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Slavic Folklore: Upiór

The Upiór is present in Slavic and Turkic folklore and resembles the vampire. The Upiór is depicted as a ravenous and insatiable creature with vampiric features. Belief in the Upiór may have spread across the Eurasian steppes through migrations with its origins in the regions surrounding the Volga River and the Pontic steppes.

An Upiór is created after the death of those who practised sorcery who undergo transformations in their graves and can assume animal forms. The Upiór is described as having an enlarged cranium and an elongated tail and also capable of flight.

Upiór can assume any form including human forms. Individuals under the sway of an Ubır are tormented by a ceaseless hunger and progressively become frail. An Upiór deprived of sustenance becomes aggressive and eventually driven to consume carrion and human blood.

Upiór are blamed for causing epidemic outbreaks, distress and madness in humans and animals.

Vampire Burials

In suspected Upiór cases, the grave is exhumed and nails driven into the coffin. This practice, reminiscent of contemporary vampire narratives, is widely regarded as effective.

In 2012, the discovery in Bulgaria of an 800-year-old skeleton with an iron rod stabbed through its chest, led to speculation of a vampire burial.

Upiór and Vampires

Immortality and Feeding off Life Essence:

The Upiór and the vampire both possess an insatiable hunger – whether blood, life essence, or energy. The Upiór is voracious and devours not only the flesh but also the life force of its victims leaving them weakened and dying. The vampire is also known for its hunger for human blood in order to prolong its existence.

Shape-shifting and Manipulation:

The Upiór is also a shape-shifter, which allows it to assume various forms including animals. Vampires are sometimes suggested to take the form of bats or wolves to enable them to blend into the night. This shared attribute with the Ubir suggests a link between folklore.

Dread and Vulnerability:

Both the Upiór and the vampire evoke a sense of dread and vulnerability in their victims. The ability of both Upiór and vampires to deceive the senses, blend with humanity and consume life energy strikes a common fear of violation that transcends cultural boundaries. The shared fear of deceitful danger hidden beneath a facade.

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Slavic Folklore: Rusalka

The Rusalka is related to water-dwelling nymphs and appears in the form of a beautiful woman. Water nymphs, unlike mermaids, have legs and can walk on land.

Rusalki are found in rivers or lakes they come out of the streams at certain times a year to dance and walk in the woods especially in summer months. In prehistory, they’ve been associated with fertility, but by the 19th century, they represented aggressive water sprites who would seduce young men to a watery deaths.

The origin folklore of the rusalka is unclear, but they are always women and usually virgins who had an untimely death near water. The restless soul became a rusalka because they were un-sanctified or they’d had a violent and untimely deaths. Rusalki are almost always associated with women betrayed by their lovers. They remain in the region to haunt the area of water where they died.

Rusalki often come out of the water and climb into a tree or sit on a rock, singing or combing their hair. Rusalki have green or golden hair which is always wet and their pale skin may take on a greenish hue.

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The Void

Publisher’s Description

A dark tale of self-discovery that will sweep you into a world of swords, secrets, snark, and sapphic love.

Kiera never fit in. Not on her aunt’s farm, not at her boring job, not with her ex-girlfriends. But she hasn’t given up hope of finding that elusive place to belong.

A freak storm leaves her stranded, alone in the office.

When something flashes past the upstairs window, the sarcastic voice in her head, Jiminy, insists it’s a figment of her imagination. But Kiera knows she didn’t imagine the flying pirate ship.

Or the dragon.

If she jumps on board—into a hidden world above the clouds—there’ll be no coming back. Is she ready for the quest of a lifetime, and the dark secrets beginning to unfurl?

Void is the first book in a dark steampunk fantasy series that skillfully blends thrilling adventure, snarky humour, and a sapphic slow-burn romance.


Summary

I recently read The Void (The Fang Ripper Series, #1) a steampunk fantasy novella by Australian author Neen Cohen.

