Naming Sleepy Hollow

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Local history has always been an interest of mine.  Although I’ve never lived in Sleepy Hollow, my book on “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is due out this week.  I try to keep an eye out for further information on the region.  Christopher Skelly’s The Origin of Sleepy Hollow: The Name and the Village, an Untold History appeared after I’d submitted my manuscript to McFarland, but I wanted to read it regardless.  A new father living in Wisconsin at the time, I was not aware of the name change in 1996.  I do remember looking at a map after we’d moved to New Jersey and seeing, for the first time, the name Sleepy Hollow along a route we planned to take to a point further up the Hudson.  I remember thinking, “I didn’t know there was an actual place called Sleepy Hollow.”  Well, that may have been because prior to 1996, there wasn’t.

This self-published account of how the name came about is valuable local history.  Not exactly belles-lettres, it nevertheless begins at the earliest Dutch naming of the area as the Dutch version of Sleepy Hollow.  By the time Washington Irving wrote his story around 1819, the area had already gone by several names but the village of Tarrytown was well established.  And, over time what was vaguely called Sleepy Hollow by the Dutch became North Tarrytown.  I learned here that the haven, or harbor on the Tappan Zee that was first called some version of “Sleepy” had been the victim of landfill so that a railroad could be put in.  The author is clear that the “Hollow” is still visible if you know where to stand and look.  He also explains the motivations behind changing the village name that began in 1988. 

One things I learned in my own study of ancient history is that place names tend to be remarkably resilient.  European settlers ignored much of the indigenous nomenclature, but did adapt many examples of it.  Our species needs to reference where things, or other people, are over very large distances.  We know where Edinburgh is, even if we live in Australia.  Names are important.  Personally, I’m glad that some citizens of North Tarrytown decided to change the name of their village to Sleepy Hollow.  And not just because I have a book coming out on the topic.  I’m sure the change has boosted tourism immensely, even if that wasn’t the initial motivation.  It’s nice to know that the change was actually back to the first Dutch ideas about the place.  And that a visit to Sleepy Hollow is possible because of one influential little story.

Must Be Autumn

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As it often goes, a friend pointed out to me a book on Sleepy Hollow that published just this week.  I preordered a copy that arrived on Tuesday and buzzed through it.  It’s what I describe to family as “one of those books”—you know, the local history, heavily illustrated quick reads from The History Press.  (I would note that I submitted what was then The Myth of Sleepy Hollow to The History Press, but they never even responded to the submission.)  In any case, Sam Baltrusis’ Ghosts of Sleepy Hollow: Haunts of the Headless Horseman is really quite different from what I do in my forthcoming Sleepy Hollow as American Myth.  The History Press isn’t really regarded as such by historians.  I like their books nonetheless.  I was castigated by an academic journal editor early in my career for using one such book to illustrate local folklore.  (That was, by far, the snootiest rejection letter I’ve ever received.)

Aloft noses aside, there is a legitimacy in listening to what the folk say.  The tales in a book like this won’t convince skeptics, of course, but if you read them in the dark you’ll nevertheless find yourself glancing into the corner now and again, wondering if you saw something.  The book does cover the “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and Irving’s life in a few pages—Irving was a complex man and the first truly famous American writer—before moving on to local haunts.  The thing that kept nagging at me was the easy shifting from fiction to fact.  Folklore does have a way of becoming reality (and who can definitively even say what that is?) for people.  No doubt, Sleepy Hollow has latched onto tourism in a big way.  Even more so than on my last visit there. And folklore draws on that shifting borderland between fact and fict.

One of my motivations in writing Sleepy Hollow as American Myth was that the story is largely ignored by academics and “sophisticated” readers.  It nevertheless remains important in popular culture.  Academics tend to be slow in picking up what general readers find fascinating.  I found a few academic articles on the subject, but my book was written for general readers as well.  I hesitate to say too much, otherwise, why buy it?  I have a handful of History Press (and similar) books on the region on my shelf.  I learn from them.  And I’m glad to see Sleepy Hollow getting more attention.  My only real regret about my book is that I’ll have to wait a couple of years before the price comes down.  In the meantime, those really curious about Sleepy Hollow will have this Haunted America version to read.

