We think of Victorian houses as haunted and creepy because of changing cultural values as well as evolving design trends.
Following the American Civil War affluent families (especially in the North) built new homes in the style of the time. The style in the second half of the 19th century was Victorian architecture complete with deep porches, mansard roofs, ornate decorative trim, turrets, heavy drapes, wallpaper, etc. Victorian architecture tended to give each room a specific purpose with an overall closed floorpan.
By the early 20th century however this style was out of fashion. Design was turning towards Modernism and architecture was no different. Architects everywhere were embracing the simpler, cleaner, more open design approach of Modernism – Frank Lloyd Wright was becoming celebrated for his use of the modernist “Prairie style”. Design was moving into the future with forward-thinking ideas of progress (technological, industrial, social, etc.). In this environment Victorian homes looked increasingly behind the times both culturally and stylistically. Architects were outright rejecting what Victorian design looked-like and symbolized. Big Victorian houses, once seen as signs of prosperity were now seen as symbols of corruption – the rich getting richer, the wealth gap, and the prosperity that was unobtainable by the common person.
Out with the old, in with the new
As time marched on many older houses were torn down and replaced with new homes in the latest styles. Those who kept their Victorian homes did so because they either truly liked them or because they no longer had the money to do anything else. It’s this second group of people who let their homes go (sometimes abandoning them altogether), who were no longer able to handle the upkeep.
On the outside the elaborate wood trim would fade or chip exposing the wood to rot & crumble. On the inside the ornate trim would accumulate dust & spider webs. As the houses aged they would settle creating creaking floorboards and doors that might not stay shut, opening by themselves. If gas pipes broke and leaked they could release carbon monoxide, leading people to see visions and feel a sense of unexplained fear. All-in-all the world was moving on but these old, overgrown, decrepit, dusty, creaking Victorian homes sat in decay, stirring up emotions of failure, fear, & unease. Then pop culture put the final nail in the coffin.
From The Addams Family to Stranger Things, Victorian houses have become the go-to architectural style of spooky haunted houses.
In 1938 The Addams Family made their first appearance as a comic in The New Yorker. The creepy, kookie, macabre Addams family lived in an old haunted Victorian mansion (which has been revisited most recently in the 2022 spin-off Wednesday). In 1960 Alfred Hitchcock gave us Psycho in which Norman Bates lives with his mother (sort of) in a spooky Victorian house up on a hill. In 1964 we got The Munsters who, like the Addams Family, were a funny family of creepy misfits living in a Victorian mansion.
Today, regardless of whether they are well-kept or not, it’s hard not to not see Victorian houses as being slightly creepy thanks to shifting design trends and pop culture monsters.
Darkened mirrors have been used for the arts as well as the dark arts.
In the late 18th century the growing popular aesthetic movement was Picturesque. Begun in the late Renaissance, the idea of picturesque art gained traction through the writings of English artist & cleric William Gilpin. Picturesque was a balance between the beautiful and the sublime, between the attractive and the dangerous, between the gentle and the powerful. It made artists & audiences reevaluate how they saw nature.
In western art, landscapes had generally been just the background to something else – you could have a landscape but it was being covered by the subject of the painting in the foreground. It wasn’t until the picturesque movement that landscape paintings became celebrated in their own right.
Claude glass
One artist that Gilpin praised for his picturesque work was 17th century French painter Claude Lorrain. The paintings of Lorrain frequently featured landscapes dotted with small people, unfinished/crumbling classical buildings and natural settings. His quality of soft light became of particular interest to the picturesque movement, a movement that took shape nearly a century after Claude’s death in 1682.
To help an artist create landscapes similar to Lorrain, and thereby create a picturesque work of art, one could look to (and at) a Claude glass. A Claude glass (named for Lorrain although there is no indication he ever used anything like it) is a dark convex mirror that can simplify the tonal range of colors of whatever is being reflected in it. Gilpin advocated the use of the Claude glass by saying it would “… give the object of nature a soft, mellow tinge like the colouring of that Master”.
The Claude glass got its name from the soft light landscapes of French painter Claude Lorrain. It became popular with artists and tourists alike.
The Claude glass was a popular tool among late 18th century landscape painters who would turn their back to the landscape they wanted to paint, open the mirror facing it backwards towards the landscape, and then paint from what they saw in the mirror. The Claude glass was also being used by wealthy tourists of England as a sort of augmented reality tool to filter the world around them.
