What's the scary folk lore from your culture?
What's the scary folk lore from your culture?
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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This is really interesting, I hope more people comment.
I kind of have one. I can't tell if it's an actual lore or just something my bipolar priestess told me because she wanted to have an answer when I asked her if evil existed outside of human nature.
She told me of the stick men.
She said they were malicious spirits that dwelled in the nearby forest. When you look upon them, they look like sapling trees, dead and leafless even in the height of summer, but still rooted to the ground. At least while you're looking. When your gaze is elsewhere they creep closer to you, surround you, until it is too late.
She discouraged me from wandering the deep wood and threatened to bury me to my neck in salt just for thinking about them, lest my interest summon them closer to town.
There's no record of these creatures as folk lore anywhere that I can find, and their description is vague and tropey enough she probably just made it all up.
Probably.
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.
I'd give you a loaf for free if you lived by me.
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.
she probably just made it all up
Or stole it from the weeping angels on Doctor Who
Or Macbeth.
I should actually read/watch that one of these days.
This was before the reboot. Were the angels part of the older series?
Sounds a bit like the topiary scene in The Shining. (Book version)
This sounds like a more likely source 🤣.
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.