Crazy Holidays

The holidays and the crazy things that they bring...

How to kill vampires: Garlic flavored

We often see people using garlic as a vampire repellant. Some chuckle head even thought of wearing them around the neck like a fashionable necklace. Another genius came up with the idea of mixing them with water or a more effective agent holy water, them putting the fluid in squirt guns. Feels like summer, except that you’re squirting garlic flavored water at undead creatures.

It always has been that way but why? Why garlic, why something that we use in everyday cooking is an “effective” deterrent against vamps.

Well way back in the old days, when prescription drugs and pill popping wasn’t an everyday occurrence people used medicinal plants and herbs. And garlic as delicious as it is on a variety of dishes also possessed a bunch of medicinal qualities.

Mythical:Hand of Glory a thief's boon

The Hand of Glory is the pickled and dried hand of man who committed unlawful acts and hanged for his crimes. Often the left hand is used (several religions believe that the left hand is sinister???) or if not the left the hand that "did the deed".The Hand of Glory is effectively used by thieves to ransack houses safely. Being able to enter houses without stirring any of its occupants, putting them in a state of slumber. The hand is lit similar to a candle and as long as it is lit its powers are in effect, if the flames are to be put out then the power will cease.

To make a Hand of Glory, as stated in the Petit Albert:

"Take the right or left hand of a criminal who is hanging for his crimes from a gibbet beside a highway; wrap it in part of a funeral pall and so wrapped squeeze it well. Then put it into an earthenware vessel with zimat, nitre, salt and long peppers, the whole well powdered. Leave it in this vessel for a fortnight, then take it out and expose it to full sunlight during the dog-days until it becomes quite dry. If the sun is not strong enough put it in an oven with fern and vervain. Next make a kind of candle from the fat of a gibbeted felon, virgin wax, sesame, and ponie, and use the Hand of Glory as a candlestick to hold this candle when lighted, and then those in every place into which you go with this baneful instrument shall remain motionless"

The Petit Albert also provides ways to counter act the effectiveness of a Hand of Glory:

"The Hand of Glory would become ineffective, and thieves would not be able to utilize it, if you were to rub the threshold or other parts of the house by which they may enter with an unguent composed of the gall of a black cat, the fat of a white hen, and the blood of the screech-owl; this substance must be compounded during the dog-days"

An example of a Hand of Glory can be found the Whitby museum in Whitby, North Yorkshire, England.