This led to ridicule as these tourists showed up to take in nature by turning their backs to it and opening a mirror. By the early 19th century the Claude glass largely fell out of fashion but you can still find them here and there. The Desert View Watchtower at the Grand Canyon has a few installed in the tower to view the canyon, and you sometimes find them as art installations in arboretums and nature preserves.
While the darkened surface of the Claude glass allowed a person to look back (literally), in divination a dark mirror allows you to look forward. Scrying is the magical act of gazing into a reflective / luminescent surface (a crystal ball, water, fire, a mirror, etc) with the intention of clairvoyantly gaining knowledge.
Scrying, in various forms, has existed in cultures around the world over thousands of years. Ancient Egyptians had young boys look into vases filled with oil to seek divine knowledge. The Oracle of Delphi would stare into a dish of Kassotis spring water. In Persian mythology the cup of Jamshid was used to see all seven heavens of the universe. John Dee used a crystal ball as well as polished obsidian to try and acquire esoteric knowledge (both objects are now in the British Museum, but of questionable provenance). Even Joseph Smith claimed to look at magical “seer stones” to receive special information from God before founding Mormonism.
Using black mirrors to learn secret knowledge is a part of the ancient tradition of scrying.
Black Mirror
Water scrying was popular before the widespread availability of mirrors. Nostradamus used water scrying to see visions and make predictions about the future. While the accuracy of Nostradamus’s predictions is questionable, nobody can deny he stared at a bowl of water.
Black mirrors are used to see visions instead of reflections. The back of the glass is coated in black instead of an ordinary mirror’s reflective silver. The darkened surface allows one to stare into the mirror while little of the surrounding environment is reflected. That said there is a difference of opinion on whether you should be able to see your face or not. In either case, like someone about to go on a psychedelic drug trip, the set & setting of a scrying experience makes a difference – a darkened room, a candle / candles, maybe some incense, and a way to record your visions. With eyes of soft focus one looks into the black mirror and hopes to gain mystical knowledge.
Like astrology or other forms of divination, scrying has absolutely no merit as a way to learn about the future. Staring at a black mirror is not magical. However, the act of sitting in quiet reflection for an extended period of time (ie. meditation), alone with your thoughts, can prove beneficial psychologically, if not psychically.
Instead of being made by high tech aliens, they’re made by clever humans with low tech tools.
Crop circles, the geometric designs created in fields by flattening vegetables stalks, entered the cultural sphere in 1970s England. Since then over 10,000 circles have been found around the world (although over 90% of them have been within 50 miles of Stonehenge in southern England). While a host of mystical, magical, paranormal theories have been put forth to explain their creation (aliens/UFOs being the most popular theory), the reality is that they’re all hoaxes.
The credit for the crop circle phenomenon largely goes to Doug Bower and Dave Chorley. In 1978, while sitting in a pub in Cheesefoot Head, England, the two thought it would be a bit of fun to create patterns in a field – as if aliens had landed in the night. Their inspiration was a series of stories of circles that Bower had heard while living Australia in 1966. Regarding their first crop circle Chorley said “We enjoyed that first one and had a good giggle about it after.”
Imitation is the highest form of flattery
Bower & Chorley created more than 200 crop circles between 1978 to 1991. Each man used a board with a rope attached that, while holding the arch of rope in their hands, they then used a foot to push the board down to flatten the crop. By 1985 Bower’s wife was suspicious of what he was up to. He told her the full story and to prove it he had her design her own crop circle which he and Chorley later created.
Inspired by the designs of Bower & Chorley imitators began to pop up. One of the most active groups was the Circlemakers who considered their work to be conceptual art. Rob Irving of the group said the power of the art comes from the mystery. Even as they admit they create crop circles the Circlemakers won’t confirm which ones they have made, so as to retain some of the mystery.
Bower & Chorley started the crop circle phenomenon.
The Thrill Is Gone
On September 9, 1991 the mystery of the crop circles came to an end when Bower & Chorley revealed their secret to the newspaper Today. They explained how they did it, offered evidence, and gave a demonstration. Despite this, as happens with most conspiratorial thinking, true believers rejected this evidence and continued to believe in extraordinary explanations. “Croppies” still believe that unproven and unknown forces have created these designs and that any evidence to the contrary can be outright rejected or (paradoxically) used as evidence as a part of some larger conspiracy.
