A Dictionary of the Paranormal, the Supernatural, and the Otherworldly (A - C)

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Note: Unless otherwise noted, definitions are courtesy of dictionary.die.net, an Internet dictionary in the public domain.

A

The Alchemist

Abracadabra--A mystical word or collocation of letters. . . . worn on an amulet. It was supposed to ward off fever. At present the word is used chiefly in jest to denote something without meaning; jargon.

Abominable Snowman (Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti)--a large hairy humanoid creature said to live in the Himalayas.

Acupuncture--The insertion of needles into the living tissues for remedial purposes.

Ad hoc hypothesis--an interpretation of facts that explains away evidence that contradicts a favored idea or belief (the author).

Akashic record--a spiritual or incorporeal plane upon which all knowledge is stored (the author).

Alchemy--An imaginary art which aimed to transmute the baser metals into gold, to find the panacea, or universal remedy for diseases, etc. It led the way to modern chemistry.
Alien (Extraterrestrial Biological Entities, EBEs)--a form of life assumed to exist outside the Earth or its atmosphere.

Allopathy--That system of medical practice which aims to combat disease by the use of remedies which produce effects different from those produced by the special disease treated; -- a term invented by Hahnemann to designate the ordinary practice, as opposed to homeopathy.

Alpha wave--the normal brainwave in the electroencephalogram of a person who is awake but relaxed; occurs with a frequency of 8-12 hertz.

Altered state of consciousness--a trance or trance-like state of mind (the author)

Amityville (New York) haunting--a hoax; the Lutz family, owners of a Dutch Colonial house in Amityville, NY, claimed their residence was haunted; prior to their purchase and residence in the house, Ronald DeFeo, Jr., killed six of his family members in the same house (the author).

Amulet--An ornament, gem, or scroll, or a package containing a relic, etc., worn as a charm or preservative against evils or mischief, such as diseases and witchcraft, and generally inscribed with mystic forms or characters.

Angel--spiritual being attendant upon God.

Animal ghost--the ghost of an animal.

Animism--the doctrine that all natural objects and the universe itself have souls.

Anomaly--deviation from the normal or common order or form or rule.

Appeal to authority fallacy: the idea or belief that the credibility or authority of an expert is sufficient cause to accept the claims of an argument (the author).

Apollo--Greek god of light; god of prophesy and poetry and music and healing; son of Zeus and Leto; twin brother of Artemis.

Apparition--the appearance of a ghostlike figure.

Apport--the transference of an article from an unknown source, to you, or another place by unknown means (Wikipedia).

Argo--The name of the ship which carried Jason and his fifty-four companions to Colchis, in quest of the Golden Fleece.

Argonaut--one of the heroes who sailed with Jason on the Argo in search of the Golden Fleece

Argument from design (teleological argument)--the argument that the order the universe and the inetraction of its myriad parts necessitates the belief in God as a ominscient and omnipotent designer (the author).

Argument from incredulity--see "Divine fallacy."

Artemis--the virgin goddess of the hunt and the moon; daughter of Leto and twin sister of Apollo; identified with Roman Diana.

Astarte--a Phoenician goddess; counterpart of Ashtoreth and Ishtar.

Astral plane--an otherworldly plane of existence or one in a parallel dimension (the author).

Astral projection--the spiritual body’s travel from the physical body (the author).

Astronauts, ancient--extraterrestrial visitors to earth (sometimes mistaken for gods) during prehistoric times to manipulate or control human evolution or culture (the author).

Aura--a distinctive but intangible quality surrounding a person or thing.

Aural hallucination--hearing things (that aren’t there) (the author).

Autism--an abnormal absorption with the self; marked by communication disorders and short attention span and inability to treat others as people.

Autokinetic effect--the apparent movement of a stationary light in an otherwise dark environment (the author).

Automatic writing--writing produced without conscious thought; often considered a means of channeling (the author).

