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A Dark Heritage:
The Nighthunter
Logan Bartholom, Nighthunter to the Emperor, wakes with Ghost-induced amnesia in a manor in Little Beddin, Ossyan. All he has from his previous life is a magical sword and a talking dog from Hell. To find his true identity and discover what happened to him, he must go on a dangerous journey to a land where magecraft is still legal, in the company of a child with terrifying powers and his own would-be murderer… who is falling in love with him.
On the way to Thosea they discover a cult which sacrifices people’s souls to a Ghost masquerading as a god. Logan finds out he can travel through time and to different worlds. And they encounter many individuals and beings who are attracted by Cailte’s budding magical powers…
A Dark Heritage is a fantasy / horror novel set in a magical world where prehistoric animals coexist with humans and the Dead return as different species of Ghost.
Hansen Adcock is a writer of short SF stories and novels. His most recent book is A Dark Heritage: The Nighthunter, available from Golden Storyline Books
- The Versailles Incident
A supernatural journey through time by two Edwardian headmistresses
image by SLPix (pixabay.com)
Two women named Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain paid a visit to the Palace of Versailles in France in 1901. While they were looking around the palace grounds, they became lost and seemed to walk backwards through time.
Miss Moberly, born in 1846 (the tenth of fifteen children) was the daughter of the headmaster of Winchester College (who was also Bishop of Salisbury). When she grew up she became the head of a hall of residence for young women, St Hugh’s College, in Oxford. Miss Jourdain was asked to take on the role of her assistant.
Miss Jourdain, born in 1863, was the child of a reverend who was the vicar of Ashbourne in Derbyshire. The eldest of ten siblings, she was the sister to art historian Margaret Jourdain and the mathematician Philip Jourdain. She attended school in Manchester, despite most girls being educated at home during that era. Miss Jourdain also ran a school of her own in Watford and had written several textbooks.
Eleanor Jourdain had an apartment in Paris which she used to teach children English. Before she took on the role of vice-headmistress at Charlotte Moberly’s college, the two women decided to spend some time in the apartment in Paris to get better acquainted, though the main reason may have been because Charlotte wanted to visit the great International Exhibition.
They took a train to the Palace of Versailles in August 1901 and took a tour of the building. While walking in the gardens they missed the turning for the main avenue and wandered onto a lane that passed by the Petit Trianon (a small chateau they were trying to get to). Then strange things started to happen, almost imperceptibly at first.
An Incident in Time
It was August the 10th, 1901. After the palace tour, Misses Moberly and Jourdain decided to walk through the gardens to the Petit Trianon, a Neoclassical style chateau within the gardens of the Grande Trianon. The smaller chateau was built on the orders of Louis XV for his mistress, Madame de Pompadour.
When Louis XVI gained the throne aged 20, he gave the chateau and its surrounding grounds exclusively to his wife, Marie Antoinette.
The two headmistresses looked forward to seeing the gardens’ decorative bridges, waterfalls, pavilions, groves, and the “toy village” where Marie Antoinette would entertain herself pretending to be a peasant woman, a shepherd or a milkmaid in the farm cottages.
They reached the head of a long lake and turned right, through a woodland glade, until they found another stretch of water with the Grande Trianon reflected in it. They passed the body of water on the left and came to a wide green drive, completely empty of people. If they had followed it, they wouldn’t have gotten lost, but they crossed it into a lane instead.
Eleanor was slightly further ahead when Charlotte noticed a woman shaking a white cloth out of the window of a cottage on the corner of the lane. Later, she learned that Eleanor didn’t see the woman.
At that point, both the women weren’t aware of anything unusual going on. They talked about Oxford and mutual friends, moving up the lane and turning right past some buildings.
They came to a fork of three grass-covered paths and chose the central one, as there were two men up ahead from whom they proposed to ask for directions. Both women assumed the men were gardeners because there was a wheelbarrow and a pointed spade nearby, but both men were dressed a little oddly in long, grey-green coats and small, tricornered hats. The men directed Eleanor and Charlotte to keep going straight ahead, then resumed their deep conversation.
Eleanor then saw a detached cottage with a woman and a girl standing in its doorway. They were dressed oddly, too, with white kerchiefs tucked into bodices, and the woman was passing a jug to the girl, who wore an ankle-length skirt and a close-fitting, white cap. Charlotte didn’t see the girl or the woman with the jug.
