Category: Horror Mystery and Lore

Local lore and legends explored

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Beware the Boo Hags of South Carolina

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Featured Horror Mystery and Lore

Have you ever woken up in the morning completely exhausted even though you thought you got a full night’s sleep? You’re bleary-eyed and achy all over, but you’re not sure why. Perhaps you remember vivid dreams and a sense of restlessness that you couldn’t escape. Or worse yet, have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and been unable to move? Sleep paralysis affects a number of people, but what if the cause is something more sinister? Let me introduce the Boo Hag.

In the southern part of South Carolina, specifically the Lowcountry and Sea Island regions, there lives a group of people known as the Gullah. This community of Africans are descendants of the West African slave trade, brought to the area in the 1700s. Over the centuries they’ve formed their own unique culture that still thrives to this day. There are many iconic ghost stories and legends that come from the Lowcountry, but one of the most famous is the Gullah “Boo Hag”. 

Characteristics of the Boo Hag

In Gullah culture, a person has both a soul and spirit. When one dies their soul departs and their spirit remains. If they were good in life, then their spirit resides to guide and protect the friends and families they’ve left behind. But if they were wicked in life, then their spirit morphs into a terrifying entity known as a Boo Hag. Boo Hags are skinless, red-muscled creatures with blue veins and large reflective eyes. In some legends they have long gray hair as well.

Boo Hag sleep paralysis bed

These dark spirits are believed to creep into houses at night, slithering through exterior cracks and holes, and sit on the chests of their sleeping victims, sucking their breath out of their bodies. Sometimes they return to the same body to drain its energy over and over again. If you wake up in the morning feeling tired and short of breath, it may be because you were visited by a Boo Hag in the night. If you’re unfortunate enough to wake while the Hag is still “riding” you, then it may steal your skin to wear as its own (though some stories say it will rip off your skin and wear it like a coat just because). 

How to Avoid the Hag

There are some signs that a Boo Hag is near, including the smell of something rotting and air that suddenly becomes very humid. If you’re wanting to avoid a run in with the Boo Hag, there are a few things you can do. Taking a note from popular voodoo culture these rituals might help. One option is to paint your door and window frames in indigo blue (or “Haint Blue”), a color that the Gullah people believe has supernatural protective properties. Another option is to leave a broom, hairbrush, or even a colander near your bed as it is believed the Boo Hag is obsessive and will get distracted trying to count the individual bristles/holes. If it’s distracted long enough then daylight will come and it will have to depart or risk being burned alive by the sun. 

Window painted in indigo blue or Haint Blue
Window painted in “Haint Blue”

The Boo Hag has some similarities to other paranormal folklore, including various other hag myths, boogeyman legends, and sleep paralysis demons. They also have been compared to vampires, sucking breath rather than blood. Of course science will direct readers to hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations to explain such phenomena, but there’s always the possibility that it’s something the rational mind can’t comprehend. So if you’re visiting the Lowcountry, it’s best to play it safe; get out your brooms and don’t let de hag ride ya!

Sources

https://charlestonterrors.com/boo-hags-haint-blue-vampires-of-the-lowcountry-the-paint-that-stops-them/

https://scaresandhauntsofcharleston.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/the-boo-hags-of-gullah-culture/

https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/south-carolina/gullah-culture-boo-hags-sc/

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Beyond Frankenstein—Mary Shelley’s Literary Successes

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Featured Horror Books Horror Mystery and Lore Women in Horror

The tragedy of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is that, despite having one of the most famous horror stories of all time, her other work is virtually unknown. Her other two novels, aside from Frankenstein, were actually strange and unique in their own way—keep reading to learn more about the roads Mary Shelley paved for the literary community.

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818)

Shelley’s first and most notorious novel was started when she was still a teenager, in 1816, at age 18. Female writers around the world, myself included, are grateful for her contribution to literature, even though she published initial additions anonymously when she was twenty in London in 1818. Her name didn’t actually appear on the publication until the second edition was published in Paris in 1821.

Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

What is incredible about this book is not just that it was written by a teenager, or that it was written by a woman, but that it was written by a woman from the perspective of a young male scientist. This story arose from her travels through Europe in 1815 while she traveled along the Rhine in Germany. Eleven miles away from what is considered Frankenstein Castle, where two centuries before her visit a mad alchemist conducted various experiments. She continued her travels across Geneva, Switzerland—which was also used as a setting for much of the novel. Shelley and her traveling companions had incredibly controversial conversations that ranged from the occult to galvanism—this of course was around the time that Luigi Galvani was conducting his experiments with his frog galvanoscope.

The legend of how Shelley came up with her idea of this particular novel tells us that Shelley and her traveling companions, most all of them writers, decided to have a contest amongst themselves. They wanted to challenge each other and see, who among them could create the most engaging, terrifying, and outrageous horror story. Initially stumped by the prompt, Shelly thought upon the topic for days until she finally had a dream that would inspire her to write the story of a scientist who created life, only to be horrified by his own creation.