The Void follows protagonist Kiera who lives in present-day Brisbane with allusions made early to her mental instability or repressed memories and self. Kiera lives a ‘normal’ life but the arrival of an otherworldly storm pulls Kiera from what she’d imagined was reality and into a new one of Skyan. Is this the strange connection she’d always felt was wrong with her?

Kiera’s journey into learning her true past begins when Blue crashes his sky ship to earth and the attractive but feminine Zarzy is injured battling an earth-magic dragon. To save Zarzy and prevent the darkly powerful Void from drvouring everything, Kiera must learn quickly as Blue takes the sky ship into Skyran with its floating cities, war and dangerous political machinations that threaten not just Blue and Zarzy who Kiera is undeniably attracted to. Into this complex battles of dragons and opposing invested interests, Kiera begins to learns her own truth.

Review

Cohen introduces a new take on urban fantasy with energetic prose and a mild sapphic romance. There’s a lot to unpack in this first novella and the word-building is fascinating and much more detail to follow. This is a genre-blending series of urban fantasy, steampunk and adventure. Cohen keeps it fast-paced with intriguing characters and innovative concepts.

Conclusion

A recommended new dark fantasy with mild sapphic romance, dragons, airships in a fresh take on urban fantasy!

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Peripheral Visions

Publisher’s Description

Peripheral Visions is a unique, award-winning reference collection that includes all of Robert Hood’s 44 ghost stories to date, three of them especially written for this volume. These memorable tales display Hood’s uncanny ability to make the fantastic real, to embrace weirdness and create human characters whose lives – both inner and outer – haunted by mortality, are laid bare and revealed to be our own worst nightmares. Ranging from melancholy reflection on life and death, through disquieting tales of dark humour and vengeance, to chilling visions of ghostly apocalypse.

Hood’s stories are sure to draw you into a terrifying world that in the end is revealed to be irrefutably our own. Though many of these stories draw on the traditions of the past, they are far from traditional in approach.

As you turn each page remember this: not everything here is as it seems. There’s always something more, barely glimpsed, out there on the periphery.


Summary

I recently read the limited edition three volume collection Peripheral Visions: The Collected Ghost Stories by Australian horror author Robert Hood.

This limited edition collection spans forty years of Robert Hood’s ghost story writing with 44 tales covering six different themes of haunting in the horror genre. There are many brilliant stories within each section that focuses on a variety of themes including Haunted Places, Haunted Families, Haunted Minds, Haunted Youth, Haunted Vengeance and Haunted Realities. Some of my favourites included Haunted Places, Haunted Minds, Haunted Youth and Haunted Vengeance. The scope of aspects that Hood delves into in these stories includes the deeply psychological, historical and, at times, what felt like a deeply personal venture in the haunted mind.

Review

Peripheral Visions is a sweeping three volume collection of divided into themes on the horror genre of Haunting. There are some of the most unique, darkly humorous and chilling ghost stories I’ve ever had the pleasure to read. Hood delivers a masterclass in ghost stories with brilliant prose that keeps the pace of this three volume collection moving with a deft storyteller’s hand.

Conclusion

This was a fabulous, wide-ranging collection of ghost stories and hauntings by one of the best horror authors in the business. Highly recommended!

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Egyptian Myth: Hathor

Hathor was known as “the Great One of Many Names” and her titles and attributes are so numerous that she was important in nearly every aspect of ancient Egyptian life and death. Her widespread worship in the Predynastic period is indicated by her depiction on the Narmer palette.

During the Old Kingdom period, her worship was well established. Hathor symbolically represents Upper Egypt while the god Bast represents Lower Egypt and both are depicted in The Valley Temple of Khafre at Giza.

Hathor was originally a personification of the Milky Way which was considered to be the milk that flowed from the udders of a heavenly cow, which links her to the goddess Nut and Bat. But over time, Hathor absorbed the attributes of many other goddesses to become more closely associated with Isis. In turn, Isis usurped Hathor’s position as the most popular and more powerful goddess. But, Hathor remained popular throughout Ancient Egyptian worship.