Many Moons

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Scientists, often with their base matrix bound up with the local religion, are frequently interested in  myth.  And sometimes religion too.  This is no surprise.  Many of us go into religious studies because of its influence on our lives and scientists, who measure and analyze material realities, must be curious when their results challenge some religious or mythic assumptions.  So it is that Ernest Naylor addresses mythic beliefs about the moon’s influence on animals and what scientific findings on the same show.  Although this book wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be, Moonstruck: How Lunar Cycles Affect Life does address the subtitle assertion quite directly.  Naylor, a marine zoologist, knows about tides—caused by the moon—and their effects on marine organisms.  That connection is the main focus of the book, with occasional forays onto dry land.

What caught my attention right away was that when discussing myth and religious ideas, Naylor describes two stories as biblical: the woodcutter banished for gathering on the Sabbath and Judas’ banishment.  Both of these, he seems to believe, have the Bible banishing the criminals to the moon.  That was news to me.  There may well be folklore with such associations, but a simple opening of the covers of the Good Book would dispel this particular “myth.”  Neither the sabbath wood-gatherer nor Judas were banished to the moon after their deaths.  The former presumably went to Sheol and the latter presumably to Hell.  For me this illustrates yet again how many ideas professional people outside the guild suppose to be “biblical.”  The Bible says very little about the moon.  One New Testament demoniac is described as “moonstruck,” but beyond that the occasional references are mainly just to the moon qua moon.

The Bible’s a big book.  Everyone in western society knows it’s an important book but few read it.  Even fewer deeply engage with it to understand its original context and message.  We hear stuff and we’re told it’s in there, and we believe it.  I first noticed this in high school.  Classmates would tell me “the Bible says…” (you can fill in the blank with just about anything, this isn’t a quiz).  Almost always they were wrong.  By that point I’d read the Good Book many times cover-to-cover.  I owned concordances and knew when foreign matter was introduced.  The thing about the Bible is that it’s fairly simple to look it up.  Moonstruck focuses on marine animals and tells interesting connections to the moon.  It has a chapter on humans and the moon, finding little direct biological influence.  It’s an informative book, just don’t use it to verify what’s in the Bible.

Thick Skin

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Religion and folklore encapsulate what folk believe. Human beings, despite rationality, are ritualistic creatures. Psychologists have their work cut out trying to explain why we do this or that odd thing, and historians sometimes dig deep into the backstory to find some hint of a tradition’s origins. Although I lived in Edinburgh for over three years, and drove through South Queensferry in the shadow of the great Forth Bridge a number of times, I never heard of the Burryman. In case you haven’t either, here’s a link a friend sent to a brief video about him. In it Andrew Taylor explains the tradition. Each year, going back to South Queensferry’s pagan past, a citizen dresses in a suit of burrs to ensure a good harvest and bring good luck. What’s fascinating here is that burrs are something people generally avoid, although they are an ingenious method of seed dispersal. They stick to clothes, and even skin and can be annoying even singly. Why anyone would submit to an entire outfit of burrs is something only folklore can answer.

Anthropologists are in short supply. Universities don’t like to fund the study of folklore since it doesn’t lead to jobs. The end result is that what we know of many strange traditions is anecdotal. A few years back I got soundly dressed down in an academic setting for referring to a popular publication of Scottish ghost stories. You see, I was writing an article for publication in an academic journal. I wanted to document a story I’d memorized by dint of the fact that a ghost tour guide would stand beneath our window every night in Mylne’s Court and recite his tale. (I traced it back to a potential Ancient Near Eastern origin.) The problem was, no academic would deign to write about such decidedly low brow tripe. In order to find a written source, I had to cite a popular book. Academic reviewers responded with scorn that I would never pass on to an author, speaking as an editor. This was, however, in the old school days.

