Welcome to the Nightwalks…

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What is punk writing? Punk genres use the technology of a certain time and take that usage to fantasy extremes. You could say there is a punk genre for every decade of the 20th century. Cyberpunk came first, then Steampunk, and the other genres blossomed from those two branches. Traditionally, punk genres were also about rebellion and social isolation, but that isn’t always the case nowadays. Here is a list of punk genres.

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Aetherpunk (or magicpunk, etc) :- This tends to be used alongside another genre – such as steampunk – and its technology is based on magic.

Apunkalypse :- The name for many connected punk genres, all set in a post-apocalyptic world.

Anthropunk (or Furpunk) :- This is a relatively new one, where biotechnology has fused humans and animals to make real-life furries. It’s popular in Ao3 furry writing communities.

Atompunk :- Examples of this are Futurama and The Incredibles. This genre focuses on things like the nuclear revolution and the space race, taking place in the context of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War. This was a time when technology was progressing fast and society was struggling to adapt to the changes.

Biopunk :- similar to Cyberpunk. This involves biological hacking, gene modification and body enhancement. Think genetic tracking, cloning, and designer babies. Unlike cyberpunk, this looks at the idea of humans vs. post-humans.

Bronzepunk (or Sandalpunk) :- This deals with retrofuturistic civilisations based on technology from the times of Aristotle and Plato, and is sometimes combined with aetherpunk. Think columns, Spartans, and sandals. Inspired by the architecture of the Athenians and the Antikythera mechanism, and the fact that the Romans invented the idea of steam engines (but hadn’t a clue what to do with them, in reality). Examples:  Disney’s Atlantis movie, Gods of Egypt.

Capepunk  :- set in worlds where superheroes are real.

Castlepunk (or Middlepunk) :- set in the Middle Ages and uses the technology from that time.

Cattlepunk :- like Steampunk, but in the American Wild West. Think Cowboys & Aliens, or the Doctor Who episode ‘A Town Called Mercy.’

Clockpunk :- like pre-steampunk. Everything runs on clockwork, often with an 18th century thing about it inspired by the Georgians and the court of Versailles. Some mechanisms in clockpunk are possible in theory, but wouldn’t be efficient in real life. An example of clockpunk might be ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ episode of Doctor Who, or the movie Hugo.

Cyberpunk :- one of the oldest punk genres, looking at the close future and rapid technological changes. It often includes dystopias and governments using technology to invade and control people’s lives. The main characters are often alienated from this grim society. The vibe is dark, cynical, and industrial. Think Blade Runner and The Matrix. Cyberpunk originated in the New Wave sci-fi of the 1960s, with authors like Samuel R. Delaney, Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick, and J. G. Ballard. John Brunner’s 1975 novel The Shockwave Rider may have been the first Cyberpunk book, though the word cyberpunk wasn’t invented until Bruce Bethke used it in a short story in Amazing Stories in 1983. Gardner Dozois, the editor of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, jumped on the word and described the genre as “bizarre, hard-edged, high-tech stuff.” William Gibson’s Neuromancer was released that year.

Deiselpunk :- This takes both World Wars and the span of time between them and takes the technology and aesthetic of that era to another level.

Decopunk :- a subgenre of Deiselpunk, only this one concentrates more on Art Deco style and has more of an optimistic outlook.

Desertpunk :- This concerns the use of technology in very harsh desert settings, usually in a post-apocalyptic time. There may be social struggles, warlords, gangs, and a grungy aesthetic. A good example of desertpunk is the Mad Max film.

Dreadpunk  :- set in pre-20th century with technology from that time, only with more supernatural elements from literature, e.g. vampires.

Dungeonpunk :- A close cousin to aetherpunk but grittier, mixing in sword & sorcery tropes. An example of this is Adventure Time.

Ecopunk (or Greenpunk) :- an optimistic genre that focuses on the environment and green solutions to humanity’s problems. Think anti-corporate sentiments, cottage industry, reusing and recycling, homegrown, DIY stuff.

Formicapunk (or Modem Punk, or Cassette Futurism) :- This is to do with 1970s and 1980s culture. Loud colours, blocky computer screens, postmodern architecture. An example of this would be Stranger Things.

