Witches and Onryo – The Vengeful Spirit

It’s witch weekend! The movie The Witch has just released. After seeing the preview, I'm pumped to go see the movie today. It's also a perfect weekend to have guest author Catherine Cavendish talk about witches, demons, vengeful spirits and share an excerpt from her scary book The Pendle Curse.

Onryo – The Vengeful Spirit

 by Catherine Cavendish

In addition to witches, I often write about devils and demons, revenge and retribution. I am not alone, of course. Ancient traditions of vengeance abound in the traditions and folklore of people all over the world, often involving demons and other creatures from the paranormal. One such character is Onryo – a mythological spirit found in Japanese folklore. Actually there wasn’t just one of them, but many, and onryos are usually (though not exclusively) female.

An onryo is an angry and vengeful spirit who returns from the depths of the Otherworld. In life, she has been a gentle and inoffensive, non-assertive woman, but she has been ill-used by her brutal and aggressive husband and, after death - frequently at the hands of the wicked husband - her spirit has blackened. She has also become immensely strong and dangerous and will stop at nothing to gain her revenge.

Onryos first appeared in Japanese folklore around the 7^th or 8^th century and rapidly became embedded in legend. They have but one aim in death - to punish their abusers with unbearable and eternal torture if they should dare to continue to use aggression on their new women.

So powerful were the stories of this vengeance, that onryos became one of the most feared legends in Japan and other Asian countries by the early 1900s. The old legends didn’t describe their appearance but, as more and more men were attacked by them, a picture began to emerge.

They are usually described as slender, beautiful and dressed in a white, bloodstained kimono. Their veins stand out as green and purple and they have long black hair, covering their faces. When angered their hair bristles as if electrified, revealing a deformed face, frequently with a mouth, but no eyes or nose.

An encounter with an onryo usually starts by their intended victim finding a seemingly unconscious woman collapsed on the floor. As they approach her, the man will feel the onset of a sudden migraine and chest pains. As they near her, they will hear strange, unintelligible sounds coming from the woman – similar to weeping, or whispering in an unfamiliar language. Then, the onryo will stand and levitate towards the victim, reaching out to capture him with her hands. Now the woman is surrounded in a dark aura and makes deep, unearthly growls.

In some instances, the onryo will kill their intended. In others, they will curse the abusive husband and his family, and even sentence any woman he makes intimate contact with to death. They have also been blamed for causing anything from earthquakes to fires, storms, drought, famine and pestilence in their quest for vengeance.

They are still feared to this day…

 

Now, here’s the blurb for The Pendle Curse:

Four hundred years ago, ten convicted witches were hanged on Gallows Hill. Now they are back…for vengeance.

Laura Phillips’s grief at her husband’s sudden death shows no sign of passing. Even sleep brings her no peace. She experiences vivid, disturbing dreams of a dark, brooding hill, and a man—somehow out of time—who seems to know her. She discovers that the place she has dreamed about exists. Pendle Hill. And she knows she must go there. But as soon as she arrives, the dream becomes a nightmare. She is caught up in a web of witchcraft and evil…and a curse that will not die.

Here’s a short extract from the beginning:

His spirit soared within him and flew up into the storm-clad sky as blackness descended and the rain became a tempest.

He flew. Lost in a maelstrom of swirling mists. Somewhere a baby cried until its sobs became distorted, tortured roars. Beyond, a black void loomed. He saw Alizon’s spirit just ahead and tried to call out to her, but his voice couldn’t reach her.

Beside him, another spirit cried out. His mother. He flinched at her screams before they were drowned in the mass—that terrible parody of some hideous child.

The blackness metamorphosed. An amorphous shape formed as his eyes struggled to see with their new vision—the gift of death. Small baby limbs flailed towards him. Eyes of fire flashed as a toothless mouth opened. Screeching, roaring and demanding to be fed. Demanding its mother.

His spirit reached out for his lover. Tried to pull her back. “Alizon!”

She turned anguished eyes to him. “It calls to me.”

He recognized it instantly. The blazing fire. The devil child. That cursed infant had come for them.

Again he reached out with arms that no longer felt connected to him, but he was powerless to stop Alizon being swept away, deep into the abomination’s maw.

“No!” His cry reverberated around him—a wail of anguish in a sea of torment.

Then…silence. Only he remained, drifting in swirling gray mists of time.

“I will find you, sweet Alizon. One day I will find you. And I will find the one who betrayed us.”

From somewhere, he heard an echo…

You can buy The Pendle Curse here:

Samhain Publishing

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

About the author:

Following a varied career in sales, advertising and career guidance, Cat is now the full-time author of a number of paranormal, ghostly and Gothic horror novels, novellas and short stories. She was the 2013 joint winner of the Samhain Gothic Horror Anthology Competition, with Linden Manor, which features in the anthology What Waits in the Shadows.  Her novels, The Devil’s Serenade, The Pendle Curse and Saving Grace Devine are also published by Samhain as is her novella – Dark Avenging Angel. Her latest novel –The Devil’s Serenade - will be released by Samhain on April 19th, 2016.

You can connect with Cat here:

Catherine Cavendish

Facebook

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Goodreads

Tsu

A House Possessed: My Paranormal Journey

Lately, I’ve been having a lot of guest writers share their encounters with real paranormal phenomena from haunted hospitals to haunted graveyards to haunted houses. Today, Dawn Shepard shares some strange paranormal activity in her own home, which seems to be possessed by multiple spirits . . . and these aren’t the friendly kind. I’ll let Dawn take it from here.