So, how would we find the backstory to the Burryman? Great Big Story went straight to the source. Andrew Taylor, the incumbent Burryman, tells what he knows of the tradition. You can’t even see the Burryman from high in your ivory tower where pure thought is your only companion. I’ve always been a street academic, though. Growing up blue collar, I find it much more interesting to see what people are doing out here where the professionals don’t tell them how to behave. The pagan past is still alive. We don’t need a wicker man to prove the point. All it takes is a bunch of dried burdock and some very thick skin.

The Canine Mystique

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BlackDogAnyone who spends long enough in the United Kingdom will hear about them. Not everyone believes in them, but reports of their presence are pervasive. Some call them ghosts while others call them protective spirits. They are the black dogs. As Mark Norman points out in his new book Black Dog Folklore, the tales of these spectral canines go back centuries and they also appear in other parts of the world. The majority of the lore comes from the British Isles and even there they are concentrated into certain parts of the country. Norman isn’t setting out to prove that they exist, though. This book is an exploration of folklore and the question of the reality of the phenomenon isn’t the point. The fact is people have reported encountering similar kinds of black dogs that vanish in similar ways frequently enough that secondary characteristics can be described and the accounts can be treated as lore.

Dogs were the earliest domesticated animals. Long before cattle and sheep could be tamed, humans and dogs had learned the mutual benefits of each other’s company. This very long association between species has, however, not always been smooth. Dogs retain something of the ancestral wolf in their nature, even as we harbor our inner ape. Some people fear dogs, and indeed, dogs are still used for security and can be trained to attack, or even kill, people. Their millennia-long association with humans, however, has assured them a place in our mythologies. Ancient cultures frequently mythologize dogs, making them prime candidates for an afterlife in folklore.

Traditionally, dogs are chthonian creatures. That word tripped me up the first time I encountered it. “Chthonian” is literally something like “of the earth,” but in mythology it is used to designate that they are associated with the underworld. As in life, dogs may act as guides in mythology, and one of their regular associations is with the realm of the dead. It’s no wonder, then, that dogs came to be associated with ghosts. As Norman demonstrates, the lore was pervasive enough to engage Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles, and perhaps even Bram Stoker used the image in Dracula. Winston Churchill referred to his depression as a black dog. Norman’s book won’t convince the reader that such things actually exist, but what it does do is draw the tales together to determine what there is to analyze. Since dogs have been our companions for so long, they have become part of our narrative tradition, participating in what it means to be human. As with all good folklore, there are those today who still swear these spectral dogs still haunt those who are willing to believe.

World of Color

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Albinism occurs across species. In human beings, suspicious and superstitious lot that we are, it’s sometimes an excuse for prejudice. I’ve confessed in the past to reading Weird N.J. (Long story.) When we first moved to the Garden State a series of stories ran about rumors of albinos in a secret town, probably deep in the woods. Don’t scoff—there are deep woods in Jersey! Typical of stories in the zine, people—mostly of the teen variety, I suspect—would write of driving around late at night, discovering these albino enclaves, and being chased out by people lacking pigment and tolerance for strangers. Average juvenile behavior. I had no idea at the time that people with albinism are actually seriously mistreated. This is particularly a concern in Malawi. A story in the Washington Post by Max Bearak describes how albinos are murdered for body parts because of a rumor that, among other fabrications, they have gold in their bones.

As someone who has a love of folklore (and it’s more puerile kin—thus Weird N.J.) this is deeply disturbing. Folklore often focuses on the strange, unusual, or uncanny. Let’s face it, there’s not much of a story to tell when everything’s normal. Humans have the natural predisposition to tell tales when something is out of the ordinary. Our saving grace is that we recognize stories are just stories. When we start taking fiction for fact, we’re all in trouble. Many the night before Snopes I cowered under the covers because of some urban legend spreading by however ideas spread before the internet. There were killers on the road at night, and hiding under your car in the parking lot. At the same time, I could separate truth from the stories my step-dad told of jars of buffalo nickels buried in the woods behind our house. Nobody wants to be thought gullible.