B

Baal--any of numerous local fertility and nature deities worshipped by ancient Semitic peoples; the Hebrews considered Baal a false god.

Backward Satanic messages--supposedly diabolical communications created by backmasking (the author).

Ball lightning

Ball lightning--a rare form of lightning sometimes seen as a globe of fire moving from the clouds to the earth.

Banshee--In Irish folklore, a female spirit who wails to warn of impending death.

Begging the question--circular reasoning (the author).

“Believe It Or Not” strip--a comic strip in which the artist-writer Robert Ripley recounted strange and mysterious incidents and recorded odd facts and trivia.

Benzene molecule--a ring-shaped chemical molecule the structure of which was perceived by Friedrich August Kekulé, a German chemist, during a dream in which he saw a snake biting its own tail (the author),

Bermuda Triangle--an area in the western Atlantic Ocean where many ships and planes are spposed to have been mysteriously lost.

Bible Code--information patterns said to exist in encrypted or coded form in the text of the Bible, or, more specifically, in the Hebrew Torah, the first five books of Old Testament (Wikipedia).

Biorhythm--a hypothetical cycle in physiological, emotional, or intellectual well-being or prowess (Wikipedia).

Blavatsky, Madame Helene Petrovna--founder of the Theosophy Society (the author).

Book of shadows--a witch's personal collection of spells and incantations (the author).

Brainwashing--forcible indoctrination into a new set of attitudes and beliefs.

C

Cardiff giant--a hoax perpetuated by P. T. Barnum in which it was claimed that a giant “petrified man” had been dug up on Cardiff, NY, by laborers digging a well (the author); this alleged giant is the basis of “A Ghost Story” by Mark Twain (the author).

Cartomancy--the art of telling fortunes with cards.

Castenada, Carlos--a Peruvian mystic (the author).

Cayce, Edgar--an American psychic who claimed to channel messages from the dead concerning health, reincarnation, Atlantis, and other matters (the author).

Cattle mutilation--the evisceration of cattle, often on isolated farms, allegedly by extraterrestrials, presumably for research purposes (the author).

Celestine Prophecy--a 1993 novel by James Redfield which discusses various psychological and spiritual ideas which are rooted in many ancient Eastern Traditions (Wikipedia) .

Centaur--a mythical being that is half man and half horse.

Cerberus--three-headed dog guarding the entrance to Hades; son of Typhon.

Chakra--a anatomical energy center (the author).

Channeling--opening oneself as a medium for the receipt of messages from spirits, often during séances (the author).

Chariot of the Gods--book by Erich von Daniken in which the author claims ancient humans were visited by extraterrestrial beings (ancient astronauts) (the author).

Chemtrail--gaseous trails released by aircraft; they are believed to consist of dangerous, but unidentified, chemicals sprayed by the government as part of a nationwide (possibly worldwide) clandestine mission (the author).

Chiropractic--a method of treatment that manipulates body structures (especially the spine) to relieve low back pain or even headache or high blood pressure.

Chopra, Deepak--Indian mystic and author who influenced the New Thought movement in America and elsewhere (the author).

Christ, foreskin of--a holy relic.

Chupacabra--a legendary beast that roams North, Central, and South America, attacking goats and other animals, from which it sucks blood; also known as a “goatsucker” (the author).

Close Encounters of the Second Kind (CE2)--an observation of a UFO and associated physical effects (heat, radiation, damaged terrain, human paralysis, frightened animals, interference with engines or TV or radio reception, and/or crop circles found in the vicinity of the UFO (Wikipedia).

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (CE3)--an observation of. . . “animate beings” in association with a UFO sighting (Wikipedia).

Coelacanth--a supposedly extinct fish caught (several times) by Japanese fishermen and others (the author).

Cold reading--a medium or other’s use of people’s innate need and tendency to make sense of experiences by imposing order and cause upon otherwise random or seemingly random incidents as a means by which to ascertain information and to seem credible as fortunetellers or others who are adept in the use of allegedly paranormal or supernatural abilities (the author).

