Author Archives: Lauryn Soorani

The stalking ghost

Nationality: Greek
Occupation: Art History professor, author, photographer
Residence: Echo Park, Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/17/12
Primary Language: English

In 2011 my informant published a the book, The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses. The book’s 260 photographs were gathered by Dr. Koudounaris over the course of five years, during which he traveled to 70 different locations around the world, studying, visiting, and photographing charnel houses.

Dr. Koudounaris’ travels took him to the Catacombe dei Cappuccini (the Catacombs of the Capuchin monastery) in Palermo, Italy. Part of his process of learning about the catacombs included talking to the various fruit and flower vendors who sold their goods across from the monastery. Because the fruit and flower vendors are directly across from the monastery, they know everything that went on there and were able to tell him a variety of ghost stories about the monastery.

“The fruit and flower vendors are an incredible source of information. It’s hard to understand if you live in our type of society. Ya know, a street vendor, in societies like this is a source of incredible information. The fruit and flower vendors are across from the monastery and they know everything that goes on in the monastery. And everyone goes—it’s not like they go to super markets, they go to these vendors—so they are an incredible source of information if you really want to know what goes on in societies like that.”

The story is as follows:

“She’s a mummy in the catacombs in Palermo. She tends to develop romantic interests in young male tourists who come to visit. Especially Germans. She’s got this thing—it’s always Germans. Like not Austrians, just Germans. There are over a dozen cases of the ghost of this mummy visiting, and often in the end in very detrimental ways, tourists who have visited the catacombs. If they linger too long in front of her she gets this fixation on them apparently. She’ll appear in their dreams and profess love for them, or appear in their hotel room in this kind of ghostly skeletal form which they of course reject, and then when the reject her she gets vindictive. Especially if they have a girlfriend and she did not know cause then apparently she feels cheated on. If there’s the fräulein involved she doesn’t like it. And so anyways the most notorious of these involved this man from Hamburg in the 1970’s who had visited Palermo with his fiancé and he had stopped to take a photo of her and the skeleton actually fell over onto him so ya know it was very—and I’ve been in these places and I’ve photographed all of these things. I don’t even know how she could fall over because well at least now she seems well held down, but anyways she fell over onto him and he was shaken and left. She appeared that night in a dream and asked him to return and he did not, cause this is the ghost of the skeleton who had just fallen on him. Then the apparition appeared in the shower with him and so he was very upset. She appeared several more times and then when she realized he was there with his fiancé, um, she kind of provoked this catfight with his fiancé. She appeared in the middle of the night—the  ghost did—and grabbed the woman by the hair and threw her down the stairs and broke several of her bones and she wound up in traction and so ya know logically you’d say they should just leave Sicily but they couldn’t because the finance was in traction in the hospital. So they brought a priest to exorcise the hotel room and the hotel room burst into flames and so um, they moved them to Messina and they were safe after that, they just got them out of Palermo and moved them to Messina and she stopped bothering them. But for some time there were signs in the Palermo catacombs advising people not to stop in front of this mummy because she might haunt them but they took the signs down because it was not really helping them in terms of tourist dollars because it was really scaring people and costing them money.”

Of all of the ghost stories my informant told me, this one had occurred the most recently. One may expect for ghost stories to be received with more gravity further back in time, but not so long ago, as my informant said, there were signs in the catacombs warning visitors against the ghost of this particular mummy. The concept of ghosts is something many citizens of Palermo take very seriously, which is most likely a result of Catacombe dei Cappuccini (Catacombs of the Cappuccini) being a town landmark. The catacombs of the Cappuccini monastery are popular enough that they are considered a tourist attraction. Thus, when the sign warning visitors that this mummy might haunt them scared tourists away, it was essential to take it down.

Originally entombment in the catacombs was intended for only deceased friars but it became a status symbol over the centuries for residents to be entombed there. Thus one may theorize that current residents of the town have a stronger connection with the catacombs than they may have had it been limited strictly to the friars.

The Catacombs of the Cappuccini appear on the American paranormal documentary reality series Scariest Places on Earth. 

The panty thieving ghost

Nationality: Greek
Occupation: Art History professor, author, photographer
Residence: Echo Park, Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/17/12
Primary Language: English

In 2011 my informant published a the book, The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses. The book’s 260 photographs were gathered by Dr. Koudounaris over the course of five years, during which he traveled to 70 different locations around the world, studying, visiting, and photographing charnel houses.

Dr. Koudounaris’ travels took him to the Catacombe dei Cappuccini (the Catacombs of the Capuchin monastery) in Palermo, Italy. Part of his process of learning about the catacombs included talking to the various fruit and flower vendors who sold their goods across from the monastery. Because the fruit and flower vendors are directly across from the monastery, they know everything that went on there and were able to tell him a variety of ghost stories about the monastery.

