(06-14-2024, 02:44 AM)VioletDove Wrote: Could be coincidence or FB 100% tracks where you go and what you read. I had to put it here because it seems to fit. A little Appalachia Folklore randomly landed in my newsfeed
I don’t know if it’s a real folklore but maybe @"Ninurta"#2 can verify.
I can’t quote the post because I lost it but I’ll try to remember what it said.
They are called Death Crowns or Angel Crowns. They happen when feathers in a pillow become matted in a certain way. This is seen as a sign that a loved one made it to Heaven. Then it is preserved, usually becoming a family heirloom.
There is a theory that some kind of electrical charge causes it but some people believe it’s a miracle.
There are supposed to be some in a museum in Tennessee.
That’s basically all I can remember. I only kind of skimmed through it before I had to go do something else and then when I went back to give it a good read couldn’t find it.
That's not something I've ever encountered that I know of, but that doesn't mean it's not so. There is a lot of weirdness here that I've run into, but there is a lot more weirdness that I HAVEN'T run into... yet.
My paternal granny was said to be a witch. The same was said for dad, as he was born "under a veil" or "with a caul", and that is supposed to confer strange powers on the conferee... and the same has been said about me, especially by my sisters, because I sometimes just "know" things that I shouldn't have any way of knowing.
But back to Granny. She was known to occasionally see "balls of fire" descend on houses and drop through the roof, and invariably the next morning someone in that house would be dead. She "knew" things some times, and taught some of my female cousins unusual means of divination that I've seen them use. There's no telling what she knew and did that I've never heard about.
My maternal granny, the one who lived in this house, was a "granny woman" or "medicine woman" that knew all manner of cures and concoctions out of the woods and from other sources. Just last week one of my cousins and I were talking about that, with him recalling how she cured him of a poison ivy infection. I never had that problem, because poison ivy has never affected me. He said she used buttermilk and some other goopy stuff to cure it. Just slathered it all over him wherever the rash was present.
I know she used to make cough medicine out of moonshine, rock candy, honey, and wild cherry bark. I think I still have a little jar of it on a shelf here that she made, and which will never be used. She's not around to make any more, y'know?
I've also got a mason jar of some concoction she made out of elderberries and God only knows what else. That'll never be used, either, and to be truthful I can't recall what it was used for anyhow.
She also used to cure whooping cough in children. When my ma was young, whooping cough was a big problem around here. A lot of folks bought special "whooping cough lamps" for their kids, but granny used asafoetidia instead. She'd hang a little cloth bag of it around the afflicted child's neck. If you've ever smelled it, it's no wonder it worked - if I was a kid and had asafoetidia hung around my neck, I'd do my damndest not to breath at all!
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