Collective hallucination (mass hallucination)--the same hallucination, shared by several (often many) people (the author).

Conspiracy theory--the belief that many individuals or organizations are involved in an attempt to conceal evidence, mislead the public, discredit individuals, secure power, promote a hidden agenda, or otherwise extend influence and socio-economic and political power over the unsuspecting masses (the author).

Cosmobiology--the metaphysical study of the universe; the astronomical study of the universe (the author).

Course in Miracles, A--a book that Helen Schucman (1909-1981) claims was dictated to her by Jesus Christ (the author).

Crop circle

Crop circle--geometrical patterns cut into the crops or grass of a field, allegedly by extraterrestrials, possibly as messages or navigational aids; some have been revealed as elaborate hoaxes (the author).

Crowley, Aleister--author of several books of occult mysticism, including Magick in Theory and Practice and The Book of the Law (the author).

Cryptomnesia--forgotten or repressed memories (the author).

Cryptozoology--the study of legendary, mythical, or unknown animals (the author).

Crystal skull--skulls carved in quartz or other stone and sometimes alleged to be endowed with magical powers of various kinds (the author).

Cult--adherents of an exclusive system of religious beliefs and practices.

Cupping--a treatment in which evacuated cups are applied to the skin to draw blood through the surface.

Curse--an evil spell.

Cyclops--In Greek mythology, one of a race of giants having a single eye in the middle of their forehead.

Everyday Horrors: Plagues

Copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

When most people think of the plague, they are likely to think of the bubonic plague, or “Black Death” that decimated the populations of medieval Europe and other parts of the world. Caused by bacteria carried by infected rats and the fleas who regarded their rodent hosts as moveable feasts, the plague killed as many as 30,000,000 Europeans, or about a third of that continent’s population, in the 13th century. About 550 years later, the same disease killed about 12,000,000 Chinese. Although the plague continues to kill men, women, and children today, its death toll has been greatly reduced, there having been a mere 2,118 fatalities in 2003. A handful of individuals in the United States succumb to the disease each year, but “there has not been a case of person-to-person infection. . . since 1924.”

Usually, the plague attacks the lymph nodes, causing flu-like symptoms within three to seven days, including “fever, headache, chills, weakness, and swollen tender lymph glands,” or buboes (“hence the name bubonic”). Today, the plague is treated with antibiotics.

In addition to rats, “many other rodent species, for instance, prairie dogs, wood rats, chipmunks, and other ground squirrels and their fleas,” also “suffer plague outbreaks and some of these occasionally serve as sources of human infection.” In addition,

Deer mice and voles are thought to maintain the disease in animal populations but are less important as sources of human infection. Other less frequent sources of infection include wild rabbits, and wild carnivores that pick up their infections from wild rodent outbreaks. Domestic cats (and sometimes dogs) are readily infected by fleas or from eating infected wild rodents. Cats may serve as a source of infection to persons exposed to them. Pets may also bring plague-infected fleas into the home.

According to a source that the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, does not bother to cite:

The bacteria multiply inside the flea, sticking together to form a plug that blocks its stomach and causes it to begin to starve. The flea then voraciously bites a host and continues to feed, even though it cannot quell its hunger, and consequently the flea vomits blood tainted with the bacteria back into the bite wound. The bubonic plague bacterium then infects a new victim, and the flea eventually dies from starvation.

In The Decameron, Boccaccio provides an account of the plague; even a small excerpt of his narrative conveys something of the horror of the black death:

. . . in men and women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumours in the groin or the armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg, some more, some less, which the common folk called gavoccioli. From the two said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, now minute and numerous. And as the gavocciolo had been and still was an infallible token of approaching death, such also were these spots on whomsoever they shewed themselves.

There are other plagues besides the Black Death, a famous series of which were the 10 plagues described in Exodus.

