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Nocturnal Treasures

Posted in Animals, Books, Children, Children's Books, Children's Literature, Fantasy, Fiction, vampires, Wildlife with tags , , , , , , , on June 8, 2012 by mariathermann

This blog has reported about squirrels, aardvarks, hedgehogs, moths, fairies, snakes, ghosts, oak and willow trees, dragons and knights, aardwolves, raccoons, hyenas, cats and bats, goblins and all manner of other creatures of the night.

While the supernatural ones can undoubtedly take care of them selves, Willow the Vampire has made it her business to defend the natural world and its denizens against mankind’s thoughtlessness, cruelty and plain stupidity. In Willow’s quest for allies to help her rescue Earth from dark forces of the underworld, my eleven-year-old heroine has already shown herself to be a staunch defender of the rights of animals.

Who could forget her making a smorgasbord of the research staff at Stinkforthshire’s very own Cosmetic Lab, where animal testing took on a new meaning, once Willow had sunk her fangs into the security guard?

Every day somewhere in the world some nocturnal treasure trove is plundered and its contents spoilt forever. From the rainforests in South America to the ancient woodlands of Britain, commerce and greed will always find an excuse to plunder nature’s treasure chest.

Once a species is lost, there is little we can do to get it back, be it a wildflower, a rare newt, a strange looking toad or a Red Panda. In J K Rowling’s series of Harry Potter books Hermione rightly spoke out for the rights of elves, the much put upon servants of wizards and Hogwart’s School of Wizardry. In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy the Shire’s natural world is defended by the Hobbits, who’d give their lives to protect what truly matters in this world. In T H White’s The Once and Future King the young King Arthur is taught by Merlin what it takes to be another being, a different creature, seeing the world through somebody else’s eyes.

What seems to make sense in literature and what we agree is right and proper is just that much harder to follow in real life. Seeing an appeal on my Facebook account from Compassion in World Farming I feel ashamed that I frequently forget the cows in the fields, the chicken in the coop, the geese in their pen, the lambs being led to the slaughter.

Willow the Vampire might ask herself often, how she’d survive, if bloodsucking was no longer an option and humans became extinct – or were at least off the menu on moral grounds.

Why are we humans still eating meat, when our insatiable appetite for flesh forces poor farmers to clear more and more land so cattle can graze, fart and pollute the very air we breathe, only to be shipped in horrific life transports to the other end of the world, where animals are slaughtered under the most barbaric conditions?

Various experiments have shown that we can exist far more healthily on a meat free diet. Do we fear our blood will became even tastier for vampires, if we “taint” it with carrots, broccoli and all the other 5 healthy elements we’re supposed to have every day?

Admittedly, we would once again be a lot shorter, once the over-supply of protein stops. Monk-y-monk-boys from the 14th century were an awful lot smaller than the average Welsh woman is today – crusading knights would probably fit into a hoodie made for a ten-year-old today. The average Hollywood hunk would suddenly retail at just 5 ft, while the starved bimbos treading the Paris cat walk would look like every other vertically challenged dumpling the rest of us females see in the mirror every day.

Our obsession with meat-munching has reached such levels that celebrities drape themselves in raw flesh to gain attention and whole nations have become so fat they can no longer leave the house. Will we all start eating each other after Armageddon or Ragnarök has happened, like the French black comedy Delicatessen suggests (1991, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro directed)?

What will happen to vampires, if humans start eating humans and we return to our cannibalistic ways? Will a future encyclopaedia of animals mark them out as being extinct, along with the oak trees, the Red Pandas, the moths, the foxes, the aardvarks, the hedgehogs, the raccoons and even the snakes?

Adam and Eve have so much to answer for – not because they sought knowledge, but because they used it to exterminate the world.

(original artwork copyright Maria Thermann, animation: heathersanimation.com)

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Not making the same Mistakes in the Afterlife

Posted in Books, Children, Children's Books, Children's Literature, Children's Stories, Fantasy, Fiction, vampires with tags , , , , , , on June 4, 2012 by mariathermann

It seems that some of us never learn and are doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again. Some never learn with regard to money and fall for every conman they meet, others fall in love with the wrong person every time, but won’t hear of changing their ways, when friends tell them to stay clear of cheats and ruthless seducers.

Some people never think of the consequences of their actions and believe they will be forgiven, no matter what they do – their charm and winning smile allows them to get away with murder during their lifetime; in some case, quite literally, but in their afterlife they’ll have to face up to what they did.