Still, by the 1990s crop circles were popular tourist attractions in southern England bringing tourist dollars to local businesses and to the farmers themselves. One farmer near Stonehenge said he made about £30,000 charging tourists to visit his fields. Like any cultural phenomenon, the popularity of crop circles diminished. As some groups began to be paid to create crop circles as advertisements for major brands (Nike, Pepsi, the BBC. Greenpeace, etc) there was less motivation to spend hours in the fields for free.
A short clip of Bower & Chorley discussing their work.
QI discusses crop circles and the simple tools needed to make them.
Added info: crop circles are not to be confused with circular crop fields. Center-pivot irrigation creates fields of crops that are circular shaped because the massive sprinkler pipes are rotated from a central point.
Central-pivot irrigation creates circles of crops, but not “crop circles”.
The idea that Egyptian tombs are cursed as a means of protection is largely a 20th century creation.
Egyptians began mummifying their dead around 3500 BCE. In all the years of archaeological explorations of Egyptian tombs very few written or inscribed “curses” have ever been found. Those that have however could be thought of as early security systems – trying to protect the contents of the tomb from grave robbers (both amateur and archaeological). Unfortunately, given centuries of rampant looting of Egyptian graves it’s safe to say the curses didn’t work. Despite so few curses having ever been found our modern pop culture is firmly gripped by the undead idea of cursed tombs with mummified Egyptians exacting their revenge from beyond the grave.
The primary reason we think of cursed Egyptian tombs is the 1922 excavation of the tomb of Tutankhamun. George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, had financed the search for King Tut’s tomb which was run by archaeologist Howard Carter. As Tutankhamun’s tomb was discovered, and the magnitude of the discovery was realized, the Egyptian government ensured that all artifacts would stay in Egypt. Without being able to sell any of the treasures (to cover his costs … or to make a profit) Lord Carnavon sold the exclusive rights to the excavation story to the London Times for £5,000 up front as well as 75% of the Times’ profits from sales of the story to other papers. This left every other news outlet high & dry for a story. Enter: the mummy’s curse.
Howard Carter’s 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb changed the world (and how we think of Egyptian mummies).
From Beyond
Without access to the largest archaeological find of the age, all other news organizations were left scrambling for another angle. Less than six months after the discovery, on April 5th 1923 Lord Carnarvon died and the press had their angle. The media began to report on a supposed Egyptian curse that had killed Carnarvon for opening King Tut’s tomb (despite no such curse being written anywhere in the tomb).
Paranormal “experts” crawled out of the woodwork to substantiate the idea of a curse. Archaeologists (especially the ones who were excluded from the tomb) where willing to discuss potential curses, which allowed them to profit from the find. Rumors and claims spread & grew like wildfire. Even Howard Carter let the reports of a curse continue, never publicly denying them, because (like a Scooby-Doo episode) it had the effect of scaring people away from the tomb, allowing him to continue working on the excavation for the next decade in relative peace.
The association of mummies with curses proliferated across pop culture after the discovery of King Tut’s tomb.
I want my mummy
The western fascination with Egypt, and the orientalized ideas that it was an exotic land of magic, has existed since at least the Middle Ages. Using ground up mummies as medicine, or turning them into paint pigment, had long been practiced by Europeans. The 19th century Egyptomania craze popularized Egypt as a setting for fantastical stories of mummies and tombs. The first story featuring a reanimated mummy (a trope most later mummy stories would follow) was 1827’s The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Jane Webb. Bram Stoker’s 1903 horror novel The Jewel of Seven Stars also features Egyptian magic and resurrection. However the discover of King Tut’s tomb did more to popularize the idea of a mummy’s curse than anything else.
In 1932, not long after the 1922 discovery of King Tut’s tomb, the film The Mummy was released featuring Boris Karloff as an ancient mummy resurrected. This was the beginning of many, many mummy movies (including 1944’s The Mummy’s Curse and 1957’s Pharaoh’s Curse, both of which have a curse right in the title). Each telling of a mummy story wanted to be better or more fantastical than the previous so the idea of a mummy’s curse grew. Today the idea of resurrected mummies & curses is a standard part of the horror genre.
Added info: As for any idea that Lord Carnarvon’s death might be attributed to some kind of curse, there is no evidence to support this. While a few people associated with the excavation of the tomb of Tutankhamun died not long after its discovery, nobody died at an unusually young age. An epidemiological study of the people who entered the tomb found that these individuals died on average around 70 years old, which was normal for the early 20th century.
Also, Lord Carnarvon’s home was Highclere Castle, which today is the setting of Downton Abbey.