“The fruit and flower vendors are an incredible source of information. It’s hard to understand if you live in our type of society. Ya know, a street vendor, in societies like this is a source of incredible information. The fruit and flower vendors are across from the monastery and they know everything that goes on in the monastery. And everyone goes—it’s not like they go to super markets, they go to these vendors—so they are an incredible source of information if you really want to know what goes on in societies like that.”

The story is as follows:

“This one—they call him the postman because he is a wandering ghost. El Postino. He’s not really a postman. All the people down there were high class. He continually returns to people’s homes like a postman and um… El Postino, it’s funny because a friend of mine is actually related to him. His last name is Spinoza and a friend of mine named Jean Spinoza is related to this mummy. He had apparently—this ghost had been sneaking into this beautiful girl’s house in the 20th century and stealing her underpants. He kept coming into her home making sexual advances to her and when she refused him, her underpants started to disappear so she told the monastery about this—that she believed he was a panty thief. Anyway, the public became very outraged as the story grew, that this girl’s underpants were disappearing and that this ghost kept coming to her house so the monastery was forced to allow inspectors to come in and check the premises and apparently behind the mummy in his niche they found some women’s underpants which—ya know the monastery insisted that someone had planted them there, but it seemed by accounts that the mummy had been stealing the underpants. So she was able to get a court injunction prohibiting the mummy, or the ghost more precisely from entering her home. Um… but he violated it because more of her underpants disappeared so the court demanded that the monastery rectify the situation, which… what are they going to do? How can they monitor this ghost? So they went to his mummy and threatened him with burial unless the woman’s underpants stopped disappearing and that apparently did it. He stopped harassing the woman after that.”

When El Postino was ordered by a court injunction to stop stealing the woman’s underwear, it is no surprise that his actions did not cease as any repercussions for violating a court injunction do not apply to the dead. What does apply to El Postino however is the belief of the Capuchin order that the body must be preserved for the coming resurrection. Thus it may be inferred that it was because of this belief that El Postino stopped stealing underwear only when threatened with a burial that may not preserve his body in the same way that his current entombment has.

Krampusnacht

Nationality: German
Age: 30
Occupation: Antique Dealer
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/25/12
Primary Language: English

Krampusnacht (Krampus Night) occurs on December 5th in alpine countries in Europe (primarily Germany and Austria). It occurs on the night before St. Nicholas Day which is a festival in which children are given presents by St. Nicholas.

St. Nicholas (as well as the Dutch Sinterklaas) is where the British figure of Father Christmas and the American Santa Claus was derived from. On St. Nicholas day which in most countries falls on December 6th, he brings presents to all the good children. His demon counterpart, the Krampus acts as his servant and while St. Nicholas rewards the good children with treats, Krampus punishes the wicked.

Young men make Krampus costumes that mimic the imagery of the demonic figure. They wear these costumes on Krampusnacht and roam the streets making loud noises with bells and rusty chains and cause mischief around the city. In some towns there are processions and parades where those who have made Krampus costumes can walk down the street making loud noises and spooking spectators. According to the mythos, the Krampus is said to appear the night before St. Nicholas Day and so this celebration acts as a reenactment of this.

” Krampus night is celebrated on the 5th of December. And on the 5th of December people celebrate Krampus day by making home made fur suits, they look like monkey fur but they are actually made out of sheep wool, and then they make hand made carved masks and uhh, the hand carved mask portrays a demon. After they make these, on December 5th, they run around and cause havoc usually in large groups. It goes from hitting people with bitch sticks, to now they have large parades, but ya know usually they get a little rowdy and break stuff—but it’s not really about breaking stuff, it’s more about causing mischief, so it’s a day of mischief and romping around and all that sort of stuff. It only really—the celebration really only exists in rural towns in the mountains of Germany and Austria.”

The Krampus

Nationality: German
Age: 30
Occupation: Antique Dealer
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/25/12
Primary Language: English

The following myth is that of the mythical creature, the Krampus.

“Ahhhh the Krampus is the demon servant of St Nicholas. He exists in some parts of Switzerland but mostly it’s in the Alps of Germany and Austria. Um, he really only exists today in kind of remote areas in the mountains of northern Germany and Austria.  The Krampus is kind of what they base a lot of modern devil themes off of but he has antlers and hoofed feet and he’s all red and has a big long black tongue, and obviously there has always been a kind of sexual connotation with him and his tongue.