Only when we are brought face to face with our demise do some of us realise we cannot go through life without leaving some mark, even if we believe ourselves to be a fairly unassuming nobody, who wouldn’t hurt a fly or invisible, because we are of no interest to society at large. Words can often cut more than we realise, hurt even more than an actual blow. Yet rarely do we go back and say sorry or try to make amends to relative strangers or those we do not deem that important to our happiness.

In Willow the Vampire’s adventures I love to play with the notion that humans rarely get a chance to put things right, while vampires do, since they have their eternal afterlife to seek redemption. Meeting a large number of ghosts in her next adventure, Willow will for the first time understand the value of being a vampire, of not being mortal.

Ghosts are troubled spirits. Some seek revenge for the wrongs done to them during their lives, others cannot find peace, because they did someone a wrong they never had the chance to put right. Others again had an unhappy life, sometimes because of their own making. There are those men and woman who only ever date the brainless, but pretty and never find true happiness as a result. Others like to subdue and conquer in their relationships and are only content when they can humiliate those they call their friends. There are bullies and sadists, eternal victims and martyrs and those who are too arrogant to care much about anything.

A vampire’s afterlife is quite different from that of a ghost. The Egyptians depicted their dead looking very much like they did in life. The Book of the Dead shows people wearing the same style of clothes, eating the same type of food and doing similar things to those they did in life. Some ghosts reappear as animals, mostly as birds, in some cultures, while vampires have the option how they want to return and can change their appearance almost at will – at least with some practice and with the help of ancient magic. Vampires will retain some of their human characteristics, some will even be enhanced, but on the whole they will turn into quite a different creature to the one they were when blood still pulsed through their veins.

While our bodies might be cremated or buried in some grave, many people believe our souls or spirits remain, either floating to some paradisiacal land called heaven or tumble straight into hell for our “sins”. Traditional Romanian folklore puts vampires far more into the same category as ghosts than modern fiction has done since Bram Stoker wrote his Dracula. Modern vampires spend their afterlife chasing teenage lovers, fighting for justice or simply battling against werewolves for the sheer fun of it.

I’d like to believe that someone, no matter what they were like in their first life, would use their afterlife to contemplate about the mistakes they made the first time round and try to put things right. The afterlife will last an awfully long time – a whole eternity in fact – so trying to atone for the things we did wrong and gaining redemption from those we wronged during our lifetime seems one of the few things truly worthwhile doing when we’re dead.

(animation source: heathersanimation.com)

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Expect the Unexpected

Posted in Books, Children, Children's Books, Children's Literature, Fantasy, Fiction, vampires with tags , , , , , on June 1, 2012 by mariathermann

My apology, I have been rather slack with my Willow the Vampire blog this last week – but between visiting Italian mothers and new Polish flatmate arriving, my existing flatmate F. causing chaos because she’s cooking THE first meal for her YOUNG MAN, clients wanting their translations done and me wanting to have a bit of a social life, blogging has had to take a back seat this week.

I’ve long given up making plans, since life never works out the way we envisage it. Come to think of it, expecting the unexpected is very much in the nature of vampires, witches, ghouls, ghosts, elves, goblins, fairies, trolls and all the other nocturnal critters I have been blogging about. They never take anything for granted and enjoy their existence to the full, knowing at any moment the party might come to an abrupt end.

Supernatural beings are usually not that easy to get rid off, though. As humans, we are far more vulnerable than we think. When we’re young, we believe we’re invincible and forget, the unexpected is lurking everywhere. One minute you’re going fishing, minding your own business and hoping for a nice bit of trout for your dinner – the next minute the Creature from the Black Lagoon swallows you whole, before letting off one almighty burp.

Or you’re strolling down a Stinkforthshire country lane and suddenly ZAP, a vampire mother hurls herself at you and takes a chunk out of your leg – sorry, make that throat. Even in school we’re not safe. There are bullies among the students and even worse bullies among the teachers. And then there’s Mr Henderson, the headmaster…also known as Evil Incarnate (at least that’s what’s written below the official sign on his door)

Willow the Vampire’s friend Eddie Strongarm expected a happy marriage, but ended up being married to the pet killer from hell. He also expected to inherit a fortune, but death duties ate up most of his legacy. Now a vampire, Eddie is wondering what the after-life could possibly throw at him that could be worse than having been married to THAT woman or being already dead.

His ancestor Edwin Strongarm the crusader also got a bit of a surprise, when he entered a temple in medieval Jerusalem in the hope of some easy-to-carry-loot. Far from being the cash-n-carry Edwin had hoped for, the temple’s most important artefact came rather unwillingly – thanks to the grumpy dragon attached to it.

As for Willow, just when she’s come to terms with being rather different from other vampire kids, she’s now having to cope with something even more irritating than a set of fangs and a hankering for vanilla ice cream instead of blood served straight from throbbing veins.

That floaty, glowy thing, she has no control over, which happens every time she gets nervous or a little overexcited. Puberty strikes again, I hear you cry, but in Willow the Vampire and the Würzburg Ghosts life is never as straightforward as that.

Expecting the unexpected and living each day as if it was our last is a lesson many of us have to learn the hard way – me included. When we are told, our lives are about to end due to illness or when a loved one is lost forever, we often shake our heads in despair and say “I should have seen that coming, life was just too good right now”.

Living each day as if a vampire might rip out our throat and suck the life out of us, when we least expect it, provides us with that little thrill we have been craving to spice up our humdrum lives – ever since we discovered our troglodyte neighbours were just waiting to brain us the moment we stuck our heads out of our caves with a hearty “Good Morning, have you seen Grotto-Mart’s got a special offer on clubs this week?”

For those of you who have loved ones, friends and family, give them a hug RIGHT NOW and tell them how much they mean to you. RIGHT NOW, do you hear? For in that dark shadow in the corner by the fridge freezer over there lurks goodness knows what, ready to take a chunk out of your leg…erm…throat (I blame Google translate).

But what’s this…can’t you hear it? That soft thud from under the floorboards…

Is this an apparition from an Edgar Allan Poe story or is there really a heart beating under your carpet tiles? Can’t you hear it…it’s beating faster and faster…actually, it’s yours…damn, how did you get there?

Ah yes, that visiting Italian mother turned out to be a crazed axe murder and the terrified Polish flatmate helped Signora L’Accetta tie you up with rope, before stuffing you between the Axminster and joists. You can hear the two women debating in pigeon English, what to do with you until the time is right to chop you up.

You’ll scream the house down? Go on, have a go – the Jubilee celebrations in the street below will drown out the noise of your cries for help. See if anyone hears you in the unoccupied flat below. Yes, old Mrs Busybody, the one who never lets you walk up the stairs without popping her head out of her door to say a few sharp words about the state of your garden has gone away to a better place – expect the unexpected, remember?

English: Edgar Allan Poe.

For those of you, who are like me alone in the world, please accept this as a virtual hug and a small reminder that life is brief, so make the most of it – and please don’t put off writing your novel until it is too late!

(source of animation: heathersanimations.com; picture credit above: Hinkler “Draw Fantasy Art“, E A Poe to the left: Wikipedia)

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Spectral Goblins

Posted in Animals, Children, Children's Books, Children's Literature, Fantasy, Fiction, vampires with tags , , , , , , , , on May 29, 2012 by mariathermann

The last few days’ sunshine have taken their toll on me and frankly, writing a blog about creatures of the night, when you’re roasting in the sun is rather difficult. A little blog-holiday is what I needed, but now I’m back.

Looking for inspiration I turned to my trusted friend the encyclopaedia of animals. If ever there was a creature that resembled a hobgoblin, it’s got to be the Spectral tarsier, although his cousin the Western tarsier comes a close second.

Spectral Tarsier

Spectral Tarsier (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tarsiers belong to the family known as Prosimians, meaning they are classed as primates but are really critters that existed before monkeys showed their faces in evolutionary terms. Most scientists today argue that tarsiers should really be classified as a suborder called Haplorhini to which monkeys and certain apes also belong.

Tarsiers have huge eyes, just like bush babies, but tarsiers’ eyes cannot move and they lack the light-reflecting disk to enhance their night vision. To make up for this inefficiency of nature, tarsiers can rotate their heads nearly a full circle or 360 degrees, putting a rather literal interpretation on the words “this is making my head spin”.

In fact, each eye of a tarsier is bigger than its brain, which perhaps explains the puzzled expression on their strange little faces. As tree-dwellers, they have long, skinny digits, so they can grasp branches better. They have very long, spindly legs and large ears with excellent hearing as well as a long, thing tail to help with navigation when leaping. Tarsiers are tiny, weighing only 165 gr or 6 oz., but they pack a punch when it comes to leaping, which they could easily do for the Olympics. Tarsiers can leap up to 20 feet or 6 m between trees.

In the trees they hunt for bats and birds. When on the ground foraging for insects, lizards or snakes tarsiers hop on their hind legs, making them look more than ever like Dobby the Elf (J K Rowling, Harry Potter books).

Tarsier

While Willow the Vampire and her friends are unlikely to encounter a tarsier in rural Stinkforthshire, elves and goblins are another matter. As Willow’s world widens – she is going to be 12 in the next story and therefore more independent – she discovers that humans and vampires share Earth with all manner of natural and supernatural beings, not all of them friendly.