Festivals were dedicated to Hathor and her worship extended beyond Egypt and Nubia. She was worshipped throughout Semitic West Asia, Ethiopia, Somalia and Libya and she was particularly worshipped in the city of Byblos.

Hathor was among the goddesses that carried the Eye of Ra – a symbolic representation as the female opposite of Ra in which she had an avenging character protection g her from her opposites.

In her feminine aspect, Hathor represented the musical arts, dance, joy, love, sexuality, and maternal care. These were the properties of the goddess and represented ancient Egyptian femininity.
As the goddess of music and dance, her ministry was formed by dancers, singers, actors and even acrobats.

Hathor crossed the boundaries between the worlds to learn from the dead as they transitioned to an afterlife.

She was entrusted to receive the dead to enter the afterlife and when they went to her in an adequate manner, their petitions would be were heard. The goddess Hathor herself would lead them over to the room of the dead. To some, Hathor was a cow goddess that suckled babies with her sacred milk, or was associated with the wild lioness that lived in the desert capable of extinguishing all life.

Hathor was often personified as a cow – or the symbol of a woman with a crown of cow horns and a solar disk. She could also be symbolized as a lioness – the protective emblem used by the pharaohs. She was also associated with a sycamore tree – the yellow trunk of resistant, durable wood.

In Egyptian mythology, Hathor also was the defender of the drunkards, ruled the celebration of drunkenness, which was celebrated in Dendera, twenty days after the overflowing of the Nile. She was named “The lady of joys” for to her cheerful, festive and game-related personality and “The lady of the garlands” for her beauty

Many shrines were consecrated to Hathor with the most famous at Dendera in Upper Egypt where she also enjoyed being worshipped in the temples of her male companions.

By the New kingdom era, the goddesses Nut and Isis took the place of Hathor, but she continued to represent one of the most revered goddesses. At the end of the New Empire, Hathor was overshadowed by the goddess Isis.

During the Ptolemaic era, a rite arose based on Hathor and Horus forming a marriage saw “The Good Gathering” celebrated in the month of Epiphany according to the Egyptian calendar.

Hathor appears as a woman with a cow’s head, or a human head with the ears and horns of a cow.

She can also appear as a lioness associated with Sekhmet or the cat.

In the late period tale, Ra transformed Hathor into Sekhmet who was the eye of her father. He sent her to devastate humankind for not obeying him, but later, in remorse, Sekhmet was so drunk so that Ra transformed her back into Hathor – the goddess who represents love and veneration

In Egyptian mythology, Hathor is the “mother of mothers”, a goddess of women, maturity, children, and work. Her enigmatic energy connected her with women.

In the Book of the Dead from the 13th century B.C., Hathor was one of the goddesses associated with the souls in the afterlife. Among those deities, there was Amentit, a deity of the west, who represented Necropolis or sarcophagi on the western banks of the Nile and the kingdom of life after death.

Hathor’s associates:
Women, musicians, dancers, singers, perfumers, aroMatherapists, cosmeticians, brewers, vintners, magicians, fortune-tellers, diviners, and henna artists

Manifestations:
Hathor is most often depicted as a cow with the solar disk and plumes between her horns or as a woman whose crown is a solar disk held between a pair of cow horns.

Iconography:
Hathor is symbolised as tree with a woman’s breast, with which she nourishes pharaohs.

Attributes:
Mirror, frame drum, and sistrum: the sistrum, a percussion instrument, is sometimes decorated with Hathor’s image, as are Egyptian hand mirrors.

Animals:
Cow, gazelle, cat, goose

Plants:
Myrrh tree, date palm, sycomore fig, papyrus, and henna

Stones:
Malachite, turquoise

Metal:
Gold, copper

Color:
Red

Planet:
Moon. Hathor also has associations with the Dog Star, or Sirius which the ancient Egyptians called Sothis, the Great Provider or the Womb of Hathor.

