Episode 121 – Til Death – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 110 Show Notes

Source: Algonquin Folklore

This week on MYTH, it’s once again time for my favorite annual tradition – the Halloween Special! You’ll learn that war is hell on relationships, that it’s surprisingly easy to get a human skull, and that fireplaces make bad hiding spots. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll meet one of the undead inspirations for vampires. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 121, “Til Death”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
Halloween is always one of my favorite times of year. It’s that special time when we can decorate our homes with skeletons and ghosts to distract us from all the existential horrors haunting our daily lives. I know I need the distraction, so this week’s diversion comes from Hungarian folklore by way of Folk-Tales of the Magyars collected by Henry Jones and Lewis Kropf from 1889.
Long, long ago somewhere far away, even beyond the Operencian Sea (a fictional sea in Magyar folklore meant to indicate somewhere incredibly distant and unreachable, and likely a mispronunciation of the Austrian district Ober Enns, the westernmost frontier of king Matthias of Hungary) there once lived a maid. As is so common in folklore, she had long since lost her mother and, for once, her father as well. That’s right, this poor girl was an orphan. She had grieved for an appropriate amount of time but, after moving on, she met and fell in love with the handsomest young man in her small village. He was as besotted with her as she was with him (the story says they were as inseparable as two turtle-doves in a wood, which is an adorable image). They were so happy, in fact, that they decided to get married and set a fairly quick wedding date. They were anxious to be man and wife (and to get to the honeymoon banging).
Given the aggressive date they’d set, the couple wanted a small, intimate ceremony. And when I say small, I mean absolutely tiny – the girl only invited her godmother, and the boy only invited his very best friend. He may have also been an orphan, based on that, but the story doesn’t clarify. The wedding was about a week away when shit went sideways in a global way – the drums of war began to thunder. For reasons that have been lost to time, the Hungarian king called up his armies and sent them to march out against their belligerent neighbor. This being the feudal days, the armies mostly consisted of random-ass farmers and townsfolk who were summoned by their local lords to take up their scythes and bows to die for a cause that would never really benefit them.
Our hero, whose name was John though his fiance (whose name is Judith although the story is almost over before we learn this) called him Jack, was rich enough to own a fine stallion and an actual sword. He mounted up and joined the other brightly-bedecked horses and young, naive riders as they flocked to their king’s banners like bees swarming in defense of their hive. Kissing his beloved goodbye, he told her to wait for him – he would be back as soon as he could for that intimate wedding. “The generals have said we will be back in three years, my love. Wait for me until then and don’t lose hope. I will think of you every night and will be faithful to you in every word and deed until then. Even if a thousand beautiful girls threw themselves at me, I would turn them all aside for love of you. I swear I will be back. I love you.” Tears in her eyes, our brave heroine vowed to wait for her beloved Jack as long as it took. Even if the treasures of the whole world were offered up as a bridal gift, she would not be tempted to marry another. Even if it took him ten years to come back instead of three, she would wait faithfully for her beloved. She accompanied him as far as the frontier before finally having to turn back or risk getting caught in the conflict.
That awful, nameless war dragged on for two blood-drenched years before both sides had finally had enough death and sought peace. News of the treaty raced back from the frontier faster than wildfire and the young maid was overjoyed at the news that her beloved Jack would be home a whole year earlier than expected. Each and every day, she would head out along the road she knew he would have to come back along and peer out to the horizon to try and spot him riding back to her waiting arms. Each and every day, she was disappointed by the empty space where her lover should be. She began going out twice each day, then five times, then ten times a day, too impatient and sick with worry to focus on doing anything else at all for very long. John did not come back and no one she met had any word of his whereabouts.
Another year went by, and still he did not come. Another, but still no Jack. Four years had now come and gone, with the war being two years ended and the girl could wait no longer. This endless waiting without so much as a rumor of her missing bridegroom was driving her mad, so she resolved to do something. With Jack vanished into the aether, there was only one person in the whole wide world that the young maid went to with her fears and problems – her godmother. This is a folktale, so it should come as very little surprise that this particular old woman was, in fact, a witch. Her goddaughter knew of her witchy ways and loved her anyways since, as far as I can tell, she had been a very kind and loving godmother after the death of both her parents. Witch doesn’t always mean wicked.