Being able to distinguish friend from foe, good characters from bad, is something we hope to learn as we grow up. Some of us are destined to fall for the same tricks time and again, others get wiser with experience and learn from their mistakes. Being taken in by fine words and charming gestures is something we warn our kids about. “Don’t take sweets from strangers” we say to them as they leave for school or the playground, but we rarely follow our own advice.

At work or in our social life we often meet goblins and dark elves who charm us with their otherworldliness, their different looks and their flattery. Some of us mean us real harm, see as “sport”, somebody to trick and fool. Others are just mischievous and want to have fun. Either way, we end up getting hurt, when we forget that they might look us straight in the face with those big, innocent eyes of theirs, but their heads can turn all the way round to talk about us disparagingly without us realising.

Dobby in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ...

Dobby in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Spectral tarsiers or spectral goblins, either way they are a learning experience for Willow the Vampire to endure. Not all our foes wield swords, fangs and claws. Some make cute twittering noises and flatter their eyelashes at us, before attempting to strangle us with their long fingers and toes.

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Vampires feast in Times of War

Posted in Animals, Books, Children, Children's Books, Children's Literature, Fantasy, Fiction, vampires with tags , , , , , , on May 23, 2012 by mariathermann

Throughout the ages some religious nutters somewhere in the world have started wars, called upon their “faithful followers” to participate in crusades and have persecuted those who refused to believe in the rubbish spouted out of the mouths of lunatics.

As Willow the Vampire and her friends battle the forces of evil, they come across religious demagogues and their acolytes, miffed pagan gods with an axe to grind and people pretending to be into a trendy cause, when they are really just following their own agenda. My last post mentioned the crusades with regard to the practice of knights and soldiers getting rich by taking prisoners of war hostage for ransom.

Knights and noble born people could also get rich and gain power by joining the Church – which, throughout the time Christianity has existed, has been split into a number of factions thanks to followers with varying degrees of greed for power and money as well as sanctimonious pretensions to be “holier than thou”.

In times of war, vampires feast and their influence over humans increases. Bloodsuckers of all denominations can hide their victims among the death and carnage created by humans, who tell us that they follow some God and do this out of love to save our souls.

Among the many outrages committed by those who fought crusades, the Albigensian Crusade is perhaps one of the most disturbing, as it pitted Christian against Christian for a change. When in January 1208 a papal legate was found murdered on the banks of the Rhone River in France, Pope Innocent III (if ever there was irony intended in naming him thus, it was undoubtedly lost on the man) was quick to point the finger at the “heretics” and Raimon VI, who was Count of Toulouse at that time.

English: Pope Innocent III wearing a Y-shaped ...

Pope Innocent III forced all Christians to take up arms against the heretics and the Count of Toulouse, thus turning the area between the Garonne and the Rhone Rivers into a battlefield for the next two decades. The region involved in this most bloodthirsty of wars was located in what we today know as Southern France. While many historians still refute that the Cathars, as these “heretics” were allegedly called, ever existed, many eyewitness reports from men, women and children survive to this day, which say otherwise.

The way people were forced to live during two long decades of persecution for essentially believing in the same God and the same religion defies all reason. Reading about such events, one is quick to mutter “this would never happen today”, but then suddenly remembers with a pang such madness and persecution goes on daily in other parts of the world even as I’m writing this.

In Willow the Vampire and the Sacred Grove I have scattered the seeds for the dilemmas my young vampire protagonist is going to face. As the old saying goes, all’s fair in love and war – a proverb that vampires in particular seem to have taken to heart. Where better to take advantage of human frailty than among the refugees and displaced? Where better to enjoy a feast than on the battlefield among the slain knights and their soldiers? Where better than to sow discord among humans than in Church?

When two parties fight, the smart third party looks on and waits, who’s going to be the winner. It’s also a great opportunity to ascertain the strengths and weaknesses of both sides. Vampires thrive on mankind’s struggle to come to terms with humanity’s role in a vast universe. Those who claim to believe in the divine have always been quick to condemn people with a different point of view and have sought throughout the ages to subdue, conquer and oppress – perhaps because in them greed and lust for power have replaced that which is supposed to make us “humane”?

While the hunting parties of Innocent III went about slaughtering men, women and children, holy soldiers telling themselves they would be rewarded for this “love of Christ” in heaven, vampires must have been sharpening their fangs and claws to get ready for a glutton’s party. When we succumb to handing over the responsibility for our actions to another authority, be it divine or just imagined, we instantly open a window in our hearts and souls for evil to sneak in. Instead of surrendering ourselves to the divine, we are giving up what makes us human to the dark forces of the underworld. We simply become puppets, devoid of our own free will.