1. Water turned to blood
2. Sky raining frogs
3. Lice
4. Flies
5. Diseased livestock
6. Boils
7. Rain of hail and fire
8. Locusts
9. Darkness
10. Deaths of firstborn sons

Professor Roger Wotton of the University College of London identifies several natural events that might have caused the Biblical floods:

A large storm may have caused the rivers of blood with heavy rain on the dry, baked soil of Egypt causing sediment-rich underlying soils and rocks to flow from tributaries into the Nile, which could also explain the killing of fish.

The fiery hail as described in the Bible could have been large hail and ball lightning that often followed dramatic storms, as could the darkening of skies.

The lice plague could be explained through the sudden mass hatching of lice after rainfall that followed hot and dry weather and the plague of frogs was explained by the emergence of spadefoot toads from hiding places in damp undersoil following a large rain.

The described biblical swarms of flies may have been clouds of biting midges which could have been seen as pestilence that killed cattle and caused boils on humans.

Both the Black Death and the Biblical plagues have inspired both horror novels and films, including Robert McCammon’s Swan Song, Stephen King’s The Stand, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, and The Reaping, among others:

Swan Song:

On the edge of a barren Kansas landscape, an ex-wrestler called Black Frankenstein hears the cry. . . . . "Protect the Child!"--In the wasteland of New York City, a bag lady clutches a strange glass ring and feels magic coursing through her--within an Idaho mountain, a survivalist compound lies in ruins, and a young boy learns how to kill.

In a wasteland born of nuclear rage, in a world of mutant animals and marauding armies, the last people on earth are now the first. Three bands of survivors journey toward destiny--drawn into the final struggle between annihilation and life!

They have survived the unsurvivable. Now the ultimate terror begins.

The Stand:

One man escapes from a biological weapon facility after an accident, carrying with him the deadly virus known as Captain Tripps, a rapidly mutating flu that--in the ensuing weeks--wipes out most of the world's population. In the aftermath, survivors choose between following an elderly black woman to Boulder or the dark man, Randall Flagg, who has set up his command post in Las Vegas.

The two factions prepare for a confrontation between the forces of good and evil.

Dreamcatcher:

Four lifelong friends gather in the woods of western Maine for their annual hunting trip. When they were young, they were bound together forever by an act of bravery involving a fifth friend, whose influence has given these men special powers. Their trip is disrupted when a stranger, disoriented and delirious, wanders into camp, muttering about light in the sky. Before long, the friends find themselves pitted against an alien invasion and must draw on their old friend's strength once again to fight for their lives.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes:

Dr. Anton Phibes, a mad doctor (his Ph.D is in music!). . .was horribly disfigured in an automobile accident while racing to see his wife in the hospital, where she was undergoing unsuccessful surgery that left her dead. . . .

Set in 1925, the plot follows the mad musician as he kills off the surgical team behind the failed operation, using grimly imaginative methods (bees, rats, bats) inspired by the Old Testament plagues Moses called down upon Egypt (it seems Phibes also studied theology while getting his musical degree). . . .

The Reaping:

Investigative scholar Katherine Winter (Hilary Swank) is a debunker of modern "miracles," bringing scientific light to superstition and fraud. But events in tiny Haven, Louisiana, defy even her expertise. There, the 10 Biblical Plagues seem to be reoccurring. And the more she seeks answers, the more she questions her own beliefs.

Not to be outdone (or left behind) by the masters of horror, several science fiction novelists and scriptwriters have also based stories upon the idea of plagues, one of which arrives from outer space (Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain), and another of which resulted from a disease caused by biological warfare. The victims undergo bizarre mutations that transform them into vampire-like creatures. The Omega Man is a military scientist who’d injected himself with an experimental vaccine against the disease. It’s up to him to try to save the world.

“Everyday Horrors: Plagues” is the first in a series of “everyday horrors” that will be featured in Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of Fear. These “everyday horrors” continue, in many cases, to appear in horror fiction, literary, cinematographic, and otherwise.

