The excellent and scary webcomic The Fox Sister has its roots in a Korean fairy tale of the same name. The comic, still in progress and updated on Tuesdays (when the artists are not too busy with other things!), is set in Seoul in the late 1960s. It is the story of a young Mugyo priestess and her battle with a kumiho—a nine-tailed werevixen demon. Continue reading
Author Archives: The Elder Fox Sister
Constantine S01E01 Review: Non Est Asylum
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In the quarter-century since The DC/Vertigo horror comic Hellblazer began its run, the television landscape has changed to include many shows that follow a similar “occult detective” format: Supernatural, Sleepy Hollow, and the (sadly short-lived) Dresden Files, to name just a few. But fans of John Constantine have waited a long time for a series featuring our favorite anti-hero. Time will tell if NBC can finally pull it off, but the pilot episode seems at least promising.
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Constantine Episode 1 Gallery
The Changeling
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From Strange Lands: A Field Guide to the Celtic and British Otherworld by Andy Paciorek
A mother had her child taken from the cradle by elves. In its place they laid a changeling with a thick head and staring eyes who would do nothing but eat and drink. In distress she went to a neighbor and asked for advice. The neighbor told her to carry the changeling into the kitchen, set it on the hearth, make a fire, and boil water in two eggshells. That should make the changeling laugh, and if he laughs it will be all over with him. The woman did everything just as her neighbor said. When she placed the eggshells filled with water over the fire, the blockhead said:
Nun bin ich so alt Now I am as old
Wie der Westerwald, As the Wester Wood,
Und hab nicht gesehen, But have never seen anyone
Daß jemand in Schalen kocht. Cooking in shells! Continue reading
Monster of the Week: The Dullahan
3The Dullahan is a headless horseman from the Unseelie Court of the Irish fairy realm. Although in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the mysterious rider is implied to be only a man in disguise, the early American short story’s antagonist is modeled from legends of the Dullahan.
The Dullahan carry their grotesque, rictal heads with them, either aloft in their hands or in their saddlebags. (They in fact see through the heads’ eyes, though their sight extends vastly farther than human eyes, and through the pitch black of night). Unlike Death itself, the Dullahan rides a steaming stallion of jet black. The Dullahan maintain classic hallmarks of a Death Omen—if it bears a lantern, it is made of human skull. If it wields a crop, it is the spine of a corpse. In some parts of Ireland the Dullahan is seen in a drawn coach rather than on horseback, with a carriage of skin and wheel spokes of bone. Whatever the conveyance, it is surely a terrifying sight. Continue reading
Monster of the Week: The Croucher
2Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? […] if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” —Genesis IV:7, 8
The Croucher is an invisible Mesopotanian entrance demon. The customs still observed today of removing one’s shoes before entering a domicile, and carrying a bride over the threshold, may originate with primeval fear of the Croucher. Although unseen, its presence can be felt near doorways when one has the sensation of one’s hair standing on end.
The Croucher is one among many demonic spirits categorized as the rabisu—”those who lie in wait.” While some rabisu, like the Croucher, have been animalistic and vampiric in nature since before the Babylonian Empire, it is believed by some that the rabisu were once malakim of Heaven and fell at the time of the Morningstar’s rebellion, making them amongst the most ancient of earthly demons.
Monster of the Week: The Penanggalan
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Mother Penanggalan by Kurt Komoda CC2.0
The Penanggalan is a vampiric monster borne of black magic. She is a normal human during the day, usually a midwife by trade, but at night she can detatch her head from her body. The disembodied head can then fly about, dangling glistening entrails behind it, which she manipulates like tentacles.
The Penanggalan flies around looking for victims to feed on, her preferences being pregnant women, women who have very recently given birth, and babies. Victims who survive having had their blood sucked by a Penanggalan develop an almost-
always fatal wasting disease. After feeding, and before dawn, she returns home, where she keeps a vat of vinegar handy. She soaks her entrails in the vinegar to shrink them, so they will more easily fit back into her body. This is one way to identify a Penanggalan in daylight—she always smells of vinegar.
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The Supernatural Fox Sisters 