Animals, be they creatures of the night or day, retain their free will at all times and never give into the temptation of power, greed and wanting to have influence over others – if there is a divine element in the universe, it created animals as the yardstick by which we should measure our actions. Unlike the aforementioned papal pest, animals are truly innocent and blessed in every sense of the word. We might be strutting around in our man-made designer boots, preach in our man-made temples and fly around in our man-made contraptions, but animals don’t need any of such trappings to be in a state of grace.

Apart from the wars humans wage on behalf of whatever religion they have invented to make sense of their place in the universe, we have gone to war against Earth itself. Over the last few decades we have successfully reduced the world’s animal and plant species by more than 30%, putting our very existence as well as what remains of paradise into peril.

Vampires feast in times of wars. They not only receive the blood they crave, but thrive on mankind relinquishing its humanity. Every time I read about another endangered species, I hear a chorus of vampires laughing, their fangs bared and their claws ready to finish off what will be left of the world, when all resources have been destroyed by our humane ways of living.

The Earth seen from Apollo 17.

Perhaps relinquishing our divine superiority complex and embracing our animal instincts might help us to find our place in the universe?

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Why biting People for a Living is not always a bad Thing

Posted in Animals, Books, Children, Children's Books, Children's Literature, Fantasy, Fiction, vampires with tags , , , , , on May 17, 2012 by mariathermann

Throughout this series of blog posts I have tried to see things from the underdog’s point of view – moths rather than butterflies, aardvarks rather than koalas.

So what of my vampy girl Willow? How is the protagonist of my children’s novel different from other vampires?

Essentially vampires are creatures of the night – Bram Stoker’s Dracula as well as the ensuing Hollywood films and even Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer have established in our minds that sunshine kills off vampires and that their place inthe world is therefore firmly established after bedtime, when the owls are hooting and the moon illuminates gravestones most eerily.

Willow the Vampire turns out to be different in that she is a child of light. However, her family and all other vampires in the Stinkforthshire world I’ve created are strictly nocturnal. My vampires bite people, they suck blood to survive but – waste not want not – they also eat people whole, when the mood takes them. Cured slice of vicar any one?

Written entirely from the vampire child’s point of view, the novels show Willow’s dilemma in coming to terms with who she is. Her mother wants Willow to be a good hunter of human prey, her father would like her to be more ruthless and Willow’s peers think she’s pretty lame, when it comes to knowing about vampire etiquette and history. Her human friends just want her to be happy.

What do you do when you are attracted to the “other side”? Willow has human friends as well as vampire ones…not all vampires are evil fiends, they simply hunt to survive just like humans eat animals. Humans and vampires are simply two different species trying to use Earth’s resources to their best advantage, right?

Not all humans are good people  either – some are murderers, some think nothing of hurting children and others enjoy torturing animals. When we grow up we discover the world cannot be defined by strict rules – black is not always black as the night, white is not always as white as the mist at dawn. Is Willow’s human friend Rita a bad person because she cannot hold down a job? Is headmaster Henderson evil because he craves fame and aspires to be mayor, not caring how he achieves his goal and who he tramples in the process?

Just like Anne Rice’s latest creature of the night, a handsome werewolf, Willow decides that biting and eating bad humans is for the time being the best option she has. As we grow older, we learn that our ability to compromise is what makes humans so successful as a species.

In the fictional world of Stinkforthshire, the Vampire Council has strict rules about how many vampires are allowed to live in any one area so as to avoid detection by humans – after all, littering rural Stinkforthshire with human corpses that have been sucked dry would soon get a whole squadron of slayers out! No, biting only people, who’d otherwise have vanished underground thanks to their illegal activities, guarantees the vampire species’ survival in an increasingly “human” world.

Biting people for a living can also be very rewarding when you know these people are harming others without ever being brought to justice for their crimes. Thus, Willow and her family bite bankers, greedy businessmen, insurance salesmen and those who experiment on animals.

Some might argue my child protagonist should learn how to live on carrot juice and in harmony with humans instead – but in the real world bankers, greedy businessmen, insurance salesmen and those torturing animals don’t live in harmony with the rest of humanity either and couldn’t care less how many living beings their actions plunge into misery!

Why not let my vampires do something truly useful and let them bite people for a living who deserve to have their despicable activities brought to an end?

While in fiction we have the good fortune to deal adequately with those who deserve a sticky end, in real life we often scratch our heads in despair and wonder what’s to be done with utterly unscrupulous people who operate only just within the law, but still manage to defraud or cheat millions of people.