It was at that point that both Charlotte and Eleanor began to get a creeping sense of surreality, but as they hadn’t known one another all that long, neither dared mention these feelings out loud.
Charlotte Moberly wrote later that “an extraordinary depression came over me, which in spite of every effort to shake it off, steadily deepened until it became quite overpowering.” Unknown to her, Eleanor Jourdain wrote that she “began to feel as if I were walking in (her) sleep; the heavy dreaminess was oppressive.”
They came to a grotto with something like a kiosk or small bandstand in it. Seated by it was a man in a heavy, dark cloak, his face shaded by a big hat. He turned his head suddenly and seemed to look at them, revealing a pockmarked face with a dark and menacing expression. Eleanor felt that he was uncanny and fear-inspiring, and both she and Charlotte had a moment of alarm.
The grotto was so enclosed they couldn’t see anything beyond it. Things took on an unnatural aspect, and not a pleasant one! Even the trees behind the bandstand became flat and lifeless, like a wood depicted on a tapestry, with no light or shade, no hint of a breeze, everything weirdly still.
Footsteps ran up the path behind the two women but when they turned around, nobody was there. However, another person had appeared in the grotto – a handsome gentleman with black, curly hair who called to them in some excitement, “Mesdames, mesdames, il ne faut pas passer par la” and waved his arms before saying “Par ici… cherchez la maison,” indicating he wanted them to take the right-hand path, not the left, as that would take them to the house.
Charlotte and Eleanor moved to a small bridge on the right and turned to thank him, but the man had vanished. They heard someone running yet again, but saw nobody actually running.
Over the bridge, they were on higher ground until they came to a meadow looking onto the front of the Petit Trianon. They mounted a set of steps onto the terrace, and Charlotte caught sight of a lady sitting in the grass growing right up to the house, sketching. This solitary artist turned to look at the two women as they passed, and she was dressed in a light summer dress trimmed with a fichu folded across her shoulders, with a shady, straw hat on top of her puffed-out blonde hair. The young woman was pretty, but at the same time, Charlotte Moberly found her somehow unattractive, still feeling as if she was walking in a dream. Eleanor Jourdain didn’t see the sketching woman.
Misses Moberly and Jourdain walked around to the terrace’s west side, seeking an entrance, the oppressive stillness growing ever more intense. A door opened and a young man dashed out, slamming the door behind him, and ran to them, saying they mustn’t stay there. He offered to take the two ladies to the main entrance off the courtyard. He had a cheerful manner with a slightly mocking smile, and though he wasn’t in livery, they got the impression he could be a junior footman.
The man led Charlotte and Eleanor through a formal French garden walled with trees, into the courtyard, where they found the entrance hall.
Reality asserted itself once again – a guide arrived and invited the two women to join a group of tourists. On leaving, Charlotte and Eleanor took a carriage back to Versailles for tea, and everything was natural, the wind blowing once again.
Taking Stock
The visit wasn’t mentioned for a whole week. However, as Charlotte was writing a letter about her time in France, she began to wonder.
“Do you think the Petit Trianon is haunted?” she asked Eleanor.
“Yes, I do,” her new friend conceded without hesitation.
They finally compared notes and discovered that they hadn’t always been seeing the same things at the same time while they were lost in the gardens.
Charlotte and Eleanor wrote a separate account of what each had experienced (without showing it to the other one) and undertook research of the Trianon’s history. They reckoned they may have seen events that took place on August the 10th 1792, six weeks before the French monarchy was abolished, the siege of the Tuileries, and the slaughter of the King’s guards.
Eleanor revisited the palace grounds again by herself in January 1902, and found that things had altered, the route she and Charlotte had walked now being untraceable. The bandstand and the bridge were missing, the place was swarming with (living) people, the gateway onto the wide green drive was derelict, the drive itself smothered by weeds, none of the three paths they’d had to choose from were there, there was no cottage where Eleanor saw the woman handing a jug to a child, no steps leading to the house-front, and the door through which the “footman” had rushed out was invisible because a wall stood in the way of it. Eleanor asked people she knew in Paris whether there were any ghost stories concerning the Petit Trianon.
