Children’s psychic experiences can be both the most poetic and the most frightening. According to the reports I get, the average ghost sighting is a completely visual experience. Other sensory phenomena – sounds, moving objects, even electrical effects – are almost never involved. The images reported are of adult people, children, shadows, and even animals. […]
1 So I admit it. I let the food run low for Disko and Fortnight over the weekend. It looked like there was just enough Science Diet to make it till Monday, and I meant to visit the vets before noon on Saturday to stock up just in case. But I had to go to […]
The recent passing of Lughnasadh (July 31/August 1) has set a couple of reflections into me. Most of you are probably wondering, though, what Lughnasadh may be. The Celtic holiday called under various spellings Lughnasadh was dedicated to the harvest’s first fruits. Usually pronounced, “Loo-NA-sa,” the word means, “Lugh’s gathering/assembly.” Traditionally held on the eve […]
[Through back-channels I heard the story of a Canadian boy who may have been studied in Toronto in the 1990s. He had some disability, possibly Downs Syndrome, and it was said that when he became agitated, some impressive psychic phenomena could get started. Everyone interpreted the flying objects and other unexplained physical effects as threatening […]
[Readers may know me as a chronicler of other people’s supernatural experiences. They may not expect me to have my own. It’s true that I don’t have many. I believe I had such a moment recently by an ancient monument in southeastern Ohio.] 1 The state of Ohio is decked with the earthworks of the […]
Talking Animals and Medicine People: The Supernaturalism of the Upstate Iroquois One of the world’s most impressive storytelling traditions is that of the six New York Iroquois nations. The Longhouse folk who call themselves Hodenosaunee populated the hills, woods and creeks of the upstate with a virtual zoo of supernatural beings, and their imaginations thrilled to […]
In my last post I referred to the beautiful fable given us by the young bardic poet Dónall Ó Héalaà at the home of Andrea and Owen O Suilleabhain. It was about the Gaelic champion Conan and the villagers who were helping him haul his treasure-chest back to the High King at Tara. The villagers […]
I mentioned the wonderful little party I attended last week at the home of Owen O Suilleabhain. I was there just long enough to meet everyone and hear the young bardic poet Dónall Ó Héalaí give us a preview presentation before his foray west and his upcoming Tedtalk. Let’s all wish him deserved success! Donall’s […]
[Supernatural folklore and ancient monuments go hand in hand in Europe. In the Americas, the connection is not so well known.] When the first historic European cultures, the Celts, moved into northern and western Europe, they found the landscape marked by the monuments of an earlier people. Many of them were apparently simple constructions of […]
The Iroquois nations of upstate New York have as developed a tradition of Little People – “the Djogao,” the “Jungies,” the fairies – as any folk on earth. The wee folk still surface now and again, if reports are to be believed. The young guys hang out at a certain tobacco shop on the Tuscarora […]