Little vampire

Little vampire (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I often wonder if writers should not use their limitless imagination to come up with non-violent, legal but utterly devastating punishments for such wrong-doers. Like not allowing bankers to shop for groceries in their local stores or ban them from every wine bar, pub and restaurant in the world, not take their kids at nurseries, snub them in the street or deposit our money with credit unions instead – perhaps boycotting such creatures of the fiscal might at every human level will make them see the light? So far nothing else has worked to get bankers, multinational pharmaceuticals and insurance companies into line.

Biting such people where it hurts – their self-esteem and their bank balance – is a good thing not only vampires should enjoy…by what legal, non-violent means do you think we could rid the world of such creatures of the fiscal might?

NB: If you live in Greece, you don’t have to answer this question.

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Things that go bump in the Night

Posted in Books, Children, Children's Books, Children's Literature, Fantasy, Fiction, vampires with tags , , , , , on May 15, 2012 by mariathermann

We’ve encountered some truly strange creatures of the night so far, from insomniacs to moths, from witches and ghosts to Willow the Vampire herself.

Ghosts come in a variety of guises and the German word Poltergeist describes a noisy, rumbustious type of ghost or goblin that likes to play pranks on the inhabitants of a house or dwelling. The spirit of a deceased moves into a home – for reasons that might not be apparent at first glance – and starts throwing furniture about by invisibly moving and manipulating objects. This is usually accompanied by groaning, knocking at doors and walls, scratching, rattling of chains and eerie screams for good measure.

The ultimate aim seems to be to drive the inhabitants from the dwelling so the poltergeist can have some peace. According to some cultures’ folklore, Poltergeister (German plural) haunt a particular person and recorded incidents date back as far as the 1st century AD.

In severe cases the Poltergeist – presumably if the living human is too thick to notice otherwise – resorts to biting, hitting, pinching and punching their intended victim. Throughout history there are recorded cases (such as Lithobolia 1698, explained on pamphlet in the British Museum, The Bell Witch of Tennessee 1817 to 1872, Rosenheim in Germany in 1967 and Borley Rectory, England in 1937 for example) of people being haunted by a Poltergeist.

In the Harry Potter books J K Rowling famously uses a poltergeist to great comic effect, but I’d like to return to the more sinister meaning of poltergeist activity in my Willow the Vampire novels. Originally Poltergeister were deemed to be malicious ghosts, spirits with an axe to grind.

Although over the  last couple of centuries people have tried to come up with various explanations of this paranormal phenomena – such as stress and anxiety of a householder causing the imagined events – nobody has so far had an adequate explanation that covers all the strange cases recorded over time.

It struck me that a guilty conscience of the householder – having previously committed some crime or grievous offence against someone – could be a good reason for a poltergeist or two to move into somebody’s home to take revenge.

Since Willow the Vampire and the Würzburg Ghosts is in part about exacting revenge for wrongs done to children, the introduction of this nocturnal avenger seems appropriate. And, as J K Rowling so beautifully demonstrated, one can have quite a lot of fun with such a creature of the night, too.

A 14-year-old domestic servant, Therese Selles...

A 14-year-old domestic servant, Therese Selles, experiences poltergeist / spontaneous PK activity in the home of her employer, the Todeschini family at Cheragas, Algeria, as featured on the cover of the French magazine La Vie Mysterieuse in 1911. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Spooky in the best sense of the word, Poltergeister who move objects, make strange noises and jump out at us from behind the curtain are part and parcel of growing up and learning not to be afraid of the night. The night terrors we perceive as children are often little more than furniture bathed in shadow and moonlight, suddenly unfamiliar at night and therefore frightening. When we grow up, we start to recognise what is real and what is imagined – at least most of us do, leaving writers out of this argument…

Looking at things from a different perspective is also a lesson we learn as we grow older. Revenge can sometimes be a good thing, but mostly it blinds us to the underlying causes of our real or perceived misery.

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Creatures of the Night

Posted in Books, Children, Children's Literature, Fantasy, vampires with tags , , , , , , on May 13, 2012 by mariathermann

Sorcery - animal transformation

Having just returned from a lovely walk in the rare Welsh sunshine, I’m reminded that my Willow the Vampire blog post is long overdue – and that, just like Willow, I’m more a child of the light than a creature of the night, when it comes to being at my best and most creative.

Our internal clock seems to have very much a mind of its own – some people thrive only during daytime hours and are at their best early in the morning, while others are strictly nocturnal and are at odds with the nine to five office routine. In bygone days, when people rose at dawn and went to bed when it got dark, being such a “nocturnal creature” must have given rise to suspicion among neighbours and friends.