In the sad case of those who are killed for being different, the Post article cites a United Nations specialist stating, “The situation is a potent mix of poverty, witchcraft beliefs and market forces which push people to do things for profit.” Poverty. Market forces. Profit. A new kind of clarity. Violence comes in many guises. One of the most insidious is that which some specialists call “slow violence.” Systems set up to exploit, drain, and yes, enslave others to one’s own benefit. And it’s perfectly legal. The plight of those born with albinism in a nation where their differences plainly show dolefully demonstrates a side of human nature that we would rather hide. Those who have control of resources place others in situations where they contribute to their personal bottom line. We call it business as usual while those who observe closely call it by another name. Witchcraft.

Same Old Story

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Once upon a time fairy tales were considered appropriate only for children. Unlike myths, fairy tales are frequently oral (yes, there are oral myths but this is not the place to discuss technicalities) and have origins that are obscure. A friend recently sent me a story entitled “Phylogenetic analyses suggests fairy tales are much older than thought” by Bob Yirka on phys.org. Using phylogenetic analysis, researchers have traced some fairy tales back thousands of years, into the Bronze Age of the ancient Near East. This will no doubt surprise some analysts who supposed fairy tales were a more recent, European invention. The tales change with time and distance, no doubt, but the basic story is very deeply rooted in who people are. Fairy tales are adult fare, after all.

I tried to make this point in an academic article that was rudely rejected by the journal Folklore some years back. I mean “rudely” literally. I’ve had academic articles rejected before—many of us have—but the letter that came with this one was insulting. My “error”? Suggesting that the story of the musician who travels to the underworld came from ancient Sumer. The article had its origins in my wife’s reading of the Mabinogion. The story of Bran’s head being washed down the river still singing reminded me of an Edinburgh ghost story the tour guides used to tell right outside our window. You’ve probably heard similar: a tunnel is discovered, a musician (a bagpiper, since this was Scotland) is sent down while playing so that those above can follow the sound, but the musician never emerges. I traced the story through the Celtic tradition of Uamh ‘n Òir, the cave of gold, through Bran, Orpheus, and finally back to Ishtar’s descent into the underworld. It was a fun piece, but serious. It ended up published in a Festschrift to a scholar with a noted sense of humor.

Photo credit: Kim Traynor, Wikimedia Commons

Photo credit: Kim Traynor, Wikimedia Commons

The fact is, traditional stories often go back very far in history. We haven’t the tools to trace many, nor can the results be taken for Gospel, but the implications can. People are storytellers by nature. We find meaning in what would today be called “fiction.” Too often I’ve had to hang my head in embarrassment when admitting to a fellow academic that I read (and sometimes write) fiction. It is something, however, that ancient mythographers and folklore singers would have understood. We can be academic some of the time, but we are human full-time. And telling stories is something that predates even the Bronze Age. Of that we can be completely certain. And they lived happily ever after.

Supernatural Quest

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SupernaturalTwo things we’re told about the supernatural: one, it doesn’t exist and two, it can’t be studied. Of course the vast majority of people in the world don’t buy into number one and hardly care about number two. Both, it seems to me, could be wrong. As Jeannie Banks Thomas says in her introduction to Putting the Supernatural in Its Place: Folklore, the Hypermodern, and the Ethereal, belief in the supernatural is not declining. In fact, the more we’re told by cocksure scientists that all of reality is quantifiable and material, the more we become aware of the many exceptions to the rules. Of course, “supernatural” may be a misnomer. It could be that anything sloughed off into that category is simply not understood well enough to be empirically studied. Thinking back over the history of science I find it ironic that the very system that had to convince people that something couldn’t be seen (many gases) could be deadly. Now if it can’t be seen it can’t exist. We certainly don’t want any deities hanging out around here.

