The Origin of Spooky Halloween Monsters

[Ninurta]

Well, it's almost that time. Halloween eve.

I've had this on my mind off and on for ya. I've put together every connection I could come up with, but don't think I'm even close to what you're shooting for Herr.

Time, location, some historical events, like plagues, as well as rulers of the time, are the only solid connections I've come up with.

I do remember hearing something long ago about how Mary Shelly's Frankenstein's monster character was actually a metaphor for something twisted, but I can't remember what it was.

I also picked up a new tidbit from watching a few vampire movies recently. I watched Bram Strokers Dracula, and noticed something i hadn't picked up on before. Count Dracula was a part of something called "The Order of the Dragon."
I watched Fright Night, the 2011 remake, the other night (not near as good as the original) and noticed the vampire character had a signet ring on, and they kept showing this ring repeatedly. After pausing the movie just right, and then zooming in, I noticed that ring had something like a dragon on it, but looked like something the rings freemasons wear. I wondered if it was some reference to that vampire being part of a secret society as well. This would mean vampires are members of a secret order.
Bram Strokers Dracula character was even something like a Knights Templar, before he became the undead. He was "protecting the church" before his true love dies by suicide, and becomes the undead. He cursed God, denounces his faith, drinks blood, and becomes an immortal blood sucking vampire.

I wonder if any of that will play into your thesis.

Inquiring minds are hoping you lay out something we can chew on for a bit. You've got a good build up going.

Drum roll, please...

Cheers

Regarding the dragon references, "Dracul", as in Vlad Dracul, means "The Dragon", and "Dracula" means "The Little Dragon".

Referring to the incident where the "true love" of Dracula commits suicide, Vlad Dracul's wife in the real world did commit suicide by jumping from a parapet down the cliff into the ravine below at his castle at Poenari... but I don't think "love" was a factor in their marriage, true love or no.There are many reports of "ghost lights" or orbs at Poenari, and the locals won't go up there after dark for fear of the spooks that haunt the place, which they believe to be malevolent.

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[Bally002]

Well, it's almost that time. Halloween eve.

I've had this on my mind off and on for ya. I've put together every connection I could come up with, but don't think I'm even close to what you're shooting for Herr.

Time, location, some historical events, like plagues, as well as rulers of the time, are the only solid connections I've come up with.

I do remember hearing something long ago about how Mary Shelly's Frankenstein's monster character was actually a metaphor for something twisted, but I can't remember what it was.

I also picked up a new tidbit from watching a few vampire movies recently. I watched Bram Strokers Dracula, and noticed something i hadn't picked up on before. Count Dracula was a part of something called "The Order of the Dragon."
I watched Fright Night, the 2011 remake, the other night (not near as good as the original) and noticed the vampire character had a signet ring on, and they kept showing this ring repeatedly. After pausing the movie just right, and then zooming in, I noticed that ring had something like a dragon on it, but looked like something the rings freemasons wear. I wondered if it was some reference to that vampire being part of a secret society as well. This would mean vampires are members of a secret order.
Bram Strokers Dracula character was even something like a Knights Templar, before he became the undead. He was "protecting the church" before his true love dies by suicide, and becomes the undead. He cursed God, denounces his faith, drinks blood, and becomes an immortal blood sucking vampire.

I wonder if any of that will play into your thesis.

Inquiring minds are hoping you lay out something we can chew on for a bit. You've got a good build up going.

Drum roll, please...

Cheers

Regarding the dragon references, "Dracul", as in Vlad Dracul, means "The Dragon", and "Dracula" means "The Little Dragon".

Referring to the incident where the "true love" of Dracula commits suicide, Vlad Dracul's wife in the real world did commit suicide by jumping from a parapet down the cliff into the ravine below at his castle at Poenari... but I don't think "love" was a factor in their marriage, true love or no.There are many reports of "ghost lights" or orbs at Poenari, and the locals won't go up there after dark for fear of the spooks that haunt the place, which they believe to be malevolent.

