SOME are well-worn warnings as familiar as the changing of seasons. Others are slow burns that end with a bang. Still others are just plain eerie.
Stories of spiritual entities, paranormal activity and creepy cryptids are passed through generations the world over, becoming local legends that only sometimes reach across borders and cultures.
So if the sordid tales you grew up with no longer make you shiver, it’s time to reanimate your roster with global tales of ghosts, hauntings, and petrifying processions.
With Halloween nigh, and the season in many parts of the world ripe for campfires and spooky stories, people gravitate toward fear even in a complex and sometimes scary world. Here are some favorites — lore and fiction, with maybe some truth sprinkled throughout — that The Associated Press (AP) gathered from its journalists around the planet:
If you were out on the road in China in the old days — if you believe the stories, that is — you might have encountered a strange procession.
First, a man carrying a white paper lantern and scattering fake paper money ahead of them, chanting, “Yo ho, yo ho.” Then, a towering, hooded black figure wearing a ghastly mask and marching in an awkward, wooden gait. Bringing up the rear, another man guiding the giant by touch, perhaps with a black cat.
They were corpse walkers — and the giant was the corpse.
Bad things happen when someone gets buried far from home: Without descendants to feed their spirit and keep their grave clean, they’ll have a hard time settling in. They could even come back as a hungry ghost. So when a traveler died, the family would hire people who knew the strange art of walking a stiff body home.
When interviewer Liao Yiwu asked about memories of corpse walkers in the 2000s, some said they’d use a black cat to imbue the body with static electricity to make it walk. Others said there was a third man hiding under the cloak and giving the corpse a piggyback ride.
People kept their distance, he wrote, but the corpse walkers were always welcome at inns because they paid three times the normal rate and were said to bring good luck.
-By David Cohen in Bangkok
One of France’s oldest spooky legends is also one of its most gruesome, because it involves a walking headless corpse.
Said to have been Paris’ first bishop, Denis — later St. Denis — went on to lend his name to what is now the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, famous for its magnificent basilica, its soccer stadium and the Olympic village that housed athletes during the Paris Games.
The third-century Roman rulers of what was then Gaul were apparently less than thrilled that Denis and companions Rustique and Éleuthère were making converts. Even after tossing them in prison, Denis continued to celebrate Mass. In some accounts, Denis suffered all manner of unspeakable tortures to make him renounce his faith — not just run-of-the-mill flagellation, but also mauling by famished wild beasts and being locked in a scorching oven.
Eventually, the three were sentenced to death and beheaded.
Legend has it that Denis’ corpse, lifted by two angels, picked up his severed head and walked from the Mount of Martyrs — the supposed execution site now called Montmartre — for about 6 kilometers before collapsing in the village of Catulliacum, now the town of Saint-Denis.
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