Places:
Hathor’s principal sanctuary was at Dendera, on the edge of the desert between Luxor and Abydos, where it is believed her cult first began. Dendera was a healing center, the Egyptians considered it the Navel of the Universe, or Earth’s spiritual center. The mountain range to the west of the Nile River and marshes were sacred to Hathor.

Time:
An annual festival of appeasement corresponded with the rising of Sothis (Sirius) or approximately 20 July by our calendar. Hathor was offered copious amounts of beer and pomegranate juice shared by celebrating devotees.

Offerings:
A gift of two mirrors is her traditional votive offering. Hathor is the spirit of alcohol and beer or wine were used as offerings. Other traditional votive offerings include fabrics, scarabs, and other amulets; images of cats and cows; jewelry; and ex-votos (milagros) in the form of eyes or ears to encourage Hathor to see or hear petitioners.

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Diversity Grants & Awards

I’m really excited to announce I’ve been nominated for the Ditmar Awards for Best New Talent and Best Novella for Bluebells – an LGBTQI, disability dystopian alternate history horror.

I’m a recipient of the 2023 Horror Writers Association Diversity Grants to allow me to continue research for my HWA mentorship project with Lee Murray. The final piece will be an alternate history, gothic horror, GBTQI, disability with Fae versus gangsters in 1920s Sydney.

It’s a great time to be writing with my heart, soul and passion. Very excited to see where diversity in horror and dark fantasy can take us!

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Anoka

Publisher’s Description

Welcome to Anoka, Minnesota, a small city just outside of the Twin Cities dubbed “The Halloween Capital of the World” since 1937. Here before you lie several tales involving bone collectors, pagan witches, werewolves, skeletal bison, and cloned children. It is up to you to decipher between fact and fiction as the author has woven historical facts into his narratives. With his debut horror collection, Cheyenne and Arapaho author Shane Hawk explores themes of family, grief, loneliness, and identity through the lens of indigenous life.


Summary

I was recently recommended to read Anoka: A Collection of Indigenous Horror from US author Shane Hawk.

While it is hard to choose favourites from this collection which spans so many real-world themes, societal marginalisation, stigma and indigenous horror themes, there were several stories that really resonated with me.

The opening story ‘Soilborne’ was dark tale that really plunged its claws into me. ‘Wounded’ was a journey into the darkness of a mind and family. ‘Transfigured’ was a striking Halloween story that proved the perfect ending to this collection of the dark, haunting and macabre.

Review

Anoka was a fantastic collection of indigenous horror where Hawk delivered a host of genuine characters, masterful storytelling and a series of dark, weird and haunting horror in a well-written psychological horror collection.

Conclusion

Highly recommended read for fans of horror, dark fiction and psychological horror. A must read!


** This is my personal opinion and does not reflect any judging decisions **

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Ditmar Award Nominations!!

I’m thrilled to announce I’m included in the 2022 Ditmar Awards Nominations. There is such a fabulous variety of works nominated this year.

Presentations will be held at Conflux Convention in September/October.

I’m nominated for Best New Talent and my LGBTQI dystopian alternate history novella Bluebells is nominated in Best Novella or Novelette.

Congratulations to all the nominees and can’t wait to celebrate everything Australian speculative fiction at Conflux.

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Don’t Fear the Reaper

Publisher’s Description

Four years after her tumultuous senior year, Jade Daniels is released from prison right before Christmas when her conviction is overturned. But life beyond bars takes a dangerous turn as soon as she returns to Proofrock. Convicted Serial Killer, Dark Mill South, seeking revenge for thirty-eight Dakota men hanged in 1862, escapes from his prison transfer due to a blizzard, just outside of Proofrock, Idaho.

Dark Mill South’s Reunion Tour began on December 12th, 2019, a Thursday.

Thirty-six hours and twenty bodies later, on Friday the 13th, it would be over.


Summary

I’ve recently read Don’t Fear the Reaper (Indian Lake Trilogy, #2) the sequel to My Heart is a Chainsaw by US Horror author Stephen Graham Jones.

