to start, and a lot of stories get passed down through trade but Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand each have their share of scary creatures. And to think some of them came about through stories parents tell their kids so they don’t stray and get caught up with wild animals…
I live in New Jersey. Most people know it for the sopranos or even just the turnpike, but in the south of the state there’s a huge pine forest called the pine barrens. The Lenape that originally lived in New Jersey spoke of a spirit in the forest known as M’Sing, a deer like creature with leathery wings.
After New Jersey was colonized, a legend came out of a family that lived in the barrens in the 18th century, the Leeds. Mother Leeds, upon finding out she was pregnant for a 13th time, cursed the child. It is said she gave birth during a terrible storm. When the child was delivered, it transformed into a creature, not unlike what the Lenape described. It quickly took off out of the chimney and disappeared in the forest. Since then, people spot the “Jersey Devil” throughout the state, but especially around the pine barrens. Personally, everything I hear the thing is harmless, but creepy.
I’m from new jersey too but the northern part(Sussex county). Most of the stuff I heard was more weird things than actual folklore.
For example there was the toilet in the woods. Off of rt 23 if you pull over at a specific spot in the middle of no where, walk about 1/2 a mile into the woods there was a toilet. No outhouse or Porta potty. Just a toilet out in the woods. Weird thing is it had to be connected to a water source and sewer because it worked, you could flush it and everything.
There was also the pyramids off Clinton road. Just square based pyramids made of brick in the woods, no idea why they are there or what there purpose is/was. There was also stories of kkk on Clinton road so if you saw a car with a headlight out and you flashed your lights to alert them they would chase you and run you off the road(pretty sure this was just stupid highschoolers being bored and assholes).
Reading Weird New Jersey growing up was a trip. Full of stories like yours
Yup, I used to love that magazine. There’s also the stuffed bears on the telephone poles. Again on rt 23 there is I think about a 5 mile long stretch with stuffed teddy bears on the top of all the telephone poles. Snow, thunderstorms whatever causes them to fall in a day or two they are put back.
Once a car ran into one of the poles, they had to replace the pole and 2days later there was a new teddy bear on top of the pole.
In Louisiana we have the rougarou that’ll come and get ya if you don’t act right.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rougarou
He’s similar to a werewolf, but French.
One thing I could think of from Filipino culture is the manananggal (rough translation: one who removes). It’s a sort of humanlike being, but with wings and a very long tongue. At night, its body from the waist up would fly away and leave its lower half behind, then it would hunt for food. It would go on top of pregnant womens’ rooftops and using its long tongue it would feed on the fetus. Once the manananggal gets back to its lower half, the fetus would be gone forever.
In order to get the fetus back, you can prevent the manananggal from returning to its lower half by putting something on the lower half, if you find it (not sure if it was salt or garlic or something else).
One interesting thing that I’m not sure is quite related, but if you have a miscarriage, people say that ‘nakunan ka’ (rough translation: you were taken from / x was taken from you). Could be left over from the idea that the manananggal takes fetuses?
That’s fucking terrifying!
I’m from New Mexico, which is steeped in Native American culture. One of the cultures is the Navajo culture, which features the terrifying Skin Walker.
i grew up in East Anglia, which is the hump on the east-by-south-east side of England, UK, British Isles, Europe, Earth, etc
not only did we have the super cool Hereward the Wake, and Boudic(e)a and the Iceni tribe
but also
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devils dyke — a seven mile ditch caused allegedly by the devil himself being turned from a wedding and stomping his tail, and you can summon him yourself by walking around the local church 7 times
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fairy cow — a magic cow who gave milk to all in times of famine stamped her hoof in the sandstone and the.imprint is still seen today
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devils hole - a place where such a horrific crime was committed that when it rains the ground never gets wet
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tom hickathrift - a 1700s legend of a giant-killing giant whose catchphrase was “a turd in your teeth for your news” and whose weapon of choice was a wagon wheel
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Here in Costa Rica we have plenty of those:
- El Cadejos (the chain-hound): a black dog wrapped in chains, said to appear in the night to scare drunkards straight, and allegedly a former drunkard itself.
- La Segua (or La Cegua): a woman that seduces men at night, then shows her true form as a human with the head of a horse, an event which is said to scare men to death.
- La Llorona (the crying lady): a woman who lost her child, by drowning in a river in several sources, and cries loudly for that during the night.
So, is La Segua’s body normal? its just a Horse head from the neck up? Im sure there are a lot of people who could work with that.
