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 7th or 8th
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:
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:
