According to folklore, La Llorona, Spanish for "the crying woman", sometimes called the Woman in White or the Weeping Woman is the ghost of a woman crying for her dead children. Her appearances are sometimes held to presage death. There is much variation in tales of La Llorona, which are popular in Mexico, the United States (especially in Mexican-American communities), and to an extent the rest of the Americas. The tales vary mostly in the several motives they give to the mother and father for the murder. The version popular in Las Cruces, New Mexico says that "La Llorona" drowned her children in the Rio Grande when she could no longer support them. On nights with a full moon, says the story, La Llorona can be heard crying near the river.
In south Texas, however, the story of La Llorona is that of a beautiful girl who attracts the attentions of a wealthy man's son though she is herself very poor. The lovers secretly marry and set up a household; they have several children. Unfortunately, a day comes when the young man's father announces that he has arranged a marriage for his son to a young woman within their social class (in many tellings, La Llorona is a Native American maiden and her man leaves her for a Spanish lady). The young man tells his secret wife that he must leave her and that he will never see her again. She is driven mad by anger and a broken heart, and takes their children to a river where she drowns them to spite her husband. When her husband finds out he and several townspeople go to find her, but she kills herself before they can apprehend her. She goes to Heaven and faces the judgment of God. God asks her, "Where are your children?" to which she replies, "I do not know." God asks her three times and she replies with the same answer. God then damns her to walk the earth to search for her children. According to this tale, it is wise to avoid La Llorona, as she is known for drowning passers-by in an attempt to replace her dead children. Alternatively, right after she drowns her children, La Llorona realizes what she has done and, overwhelmed by grief and by guilt, she runs alongside the river trying to find her children, but never does, and she dies or disappears in her search for them.
Another popular version of the legend takes place sometime in 19th century. A beautiful young woman with two small children was living in the poorest section of Juarez, Mexico, the town across the border from El Paso. She was madly in love with a very rich man. He felt the same way about her, but he, having no interest in children, refused to marry her. So, late one night, the woman took her children to a bridge over the Rio Grande river. In the dead of the night, she heartlessly stabbed her children and threw in the river to drown. Still wearing her bloody nightgown, she went to her lover's home to show him the great lengths she had gone to be with him. The man, seeing her blood-streaked nightgown, was horrified and rejected her. Then, finally realizing the horrible mistake she had made, she ran back to the river screaming, crying, and tearing at her hair, desperately trying to save her children. But it was too late. The woman stabbed and drowned herself in the same river. The legend has it that as punishment for her unspeakable sins she was given the head of a horse, and was to wander the banks of the Rio Grande for all of eternity looking for her lost children.
In yet another Texas version of the story, La Llorona had several children from her first marriage. Her husband died and she was left lonely. Soon she met a suitor who swept her off her feet. He promised her a wonderful life together, but only if she agreed to get rid of her children. After much soul searching the woman decides to follow the man in a new life together and drowns her children in the Rio Grande river. After a few months the suitor grows tired of La Llorona and leaves her for another woman. Realizing that her selfish actions brought about the end of those who truly loved her, she dies in grief with her soul eternally looking for her long lost children.
In another variant, La Llorona is a naive but innocent woman forced into a shotgun wedding with the father of her child; in this case, it is La Llorona's father or her husband who kills the children. La Llorona attempts to stop the murders, and dies in the attempt.
+ hook man
A young couple is parked at the local Lovers' Lane. The place was dark and desolate so the guy parks the car, turns the lights off, and puts on the radio. There is some light music on the radio, and the two lovers begin making out. Suddenly, the music stops as an announcer cuts in. A dangerous murderer had just escaped from the state insane asylum, which just happened to be nearby. The one distinguishing and disturbing feature was a hook that the murderer had in place of one of his hands.
The girl becomes rather distraught and asks to go home. The guy, who was not quite ready to go home, locked the doors and told her that they would be fine. She became more and more incessant and continued pushing him away. He eventually gave in and punched the gas. They tore out of the parking lot and sped home. He didn't say a single word the entire way home. When he pulls up to her house, she gets out of the car. As she went to close the door, she began screaming uncontrollably. The guy jumped out of the car and ran around to the other side to see what was causing the commotion. There, hanging on the door handle was a bloody hook.
It is not explained why anyone, mad though they be, would use their hook hand rather than their functional hand to manipulate objects, or why a person would be allowed to keep a hook for a hand in an insane asylum.