The old hag (and yes, the story does specify that she is a hag, because of course she is) was pleased as always to see the young maid. She quickly sensed Judith’s somber attitude and asked her what was the matter. “My Jack has been gone so very long and, even though the war ended two years ago, he hasn’t returned nor has he sent word. I need to know if he’s alive or dead so I can figure out what to do with my life. Can you help me, godmother?”
The old woman smiled indulgently. “Of course I can, my dear. It just so happens that tomorrow night is the full moon, which is the perfect time for magic. Go then to the cemetery and ask the gravedigger to give you a skull by the pale moon’s light. If he balks at this request” which would be a totally reasonable and understandable reaction since giving a random person someone’s fucking skull is a big ask “tell him I sent you. He won’t refuse you then. Bring the skull home and I shall meet you there with a large earthenware pot. We’ll put the skull in the pot and boil it with some millet for two hours. This strange brew will reveal whether your lover yet lives and may even entice him to come back to you.” The girl thanked her godmother for this strange but undoubtedly sage advice and went home. The next night, as instructed, she went to the graveyard.
The gravedigger was taking his ease by the cemetery gates, smoking a pipe contentedly. “Good evening, old father!” which was a polite, old-fashioned way to greet a random old man apparently. “Good evening, lass! What brings you out to this silent, somber place so late at night? Tis a strange time to visit a grave, to be sure.” “I haven’t come to visit, sir, but to ask you a favor.” “A favor is it? Well then, tell me your request. If I can, I’ll be glad to help you out. What do you need, lass?” She took a deep breath. “A human skull.” The gravedigger blinked. I don’t know what he thought the favor was going to be, but it sure as shit wasn’t a fucking skull. It was a strange request but he knew this girl by reputation – she surely had a good reason for asking. “I can probably do that. There’s certainly enough of them around this boneyard. What do you need a skull for, if you don’t mind me asking?”
The girl shrugged hesitantly. “I don’t entirely know, to be honest. My godmother sent me out here to fetch it.” The gravedigger nodded wisely. “Ah, that explains much. Wait a moment.” He went and fetched what he thought was the best skull for the vague, mysterious task and brought it to the young maid. “Here you are, lass. Take it to your godmother with my regards.” Thanking the kind gravedigger for his aid, she wrapped the skull up and hurried home.
As instructed, Judith unwrapped the skull in her house and plunked it in the large earthenware pot. She mixed in some millet and put it on the fire to cook (presumably with a bunch of water as well, even if it’s not specified). The flames were roaring, so it didn’t take long for the millet to start to boil, throwing off huge bubbles as big as two fists put together. The girl stared into the strange skull mixture, mesmerized and waiting with baited breath for…well, she honestly wasn’t sure. Something. The bubbles kept coming until, suddenly, the biggest bubble yet grew on the surface. It stretched and grew until it finally exploded with the sound and fury of a musket shot. The force of it made her look away for just a moment.
When Judith looked back, the skull was sitting balanced on the lip of the pot. It had only empty eye sockets, but she still somehow got the distinct impression that it was leering at her with a wicked grin. “It has started,” it hissed in a vicious tone. “He comes.” The godmother’s magic was clearly doing something and so, without any directions, she stared back at the skull and kept waiting. Two more bubbles exploded like rifle fire and the skull grinned. “He has made it halfway.” She kept waiting until three more bubbles exploded with the same volume and ferocity. “He’s here. He waits out in the yard.”
That was the magic phrase so to speak and the young maid turned away from the magic skull and raced for the door. Even as she crossed the threshold, Judith saw her beloved fiance standing just beyond. Jack was as handsome as he’d ever been in her memories and dreams, sitting astride his magnificent white stallion. His horse was the same pure color as fresh-driven snow, and it matched the pure white garments he wore from head to toe. Even his boots and his helmet were that same pure white, which was a striking image to say the least. He smiled as he saw his beloved fiance coming towards him from the door. “Will you come with me to the country where I now dwell?”