But back to the book. Putting the Supernatural in Its Place is a folkloric study of place. The contributors to the volume look at popular beliefs, some serious, some not, that accrue around certain places. As I’ve often stated on this blog, we are aware as humans that some places are fraught with meaning. Scientifically we know this shouldn’t be true, but we feel it when we approach any space of significance. The contributors to Thomas’ book look to some very interesting places: New Orleans, Salem, St. Ann’s Retreat, Lily Dale, Japan, and even movies and the internet. If any of these places aren’t familiar to you, it’s worth picking up a copy of this accessible book to learn more. Supporting folklore is a very good thing. Folklore, after all, is the wisdom of the people.

The places in this book are rumored to be haunted by ghosts, witches, zombies, vampires, and even fairies. Folklorists, of course, don’t try to prove that beliefs are true. Like any academic they study and analyze. The main form of exploration for the non-academic is the legend quest. Many of us have gone legend questing from time to time. A place where something happened is said to have a certain feel or manifestation, so we go to see what it’s all about. If such trips are given religious sanction we call them pilgrimages. We want to see. But more than that, we want to experience something that the past has left behind. In the part of the year when each night grows longer than the last, my thoughts turn to what is usually termed “the supernatural.” And I, for one, am glad to have able guides along the way to make the simple voyage into a quest.

The State Demon

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It’s the time of year for seeing things. I suppose that’s why there have been two supposed sightings of the Jersey Devil flying around the internet this past week. The credulous take these kinds of things for evidence, and the posters claim complete sincerity and who doesn’t want to believe? Still, the photos and videos fail to convince. It’s the time of year when we want to see monsters.

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While the origin story of the Jersey Devil is one of the main strikes against it for sheer impossibility: Mother Leeds, who had twelve children, finding herself pregnant with a thirteenth, wished that it would be born a devil. The cursed child, meeting motherly expectations, came out a devil, flew up the chimney, and has haunted southern New Jersey ever since. The folklore elements are thick in this tale: the thirteenth child, the exasperated mother, devils in the woods. This doesn’t, however, suggest much confidence in the literal truth of the story. This traditional tale circulated in the same region where legitimately strange things were seen, especially around the turn of the last century. Every now and again the devil reappears in a present-day venue. At one time the Jersey Devil was even the official state demon of New Jersey.

The ease of use of photo-altering software has taken us further and further from the truth. It is an impoverished world that has no mystery to it, but the easily hoaxed world of Photoshopped monsters will cast doubt on all contenders, I fear, forevermore. We can no longer trust the veracity of the lens. Our world has become an electronic illusion. The creature spotted in the Pine Barrens can be more readily believed without photographic proof. The sober, shaken witness who can’t explain what s/he saw one dark night is more believable than a goat with wings or a stuffed animal on a string. Our religious sensibilities urge us to believe in the impossible. Our cameras urge caution. After all, internet fame is often the only kind available to those whose videos and photos go viral. The devil, they say, is in the details.

The Lure of Lore

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SleepyHollowOne of my doctoral advisers, Nick Wyatt, has become a friend over the years. I’m sure he would agree that he is often called a maverick, but in the best possible way. He is one of the brightest people I’ve ever known. When it was time for his Festschrift to appear, I had been unceremoniously tipped out of academia and left to my own devices. Being his first doctoral student, I had to contribute a piece, and so I settled on one I had written about an Edinburgh ghost story that seems to have roots in ancient Sumer.  Nick is the kind of scholar who can appreciate such ventures. This paper came to mind while reading Legends and Lore of Sleepy Hollow and the Hudson Valley by Jonathan Kruk.  Kruk labels himself a storyteller, and that was a venerable role in ancient times.  In fact it was a priestly one.  Kruk draws out the many tales of headless horsemen and other spirits mentioned in Washington Irving’s “Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Nothing is proven here, but that’s not the point.