A school of thought is presented with this story. There is a possibility that the murderer in question (The Hook) may be a sexually motivated killer. This is quite simply because it would be incredibly difficult to obtain self gratification (masturbation) with the lack of a functional hand. Also, it would be quite painful as well, which may explain the blood on the hook.
So, with no repression for his unspeakable biological urges he may find it necessary to mutilate others to find relief for his tragic celibacy.
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+ wendigo
In the mythology of the Algonquian-speaking tribes of Native Americans, the Wendigo is a malevolent supernatural creature. It is usually described as a giant with a heart of ice; sometimes it is thought to be entirely made of ice. Its body is skeletal and deformed, with missing lips and toes.
The first accounts of the Wendigo myth by explorers and missionaries date back to the 17th century. They describe it rather generically as a werewolf, devil, or cannibal.
The Wendigo was usually presumed to have once been human. Different origins of the Wendigo are described in variations of the myth. A hunter may become the Wendigo when encountering it in the forest at night, or when becoming possessed by its spirit in a dream. When the cannibalistic element of the myth is stressed, it is assumed that anyone who eats corpses in a famine becomes a Wendigo as a result. The only way to destroy a Wendigo is to melt its heart of ice. In recent times, it has been identified with Sasquatch or Bigfoot by cryptozoologists, but there is little evidence in the indigenous folklore for it being a similar creature.
Perhaps this myth was used as a deterrent and cautionary tale among northern tribes whose winters were long and bitter and whose hunting parties often were trapped in storms with no recourse but to consume members of their own party. It could be indicative of starvation that the Wendigo is said to consume moss and other unpalatable food when human flesh is unavailable. Its physical deformities are suggestive of starvation and frostbite, so the Wendigo may be a myth based on a personification of the hardships of winter and the taboo of cannibalism.Actual Wendigo murder trials took place in Canada around the beginning of the 20th century. The anthropologist Morton Teicher has described the alleged clinical condition of believing oneself to be a Wendigo, which he calls Windigo Psychosis..
In some stories a Wendigo will follow a lone wanderer for a long time. When the prey becomes suspicious and turns around the Wendigo always manages to get out of sight by hiding behind a tree. After a while the followed person starts to become hysterical and runs until he makes an error. The Wendigo then strikes. If someone actually survives a Wendigo attack they get the Wendigo-fever: after a night of nightmares and pain in their legs, Wendigo-fevered people strip themselves naked and run into the forest screaming.
Windigo Psychosis
Windigo Psychosis is the medical term given to those people presumed "windigo" (cannibalistic). The term applies to the Algonquin Ojibway, as well as Cree (Witigo). It is hard to pin down any real biological causes, as hunger seems to be the only one. Rather it is more likely that windigo psychosis was a cultural disease. The most commonly known cure for windigo psychosis is bear fat or bear grease.
+ bloody mary
In folklore and children's street culture, "Bloody Mary" is the name of a children's game in which a ghost or witch of the same name (or sometimes other names, such as Mary Worth) is said to appear in a mirror when summoned. One of the more common ways participants attempt to make her appear is to stand before a mirror in the dark and repeat her name three times, though there are many variations. Some include chanting a hundred times, chanting at midnight, spinning around, or rubbing one's eyes. Most of these are meant to disorient people. In some versions of the legend, the summoner must say "Bloody Mary, I killed your son!" (or "I killed your baby"). In these variants, Bloody Mary is often believed to be the spirit of a mother (often a widow) who murdered her children, or a woman who was murdered shortly before or after her wedding. In stories where Mary is supposed to have been wrongly accused of killing her children, the querent might say "I believe in Mary Worth." This is similar to another game involving the summoning of The Bell Witch in a mirror at midnight. Similar rituals are also used to summon spirits in the movies Beetlejuice and Candyman. The game is often a test of courage, as it is said that if Bloody Mary is summoned, she would murder the summoner, often in a quite violent way, such as gouging out his or her eyes. Other variations say that the querent must not look directly at her, but at her image in the mirror; she will then reveal the querent's future, particularly concerning marriage and children.Bloody Mary Worth is typically described as a child-murderess who lived in the locality where the legend has taken root about a century ago. There is often a specific local graveyard or tombstone that becomes attached to the legend.
The mirror ritual by which Bloody Mary is summoned may also relate to a form of divination involving mirrors and darkness that was once performed on Halloween. While as with any sort of folklore the details may vary, this particular tale encouraged young women to walk up a flight of stairs backwards, holding a candle and a hand mirror, in a darkened house. As they gazed into the mirror, they were supposed to be able to catch a view of their future husband's face. There was, however, a chance that they would see the skull-face of the Grim Reaper instead; this meant, of course, that they were destined to die before they married.