As far as greetings from long-lost lovers go, it’s a little underwhelming. The maid was barely phased by it though and didn’t miss a beat. “Of course, my dear beloved Jack. I would follow you anywhere, even to the end of the world.” He smiled and offered her a hand. “Then join me up here in my saddle.” With his help, she mounted smoothly up behind him and finally she got the reunion she’d hoped for. They embraced and kissed each other passionately, deeply, and repeatedly. When she finally had to come up for air, she looked up at Jack with a smile in her eyes. “Is this new country of yours very far from here?” He nodded solemnly. “Yes, my love – it is very far away indeed but don’t worry. Despite the distance, it won’t take us long to get there.” And so saying, he heeled his horse into a trot. The journey had begun.
The couple soon left the village where they had both grown up. As they passed the outskirts, they saw ten mounted men gallop past, all clad in the same spotless white like the color of the purest flour. Before the maid could even open her mouth to ask about them, another ten appeared a little ways off but still very clearly visible in the moonlight. John saw her startled look and spoke first. “How beautifully shines the moon, the moon; how beautifully march past the dead. Are you afraid, my love, my little Judith?” She gazed into his eyes. “I am not afraid so long as I can see you, my beloved Jack.” Satisfied with her answer, the couple rode on.
Before they had gone very far, the maid saw a hundred men riding past in perfect military columns, trotting in perfect order like soldiers. No sooner had this regiment vanished into the dark than another hundred men appeared and followed after. Again, John met Judith’s eyes. “How beautifully shines the moon, the moon; how beautifully march past the dead. Are you afraid, my love, my little Judith?” She shook her head. “I am not afraid so long as I can see you, my darling Jack.” They continued on their way, but the phantasmal soldiers kept appearing, more often and in much greater numbers. Soon, an entire ghostly army was on the move around them, so many that the young maid couldn’t even guess at how many she had seen. Some rode past so close that they nearly brushed against the riding couple, but not quite.
“How beautifully shines the moon, the moon; how beautifully march past the dead. Are you afraid, my love, my little Judith?” She shook her head. “I am not afraid so long as I can see you, Jack my love.” Jack nodded solemnly. “I am glad to hear it. You are a good woman, and brave to boot. I know that you would do anything for me, my dove. As a reward for your trust and honor, you shall have everything your heart desires when we reach my new country.” This made Judith’s heart swell with hope and love. She couldn’t wait to see this new home that Jack was taking her to, a place they could live out their days in peace and comfort.
They rode along beyond the town until they came to an old burial ground enclosed by a foreboding black wall. John stopped beside the open gate set into the ancient graveyard wall. “We are here, my love. This is my new country and we are almost to our new home.” Judith was beginning to have some very real doubts as John heeled the horse into motion again and they rode through the gate into the boneyard. The doubts became absolute certainty that something had gone very fucking wrong when the pure-white horse stopped before the gaping maw of an open grave. “We’re home, my dove.” They both dismounted from the horse and Judith hid her terror behind a sweet smile at the thing that had once been Jack.
He gestured towards the open grave with a ghastly smile and, in the pale moonlight, she could now see an empty coffin lying at the bottom with the lid propped up beside it. “Go on in, my darling.” “You should probably go first, my dear beloved Jack. You already know the way.” With another horrible smile, Jack climbed down into the pit, crawled into the coffin, and lay down like the corpse he clearly was. Judith nodded once at her undead fiance, turned around, and ran the fuck away as fast as her legs could carry her. She fled directly for a mansion they had passed a few miles back in the hopes that she could find refuge there.
Being the middle of the night, all of the doors were naturally locked. She knocked on all of them, crying and pleading for anyone inside to take pity on her and let her in but no response came. To be fair, a lot of monsters require permission to come inside and murder everyone beyond a threshold, so I can’t exactly blame them for not trusting the pleading of a stranger on a night when the hungry, restless dead are clearly on the move. She shook all of the doors in vain until, at last, she found one door that opened beneath her hand.
She burst through it into a long, dark corridor. Heedless, she raced along it until she came to a large chamber. At the center of it stood an open coffin with a corpse lying in state. Well, shit. It wasn’t exactly the kind of place she wanted to be on a night like tonight but it was all she had. With no other real options, she shut the door and crawled into the dirty, unlit fireplace in the corner and hid in the deepest shadows she could find. She didn’t wait long.
