A Quick History of Halloween

I had intention on having this blog up a couple weeks ago but life has its way of keeping you busy.  So without further adieu let's dive in and see where getting dressed up and going door to door for candy comes from.

Modern day Halloween has centuries-old roots that go back to the Celtic celebration of Samhain, one of the 2 most important observances to the Celts, marking the harvest and the beginning of a new cycle.  They believed that on this day the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was at its thinnest and ghosts were able to mingle among us.  All manner of supernatural creatures were thought to be out and about at this time, including ghosts, fairies, and demons.

All the fires at home had to be extinguished.  The people would gather and lit bonfires to honor the dead, as well as to keep them away. They offered sacrifices that symbolized their wishes.  Afterwards they would light torches from the fire to take home and re-light their home fires with in order to have a prosperous season the next year.  During the celebration they would dress up in animal skins and attempt to tell one another's future.

Then the god-fearing Christians made their way into what is now Ireland, the UK, and northern France where the Celts lived.  The missionaries were instructed to try and adapt the native's existing beliefs into coexisting with Christian notions.  Samhain was renamed All Saint's Day, to honor those who had passed away that year, along with all the saints.  The church branded Celtic beliefs as evil, and those who continued to follow the old way were branded witches or went into hiding.  

All Saint's Day, or All Soul's Day became All Hallows, meaning sanctified or holy.  The evening prior to this was believed to be the time for the most supernatural activity, and came to be known as All Hallow's Eve, which finally became Halloween.

Trick or Treating

During the All Soul's Day festivities, the poor would go from house to house and beg for food.  They were given "soul cakes" in return for offering up prayers for the family's lost loved ones.  The offering of these cakes was encouraged by the church to replace the leaving out of food and wine as offerings for the wandering ghouls lurking about on that night.  The practice became known as "going a-souling" which evolved in time as children went around the town asking for food and money, and eventually became what we know today as trick or treating.

Going a-souling or trick or treating while wearing costumes dates back to the Samhain festivals in which the people would wear animal skins and skulls.  The costumes were meant to trick the actual supernatural beings that were out walking among them on this night.  

Jack O'Lanterns 

The story of the first jack o'lantern starts with a fellow named Jack.  There are a few variations, but they all agree that Jack meets the Devil and tricks him into not taking his soul.  Upon his death Jack was deemed to mean to get into heaven, but because of the trick he played on the devil, he can't go into hell either.  With no where to go and doomed to wander around for eternity, the devil tossed Jack an ember from the fires of hell.  He placed it inside a hollowed out turnip to light his way in the dark.  

People began carving turnips and then pumpkins and placing candles in them to scare away Jack and any other wandering beasty that happened to creep up on All Hallow's Eve.

Halloween Comes to the New World

Halloween celebrations in colonial America were extremely limited because of the rigid Protestant belief system. The melting pot of a nation saw the traditions and beliefs of colonists mesh with those of its immigrants as well as Native Americans.  Early celebrations included dancing, singing and eating.  Neighbors would gather to tell stories about the dead and attempt to tell one another's futures.  

In the late nineteenth century Irish immigrants fleeing to the New World to escape the potato famine back home helped to popularize the Halloween celebrations.  This is when Americans, taking from Irish traditions, began to dress up in costumes and go from house to house asking for food.  

Modern Halloween has became a holiday for children as well as adults who dress up like every manner of ghastly creature and mock and tease the spirits of the dead.  In so doing, they are reaffirming death and its place as a part of life in an celebration of a holy and magic evening.  Be vigilant tomorrow as you go about your business, mischievous or not, as the thin veil between worlds may allow ghouls to wander into your path!

 

I Want To Believe

Two weeks ago a guy just across the mountain in Virgie, KY captured footage of the object seen below.  The object was spotted here in Letcher County in Jenkins, as well as Elkhorn City and South Williamson in Pike County, and in parts of Virginia and Tennessee.

The footage was shot by Allen Epling with what I'm fairly certain is the most powerful telescope in Virgie.  An amateur astronomer, Epling and his wife were enjoying an evening with friends when one of the visiting children came and told him there was a funny looking airplane in the sky.  Minutes later Epling had set a camera to recording through the viewfinder of his telescope.  He uploaded the footage, shown below, to YouTube and the next day he began enjoying his 15 minutes on all the popular UFO-related websites.  

