Fallen Angels . . . and Spirits of the Dark

by Robert Masello

  PROTECTION AGAINST WEREWOLVES

  Identifying a potential werewolf while he was still in his exclusively human form was considered the first and most obvious line of defense. To that end, people were scrutinized for such unusual characteristics as eyebrows that meet, long and reddish-colored fingernails, small ears that sit low on the head, and, not surprisingly, lots of body hair — particularly on the hands and feet.

  Still, it wasn’t possible to convict people on just such evidence alone; they had to be caught in their werewolf form. Then they could be cured, or, if necessary, killed outright. To cure them, the French (to whom the werewolf was known as the loup-garou) believed the werewolf had to be pricked to the bleeding point during the night. If, on the other hand, he had been made a werewolf by a priest’s curse, he had to be cured through a wound, inflicted by that priest or any other. In some countries the werewolf could be saved if, in his werewolf state, three drops of blood were drawn from him, or his human name was called out. Werewolves who wanted to rid themselves of the curse had to go “cold turkey,” as it were, and use their willpower to abstain from eating human flesh for a period of nine years.

  Killing them wasn’t nearly as hard as killing, for instance, a vampire. Once caught, they could be simply bludgeoned or stabbed to death. Shooting was also recommended, though by some accounts a silver bullet was needed. Wounded or dead, werewolves reassumed their human form (as occurred in the story from the Satyricon). A similar story was told in 16th century France, where a hunter told of being attacked by a huge and fierce wolf in the woods. The hunter fought the creature off, and in the struggle managed to sever one of its paws. The wolf fled, howling in pain, and the hunter, putting the paw in his pouch, started for home. On the way, he encountered a friend to whom he related the story. But when he reached into his pouch to show the paw, he found instead a woman’s hand with a gold ring adorning one finger. The ring, to his horror, looked very familiar. He raced the rest of the way home, and as soon as he got there discovered his treacherous wife bandaging the stump of her arm. He turned her in to the local authorities, who promptly tried her, and just as promptly burned her at the stake.

  CLOSE COUSINS: THE LUPINS

  Though they were sometimes thought to share the savagery of the werewolf, the lupins, as they were known in parts of France, were generally considered a kind of lesser relative. Wolflike in appearance, these creatures haunted graveyards at night, howling at the moon and chattering with each other in a language indecipherable to man. When they got hungry, they dug up a grave and consumed the corpse. But if they were disturbed—if, for instance, a cemetery watchman approached—they would run away into the night.

  It may well have been lupins that a French farmer reportedly stumbled upon in the early years of this century. Seeing the creatures coming, he scrambled up a tree and hid there. The animals lingered nearby, and he was able to hear them talking in human voices, though he could not distinguish a word they were saying. At one point in the conversation, one of them lifted his tail and produced a snuffbox, which he offered to the other. When they left, and the farmer climbed down from the tree, he found the snuffbox lying on the ground, and he knew the local man to whom it belonged. But he kept his own counsel for many years — telling the story, but leaving out who the werewolf was — until the man died. Then he told who it was, and to prove his case showed that the man’s headstone bore fresh claw marks, as if made by a wolf, each morning.

  Another legend, well known in Brittany, was of Le Meneur des Loups, the leader of the wolves, a sorcerer who gave the pack its marching orders. The wolves would assemble around a crackling bonfire deep in the woods, and listen to his instructions, given in a human voice. (The sorcerer could remain in human form, or take the shape of a wolf.) He knew which fences were down, what flocks were unattended, which travelers were taking what lonely roads after dark. Armed with this information, and often led by the wizard himself, the wolves were then set loose to wreak their havoc on the countryside.

  THE ZOMBIE

  In other lands there were other creatures, other revenants, who rose from the grave. In the West Indies, African slaves created a strange, hybridized faith from mixing their tribal religions with elements of Catholicism. This new faith, which came to be known as Voodoo, featured an animated corpse called the zombie. Much of the Voodoo ritual had to do with ways of protecting yourself from zombies, and even more importantly, ways to keep from becoming one yourself—for that was a fate, truly, worse than death.