Gothic Punk :- Early 2000s architecture, big cities, and dark, ominous supernatural stuff. An example of this would be Hellboy.

Hopepunk  :- Alexandra Rowland invented this term in 2017. This genre looks at resistance and activism through hope, positivity, and kindness. Gentleness, coziness and cute stuff, like the recent trend of cozy fantasy books currently in the market.

Lunarpunk  :- a subgenre of Solarpunk, without the art nouveau stuff. Instead it is gothic and dark, involving pagan, Wiccan or Satanic-style aesthetics.

Mythpunk  :- This uses folklore tropes to contradict storytelling “norms”. This word was invented by Catherynne M. Valentine to describe her own writing in 2006.

Nanopunk  :- similar to Cyberpunk and Biopunk, except with its main focus on nanotechnology, or tiny robots doing things for humans, enhancing humans, or being used in weaponry. Includes lots of chrome, shiny surfaces, and stark colours.

Oceanpunk :- like Desertpunk, only everywhere is flooded. Some Oceanpunk stories use Pacific Islander imagery. Can include floating cities, travelling ship settlements, and underwater cities.

Piratepunk :- like Oceanpunk, but more to do with pirates.

Plaguepunk  :- set in a narrow bit of time between the Black Death and the Renaissance.

Raypunk  :- similar to Atompunk, but doesn’t usually include nuclear power.

Silkpunk  :- like Steampunk but set in Japan, China, and Korea. Instead of steamships, expect to find such things as battle kites, fireworks being utilised as weapons, terracotta robots, Asian herbal law, argumentative Chinese gods, immortal Emperors, and East Asian architecture. The genre was invented by Ken Liu for his novel The Grace of Kings.

Solarpunk :- similar to Ecopunk, but involving art nouveau and African-style architecture, still with an insistence on radical social change. In contrast to the dystopias of Cyberpunk, this genre is often about utopias and harmony between technology and nature.

Splatterpunk  :- This doesn’t have to have a lot of technology in it, because it’s main focus is lots of gore. The word was invented in 1986 by David J Schow to describe horror that uses graphic violence.

Steampunk :- one of the most well-known genres. It evolved from Cyberpunk and was named in the mid-1980s by author K. W. Jeter to describe his own work and writing by Tim Powers and James Blaylock. Victorian era, technology based on steam power, gears and cogs. More specifically, it tends to focus on the 19th century British Empire. This time in history had a lot of technological change and social upheaval, e.g. the Luddite riots. A good example in this genre is The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore.

Steelpunk  :- concentrates on the late 20th century, featuring rivets and mechanical contraptions.

Stonepunk  :- uses Stone Age technology in an advanced way. It’s usually seen as a joke amongst the punk genres. Example: The Flintstones.

Teslapunk  :- similar to Atompunk and Raypunk, but doesn’t usually involve nuclear power. Uses electricity instead of steam.

Tidalpunk  :- Solarpunk but at sea, rebuilding after climate change or catastrophe using tidal power.

Transistorpunk  :- focuses on the Cold War and the 1960s era.

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Sources

https://write.as/nerd-for-hire/punk-subgenres-101

Different punk: A to Z of punk genres

https://www.writing.com/main/books/entry_id/1081142-20241214-Punk-Genres

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The Gwyllion is a mountain-dwelling spirit or faery in Welsh folklore, uncanny feminine entities that lead travellers away from the path into the mist and darkness…

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Gwyllion (or Gwyllon) is the plural form of Gwyll or Yr Wyll, meaning “twilight,” “gloaming,” or “the wild.” The word is often  applied to a type of ghost or spirit, or sometimes to night-wanderers (human or supernatural). These beings are seen as outlaws of the wild and up to no good, and they often resemble mysterious women or strange, elderly hags in ash-coloured clothing and oblong, four-cornered hats, an apron over one shoulder and a wooden milk-can in one hand. Travellers never see their faces, because when they do appear in the distance they are always facing away from the person seeing them, and never turns around.

One of the Gwyllion is the Old Woman of the Mist, who appears on the slopes wrapped in ragged clothing, her face half-hidden by a hood or veils of drifting clouds. Sometimes, she merely stands there watching you. Sometimes, she gestures for you to follow her. Or, she wails – a sound described in nineteenth-century stories as being “like a child crying itself hoarse on a cold stone floor.”