Everyday Horrors: Nightmares

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

We’re not sure why we dream or what, if anything, dreams mean. Some believe that they are nothing more than a venting of mental, or psychic, steam, so to speak. Others believe that they are attempts by a clumsy, rather inarticulate subconscious mind to communicate with the conscious mind, or ego, through such devices as figures of speech, symbolism, and puns. Still others believe that dreams are--or can be, at times--messages from God.

Dreams can be inspirational. The benzene molecule’s unusual structure came to a German chemist, Friedrich August Kekulé, in a dream in which he envisioned a snake forming a ring by biting its own tail. The dream showed him the circular structure of the molecule he’d long sought to decipher. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge claims that the poem--or fragment of the poem--Kubla Khan came to him, fully complete, in a dream--one of which, it seems, was induced by opium.

Sometimes, dreams prove prophetic. During a journey by steamboat, Mark Twain and his younger brother Henry paused in their journey to stay at their sister’s house for the night. Twain dreamed that Henry had died. He saw him lying in his casket, which rested upon two chairs. The coffin was topped by a bouquet of white roses, a single red rose at its center. Rushing downstairs, Twain saw that his dream had been just that--a nightmare--as Henry was fine.

A week later, Twain, a riverboat pilot was transferred from the Pennsylvania, which he‘d shared with Henry until now, while Henry continued his trip aboard the other riverboat. Three days later, word reached Twain that the Pennsylvania’s boilers had exploded, just after the steamboat had passed Memphis, injuring or killing 150 people. Henry had been among those injured.

Twain made it to Memphis in time to sit by his dying brother’s side. The next morning, Twain went to the room in which the caskets of the dead awaited burial, and saw Henry’s coffin, resting upon two chairs, only the bouquet missing. However, as the grief-stricken Twain watched, a volunteer nurse approached Henry’s casket and set a bouquet of roses atop the casket. At its center was a single red rose.

In “Recollections of Abraham Lincoln,” Ward Hill Lamon describes a horrific prophetic dream that the president had:

About ten days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible.

I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. It was light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break?

I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered.

There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. 'Who is dead in the White House?' I demanded of one of the soldiers 'The President' was his answer; 'he was killed by an assassin!' Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which awoke me from my dream.

Soon thereafter, Lincoln, attending a production of the comedy Our American Cousin at the Ford’s Theater with his wife, Mary, was shot in the back of the head by the actor John Wilkes Booth. He was carried across the street to a private residence, where he died. His body, placed inside a casket, was placed upon a platform in the East Room of the White House and guarded by soldiers, just as Lincoln had dreamed.

Both the Old and the New Testaments of the Bible records dreams which it declares to have been heaven-sent. One of the more memorable is Joseph’s dream, which came to him while he and his family were living in Egypt, under the rule of the pharaoh. He said that he was “binding sheaves of grain out in the field” with his brothers “when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it.” His brothers were jealous and angry, because they interpreted the dream to mean that Joseph would rule over them.

Joseph later had a second dream, in which “the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down” to him. This time, Joseph’s dream aggravated his father, for he interpreted the dream to indicate that both Joseph’s brothers as well as his parents would be subjects to Joseph’s reign.

At the age of thirty, the pharaoh made Joseph his second in command. Another memorable dream is that of Mary, Jesus’ mother, which was brought to her by the angel Gabriel. The angel informed her that the baby to whom she would give birth would be the Son of God. When Mary said that she was a virgin, and, as such, could not have conceived a child, the angel told her that the birth would be the result of a miracle. “With God, nothing is impossible,” the angel declared, and then told Mary that her elderly relative, Elizabeth, was pregnant with the baby who would be Jesus’ herald, John the Baptist. Gabriel, before visiting Mary, had already informed Elizabeth’s husband, Zacharias, that he would be the father of a boy named John.