  The funeral rites in Haiti and other countries where Voodoo is practiced (Brazil being one) are very elaborate; they are designed to ensure that the soul (or individual loa) of the deceased does not fall into the wrong hands. As soon as a person dies, his family calls in the houngan (or Voodoo priest), who comes equipped with a live chicken, from which he plucks a handful of feathers. These he places in a small white pot along with hair from the head of the body and nail parings from its left hand and foot. Together, these elements comprise the symbolic matter of the soul, and the vessel, called the pot de tete, is carefully guarded by the family until the day it is consumed in a sacred fire.

  Then the houngan performs an even more appalling task; after asking the family members to stand clear of the body, he lifts the sheet and crawls under. He shakes his rattles and mutters incantations, and embraces the body itself, all in an effort to free the loa and capture it in a tiny bottle. According to Voodoo lore, it is often possible to see the body lift its head and shoulders as it allows the spirit to escape from its mouth. Once bottled, the spirit is entrusted only to a close relative, or possibly the houngan himself. By no means must it be acquired by a bokor (a kind of sorcerer), who will use it to create a zombie for himself.

  Just how does the bokor do this? There are a couple of ways to go, though the exact ins and outs remain a bit mysterious. If he can manage it, the bokor can place a pot containing 21 seeds of pois congo and a piece of string with 21 knots in it under the dying man’s pillow. When the man dies, the string turns into a spider and the spider becomes the essence of the man’s soul. If the bokor comes to the door, knocks three times and turns his back, the man — now a zombie — will emerge. But the bokor must remember to threaten the zombie with a whip if he hopes to ensure its cooperation.

  Another method of creating a zombie is simply to poison a living man with the deadly machineel fruit, or with datura, the thorn apple, and then once he’s buried, to call him forth from the grave. Voodoo legend has it that the corpse must be spoken to by name, and must answer the call; as a result, many corpses in Haiti are buried face down, their mouths filled with dirt, and their lips sewn together. They’re sometimes given knives too, with which to attack the bokor if summoned from their resting place.

  It’s unlikely, however, that a zombie would have the strength or will to defend himself. He is characterized as a mindless automaton, a human robot, that the bokor can command to do his will. In Haiti, zombies are reportedly seen slaving away in the canefields all day, without speaking or looking up, dressed in rags. They are fed next to nothing, watery soup or crumbs from the table, and lashed into continual, blind submission.

  Even so, they are greatly feared. If a zombie is awakened from his spell, whether by eating meat or salt, or from hearing a living human call his name, his wrath is extraordinary. He runs wild like a rabid animal before searching out his grave again and trying to claw his way back into the dirt. The kindest, wisest thing anyone can do for a zombie at that point is to shoot him through the head (which effectively renders him useless) and then bury him again — this time for good.

  THE CASE OF CLAIRVIUS NARCISSE

  In 1980, a man entered the Haitian marketplace of l’Estere, approached a woman named Angelina Narcisse, and introduced himself as her brother, Clairvius. To say she was astonished is the least of it — she hadn’t laid eyes on him for eighteen years—but the last time she had seen him, he had been in his coffin. He had been declared dead by the doctors at the Albe
rt Schweitzer Hospital, and buried under a concrete headstone in the small cemetery just north of his native village.

  And now he was back . . . with an amazing story to tell.

  According to Narcisse, before he died his soul had been secretly sold to a bokor, by a brother with whom he was involved in a bitter land dispute. He remembered everything that happened thereafter. He remembered stumbling up to the doors of the hospital in the spring of 1962, feeling feverish and unwell, spitting blood. He remembered the next several days in the clinic and he remembered, with particular horror, listening to the two attending physicians declare him dead. His older sister, Marie Claire, was called, witnessed the body, and affixed her thumbprint to the death certificate. Still aware, but feeling as if his soul were somehow floating above it all, observing everything that happened to him but powerless to intervene, Narcisse watched as his body was placed in cold storage for almost an entire day, then removed and buried.

