Category:
Rituals and Superstitions
Rituals and Superstitions
Vasilisa & The Hungry Doll
Posted By: Paul - Fri Mar 18, 2022 -
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Category: Family, Hobbies and DIY, Movies, Rituals and Superstitions, Supernatural, Occult, Paranormal, Myths and Fairytales, Dolls and Stuffed Animals
The Tennessee Head Banger
Tom Myslinski, who was an offensive lineman for the Tennessee Volunteers, had an unusual pre-game ritual. He would psych himself up by banging his head against doors, cabinets, walls, towel dispensers, etc. Without a helmet.One of his teammates explained that he did this "until his eyes get all bloodshot and, then, blood is pouring from his forehead."
Myslinski noted, "It's just my way to pick up the intensity. To tell you the truth, I have no idea why I do it. Afterwards, sometimes, I say to myself that it sure was stupid because my head hurts."
Myslinski went on to play for nine seasons in the NFL and is now a strength and conditioning coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Kingsport Times - Nov 20, 1991
Arizona Republic - Dec 27, 1991
Posted By: Alex - Mon Feb 07, 2022 -
Comments (2)
Category: Rituals and Superstitions, Sports, 1990s, Brain Damage
Dannie Druehyld, Only Official Witch of Denmark, Has Passed
Some interesting videos, not in English, at the obituary.
Dannie Druehyld knew every single plant and stone in Rold Skov, after calling the forest [her] home for more than 30 years. Now Denmark has lost its only officially registered witch. Dannie Druehyld died on Monday, aged 74. She leaves behind a daughter and a granddaughter.
According to Dannie Druehyld, she was a witch before she was born, and in Rold Skov she has over the years taught children and adults about the forest's magic, folk beliefs and ancient wisdom through her workshop in the Rebild Center. She has also published several books, including "The Witch's Handbook", which tells about witch life all year round.
Posted By: Paul - Wed May 05, 2021 -
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Category: Eccentrics, New Age, Religion, Rituals and Superstitions, Supernatural, Occult, Paranormal, Europe
Jemima Wilkinson Is Lord
The source.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Jan 28, 2017 -
Comments (2)
Category: Delusions, Fantasies and Other Tricks of the Imagination, Eccentrics, Hoaxes and Imposters and Imitators, Religion, Rituals and Superstitions, Scams, Cons, Rip-offs, and General Larceny, Eighteenth Century
Shoes Concealed in Buildings
In the 1950s, the Northampton Museum (home of the "World Famous Shoe Collection) began to receive reports of shoes that had been found hidden in buildings. The shoes, usually discovered by people doing renovations or repairs, were concealed under floors, inside walls, in chimneys, above ceilings, etc.Eventually the Museum received enough of these reports that they realized the concealment of the shoes wasn't an accident, but rather that hiding shoes inside a building was an ancient, deliberate practice. Ever since then, the Museum has kept a record of all concealed shoe finds (the "Concealed Shoe Index"). As of 2012, the index had over 1900 reports of shoe concealment from all over the world (but mostly Europe and North America).
image source: wikipedia
The Museum curators aren't entirely sure why people hide shoes inside buildings, but the leading theory is that it's a form of protection superstition, done to ward off forms of evil such as witches, bad luck, or the plague.
Shoe historian June Swann, former keeper of the Northamton Shoe collection, notes in a 1996 article about concealed shoes that there are all kinds of weird superstitions associated with shoes:
there is much recorded on other shoe superstitions, which are rife wherever shoes are traditionally worn. They are symbols of authority, as in the Old Testament. They are linked with fertility: we still tie them on the back of wedding cars. And they are generally associated with good luck (witness all the holiday souvenirs in the shape of shoes). But most of all they stand in for the person: it has been a common practice from at least the sixteenth century to at least 1966 to throw an old shoe after people ‘for luck’.
Why the shoe? It is the only garment we wear which retains the shape, the personality, the essence of the wearer.
Why the shoe? It is the only garment we wear which retains the shape, the personality, the essence of the wearer.
Just recently, maintenance workers at Cambridge University found a 300-year-old shoe hidden inside a wall.
And earlier this year, a Michigan family discovered 53 pairs of shoes behind a wall in their home — concealed there since the 1970s. Though in that case, it was theorized that the hidden shoes weren't warding off bad luck, but instead were evidence that a previous owner of the home had a shoe fetish.
via TYWKIWDBI
Posted By: Alex - Wed Aug 24, 2016 -
Comments (6)
Category: Rituals and Superstitions, Shoes
Pre-Game Frog Head Biting
1977: Larry Canaday, football coach at Eau Gallie High School in Florida, would inspire his players to victory by biting the head off a live frog. No one at the school was particularly disturbed by this. Parents would even give him frogs before games to help fire up the kids. But when word of the unusual motivational technique began to attract national attention, school officials told Canaday that the "frog-biting must cease."
