Every culture/region has stories and myths about the things existing there. What are the ones you find the most spooky and/or interesting?
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.
I’ll take that bet but choose to modify instead of money, a fresh loaf of baked bread from scratch.
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 🤣.
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.
she probably just made it all up
Or stole it from the weeping angels on Doctor Who
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.
Nisser, the Danish, or rather Scandinavian, small and cute gods of protection. As far as I know, the nisse can form when an old farmer dies and is buried on their farm. The nisse will then henceforth protect the farm and it’s inhabitants.
Now, while considered fun and cute in modern times, the gårdsnisser (contrary to the more feral and much more dangerous skovnisser/forest nisser) are very gullable with a strong sense of guilt, and they are hotheaded and intractable/stubborn to an unreasonable degree. They will protect you and give good luck if treated well, but will be intolerable if they feel inconvenienced or not properly cared for, to the point where they might directly or indirectly kill everyone on the farm out of spite.
Sometimes they cause atrocities because of misunderstandings, and when finding out that it was a misunderstanding on their part will cause harm to others to make up to their own farm, such as stealing cattle from neighboring farms to make up for the cows they killed earlier.
Now, the possibly worst thing you can do is to try and force a nisse to show itself to you. The small creatures accept indirect gifts, but don’t like direct contact and have a cursing bite, and will most definitely bite if cornered, such as by a nosy and persistent child. This curse makes one fall sick, loosing health and strenght until one perishes in a matter of months/years. As far as I’m aware, there is no cure for the curse, and regarding the nissers tendency to be fooled or act before thinking, well…
Having a nisse on your farm can be a great blessing, but one is also constantly in danger of having their whole family killed over a minor misunderstanding or mood swing. So it is heavily recommended not to acquire any farms where a nisse might reside.
We have the ättestupa in Sweden - the idea that we pushed the elderly off a cliff when they got old.
Since most of us can’t afford retirement this should make a comeback.
Or we push billionaires down a cliff and use that money to take care of the elderly.
Dalafíflaþáttr (‘the story of the fools from the valleys’) in which one particular family is so miserly that they prefer to kill themselves than see their wealth spent on hospitality. In this tale, the family members kill themselves by jumping off a cliff which the saga calls the Ættarstapi or Ætternisstapi (“dynasty precipice”), a word which occurs in no Old Norse texts other than this saga.
Funny how this archetype has existed forever across many cultures
Wasn’t that the only way to get to Valhalla except dying in a fight?
And IIRC you had to jump yourself (sure gramps jumped all by himself!!!).
Nah this was a deliberately comedic scene in Gautreks Saga where members of a family keep sacrificing themselves for absurd reasons. There is some possibility that something like this could have happened in some parts of Norse society but there’s no evidence it was a requirement for entry into Valhalla (Old Norse Valhǫll).
In fact, whereas the Prose Edda (a 13th-century narrative guide to understanding skaldic poetry) does claim that those who fall in battle end up in Valhǫll, and this is supported by evidence from pre-Christian poems such as Grímnismál, Norse mythological sources are actually littered with attestations of people dying in combat but not going to Valhǫll, as well as people dying outside of combat but still ending up in Valhǫll.
One example of this is the character Sinfjǫtli from Vǫlsunga Saga. Sinfjǫtli is poisoned by his mother-in-law at a party, and his father Sigmundr carries his dead body down to the shore where a ferryman offers to take it across the water. Once the body is on the boat, it turns out the ferryman is Odin and he disappears with the body which is elsewhere confirmed to have ended up in Valhǫll in the poem Eiríksmál.
Scholar Jens Peter Schjødt theorized in Pre-Christian Religions of the North that entry into Valhǫll is predicated on a person being dedicated to Odin, which is something a person could do for themselves ritualistically (there are references to marking oneself with a spear for Odin) or could also be done to you by an enemy who has set out to kill you and intends to “give” you to Odin as a way of showing his own dedication.
It also seems logical that Odin wants the best warriors fighting for him at Ragnarok and would take precedence over dying in battle or not.
Ah I’ve seen this in Midsommar, thought it was completely made up. Still a shit movie
Not especially. If we’re talking horror as in scary, then yea, but it has to be more than gratuitous jumpscares. If we’re talking psychological, graphic horror, which I feel is what Midsommar was trying to be, then not too much. I felt it really lacked a purpose and existed only to serve shocking visuals. I found the director’s previous film (The Witch, I think?) to be way more compelling.
It’s perfectly possible to be a fan of a genre, but not of a particular film in that genre. Stop trying to make it weird.
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.
Would people knock on your door and say your name at night just to fuck with you?
Bro it’s 11:30PM and now someone is surely coming to call me by my name. I’m scared 😶🌫️
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunyip
If you were worried about dingos and drop bears when coming to Australia then you don’t want to know about the bunyip.
It’ll fuck you up.
