GHOSTS & THE GRAVELY ILL

When people are on their death beds they tend to experience ghosts. Most of these experiences are dismissed by others as delusions.

Maybe. Maybe not.

One of the most touching aspects of the nature of dogs and cats is their readiness to provide comfort to, and keep company with, the ill.

And the dying....

And, let's admit it, the recently deceased. Cats and dogs interact with the dead for months and even years after the bodies have been interred. Examples abound.

This is true among their own species and, clearly, among those of other species a dog or a cat may have adopted as family. You, for instance.

It is common for me to hear of a family pet, either dog or cat, continuing to interact with a family member who has passed away. In households who have more than one pet, this is also true when one of their four-legged life companions experience death. I could list dozens of examples I have heard from people who were party to such ghost sensitivity from their family's animals.

I have used examples I have heard as detail and background for stories in both Ghost Dogs of the South and Ghost Cats of the South.

There is another death-bed sort of a ghost I have heard from people who have experienced it. It is a ghost I call The Unknown Comforter. I'll provide a recent true life example in my next blog post.

Hunting the American Witch of Folklore

As I continue to skulk about collecting antique images of witches and witchcraft of American folklore, I came upon this stunning circa-1910 reproduced painting of the Witches of Harz Mountain (Germany). I have added this antique postcard to the collection as a comparison to American folklore witches.


Hell hounds, pitchforks, bat wings, flying pigs! These are so much more frightening images of witches than found at the same time in American produced images of our supposedly scary Halloween witches.


Many of the German traditions were transplanted in American folklore. The close association of witches with Satan, happily, has not made the transition to the American psyche. Even with our history of having put people to death as witches in Salem Massachusetts, Americans tend to keep our evil witches and Satan apart.

In American folklore, individuals tend to tangle with Satan on his lonesome own. In the South, we out-fiddle him, for one thing.

Still, it is striking to compare our "scary witch" traditonal image to that of Germany's. Copied below, and printed for popular consumption at about the same time as the above Harz Mountain witches, is the American image of a witch in flight on her broom (here depicted as being a Salem Massachusetts witch).


Maybe in America, we prefer happier witches. Even though we killed a bunch of people once for being bewitched.