Ghostwatch (or, Paranormal Hoaxes for Fun and Profit)

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Planning my annual Halloween shenanigans (of course), and happened upon something interesting. Namely, this photo:

(c) Terry Allen, 2017

I caught up with the photographer recently and from what I gathered, he had someone add a “lady spirit” to the photo. She’s hard to see but I found her in the right-hand window, in the middle panel. It certainly looks like a haunted building, as discussed in Jeffrey S. Debies-Carl’s book If You Should Go At Midnight: Legends and Legend Tripping in America (to wit, decay or odd features in a building make it seem like it should be haunted, whether or not there is an attached legend of ghosts or paranormal activity of any kind; Debies-Carl, pp. 134-144). But I think Allen just did it for a good laugh.

You see, we Wyomingites love our paranormal hoaxes for fun and profit. The most famous of these is the Jackalope. Two hunters and hobbyist taxidermists hit on the idea to slap antlers onto a jackrabbit carcass in 1932, and the modern jackalope was born (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackalope). Or rather, that’s one commonly cited origin of the creature. There are ties to sightings of rabbits infected with Shope papillomavirus, which causes them to grow mounds of proteins on their faces and necks which, incidentally, resemble horns (https://cowboystatedaily.com/2025/08/17/what-the-heck-are-those-zombie-rabbits-found-just-south-of-wyoming-border/). And in any case, the creature is talked about enough to gain strange powers, like the ability to talk, drink whiskey, and only mate during lightning storms.

I own a book on the Roswell crash titled UFO Crash At Roswell: The Genesis of a Modern Myth, the thesis of which is that the actual facts of the Roswell Incident no longer matter. The exact origins of the debris are not the point. The point is that the story is foundational to a group of people, as a way of helping build their identity and worldview. It’s safe to say this book changed the way I understand basically any story that circulates widely, such as urban legends and creepypastas. Slenderman doesn’t need to be factually, scientifically real for two teenage girls to attempt to kill in his name. An alien spacecraft did not factually, scientifically need to crash in the New Mexico desert for certain types of people to cry coverup and demand the release of the alien bodies and/or captives.

A rabbit does not factually, scientifically need to grow horns (although some do indeed do something similar) for that symbol to become emblematic of a state and many of the folks who live here. And more to the point, not everyone in that category needs to believe in the jackalope, even. Some might, if they aren’t familiar with Shope papillomavirus and happen upon an infected animal, but mostly the story seems to be a way to kill time. And if my choices are animal cruelty, homicide, meth, and indulging in some paranormal-flavored tomfoolery, I’m choosing the last of those, personally.

Yuletide Updates

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As it so happened, life got away from me a little bit, so I missed that time somebody deep faked burning the Gavle Goat. So the goat’s fine, still standing, nothing really happened.

I did, however, catch up on Christmas movies, and I have a few new favorites: Violent Night, featuring Santa as John McClane (but not a version of the character who’d say shit like “Now I’ve got a machine gun, ho ho ho”, at least as far as I could tell); Ernest Saves Christmas, featuring a Santa definitely channeling his best Edmund Gwenn of Miracle on 34th Street; Red One, where Santa gets kidnapped and a devil’s dozen other Yule figures are involved. (This one is interesting to me, as I know at least one half-way prominent Pagan author who does a lot of Horned God work and discussed Krampus in this capacity, and let me just say that Red One‘s Krampus definitely has a type. Like, it is painfully obvious.)

I’m working on a crochet tree skirt, chiefly to have something to do with my hands and all the yarn I’ve got taking up space in my home. It’s coming along quite well and mosaic crochet is definitely a vibe. Maybe limited in what you can do with it but I like it.

Despite a false start, I got through my Yule ritual OK, which is good bc I had to do it right after getting home from Christmas dinner with my parents. I “had a good time” but good times with them are like lures on angler fish. So there’s that. (Also it doesn’t help that my dad was unspeakably rude about the whole thing and used it as leverage to get me to an appointment I needed to get to in another state, because he’s the man of the house and needs to assert his authority or something like that.)

Right now I’m just tired, and I can’t even say next year is going to be excellent because considering what we just did in November, I highly doubt that.

An interesting discovery on my Tumblr dash

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https://www.tumblr.com/breelandwalker/769132886579347456

Yes, in Gävle, Sweden, you can buy a Yule Goat and some matches at the same time. I personally think this is them leaning into the widely known fact that their big Yule Goat keeps getting burned down (and other methods of destruction but arson is far and away the most common).