Don’t Fear the Reaper returns us to the town of Proofrock and to the protagonist Jade Daniel’s – four years after court trials – she’s changed a lot and finally cleared of the crimes from the Fourth of July Massacre. In the minds of some Proofrock residents, she’s still to blame for the Fourth of July Massacre. Others still, wait for the return of Indian ghost witch, Stacey Graves. But Jade is fairly certain that venegful ghost is finally in her watery grave. She hopes.

Proofrock is gripped in the worst ice storm of a century. The FBI have been busy trying to convict a Native American serial killer by returning to the scenes of his crimes across many states hoping for bodies of the victims still missing. But Dark Mill South has other plans. Once the FBI are inevitably caught in the snowstorm, he makes his escape and heads for…Proofrock. The body count starts piling up quickly and soon Jade and a few former school survivors of the Fourth July Massacre begin to wonder just how many killings are due to Dark Mill South or is someone else taking advantage of his presence?

Review

Graham-Jones writes a compelling and more rigorous sequel as though he’s found his ground, the audience are running with him as we’re led through the icy killing grounds of Proofrock once more. The pace is fast, the killer (or killers) are quick and cunning. Graham-Jones writes a brilliant crime story as well as a horror-infused homage to the slasher form. A steadily building pace is jerked into rapid action with a few gruesome but effective splashes of violence. Graham-Jones is a master of keeping the equilibrium perfectly poised.

Conclusion

A thrilling and suspenseful homage to the slasher genre with genuine characters and masterfully written. Great for fans of dark fiction, horror, slashers, suspense, mystery and thrillers. A highly recommended read!!


** This is my personal opinion and does not reflect any judging decisions **

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Arthurian Lore: Merlin

Merlin is the archetypal wizard from Arthurian lore. Merlin is a Latinized version of the Welsh Myrddin. His exact origins are lost in myth and there is no concrete evidence, but there was possibly several individuals who were guardians to kings, prophets and bards existed toward in the late fifth century. What we have today has become the basis for the Arthurian lore about Merlin.

Merlin’s first appearances in the Latin works of Geoffrey of Monmouth, a 12th-century Welsh cleric. The Prophecies of Merlin written in the early 1130s and are verses apparently made by the fifth century prophet, Merlin. Monmouth did invent many of the prophecies himself which stretched beyond the 12th century. In the History of the Kings of Britain, Monmouth formed the foundations for the Arthurian legends where Merlin becomes a key character. Monmouth confuses the chronology placing Merlín in both the fifth and sixth centuries. He is allegedly a magical child born from a union between a mortal woman and a spirit (a daemon, which later Christian writers interpreted as the Devil) but he has great magical abilities with prophecy and matures quickly like many demi-gods from Classical mythology.

Accordingly, Merlin moves great stones from Ireland to the Salisbury Plain to construct Stonehenge (which actually much older than the fifth or sixth centuries CE). It is Merlín who organises for king Uther Pendragon to seduce Igraine. From the union is a son – the infant Arthur. Here, Monmouth’s story leaves Arthur and he doesn’t reappear until a third poetic work where The Life of Merlin continues the tale of Artur but instead focuses on Merlin sister- Ganieda. Vita Merlini written by Monmouth in about 1150, is a biography of sorts about the adult Merlin but it a written account of twelfth century oral lore, mythology, cosmography, cosmology and natural history.

In Vita Merlini, Merlin fights at the Battle of Camlann. Unlike many Arthurian stories and romantic poems, instead of glorifying war, the horrifying effects of trauma on individuals and their families are made plain. Merlin rules South Wales. Peredur of North Wales argues with Gwenddoleu, the King of Scotland and Merlin and King Rhydderch of Cumbria join with Peredur against the Scots in a savage battle. Arthur is wounded and taken from the battlefield to Avalon for healing.

