But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate.
(Ah, let us mourn! — for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
From “The Haunted Palace” by Edgar Allan Poe
Just a thin veil, between this world
And that world of beauty and love,
Just a thin veil that hides the view
Of our Spirit loved ones above!
~ Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, “Just a Thin Veil,” 1940s
Who thought that these little tubs would ever be big enough for trick-or-treating? But, they were so cool!
My ghost? Do you suppose I’m fool enough to go to the expense of keeping one of my own, when there are so many charming ones in my friends’ closets?
~Edith Wharton, “The Eyes,” Tales of Men and Ghosts, 1910
“In Montmorency [Quebec], the ghost is thought to be Mathilde Robin. In 1759, in the middle of the Seven Years War, Mathilde had found her true love in Louis Tessier, a local farmer and member of the militia who asked for her hand in marriage. Her father approved of the match and the two were to be married at the end of the summer in 1759.
“However, this was a turbulent time in QuĂ©bec and Louis was soon sent to fight in the Battle of Beauport, which took place at the base of the Montmorency Falls on July 31, 1759.
“The English forces were controlled by General James Wolfe who is famous for taking QuĂ©bec during the Plains of Abraham. He would not be victorious during this battle; wet air from the falls and a sudden storm ruined the English gun power and the British troops were forced to retreat. Wolfe recorded 210-deaths in this journal. The French leader, Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, recorded 60.
“However, for poor Mathilde, the French were victorious but her beloved Louis was one of the 60-militiamen who were killed. In her grief, it’s believed that she put on her wedding dress and threw herself from the top of the falls, where they had met the evening before. People have claimed to have heard her cries or to have seen her ghost in a white dress falling from the top of the falls.”
From The Travel Geek: Montmorency: La légende de la Dame blanche
Going into Flight 666, I was anxious that I was being introduced to characters simply to watch them get their heads ripped off later on. I am happy to report that this movie didn’t turn into a gory disaster movie. Instead, the story, although cheesy, was an interesting plot for the premise of a haunted flight.
Not recommended, necessarily, but worth it for a movie night 🍿.
Pallatina, Rob. Flight 666, Slightly Distorted Productions / The Asylum, 2018.
In Mesopotamia, ghost stories have been discovered as far back as 5,000 years ago.
According to the Mesopotamians, when a person’s physical body died, it created what was known as a gidim, an imprint or image of the person at the time of their death which retained their memories and personality in ghost form.
In the mythology of the afterlife, people believed the soul of the dead would travel to the underworld or Irkalla, an inescapable place where spirits would dwell for eternity.
However, in some cases, it was even thought that spirits or gidim could escape and infiltrate the mortal world. Mesopotamians believed the gidim who dwelled in the mortal realm did so because they had not received a proper burial. They assumed these spirits could not find peace, so instead they would haunt family and friends.
The Epic of Gilgamesh
When the people of ancient Mesopotamia experienced illnesses and misfortune, they believed it was caused by hauntings, or gidim. Mesopotamians regularly made offerings to the dead to placate them if they thought a gidim was responsible. A famous example of one such spirit from ancient literature is found in the Epic of Gilgamesh. In the epic story, king Gilgamesh summons his friend and war-hero Enkidu back from the dead, inviting him into the mortal world in ghost form.
From The Collector: Ancient Ghost Stories From Around the World