The word gwyllion was coined in the 17th century by the Welsh lexicographer, Dr John Davies of Mallwyd. The word was eventually associated with the mountain faeries / spirits beginning with Edmund Jones, a minister who was born in Aberystruth in 1702 and was obsessed with these beings. People nicknamed him the Old Prophet, and he spent tens of years collecting and writing down stories of apparitions told to him by people around Pontypool. He published these accounts in 1780 as the book A Relation of Apparitions of Spirits in the County of Monmouth and the Principality of Wales. 100 years after that, the American consul of Cardiff (Wirt Sikes) retold the material from Edmund Jones in a book named British Goblins. He filed the mountain apparitions under the heading “The Gwyllion,” and the name stuck. Wirt described them as belonging “to the twilight between ghost and fairy.”

Gwyllion are female faeries of terrifying aspect who haunt lonely roads in the Welsh mountains of Monmouthshire and Breconshire, and they lead travellers astray. They are gloomy spirits akin to hags or witches, distinct from the Ellyllon (Welsh elves) who are usually more benevolent. While they aren’t good entities, they aren’t inherently evil, either. They are more like lost souls, wandering endlessly.

The Gwyllion are often encountered at night or during misty days, and even if you’re perfectly familiar with the road you’re on, they can and will make you get lost.

Gwyllion often entered the houses of people in the parish of Aberystruth, especially in stormy weather. The elderly faery women were always made welcome out of fear of what they might do if offended. They would be given clean water and great care was taken to not have any knives or cutting tools in the corner beside the fire (where faeries would usually like to sit). It was good to be hospitable to them while indoors, but outside, it was a different story.

One such gwyll is known as The Old Woman and was haunting the Black Mountain in Breconshire. A man – Robert Williams of Llangattock, near Crickhowell – happened to meet her there at the same time that he became lost. Thinking she was human, he called after her to wait, but she never replied. He assumed she was deaf and tried to overtake her, but she led him further and further astray, always out of his reach, until he stumbled upon a marsh. She cackled, and, suspecting she was a gwyll, he drew his knife – and she disappeared.

It is interesting to note that many Welsh ghosts and faeries are afraid of knives, and can be banished by them. Perhaps this is because faeries are vulnerable to cold iron, or maybe the knife exorcism is an echo of Excalibur and the role it played in pre-medieval times. Other ways to make the Gwyllion vanish or protect yourself from their tricks is to offer them some food, such as a bit of cheese or a crust of bread, or to nod politely to them and wish them “nos da,” (good evening).

There was an Old Woman of the Mountain haunting Llanhyddel Mountain in Monmouthshire as well. She was seen as the ghost of a woman who was viewed as a witch when she was living. Her name was Juan White. A Monmouthshire man writing to Sikes in 1870 said he remembered her as the tenant of a ruined cottage on Lasgarn Hill near Pontypool when he was a boy, and that at midnight she appeared carrying her own head under her arm. As a gwyll, she uttered strange cries and shouts throughout her mountain to frighten travellers. (Gwyllion are believed to cry a sound like “wow-up,” based on the Welsh cry of distress: wwb, or ww-bwb. People of Aberystruth could hear that sound from many different directions in a short amount of time.)

There were also gwyllion on Bedwellty Mountain at night. A traveller – Evan Thomas – was crossing the mountain towards home in the valley of Ebwy Fawr and saw several spirits dancing around him and heard the sounds of a bugle overhead while invisible hunters rode past. Evan drew his knife, and they all vanished.

John ap John from Cwm Celyn, was chased across Milfre Mountain by disembodied shouts moving from Bryn Mawr to Bwlch y Llwyn to the Gilfach fields, and the cries always resounded in the direction he was heading in (towards Caerleon fair, and it was before dawn). He was struck by the trundling of a coach on a path that no coach would be able to use, and the same shouts sounded as if they were sitting on top of it. John dived off the road and waited face-down in heather until the sounds had abated. He stood and the birds had started singing, there were sheep on the hill, and the terror deserted him.