The appearance of a ghostly figure in the mirror could be explained quite easily for the more complex rituals, for example spinning around whilst summoning Bloody Mary in front of a mirror lit by candles. The combination of dizziness, rapid movement and flickering lighting could easily fool the eye into seeing someone, especially when the idea has already been implanted.
+ vanir
Vanir is the name of one of the two groups of gods in Norse mythology, the other and more well known being the Æsir. They are gods of fertility, the sea, and prosperity.
+ reaper
Death has been personified as a figure or fictional character in mythology and popular culture since the earliest days of storytelling. Because the reality of death has had a substantial influence on the human psyche and the development of civilization as a whole, the personification of Death as a living, sentient entity is a concept that has existed in many societies since the beginning of recorded history. In Western cultures, death is usually shown as a skeletal figure carrying a large scythe, and wearing a midnight black gown with a hood, while the color white is often associated with death in Asia.
+ tulpa
A tulpa is, in Tibetan mysticism, a being or object which is created through sheer willpower alone. In other words, it is a materialized thought that has taken physical form (a thought form).The concept was brought to the West in the 19th century by Alexandra David-Neel, who claimed to have created a tulpa in the image of a jolly, Friar Tuck-like monk which later developed a life of its own and had to be destroyed.Many authors and artists have since used tulpas in their works, both in the context of fiction and in writing about mysticism. Horror author Clive Barker, for example, envisioned his famous "Candy Man" killer to be nothing more than a myth gone terribly awry in his original story.
+ the shtriga
The Shtriga, in Albanian folklore, was a witch that would suck the spiritus vitae, the living force of a person, out of people at night while they slept, and would move on to another child either of the family or from a different family the next night. The only way to cure the victims was to kill the shtriga itself. She preferred to drink from young children or even infants. There are several methods traditionally considered effective for defending oneself from shtriga. A cross made of bone could be placed at the entrance of a church on Easter Sunday, rendering any shtriga inside unable to leave. They could then be captured and killed at the threshold as they vainly attempted to pass. After draining blood from a victim, the shtriga would generally go off into the woods and regurgitate it. If a silver coin were to be soaked in that blood and wrapped in cloth, it would become an amulet offering permanent protection from any shtriga. Another way to get rid of the creature, exposed in The Witcher was to spend a night, obviously surviving, in one building/room with it.The shtriga is related to other witches/vampires such as the Romanian strigă and the Roman strix.
+ rakshasa
A rakshasa is a demon or unrighteous spirit in Hinduism. They were man-eaters or cannibals. The Aryans were always at war with the Rakshasas. However even Rakshasas such as Ravan described himself as a minister of the Aryans.
The Ramayana describes them as being created from Brahma's foot; elsewhere, they are descended from Pulastya, or from Khasa, or from Nirriti and Nirrita. Many Rakshasa were particularly wicked humans in previous incarnations. Rakshasas are notorious for disturbing sacrifices, desecrating graves, harassing priests, possessing human beings, and so on. Their fingernails are poisonous, and they feed on human flesh and spoiled food. They are shapechangers and magicians, and often appear in the forms of humans and large birds. Hanuman, during a visit to the rakshasas' home in Lanka, observed that the demons could come in any form imaginable.The great ten-headed demon Ravana, enemy of Rama, was king of the rakshasas. His younger brother Vibhishana was a rare good-hearted rakshasa; he was exiled by his brother the king, who was displeased by his behavior. Vibhishana later became an ally of Rama and a ruler in Lanka. Other notable rakshasas include the guardian god Nairitya, who is associated with the southwest direction. A female rakshasa is called a Rakshasi, and a female rakshasa in human form is a manushya-rakshasi.
+ zombie
A zombie is purportedly a dead person whose body has been re-animated. Stories of zombies originated in the Afro-Caribbean spiritual belief system of Vodoun (Voodoo), where zombies are humans who have had their "Ti Bon Ange" (Creole from the French "petit bon ange", or "little good angel") or soul stolen by supernatural means or shamanic medicine, and who thus lack free will and are forced to work as uncomplaining slaves for a "zombie master", typically on plantations. It is widely thought that, if such "zombies" existed, they were in fact heavily drugged but still-living humans. Other more macabre versions of zombies have become a staple of modern horror fiction, where they are brought back from the dead by supernatural or scientific means, and eat the flesh of the living. They have very limited intelligence, but may not be under anyone's direct control. In philosophy of mind, zombies are hypothetical persons who lack full consciousness but behave otherwise just like other people. They are referred to as philosophical zombies or "p-zombies" or "Antonovichs". According to the tenets of Vodoun, a dead person can be revived by a bokor or black magician. Zombies remain under the control of the bokor since they have no will of their own. "Zombi" is also another name of the voodoo snake god Damballah Wedo, of Niger-Congo origin; it is akin to the Kongo word nzambi, which means "god".