Sorcery - Paramour with the devil

In an age, when anybody could be accused of witchcraft and sorcery for any number of idiotic reasons, the mere fact that somebody might be an insomniac could be seen as being in league with the devil. The Würzburg Witch Trials didn’t need sound reasons for accusing men, women and children of sorcery – and those accused had not even the right to defend themselves. Fire and brimstone where suspected everywhere – but particularly in the lives of women.

Typically, only 20 to 30 per cent of those burned for practicing sorcery were male. In Würzburg the percentage is surprisingly high with 40%. Of the 900 or so people who were executed, more than 300 victims were children. After 42 burnings at the stake the mass hysteria and murderous madness finally stopped on 30th August 1629. Even 48 members of the Church had been executed as sorcerers, no doubt denounced by other victims, who knew they stood no chance of survival and wanted a little revenge of their own.

Sleep – or the lack thereof – is a mysterious thing. We need our small death not as practice for the final long sleep but to stay alive and healthy. Doing without sleep for prolonged periods of time has serious implications for our wellbeing and sanity. Sleep deprivation is therefore often used as an interrogation method to wear suspects down and to torture them. It is likely that such methods were also used on those accused of witchcraft and would probably have admitted to whatever they were accused of – especially when being encouraged to denounce other people as being in league with the devil.

The Pendle Witch Trial in Lancaster, UK, in 1612, resulted in twenty people being under suspicion of sorcery, of which 16 were female and just 4 were male. Unlike the Würzburg Trials, the Pendle witches were at least allowed to defend themselves and some were acquitted without trial. There are quite a lot of details about the men and women accused and it seems that in those days just being a little eccentric and muttering to yourself could get you into serious trouble – in which case I’m most certainly a witch and will probably one day end up being tied to a stake.

When I read the description of Witch Demdike, an old woman from Pendle Forest, I think that just being an independent women could get you accused of using sorcery. The old lady might have been a cantankerous old thing, but seemed rather harmless – until some neighbour decided she had said something offensive and therefore had to be a witch.

Being an independent woman seems to have been the most grievous offence in an age, when the Church continuously told everyone that women were in league with the devil, no doubt because the Church wanted to appease male egos about their insecurities…and this is of course still going on today in many countries around the world, where male religious fanaticism always sees evil in women and children, never in themselves. In some countries being independently minded still gets women killed.

Old Mrs Demdike died worn out and aged before she could be brought to trial. Perhaps she was just an old woman who’d had trouble sleeping and liked to walk at night muttering to keep herself company and stop herself from feeling alone – she died in prison as her Christian neighbours could not tolerate anybody who was even slightly different from themselves.

Crossroads in the Happy Valley On the outskirt...

Crossroads in the Happy Valley On the outskirts of Roughlee on the edge of the Forest of Pendle. The grit bin is on Jinny Lane. The spoof pointer to Lancaster Castle is a reminder of the place of execution of the Pendle Witches. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I walk in the bright sunshine I often think of those night time ramblers, those independent women bringing up kids on their own, who might have aroused suspicion in their 17th century neighbourhood and might have been accused of sorcery simply because they were creatures of the night.

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Getting Axed

Posted in Animals, Books, Children, Fantasy, Fiction, vampires, Wildlife with tags , , , , , , on May 10, 2012 by mariathermann

Once Winfrid and his axe had murdered Thor’s ancient oak, the slaughter generally began. Medieval Christendom’s obsession with the destruction of trees is in fact haunting us to this day.

From AD 900 onwards the largest parcels of land were all owned by the various monastic orders. Among them the Cistercians, who could best be described as the “shock and awe” equivalent of medieval times, since they are largely responsible for mindless deforestation fuelled by greed. Once forests had been cleared, the newly created fields were rented out, making monastic orders rich in the process and those who worked the fields considerably poorer.

Oak trees were also used widely in the construction of churches, chapels and monastic settlements. Just like the pagan Norse shrines had been surrounded by oak, so were the ones dedicated to Christ, with the difference that pagan ceremonies took place in the living forest, while Christians killed off the trees to use only dead wood in their worship.

When the sixteenth century arrived, European axes never stopped falling and the once plentiful oak forests were decimated even further. Oak was mainly used to build ships that could cross the oceans. Although Britain had once been covered in oak forests, by the seventeenth century there was a severe oak shortage and timber like pine had to be important from the Baltic and from as far away as America.

The other types of trees that play a major part in Willow the Vampire and the Sacred Grove as well as in the sequel Willow the Vampire and the Würzburg Ghosts are ash trees, since the World Tree Yggdrasil is an ash tree and, naturally, the willow tree, which has had all sorts of magical and healing powers.

