Alice (&) the Uncanny

morbidhistory:

The caul is the inner fetal membrane of amnoitic fluid, which at birth sometimes still covers the body, or especially the head. In folklore, persons “born with the caul” are reputed to have special supernatural powers, either good or evil.

In Greek lore and among the Kashubs, a child born with a caul is immediately identified as a vampire, and precautionary measures must be taken. In Kashub tradition, the caul is dried and reduced to ashes. The ashes are fed to the child when he reaches age seven, as an antidote for vampirism.

In Romanian lore, the caul of a newborn must be broken immediately. If the infant swallows it, he is doomed to be an evil vampire, and will cast the evil eye all of his life and eat his relations after he dies. To avert this fate, the midwife should clean the baby and take it outdoors, calling out, “Hear, everyone, a wolf is born onto the earth. It is not a wolf that will eat people, but a wolf that will work and bring luck.” The ritual transmutes the evil power of the vampire into good, and makes the vampire child lucky.

Others born with the caul are believed to be blessed with good fortune, to have the power to see evil spirits, and to battle them and neutralize their evil spells. Their powers and roles are similar to the Dhampir and Sabbatarians.

The benandanti (“good walkers”), a pagan agrarian cult of northern Italy, were persons born with the caul who went out in their astral bodies on the “Ember Days” (the solstices and equinoxes) to battle witches and wizards. The benandanti shape-shifted into the forms of butterflies, mice, cats, and hares. If they triumphed over the witches, the crops would be abundant. If they lost, the crops would be poor. The benandanti often saved their cauls, dried them and wore them about their necks as amulets.

Elsewhere cauls were carefully preserved and kept as amulets. Midwives sold them as charms, especially to sailors who considered them protection against drowning at sea.

morbidhistory:

In Bulgarian lore, bottling vampires is an effective way to trap, contain, or destroy vampires. Montague Summers gives this description of the procedure in The Vampire: His Kith and Kin:

The sorcerer, armed with a picture of some saint, lies in ambush until he sees the Vampire pass, when he pursues him with Eikon [icon]: the poor Obour [vampire] takes refuge on a tree or on the roof of a house, but his persecutor follows him up with the talisman, driving him away from all shelter, in the direction of a bottle specially prepared, in which is placed some of the vampire’s favorite food. Having no other resource, he enters this prison, and is immediately fastened down with a cork, on the interior of which is a fragment of the Eikon. The bottle is then thrown into the fire, and the vampire disappears forever.

Photo: Nosferatu, from the 1921 film Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, who was a vampire character.

morbidhistory:

The Hexham Heads was a case of a supposed demonic, phantom werewolf that appeared in conjunction with the discovery of some strange stone skulls in England. The Hexham Heads case occurred in 1972 in Hexham, Northumberland.

In February 1972, 11 year old Colin Robson was weeding his family’s garden when he dug up a carved stone head. He and his brother dug some more and found a second stone head. Both were slightly larger than tennis balls and were very heavy. One appeared to be that of a man, and the slighter skull seemed feminine. The boys took the skulls into the house.

Strange poltergeist-like things began to happen, both in the Robson household and the Dodd house next door. The heads would be found turned around, seemingly of their own accord. Objects would be found broken. The bed of one of the Robson daughters was found covered with shreds of glass.

In the Dodd household, a “werewolf” was seen in the middle of the night in the bedroom of the parents. The half-man, half-beast ran down the stairs on its hind legs and went out the front door.

The heads were acquired by an expert on Celtic culture, Dr. Anne Ross, who lived in Southampton, and who knew nothing about the apparition or disturbances, Ross thought the heads to be common religious ritual objects about 1,800 years old. She already had several similar ones in her collection - but the new ones proved to be problematic.

One night Ross suffered troubled sleep and awoke feeling very cold and frightened. She looked toward her door and saw a black figure, half-man and half-beast, about six feet tall. Its upper part was wolf and the lower part human. The whole body was covered with black fur. Upon being seen, the figure disappeared, and Ross heard it running on padded feet down the stairs. She felt compelled to pursue it and saw it disappear toward the back of her home.

The figure was seen one afternoon by her teenage daughter. Arriving home from school to an empty house, the girl opened the front door and saw the werewolf on the stairs. It vaulted over the banister, landed in the hall, and took off for the back of the house. Like her mother, the girl felt oddly compelled to pursue it, despite her terror, and saw it disappear in the doorway of the music room where the hall ended.

The Ross family encountered the werewolf several more times. It was usually seen on the stairs, and it would always jump over the banister and run down the hall, disappearing. Sometimes the sound of its padded steps could be heard, though nothing was seen. Ross felt the house became permeated with a definite presence of evil, and visitors remarked on this as well.

A most unusual turn in the case occurred when a man stepped forward and claimed to be the maker of the heads. Desmond Craigie had lived in the house occupied by the Robsons. He said he had made the heads as toys for his two daughters in 1956, and they had been lost in the garden.

No explanation was ever found for the strange werewolf manifestations.