It is, but the big reveal usually happens in the middle of a passionate kiss. Hence the deadly shock. Though I’d like to see the Cegua foiled by a dedicated furry
Fresno has its very own cryptic with the Fresno Nightcrawler
The story of Tanis as told by Nick Silver and the basis of the Blair Witch Project. Both supernatural prescence or reality breach in the woods.
I didn’t realize it was based on the Blair witch project. I should pick that podcast back up. the first season was a lot of fun!
Sorry, I was putting both concepts together because they are similar. They are
unrelatedindependent stories.
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I need more information about your culture, if you’re willing. Are you in a western country? Are you actually in danger of being buried in salt? Is salt burial common in your country? In your religion? Is it a legal practice? I have so many questions, and if you’re open to answering them, you’d make me very happy. Lol. But if not, I understand.
Bet you 5 bucks it’s some stupid wicca thing in the usa.
I’ll take that bet but choose to modify instead of money, a fresh loaf of baked bread from scratch.
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Ding ding ding.
I was raised in it. I take a little offense at calling it stupid but only a little. It’s like, you know how you can call your sibling lame/stupid but if someone else does it then you get annoyed?
Yeah, I’m not Wiccan but I get bothered when people bag on it because we faced serious (bodily injury, houses set on fire, preached about on the streets/in school lunchroom etc.) legit persecution for it in our hometown and that shit is hard to shake. No, not in the south or Midwest.
But yeah she was spewing up some nonsense most likely. Although she claims she got the lore from the local native tribe and to be fair, she (and we) were tight with a lot of tribal members. Her good friend, who may have been the source of the “legend”, is currently an elder of the tribe.
Look, I’m not saying it’s true I’m just answering the prompt 🤣.
Which tribe?
It’s gross and racist to make stuff up about native americans to add to your woowoo wicca stories.Wicca was started as a sex cult by Gerald Gardener a 100 years ago, and it was based almost entierly off a book of complete pulled-from-her-arse bullshit about witch cults in western europe by Margaret Murray.
Do you know what happens when you put lemons in salt? The juices get sucked out and you get preserved lemons. Lemons contain 20% more water than humans but the result would be the same.
If you know wicca is stupid bullshit, stop sharing bad creepypasta about it.
Sorry to disappoint but things are a lot less mysterious than you may be thinking, lol. A comment below called it. United States, new-age/pagan and Gardnerian Wicca. I was raised in it but no longer believe.
Lol, no one is buried in salt for real. Salt is used for what they call “grounding”, and warding/protection, and cleansing (it’s versatile) which is what she was referring to.
I mean…I can’t say no one has ever gotten into a bathtub and filled it with salt but um…that’s not really what she was talking about. Or is it? Who knows.
I’d say Google it for more info but also I am absolutely afraid of what nonsense may come up and make the situation look more ridiculous than what actually was happening.
What she was saying was the equivalent of a superstitions person doing something to ward off the “evil eye” n whatnot. Think a long the lines of spitting on the ground after saying a bad thing, throwing salt over your shoulder, knock on wood, etc.
You were raised in it? I’d love to hear about that. I dabbled in Wicca years ago, as I have in most pagan traditions commonly found in the US. I like learning about religion, but I’ve never met anyone who was raised in it, only converts.
Well, hm, I say “raised” for simplicity. I converted at age 6 or 7 (initiated by me, not converted by another person or family member). Before then, I wasn’t raised with any specific beliefs and when I made a friend who was actually raised wiccan from birth I started hanging out with them and just kind of fell into their religion because it made sense to me. Even at that age I was into new-agey stuff on my own. Before converting, when I prayed (because TV told me to every night), I prayed to “all the gods and goddesses” because I (a kindergartner) didnt want anyone to feel left out. So I wasn’t very traditional in the first place and can you even say a 7 year old converted? It’s more like I discovered the concept of a belief system and Wicca was what I gravitated to, at the time.
Other family members dabbled in the belief but I was the only True Believer until, ironically, my official joining of the religion/coming of age/rite of passage ceremony (think first communion or bar/bat mitzvah but more low key and cheesier because it was made up by a bunch of hippies with no real ties “to the ancients”). I was preparing for the ceremony by doing some ritual self reflecting (meditation stuff) and began to leave my faith.
While I do have some ghosts of pagan beliefs left it’s more like superstitions than a religion or belief system.
Like if I’m in trouble, genuinely afraid lost-in-the-woods trouble, I immediately start praying this specific wiccan song. Because my earliest spirituality wasn’t crafted by the Abrahamic religions so my go-to operating system is pagan.