The effects of tuberculosis led some 19th century New Englanders to believe that vampires were preying on the living.
In the late 18th and much of the 19th century there was a vampire panic in New England. People across New England feared that vampire-like creatures, using some kind of sympathetic magic, were slowly killing their friends & family from inside the grave (as opposed to traditional vampires who rise from the grave to attack). People would exhume their family members, look for the one who might be a vampire, and take various precautions to stop them. New Englanders might remove & burn the heart of a suspected vampire, they may turn the skeleton over facedown, decapitate the head, put a brick in their mouth, or use a wooden stake to pin their relative to the ground among other methods.
This panic was more than just a few isolated incidents. Henry David Thoreau mentions attending an exhumation in his journal on September 26, 1859. In February of 1793 over 500 people attended the ceremonial burning of the heart, liver, and lungs of supposed vampire Rachel Harris in Manchester, Vermont. After Nancy Young died in 1827 Rhode Island, her father thought that she might be preying on her still alive little sister Almira. The family exhumed Nancy’s coffin, burned it on a pyre, and stood in the smoke to breath in the vapors thinking it would free/cure them of this affliction – it did not work and Almira and two more of her siblings later died. Digesting the cremated remains of a suspected vampire, or breathing in the smoke of the cremation pyre, were not uncommon last resort treatments after traditional medicine had failed.
The 1892 exhuming of suspected vampire Mercy Brown in Exeter, Rhode Island became an international story – Bram Stoker based part of the Lucy character in Dracula on Mercy Brown. With 18 confirmed vampire cases, Rhode Island even become known as the “Vampire Capital of America.” The reason all of this happened was twofold: tuberculosis and decomposition.
The story of Mercy Brown influenced Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Wasting away
Tuberculosis is an airborne disease that attacks the lungs (among other areas). Active tuberculosis kills about half of those infected and in 2018 it was the ninth leading cause of death worldwide (killing more people than Malaria or HIV/AIDS). In 19th century New England tuberculosis was the leading cause of death, killing an estimated 25% of the population.
Tuberculosis can develop over months or even years, slowly eating away at someone. A person with active TB develops a chronic cough as their lung tissue breaks down, their mucus starts to contain blood, they develop fevers, night sweats, and lose weight. Because of the weight loss the disease has been historically known as “consumption.” As the infected person wastes away they also develop ashen skin, giving them an overall sickly drained appearance.
Vampires, or, a lack of scientific understanding
The effect of tuberculosis (the slow draining of life) combined with some of the infected saying their deceased relatives were visiting them (as Almira Young claimed), was enough for some New Englanders to suspect there were vampires at work. Bodies of suspected vampires were exhumed to looks for signs of vampirism. Some of the corpses seemed have grown longer finger nails and longer hair, some were bloated, some had blood in their organs, while others seemed to have not decayed at all. These were surefire signs of a vampire … or were just normal aspects of body decomposition.
As bodies decay they become dehydrated causing the skin to recede and shrink. This gives the illusion of longer fingernails & hair as the base of the nails and hair that was once under the skin is now exposed. The bodies that seemed to have not decayed at all were the ones of people who died in the cold winters of New England (as was Mercy Brown’s case who had died in January) where the cold slows the decomposition process. These unremarkable signs of decomposition were mistaken as proof of life after death to the untrained eyes of 19th century New England.
The dawn of a new era
The Mercy Brown story brought unwanted attention to New England. It was embarrassing that, while the light bulb was being invented and Henry Ford was building his first car, people were worried about folklorish undead monsters. The vampire panic rose and fell with the tuberculosis endemic of New England. Over time with advancements in science, and the dissemination of knowledge, belief in vampires faded away.
Added info:porphyria is another disease whose symptoms can be similar to vampire activity. It’s a liver disease that, for some, can cause sensitivity to sunlight (leading some to only come out at night) as well as sensitivity to garlic.
“Ask a Mortician” goes through the history of the New England vampire panic and the realities of tuberculosis in 19th century New England.
The superstition that’s the combination of two separate superstitions (and a lot of magical thinking).
Superstitions are ideas that unrelated things are connected in some supernatural way. They’re frequently practices that are thought to bring about good or bad luck. Knocking on wood, walking under ladders, black cats, four leaf clovers, etc. are all classic western superstitions. Astrology and other fortune telling methods have a similar kind of magical thinking. The superstition of Friday the 13th is a combination of two separate superstitions: Fridays + the number 13.