The Bloomington Pantagraph - Oct 14, 1977
Coach Canaday, with frog statue
Posted By: Alex - Mon May 23, 2016 -
Comments (6)
Category: Rituals and Superstitions, Sports, 1970s
The Mark Of The Beast
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NewDealDesign, a design house out of San Francisco, is behind an idea for implanted tattoos that carry information about the wearer that could be exchanged by touch. The Bible has long been quoted about the mark of the beast and the Anti Christ being from the Middle East, guess where the CEO of the company is from, just sayin'.
Posted By: Alex - Sat Oct 18, 2014 -
Comments (15)
Category: Armageddon and Apocalypses, Evil, Gods, Religion, Rituals and Superstitions
Herman Slater and the Warlock Shop/Magickal Childe
Starting in 1973, Herman Slater (died 1992) became a mainstay of the New York Wiccan scene.
Here he is explaining his religion. Three more parts of the documentary available on YouTube.
Posted By: Paul - Wed May 08, 2013 -
Comments (9)
Category: Eccentrics, Regionalism, Religion, Rituals and Superstitions, 1970s
Edgar Larkin
I'm always fascinated by scientists who are also bonkers about the supernatural. Even Isaac Newton dabbled in the occult, which was more understandable for his era.But here's a twentieth-century fellow who led such a double life: Edgar Lucien Larkin.
I'm sure you will want to read all 366 pages of his masterwork to be found here.
Posted By: Paul - Mon Dec 03, 2012 -
Comments (4)
Category: Eccentrics, New Age, Religion, Rituals and Superstitions, Science, 1900s
What’s the origin of the Boy Scout’s left-hand handshake?
As the 1935 Boy Scout handbook says, "By agreement of the Scout Leaders throughout the world, Boy Scouts greet Brother Scouts with a warm left hand clasp." (wikipedia). But what's the origin of this form of greeting?
Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, claimed he learned the custom from a defeated African chieftain whom he attempted to greet in 1896 by holding out his right hand. The chieftain supposedly replied: "The men in my tribe greet the bravest with the left hand." There are different versions of this story, but I think all of them can safely be dismissed as bogus.
There's also a theory that the scouts shake with their left hand because it's the hand closer to the heart. I also doubt this theory.
I think the real origin traces back to Baden-Powell's passion for promoting ambidexterity — and not just the ability to use either hand with equal dexterity, but to use both hands for different tasks, simultaneously.
Baden-Powell expressed some of these views in the brief introduction he wrote to John Jackson's 1905 book Ambidexterity, or, Two-handedness and two-brainedness:
To train the human body completely and symmetrically, that is, to cultivate all its organs and members to their utmost capacity, in order that its functions may also attain their maximum development, is an obligation that cannot safely be ignored. This completeness and symmetry can only be secured by an equal attention to, and exercise of, both sides of the body--the right and the left; and this two-sided growth can alone be promoted and matured by educating our two hands equally, each in precisely the same way, and exactly to the same extent.
It is hardly possible to lay too much stress upon this bimanual training, or to attach too much important to the principke, because our hands -- and our arms, from which, for purposes both of argument and education, they cannot be separated -- not only constitute our chief medium of communication with the outer world, but they are likewise the pre-eminent agency by which we stamp our impress upon it...
The heavy pressure of my office work makes me wish that I had cultivated, in my youth, the useful art of writing on two different subjects at once. I get through a great deal extra -- it is true -- by using the right and left hand alternately, but I thoroughly appreciate how much more can be done by using them both together.
It is hardly possible to lay too much stress upon this bimanual training, or to attach too much important to the principke, because our hands -- and our arms, from which, for purposes both of argument and education, they cannot be separated -- not only constitute our chief medium of communication with the outer world, but they are likewise the pre-eminent agency by which we stamp our impress upon it...
The heavy pressure of my office work makes me wish that I had cultivated, in my youth, the useful art of writing on two different subjects at once. I get through a great deal extra -- it is true -- by using the right and left hand alternately, but I thoroughly appreciate how much more can be done by using them both together.
Posted By: Alex - Thu Aug 02, 2012 -
Comments (7)
Category: Customs, Rituals and Superstitions
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Contact Us |