They told her that Marie Antoinette’s ghost had been seen in the gardens wearing a light summer hat and a pink dress.
Some people in Versailles village said that the ghosts of the entire court appeared on the anniversary of the siege of the Tuileries on August the 10th, 1792 – the day that led to Marie Antoinette dying via the guillotine.
Through more research, the two women decided that the pockmark-faced man they had seen was the Comte de Vaudreuil, who was a friend of Marie Antoinette’s.
Eventually, Charlotte and Eleanor published a book about their experience titled “An Adventure” in 1911, under the pen-names Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont. The book, along with its claim that Marie Antoinette had appeared in the palace gardens in 1901, caused quite a ruckus and a lot of divided opinions.
The true identities of the book’s authors weren’t revealed until 1931.
Can It Be Explained?
It may have been that the two headmistresses had stumbled into an eccentric sort of LARPing party and not realised.
According to Philippe Jullian in 1965, the French poet Robert de Montesquiou lived near the palace of Versailles at the time of the “incident” and he was sometimes prone to holding parties where he and his friends dressed in historical clothing and performed “tableau vivants” as entertainment.
However, Charlotte and Eleanor claimed to have had other psychic experiences before and after the Versailles time-travelling escapade, including Charlotte Moberly reportedly seeing the Roman Emperor Constantine in the Louvre in 1914, an unusually tall man in a gold crown and a toga.
In the First World War, Eleanor Jourdain grew convinced there was a German spy hiding in her college. Eleanor developed more and more authoritarian behaviour and suddenly died in 1924, in the middle of a scandal over her management of the college. Charlotte Moberly died in 1937.
Once their book came out of copyright, it was republished in 1988 titled “The Ghosts of Trianon: The Complete ‘An Adventure’” by Thoth Publication. In 2008 it was released by CreateSpace.
So, what do you reckon happened at Versailles? Are there any other instances of walking through time you’d recommend I look into next? Let me know in the comments!
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moberly%E2%80%93Jourdain_incident
The World’s Greatest Psychics & Mystics by Margaret Nicholas
- Haunted Stately Piles in the UK
Sounds painful, doesn’t it? Anyhow, this is a list of some of the most ghost-ridden old buildings in the UK.
image by HiQ-Visions (pixabay.com) Scotland
Inveraray Castle
On the north-east of Glasgow, upon the edge of Loch Fyne, this castle is perhaps one of the most haunted buildings in Britain.
It has five ghosts, the most disturbing of which can be found in the MacArthur Room. In 1644, the Duke of Argyll left his castle to evade capture by the Marquess of Montrose, leaving behind a young Irish lad who had been his harp-player.
The Marquess’s mercenaries found the boy and, angry at the prospect of one of their fellow countrymen serving a Scotsman, they killed the poor fellow and left his mutilated body lying on the Duke’s bed.
Though this murder took place in the old castle, the boy’s ghost is said to have become so attached to the bed, he remained haunting it after it was moved to the more modern castle.
Glamis Castle
Built in 1372 and continuously owned by the Bowes-Lyons family, this castle in Angus, East Scotland is said to be cursed after Sir John Lyon took an ancestral chalice away from the family seat at Forteviot (where it was meant to stay in perpetuity).
The castle is haunted by the ghost of Earl Beardie, who had been a guest at the castle and got drunk, then expressed outrage that nobody wanted to play a game of cards with him, and said that instead he would play cards with the Devil! After this a tall man in dark clothes knocked on the door and offered himself as an opponent.
The stranger and Earl Beardie locked themselves in a room, from which could be heard a lot of shouting and swearing. A curious servant tried spying through the keyhole and was blinded by a strange bright light. The Earl opened the door to remonstrate with the servant, only to find that the stranger – the Devil – had left with his winnings – the Earl’s soul!
People who listen hard can sometimes hear the sound of Earl Beardie rolling dice and shouting imprecations. Some folks who stay the night, and often children, wake to find the apparition of the Earl peering into their faces. Not a pleasant wake-up call.
There is also a White Lady, someone who used to live in the castle and was burned at the stake for witchcraft outside Edinburgh Castle, and is believed to roam Glamis ever since then.
Also there is a ghost of a woman with no tongue, who appears pointing at her injured face.