From the Norse gods, to the Last Supper, thirteen people at a table has made 13 an unlucky number.
The unlucky number
One of the earliest examples of 13 being an unlucky number comes from Norse mythology. Loki was the uninvited 13th god to attend a feast following the recent slaying of the god Baldr (who died because Loki had tricked the blind god Höðr into inadvertently killing him). Another unlucky dinner with 13 members was the Last Supper where Judas betrayed Jesus. This spurred a related number 13 superstition that dinners with 13 members are unlucky. The first person to rise from the table will be in store for ill fortune (akin to how Judas was the first to rise from the Last Supper and was met with ill fortune). However various workarounds include dividing the guests across two tables or just having everyone rise at the same time (which seem like pretty simple hacks).
Another reason 13 is considered unlucky is that it throws off the satisfying “completeness” of 12. There are 12 months in the year, 12 signs of the western zodiac, there were 12 gods of Olympus, the 12 labors of Hercules, the aforementioned 12 Nordic gods in attendance at the the meal following Baldr’s death, 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 apostles, etc.
Over time western culture’s fear of 13 has spread to a wide variety of outlets. Over 80% of tall buildings skip counting the 13th floor and instead call it the 14th floor. Hotels sometimes skip having 13th rooms, the 13th card in the major arcana of the tarot deck is the card for death, the 13th loaf of bread in a baker’s dozen was sometimes said to be for the Devil, cruise ships tend to skip having a 13th floor, in Florence some houses which should have an address of 13 are given 12 1/2, etc.
The superstition that Friday is unlucky is largely because of the Good Friday crucifixion of Jesus as well as other Bible stories.
It’s Friday I’m in … trouble
The fear of Friday has mostly Judeo-Christian origins. Jesus was said to have been crucified on a Friday (or perhaps it was a Wednesday). The start of the Great Flood and the confusion at the Tower of Babel were both said to have taken place on a Friday. Eve supposedly tempted Adam with the forbidden fruit, and the resulting expulsion from the Garden of Eden, took place on a Friday. Further Cain killed Abel on a Friday. Unfortunately the Bible is silent on what calendar system was in use in the Garden of Eden or how they had Fridays at all.
Eating meat on a Friday is considered unlucky because it’s reminiscent of death and the crucifixion (but eating fish is apparently exempt from this bad luck somehow). Cutting your nails on a Friday is also considered unlucky for similar severing of the body related reasons. Over time Fridays became an inauspicious day to begin or finish things. Starting a voyage, starting a new job, finishing the production of an article of clothing, moving house, getting married, giving birth, etc. on a Friday have all been considered unlucky.
That said if you die on a Good Friday there’s a superstition that you go right to Heaven.
The 1868 Friday the 13th death of Rossini is one of the first instances of Friday the 13th being unlucky but the superstition became popular during the 20th century.
Two great tastes that taste great together
Bringing these two superstitions together seemed inevitable, the super-superstition of bad luck on Friday the 13th, but it’s relatively new. Friday the 13th is first mentioned as unlucky in the 19th century with the most famous example being the Friday the 13th, November 1868 death of Italian composer Gioachino Rossini.
Friday the 13th didn’t become more widely unlucky in pop culture until the 20th century. Most people credit the 1907 Thomas Lawson novel Friday, the Thirteenth, about a stockbroker who chooses that date to manipulate (and crash) the stock market, as the popularization of the Friday the 13th superstition.
But like all superstitions, an unlucky day & date combination is inconsistent and culturally specific. While English speaking countries think of Friday the 13th as unlucky, in Spain and Greece it’s Tuesday the 13th that’s supposed to be unlucky, but in Italy it’s Friday the 17th.
It’s all in your mind
Ultimately the idea that Fridays, or the number 13, or the combination of Friday the 13th, are in any way unlucky, is nonsense. If they were real they’d be universally held beliefs (not to mention some objective proof). Instead these three superstitions are mostly just inconsistent western ideas – people in the rest of the world are going about their lives unaware of the danger they’re supposedly in (and somehow surviving).
There is no evidence that Friday the 13th brings about an increase in unfortunate incidents or accidents. A 2011 study in the The American Journal of Emergency Medicine reviewed hospital emergency admission rates and found no significant difference between Friday the 13th to other days. In fact a 2008 Dutch study demonstrated the opposite may be true, that people are more cautious on Friday the 13th and as a result there are fewer road accidents.
