Black Magic - Paranormal Magazine

Demon lovers

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

Sexual hauntings are among the most disturbing and mysterious of paranormal phenomena. Assaults and seductions by inhuman entities have been recorded for thousands of years. Veteran researcher BRAD STEIGER discusses several of the many such cases that have come under his notice.

The email was not a request. It was an urgent plea: ‘You must help my sister!’
In the body of the email, a woman stated that her sister – an adult female living in her own apartment – had suffered a number of nocturnal attacks by an invisible being. These terrible night visits by the molester were described as violent and sexual in nature.

One night, she said, admitting to me that a seed of doubt persisted in her mind, my correspondent left her children home with her husband and went to spend a night watching over her sister.

After her sister had fallen asleep and she herself was beginning to nod in the rocking chair beside the bed, she witnessed for herself the unbelievable onslaught on her defenceless sister. The covers were torn from the bed by an invisible force, and a nightmarish struggle between her sister and her determined and increasingly aggressive assailant began.

(Full article in Paranormal issue 35, available now. CLICK HERE to buy the issue and for subscription information, or CLICK HERE to download the digital issue from www.zinio.com)

Money magic

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

Need to beat the credit crunch? Expert on the mystic arts Dr SNAKE reveals some easy to do at home magic intended to bring in the readies.  There’s no doubt about it, these are grim times. But if you’re suffering from the effects of the credit crunch, don’t despair. I’m going to show you how to use sorcery to get ahead of the competition and bring money – even wealth – your way.

(Learn more in Paranormal issue 35, available now. CLICK HERE to buy the issue and for subscription information, or CLICK HERE to download the digital issue from www.zinio.com)

Down at the crossroads

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

ILL MET: Two nightbound travelers encounter the famous 17th century ghost the ‘Drummer of Tedworth’ at a crossroads on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.

Paranormal editor RICHARD HOLLAND explores the eerie aspect of the crossways in British folklore.

In Britain, crossroads, bridges and stiles were all once considered eerie after dark. Because they connect places rather than being actual places themselves, they were considered shadowy, otherworldly, what is technically known as ‘liminal’.

These liminal sites suggested places where the boundaries between the physical world and the spiritual world might be less defined. There was a symbolic aspect, too, to the concept of passing over a style or a bridge or choosing the correct path at a crossway.

In ancient Europe crossroads were associated with Hecate, a minor goddess of the ancient Greeks who was adopted by the Romans and who has links with the winter goddess, the ‘crone’ of Celtic mythology. Hecate was considered ‘queen of the ghosts, and therefore of all manner of magic, the blacker the better’ (H J Rose, in A Handbook of Greek Mythology). She was known as triodos or trioditis, meaning ‘the goddess of parting ways’ and her image was often placed at crossroads. ‘Hecate’s suppers’ were left at crossroads to feed the malevolent spirits which followed the goddess and to dissuade them to go in search of human prey. The offerings sometimes included cakes set with candles like our modern birthday cakes.

Similar beliefs may well be universal: in India, for example, offerings were made at crossroads to Rudra, the god who rules ghosts and evil powers. In Japan, phallic symbols used to be set up at road junctions to protect passersby.

This Feature can be found in Paranormal issue 30 still available for purchase. For subscription information simply click here.

[Sources: The Lore of the Land by Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson; Glimpses in the Twilight by F G Lee; Haunted England by Christina Hole; Folklore of Wets and Mid Wales by J C Davies; A Handbook of Greek Mythology by H J Rose; E D Philips writing in Man, Myth & Magic; Wales of the Unexpected by Richard Holland.]

Curses

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

The power to curse isn’t limited to witches or magicians - anyone can do it, given extreme circumstances. At least, that’s what many people once believed, as these old stories gathered together by RICHARD HOLLAND show.

‘Through God we shall do valiantly,
For He it is that shall tread down our enemies.’

So ends Psalm 108, the so-called ‘cursing psalm’. Centuries ago it was believed that when read backwards, this Psalm - which calls upon God to vanquish a foe - would bring doom to one’s enemy. However, one had to be careful. When a wicked woman, Quendrida of Mercia, attempted to use the cursing psalm in the 8^th century, ‘her eyes burst from her head, her blood drenched the psalter and she died in agony’.

Belief in the power to curse dates back as far back as the belief in witchcraft - perhaps, therefore, for as long as mankind has existed. But it was not just witches who were believed to have the power to curse: ordinary people could do it too, in extreme circumstances. Stories are told throughout the British Isles of ‘dooms’ announced against wicked landowners or grasping relatives.

Even holy men could pronounce a curse. When Henry II and his Archbishop, Thomas Becket, were at loggerheads, the men of Strood in Kent cut off the tail of the priest’s horse to teach him a lesson. In response, Beckett pronounced that their children should all be born with tails, which, so legend has it, came to pass. In a similar story, when the 8^th century Bishop of Worcester was jeered at after telling off the men of Alcester, in Warwickshire, for working on a Sunday, he cursed them - and tails immediately sprouted out of their backsides.

When King Henry VIII deprived the Church of a grand house, Marwell Hall in Gloucestershire, presenting it as a gift it to the Seymour family, the local priest cursed them, saying they would not hold Marwell long. Henry was furious and had the priest put to death. Nevertheless, his curse held: the Seymours only survived for two generations at the house. One of the victims of the curse was Jane Seymour, who died a year after marrying the king.

You can read the rest of this feature in issue 27 of Paranormal magazine

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