I can’t think of any real difference between someone who was born in it, converted as a child, or converted later in life except for the fact that I never had Catholic guilt or other Christian or other Abrahamic religious values instilled in me. I was exposed to them a lot because of Western culture (also, Bible camp = free daycare in the summer) but nothing really appealed to me or stuck, especially since I had major issues with the way the Abrahamic religions treated women even as a very young child.
Sounds a bit like the topiary scene in The Shining. (Book version)
This sounds like a more likely source 🤣.
she probably just made it all up
Or stole it from the weeping angels on Doctor Who
This was before the reboot. Were the angels part of the older series?
Or Macbeth.
I should actually read/watch that one of these days.
There is an abandoned spruce plantation right behind my house. The trees move, for real. Not their roots but the branches. One day you can walk right though easy, then the next the path is crossed with branches. This happens for real and I’ve not found a cause or explanation online. Maybe it’s moisture content changing in the branches.
Czarny Roman (Black Roman), a homeless guy from my town, who used to wander the streets in a dark suit and hat (in winter he switched to neon-coloured ski robes). The story goes he used to run a black-market currency exchange in the 80s and was terribly rich, but either a business partner fucked him over or he lost it all at a casino; he went nuts and ended up on the street. A different story says he ran a coffee shop with his ex-wife. Some claim he used to study at the University here or even the Fine Arts Academy. He had a family (they were interviewed at his funeral by the press) who reside in New York and probably only they know the real story. He was strongly against drugs, cigarettes and alcohol; aparently used to discourage kids from smoking. He wilfully gave up social housing and spent many years wandering about and talking to people about art, poetry, music, yoga and death. He claimed he was immortal and once left a note on a napkin which gave a glimpse of his early life. Apparently he was born in 1950 and his mother was murdered by his father. He claimed Warsaw will be hit a with a meteorite and claimed to know the dates of death of passerby’s. He never begged for help, even had his own food and was sometimes supported by people he talked to. I’ve never talked to him myself but he was on a “good morning” basis with lots of people here and seemed to be able to remember them well.
some article about him released soon after his demise, also in Polish
A bogus gasman, here to ransack yer hoose.
Two pints prick!
Oh, I’ve got one.
In Romania, on June 24th there’s the “Sânziene” day. Which are like fairies. Google sources say they’re good, love/fertility fairies but there’s folk stories that say you shouldn’t swim during that night because they might come and take you (by drowning you).
Irish folklore has lots. Banshees are pretty famous. It’s a ghostly wailing you hear at night. When you hear it someone dies.
One of the nicer stories is children cursed to be swans instead of people due to an evil stepmother. They end up outliving everyone and moving to the land of youth, as swans.
Fairies are evil.
Butterflies are a link to the other world.
Hell is cold, as a hot hell, like Christian hell, was considered to provide a small amount of comfort.
Dante’s Inferno includes both hot and cold sections of Hell, with the cold ones being deeper (and thus worse)
Oh, I didn’t know it was in Dante too. I’d always been led to believe it was in contrast to Christian versions of hell but he is kind of the definitive picture of a lot of Christian concepts of hell.
I’m pretty sure the bible never actually physically describes Hell in that way. The depiction of it that most people are familiar with is straight out of the Divine Comedy. I’m pretty sure the bible doesn’t describe devils with red horns and pitchforks either. And it definitely doesn’t describe angels as sexy humans with bird wings (more like Lovecraftian horrors)
I grew up Catholic and I was taught that Hell isn’t even really a place you can go, it’s more like the punishment of not going to heaven. Not sure if that’s canon though, I haven’t gone to church in like a decade.
There’s a reason that angels in the Bible are always screaming “BE NOT AFRAID!” when they show up somewhere. It’s because they know they look like Cthulhu’s nightmares.
If anyone is interested look up Eddie Lenihan he tells some excellent stories of Irish Folklore. One that got me was of an aul fella and his friend going home from the put and one stayed at the other for a night cap. After one the friend went to go but he said not to, the other people are playing hurling ( a ball game) and not to disturb them. So they had another and the friend said the same but the man insisted.
The man left the house and jumped the gate across the road and landed into the middle of the field, no wall or gate. He could hear cheering and running etc but couldn’t see the gate he came over. He walked and walked but recognised that he must have ten times the width of the field. He turned around and walked the way he came, he quickly came to the gate and jumped back over. He went to his friends door, his friend opened with a drink in hand. “They won’t be long now but you won’t get home until after they’ve finished”