Novelty and Tradition

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JillianEve, a YouTuber I follow, recently started posting Vlogmas content (in essence, a challenge to post one video every day for the month of December and/or leading up to Christmas, the rules are a bit vague and variable on that one). Her first video this year was about novelty and routine, especially around the holidays, and it got me thinking.

If you’ve followed this blog a while you know that I have been pondering Christmas traditions for a while, and observing changes in the US, where we’re embracing the “spooky side” with Krampus and multitudes of Tomten (I wouldn’t be surprised to find one of those little guys with “#1 Dad” stamped across it at some point next year, if one doesn’t exist already). In fact, it’s to a point that if you search for spooky Christmas characters, you’ll find list after list of the same ten to fifteen figures: Krampus, tomte, La Befana, Pere Fouettard, and so on. Like there is a “canon” collection. The comparison that keeps coming to mind is Wicca 101 books, that all list out the tools, Sabbats, herbs, and so on. You can only read so many Wicca 101 books or lists of spooky Christmas characters before you can write one yourself in your sleep.

You could say that spooky Christmas characters are a new American Christmas tradition. (How well they relate to these characters from other cultures is, however, up for debate.)

At this point my theory is that after decades of Bing Crosby and Black Friday deals on televisions or what have you, Americans have been craving something different. Now, Christmas-themed horror is nothing new, and neither is Christmas-themed comedy about the chaos the holidays can actually bring (for the former, see Christmas Evil or Black Christmas, and for the latter, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation or A Christmas Story). But I think these things have gotten a second wind of sorts, at least occasionally, in Krampus or Await Further Instructions or Rare Exports (I haven’t seen Await Further Instructions yet but I’m adding it to my list as we speak).

And if it’s scary ghost stories you seek, those are easier than ever to find, from deceased authors and living ones alike. Currently I have made my way through The Haunting Season, The Winter Spirits, More Christmas Ghost Stories, and countless audio renditions on the Chilling Tales for Dark Nights YouTube channel. And I plan to get through dozens of others.

Point being, there is a viable market for creepy Christmas, whether you like capitalism or not (I, personally, could do without it, but I’d like the mashed potatoes NOT passed directly into my face), and I think part of it is routine became rote, and Americans felt a need to do something different for the holidays. And now they can.

Preparing for Yule Goat Watch

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The Gavle Goat is set to go up soon!

I’ve discussed this poor, beleaguered monument a few times. Some years it survives, but more often than not (about 73%, actually), it goes down. Mostly in flames, although historically it has been run over, collapsed, stolen, or smashed, and last year’s goat was famously picked over by hungry jackdaws, due to the seed-heavy straw used. I don’t have enough data but I have heard a theory that the goat is supposed to be destroyed by some means or another, as a sacrifice to the old gods. (To this point, it survived in 2019, and we all know how the next year went. But then, it was also slowly damaged last year and look how this year went. So who’s to say?)

In related news, I have been spending the year on and off crocheting a little cousin to the big Gavle Goat (pattern here). The gauge is very tight so I have been forced to take breaks, but he is almost done! I expect to be finished in time for Christmas.

About that Elf on the Shelf…

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The Elf on the Shelf bills itself as a Christmas tradition, and in some households it is, in fact, customary to pose the elf in funky ways throughout the night (it is important that he not be disturbed while moving about). However, the basic concept is this: Elf on the Shelf spies on all the children in the household and reports back to Santa Claus throughout December on the kids’ behavior.

Generally I’m not a big fan of the naughty or nice element to Santa Claus, in part because it’s a potential vehicle for child abuse and in part because it cheapens Santa’s generosity (and to say nothing of the classist Prosperity Gospel implications that wealthy kids got more for Christmas because they were “better behaved” and we all know that’s a crock of shit). If I could kill that element single-handedly, I would, but it’s baked into the loaf (er… fruit cake) at this point. Santa gets his morality kick from St. Nicolas, who throughout Europe rewards good children who mind their Bible lessons, while some demon or other in his service punishes the bad ones (who are lazy, don’t give a damn about Bible study, and are otherwise ill-behaved). In a lot of cases there’s a good point to be made here about teaching kids to function in society and how to not get killed in the winter months (some winter spirits will roam the wilderness and snatch up anyone who wanders in unawares, for example).

