Friday the 13th...unlucky for some...

Elevator buttons showing the missing 13th floor

It's always intrigued me, the superstitions that we as humans hold true--- even after decades of time and scientific advancement have proven they are, in fact, not true. Of course, most superstitions have their ORIGINS in fact....it probably only took a few people getting injured from items falling from ladders for it to be deemed unlucky to walk under them.

But, triskaidekaphobia? How is somebody hurt by a number?? The fear of the number 13 runs so deep that some buildings refuse to have a "13th" floor...evident by the lack of "13" in their elevator numbers---- there's a 12 and a 14, but no 13. Forget the fact that the floor just above the 12th, though it is labeled 14, is in fact the 13th floor.....

And to further the query.... where did the fear of Friday the 13th originate? Friggatriskaidekaphobia, to quote the technical term....Most beliefs of the "unlucky-ness" of Friday the 13th seems to stem from Old Christian thinking. Christ was crucified on a Friday...there were 13 members at the last supper. The number 13 was considered "lucky" by Pagan beliefs--- 13 lunar cycles, etc., which proved to be another reason 13 was deemed unlucky (easier to make people fear a belief, makes the promoted belief that much more revered.)

How many superstitions have we been "forced" to believe because it was the easiest way to control the mass populace?

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I is for...

... Iron Maiden

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? ---Edgar Allan Poe

---and not the English heavy metal band from East London...

Day 2 in the realm of morbid/macabre torture devices finds us back in the Middle Ages (there was definitely a fashionable trend of imaginative torture devices during this time). Though, the Middle Ages isn't really when we should be turning our attention when we discuss the Iron Maiden. In fact, there has been some debate as to the exact appearance of this monstrous creation.

It's probably easiest to relocate such a torturous thing back to a time when it seemed everyone was as skilled at exacting a confession as they were at creating the tools to exact those confessions. It's easier to blame ancestors from several hundred years ago than to accept that anyone of civilized disposition would be capable of doing such horrible things with such terrif…

Y is for Yeth Hound.....

Yeth Hound--- one of the incarnations of the "Black Dog" myth, this one located specifically, in Devon, England.

"Black Dogs" appear in myths across the world, most are associated with death and bad omens... i.e. Hell Hounds.

The Yeth Hound is said to be the spirit of an unbaptised child that takes the form of a headless black dog. The Hound wanders the woods at night making pitiful wailing sounds (though, I'm unclear as to how it makes wailing sounds without having a head).

The Black Dogs were possibly one inspiration from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's ghost dog in The Hound of the Baskervilles-- "an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen."

Heed Not, the Lonesome Cry
Heed not, the lonesome cry, the baleful wail echoing through the woods. Seek not, the black hound's sigh, look not where the headless creature stood.
One sound, your limbs will shake, your heart filled with the deepest dread. One glimpse, your sou…

V is for...

... Vrolik Museum

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? ---Edgar Allan Poe

How about a morbid museum?

Still used by the medical faculty and students at the University of Amsterdam, the Vrolik Museum is a unique collection of odd bones and skulls, pathogenic specimens, and an assortment of anomalous embryos.

The collection was amassed by Dutch anatomist, Gerardus Vrolik (1775-1859) and continued by his son, Dutch anatomist and pathologist, Willem Vrolik (1801-1863). And since Willem's death, various donations have expanded the collection even further. Most specimens are human, though a few zoological specimens have trickled into the collection. Preserved remains, plaster casts, and various models show an assortment of congenital deformities and malformations.

This is one of those places that isn't for the faint of heart---certainly not for those who are easily moved or triggered by…

From the Inkwell, From the Vein.....

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