Headless ghosts were a staple of nineteenth-century lore not only in the Hudson Valley, but also in Scotland and Germany, as well as in many other locations.  How a spirit became decapitated is generally part of the draw to such ghoulish stories, and Kruk convincingly points to the tradition of the Wild Hunt as an element in Ichabod Crane’s famous ride.  The point is that stories often contain a truth that facts can’t match.  Case in point: the legend of Sleepy Hollow is alive and well. There have been periods, and will likely be more periods, when interest wanes, but we keep coming back to the story because it teaches us something about ourselves.  Empiricism is all fine and good until you find yourself facing a headless phantom on a nighttime highway.  Experience all of a sudden takes the wheel.

What does this have to do with Professor Wyatt?  My Festschrift article was reviewed, at a much earlier stage, by the journal Folklore.  I received a very sniffy rejection letter, citing, among other scholarly infractions, that I had referred to a popular publication (say it isn’t so!) as a source of the Edinburgh ghost story text. Where else was I to find it?  What scholar would bother to replicate an obviously—let’s just say it—uneducated tale?  Isn’t it beneath scholarly dignity? The stories we tell, I’ve always believed, make us who we are. It may be that materialists will have the last laugh.  When they are carted to the graveyard, however, I can guarantee that there will those among the common mourners who will be able to make a believable tale that their lives meant something after all.

Monster Map

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Monster QuestMonsters are becoming more mainstream. Or at least it seems that the ridicule factor, with which I had to deal as a child, has moderated a bit. A friend recently sent me a link to Hog Island Press’s Monsters in America map. No doubt, skeptical persons will dismiss such whimsical charts as a load of hooey, but people continue to see unusual things. Although we don’t subscribe to any television service, it has become clear that ghosts and Bigfoot have become pretty standard fare for reality shows. Lake monsters still make appearances from time to time, and since we aren’t always watching the waters, nobody’s terribly surprised. And who knows what’s flying below the radar at night? People have believed in monsters from the very earliest of times. We, however, live in an age when belief can’t exist without proof, and our world of the plausible has shrunk because of it.

Another problem here is the definition of “monster.” The traditional monster was pure fiction—werewolves, vampires, and zombies simply don’t exist. We tell scary stories about them because it’s fun to be afraid when we know there’s really no such thing. American monsters, on the other hand, are based on eyewitness reports, reliable or not. I grew up literally on the edge of the woods in a rural town and never saw anything cryptozoological in nature. At the same time I learned that it’s difficult to see everything in the woods. I would’ve never guessed, for instance, that the number of deer and bear that were shot each season were only a small representative of their populations. The woods, it seemed, should’ve been much more crowded.

Those who’ve spent time in the woods know that nature doesn’t reveal everything easily. Looking at the Hog Island Press chart, I notice some new creatures (to me) and some surprising omissions. Wisconsin and Michigan, both heavily wooded and (I speak from experience here) areas of strangeness, seem devoid of the creatures so commonly reported. Linda Godfrey has written extensively about the dog-men (or werewolves) not uncommonly reported in both states. I suppose that in making such a map there is an embarrassment of riches. People see things all the time, and urbanites have a difficult time identifying species the naturalist finds, well, natural. One need not be credulous to enjoy the monsters of the natural world. It is fun, in any case, to consider the possibilities, now that monsters have gone mainstream.

Illini Wisdom

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Running through the Midwest like a massive, erosive serpent, the Mississippi River has an unrivalled place in the American imagination. In many locations the relentless river has carved impressive bluffs over the millennia, providing impressive views out over the valley that has been carved in nature’s time. Down near the town of Alton, Illinois, along the eastern bluffs left by the sculpting waters, is a reproduction of the Piasa Bird. Years ago, while living in the Midwest, some relatives took me to see the replica, a local tourist attraction and not a bad place to watch for bald eagles. It was then that I first heard the myth of the Piasa Bird. “Bird” is a bit of understatement, or perhaps a misnomer. The creature was really a monster, by any description. According to the lore presented by the tourist literature, the Piasa was a flying, human-eating beast that terrorized the local Illini tribe. Unsure of what to do, the tribe was at a loss until Ouatoga, their leader, had a dream that revealed an ambush as the means of defeating the monster.

The ambush involved, as is often the case in folkloristic accounts, a victim. Someone had to be bait to draw the Piasa into the ambush of poisoned arrows that had been arranged. Ouatoga, aware of the obligations of leadership, volunteered for the role of the victim and stood in the open to lure the Piasa into the trap. As the monster swooped down on him, the warriors released their arrows, killing the beast and saving their leader. The story bears much in common with myths throughout the world: a frightful beast, a sacrifice, and ultimate deliverance. This framework also appears in many religions, outlining the human condition. It also reflects, in an abstract way, the ideal of pre-modern society; we are all in this together. Banding together against an outside evil, human society might banish the monster and everyone’s chances would be improved. It is the world of mythology.

In our enlightened society the emphasis seems to have changed completely. Our leaders are often our Piasa, snatching from the populace at will and maintaining uneasy control. Ouatoga, in the myth, understood the role of leadership as being willing to sacrifice everything for the good of those who were under his watch. The idea also occurs in the Bible where Ezekiel charges the ungodly kings of Judah with being shepherds who eat the sheep. I still believe in the power of mythology. Stories are preserved because of a truth that resonates with the hearers. Monsters are in no short supply, and a society that is subject to the whims of an oligarchy perhaps has the most to learn from our mythological past. When is the last time a public leader offered to give up anything in order to serve the populace who grants him (sometimes her) his power? Old Man River, he must know somethin’. Looking up at the Piasa, I think I might be able to guess what it is.

Lamp of the Gods

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Long venerated as a god, the moon has fallen to such a declination that it scarcely attracts the notice of most people anymore. While some governments are busy making plans to reach the moon—notably those with the largest populations—the rest of the developed world looks to the nighttime sky and lets out a yawn. The poignant little book called Moon: A Brief History, by Bernd Brunner, offers a moving tribute that is part science, part history, and part whimsy. Very few heavenly bodies have undergone the dramatic plummet in interest as our familiar old moon. It remains the proximate cause for werewolves and the occasional harvest-season horror movie, but since the Cold War has ended and we no longer need to prove ourselves to anybody, attention has shifted toward more distant and abstract targets. Maybe Mars, or one of Jupiter’s moons holds the fascination we so long for. The moon, apart from a brief flare of interest when water was discovered there, has died a slow death in the human imagination.

In ancient times, the moon was often considered superior to the sun. Sure, it’s not as warm—downright cold at times—but its light is more gentle, more forgiving. The traveler’s companion, the moon illuminated the way before headlights were invented. The god of the moon (its gender was slippery in parts of the ancient Near East) sometimes topped the pantheon. Even today in Islam, the memory of the high god’s crescent moon can be found atop mosques throughout the world.

What happened to the moon? Famously Carl Sagan, himself an astronomer, wrote about The Demon-Haunted World. In this book he decried the human tendency to look for supernatural causation; the universe is entirely natural. Many have used his reasoning as a nail in the coffin of God. Clearly he was right in many cases, but, as Brunner shows, science can rob even a deity of its shine. Writes Brunner: “Its significance and roles have always varied across cultures and eras—from heavenly god to symbolic guardian or judge, to the scene or stage of spectacular visions and visits, to being ‘just’ and object of scientific investigation.” Once we’ve been to bed with the moon and look at it scientifically, its luster is lost. “Maybe we should try sometimes to un-think our scientific knowledge of the moon,” Brunner opines.

I was one of those thousands planted before the television on 21 June 1969 to watch the first men on the moon. Amid the turmoil of earth, it was a sublime, even a religious moment. In the end a dozen men walked on the moon before it was forgotten. Like the dozen disciples, they alone have been near the truly sublime. With Brunner I too would suggest that we not be too quick to forget our constant companion.