Darker dreams--the dreams of terror and horror--are called nightmares, and they have inspired great literary art as well as adrenaline rushes and heart palpitations. Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, dreamed the idea for her novel’s plot. After reading Phantasmagoria, a book of ghost stories, to divert themselves on a holiday to Lake Geneva, Switzerland, during rainy weather, it was suggested that their party participate in a contest to see which of their number could devise the most frightening horror story. Of those present--Mary, her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and Byron’s personal physician, John Polidon--only Mary completed her story, which she published in 1831 as Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. Perhaps as a result of having read of Luigi Galvani’s use of electricity to animate dead frogs’ legs, Mary had a nightmare in which she dreamed of a young scientist’s use of electricity to bring life to a body composed of parts of human cadavers he’d sewn together. She’d reasoned that her nightmare had frightened her; therefore, it was likely to frighten others as well.

Stephen King likewise cites nightmares as the muses that have inspired some of his fiction, one of which was the novel Misery:

The inspiration for Misery was a short story by Evelyn Waugh called “The Man Who Loved Dickens.” It came to me as I dozed off while on a New York-to-London Concorde flight. Waugh's short story was about a man in South America held prisoner by a chief who falls in love with the stories of Charles Dickens and makes the man read them to him. I wondered what it would be like if Dickens himself was held captive.

One wonders what sort of novel King might have written had he read O. Henry’s short story “The Ransom of Red Chief” before nodding off.

Not only have literary artists received inspiration from nightmares, but visual artists have also been inspired by these dark dreams. An oil painting by Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, features a sleeping woman dressed in a white nightgown, her head and arms dangling over the edge of her bed, dreaming of a horse (the nightmare) and an incubus (a demon in male guise who has sex with sleeping women) seated upon the woman’s breast. Copies sold with the accompanying inscription, by Erasmus Darwin, which he later expanded and included in a long poem, The Loves of the Plants:

So on his Nightmare through the evening fog
Flits the squab Fiend o'er fen, and lake, and bog;

Seeks some love-wilder'd maid with sleep oppress'd,

Alights, and grinning sits upon her breast.

Kathleen Russo believes that the painting may have been inspired by the painter’s own nightmares, which he related to folktales that claimed demons possessed lone sleepers, visiting them as hags on horseback, although the origin of the term “nightmare” is unrelated to horses, whether mares or stallions, having referred, originally, the Online Etymology Dictionary asserts, to “‘an evil female spirit afflicting sleepers with a feeling of suffocation,’ compounded from night + mare ‘goblin that causes nightmares, incubus,’ from O.E. mare ‘incubus.’”

One may agree or disagree with Freudians and neo-Freudians as to whether dreams have any actual significance. Perhaps they are nothing more than the effects of an undigested bit of potato, as Ebenezer Scrooge tried to claim, early on, at least. Maybe they are communications from the deeper self. Maybe they are divine messages, borne by angels. Maybe we will never know, for certain, what they are, but, it seems safe to say, whatever they are, we will be likely to remain fascinated by them and to find them inspirational to art if not to life.

“Everyday Horrors: Nightmares” is part of a series of “everyday horrors” that will be featured in Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of Fear. These “everyday horrors” continue, in many cases, to appear in horror fiction, literary, cinematographic, and otherwise.

Everyday Horrors: Frogs

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

In “What’s My Line, Part I,” an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow Rosenberg, during an all-night research session in the Sunnydale High School library, falls asleep. When the librarian, Rupert Giles, awakens her, she mutters something about tadpoles. When he looks puzzled, Willow explains, “I have frog fear.” She’s not alone.

God himself used frogs to terrify his enemy, the pharaoh of Egypt who was holding Moses and the ancient Israelites captive: “And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs” (Ex. 8:2).

What’s so frightening about frogs?

