Tag Archives: myth

Counting Crows: What the Number of Crows Symbolizes

Arkane Curiosities

Sure, a big flock of crows is a murder. But often you’ll only see a few crows at a time. In some cultures, crows are associated with intelligence, mystery, and magic. The number of crows symbolizes different things, from good luck to death.

One Crow

Crows are linked with the afterlife and death. Seeing a single crow means you have a message from someone recently deceased. This often means bad luck for you. 

Two Crows

If one crow means destruction, a pair of crows signifies harmony and good luck. New opportunities are coming your way. A new chapter of your life is about to begin. 

Three Crows

Bad luck comes in spades when you see three crows together. Something is going to die. It could be an old relationship. It could mean illness will strike a loved one. At the very least, you’ll get some bad news. 

Four Crows

Four crows on the horizon? Cash is coming your way. Four crows symbolizes good luck and prosperity. Maybe a promotion at work or you discover a new source of income. Either way, take advantage of this opportunity. You’re on the right track.

Five Crows

Five crows represents sickness. You or a family member might catch an illness or suffer mental distress. 

Six Crows

This is the most powerful bad luck. Six crows? Tread carefully the next few days. You might have something stolen from you… or you can lose your life. Impending doom is on your way with five crows. This moment of destruction will transform everything, possibly leading to a new beginning. The destructive event you face could be a minor bump, like a car accident. Or it could be a full on disaster. In any event, dark days are coming your way. 

Any more than six crows and let’s face it, you have a murder of crows. 

Tim Kane

Strange News Signup

Arkane curiosities: five minute reads on mythology, legend, and supernatural history delivered monthly to your inbox.

churning

Thank you for sign up!

The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga

Arkane Curiosities

Picture a small thatched hut of warped boards, old rusty nails, and decaying thatch. Bizarre symbols and human skulls adorn the walls. You step too close and the hut rises up, perched atop gigantic chicken legs growing out of the foundation. This is the dancing hut of Baba Yaga, one of the most bizarre and bewildering sights in all of Slavic folklore.

The Dancing Hut

The Dancing Hut was originally a simple wooden cabin, built by Baba Yaga as a place to retreat and conduct her sorcery in solitude. Over time, however, the Hut began to take on a life of its own, growing in size and becoming increasingly twisted and malevolent. Perhaps, Baba Yaga cast a powerful enchantment on the Hut, imbuing it with a sinister sentience that allowed it to move and dance of its own accord.

Why chicken legs? Does Baba Yaga have a fondness for poultry? It might be a nod to the ancient Slavic tradition of using chicken feet in various magical rituals. Baba Yaga simply incorporated this imagery into the Hut as a symbol of her power.

One site mentions that Baba Yaga’s hut might not have always resided atop chicken legs (or курьи ножки meaning chicken bones). Instead it might have sat on smoked legs (курные). This is the practice of setting a house up on wooden struts saturated with smoke to avoid rot. This was common in the houses of the dead where Slavic people stored the ashes of their ancestors. 

Ditching the Broomstick

Baba Yaga didn’t use the conventional methods of flying like a broomstick or flying carpet. Picture, if you will, a gigantic wooden mortar, with a pestle as long as a tree trunk jutting out from one end. Baba Yaga sat in the hollowed-out bowl of the mortar, gripping the pestle like a joystick, cackling maniacally as she hurtled through the skies. Yes, you read that right. A mortar and pestle, the kind used for grinding herbs and spices in the kitchen.

She did incorporate a broom in flying. Not for the flying part, but to keep her peregrinations secret. The witch gripped a broom constructed of silver birch and swept away any traces of her passage. 

Be Warned

For those brave enough to seek out Baba Yaga and her dancing hut, the rewards can be great. The witch is known to possess great knowledge and power, and those who approach her with respect and humility may find themselves blessed with her gifts. 

But be warned: Baba Yaga is a creature of chaos and contradiction, and her dancing hut is but one facet of her strange and otherworldly existence. To encounter Baba Yaga is to embark on a journey that is both perilous and profound, a dance with the unknown that may lead to either enlightenment or destruction.

Tim Kane

Strange News Signup

Arkane curiosities: five minute reads on mythology, legend, and supernatural history delivered monthly to your inbox.

churning

Thank you for sign up!

Baba Yaga Wants to Cook Your Children in a Stew

Arkane Curiosities

A smile filled with iron teeth. Skin wraps her bones like cling wrap. A nose so long it scrapes the ceiling when she sleeps. This is Baba Yaga, a witch who fits all the stereotypes. But in Slavic lore, she is much more than a bogeyman. Some consider Baba Yaga to be a force of nature or even a deity. Yet many tales talk of her voracious appetite and her desire to cook your children in a stew.

She Will Count Your Spoons

Apparently all aspects of cooking fall under Baba Yaga’s domain. In the story called “Baba Yaga and the Brave Youth”, she returns again and again to young man’s house to count his spoons. 

In the tale the youth lives with a talking cat and sparrow (so we’re off to a good start). The youth is a layabout, letting the animals go out into the forest to cut wood. Their only warning is to hide if Baba Yaga shows up to, you know, inventory the spoons. 

Three times the witch appears and each time the youth can’t keep his trap shut. When he sees her touch his spoon, he yells out “That’s my spoon!” The first two times, the cat and sparrow swoop in for the rescue. But the third time is not the charm and Baba Yaga makes off with the youth to cook him in a stew. 

Legend has it that Baba Yaga only counts eating spoons, not stirring spoons. She wants to know how many people are in the house, and maybe if there are any children. 

Beware the Black Geese

Three black geese serve Baba Yaga. Their mission? To fly around in search of delicious-looking kids to eat. In the fairytale of the black geese, the parents warn a young Elena to watch over her brother. 

Elena gets distracted with her friends while the brother plays outside. Cue the malevolent geese. They swoop down and abduct the helpless boy. Knowing she screwed up, Elena sets off to rescue her brother. 

She must hurry. After all, the brother is destined for Baba Yaga’s pot. Yet even in her rush, she pauses to rescue three woodland creatures. She saves a fish out of water, a squirrel caught in a trap and a field mouse with a pebble blocking its home. In gratitude for her help, the animals give her three tokens (a shell, a nut and the pebble). They tell her to throw them over her shoulder if she’s ever in danger. 

Reaching Baba Yaga’s hut, she found the witch asleep and her brother beside the bed playing with bones. A cauldron bubbled on the fire, ready for a little-boy-stew. Elena snuck and and grabbed her brother, but the black geese sounded the alarm.

Elena bolted into the forest with Baba Yaga in chase. Hampered with her brother, Elena could not outrun the witch. Remembering the tokens, she tosses the shell over her shoulder and it becomes a lake. Instead of going around the lake, Baba Yaga leans down and slurps it up. Next Elena tosses the nut and it sprouts into a thick forest. The witch chews through the wood, devouring the trees. 

Finally, Elena throws the pebble. It transforms into a mountain, too high to climb. Baba Yaga can’t drink or eat the mountain, so she returns home empty handed. 

The moral, of course, is to watch over your kids. Nothing like a bit of child-eating to scare your little ones into being good and following the rules. 

Tim Kane

Strange News Signup

Arkane curiosities: five minute reads on mythology, legend, and supernatural history delivered monthly to your inbox.

churning

Thank you for sign up!

The Backrooms — A Surreal Alternate Reality

Arkane Curiosities

The Backrooms are not for the faint of heart. This is a place both alluring and dangerous, a surreal alternate reality that exists just beyond the walls of our everyday world. No one should ever seek out the backrooms. The risk is too great. Both to your life and also your sanity.

No Ordinary Place

Identical yellow-tinted walls. Flickering fluorescent lighting. At first glance, the Backrooms seem utterly mundane. Yet the more you explore, you realize the truly bizarre place you’ve stumbled into. 

There are no windows, no doors, and no clear sense of direction or purpose. The rooms seem to stretch on forever, each one identical to the last. You may feel disoriented or confused — overwhelmed by the relentless hum that permeates the air. Strange entities inhabit these rooms, creatures that exist outside of our normal understanding of reality.

Gaining Entry

But for those who are brave enough to seek out the Backrooms, there are a few things you should know. Firstl, the Backrooms occupy a kind of liminal space between the digital and the physical. Some have reported finding portals to the Backrooms in video games, while others claim to have stumbled upon them in abandoned buildings or other forgotten places.

These entrances, or glitches in reality, have subtle signs. 

  • Doors that appear suddenly
  • Walls a shade darker than those around it
  • Locations with a sense of unease

When you are ready, simply step through to enter the backrooms.

A Different Kind of Time

Time behaves differently within the walls of the Backrooms. Some have reported losing hours or even days while exploring the endless rooms. Others reported feeling as though they have been trapped in the Backrooms for weeks or months, only to emerge and find that only hours have passed.

This temporal strangeness is often compounded by the endless sameness of the rooms themselves. With no discernible landmarks or signs of change, it can be difficult to gauge how much time has passed or how far you have traveled.

Backrooms Origin

It all started with a picture titled “unsettling room” on a 4chan forum about cursed images. A year later, on May 12th, a user replied to the odd yellow room by saying: 

If you’re not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms, where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in
God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you

This snowballed into more comments and posts. Eventually “found footage” made its way onto social media — people exploring the Backrooms. 

A Final Warning

In the end, entering the Backrooms is not something to be taken lightly. It is a place of great danger and mystery, and those who enter may never return to the world they once knew. Yet… for those who are willing to take the risk… the Backrooms offer a glimpse into a world of endless possibility and unbridled imagination.

Tim Kane

Strange News Signup

Arkane curiosities: five minute reads on mythology, legend, and supernatural history delivered monthly to your inbox.

churning

Thank you for sign up!

Will O’Wisp: Tricksters Who Lure Travelers into Danger

Arkane Curiosities

Blue balls of flames burn in the night, hovering over the marshes. They lure travelers into danger and soon you’re sinking in a peat bog or tumble off a cliff. Also called ignis fatuus (Medieval Latin: “foolish fire”), these tricksters prey on the unsuspecting.

Word Origin

A “wisp” is a bundle of sticks or twisted paper used as a torch. Combined with the name “Will” we get Will-o’-the-wisp (literally “Will-of-the-torch”). Originating in England, these floating lights have crossed the pond and are known as “spook-lights”, “ghost-lights”, or “orbs” in the States. 

Other names for these mischievous nighttime tricksters are Hobby-Lantern, Jack-o’-Lantern, Jenny-Burnt-Tale, Kitty-Candlestick, and Peg-a-Lantern.

Evil Spirits

The Will-o’-the-wisps are considered a kind of evil spirits intent on diverting people off established roads. Their goal is to strand people in the wild with no hope of every reaching the land of the living again. 

On origin story, from Scotland, claims this wispy spirit is actually a deceased blacksmith names Jack. He was denied admittance to hell (which in Scottish lore is known as “the place of the wind of the cold passages, or the wind of the cold channels”). The devil gave Jack a single ember to warm himself as he wandered the mortal plane. It’s this light you see floating over the marshes — the Jack o’Lanten. 

Goblins with Lanterns

In Wales, the Will-o’-the-wisp goes by the name Ellylldan or Pooka (this is where we get the name Puck or Pwca). In this version, a farmer returns home after working the fields and sees a light bobbing before him. A small shadowy figure holds a lantern above its head. 

The farmer follows the light for miles only to find himself on the edge of a high cliff. Far below, a river rages. At this moment, the goblin leaps across the chasm and lands on the opposite side. It utters a malevolent laugh and blows out the lantern, leaving the farmer stranded in the dark. 

Lost Souls

Other versions of this myth have it that the Will-o’-the-wisps are the souls of unbaptized children. They cannot enter heaven and thus must roam the earth forever. They linger in dark forests and deserted places. 

If they spot a person at night, these lost souls hurry over and guide the traveler to water. Not in any attempt to drown the person, but in order to get baptized. 

There is a story from the Netherlands involving a certain Gandshoven from Molenbeek. When he encountered three will-o’-the-wisps, he baptized them. In that instant, thousands more will-o’-the-wisps surrounded him, all wanting the same treatment. Gandshoven spent the whole night baptizing them until the sun rose. 

So if you see a light bobbing mysteriously in the night, maybe leave it be. Who knows where it might lead you.

Tim Kane

Strange News Signup

Arkane curiosities: five minute reads on mythology, legend, and supernatural history delivered monthly to your inbox.

churning

Thank you for sign up!