.

I like 'true loves.'  My 'true love' likes diving 'for' the parapet.  The deadly, devouring 'bearded clam' soon takes over.  Be ready and aware.  I am.


Now that's a deadly halloween monster mate.  While it devours you, just lay back.  The 'bearded clam' is more deadly than Dracula or any dragon.  Bring a snorkel, eye goggles and packet of smokes and lighter to survive.  

Halloween tonight here in Aust.

My best Scottish accent is added here.  "We're Doomed"

Kind regards,

Bally

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

Well, it's almost that time. Halloween eve.

I've had this on my mind off and on for ya. I've put together every connection I could come up with, but don't think I'm even close to what you're shooting for Herr.

Time, location, some historical events, like plagues, as well as rulers of the time, are the only solid connections I've come up with.

I do remember hearing something long ago about how Mary Shelly's Frankenstein's monster character was actually a metaphor for something twisted, but I can't remember what it was.

I also picked up a new tidbit from watching a few vampire movies recently. I watched Bram Strokers Dracula, and noticed something i hadn't picked up on before. Count Dracula was a part of something called "The Order of the Dragon."
I watched Fright Night, the 2011 remake, the other night (not near as good as the original) and noticed the vampire character had a signet ring on, and they kept showing this ring repeatedly. After pausing the movie just right, and then zooming in, I noticed that ring had something like a dragon on it, but looked like something the rings freemasons wear. I wondered if it was some reference to that vampire being part of a secret society as well. This would mean vampires are members of a secret order.
Bram Strokers Dracula character was even something like a Knights Templar, before he became the undead. He was "protecting the church" before his true love dies by suicide, and becomes the undead. He cursed God, denounces his faith, drinks blood, and becomes an immortal blood sucking vampire.

I wonder if any of that will play into your thesis.

Inquiring minds are hoping you lay out something we can chew on for a bit. You've got a good build up going.

Drum roll, please...

Cheers

I gave it away in my last post. Here is my thesis statement, "I concluded that classic Gothic horror stories are based on the history of the Late Medieval Period in Europe between 1300 and 1500. These stories later developed into their present form during the fall of the European feudal system in the mid-1800s."

The end of the feudal age in Europe, that is what gave birth to the current version of monsters that came from before in the late medieval period. It fits like a glove, IMO.

I thought I pretty well covered all that in that last post I made.

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

I finally put the essay up online. For anyone who wants to check it out, here is a link below . . .

Gothic Horror and the End of Feudal Age Europe

Let me know what you think. I shorted it up, edited it, and added a couple of pictures.

[BIAD]

I finally put the essay up online. For anyone who wants to check it out, here is a link below . . .

Gothic Horror and the End of Feudal Age Europe

Let me know what you think. I shorted it up, edited it, and added a couple of pictures.

Very well executed, Sir.
I can see the links between the soft change of perception during a dark disease-ridden period
where those traditionally deemed of higher intellect and noble standing failed to emulate the
what the lower-classes believed for a long time. Being 'well-bred' or immersed in a new type
of science doesn't make you a redemptive God! 

In today's society, that type of attitude isn't so regularly taken for granted as those placed on
a pedestal -for whatever reasons, tend to display their shortcomings quicker due to a hungry
media who longer report news. One might suggest that with the celebrity-craze, there are
more monsters now!

Well done, again.

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

Thanks for your perspective BIAD. Although I never pursued the idea, I had given a little consideration to how little has really changed since the feudal age. The comparison isn't a perfect one, then again neither is comparing the fall of Ancient Rome to the current dilemma of Western Society.

[Ninurta]

A pretty good read and premise, once the ideas were assembled together and articulated rather than being parceled out piecemeal as clues.

I've been thinking a lot about feudalism lately as well. Matter of fact, I made a post about it a couple of days ago here. My basic conclusion is that feudalism has not yet fallen from the face of the Earth, but it's sort of on the ropes and less prevalent, perhaps, than it once was - although it does appear to be in the ascendant again under the brand name of "Globalism". I believe firmly that socialism, communism, and now globalism were and are just an attempt to re-brand feudalism and make it palatable to the masses.

It's not a coincidence that Marxism appeared just when feudalism appeared to be in severe decline.

"You will own nothing and be happy" and "you will not need transportation because everything you need will be within a 15 minute walk of your home" both sound a LOT like serfdom to me, just a re-branding of the age old system, a continuation of renaming "serf" to "the proletariat".

To be honest, almost ANY political system is going to have a certain degree of feudalism built-in to it. Under any of them, with the singular exception of Anarchy, you are going to have those wielding the power and those subject to the power. The question is one of balance, the degree to which the subjects are subjected to the powerful. Anarchy is merely a throwback to the days of lawlessness, the world of dog-eat-dog and survival of the fittest, which is probably too far in the opposite direction. The ideal is to have some degree of governance, of law and order, while at the same time permitting the subjected to the greatest degree of freedom possible - i.e. "small government".

But yes, it was thought-provoking, and well laid out and articulated.

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[Michigan Swamp Buck]

Thanks for everyone's comments, it helped me add to and edit my essay. It also gave me more food for thought.

Did anyone notice my thanks to Rogue-Nation in tiny print at the bottom of the page after the copyright notice?

[Ninurta]

Thanks for everyone's comments, it helped me add to and edit my essay. It also gave me more food for thought.

Did anyone notice my thanks to Rogue-Nation in tiny print at the bottom of the page after the copyright notice?

Yessir, I did notice the thank you to Rogue-Nation, and thought it was a nice touch.

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[F2d5thCav]

Yeah, I keep getting vibes that a return to open feudalism is just around the corner.

It will be gussied up to not look so oppressive, but lipstick on pigs and all that.

Cheers

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that these feudal kingdoms went to war and then payed off their knights with land from conquered territory. They now own the land and everything on it, including the people that have lived there through every other lord or king that had ruled before the new bunch. The land and the people of the land are owned by the local lord or baron who collected taxes for themselves and the monarchy. Plus the land provided people for the on going war efforts.

So, as comparison, I can own land, but have to pay tribute to keep it in the form of property taxes. If the government needs my property, eminent domain can take it from me as well. If a war breaks out and I am able bodied and of a certain age range I could be drafted to fight in said war.

I guess I can think of a few more if I tried a little harder.

[Ninurta]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that these feudal kingdoms went to war and then payed off their knights with land from conquered territory. They now own the land and everything on it, including the people that have lived there through every other lord or king that had ruled before the new bunch. The land and the people of the land are owned by the local lord or baron who collected taxes for themselves and the monarchy. Plus the land provided people for the on going war efforts.

So, as comparison, I can own land, but have to pay tribute to keep it in the form of property taxes. If the government needs my property, eminent domain can take it from me as well. If a war breaks out and I am able bodied and of a certain age range I could be drafted to fight in said war.

I guess I can think of a few more if I tried a little harder.

Yes, in some cases the knights were paid off with conquered lands, especially after the Norman Conquest. They didn't actually "own" the serfs, but it was a defacto sort of slavery - the serfs were not allowed to leave the lands without permission, and had to work them and pay "taxes" to the Lord from their produce. So, he still got rich off their work, and used some of the surplus to pay taxes to HIS Lord, and so on right on up to the king.

Some times, one Lord would "poach" some particularly useful serfs from another Lord.

In America, the original "slaves" were indentured Irishmen, "transported" to America for being "troublesome". They were indentured to whomever paid for their transport for varying times, from 4 to 7 years, during which time they had to work for their masters to pay off the price of their indenture, which was the price of their transportation to America. At the end of their indenture, the master was bound by law to give them a suit of clothes and a gun, at which time they were free to go off and get their own lands, and make their own indentures if they had the money (from working that land) to transport more people.