Bible commentaries find plenty to say on the topic:

Concerning Exodus 8:2, quoted above, the Geneva Study Bible observes, “There is nothing so weak that God cannot use it to overcome the greatest power of man,” while the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary comments that “Those animals, though the natural spawn of the river, and therefore objects familiar to the people, were on this occasion miraculously multiplied to an amazing extent, and it is probable that the ova of the frogs, which had been previously deposited in the mire and marshes, were miraculously brought to perfection at once.”
Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary on God’s plague of frogs is not quite as concise as the previous two:

Pharaoh is plagued with frogs; their vast numbers made them sore plagues to the Egyptians. God could have plagued Egypt with lions, or bears, or wolves, or with birds of prey, but he chose to do it by these despicable creatures. God, when he pleases, can arm the smallest parts of the creation against us. He thereby humbled Pharaoh. They should neither eat, nor drink, nor sleep in quiet; but wherever they were, they should be troubled by the frogs. God's curse upon a man will pursue him wherever he goes, and lie heavy upon him whatever he does. Pharaoh gave way under this plague. He promises that he will let the people go. Those who bid defiance to God and prayer, first or last, will be made to see their need of both. But when Pharaoh saw there was respite, he hardened his heart. Till the heart is renewed by the grace of God, the thoughts made by affliction do not abide; the convictions wear off, and the promises that were given are forgotten. Till the state of the air is changed, what thaws in the sun will freeze again in the shade.

But what if you're not Jewish or Christian? What's so frightening about frogs if you're an atheist or a member of another faith?

They’re slimy! Okay, they’re not--at least, not all of them are. Frogs need moist skin and, since they don’t stay in the water all the time, they have a skin coating that keeps them moist. For quite a few people, slime is icky. A lot of folks are both disgusted by it and afraid of it. It’s different and it’s yucky and there’s no telling what might be in it that makes it slimy and yucky and icky.

Frogs cause warts--and they do it by urinating on their handlers! Okay, they don’t, not really. Viruses cause warts, and they’re usually transmitted by other people, not by frogs. But, again, perception is truth for those who won’t do their homework.

They’re poisonous! We’re not going to deny it: some are. In fact, blue poison dart frogs, as their name implies, exist for no other reason than to supply the poison for the blowgun darts that some South American tribes use. According to the National Aquarium in Baltimore, their diet (in the wild, at least) is the source of their poison. They eat such delicacies as “ants, termites. . . beetles, and other. . . insects.” However, in captivity, they’re “fed fruit flies and baby crickets” that are fortified with various vitamins and minerals and, as a result, are themselves “completely non-toxic.” Usually, the poison frogs are brightly colored. (Posion dart frogs may also be red and blue, strawberry, golden, green and black, and other colors.) The bright colors are warning signs that shout, STAY AWAY. Those animals, including people, who don’t are sometimes the victims of these frogs, but, even then, the poison’s usually only enough to make a body sick, not to kill him or her.

Besides, according to psychologists, frog fear isn’t based on reason. It’s irrational. It’s a phobia. Shrinks claim that people fear frogs because they’ve associated them with some sort of traumatic event in which they--the people and the frogs--were involved, probably in the dim past. A rather extreme example is an incident in which a person developed frog fear is that of a woman who ran over several frogs while mowing her lawn.

For those who want their frog fear to sound a little less irrational and a little more clinical, there’s a Latin name for it that confers dignity and culture to the phobia (for those who believe that Latin is a dignified and cultured, if dead, language, at least). The term is ranidaphobia. An alterative term is batrachophobia. The latter term can also apply to the fear of other amphibians, including Newt Gingrich. Folks whose phobia is specific to toads suffer from bufonophobia.

People who fear frogs should stay away from the Goliath frog, for sure!


“Everyday Horrors: Frogs” is part of a series of “everyday horrors” that will be featured on Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of Fear. These “everyday horrors” continue, in many cases, to appear in horror fiction, literary, cinematographic, and otherwise.