 

Witnesses reported seeing the object hovering in the sky for over 2 hours.  Epling described it as looking like "two fluorescent bulbs side by side, parallel, shining very brightly. It would get so bright they would seem to merge, and you could see it very clearly with the naked eye. Then it would dim down almost invisible."  One witness described viewing it thru binoculars as starting out as a sphere, morphing into the elongated shape in the pictures, then back in to a sphere before disappearing. 

Police officials said they received a handful of calls about the object but were unable to locate it themselves.  Officials with the U..S. Department of Defense and Kentucky Air National Guard say they had no aircraft in the sky at the time.  

Some believers are calling the it a plasma UFO.  Others insist it is the result of test performed by everyone from the Illuminati and the New World Order to the Nephelim and the Anunnaki.  Skeptics theorize that the sightings could be the result of a highly classified test, something like NASA’s Tether Incident, in which a mile long cable ran from satellites to a space shuttle.  When it was activated, a charge ran along the tether, and creating a magnetic field that interacted with the Earth’s magnetic field.  When the cable broke and it floated away with the satellites, several UFO sightings were reported as witnesses mistook the strange light show for alien transportation. 

To read more about the Virgie UFO footage visit the following links:

AP article

From UFO Eyes.com

From UFO Case Book.com

The story featuring Epling on the local WYMT news is below:

Kroc Kills

I previously stated something to the effect of bath salt zombies and addiction would be the catalyst for the end of the world as we know it.  It seems I’m on the right track.  A friend recently posted about googling the effects of krokodil.  Sounded interesting so I had to know what it was.

A couple hours later I was eyeball deep in the Russian drug scene.  Recent law changes have tightened the flow of heroine in from Afghanistan and made it much harder to come by.  While here stateside, amateur chemists are busy cooking meth, Russian “make-your-dope-at-home” addicts are responsible for the invasion of a drug referred to as Krokodil. 

The drug’s reptilian name comes from it’s immediate effect of turning the skin flaky and greenish.  Users eventually end up looking like zombies, with sores continuing to literally eat away their flesh all the way to the bone.  The images and videos that follow are about as graphic as it gets, you’ve been warned.

That used to be an arm.

Krokodil is actually a synthetic form of morphine, actually called Desomorphine.  The drug was discovered in 1932 and was intended to be a substitute for morphine.  It’s use was quickly discontinued when it was found to be much more addictive than morphine.  Russian addicts desperate for a fix have been cooking up their own recipe of krokodil.  Especially in isolated and poor regions of the country, addicts continually go about the process of distilling and boiling that takes about an hour.  Krokodil’s effects, similar to that of heroine, only lasts for up to an hour.  The life of a user often consists of a continuous cycle of cooking and using. 

Actual person, not a Walking Dead extra.

Codeine tablets are available over the counter in Russia.  They’re krokodil’s main ingredient, cooked together with match tips, gas, paint-thinner, lighter fluid, and iodine.  Yeah.  When produced in a lab with proper equipment, the drug is clean.  When made with makeshift tools, it’s byproducts are as toxic and corrosive as they come. The solution is injected by users.  While it gives them their fix for a short period of time, injection sites soon develop into large sores, which only grow.  Gangrene, meningitis, and irreversible brain damage are common.  The life expectancy of a person once they use drops to two to three years.

Effects of krokodil eating the flesh of the user

When heroine users try to kick the habit they will experience withdrawal for 3-5 days.  Krokodil users face up to 30 days of physical and mental anguish.  While the drug seems to have exploded in Russia, it’s spreading throughout Europe.  Cases have been reported in Switzerland, Poland, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Germany, and several other countries.

Bad economies further the plight of addicts across the world.  In desperation, they turn to any means available to get their fix and not be sick.  The bath salt attacks here in the U.S. recently, and the effects of krokodil in Russia further the need to fund more rehabilitation programs.  Otherwise, a dystopian future populated with lethargic addicts walking around with their flash rotting of isn’t that far off.

 For more graphic effects of krokodil use, see the following videos:

Man's leg amputated/sawed in two. Gruesome.

 

Guy's nasty arm and girl's unbelieveable deterioration.

Not for the squeamish after the 5 minute mark.

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