The story of Victor Frankenstein was rather controversial due to the idea of Galvani’s technology and what his experiments meant for the scientific community at the time. So, Shelley portrays Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist as a man pursuing knowledge that lies in the unorthodox, blasphemous fields of secrets yet-to-be-told. Life and death are uncertainties in this story, when Victor creates a sapient creature, one constructed from the pilfered parts of those who have died.

Galvani’s experiments gave the scientific community a lot of ideas about reanimation after death and also launched experimental medical treatments using electricity to cure diseases that were incurable at the time. If you’re interested in learning a bit more about the process that Luigi Galvani used to achieve this ground-breaking discovery about electrical impulses and the nerve system, there are a few YouTubers who decided to replicate the experiment. Enjoy!

The Last Man (1826)

Shelley’s novel The Last Man is an unusual topic for the time during which it arose; originally published in 1826, this book envisions a future Earth—set in the late twenty-first century—that is ravaged by plague and unknown pandemic. It harbors the eery scene of a planet in the throes of apocalypse, where society has degraded to a dystopian nightmare, amidst the ravages of an unchecked and unknowable plague that blankets the globe.

The Last Man

In order to write this particular novel, Shelley spent time sitting in meetings of the House of Commons in order to have a deeper understanding of the inner workings of a Romantic Era political system. As such, she created another first in literature—dystopian apocalyptic visions of the future within the writing community. Due to the insanely new concept of a dystopic world, her novel was suppressed by the literary community at large, as it was a wholly nightmarish idea at the time. It was almost considered prophecy and it wasn’t until the 1960s that the novel resurfaced to the public where it was clearly understood to be a work of fiction.

Mathilda (1959)

Mathilda is one of those books that, if it had been published during Shelley’s lifetime, it might have created another scandal for Mary Shelley—as such her second long work, despite having been written between August 1819 and February 1820, wasn’t published until 1959, well after Shelley’s death. While this isn’t a horror novel, it does provide some insight into the dark and depressed mind of Shelley following the death of two of her children. Their deaths in 1818 and 1819 respectively caused Mary Shelley to distance herself emotionally and sexually from her husband which was an incredible hardship on their marriage.

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The plot of this particular novel dealt with a common theme found in Romance Era novels—incest and suicide, this novel in particular was the narrative of a father’s incestuous love for his daughter. Now you may be thinking—that’s disgusting! And by today’s standards of familial relationships and romantic relationships, you would be correct.

Mathilda tells her story from her deathbed, having barely lived to her twenties, in order to tell the story of her darkest secrets that have led her to such a young demise. She confesses the truth of her isolated upbringing which leads to the ultimate begrudging truth of her emotional withdrawal and inevitable, secluded death. She never names her father, who confesses his incestuous love for her—his confession fuels his decision to commit suicide by drowning.

Index of Sources

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Borley Rectory – Most Haunted House in England

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Featured Haunted Places Horror Mystery and Lore

There are many, many demon houses in America – from the hauntings of Amityville to Georgia to Connecticut and every state in between. But there’s another Gothic-style home that came far before any of these famous hauntings – across the pond and described as “the most haunted house in England” by famed psychic researcher Harry Price. Yes, we’re talking about Borley Rectory. Built in 1862 and demolished in 1944, there were claims of paranormal activity within the house for many decades – from owners, paranormal experts, visitors and more for many decades after the house was destroyed. Sure, there were a few skeptics… but what haunting legend doesn’t have its haters? Read on to learn more about Borley Rectory and the horror it bestowed upon Britain many years ago.

The Reverend

Quite a few hauntings around demon houses involve religion, whether it’s regarding a nun spirit (wait for it) or the priest who is forced to come in and perform an exorcism on the property. The difference with Borley Rectory, however, is that it was made specifically for Reverend Henry Dawson Ellis Bull to live in after becoming rector of the parish. The manor was built after the previous rectory had burned to the ground just one year prior… and immediately became a source of gossip for the townspeople. Partly for the gothic exterior that stood out in a rural suburban town, and partly for the spirits that were seen wandering the grounds throughout the years.

Borely Rectory Image from 1800's

Reverend Henry Dawson Ellis Bull lived there with his fourteen children until his death in 1892, and those three decades were supposedly filled with all types of paranormal activity and unexplained events – a claim which would be supported by later owners. His daughters were the first ones who claimed to see the ghostly nun – which would become one of the most prominent spiritual figures within the home and an apparition seen by many people of Borley. Despite these claims of ghostly activity, the Bull family owned the house until 1927 when the Reverend’s eldest son died. That’s when Reverend Guy Eric Smith and his wife moved in and began to ask questions that the Bulls never had. 