As soon as John realized that his beloved corpse bride-to-be hadn’t joined him in the grave, he scrambled back out of it and hurried off in pursuit. Despite his best efforts though, he couldn’t match her terrified speed. It took him a little longer, but soon enough he too came to the mansion. Following her tracks, he came to the long corridor and the closed door. Jack lifted his corpsey knuckles and rapped on the door like the crack of doom. “Dead man, open the door to a fellow dead man.”
To her horror, Judith saw the corpse lying in state shudder at her once-beloved Jack’s terrible words. He knocked again. “Dead man, open the door to a fellow dead man.” This time, the corpse sat up straight in his coffin and looked around. Thrice, Jack knocked on the door. “Dead man, open the door to a fellow dead man.” Dead joints creaking, the corpse stood and went to open the door for Jack.
“Is my bride here, dead man?” The corpse nodded. “She is indeed. I saw her crawl into the fireplace to hide.” Jack smiled a horrible smile. “Perfect. Come, dead man – let us tear her to mutilated pieces and bathe in her hot blood.” Judith backed as far away as she could, but there was nowhere to go. The fireplace would be her tomb, and she would die screaming at the hands of the one she had loved enough to follow him anywhere. The two corpses leered at her, skeletal hands reaching for her throat…and just then, the rooster in the loft began to crow. Sunrise broke across the land and the two corpses vanished at the first touch of the light.
Judith didn’t realize she’d been screaming until a well-dressed gentleman burst into the room from one of the previously locked doors. He was a handsome man and so richly garbed that you could be excused for thinking him a king. He looked around the room and saw the empty coffin and the trembling woman (who had crawled out of the fireplace). He rushed over to her and caught her up in an enormous, rib-creaking hug before smothering her in relieved and grateful kisses.
“Thank you so much you poor, brave, dear! The corpse you saw laid out in this room last night was my brother. I’ve buried him 365 times already, but he has come back to haunt me each and every time. No matter what I do, no matter how magnificent I make his burial ceremony, he still came back. You have banished him somehow and for that, you have my eternal gratitude. Let’s get married, my beautiful, brave savior and stay together forever so that not even the hoe and the spade can ever separate us.” This is a very strange time and place for a proposal to someone you literally just met, and bringing in talk of being buried together seems like a particularly macabre touch but both of them have been through something very, very traumatic so maybe I can give him a little grace. Having just been through the worst kind of breakup imaginable, Judith agreed to marry the very rich, very handsome, and apparently very kind man she had, again, literally just met. They were wed that very winter. The story doesn’t say whether they lived happily ever after, so I guess use your best judgment.
It’s never explained if the witchy godmother’s magic went wrong or horribly right. Judith did indeed learn that her once-beloved Jack was very much dead and never coming back and, what’s more, moved on from that relationship with incredible speed thanks to bone-chilling terror. She even found a far more eligible bachelor to marry, garnering herself a better life than she otherwise would have had, so maybe this whole thing was part of godmother’s twisted plan? Who knows – I certainly don’t. What I do know is that it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s monster is the strigoi.
The strigoi are restless, troubled spirits who have risen from the grave to wander the earth. The undead creatures are Romanian, although the term is believed to date all the way back to the Dacian Kingdom that was conquered by the Roman Empire (hence the name Romania). In Romanian, the term roughly translates to ‘one risen from the grave’, though it’s also related to the Latin strix (a bird of ill-omen) or striga (a term for witches or evil magic users). Strigoi are more revenants than ghosts and have a variety of supernatural powers. It was said that they were evil men whose vile actions made them unworthy to enter the afterlife, doomed to roam the earth. They can transform into animals, turn invisible, and drink the blood of their victims to gain strength and vitality. If that sounds an awful lot like a certain famous vampire, it’s because Bram Stoker used the strigoi as one of the main inspirations for Count Dracula (right down to living in Romania).
Although the strigoi are creatures of folklore, there are several documented historical cases of people becoming the hungry dead – or at least being accused of it. The earliest surviving case was a man named Jure Grando Alilovic who lived and died in a small village in Istria in what is now Croatia. For 16 years after his death, Grando was believed to have terrorized the poor village, hunting and killing those he had once lived amongst. The strigoi was eventually hunted down and decapitated by the villagers, led by the village priest, in 1672 thus ending his reign of terror. Grando’s story was thoroughly documented by the Carniolan (a territory of the Holy Roman Empire) scientist Johann Weikhard von Valvasor in his work The Glory of the Dutchy of Carniola.