+ the benders
The Bloody Benders were a family of serial killers who owned a small general store and inn in Labette County, Kansas from 1872 to 1873. The family consisted of John Bender, his wife, son, and daughter Kate. Kate was very attractive and outgoing, and thus became a large draw for the Benders' establishment. She proclaimed herself to be a healer and psychic who could cure sickness and contact the dead. Kate is believed to be the driving force behind the Bender family killings.
The Bender family's home had a large room which was divided by a curtain. If a guest appeared to be wealthy, they would give him a seat of honor with his back to the curtain. Kate would distract the guest, while John Bender and/or his son would come from behind the curtain and strike the guest on the skull with blunt object such as a sledgehammer. The body would then be dragged behind the curtain and thrown down a trap door into a cellar. Once in the cellar, the body would be stripped and then buried somewhere on the property, often in the orchard.
In the spring of 1873, Dr. William York arrived at the Benders' Inn. York had visited previously on his trip west and had told his brother, a colonel, about the inn. Dr. York never returned home.On May 4, 1873, a short time after Dr. York's disappearance, Colonel York arrived at the inn, explained to the Benders that his brother had gone missing, and asked if they had seen him. They said they had not and suggested the possibility that he had run into trouble with the Indians. Colonel York agreed that this was possible and was served dinner.The story goes that after dinner, Colonel York was sitting in the front room when he noticed a gold locket under one of the beds. He opened it and was surprised to see his brother's wife and daughter looking at him. He slipped out and returned the next morning with the sheriff and several deputies, only to find that the Benders had fled. After a search of the Bender property, 11 mounds of earth in the trees and as many as two dozen bodies were reported to have been found later. The first grave revealed the body of Dr. William York.
It is not known what happened to the Benders after they fled. Colonel York used his military status to organize an extensive search but found nothing. Several groups of vigilantes were formed to search for them as well. Many stories say that one vigilante group actually caught the Benders and shot all of them but Kate, whom they burned alive.The story spread and the search continued on and off for the next fifty years. Often groups of two traveling women were accused of being Kate Bender and her mother. Two women in Detroit were reportedly extradited on this charge, but the case was never brought to court.
+ herman mudgett (based on the episode 2.06: No Exit)
Herman Webster Mudgett (May 16, 1861 – May 7, 1896), better known under the alias of "Dr. H. H. Holmes," was an American serial killer.
Holmes trapped and murdered possibly hundreds of guests at his Chicago hotel, which he opened for the 1893 World's Fair. He confessed to 27 murders, though only nine have been confirmed.The case was notorious in its time, and received wide publicity via a series of articles in William Randolph Hearst's newspapers. Interest in Holmes' crimes was revived in 2003 by The Devil in the White City, a best-selling non-fiction book that juxtaposed an account of the planning and staging of the World's Fair with Holmes' story. In addition, Harold Schechter has written a biography of his life entitled Depraved: The Shocking True Story of America's First Serial Killer.
Although Holmes is sometimes referred to as America's first serial killer, his crimes occurred after those of others such as Thomas Neill Cream, the Austin Axe Murderer and the Bloody Benders. On 8 July 1878, he married Clara A. Lovering of Alton, New Hampshire. On 28 January 1887, he married Myrta Z. Belknap in Minneapolis, Minnesota; they had a daughter named Lucy. He filed a petition for divorce from his first wife after marrying his second, but it never became final. He married his third wife, Georgiana Yoke, on 9 January 1894. He was also the lover of Julia Smythe, the wife of Ned Connor, a former employee of Holmes's who fled Chicago soon after his suspicions of Holmes were confirmed. She would later become one of his alleged victims.