England
Chillingham Castle, Northumberland
This may be the most haunted castle in England. Its glowing apparition of a “Blue Boy”, whose cries of terror resound through the corridors, is the castle’s most well-known ghost, usually seen in the Pink Room.
There is a “White Lady” in its inner pantry, a malignant poltergeist in King Edward’s room and a crowd of ghosts hang out in the torture chamber, where John Sage (the Butcher of the Scots) did a lot of gruesome things to them.
Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk
In this building’s library, the books move on their own. Some people maintain the one moving them is the ghost of William Windham III, a lover of books who died in 1809. He died trying to save his collection of books from a fire which began in that library, and this 17th century Hall is otherwise calm and peaceful (apart from the sound of unknown hands turning pages after dark…)
Blickling Hall, Norfolk
This Jacobean mansion is now owned by the National Trust, but it would seem that a few of its Tudor residents never fully left.
Every May the 19th – the anniversary of her beheading – Anne Boleyn (one of Henry VIII’s wives) is said to return here in a spectral coach driven by a headless horseman, her own head either resting on his lap or her lap. For more information check out this earlier post.
Raynham Hall, Norfolk
One of the most famous photographs of an apparition was taken here in 1936, that of a “Brown Lady” gliding down a staircase.
The Lady may be Lady Dorothy Walpole, the sister of one of the earlier Prime Ministers, Robert Walpole, who died in 1726 under suspicious circumstances.
Visitors in the present-day have heard disembodied footsteps, whispering, and an intense feeling of dread in the upper corridors.
Burton Agnes Manor House, East Yorkshire
Built in 1610, this Elizabethan manor is haunted by the ghost of Anne Griffiths, who is what you might call a quiescent poltergeist.
Anne was the youngest of three sisters who lived here, and she was attacked by robbers and injured fatally. As she was dying, she asked her sisters to always keep a part of her with them forever.
Later on, her skull was found hidden in the manor. Whenever the skull was moved or disturbed, inexplicable noises and poltergeist activity would happen.
The building is calm today, but Anne is still supposedly present in some way.
Treasurer’s House, York
This one is home to a ghostly battalion of marching Romans!
Believed to be the most haunted place in York, the House is also home to the spectre of a cat, a grey lady who tries to converse with children, and the ghost of the building’s previous owner, who leaves smells of cigar smoke wherever he goes.
Longleat, Wiltshire
Louisa Carteret and her husband Thomas Thynne (the second Viscount Weymouth) lived here. She was a kindly and attractive woman, whilst Thomas was suspicious and often bad-tempered.
He became aware – perhaps only in his imagination – that Louisa was in an over-familiar relationship with one of the footmen. In a jealous rage, Thomas shoved that footman down some stairs, killing him. He comcealed the man’s body under the flagstones in the basement, and told his wife the footman had just departed suddenly.
Louisa, incredibly upset, caught some form of illness and died in childbirth aged 22 in 1736.
After her passing, servants claimed they saw Louisa still moving along the corridors in search for her footman, and she can still be heard today banging on doors.
When central heating was put in at Longleat, a body dressed in 18th-century attire was indeed discovered beneath the flagstone floor!
Dorney Court, Windsor, Berkshire
This is a strange one – the place is haunted by the spectre of a bald woman who is only visible to men.
In the 19th century, the Palmer family (who lived there then) were so frightened by the bald ghost they got a priest in to work out what was going on.
Whilst in there, the priest received a supernatural instruction to remove some panelling in an upstairs bedroom. He obeyed, and behind the panels was a secret alcove containing the long tresses of a woman’s hair!
Fulham Palace, West London
This was once a country house for Bishops of London for over 1200 years (obviously the city of London hadn’t expanded so much back then).
It wasn’t such a relaxing holiday destination, however, due to the constant switching of allegiances between Catholicism and Protestantism. During King Edward VI’s reign, the Catholic Bishop Edmund Bonner was sent to Marshalsea Prison, then while Catholicism was popular once again under the reinstated Queen Mary, Bonner’s successor (Bishop Ridley) was burned at the stake!
Bishop Bonner is sometimes still seen by staff and visitors in the present-day, ambling through empty hallways, his footsteps echoing.