The Friday the 13th movie franchise capitalizes on the superstition. Interestingly in Spanish speaking countries the movies are sometimes called Martes 13 (Tuesday the 13th) in keeping with the Spanish superstition around Tuesday the 13th, instead of Friday the 13th. Finally, the most important metal band of all time Black Sabbath released their eponymous debut album on Friday the 13th, February 1970.
Black Sabbath, the most important metal band of all time, released their debut album on Friday the 13th, February 1970.
There are highs & (many) lows to the Friday the 13th movie franchise, but the disco theme song for Part 3 is something else.
Stemming from ancient pagan traditions, it used to be customary to tell ghost stories at Christmas.
In the northern hemisphere Christmas comes at the darkest time of the year. Years before people gathered together for Christmas they would gather together around fires (such as the Yule log) for various pagan winter holidays on the longest nights of the year. In the cold dark they would tell stories. Similar to Halloween, it was thought that in these long nights the veil between this world and the next was thin allowing spirits to pass back and forth. As such many people told ghost stories of revenants back from the dead, spirits, and other supernatural creatures.
As people adopted Christianity, winter ghost stories went from being a pagan tradition to a Christmas tradition. By the 17th century the Lord and Protector of England Oliver Cromwell tried to eliminate Christmas ghost stories because of their pagan origins. Cromwell also outlawed a host of other Christmas traditions including caroling and feasts (and that’s not even the worst of Cromwell’s legacy). These traditions eventually came back post-Cromwell but by then some were seen as old-fashioned.
Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol became the most famous Christmas ghost story of all time.
A Christmas Carol
Christmas ghost stories achieved a new kind of popularity in the 19th century Victorian Era through the Industrial Revolution. As the oral tradition moved to print, old traditional stories as well as new Christmas stories saw a surge in popularity through magazines, novellas, and book collections. Charles Dickens’s 1843 A Christmas Carol took the tradition to a new level.
A Christmas Carol is a ghost story. It’s easier to see it as a ghost story if you remove the Christmas trappings by placing it in another time of year. Unlike the traditional Christmas ghost stories Dickens reinvented the genre by including moral lessons of forgiveness, good deeds, generosity, etc. His ghosts served as a catalyst towards redemption which was very different than the ghosts of other stories which were primarily used for a good scare. Soon the redemptive, somewhat saccharine, aspects of A Christmas Carol were adopted by other authors and the scary ghost portions of Christmas stories slowly fell by the wayside.
Today we rarely associate scary ghost stories with Christmas. Similar to how Santa Claus and Krampus are a seasonal version of good cop/bad cop, we’ve mostly relegated our scary stories to Halloween while telling our hopeful happy stories at Christmas. Still, if you were to put aside the modern concept of Christmas, this dark cold time of year is the perfect time to gather around the fire and tell scary stories in the darkness.
Astrology, the idea that the stars are influencing your life, is completely fake.
Humans have been following the movements of the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars for thousands of years. Using this celestial information to understand the seasons and the passage of time is logical. Using this information to predict the future or explain human personalities, is not logical (but understandable). People want to understand why things happen, the world can be scary, and finding some system in the stars is an attractive idea. A relatable narrative is more appealing than unpredictable chaos so it’s understandable that people would look to astrology (like how people fall for conspiracy theories).
While there are different kinds of astrology, the shared basics is that they use complex series of real astronomical calculations combined with made-up traits assigned to different constellations/alignments/times to “gain insights” into the workings of the world. The Western astrological system is rooted in Hellenistic astrology from the Mediterranean around 200-100 BCE (which itself is based in the much older Babylonian astrology). It’s from Hellenistic astrology that we get the Zodiac, horoscopes, star signs, and the kind of astrology we typically encounter in blogs and newspapers.
Despite millennia of study & measurements, nobody is any closer to explaining why astrology is supposedly real.
Bunk
That said, astrology is completely fake. It’s pseudoscience, superstition, hooey. To start, there’s no reason a distant configuration of stars which looks vaguely like a crab or a bull would have any relationship with the events on Earth. But even if there was some kind of relationship there would need to be a force connecting us to these heavenly bodies, affecting us here on Earth. Science hasn’t found or been able to measure any kind of force at work. Neither gravity nor electromagnetism work like this. Maybe there is some unknown other force, that remains strong yet undetectable, interacting with us from distant stars trillions of miles away which has yet to be discovered.