Dusting the Lilim

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Having grown up on a literary diet of comic books and Doc Savage novellas, I have always had an appreciation for the fantastic. Since our town was relatively dull, it helped to have flights of imagination within the price range of those with humble means. I discovered Neil Gaiman (it seems that many profound writers are named Neil or Neal) through the machinations of one of my Rutgers students. After reading American Gods, which was an obvious starting place for someone of my erstwhile profession, I have sampled a bit more of his fare. I long ago gave up on comic books since I prefer the pictures I make in my own head, although I must admit that the few graphic novels I’ve tackled have required considerable thought. So it was that I came upon Stardust, a graphic-turned-prose novel.

Stardust serves up a number of folklore themes with the charm and wit that Gaiman generously doles out. It is a story replete with witches, fairies, and storm gods. A figurative smorgasbord of the mythical. What particularly arrested my attention was Gaiman’s use of the title Lilim for his witches. Lilim (or lilin) are mythical creatures of Semitic pedigree related to the (in)famous Lilith. Some traditions make the Lilim her children, and it has been suggested that they also put in an appearance or two in Mesopotamian mythology. Gaiman’s portrayal is fairly accurate here with the Lilim being selfish thieves of the night, but not entirely evil.

Beyond the escapism of relatively happy endings, this mix of evil tinged with the helpless inevitability of aging speaks paradigmatically of mythical ambiguity. Many modern-day religions tout the answers, but mythology parades the possibilities. The mythology of old continually returns to us in new forms. Using a mix of fantastical creatures from various eras of human story-telling, Stardust is a gentle fairytale for adults. Like the book of Ecclesiastes the story has a fatalism to it, no real happy ending but no hair-rending tragedy either. Turning the classic quest for the father into an unwitting search for the mother, the novel offers seemingly endless potential for hope. Although penned a few years ago, that message is still desperately needed today.

Jersey Devils

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My trips to the DMV always seem to involve the paranormal. Admittedly, this is sometimes partially my own fault. Against my wife’s advice, I took The Lure of the Dark Side – a book I was reviewing – with its Satanic cover, when I went to renew my driver’s license a few weeks ago. Back when we first moved to New Jersey, and I had to sit for an excessive part of the day in that waiting room, I was reading a book on the Jersey Devil. I first heard of this exotic New World beastie when I was a ghost-story fixated teenager reading some Scholastic October special. Since I lived a state over, in the western end of Pennsylvania, I figured I didn’t have too much to worry about.

The Jersey Devil is an anomaly that involves two distinct aspects. One side of the story is pure folklore; Mrs. Leeds gave birth to a devil in south Jersey and the monstrous thing has been haunting the state ever since. The other side involves the sightings of an allegedly physical cryptid by reputable individuals, especially since the early twentieth century. An unlikely combination of horse-head, wings (often bat-like), and hooves make this one odd-looking creature, based on eyewitness accounts. I have to thank my friend Susan for pointing out the suggestion that this could be a hammerhead fruit bat, although how even a small population of the African rain-forest dwellers could survive in New Jersey without producing a single road-kill specimen would itself be beyond belief. The shape and size of the bats accounts for quite a bit, but the hooves just don’t fit. That, and the Jersey Devil seems to prefer chickens, ducks, and small dogs to the eponymous fruit of the hammerhead bat.

Whatever, if-ever, the real Jersey Devil might be, the story has all the makings of a Halloweenish blend of religion and monsters. There are several versions of the story, but the one most commonly told is that Mrs. Leeds, in labor with her thirteenth child, declared that this one had better be a devil. She got her wish. The child emerged, sprouted wings and flew up the chimney to terrorize south Jersey and Philadelphia over the next several decades. The beast gives the state’s hockey league an instant identity and even led to the breakdown of a priest in the sixth season of Seinfeld. The first season of the X-Files featured a Jersey Devil episode (although it turned out to be a very humanish kind of Bigfoot), and Bruce Springsteen recorded “A Night with the Jersey Devil” for his home-state fans back in October of 2008. Only the gullible take stories of cross-species (cross-metaphysical beings?) seriously, but the story, like the Jersey Devil itself, seems to be immortal.