Ham House, London
This 17th century mansion is in Richmond, on the bank of the Thames. The ghost of the Duchess of Lauderdale, Elizabeth Murray, still somehow persists here, her perfume able to be smelled in deserted rooms.
Members of staff have experienced cold draughts, weird sounds, and creepy sensations in the basement.
Buckland Abbey, Devon
Located in Dartmoor, this 700-year-old Abbey is associated with Sir Francis Drake, who once owned the house.
Some say that after signing a contract with the Devil, Francis Drake’s ghost lingers in the house, in its grounds, or in Dartmoor in general. His ghost has to drive a black cortège pulled by headless horses, hellhounds, and goblins. If seen, this bizarre and terrifying line-up is an omen of danger.
Hinton Ampner, Hampshire
Today it is a Georgian house. However, a different manor stood on the site in earlier days, and that manor was so saturated in paranormal goings-on that it was abandoned in the 18th century.
People reported groans, banging, and apparitions.
The house that stands today, built in 1790, has a more relaxed vibe, though some people who visit claim to have odd experiences, particularly in the garden and the cellars.
The original ghost-story inspired Victorian ghost-hunters.
Wales
Dinewfr, Carmarthenshire
The 800-acre estate has a 17th-century manor AND its own ruined castle, so there are a lot of areas of a spectral persuasion.
The ghost of Lady Elinor Cavendish wanders the halls of the house, after being murdered by a lover she rejected.
Llancaich Fawr Manor, Rhymney Valley
This Tudor manor house is near Nelson village just north of the old Llancaiach Colliery.
The semi-fortified building was erected on the site of a medieval building (or perhaps incorporated into the eastern part of the older building).
The manor was once the home of Colonel Edward Prichard, who in 1645 hosted a visit by King Charles I of England. Prichard died in 1655.
It was thought to have been constructed for a Dafydd ap Richard in 1530 (ap Richard coming from the Welsh patronymic “ap Rhisiart” or son of Rhisiart). However, dendrochronology dates the roof-timbers to 1548 – 1565.
The building closed to the public in 2024 but has been used in different TV and film productions including Dr Who and an episode of Time Team.
It is supposed to be haunted by four ghosts.
- I’m Owl About Them Owls
After reading Alan Garner’s “The Owl Service” recently I went on to learn about the Welsh myth of Blodeuwedd. Then I went on a deep-dive into the folklore surrounding owls…
For those that don’t already know, Alan Garner (the author who gave us The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, one of my all-time favourite books) wrote a short novel called The Owl Service, published in 1967. The plot was based on one of the Welsh myths from The Mabinogion, the story of Blodeuwedd (lit. “Flower Face”), a woman made out of flowers by a magician so that his cursed nephew could have a wife.
In the novel, three teenagers are on holiday in Wales – Alison, her stepbrother Roger, and Gwyn, the son of the housekeeper of the house Alison has inherited – and they unwittingly trigger off a repeat of the events in the Welsh myth after they discover a pile of old plates in the attic, which appear to have a floral pattern on them in the shape of owls’ faces and bodies.
The Myth
Arianrhod (goddess of the moon, fertility, fate, and reincarnation) placed a tynged (a fate, curse, taboo, or vow) on one of her sons, Lleu Llaw Gyffes. The tynged was that Lleu would never marry a human woman.
Lleu’s uncle Gwydion, a powerful wizard and brother to Arianrhod, got wind of this and created Lleu a wife by his magic, using the flowers of oak, broom, and meadowsweet. He named her Blodeuwedd.
Blodeuwedd and Lleu were married, but obviously in these kinds of tales nobody bothers to ask the woman what she wants for herself. Blodeuwedd fell head-over-heels for Gronw Pebr, a warrior and hunter from Penllyn.
Blodeuwedd and Gronw plotted to murder Lleu so they could be together at last…
However, Lleu was only vulnerable to death in certain circumstances. He had to have one foot on a bath and one foot on a goat. He then had to be stabbed with a spear — and not just any spear, but one created for a year during Mass.
Blodeuwedd asked Lleu to show her exactly how he’d have to stand for someone to be able to kill him. Lleu had no inkling about his wife’s true motives — he and Blodeuwedd had been happily married so far.
As Lleu stood on the bath and the goat, Gronw appeared from somewhere and threw the requisite spear at him. Lleu escaped by changing into an eagle and flew away.