  He remembered a nail being driven too hard through the lid of his coffin, and gouging his cheek. And he bore the scar to prove it.

  It was several days later, still lying in his grave, that he heard the sound of pounding drums and chanting, and heard his own name called out three times by the bokor. Rising from his coffin, he was immediately beaten with a sisal whip before being bound with ropes and wrapped in black cloths. Unable to speak, unable to resist, he was forced to march, with other zombies, to the north of the country. By day their master made them hide in the brush; by night they marched on until they reached a remote sugar plantation where they were put to grueling forced labor. For two years, Narcisse recalled, he slaved in the fields from dawn till dusk, until one day a zombie who had been refusing to eat was given a terrible beating. Although such beatings were common, and zombies almost never offered any resistance, this time the zombie did. Enraged, he grabbed a hoe and killed their master with it. Freed from whatever hold he had over them, the zombies shook off their stupor and went their separate ways.

  Narcisse, however, was unsure where to go — if he went back home to his village, he was afraid his brother might try to kill him again. So for sixteen years he roamed the countryside. One day he happened to hear of his brother’s death, and it was only then that he dared to return.

  There was no denying that it was indeed Clairvius — he passed every test, and was recognized by many of his family members. And even the death certificate, with his sister’s thumbprint, was authenticated by Scotland Yard. But no one was all that pleased to see him: a selfish and contentious man in his previous life, he was even less popular now that he was thought to be — or, more properly, to have been — a zombie. Unwelcome in his old home, he lingered at a local medical clinic, or at the Baptists’ cinderblock mission. And when, on occasion, he visited the grave he had once tenanted, where the cement marker still read “Ici Repose Clairvius Narcisse,” the cemetery workers gave him a wide berth.

  A riot of demons.

  “There, in a gloomy hollow glen, she found

  A little cottage built of sticks and weeds,

  In homely wise, and walled with sods around,

  In which a witch did dwell in loathly weeds

  And willfull want, all careless of her needs;

  So choosing solitary to abide,

  Far from all neighbors, that her devilish deeds

  And hellish arts from people she might hide,

  And hurt, far off, unknown, whomever she envied.”

  Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

  (1590)

  THE WITCH

  In truth, witches have been with us for as long as men and women have believed in magic. For as long as people have believed that nature and its forces could cure and curse, heal and hurt, cultivate and destroy, there have been witches. And those who called themselves witches have believed not only in the occult or hidden powers of the things all around us—they have believed, too, in their own ability to harness those powers.

  In antiquity, witches had their own deities. In ancient Greece, they were followers of Diana, goddess of the hunt, and Hecate, goddess of the night. Medea, who made wax effigies of her enemies, was called a witch; so was Circe, who turned men into swine in her enchanted court. Witches could do good or ill. They were worshippers of the seasons and the skies, growers of herbs and plants, seers and astrologers and, in their own way, physicians. And they could be as easily venerated as feared.

  But with the advent of Christianity, much changed. The rites and rituals of witchcraft were considered heathen practices, and by the Middle Ages witchcraft and all it stood for had become anathema to the Church. According to the accepted doctrine, practitioners of witchcraft were ruled by Satan. The witch who had once performed ancient fertility rites, brewed herbal medicines, and predicted the future had degenerated into a creature of exclusively malign influence, a sinister agent of evil doing the Devil’s work here on Earth. Her appearance and peculiar talents were neatly summed up, in one astonishing sentence, by an English lawyer, William West, in the sixteenth century:

  Saul and the Witch of Endor.