The Gwyllion have been associated with goats, too. There is a tale of a man named Cadwaladr who cared greatly for his goat, Jenny. However, he lost his temper with her for running off into the hills and caused her to tumble off a steep incline by throwing a rock at her. He clambered down to where she lay dying, and she licked his hand while he cried and sat with her head on his arm until the moon rose. At that point, she became a young woman with brown eyes. She hung her black slipper on the end of a moonbeam and held out her hand, which was beautiful but still felt like a hoof when he grasped it, and she led him up the slopes. Up on the summit, a vapoured crowd of goats with shadowy horns circled around him, bleating, and the king of the goats drove its head into Cadwaladr’s stomach, pushing him over a crag. The man then woke to find himself utterly alone and goatless in the sunshine, with the birds singing like nothing had happened.

Edmund Jones noted that the Old Women / Gwyllion had moved out of the open hills of Wales since about 1800, and into the coal-pits and holes of the Earth instead.

The Welsh faeries are known as the Tylwyth Teg, meaning “Fair Family,” and the Irish equivalent are the Aos Si. In Welsh folklore, the Ellyllon are found in valleys and groves and are loosely equivalent to elves, the Coblynau are found in mines and are similar to dwarves, brownies or household faeries are the Bwbachod, and nymphs (or at least, faeries of lakes and streams) are known as the Gwragedd Annwn. The Gwyllion are found in mountains and could be seen as hags, witches, the Irish folkloric idea of “stray sod” or even will-o-the-wisps (which I wrote a few posts about a while ago).

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Sources:

https://sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/wfl/wfl04.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwyllion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tylwyth_Teg

Gwyllion

The Welsh Gwyllion

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In 2003, a haunted wine cabinet was put up for auction on eBay by Kevin Mannis, along with a description of horrific events caused by the cabinet’s presence, and whatever entity lay inside it. But what exactly is a dybbuk, and how much of the story was real?

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Way back in the mists of time (erm, 2001), a writer and furniture refinishing businessman named Kevin Mannis bought an old wine cabinet from a garden sale. The garden sale was that of an attorney in Portland, Oregon.

Kevin Mannis placed the (sadly wineless) cabinet for auction on eBay, although the item description he penned for it was rather unusual and disturbing. He said the cabinet was once the possession of a Holocaust survivor in Poland, a woman who died aged 103, and that this survivor claimed the cabinet contained an evil spirit known as a dybbuk. The elderly woman had acquired the cabinet in Spain after escaping there from a concentration camp, then brought it with her when she emigrated to America – along with a steamer trunk and a sewing box.

Kevin also wrote that after he bought the cabinet, he was approached by the woman’s granddaughter, who said her grandmother had always kept the cabinet closed, in her sewing room, in a place well out of reach, and that she always called it the “dibbuk box.” When the granddaughter asked her what was in it, the woman would spit through her fingers three times and say “a dibbuk” and “keselim” and that it must never, ever be opened.

The grandmother had expressed a wish for the cabinet to be buried with her. On hearing this, Kevin said he could let the young woman keep the cabinet without refunding him, but she became distraught and insisted that he take it away.

Kevin Mannis then wrote that the box had weird powers and was responsible for a series of nightmares and bad luck affecting his life. He took the cabinet back to his furniture refinishing shop and left it in the basement, intending to dress it up and gift it to his mother. He then went on an errand, leaving a young female sales assistant in charge.

After half an hour (Kevin wrote) he got a panicked call from the sales assistant, saying an intruder had gotten into the shop basement and was breaking glass, swearing, and had locked all the exits so she couldn’t escape. Kevin raced back to the shop and found all the lights downstairs shattered on the floor – including four fluorescent tubes – and a strange stench like cat urine in the basement. The sales assistant left and refused to work there again.

Kevin then wrote that he got to work inspecting the dybbuk box. It had a mechanism inside that caused the opposite door and the drawer in its bottom to simultaneously open along with the door he pulled, and inside he found an inexplicable array of objects:

• A 1928 U.S. wheat penny
• A 1925 U.S. wheat penny
• A lock of blonde hair tied with string
• A lock of brown or black hair tied with string
• A small granite statue gilded and engraved with the Hebrew letters spelling “Shalom” (or “peace”)
• A dried rosebud
• A golden wine cup
• A black cast iron candlestick with octopus legs.