Some of the people in America got their lands through indentures - they were granted an extra 50 acres for every indentured servant they paid transport for. Plus, they got the free labor from the people they indentured for the length of the indenture. Sweet deal, eh?

Some folks were just plain granted land, in huge tracts, through patents and royal charters and grants. Lord Fairfax comes to mind - he was granted a huge tract in what is now northern Virginia and eastern West Virginia. These lands were parceled out and sold to newcomers and freed indentured servants, who would live on the land as the "owner" and work it. Even thought hey "owned" the land by virtue of having purchased it from Lord Fairfax, they still had to pay him yearly "quitrents" from it. Those quitrents were paid to the Lord Fairfax instead of the government, but were the same thing as our modern taxes, just paid to the lord rather than to the government. Some time after the revolution, they became taxes paid to the government instead, but amounted to the same thing - money paid to a 3rd party to be allowed to continue to "own" their own lands.

I have some records of some of my ancestors having to pay quitrents to Lord Fairfax of 5 shillings per year, which back then was a considerable value more than it is now, due to inflation over the years.

The first African to come to North America came in 1619, to Jamestowne. They arrived as cargo on a ship captured in the incessant piracy on the Spanish, and were sold as indentures rather than true slaves. After the price of their "passage" was worked off, they were given their clothes and gun and sent off to make good on their own, the same as their Irish predecessors.

One of those original African indentures - or his son, but probably the original immigrant - was the first actual slave owner in Virginia through an act of the courts which made one of his indentured servants, John Casor, or John Bunch - I forget just now which was which - a "slave for life". This happened in either Accomack or Northampton County on the eastern shore of Virginia - that bit of VA on a spit of land east of the Chesapeake Bay that VA shares with MD. As I recall, he was made the first "slave for life" in America because of his runaway tendencies and therefore not giving the value of his passage to his master, who was also an African.

So those indentured servants were not true, legal, life-long slaves, nor were the serfs of old, but they could be punished as "runaways" the same as runaway slaves if they did not fulfill their obligations to their masters or lords. So, the difference is really academic because of a time-limit on their servitude on the part of the indentures and a slight chance of mobility (to the lands of the next-door Lord) on the part of the serfs..

So, yeah - taxes evolved from feudal quitrents, and slavery evolved from feudal serfdom via indentured servitude. Our world of today is an awful lot like the feudal world, just using different words for the same or scarily similar concepts. Those at the top of the heap, ever greedy, just want to take us back to full-on feudalism under different terminology, and are working diligently to that end.

Hence they do things like push electric vehicles and "15 minute cities" to reduce the mobility of us serfs, and push for themselves to own everything that we used to own so that they can rent it back to us.

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[Ninurta]

Background:

John Bunch

John Casor

Around that time, one of my own ancestors was a 17 year old Irish indentured girl named Mary. She was "stolen" from the Custis family (yes, THAT Custis family - the one George Washington married into a century later) by a young man named Christopher Nutter. Christopher got his ass into a legal sling over it, but they eventually married and fled to the Maryland Colony anyhow, settling at Saint Mary's. Christopher became an Indian trader with the Nanticoke Indians, and later became the chief interpreter with the Nanticokes for the Maryland Colony.

The Nanticoke Nation is a tribe that is no more.

Christopher Nutter

Mention of the Nutter court case

Nutter had a history of being a rogue.

The Bunch case was around 1640, and he Casor case around 1655. Court records of the Nutter affair in which he "stole" Mary from the Custis family are from around 1662. So, but for an accident of history, the Irish might have been declared chattel property rather than the Africans, as the cases were all congealing around the same time.

Now they are attempting to "indenture" us all back into serfdom and defacto slavery.

Feudalism never died - it just changed it's name.

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