Ash trees belong to the genus fraxinus, which in turn belongs to the family Oleaceae, meaning olive-tree like. There are some 45 to 65 species in the family and most are deciduous, although some are evergreen. In Norse mythology the first man (Askr) was fashioned from ash, while the first woman was fashioned from alder tree. Ash lends itself to be made into a number of useful human tools like shafts for bows and arrows or handles as well as being excellent for fire wood. Odin’s staff or spear Gungir is made from ash and is said to be indestructible.

Hypercompe scribonia English: Giant leopard mo...

Willow Band was named after the willows that stand along river banks and lakes. The genus of Salix contains some 400 different species, some are dwarf varieties that creep, others are purely ornamental in our gardens such as the weeping willow. In spring their pretty catkins often appear before the leaves have even opened. Willows are among the favourite food of our nocturnal friends, the Lepidoptera, which leave their larvae in the tree so that the little moths can feed the moment they emerge, among them the Giant Leopard Moth and the Minor Shoulder-knot moth.

Both leaves and bark of willow trees were used in ancient times by Egyptians, Assyrians and Sumerian doctors as a remedy for fever and various aches. Willow bark contains salicin, a substance not unlike our aspirin. Bees love willow trees because these trees flower very early in the year and give off pollen that bees need to produce honey.

An illustration of Ann Redferne and Chattox, t...

In witchcraft willow trees belong the nine sacred trees with a variety of magical properties. What those magical properties are and how Willow and her friends will use her namesake in their battle against Earth’s destruction will gradually be revealed in the next novel.

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For Sale: Toad, Cat and Cauldron, one careful previous Owner

Posted in Animals, Children, Children's Literature, Fantasy, Fiction, vampires with tags , , , , on May 4, 2012 by mariathermann

Francisco Goya's Los Caprichos: ¡Linda maestra...

As some of you might have guessed, at some point Willow the Vampire’s second adventure will have to have some ghosts – after all, the book title is Willow the Vampire and the Würzburg Ghosts!

We’ve met some of the creatures of the night Willow and her friends might encounter, but so far we’ve only scraped the surface when it comes to supernatural critters. The last blog post was about the European green toad and some time ago I wrote about nocturnal creatures like cats, dragons and  trolls, though I haven’t written about wicked fairies, yet.

What could therefore be more natural to bring witches into the equation? Not the large as life warts-an-all witches you’re thinking off – no, real people murdered by religious fanatics who suspected witches and warlocks behind every tree and wardrobe.

Marienkapelle auf dem Marktplatz in Würzburg.

The Würzburg ghosts are none other than people who were burned at the stake between 1626 and 1630. Many of them were small children and young adults of no more than 12 or 14 years of age. The aristocratic bishops Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn and his equally demented nephew Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg were solely responsible for brutally torturing and then burning more than 900 people. Anyone who spoke up in defence of those accused of witchcraft were instantly tried for sorcery themselves and before long ended up being burned alongside the other victims. The infamous Würzburg Witch Trials mark one of southern Germany’s darkest chapters with regard to religion.

Black cat, brooms and toads as well as cauldrons have for some reason always been associated with witches. My next Willow the Vampire novel will put a rather different spin on witches, given that a substantial number of those accused of witchcraft and subsequently murdered were very small children. Although quite a lot of the Würzburg  trial details were recorded, the noble bishops couldn’t even be bothered to have the names of the children registered along the adults they murdered, thus denying the children an existence – even in death. So much for Christian charity.

In the 1970s, when an underground garage and parking lot was to be built under the old market square right next to St Mary’s Chapel (Marienkapelle) in Würzburg, workmen discovered the charcoal remains of four posts that had been lined up opposite the entire length of the chapel. Dendrochronology discovered the remains of the wooden posts were indeed from the 17th century. In other words, the murders took place right outside the church, day in…day out. Hallelujah!

Deutsch: Würzburg - Statue des Julius Echter v...

Just outside of the old walled fortifications of the town there was another place of execution. Here workmen found not just the remains of wooden stakes and human bones…animals had been burned alongside their accused owners. It seems that many of the victims were first executed by having their heads severed, after which they were burned. Please do not attribute this to Christian charity either – the majority of buildings were made from timber at that time and the local magistrates felt it safer to keep fires under control – dead people burn more quickly and need smaller fires, so it seems. Like with all monsterous Christianevil doers, Julius Echter was honoured by the Church and had a statue erected in the city centre – while the names of the children and young people remain a mystery.

Willow and her friends will need their own army to fight monsters that are trying to end the world – what better than an army of ghosts…murdered children with no more evil in them than the animals burned with them at that time?

Sell  my toad, black cat and cauldron, but leave me my broom so that I may paint a large picture of the Würzburg  children’s short lives and remember them through the magic of writing!

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