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Riding off of Halloween this week's world news theme is supernatural elements! Any spooky event, incident, or legend pertaining to a certain city or region, or anything spookier within each world news contributor's home country will be shared :)
Sincerely your World News editors,
Beyza, Jan, Jessa, Martina
This week I would like to provide something related to the spooky Halloween event. It is about the legendary supernatural elements; "Nang Nak" or "Thai Ghost Wife" which is a very well known folk/ghost tale in Thailand. The popular legend tells that the story took place around mid 18th century. The story begins as a love story. A teenage girl named "Nak" fell in love with a handsome young man named "Maak". Shortly after they got married, "Maak" was conscripted for military service, involuntarily leaving his pregnant bride behind with tears and fears.
The Southern part of Belgium and especially the Ardennes, is a wild and hilly area covered with forests full of legends and myths. One of them is related to a place called ‘Les fonds de Quarreux’, on the Ambleve river near the city of Aywaille. At this very specific place the riverbed is packed with huge quartzite rocks which gave birth to a legend called the Miller of the fonds de Quarreux.
I都市伝説(toshi densetsu) is initially just a story which has been told among people. As the time passes, the story becomes more scary and always involves "the ghost," or something we can't explain.
I do not really know how this transition occurred, but it is not hard to guess that people tend to make stories more exciting or memorable by adding scary elements. Also, there is an advantage that when it comes to "the ghost"- others cannot really argue the credibility of the story since there is not any scientist has a complete explanation of it.
Something that exists in Nordic mythology is the creature called "Nattmaran." This creature was believed to have come in the form of a woman and would sneak into the bedroom at night through a keyhole. It would then sit on the man or woman’s chest and this would make them feel like they were being shocked. This is how the Swedish word "Mardröm,” which means nightmare, got into being .
In different cultures, people tell and retell stories as a way of transmitting knowledge. In Latin America legends and myths are used to preserve collective memory of our history and traditions. These stories are retold from one generation to another, and sometimes they could suffer variations depending on the countries. Today, I would like to share with you the Colombian version of a bloodcurdling story about a woman called “La Llorona” (the weeping woman).
Old fortresses, even after one battle, are sometimes claimed to have ghosts and spirits of defeated souls roaming them. Kremlin was priginally a fortress, then a castle of aort, and more recently served as headquarters for a major world power that was spreading workers' revolution throughout the world.
Internal political conflicts, assassinations of political leaders and signing of orders to murder millions of people taint the history of an architectural giant in the heart of Moscow. Legends of restless spirits that wander Kremlin were heard in all corners of Russian Empire and the fear-imspiring stories left people asking themselves just how much of Kremlin's bloody history remains classified or hidden.
Many people in Germany and in the world believe in the good or bad luck of Friday the 13th.
Friday has been considered an unlucky day at least since the 14th century's "The Canterbury Tales," and many other professions have regarded Friday as an unlucky day to undertake journeys or begin new projects. Black Friday has been associated with stock market crashes and other disasters since the 1800s.
Located on the north bank of the Yangtze River, Fengdu is an ancient city with a long history, known as the "Ghost City" to most Chinese people. It got its reputation as the "Ghost City" during the Eastern Han Dynasty (A.D. 25 - A.D. 220). Two officials from the imperial court: Wang Fangping and Yin Changsheng, got bored with the political life in the court and came to Mt. Minshan outside Fengdu City to practice Taoist teachings. Both of them later became immortals by carrying out self-cultivation. This story widely spread and made Mt. Minshan become famous. When combined together, their surnames Yin and Wang, sound very much like "King of Hell" in Chinese, hence the people began to call Fengdu the "Ghost City."
There are a great number of scary stories and legends in Chile, from the desert in the north to the Patagonia in the south. Most of the stories are from pre-Colombian times, and there are only a few that involve more contemporary people and events. But if you’re interested in the supernatural in Chile, Chiloé is the place to look at. Chiloé is an archipelago, a very rural and traditional area located in southern Chile. Most of the legends in this area are about the birth of the Island, some goddesses and witchcraft. Warlocks are still quite a big deal down there, most people are still afraid of them and the legend I’m about to relate is their doing.
Spooky and super cool -- I will introduce to you an original Czech Mystical Creature - Vodnik, in translation, the Waterman. He is also known to be present in Germany in a slightly altered form, but he doesn't live anywhere else in the world. He probably decided to reside in Czech due to the abundant ponds built in the southern part of my country in the 16-17 century.
It's Holiday Season. In addition to Halloween, people across the world are celebrating national holidays, harvest holidays, religious holidays, and more this fall. That’s why we wanted to give our WWN contributors the chance to teach us all a little more about their own countries holidays. Every country has its own celebrations and just as much as they can be similar to this country’s holidays they can also be very different.
- WWN Editor's Martina, Jessa, Beyza and Jan
Hi everyone! So apparently we are dealing with national holidays for this issue of the Willamette World News Blog… And obviously this is a topic that we all like to talk about! I have to admit that I had a hard time choosing a holiday because as you might be aware of, we do have a lot of holidays in Belgium, which, once again, is not something that I dislike.
It was only recently that Halloween ( in Sweden we call it Allhelgnonaafton) came to be celebrated in Sweden. It started 1995 and even now so many years later we still don’t celebrate it exactly the same way the US does. Sure there are carved pumpkins, costumes and scary decorations in orange and black coverings in most of the stores in my country during this time of year. But it is all mostly for a marketing purpose.
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