My paranormal journey has been one of the most difficult, dangerous, yet intriguing paths I’ve taken within my life. Since my childhood I’ve always believed in ghosts, spirits, entities and have been told by many that I have a gift of being a sensitive or empathy to them. Personally, I never attributed myself to this belief of a gift until four years ago, and that’s when I started to believe differently. I had some experiences after my grandfather’s passing but not ever the intensity of what I’ve been dealing with in my home.

I’ve lived in my rented home peacefully for ten years, but things started occurring after being here for only seven years. Activity started in October 2010 after a Ouija board was found while cleaning the attic. It was noticed that sometimes objects would disappear in our home, but because of a hectic lifestyle, it was thought to be a result of being absent minded or forgetful and never questioned. Sometimes you could hear a door open or close, but having pets in the home seemed to be the answer to these occurrences too.  On March 11^th, 2011 the unexplained reality of paranormal happenings became very real and began my journey into the realm of another real and true existence.

  While it's difficult to tell in this image, I snapped a picture of 

a young man's face looking out of the window 
from one of the rooms in the attic.

The following are some unexplained messes that started in our landlord's home in the beginning.

After having six investigations which also included two different mediums and a psychic medium, EVPs (electronic voice phenomena), EMF (electromagnetic field) readings, pictures, ghost box sessions, my own investigating, countless hours of research along with researching the history on the home, I was able to start to figure some things out but didn’t realize there was going to be more to be learned.

It is known that I have eight spirits in the home with the possibility of more. Three of the eight are evil and the others I’m still not quite sure because trickery can be used and they don’t like to be honest. The three evil ones―two are deceased relatives of mine and the third is believed to be an attachment to the home since the 1800s.

My daughter and I have encountered several different odors such as sulfur, burnt toast, wet dirt, rotting flesh, apples and cinnamon, and wild musk perfume. We have been touched, heard growling, evil laughter, whispering, and sometimes voices. Objects have been thrown at us such as knives, hand held pruning shears, CDs, VCR tapes, etc.

I have been pushed down the stairs, touched in my sleep, have had the towel pulled off me after getting out of the shower. My daughter has been scratched, had some small unexplained bruises, and also had two incidents happen that she has no memory of but I was told that I intercepted what was the beginnings of a possession.

The following 3-minute video is from a paranormal investigation at our house where we captured some sound of the spirits.

can of cat food opened 

and thrown at the ceiling and wall

garlic powder dumped on the floor

Sometimes the phone will ring right before or after activity and there will be no one on the other end, or you will hear a muffled voice but can’t understand what’s being spoken.

My daughter and I have also experienced some activity while being in the car together, when we pulled into the driveway and stopped. In the following pics is the scratch my daughter got while we were in the car together. The scratch is in the shape of a letter "Z."

 

And there have been occurrences that have happened from time to time when she visits or has a sleepover at her friend’s home across the street from my home.

This was a written message left for me when my daughter was staying at her friend's home across the street. Some activity was happening and they had called me to come over. When I went to get my phone to take pictures, this written message was next to my phone. The message reads, "BN AND RM ARE MINE” (my daughter's initials and her friend's).

The next message was written on my daughter's bedroom mirror in red lipstick while no one was home. She and I had gone to the doctor's and then the store. We found this message after coming home and I went into her room. This was two days after the priest had done a full blessing on our home for the third time. It says: "YOU CANT STOP ME".

We’ve experienced communication from written messages, symbols, on Facebook and from several messes made using edible items and even paint.

 

Below is cat litter taken from a litter box and made into a circle. Circles were always being made and it's a protection for the entities and means never ending.

          

This symbol below is a drawing and only because I was away when this symbol was made out of fruity pebbles cereal, black pepper, and onion powder. The word "DIE" was written underneath. 

My husband at the time had found it and tried to shield our daughter from it and didn't think to take a picture. They were asked to describe what they saw and to draw it in separate rooms. I found out it's a satanic symbol to represent the devil.

The next symbol is a “triquetra” made out of black pepper and garlic powder along with a circle and a written message. The messages says:   "I WANT THE GIRL NOW I NEED HER TO JOI ME."

 

  My daughter, a few years older

The second written message was written on my daughter's bedroom wall next to her closet door with a mirror on it. It says . . . "SHES MINE JOI ME AND YOU WILL DIE DAWN.”

 

This message was written after I had intercepted what was the start of a partial possession of her. She has blue eyes and her eyes were black when I had opened her door to see if she was okay.

The calendar was thrown at me while upstairs in my landlord's place and the word "DIE" was written on it for me. I have been constantly told to die.

While all of this may seem unbelievable, it’s been proven that these incidents weren't from someone playing a joke or trying to be scary, and I have copies of all the messages received. The home has been blessed three times inside and outside using holy water, incense, many prayers, crosses and other religious objects. Gregorian music has also been tried, sage, crystals, salt, and other things. Each time though the activity escalates and becomes stronger and more difficult.

I’ve been told that I have a combination of demonic activity along with witchcraft that was either practiced or dabbled with, and there was also some kind of satanic worshipping or practicing. I have names of those whom lived in the home from the 1800s up until now but can’t say for certain what was ever practiced or believed in.
 

There is much more to my story but wanted to try to give some insight into my journey that I am still facing and working at resolving. I understand there may be those that feel moving out of the home would be in my best interest but the spirits can and do follow. I am not one to give up very easily, nor will I give into what they feel they can have or control without trying for a resolution.

   

Here is a video of another paranormal investigation. This one is 18 minutes.

A link to my blog called “My Paranormal” is: www.cinn2you2blogspot.com

I haven’t updated since June 13, 2013 but can answer any questions via email lilsis72@hotmail.com

Many thanks to Dawn Shepard for sharing her paranormal story on Dark Lucidity. I love posting paranormal stories. If you have evidence of ghostly encounters with photos and video, or know someone who does, please contact Brian(at)BrianMoreland(dot)com.