Value as a Clue to Horror

Copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman

Life is always fragile. One might suppose, however, that, before the advancements in science and technology that we enjoy (sometimes) today, the world must have been fraught with many more perils. Human life must have been especially precarious without the benefits of such modern marvels as antibiotics, computers, incandescent light, and firearms, to name but a few. Pneumonia, tornados, the blindness imposed by darkness, and inefficient or unreliable weapons must have caused many deaths that, today, could be averted or avoided. No wonder Gilgamesh sought immortality. Life in his day must have been both mean and brief. What did others seek? The treasures that were the objects of their quests tell us the things their societies valued most. Whatever threatened these treasures represented their fears, because we fear what we may lose (or want but may never gain). If Gilgamesh sought immortality, he valued life and, consequently, feared death, which may be the greatest loss of all.

“The wages of sin,” the Bible tells us, “is death,” and this is frequently the punishment that God metes out to the unrepentant, as he did with regard to Adam and Eve, to the civilization that existed at the time of the flood, to the residents of Sodom, and to many others throughout the pages of both Testaments. However, according to Christian thought, there are two types of death: physical and spiritual, as the following scripture suggests:

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both the soul and body in hell. --
Matthew 10:28

The one who can destroy both the body and the soul in hell is God, and, many times, the Bible warns the faithful to “fear God,” as does Matthew 10:20. There is a worse condition that death and a worse place than the grave, as the damned find out when they arrive to spend an eternity’s torment in hell. If hell is considered the state of the soul as it exists apart from God, then its opposite is the value that the existence of hell threatens, namely, being in the presence of God (or love, for “God is love”) for eternity. To be an eternal outcast of love is hell.

A threat to one’s whole way of life, which the Trojan War represented to the ancient Greeks, indicates that a people--in this case, the ancient Greeks--valued their culture. Although war is horrible, it’s not usually a horror story’s antagonist, because the monsters of horror fiction are, as we see in another post, metaphorical in nature. They’re symbolic of something else. Instead of a war threatening one’s way of life, therefore, a horror story might posit an extraterrestrial race, as in The War of the Worlds or Alien, as the antagonist, but, make no mistake, these monsters aren’t going to be satisfied with killing only a handful of victims; they want nothing less than a whole nation or, perhaps, the entire planet. In Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four, Galactus represents such a threat to humanity. Following the lead of his herald, the Silver Surfer, who locates inhabited planets, Galactus literally devours the energy that sustains the planets’ life forms, whether they are human or otherwise, going from planet to planet to appease his hunger. Since Galactus threatens humanity itself, as do, or could, the Martians or the extraterrestrial monsters of Alien, he represents the destruction of a whole way of life, or a civilization and its culture. This same monster--the threat to culture--appears in Beowulf, in the guise of Grendel,

Grendel’s mother, and the dragon.

Such monsters, in a more specific mask and costume, showed up in the horror films of the 1950’s. After World War II, which culminated in the nuclear destruction of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world feared wholesale annihilation, a worldwide nuclear holocaust, and the monsters of horror represented such a threat in the guise of Godzilla, giant ants (Them!), and aliens with enormous destructive capabilities (Invaders from Mars).

The post-war decades (1960’s-present) of horror produced more personal monsters, products of the decade’s emphases on sex, drugs, and rock and roll--experiments with sexual freedom (or license), altered consciousness, and the pursuit of passion, adventure, and excitement for their own sake: deranged serial killers, cannibals, and paranormal or supernatural aberrations and entities who acted, as often as not, on the bases of vengeance, lust, or sadism, rather than on the basis of any rational purpose. Again, the monsters are the threats to the values that the writers, filmmakers, and audiences hold dear. It’s hard to exercise one’s sexual freedom when there’s a sadistic serial killer on the loose or to enjoy one’s emotions when doing so could attract an alien or a demon who feeds off human feelings or the energy associated with them.

What’s to come? Time alone, it seems, has the answer. Whatever the new monster’s shape, though, it will be the shadow of the values of the society of the day that spawns it.