Another problem is that astrological assessments/predictions should be at least consistent if not accurate. In 1985 scientist Shawn Carlson conducted a double-blind experiment with astrologers to match personality test results to natal charts (essentially their zodiac symbols). If personality types are immutably governed by the stars, matching a zodiac sign to a participant’s corresponding personality type should be easy. It was apparently not easy, as astrologers performed about the same as pure chance. Worse, the astrologer participants performed poorly in even finding their own personality profiles.
Maybe astrology succeeds despite the human failings of astrologers. Time twins, people born at the same time on the same day sometimes even in the same hospital, should have similar personalities. Unfortunately there is no correlation at all. Even without astrologers being involved astrology is inconsistent.
Part of the blame for astrology lies with its adherents who believe astrology is real. Paranormal skeptic James Randi conducted an exercise where he gave detailed horoscopes to a class full of students. Most of the students said the horoscope they received was quite accurate. The trick was that Randi gave the same horoscope to everyone in the class. What the students in Randi’s experiment fell for was the Barnum effect.
Barnum Effect
The Barnum effect (aka the Forer effect) is found in fortune telling and astrology where an assessment/reading seems to be about you but in reality can apply to almost anyone. These are statements that have been carefully worded to be specific and yet universal. For example, one might say that …
“You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a great need for other people to like and admire you. You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof. At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved.”
In fact these statements are part of what psychologist Bertram Forer gave to his test subjects as part of his 1948 study. When assessing the accuracy of these statements, participants in Forer’s experiment gave an average rating of 4.3 out of 5 (5 being the most accurate). It turns out every student was given the exact same statements. Horoscopes and other astrological readings frequently use the Barnum effect to seem specific to you but in reality can apply to almost anyone.
Confirmation Bias
Another way astrology can seem real is through confirmation bias. Believers remember the predictions that came true more than the ones that didn’t. When someone has an emotional desire for a certain outcome they can respond more favorably towards the evidence that supports their beliefs and dismiss or undervalue contradictory evidence. Selectively remembering the horoscopes that came true can make astrology seem real, even thought it’s not.
Other contributing factors are that people who believe in astrology tend to be of lower intelligence, and more narcissistic, than non-believers. A potential “self-centered worldview” (along with a shaky understanding of science) could be influencing factors leading people to believe in astrology.
Ultimately astrology is inconsistent, inaccurate, and unable to explain why any of it is supposedly happening. From Cicero to modern scientists we have compelling arguments and mountains of scientific evidence showing again and again that astrology isn’t real. As professor Ivan Kelly of the University of Saskatchewan wrote, “Astrology is part of our past and has undeniable historical value, but astrologers have given no plausible reason why it should have a role in our future.”
Added bonus: one famous believer in astrology was President Ronald Reagan. Astrologer Joan Quigley (the Rasputin of the Reagan White House) regularly consulted her star charts to advise the president on a host of matters. She advised the president on when to deliver speeches, when to have presidential debates, when he should schedule his cancer surgery, and even when to land Air Force One. It was generous of the Christian Moral Majority to overlook Reagan’s pagan beliefs.
The concept of Haitian zombies was used as a threat to keep slaves working.
Before Haiti was an independent country it was the French colony of Saint-Domingue where they produced sugar, coffee, cotton, and other goods. The French brought more than a million West African people to the colony as slaves, more than any other colony in the Caribbean. Slavery in Saint-Domingue was particularly brutal – most people were poorly fed, they worked 12 hour days, pregnant slaves frequently didn’t live long enough to have babies, torture was common. Life expectancy was about 3-6 years with about half of the enslaved people of Saint-Domingue dying within the first few years of arriving.
The brutal conditions of Saint-Domingue left the enslaved people hoping that, in death, their souls would return home to West Africa.
Haitian Vodou & Zombies
The Code Noir was a 1685 decree that outlined how slavery was to be conducted in the French empire. Among other things it stated that slaves were prohibited from practicing African religions and instead were forcibly baptized into Catholicism. What resulted was Haitian Vodou, a religious blend of West African beliefs (practiced in secret) given a veneer of Catholicism.
Part of this belief system was the idea that, upon dying, you would return to lan guinée (ie. Guinea, or West Africa). Their idea of heaven was to escape the slavery of Saint-Domingue and to simply go home. Feeling the allure of going home some people decided to escape slavery on their own terms. As such suicide was very common Saint-Domingue.