A Serbian peasant named Petar Blagojevich died in the village of Kisilova in 1725 but, as you probably guessed, he didn’t stay dead. According to the legends, his strigoi returned to his home after sunset not long after his burial. Bursting into his old house (not requiring permission in this version), he asked his adult son for food but was denied. Enraged, Petar slaughtered his son, ripping out his throat and drinking his blood. In other versions, he instead visited his wife and asked for his shoes. She handed them over and promptly fled the village in fear for her safety. Either way, nine villagers died over the next eight days. On their deathbeds, each is said to have claimed to have been brutally attacked by the dead Petar. Regardless of whether he was a strigoi or not, the villagers were convinced and went to demand that the priest and the Kameralprovisor (a man named Frombald) dig up old Blagojevich’s grave.
The government official Fromabld tried to insist that they needed permission from the Austrian officials first, but the inhabitants of Kisilova were not disuaded. They feared that, by the time such permission came, everyone in the village would be dead. Either he agreed now or the village would be abandoned. Frombald had no choice. They exhumed the body and found clear signs of vampirism – his hair, beard, and nails had all grown, blood could be seen on his lips, and his body looked plump and healthy rather than dead and rotting. Of course, these are all pretty common things in normal decomposition, especially for a body that has only been dead for a short time, but the villagers were sure they knew a strigoi when they saw one. The body was staked to the earth, which caused fresh blood to flow from the ears and mouth, terrifying the villagers. Staking was clearly not good enough – this asshole needed to be immolated. Frombald didn’t try to stop them, but wrote a report after the fact denying any blame for what had happened.
In an 1865 article on Transylvanian folklore by Wilhelm Schmidt, he described strigoi as nocturnal monsters that hunted and fed on infants. He noted a tradition of tossing a stone behind yourself after the birth of a child and exclaiming ‘this into the mouth of the strigoi’ to ward off their predation. The 1909 book An Authenticated Vampire Story by Franz Hartmann claimed that peasant children living in the Carpathian Mountains began dying suddenly and mysteriously. The villagers came to the conclusion that their recently deceased count, who lived in an old fortress near the village, was clearly a vampire. To stop this beast, the villagers swarmed the castle with torches and pitchforks and burned it to the ground.
Even as recently as 1969, an old man died in the city of Capataneni as documented in In Search of Dracula, The History of Dracula and Vampires by Radu Florescu. Shortly thereafter, several of the old man’s family began to die in mysterious and increasingly suspicious ways. The terrified villagers dug up his body and, once again, found that the body had not decomposed, his eyes were wide open, and his face was red and twisted with rage and hunger. He was clearly a strigoi. The body was burned both to save the village from his predation and to save the old man’s soul from damnation.
Although the strigoi mort are the most common version (and the one described in all the stories so far), they are not the only type. According to Tudor Pamfile, a Romanian writer, you also have strigoaica, or witches, and strigoi viu, or living sorcerers. The Datinile Poporuli Roman la Inmormantari published in 1882 claimed that six conditions could make a living person more likely to become a strigoi mort upon death: being the seventh child of the same sex in a family, leading a wicked life, dying without being married, being executed for perjury, dying by suicide, or dying from a witch’s curse.
All strigoi are said to be bald on the top of their heads, to refuse to eat garlic or onions, to avoid incense, and to sleep outside as the Feast of Saint Andrew approaches. Its spine is long and twisted and covered in hair, like a beast’s tail. As we’ve seen, the tried and true way to kill one was to unearth its grave, have a priest read last rites, stake the creature through the heart with oak, yew, or ash (all woods with magical properties), and pin it to the earth with a knife or nail to keep it stuck to the coffin and unable to rise and do mischief. So if the people around you are dying in mysterious horror-movie ways and someone you know has recently died, consider digging up the body and staking it before the strigoi comes for you too.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on TuneIn, on Vurbl, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth, on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod, and on Tumblr as MythsYourTeacherHated. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff.
Next time, we’re headed to old India for some folklore fun leading up to Diwali. You’ll see that magic thieves tools grow in shit, that getting rid of demons is tough work, and that sometimes it’s appropriate to cut off a nose to spite a face. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you should be careful how observant you are when a camel is on the loose. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.