But the Elf on the Shelf is just plain weird.

I sometimes call it “baby’s first surveillance state”. There isn’t much else there. Behave or else, and the State Santa Claus will know about it no matter what you do.

I mean, you could argue that in a twisted way, it is preparing children for life in the modern United States. But, is a surveillance state really the way we want to live? (And it’s not always the government doing the surveillance. Often it’s corporations or Twitter mobs looking for fresh meat.)

Tomten Takeover Followup

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A point I forgot to mention in my last post (partially because it occurred to me after I clicked “publish”) is that while yes, we in the US are getting sick of the same old saccharine nonsense for the holiday season, the only way the culture seems to know how to express that feeling is through consumption. In Sweden, the tomte sets up shop at a farmhouse all year round, but gets a day off around Christmas time, with a meal supplied by the family. In the US, they’re treated like a Christmas-themed decoration, like Elf on the Shelf in a different coat of paint. (One day I might get to Elf on the Shelf…) Alpine demon Krampus, who follows St. Nicolas around and works with/under the Saint, punishing bad kids so Nick doesn’t get his hands dirty. In the US, his chicanery is moved to Christmas and used to sell movie tickets. (Krampus is a yearly rewatch for me, strictly on Dec. 5th (Krampusnacht), but the action is set around Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.)

Christmas overall is a consumerist nightmare, with untold costs between Black Friday and Boxing Day that better folks than me have been able to enumerate and articulate. And white America especially is absolutely no stranger to sticking price tags on cultural artifacts from anywhere else within reach (ask just about any minority group in the country, cultural appropriation is NOT a new discussion).

However, I personally have found it telling that about the same time the pagan types are talking about what some call “The Storm” (this guy has a whole series of posts on the topic and they’re all great, including one about the tides of magic), we start seeing these things in specific. The Tomten, the Krampus movies, and it seems to me, it’s easier and easier to find books and articles about Yuletide traditions elsewhere (it’s the same ones, too, as if they’re being sold to the uninformed consumer like so many Wicca 101 books). And we just slapped a price tag on it all.

The Tomten Takeover Continues

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Last year I wrote about how in recent years Tomte/Tomten (the little Christmas gnomes originating in Sweden) have basically taken over the United States. And I’m just checking in to say that the trend continues. There’s my friend planning on getting Tomte-themed Christmas nails, and then there’s a bona-fide 100% Tomte advent calendar, listed on Amazon and looking like this:

That’s right, cover your tree with the dang things.

I’m no closer to understanding what this means but it may tie in with broader holiday season trends, such as Krampus’s rise in popularity as a response to all the previous saccharine family-friendly fare associated with Christmas and Mariah Carey on repeat in every establishment from Black Friday through Christmas Day itself. I think folks in the US are looking for something different, from different parts of the world that still celebrate Christmas but have something new and different to say. I know I’m like this, and a peek at my Christmas playlist will show Czech and Ukrainian carols alongside songs in English that get less airplay (“Fairytale of New York” and “Spirit of Christmas”, for example) or reflect something sadder about the holiday (“Hard Candy Christmas” and two versions of “If We Make It Through December”).

I think this might be a reflection of the fact that we can’t paper over the cracks forever. We can’t keep covering this bullet hole with band-aids. Winter is not always happy and safe. Seasonal depression exists and the pressure to buy your loved ones’ affection is through the roof, and on top of that, winter has historically been legitimately dangerous at least in certain parts of the world. People could freeze to death or starve with very little in the way of options, and God only knows what lurks out there in the dark, especially when there’s plenty of it to go around.

A video I’m obsessed with (Hello Future Me’s 3 Ways Urban Legends Make Your Worldbuilding Better) points out that many critters in folklore, ancient and modern, exist in inhospitable places, where humans don’t always understand what’s going on. Basically every winter critter fits the bill, from Krampus and Perchta to the Wild Hunt in all iterations. Who knows what’s howling through the trees or scratching at your window, especially when it’s too cold and windy to go out and check.

And in our industrialized world, in the United States and possibly elsewhere, I think we kinda forgot that a little. We forgot a lot of things, in my opinion, but this one is seasonally relevant. We forgot that winter can hurt or kill (and it still does, there are a lot of vulnerable people in society who get by on good will toward men). And that bullet hole is bleeding through that band-aid at an alarming rate, and maybe we’re starting to realize this is a job for the hospital.