PENNY DREADFUL

I always have to take the time to give a bit of gratitude for some of the inspiration that comes from my listeners. I get e-mails, twitter messages and Facebook posts that get my mind reeling and contemplating ideas for future shows. I recently received a gold mine of inspiration from a listener who asked me if I was aware of a horror television series called “Penny Dreadful.” I never heard of the show, but I most certainly had heard of what a Penny dreadful was.

In fact I thought that the e-mail was asking me to find various “Penny Dreadful” and share them on the show. For those who do not know what a “Penny Dreadful” is, I can assure you that it is a topic that us very appropriate as we approach the Halloween season.

A Penny Dreadful was a type of fiction that was popular in Britain ion the 19th century. It actually predated the pulp fiction book or even the comic book, where lurid stories and tales of terrible treachery and horror were published in a small book that only would cost you a penny.

The penny dreadfuls were printed on cheap pulp paper and were aimed at young working class men.

The penny dreadfuls, named for both their cheap nature, and poor, sensational quality, erupted into existence and met the desires of the poor class. The penny dreadfuls “became by far the most alluring and low-priced form of escapist reading available to those who were unable to afford books.

One of the most popular Penny Dreadfuls that I knew existed in the late 1840’s was Varney the Vampire; and the Feast of Blood. It was one of the first well known gothic horror tales of the Victorian era. In fact Varney the vampire publications predated Bram Stokers Dracula which was published in 1897.

Many of today’s standard vampire stories originated with Varney: Varney has fangs, leaves two puncture wounds on the necks of his victims, has hypnotic powers, and has superhuman strength. Unlike later fictional vampires, he is able to go about in daylight and has no particular fear of either crosses or garlic. He can eat and drink like other humans in order to blend in , but he points out that human food and drink do not agree with him. His vampirism seems to be a fit that comes on him when his vital energy begins to run low; he is a regular, normally functioning person between feedings.

There are many stories that have evolved over time that have been featured as Penny dreadfuls, for example The fictional Sweeney Todd, the subject of both a successful musical by Stephen Sondheim and a feature film by Tim Burton, also first appeared in an 1846/1847 penny dreadful entitled The String of Pearls: A Romance. Many have heard of the “Demon barber of Fleet Street” that dispatches his victims by pulling a lever as they sit in his barber chair. His victims fall backward down a revolving trapdoor into the basement of his shop, generally causing them to break their necks or skulls. After the evil barber has robbed his dead victims of their goods, Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime assists him in disposing of the bodies by baking their flesh into meat pies and selling them to the unsuspecting customers of her pie shop.

While it is interesting to see that anxieties ran high in Victorian England, the literature in the Penny Dreadfuls and the stories that were spun are similar to what we are seeing today with the creations of frightening characters on Internet blogs like the “Rake.” “Slenderman” and others. There are websites like Creepy pasta that are now creating the most frightening fictional stories that some people believe are real.

There are also websites devoted to real life stories of treachery where people share their paranormal experiences. There are many people that claim that they have had meetings with vampires, have been abducted by aliens and have had encounters with shadow monsters and shadow people.

There are stories that are shared about demon possessions, houses that are haunted by ghosts and sightings of phantom black dogs and huge cats.

There was a post on my Facebook that directed me to a story originally published on a disturbing blog called “Don’t Look Behind You.” It reminded me of an account I had read in the book “Death To Dust” by Kenneth V. Iserson, in which he states that you can tell a lot about a culture by how they take care of their dead. There was a moment in the book where he spoke of how the bodies of the dead are left as carrion for the birds in cultures that practice Zoroastrianism.

According to the blog, back in 2003 Indian officials ventured into a deep jungle, investigating several missing persons reports from a nearby city. What they found was a “Tower of Silence,” or dakhma.

Zoroastrians use these sites to dispose of bodies in the open air.

While sites like these are not uncommon in certain parts of India, several peculiarities hint at something more unusual. None of the bodies were identified. Villagers from nearby, though initially surprised at the sheer number of corpses in the dakhma, proved unable to recognize the bodies. The corpses also did not match the descriptions of the missing people.

There were no animals around except for maggots and flies. Zoroastrians rely on the elements, predators and birds to dispose of the bodies, in the belief that they are contributing back to the Earth. Officials found the corpses relatively untouched by any sort of animal.

There is no official count of the bodies. In fact, little work was actually accomplished at the site and officials avoided the spot – not only because they felt uneasy looking at it, but because of the following, as well:

The deep pit in the center of the photograph was filled with several feet of festering blood – far more than the bodies on the outside could ever supply. The stench was so unbearable that many of the officials began to get nauseous when they first approached the dakhma.