The Britons finally rally their troops and force the Scots to retreat. Seeing victory ahead, Merlin instructs on the correct burial rites for all the dead before the trauma of war overwhelms him and he flees into the forest. There he exists as a hermit – naked and mad, he hunts animals and harvested nuts and wild fruit. He observes the animals and birds learning their ways and studying all the natural world around him.

After the Battle of Camlann and Merlín has fled to the woods, Queen Ganeida, Merlin’s sister and the wife of King Rhydderc worries for her brother’s well-being. She sends searchers into the woods to look for Merlin in hope of bringing him out of his madness. One of the searchers comes to a fountain hidden by hazel thickets. There he finds Merlin, naked and unkempt, talking to himself. The searcher doesn’t want to alarm Merlin with his presence so instead he softly plays the lyre and sings about the mourning of Guendoloena for her beloved husband, Metlin and of the worry of Ganieda for her brother.

The music was enough to sooth Merlin’s soul and he remembered who he was, and what he had been, and everyone he had set aside in his madness. He asks the searcher to take him to the court of his old friend King Rhydderch. There, Metlin walks through the city gates, and his sister Ganieda and wife Guenedolena run to meet him. In their love and joy at his return, they lead him to the royal court where King Rhydderch receives him with great honour. Suddenly surrounded by the vast crowd which he’s been unaccustomed to such human company, his madness returns and desperately, he tries to escape to the sanctuary of the woods.

Rhydderch refused to let his old friend go, fearing for his safety in the wild, he has Merlin chained whereupon he falls silent and morose, refusing to speak or acknowledge anyone.

Merlin bowed his head for a moment as if softening, but then the madness in him spoke, “I will be free of her, free of you, free of love and its binding chains, therefore it is right that she be allowed her chance of happiness and marry a man of her own choosing, but beware should that man ever come near! On her wedding day, I will come to her and give her my gifts.”

Metlin explained King Rhydderch’s wife – Merlín’s own sister- is having an affair. He prophecies three different deaths for the son. The king laughs at so many different prophesied deaths for the same boy and apologies for doubting his wife’s fidelity. Queen Ganieda is greatly relieved to have her secret affair kept hidden as a jest.

Merlin is granted freedom but neither his sister Ganieda or his wife can entreat him to stay in the city. Merlin’s sister and wife watch him leave for the solitude of the forest. Both were convinced his derangement had no truth to the three different predicted for the death of the queen’s son.

The boy in question grew into a young man, and one during a hunting expedition with friends and his horse throws him over the cliff but his boot snags a tree the branch suspending his body in the air while his head is submerged beneath the water and he drowns. This fulfils the three deaths for the son according to Merlin’s prophecy.

Merlin was freed and made his way the gates. His sister caught up with him there, telling of her love and begged him to at least see out the winter in comfort with her.

Merlin left and Ganieda built a lodge for him, where she brought him food and drink. Merlin thanked her for that and for her company. On one occasion, Merlín forts the death of the king she must to return quickly to court. He asks that when she return to him, she must bring Taliesin, who lord recently arrived after visiting Gildas in Brittany.

Ganieda returns to Merlín with Taliesin. Merlin explains how they’d taken the badly wounded King Arthur to the Avalon after the battle of Camlann, leaving him in the healing care of Morgan le Fay. He explains events from Vortigern to King Arthur and long period of Saxon domination which would eventually lead to a return to British ruler after a prolonged and bloody conflict.

Perhaps the best-known portrayal of Merlin comes from Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur written in 1485. This is romanticised tale of how the infant Arthur was raised in a stewardship until after on the death of his father, Uther Pendragon, Merlin presents the youth, Arthur to the knights of the land. Merlin sets a task to prove Arthur is Uthet’s true heir by if he can withdraw the sword Excalibur from the stone in which Merlín has embedded, he is the rightful ruler of Britain. Here, Merlin acts as Arthur’s adviser but disappears from the story early in Arthur’s reign. An unrequited passion for Nimue (or Viviane) the lady of the lake tricks Merlín into revealing how to construct a magical tower of hidden by mist which she then uses to imprison him.