He managed to secure a Chicago pharmacy by defrauding and eventually murdering the pharmacist and his family, and built a block-long, three-story building on the lot across the street. Neighbors called this building "The Castle". Holmes opened it as a hotel for the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, using the rest of the structure for shops he rented. The bottom floor of the Castle contained these shops (one a jeweler, for example), his personal office, and the upper floors a maze of over one hundred windowless rooms with doorways that would open to brick walls, stairways to nowhere, doors that could only be opened from the outside, and a host of other maze-like constructions. Over a period of three years, Holmes selected female victims from among his employees, lovers, or hotel's guests, and tortured them in soundproof and escape proof chambers fitted with gas lines that permitted Holmes to asphyxiate the women at any time. Holmes had repeatedly changed builders during the initial construction of the Castle, to ensure that no one truly understood the design of the house he had created, who might then report it to the police. In addition, according to law at that time, by firing workers every two weeks, he didn't have to pay them. Once dead, the victims' bodies went by a secret chute to the basement, where they were either meticulously dissected, stripped of flesh, articulated--crafted into a skeleton model--and then sold to medical schools; or cremated and placed in lime pits for destruction. Holmes had two giant furnaces as well as pits of acid, bottles of various poisons, and even a rack to create a race of "giants." Because of the connections he gained through medical school, he was able to sell skeletons and organs with little difficulty.
Following the World's Fair, and with creditors closing in, Holmes left Chicago and apparently murdered people as he traveled around the country, though only the corpses of his close associate and children were ever located. He was arrested in 1895 when police discovered his connection with this former business associate, Benjamin Pitezel, and three of his children. His habit of taking out insurance policies on some of his victims before killing them might have eventually exposed him regardless, but it wasn't until his custodian revealed to the police that he was never allowed to clean the upper floors that terror seized the local department. A fire of mysterious origin consumed the building on August 19, but not before the police had spent a month inspecting the building, learning Holmes' methods for committing the murders and disposing of the remains fairly efficiently.The number of his victims has typically been estimated between 20 to 100, and even as high as 230 by some estimates, using missing persons records at that time; however, the only verified number is 27, though police had commented that some of the bodies in the basement were so badly marred and distorted that it was difficult to tell how many there actually were. His victims were primarily women, but included some men and children.
Holmes was put on trial for murder, and confessed to 27 murders (in Chicago, Indianapolis and Toronto) and six attempted murders. He wrote various contradictory accounts of his life, initially claiming innocence, later fancying that he was possessed by Satan. His talent for convincingly lying at will made it difficult for researchers to determine which kernels of truth were in his writings.He was hanged on May 7, 1896, in Philadelphia. The New York Times reported, Holmes said to the executioner, "Take your time: don't bungle it." The executioner did "bungle," however, because Holmes' neck did not snap immediately; he instead died slowly, infrequently twitching over ten minutes before being pronounced dead 15 minutes after the trap was sprung.
According to folklore, La Llorona, Spanish for "the crying woman", sometimes called the Woman in White or the Weeping Woman is the ghost of a woman crying for her dead children. Her appearances are sometimes held to presage death. There is much variation in tales of La Llorona, which are popular in Mexico, the United States (especially in Mexican-American communities), and to an extent the rest of the Americas. The tales vary mostly in the several motives they give to the mother and father for the murder. The version popular in Las Cruces, New Mexico says that "La Llorona" drowned her children in the Rio Grande when she could no longer support them. On nights with a full moon, says the story, La Llorona can be heard crying near the river.
A zombie is purportedly a dead person whose body has been re-animated. Stories of zombies originated in the Afro-Caribbean spiritual belief system of Vodoun (Voodoo), where zombies are humans who have had their "Ti Bon Ange" (Creole from the French "petit bon ange", or "little good angel") or soul stolen by supernatural means or shamanic medicine, and who thus lack free will and are forced to work as uncomplaining slaves for a "zombie master", typically on plantations. It is widely thought that, if such "zombies" existed, they were in fact heavily drugged but still-living humans. Other more macabre versions of zombies have become a staple of modern horror fiction, where they are brought back from the dead by supernatural or scientific means, and eat the flesh of the living. They have very limited intelligence, but may not be under anyone's direct control. In philosophy of mind, zombies are hypothetical persons who lack full consciousness but behave otherwise just like other people. They are referred to as philosophical zombies or "p-zombies" or "Antonovichs". According to the tenets of Vodoun, a dead person can be revived by a bokor or black magician. Zombies remain under the control of the bokor since they have no will of their own. "Zombi" is also another name of the voodoo snake god Damballah Wedo, of Niger-Congo origin; it is akin to the Kongo word nzambi, which means "god".
Herman Webster Mudgett (May 16, 1861 – May 7, 1896), better known under the alias of "Dr. H. H. Holmes," was an American serial killer.