AN evil black-eyed child ghost has been captured on film sitting at a table during a Christmas party.
A pair of terrified teens spotted the demon after taking the snap at a pub.
Spooked pals Sophie Killip and Kayleigh Lomas, both 19, had met up for a festive get-together at the boozer.
But they were left horrified when the spectre appeared at one of the party tables in the photograph.
The
dark-haired child, who appears to have cuts on her head and be wearing
old fashioned clothes, seems to be staring straight at the camera from
sunken eyes. Spooked Sophie, a student,
said: “The table was just one down from us and nobody was sat there so
we took a photo of the decorations because they were really nice.
“There was nothing there at the time but when we looked back at the photo we couldn’t believe it.
“It looked like a little girl staring directly back at us.
“I didn’t believe in ghosts until I saw this photo.
“No-one was sitting at this table yet there is most definitely something paranormal in the photo.”
The pair took the photo at Harry’s Bar and Grill in Newcastle. And Sophie sent it to a friend who “reads” ghost photos.
The pal admitted it was the “clearest evidence she had ever seen”.
Was Jersey City visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past? Or was Santa touched by an angel?
In this photo taken at the Historic Jersey City and Harsimus
Cemetery, what appear to be white, ghostly hands reach out and touch
Santa as he and Mrs. Claus lay down a wreath on an old grave.
Cemetery director Eileen Markenstein snapped the photo during the
Christmas tree lighting ceremony and holiday festivities last Saturday
as Santa helped decorate the gravestone of the Losey brothers, both
soldiers who served in the Civil War.
"If you look closely, you can see what looks like fingers on both
sides of the white aura," said Markenstein in an email. "I can't explain
it, but it sure makes me feel like the spirits are very happy!"
What better time to talk to dead people for fun than the festival to
celebrate the birth of Jesus? Ouija boards are flying themselves off
shelves and under trees this Christmas, according to trends data
released by Google. The company has recorded a 300 per cent increase in
searches for the spirit-bothering devices, fueled by a terrible movie
that was effectively a feature-length ad for a board game, an appearance
on The Archers, and the Victorian belief that if the dead could speak,
they would use a plank of a wood and the alphabet.
All of which is appropriate, because the
Ouija-board trend, circa 1890, was always about selling games. Spirit
writing dates back much further. In 12th-century China, it was believed
that spirits had the power to guide a "planchette" to write Chinese
characters. In the late 19th century, when doubts about God inspired by
Darwin's little birds led to a boom in spiritualism, planchettes became a
novelty hit in the west. Elijah Bond, an American lawyer and inventor
from Baltimore, devised and patented in 1891 "a toy or game by which two
or more persons can amuse themselves by asking questions of any kind
and having them answered by the device used and operated by the touch of
the hand, so that the answers are designated by letters on a board".
For generations the Christmas season has been infused with sweetness, but some families in Philadelphia are adding a dash of horror.
There are no Christmas lights up at Janet Finegar's house in the Northern Liberties neighborhood of Philadelphia. She does not deck her halls with boughs of holly. Instead, hundreds of rib bones leftover from a neighborhood barbecue hang on a clothesline strung across her backyard. They're bleaching in the sun.
"They have been scraped, boiled, scraped again, bleached and are now strung on strands and hanging out to dry," she says. "They smell. Rib bones, as it turns out, are incredibly nasty."
She will drape the bones over herself and wear them like a grisly tunic. It's her Krampus costume.
The Krampus is a character from European Alpine folklore, common in Austria and Switzerland. The creature stands on two hooves and has horns growing out of its skull. An extremely long tongue hangs out of its mouth, and it carries a basket to haul away naughty children.
For hundreds of years, the Krampus and Saint Nicholas have worked a kind of good cop-bad cop routine. Saint Nick rewards the good children; Krampus terrorizes the bad.
For Finegar, it's the perfect antidote for Christmas.
"If everything is sweet and beautiful and lovely and the most wonderful time of the year, some people, like me, start to get a little nauseated, want a little salt to go with the sugar," she says. "I think there [are] a lot of people out there who enjoy the idea of having a little salt."
Around the country, there are Krampus parties and club nights in December, where people dress in leftover Halloween costumes to drink and dance.
Janet Finegar shows off her costume of rib bones
Janet Finegar will be one among many parade participants dressed as the mythical Christmas demon Krampus.
Finegar is helping to organize a traditional Krampuslauf: a procession of people dressed as Krampus, walking through the streets with noisemakers. The idea for the Krampuslauf in Philadelphia came from Amber Dorko Stopper, a mother of two.
"Spooky and scary has had a place in Christmas historically — A Christmas Carol is a ghost story with scary things in it," she says. "I hate to see everything get watered down because I remember how much fun those things are."
Krampus parades are rare in the United Sates. Last year, Joseph Ragan organized one in Portland, Ore., as a reaction to the way Christmas dominates the winter season.
"Of all the 10,000 holidays that can be celebrated, we just have this one particular version of this one particular holiday really shoved down our throats for months at a time — in the most saccharine form," he says.
Consider that Christmas muzak you hear in grocery stores before Thanksgiving. That really annoys Stopper. She's a fan of horror movies, and enjoys the folk tales of Krampus stealing children, throwing them into icy rivers or eating them alive.
"I realized really quickly how that was not popular in this time period. As a parent of small children that was seen as suspicious behavior almost immediately," she says. "Everything is so soft-pedaled these days with kids to the point where you're not showing any kind of conflict to your kids, much less folklore."
But even Stopper admits there are limits.
"Since both of our children are adopted, we're a little extra sensitive to talking about being taken away," Stopper says. "But we did tell them that, 'He'll take you to his house, you'll have to eat spicy vegetables and watch boring adult television — and then he'll bring you home.' "
Did you hear about the kerfuffle this weekend over the Travel Channel's decision not to air an animated short penned by Anthony Bourdain about Saint Nick's BFF, the child-eating demon Krampus?
Who is Krampus, you ask? Remember when you were a kid and your parents told you you'd be getting coal for the holidays instead of gifts if you were naughty. Well, Krampus is kind of like that, only way, way more terrifying.
In parts of Northern Europe, especially the Nordic countries, where the holiday traditions celebrate the real Saint Nicholas, many families also celebrate Krampusnacht during the first week of December. While Saint Nick gives gifts to the good kids, the demon Krampus hunts down the bad ones, stuffs them in a barrel and devours them for dinner. Remember, this is the same region that gave us stories like Hansel and Gretel.
The Bourdain cartoon, which harkens back to old Claymation Christmas classics like Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer, was pulled from the Travel Channel just before No Reservations aired by network execs who found it a little too...vulgar. It's not that bad until about 1:45, when it gets oddly violent. See for yourself.
And you thought Santa was all elves and cuddly flying reindeer. Nope. Krampus has been haunting the sugarplum dreams of Alpine children for decades. In fact, most Krampus imagery comes from vintage postcards and trick photos. Here are ten haunting images, and a bonus video at the bottom, of the nightmare before Christmas. Why do you think Santa is an anagram for Satan, hmmm?
Notice how many of the naughty "kids" in these images are girls or women?
In Austria, people throw Krampus parties complete with creepy masks and costumes to remind kids to be good all year long. I would NOT want to see this after stumbling out of a bar at night.
This is some odd Japanese amalgam of Santa and Krampus combined, I guess?