Blodeuwedd and Gronw lived together for a while after Lleu’s disappearance. But Lleu asked Gwydion to help him get revenge, and he returned and killed Gronw Pebr, making him stand in the same spot that Lleu was stabbed in. Gronw tried to use a large stone in the ground as a shield to hide behind, but Lleu’s spear miraculously passed through the stone and killed Gronw anyway, leaving a hole in the rock.
Gwydion then changed Blodeuwedd into an owl, which meant she was never able to show her face in daylight ever again and all other birds would shun her.
Interestingly, Arianrhod herself is sometimes symbolised by an owl, representing wisdom, though in Welsh tradition the owl is often seen as a bird of ill omen, darkness, and death. Sometimes, if an owl is heard amongst houses, the Welsh believe that an unmarried girl has lost her virginity, and if a pregnant woman hears an owl call, that means her child will be blessed.
In The Owl Service, Alison, Roger, and Gwyn find themselves re-enacting this love triangle, betrayal, and perhaps transformation (the ending was kind of a cliffhanger that could be interpreted either way, in my opinion). Alison was the reincarnation of Blodeuwedd, though I wasn’t exactly sure whether Gwyn was Gronw and Roger was Lleu, or vice versa, or whether they were swapping between the two as the book continued and their characters evolved over time.
Owls were first depicted in cave art 30,000 years ago, drawn upon the rock walls in Chauvet Cave in France.
In ancient cultures, the owl was symbolic of the afterlife and was believed to escort deceased souls to the underworld. It was also a guide or helping spirit according to Siberian and Inuit shamans, who wore owl feathers in their caps or on their collars. The Inuits had a story explaining the features of the owl, where a beautiful girl was transformed into an owl with a long beak, then in her owl guise she took fright at something and flew into the wall of her house, squashing her face and beak flat.
In many Indigenous North American cultures, owls were a connection to the mystical and otherworldly, with the power to bestow good luck on anyone who came across them. They were associated with magic and the supernatural, believed to be able to converse with spirits and the afterlife. Sometimes they were seen as the souls of living or recently deceased people. Some tribes saw owls as incarnations of gods, for example the Hopis thought the Burrowing Owl was the god of the dead.
Some of the Indigenous North Americans also viewed owls as creatures of safety and protection, able to guard the home and ward off evil spirits, and saw them as fierce warriors, allies, and protectors of the people.
Other Indigneous tribes saw owls as harbingers of disease and death. Some tribes referred to dying as “crossing the owl’s bridge.”
For other Indigenous peoples of the Americas, the owl is also associated with their god of death, The Skeleton Man. However the owl does not just symbolise death but also rebirth and regeneration – their Great Goddess has an owl companion too.
The Newuk tribe believed that when a bad person died, he became a Barn Owl, but if a good person died, he became a Great Horned Owl.
A common belief amongst the Zuni tribe was that putting an owl’s feather under a woman while she was in labour would help her deliver a healthy baby, and that placing an owl feather in a baby’s cot would ward off evil spirits.
For more about what the different Indigenous Americans believed about owls, visit https://www.owlpages.com/owls/articles.php?a=62
In Mexico, owls are associated with the underworld because they burrow underground. Hearing an owl’s hoot is believed to predict a death. The Mexican folk saint, Santa Muerte, is sometimes shown with an owl who helps her to find her way in the darkness. In Mexican folklore, La Lechuza, a shape-shifting witch, has the body of an owl and the face of an old woman.
In Guatemala, owls are associated with prosperity and abundance. People there store money in owl-shaped banks rather than piggy-banks.
In Peruvian art, owls carry defeated warriors to the world of the dead and occasionally they personify shamans, whose power to cure supernatural illness is strengthened by the strong vision of the owl.
The Greek goddess of wisdom and intellect, Athena, had a Little Owl as a companion. It sat on her blind side so she was able to see the whole truth. This owl was protected and lived in the Acropolis in large numbers. It was believed a magical “inner light” gave owls their night vision. The ancient Greeks therefore looked upon the owl with reverence and the backs of Athenian coins often had owls engraved on them. The owl’s sharp senses and intelligence mirrored Athena’s, and the bird’s nocturnal life represented the pursuit of knowledge even in dark times. The owl’s hoot was a call to learning.