Society for Psychical Research

Society for Psychical Research

When you find the skull of a young woman in one of the cupboards of your new house, like the Smiths did, it’s likely that you’d have a few questions. Especially since the paranormal activity at Borley Rectory reached a peak right after this discovery of human remains. The couple apparently saw a headless horseman pulling the carriage while they heard unexplained footsteps and servant bells ringing… which prompted them to contact The Daily Mirror and plead for contact with the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). That’s how the Smiths met Harry Price, the famed paranormal investigator who would later call Borley Rectory “the most haunted house in England.”

Price’s presence in the house only upset the spirits, and his report of terrifying experiences at Borley Rectory included objects being thrown and “spirit messages” in the mirror. As could be expected, this phenomena came to a halt shortly after Price left the house. While the investigator had many skeptics who doubted his claims of paranormal activity at the house, including Mrs. Smith herself, his experiences captured the attention of people far outside of Borley and contributed to the house’s infamy. It’s also worth noting that many other paranormal investigators over the years, including famed ghosthunters Ed and Lorraine Warren, supported the idea of frightening phenomena within Borley Rectory. 

The Smiths stayed in the house for only a couple years, being replaced by Reverend Lionel Algernon Foyster and his wife Marianne in 1929. This family reported far more frightening events than those before them – including being locked in rooms, threatening mirror messages, and being violently thrown from the bed. The Reverend compiled an entire report of paranormal phenomena that they experienced during their time at Borley Rectory, which caused Harry Prince to circle back around and become even more interested in the house. While he failed to exorcise the property on two occasions, he drew enormous attention to Borley Rectory and inspired many ghosthunters and mediums to attend and study the ghosts within the walls. How popular was this home in the city of Essex, exactly? Let this quote from The Daily Mirror tell you. 

Daily Mirror Borely Rectory 1929

“The rectory continues to receive the unwelcome attention of hundreds of curious people, and at night the headlights of their cars may be seen for miles around. One ‘enterprising’ firm even ran a motor coach to the Rectory, inviting the public ‘to come and see the Borley Ghost’, while cases of rowdyism were frequent.’”

The Spirits

After the Foysters left Borley Rectory in 1935, Price would move in and spend years experimenting with the paranormal phenomena in the house. He held seances, hired psychics, and recorded instances with meticulous detail to uncover the history of the house. The closest he got was one instance in 1938, in which medium Helen Glanville was reported as having made successful contact with a nun and an unidentified male spirit. The man even predicted that the Borley Rectory would be destroyed in a fire in March of that year. Spoiler alert: he was right. 

Despite the fire badly damaging the house and the entire demolition of the property in 1944, there has been continued interest in the ghostly activity within Borley Rectory. Both from Harry Prince and the many ghost hunters that came after him. What’s the deal with the nun, and why exactly did the Foysters experience more terror than any other family?

There are plenty of books, movies and mini-series that you can check out for answers, as you become immersed in the mystery of Borley Rectory. 

Books

Films

Borley Rectory horror film 2017

Borley Rectory horror film 2017 poster

The Haunting of the Borely Rectory 2019

The Haunting of the Borely Rectory 2019 horror movie poster

The Banishing Coming 2021

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California’s Haunted Lighthouses

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Featured Haunted Places Horror Mystery and Lore NA

Lighthouses are a common fixture in the world of horror, and there are many reasons why. Perhaps it’s the eerie crashing of the waves, or dim light that may or may not bring lost ships to safety. But there’s one aspect that definitely plays a part in the horror of lighthouses – the real-world fear of loneliness. Lighthouse keepers often choose to live in solitude, spending their days alone as they save ships from danger and witness horrific shipwrecks. It’s very common for lighthouse keepers to die alone in their chamber of solitude, and continuously haunt the area for years to come. This is the case with some of the most haunted lighthouses in California, which combine the common fears of the sea, lost spirits, and abandonment for a true horror story. Here are the top haunted lighthouses in California that you need to know….

Point Sur Haunted Lighthouse

Point Sur Haunted Lighthouse

Location: Monterey, CA

Nestled on the rocky coastline between Carmel and Big Sur, this lighthouse isn’t just one of the most haunted in California, but the entire country. That being said, you’d never know just by looking at it. It’s perched on a volcanic rock with a gorgeous view of the Pacific Ocean, on a beach that’s more serene than spooky. It’s when you get close enough that you realize it’s haunted by the souls of all those who perished in shipwrecks near the shore. And even the families who lived here in harmony, and simply wish to return as spirits and enjoy the breathtaking ocean views. Many ghosts have been sighted throughout the years, but one of the most famous is a tall man in dark blue, 19th century attire – and you’re guaranteed to hear about him when you take a guided tour of Point Sur State Historic Park.