Kevin wrote that he then cleaned the cabinet and rubbed it with lemon oil, noticing something carved into the back of the box. Disaster struck when he tried to give the box to his mother as a gift, resulting in her having to go to hospital after suffering a stroke.

You can find out more about how things went from bad to worse for Kevin – according to his written account – at https://www.dibbukbox.com/story.html

Subsequent owners of the dybbuk box retold Mannis’s tale when selling the cabinet, and added their own accounts of terrifying phenomena in connection with it. You’d think that would put people off buying it, but then again, humans are strange.

Another of the cabinet’s owners, a Jason Haxton (Director of an osteopathy museum in Kirksville, Missouri) created the website about the haunted box at dibbukbox.com. It apparently received hundreds of thousands of visitors and the story became something of an online legend. In 2004, Jason Haxton sold the rights to the tale to a Hollywood production company.

The film that resulted from all of this was The Possession, released in 2012 and produced by Sam Raimi.

Jason then gave the dybbuk box to Zak Bagans, the star of Ghost Adventures, to put on display in his museum of haunted objects in Los Angeles.

In 2018, fans of the singer Post Malone suggested that his spate of misfortune was down to him having some contact with the haunted cabinet. Post Malone went to visit Zak Bagans’s museum and touched Zak on the shoulder after Zak had touched the box, which was apparently enough to get him “cursed.” In September 2018, the singer had some mishaps including two tyres on his private jet blowing out on the runway, his old house getting broken into by people with guns a few days later, and his Rolls Royce crashing into another car a week afterwards.

But what on Earth is a dybbuk, or a dibbuk? And what really happened?

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The Dybbuk

According to the Encyclopedia Mythica, a dybbuk is a disembodied spirit possessing a living body that belongs to another soul. The spirit usually talks using that person’s mouth, and the idea of the dybbuk comes from Hebrew mythology.

A 1914 Yiddish play, The Dybbuk, was about the ghost of a dead man possessing the living body of a woman he had loved, and he had to be exorcised.

The word dybbuk comes from the Hebrew dibuq, meaning “a case of attachment.” This is derived from the verb dabaq (to adhere or to cling). The dybbuk is mentioned in old 16th century texts, but was more or less forgotten until the Yiddish play.

Traditionally, dybbuks were believed to be male spirits, as the Jewish religion held that women didn’t reincarnate. The dybbuks were said to possess women on the night before their weddings, typically in an inappropriate way, through their privates. However, dybbuks could also possess men and boys.

A Jewish boy in the Galilean village of Safed in 1540 was reportedly possessed by a soul that had previously been inside a dog. The soul within the dog possessed the boy to gain revenge after the boy’s father killed it.

In April 1999, a 38-year-old widow in Dimona, Israel was convinced she had been possessed by the soul of her dead husband. A rabbi diagnosed her with dybbuk possession and conducted an exorcism for it which was later shown on Israeli TV.

A dybbuk was believed to possess someone because it needed some kind of help, either to confess guilt about something, finish an incomplete task, or undergo expiation of a sin before it could move on to Gehenna or heaven. Exorcism was a healing for the possessed person but also a correction for the possessing spirit.

The idea of the dybbuk may have allowed people to express socially unacceptable urges in the past.

According to the author Brian Dunning, there is no precedent for a dybbuk possessing a box or other inanimate object in written folklore.

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The Hoax

In January 2019, Kenny Biddle of the Skeptical Inquirer investigated the dybbuk box when it was on view in Zak Bagans’s haunted museum in LA. He concluded that the cabinet was not actually an old Jewish wine cabinet from Spain but instead a minibar from New York.

Kevin Mannis, being a creative writer, invented the story while posting the box for sale online. One of his Facebook posts to the Haunt ME page read:

“I am the original creator of the story of The Dibbuk Box which appeared as one of my Ebay [sic] posts back in 2003. … How about this – if you or anyone else can find any reference to a Dibbut [sic] Box anywhere in history prior to my Ebay post, I’ll pay you $100,000.00 and tattoo your name on my forehead.”

Mannis wanted the dybbuk box to become “an interactive horror story in real time.” The carving in the back of the box was his own handiwork, and the stone inside the box was also a design he created.

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Sources

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-45559534

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dybbuk_box

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dybbuk

https://www.dibbukbox.com/story.html