The Romans thought owls were omens of coming disaster. Hearing an owl call meant there would be an imminent death – it’s said that the deaths of many famous Romans were predicted by an owl’s hoot, e.g. Julius Caesar, Augustus, and Agrippa. Whilst the Greeks thought that seeing an owl meant victory in battle, the Romans saw it as a presentiment of defeat. To them, a dream of an owl was an omen of shipwreck for sailors or of robbery. To prevent the evil “caused” by an owl, the Romans believed the owl should be killed and nailed to the door of an affected house.
Both Greeks and Romans believed that witches shape-shifted into owls to drink the blood of babies. In some other cultures, owls were thought to be the messengers of witches, and their calls heralded the approach of a witch.
In medieval Europe, the owl was a sign of doom, a harbinger of death. It was shown in art and literature as a messenger of the underworld. In Germany and East Europe, if an owl was found in a barn it was a sign of imminent death.
In British folklore, a screeching Barn Owl predicts an incoming storm or cold weather. During a storm, if a Barn Owl is heard, it is a sign the storm is almost over.
Odo of Cheriton, a preacher in Kent in the 12th Century, said the owl is nocturnal because it had stolen the rose – a prize awarded for beauty – and other birds punished it for that by only allowing it to come out at night.
In Malaya, it was thought that owls ate new-born babies, the Swahili people believed they brought sickness to children.
In Arabia, it was said that owls were evil spirits who abducted children in the night. At the same time, they thought that every female owl laid two eggs – one that could make hair fall out, the other egg having the power to restore lost hair.
In Algeria, they believed that if the right eye of an Eagle Owl was put into the hand of a sleeping woman, that woman would tell you the entire truth about whatever you wanted to know.
In Yorkshire, England, owl broth is seen as an old remedy for whooping cough, and the powdered, charred, hard-boiled eggs were meant to improve eyesight.
Until recently, owls were still being nailed to barn gates in the UK to protect barns from lightning strikes and bad luck. Having or carrying around owl feathers, eyeballs, hearts, bones, or even entire owl corpses was supposed to give protection against rabies or epilepsy in the old days, and give qualities such as courage, energy, or wisdom. Healers in medieval Europe would prescribe owls to their clients, including warriors who needed strength, and lovers who wanted to win the affections of someone using magic.
18th and 19th-century UK poets such as Robert Blair and William Wordsworth used the Barn Owl as a “bird of doom” in their writing.
People in those centuries also believed that the screech of an owl flying past the window of a sick person meant they would shortly die.
Alcoholism was treated with owl eggs in old folk remedies. The person who drank a lot of alcohol was prescribed raw owl eggs, and it was also believed that if a young child was given this treatment, it gave them a lifetime of protection against becoming an alcoholic.
In India, food made from owls was thought to have medicinal properties, effective for curing seizures in children (owl’s eye broth) and healing rheumatism (owl’s meat). Eating the eyes of an owl was said to make a person able to see in the dark, whilst owl’s meat was also believed to be an aphrodisiac. There was also a superstition about the number of owl hoots predicting certain events (which has a parallel to seeing numbers of magpies in the UK):
Numbers of Hoots:
1 = impending death
2 = success in imminent venture
3 = a woman will enter the family through marriage
4 = disturbance
5 = imminent travel
6 = guests will arrive
7 = mental distress
8 = sudden death
9 = good luck
Because the owl is able to rotate its head so far, it was believed you could get an owl to wring its own neck by walking in circles around it! (Owls can actually rotate their heads 270 degrees, not 360.)
Another odd belief: it has been suggested that a Barn Owl’s breath might glow in the dark and that, along with its silent flight, could be the reason behind certain sightings of UFOs! Another theory is that the glowing comes from the owl’s body, due to luminous mould or fungi sticking to its plumage.
Some cultures (like the Babylonians and the Romans) tried to augur the future by watching owls’ flight patterns.
In India, the owl is often associated with the goddess of learning (Saraswati) and with Kali (the goddess of death and destruction).
Perhaps over a thousand owls, including the endangered Brown Fish Owl, are killed every year during Diwali by black-magic wizards to try to ward off evil luck and obtain powers. However, owls are associated with the goddess of wealth (Lakshmi) who is the one the celebration is held in honour of. (When Lakshmi travels without Vishnu, she rides upon an owl – her vahan or vehicle – but when she journeys abroad with Vishnu they both ride on the eagle known as Garuda). Black magic and voodoo practitioners make amulets from the bones, beaks, and talons of owls. In some parts of India, wearing owl feathers or talons as talismans are thought to guard against evil or ward off illness.
The owls are also hunted during Diwali because during that festival, Lakshmi is believed to descend to Earth, and the idea is to get rid of the vehicle she would use to depart, thereby trapping her – and the resulting good luck – inside the home. Owls with ear tufts, like the Indian Eagle Owl, are often targeted.
In Russia, hunters used to carry owl claws around with them so their souls could use them to climb up to heaven if they died. The Kalmuks held owls as sacred because one was said to have saved the life of Genghis Khan.
While many cultures believe owls are bad (in Cameroon, it’s only referred to as “the bird that makes you afraid”), other cultures see owls as benevolent. For example, in Babylon, owl amulets were used for protection by pregnant women, the French people of Lorraine think owls can help spinsters find husbands, and in Romania, the souls of repentant sinners are believed to ascend to heaven in the form of Snowy Owls.
In France, owls were also looked upon with much esteem, for example the European Eagle Owl was named Hibou Grand-Duc and the long-eared owl was called Hibou Moyen-Duc. This may have originated from the Middle Ages when nobles below the rank of Duke weren’t allowed to wear plumes of feathers, so the “eared” owls must have the rank of a Duke. However this attitude of reverence changed, as the European Eagle Owl was known as vermin by the French until the late 1960s.
Blakiston’s Fish Owl is one of the most important gods of the Ainu peoples of Hokkaidu, in Japan. They call it kotan kor kamuy, or “god of the village” / “god who defends the village”. Owls are seen as incredibly lucky in Japan, featuring a lot in Japanese art. Japanese people may carry an owl-shaped good luck charm.
In China, a common moniker for owls, (especially “eared” owls) is “cat-eared hawk.” Another Chinese name for the owl is xiao. These owls have a legend attached to them – the story being that they were evil birds which consumed their own mothers. The Chinese character representing xiao is utilised in expressions to do with bravery but also ferocity. In China, the owl was also the bird of a storm god.
The hooting of an owl is hu in Chinese, which means “digging”. In China, hearing the owl hoot is a sign to begin digging a grave. Owls here are believed to have powers, such as the ability to steal your soul. If an owl is seen near a house in China, they burn dried bushes to scare it away.
In Poland, it was said that girls who died with no husbands changed into doves, and those who died as wives changed into owls. It was also believed that owls didn’t emerge in daylight because they were too beautiful and prone to being mobbed by other birds out of jealousy.
In Etruscan culture owls were associated with their god of darkness.
In Slavic mythology, the owl was one form assumed by Strzyga, a female vampiric demon who flew through forests and attacked unsuspecting travellers. She was said to relish blood and entrails.
The Mayan god of darkness, Ah Puch, was sometimes depicted with an owl’s head.
Some African tribes saw owls as the messengers of witches and wizards (hello, Harry Potter?) and the ancient Egyptians described them guiding souls to the afterlife in their Book of the Dead. In South Africa, many believe when an owl lands on the roof of a house or building and hoots, it has been sent by a sangoma (witch doctor) to deliver a terrible curse.
There are still superstitions about owls in parts of North America, for example in the Ozark Mountains, the sound of a screech owl can signify illness or approaching death. Children are warned never to imitate the owl’s call for fear that the owl will keep returning to the house, or even descend the chimney into the house and scatter the fire onto the floor, thereby burning the house down!
In New Hampshire, big owls were unlucky and meant death, but small owls such as screech owls were lucky and were thought to bring presents.
More information about species of owls and the legends associated with them:
Sources / Further Reading:
http://www.pauldfrost.co.uk/intro_o2.html
https://katescorner.co.uk/what-does-the-owl-symbolise/
https://www.pugdundeesafaris.com/blog/myths-about-owls/
https://www.houseofgoodfortune.org/bonheur-blog/owls-good-or-bad-luck
You can also reach Hansen at hansentorauthor@gmail.com
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