  “A witch or hag is she which being deluded by a league made with the devil through his persuasion, inspiration or juggling, thinketh she can design what manner of evil things soever, either by thought or imprecation, as to shake the air with lightnings and thunder, to cause hail and tempests, to remove green corn or trees to another place, to be carried of her familiar (which hath taken upon him the deceitful shape of a goat, swine, or calf, etc.) into some mountain far distant, in a wonderful short space of time, and sometimes to fly upon a staff or fork, or some other instrument, and to spend all the night after with her sweetheart, in playing, sporting, banqueting, dancing, dalliance, and divers other devilish lusts and lewd disports, and to show a thousand such monstrous mockeries.”

  The witch had become — and has remained ever since — a frightful figure of depravity and sacrilege.

  THE SABBAT

  Although witches were generally portrayed as solitary crones working their magic in secluded cottages, they were also thought to be quite sociable — among their own kind.

  Their gatherings were called sabbats, and by all reports these assemblies were something of a cross between a trade convention and a raucous carnival. They were occasions to meet, swap professional secrets, and indulge their most carnal appetites. (Men, incidentally, could be witches, too, though they never made as much of an impression. They are sometimes referred to in later works as warlocks.)

  First, the witches agreed upon a time for the sabbat — always late at night, though at no particular hour. The place was usually a field or forest, a crossroads or a hidden cave. All that was really required was an open space, far from prying eyes.

  No matter how remote the spot, and mountaintops were often chosen, getting there was not a problem. As part of their deal with the Devil, witches were given the gift of transvection — the ability to fly through the night air, on broomsticks coated with a secret flying ointment, on the backs of their familiars, or invisibly through the agency of the Devil himself. Even a piece of straw clutched between a witch’s legs could serve to keep her airborne. They flew up their chimneys, and at miraculous speed straight to the sabbat. The only real danger was from church bells; the sound of their ringing could blast a flying witch right out of the air.

  Once a witch had landed, she joined the other witches, who might number anywhere from several to a thousand. (The rule of the coven, a group of thirteen witches, was never strictly observed, at this or even more casual meetings.) But the first order of business was always to pay homage to the Devil, who generally attended the sabbat in his classic manifestation as a monstrous goat. Between his horns he often sported a lighted candle, from which the witches were to light their own. The witches were to approach him humbly, and offer what was known as the osculum infame: as Agnes Sampson put it at her trial for witchcraft, “the devil caused all the company to come and kiss his arse, which they said was cold like ice.”

&
nbsp; The Devil then took roll call, and recorded it in his Red Book. And each witch present was required to describe the magical acts and wicked deeds that she had performed since the last sabbat. When the Devil inquired what the witches were planning next, they told him, and he offered professional tips and guidance. Then he was introduced to the new recruits, who renounced Christianity and swore their eternal fealty. If there were unsanctified marriages or unholy baptisms to be conducted, this was the time.

  Then the merriment, such as it was, began. The banquet tables were laid out, and everyone sat down to eat — the Devil, with his favorite witch, of course occupied the head of the table. The menu could vary greatly. Some witches, such as those in Lancashire, said they dined on beef and bacon and roast mutton; those in Aix-en-Provence remembered bread, malmsey wine, and the cooked flesh of freshly butchered children. But one thing that was never found on the table was salt; because it was a preservative, it was thought inappropriate to serve it to agents of corruption.

  Afterwards, there was dancing — back to back, which was considered indecent at the time, and moving always to the left, contrary to the course of the sun. The dancing, led by the Devil himself, grew more and more frenzied, until in a state of wild abandon everyone present threw themselves into a frantic orgy of perversion. There were no laws of decency observed or allowed; anything went, including sodomy, incest, and homosexuality. The Devil, with his scaly and cold sexual organ, had intercourse with as many of the witches as time would permit. But even so, he did display some discrimination: one young witch, in her confession, recalled that he took the pretty witches from the front, the ugly ones from behind. The orgy went on until the sound of the crowing cock could be heard, at which time the sated, debauched revelers disbanded, going their separate ways until the next sabbat should be convened.