Initially suicide was seen as a viable way of getting to lan guinée but at some point there was a change. At some point (oral tradition is murky on when/how) suicide was prohibited and the punishment for committing suicide was that you’d be a slave forever – you’d become a zombie. The zombies of Haitian Vodou are not the Western pop culture shambling brain-eating zombies. The Haitian zombie was someone whose soul had been captured, denied entry to lan guinée, and was turned into an undead field hand with no chance of escape. Plantation slave-drivers used this to their advantage threatening slaves that if they killed themselves they would be turned into zombies to work forever under the control of a bokor/sorcerer. Unlike today what was feared was the threat of becoming a zombie, not the actual zombies themselves.
1929’s White Zombie was the first zombie movie. It used some Haitian Vodou beliefs but took significant artistic license.
White Zombie
Over time the zombie concept evolved and changed. The sensationalistic 1929 William Seabrook travel book The Magic Island introduced voodoo and zombies to mainstream Western culture. This inspired the 1932 film White Zombie, which was the first zombie movie. White Zombie stars Bela Lugosi as the villainous Murder Legendre (a bit on the nose) who’s a bokor enslaving people as zombies to be his henchmen and to work in his sugarcane mill. White Zombie used Haitian Vodou ideas but with a lot of artistic license. Later zombie stories dropped the Saint-Domingue threat of eternal slavery, then they dropped the bokor master commanding the zombies. Aside from being mindless undead creatures, the zombies of today have little resemblance to their sadder more terrifying origins.
Added info: following the Haitian revolution of 1791–1804, the 1883 Haitian Criminal Code outlawed the practice of turning someone into a zombie.
The most famous magical book of occult knowledge that sounds real, but isn’t.
Possibly the most famous book that doesn’t exist, the Necronomicon is a fictional book of dark magic invented by weird fiction / horror author H.P. Lovecraft. First mentioned in 1924’s The Hound, the Necronomicon is part of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, a dark collection of cosmic horror, ghouls, inter dimensional monsters, and unspeakable evil all set in an uncaring indifferent universe. The best interpretation of the name “necronomicon” is “book considering (or classifying) the dead”. Supposedly written in 738 CE by Abdul Alhazred (who was later eaten alive by an invisible monster in broad daylight), the Necronomicon is a dark book of forbidden knowledge and most Lovecraft characters who read it come to horrible ends.
Lovecraft felt to produce terror a story had to be “… devised with the care and verisimilitude of an actual hoax.” As such the Necronomicon is very much treated as if it were a real book. Lovecraft enjoyed making his fictional world seem believable. For example, in a list of real books he would throw in a few real-sounding fake ones (such as the Necronomicon) – blurring the line between reality and fiction. Similarly he wrote that there were copies of the Necronomicon held by 5 world institutions: the British Museum, Harvard, Bibliothèque nationale de France, University of Buenos Aires, as well as Miskatonic University … which is a fictional school set in the equally fictional city of Arkham, Massachusetts. Again, including a fictional creation in a list of real places making something fake seem real.
H.P. Lovecraft’s Necronomicon can be found in a host of movies, books, comics, and more.
Crawling Chaos
Part of the appeal of the Necronomicon (beyond the spooky name) is that, like all good suspenseful horror, Lovecraft gives the reader just enough details to understand the idea of the Necronomicon but the exact contents (or even a good physical description of the book) are left open to your imagination. This vagueness also kept the door open for future expansion of ideas. Soon other authors began to include the Necronomicon in their work, and so it spread.
Today the Necronomicon has gone beyond the works of Lovecraft & his friends and has appeared in countless other projects. It’s in books, movies, cartoons, comics, video games, music, etc, each with their own take on exactly what the Necronomicon is, but it’s always a book of dark magic. It’s in the The Evil Dead series, it’s in an episode of The Real Ghostbusters, Mr. Burns mentions it at a meeting of republicans in The Simpsons, it’s the name of a German thrash metal band, it’s the name of H.R. Giger’s first collection of artwork, Michael Crichton and Stephen King have both referenced it, etc. The book of the dead lives on, spreading its tentacles across dark fiction. Cthulhu fhtagn.
Added info: The fictional Arkham Asylum in the DC Universe, where many of Batman’s foes are frequently locked away, was named after the fictional Lovecraft town of Arkham, Massachusetts.
Mr. Burns has Bob Dole read from the Necronomicon.
In a cleverly titled episode The Collect Call of Cathulhu, the Ghostbusters discuss that the Necronomicon will be on display at the New York City Public Library.