Battery Point Haunted Lighthouse

Battery Point Haunted Lighthouse

Location: Crescent City

Believe it or not, you can actually apply to work as a keeper at Battery Point Lighthouse. You’ll work on a one-month rotation, help upkeep the museum, and keep the ghosts at bay! Okay, maybe not. But there has been some extreme paranormal activity inside this red-bricked building. People have heard footsteps on the tower stairs during storms, slippers have moved in the middle of the night with no explanation, and strange smells of cigars are a common occurrence at the Battery Point Lighthouse, even more than 100 years after it was built. Visit the museum and learn more about the haunted history of this lighthouse!

Point Piños Haunted Lighthouse

Point Piños Haunted Lighthouse

Location: Pacific Grove, CA

If you didn’t know any better, you’d think that the Point Piños Lighthouse was just a cute little house… not a haunted institution. Can’t it be both? It’s still in use today as a way to warn ships of upcoming rocks and dangers, and also has museums and exhibits on the grounds. Many apparitions have been seen throughout the years, but one of the most popular spirits is that of Emily Fish, the “socialite lighthouse keeper.” She served as a keeper from 1893 to 1914, and it was quite rare at the time for women to hold such a position. She did a great job upkeeping the grounds and keeping the lighthouse in top shape, and as it turns out… she does the same thing in death. Fish is frequently seen hanging out around the lighthouse and keeping things running!

Alcatraz Island Haunted Lighthouse

Alcatraz Island Haunted Lighthouse

Location: San Francisco, CA

There’s a very good chance that you’ve heard of Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay, and the prison that once housed some of the worst criminals in America. It’s hard not to be consumed by evil when you’re surrounded by murderers and thieves – many of whom were killed by other inmates or while trying to escape “The Rock.” Many of these bad vibes can also be felt in the lighthouse, which has been out of service for decades. Take a cruise to Alcatraz and discover why the island, and its lighthouse, are considered to be some of the most haunted places in California.

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Catman – An Urban Legend

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Featured Haunted Places Horror Mystery and Lore
newspaper clipping from Colonel Armwell Long's obituary

You may have heard about Catwoman, the iconic superhero known for her ultra-tight leather suits and wall-climbing abilities that look even better on the big screen. But there’s also another fictional feline that you should know about…a Delaware urban legend that’s far less sexy and far more scary. Like many other ghosts who haunt hallowed grounds, the Catman is said to hang around the Long Cemetery in Frankford, Delaware. But this graveyard is more than just a favorite spot; he has a special attachment to the property that is said to go back decades. 

The Long Cemetery

Located at the end of an old dirt road near Selbyville in Sussex County, Delaware, Long Cemetery dates back to the 1800’s.  Joe Long Cemetery, its full name, is also known as Colonel Armwell Long Cemetery. Long served in the War of 1812 and died in 1834 at the age of 80. He was the commandant of Sussex County, Delaware Militia and Waples Company during the War of 1812. He was executor of David Long’s will, and probably donated the land for the Col. Armwell Long Cemetery where it was turned into a public graveyard.

The Legend of Catman

Before he was one of the most famous ghostly figures and urban legends in Delaware, Catman was a caretaker on the cemetery grounds who took his job very seriously. He didn’t just look after graves and keep the place looking hauntingly beautiful – he also scared away teenagers who were causing trouble among the headstones. Any time a young adult would pull out the ouija board or try to get frisky among the dead, Catman was there to banish them…and it wasn’t exactly difficult to do with a face like his. While he wasn’t literally a human-cat hybrid like his name suggests, he had feline-like features that were very intimidating. His stare was as intense as any favorite feline, and people would generally run the other way at the sight of Catman.

Long Cemetery with gravestones near where catman was buried

When Catman died, it’s said that he was rewarded for his lifelong dedication to Long Cemetery with an above-ground tomb. This was sadly torn down in 1994 due to threats of vandalism, but those who saw the landmark prior to its destruction noted a few strange markings on the tomb. Like a set of cat scratches, perhaps? While his body may not be physically at the cemetery anymore, Catman still makes his presence very known throughout the grounds.

scary cat eyes

Not only have there been supposed sightings of his ghost throughout the years, mostly from teenagers and young adults, but there’s also a neat party trick for those who are brave enough. All you need to do is head over to the remains of the brick wall that sit at the back of the property, and knock three times. It’s said that doing this will cause the former caretaker to come mess with your car. Your vehicle will stall or fail to start, leaving you behind at the cemetery that Catman cherished so greatly. If this seems like a fairly harmless prank, that’s because it is…especially compared to other urban legends that involve bloody hatchets, cheating scandals, and escaped mental patients with a hook for a hand. But Catman’s goal is not to kill or hurt, only to scare away the mischief from Long Cemetery.

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