Originally he was with the St. Nicholas mythos and he is the demon servant of St. Nicholas. Where as St Nicholas gives gifts to good children on Christmas, the Krampus punishes the bad. The original thing of getting treats and candies and little trinkets in your socks from St Nicholas originally came with a bipolar one where the Krampus would stick sticks and twigs and rocks in your shoes. And there’s three levels to it. If you were bad, he would stick sticks and twigs and rocks in your shoes and then if you were really bad he would beat you on the ass with birch sticks. If you were really extra bad he would take you in his basket that’s on his back to hell for the day and that was your treat for Christmas, but you had to be a really naughty person to get that. So there’s three levels to Krampus. There’s bad, pretty bad, and then ultra bad.

The Krampus has an affection for loose women—especially whores, it’s particularly hookers, and actually loose women like the Krampus. The Krampus disappeared some time in the early 19th century—more late 18th century, because they thought it was cruel, and then he kind of made a renaissance in the late 19th century in post cards where he became a really popular—pretty much one of the most popular things in print on post cards in late Victorian Germany and Austria. Then he died down and surprisingly recently in popular culture has made a minor come back so uh, yeah that’s the Krampus. In  German culture he has also recently made a come back slightly. Um, probably more because he’s just fun. For all us disenfranchised youth who don’t like Santa Claus… I mean, he’s a pretty cool guy. I dunno Lauryn, do you want to have sex with the krampus or do you want to have sex with Santa Claus? You have to answer that…”

My informant is of German decent and was told about the Krampus when he was a child by his father. The Krampus acts as a method of keeping children in line and making sure they behave. If children do not behave, not only with they not get presents on St. Nicholas day, the Krampus will punish them for their bad deeds. The severity of their punishment depends on how poorly they behaved. It can be seen as a much more severe version of the western myth of Santa Claus putting coal in the stocking of bad children in place of presents.

Annotation:

The Krampus has made appearances in popular culture over the years.

  • The Venture Brothers: A Very Venture Christmas. 2004. In the Christmas episode of The Venture Brothers cartoon, Hank and Dean accidentally release the Krampus by reading a piece of scripture from a book of occult magic. As a result he appears at the Venture family Christmas party where he wreaks havoc and attacks Dr. Venture for his bad behavior. Upon his intrusion, Dr. Orpheus explains the Krampus to Dr. Venture.
    • Dr Orpheus: “I’m afraid we are being visited upon by, the Krampus. The punitive spirit who once rode side by side with St. Nicholas each Christmas eve, delivering terrible punishment to wicked children as Claus bestowed his gifts upon the righteous.”
    • Dr Venture: “That’s ridiculous! There’s no such thing as Santa Claus!”
    • Dr. Orpheous: “Not since he was killed by a jet in 1963, no. Nor has there been a Krampus since The Pope cast him into purgatory during Vatican 2, but your boys seem to have inadvertently released him from his chains.”
  • The Colbert Report: The Blitzkrieg on Grinchitude – Hallmark & Krampus. December 9th, 2009. In this segment of the Colbert Report, Colbert states that he is going to combat the attacks on Christmas by celebrating Christmas the old fashioned way, “…with figgie pudding, and wassailing, and kindly St. Nicholas, and his demon henchmen Krampus. For members of my audience who aren’t familiar with centuries old Austrian folk legends, Krampus is a demonic creature who accompanies St. Nicholas and torments naughty children with bitch branches and rusty chains. Like they say in Austria, every time a bell rings, a Krampus torments a child with rusty chains.” He goes on to describe the celebration of Krampusnacht, and suggest that Krampus must be brought to America to help fight the war on Christmas. “The next time someone tells you “seasons greetings” instead of “merry Christmas”, remind them that Krampus knows when they are naughty, when they are nice, and when they are showering alone.”

Occupy Movement: Human Microphone

Nationality: German
Age: 30
Occupation: Antique Dealer
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/25/12
Primary Language: English

My informant was an active participant in the Los Angeles branch of the Occupy Wall Street movement that came to life in Los Angeles in October of 2011. His participation spanned from its first day in Los Angeles, to the beginning of December.

“Durring the GAs [General Assemblies] or at protests, we wouldn’t always have access to a microphone, so the human mic was our way of making it so that a large group could hear what one person had to say.”

To initiate the human mic, the speaker (or anyone who notices someone is trying to be heard) yells out, “mic check”. To let the speaker know that they have been heard, individuals around them yell back in unison, “mic check”. This is repeated two to three times until the speaker has everyone’s attention.

Once the speaker has everyone’s attention, the speaker says a short phrase and then pauses. Everyone within ear shot then repeats that phrase in unison. From there, the speaker continues this process until their speech is finished. This amplifies their voice so that their speech is not limited to those within direct ear shot.