Friday, October 31, 2008

SPECIAL HALLOWEEN POST: Case of a Vanishing Hitchhiker!

Weird accounts from the occult archives of Dr. Faust

Greetings and salutations my friends, I am Dr. John Harrison Faust. Welcome to the Hobbs End Detective Agency.

Samhain is upon us yet again. Many cultures have their own names: Day of the Dead, Nos Galen-gaeof, All Hallow’s Evening, Hollantide Day, and Halloween to name a few. One of the busiest times in the year as an investigator in all matters occult. Some ancients believed it to be merely the changing of seasons and others the anniversary of a forgotten temporary victory of darkness over light fought by forgotten gods. The barriers between the realm of the living and the Otherworld dissolve on this night, allowing those ancients to walk freely among us. Inhabitants of the spirit realm no longer need invocation or rifts to cross over and intrude upon this mortal realm. This invisible realm is perceivable by humans, lifting the veils of time, and making divination and prophecy possible. The ancient dead may bestow fertility, famine, disease, and prosperity upon the living this night, depending on their mood. The distinction between natural and supernatural become blurred and that realm bleeds into this one as they merge. It is a night of magic, darkness, death, and sometimes evil. Traditions have passed down countless rituals for this night—most for keeping the dead pleased. Some prepare meals for the wandering dead, but my favorite ritual is telling ghost stories around a fire. My task of preventing dangerous incursions of ghosts and shades is most harried on liminal nights like this..I have my work ahead of me, so I haven’t had proper time to consider a perfect tale. I found this one in a file jammed between my copies of De Vermis Mysteriis and my third edition of Tobin’s Spirit Guide. Ah ha! In fitting with the theme of the dead walking among the living, I put forth this account of a vanishing hitchhiker. I have lost track of how many “vanishing hitchhiker” cases from around the world I have collected in my archives, but this is a text book case:


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