The expedition was ended when a villager accidentally kicked a small bone into the pit, penetrating the coagulated surface of the pool. A massive burst of gas from the decomposing blood erupted from the pit, splashing those looking into it, along with the photographer.

Those caught in the explosion were immediately sent to the hospital, where they were quarantined for possible infection. They became delirious with fever, shouting about “being tainted with the blood of Ahriman” (the personification of evil in Zoroastrianism), despite never having admitted having any familiarity with the religion.

In fact, many of them had no idea what the dakhma was when they had found it. Delirium turned to insanity as many began to attack hospital staff until they were sedated. The fever eventually killed all of them.

When officials returned with hazmat gear the following day, the site was empty. All the bodies had been removed and, astonishingly, the pool of blood in the pit had been drained.

It was an infectious disease that escaped from the blood spray, and there was a small group that spread the infection. It may still be out there and we may have reason to wonder if a plague is showing signs of growing.

Of course plagues and other torments of the body were administered by the demon Ahriman. So the villagers were convinced that the demonic plague had risen and soon people were beginning to show signs of hemorrhagic fever and would drop dead as they would stand.

There are most certainly other demons that are seen as deliverers of pestilence, one that is well known because it was featured in the movie the Exorcist is the demon Pazuzu.

Pazuzu according to Assyrian and Babylonian Mythology is the king of the demons and
is capable of unleashing swarms of locusts, great storms and drought. Pazuzu is a
demon with reptilian features, a clown like grin and large wings.

He appears at a time when his wife, Lamashtu is actively seeking out children that
she can devour. Although Pazuzu is, himself, an evil spirit, he drives away other evil
spirits, and appears to warn humans of coming plagues and misfortunes. According to
ancient writings Pazuzu arrived at the first Millennium and then would disappear for a
time only to reappear at the turn of a decade, millennium or century to warn of a coming
catastrophe.

Recently a photographer from Kenya was in Madagascar filming the architecture on the tiny island. Suddenly the entire sky was turning black and a hum that sounded like a small motor could be heard. The photographer began shooting pictures of what turned out to be an unbelievably large swarm of locusts.

This sudden infestation on the African island resembles one of the ten Plagues of Egypt where, according to the Bible, a swarm of locusts invaded Egypt after Moses begged Pharaoh to free the Israelite slaves.
It is written that the locusts brought devastation to Egypt by eating every last one of the country’s crops – causing mass starvation across the land.

Meanwhile in an uncanny coincidence a man from San Francisco is one of three arrested in North Carolina for murder after deputies found skeletal remains of two victims buried in shallow graves at a home there. The man that was arrested is legally named Pazuzu Illah Algarad. The 35 year old Pazuzu was arrested in Forsyth County, N.C., and charged with murder and “accessory after the fact” following discovery of remains in his backyard.

A woman who says she lived with Algarad for a month in 2005 told the Huffington Post he had talked about bones in his back yard and of “killing and eating” two prostitutes before burning their remains in a fire pit before burying their remains.

Algarad was born in San Francisco as John Alexander Johnson and changed his name to Pazuzu Alagarad in 2002 for religious reasons.

After a look at his Facebook page, it is obvious that Pazuzu is a theistic Satanist and has throughout his Facebook page satanic and dreadful images.

This illustrates that there still exists a miasma of a darker plague that surrounds all of us. There are many people who have had experiences that can be considered paranormal, frightening and dreadful. There are many monsters in the shadows that appear to us and want to communicate. Some are mesmerized and are possessed with the cold and covetous spirit that is emoted from these beings. The messages, ideas and thought forms are now accidentally turned into tulpas.

A tulpa is the result of a meme that generates enough energy to manifest perceptibly. It is conceptually similar to that of a thought form designed by a spiritual architect. Eventually, a template and a blueprint are followed and repeated. When the process becomes ingrained in the collective unconscious, the thought form can manifest perceptibly as if it is being constructed piece by piece until it shows itself.

A tulpa is the result of the idea that objects and events can happen by sheer willpower alone. It is causal engineering that can either benefit or destroy the person or group that has created it.

If this sounds like magic or demonic power – then perhaps it is…or perhaps there is a point of no return where we just don’t care about life, virtue or respect, or that the bestial nature of mankind is fighting its way to the surface and all of the reports we hear of flesh eating humans, vampiric attacks and the like are part of the Apocalypse that we haven’t read about in the various prophecies.

We live in times of viral popular acceptance of thoughts both negative and positive. Some of these thoughts are secrets, dark secrets that need to be opened up. Like the old idiom “a penny for your thoughts,” a “penny dreadful” can be valuable way of coping with the damned and demonic world.

So a penny for your dreadful thinking, and a shilling for your tale of woe, we will laugh in the midst of our screaming, no matter where the darkness grows.