As Halloween is approaching, we have decided to make it a topic of our discussion today. There is no shame to admit that we all love to dress like one of our scary monsters, but anyone here ever wondered where did they come from anyway? That’s an interesting question. Isn’t it? So we did some research and find out the secret stories behind this supernatural stuff and the origins of Halloween sinister creatures.
Origins of Halloween Sinister Creatures
Vampires
Long before the Twilight vampire Edward Cullen, Slavic folklore came up with the idea of the dead drinking the blood of the living to resolve contagious diseases. If someone in a village died and then someone else became sick, it was charged on the dead coming back to harm them. Horrible rites were then performed on the body to prevent them from preying on the living, desecrations that were later also done in Western Europe and even in America to stop deemed vampirism. But Irish novelist Bram Stoker and his famous 1897 novel Dracula inspired by this folklore and supposedly the cruel ancient ruler Vlad the Impaler, brought vampires into the mainstream. Innumerable Dracula movie conversions and new blood-sucking characters keep the creatures in our current midst. If horror is your thing, don’t forget to checkout top 10 horror movies based on true events.
Zombies
The outbreak of zombies, while a bit less bloody, is just as dreadful: Slaves in Haiti, drawing on African religion, promoted the concept as a metaphor for the harsh circumstances they lived under. This account was consolidated into the voodoo religion of the Caribbean, South America, and the southern United States, and even had some reasons. Voodoo practitioners called bokors were supposed to use a poisonous neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin that can cause a temporary death-like paralysis from which the subject will later awaken. Modern versions of the zombie, starting with the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead and proceeding with today’s The Walking Dead comic books and TV show, use the zombie myth to investigate new fears of the virus, nuclear war, a post-apocalyptic future, and even local monotony. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also gotten in on the fun with its “zombie preparedness” website.
Mummies
The ancient Egyptians mummified bodies and buried them with all the assets they would need for the afterlife in buried tombs in the desert. The concept of a mummy’s curse, in which tragedy would occur to anyone who opened a tomb, got fame as the Egyptology craze started in the nineteenth century after the Rosetta Stone’s discovery opened the ancient Egyptian language. One article from 1912 The Washington Post even condemned the sinking of the Titanic on a mummy’s curse. But it was the discovery of the undisturbed tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922 that gave the “curse of the pharaoh” life, particularly after expedition executive Lord Carnarvon died from blood poisoning a year after the tomb was opened.
Ghosts
From clear, obscure ghosts drifting through the air to invisible spirits throwing stuff around the room, our idea of ghosts is as discrete as it is old. It comes from the belief that people have souls separate from their bodies, and thus lives on after death, sometimes wandering around to haunt the living. Ghost sightings have been reported since Roman times, and according to the latest surveys, nearly half of Americans believe in ghosts with one in five people believing they’ve seen one. Despite many pictures of claimed ghosts and the prevalence of modern ghost-hunting shows and journeys, no one has yet to definitively prove their existence.
Demons
We believe in demons as creatures of the devil that can possess people, like in the 1973 film The Exorcist. Modern-day religions still support for demons’ existence, and priests may perform exorcisms to throw an evil spirit away. But, the idea of a dynamic between good and evil creatures, such as angels and demons goes back to ancient times, and demons are present in many different religions because they can influence people to do evil or stingy things.
Werewolves
The feeble, tortured werewolf, he doesn’t desire to transform into a beast because he understands the devastation he will wreak, yet he’s weak to stop it. These shapeshifters are as old as mythicism itself and figure in tales from many different cultures, from the ancient Greek tale of Lycaon, who was converted into a wolf by Zeus, to Nordic folklore. Wearing the skin of an animal to creep up while hunting may have also become a mean to frighten other tribes, creating werewolf myths among Native Americans. Also, the werewolf may have a scientific reason; rabies, for instance, could make people go on wolf-like violence.
