Rhaego. I was going to name him Rhaego, and the dosh khaleen said he would be the Stallion Who Mounts the World. Not since those half-remembered days in Braavos when she lived in the house with the red door had she been as happy.
In Dany’s dream, Rhaego had the skin color of his father and the eyes and color of his mother, the traits of Old Valyria and House Targaryen. I wonder if that is how he would have actually looked like.
In South Dakota, a sinister urban legend named âWalking Samâ is thought to have driven over ten teenagers to take their own lives, but how can a mythological figure drive people to such desperate measures?
The scene of the shocking spate of suicides is the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home to the Oglala Lakota sub-tribe of Sioux Native Americans, but also something a lot more ominous.
The Native American tribe believes in a mysterious, shadowy figure that walks the plains whispering suicidal urges into peopleâs ears. Although the Oglala Lakota tribe refers to him as the âTall Man Spirit,â this haunting presence has became colloquially known as âWalking Sam.â Tribe president John Yellow Bird Steele explained that many Sioux believed in: âA suicide spirit similar to the Slender Man.â
Reservation minister, Chris Carey, even went as far as to tell The Times thatâ âA Tall Man spirit is appearing to these kids and telling them to kill themselves.â
Although blaming the suicides on this spectral figure of traditional folklore might seem far-fetched, there is no denying the amount of young people taking their lives on the reservation is much higher than the national average.
Since December, a distressing 103 suicide attempts have occurred on the reservation, and out of them, nine young people between the ages of 12 and 24 have died. While the these deaths are obviously saddening and shocking, a foiled mass suicide is perhaps the most chilling tale to creep out of Pine Ridge. In February, Pastor John Two Bulls was alerted that a group of teens had planned to kill themselves in a mass suicide. After rushing to the spot, he was confronted with a cluster of nooses hanging from the trees and a group of young people who had converged at the spot. Luckily counseling was offered and the teenagers were dispelled before they could harm themselves, but this tale could have ended in enormous tragedy.
Santana Janis who commited suicide at age 12.
Just Who is âWalking Sam?â
Walking Sam is just as showy a figure in folklore as he is in real life. The origins of the legend cannot be pin pointed due to the Native American oral tradition of passing down stories, but it is believed that his name has been spoken for centuries.
Known by multiple names, including âStovepipe Hat Bigfootâ and âBig Man,â Walking Sam is strangely similar to the much better known Slender Man in appearance.
He is said to be seven foot tall with an impossibly lean figure and long, spindly limbs with no mouth. When he extends his arms, the dead bodies of Lakota men and women hang from them.
Walking Sam is similar in appearance to Slender Man
In folklore, Walking Samâs presence is not intrinsically hostile. Itâs said he was sent to this earth as punishment and is constantly seeking company to whom he cannot speak.
In Peter Mathiessenâs 1983 book about Pine Ridge, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,he is described as follows:
âThere is your Big man standing there, ever waiting, ever present, like the coming of a new day⊠He is both spirit and real being, but he can also glide through the forest, like a moose with big antlers, as though the trees werenât there⊠I know him as my brother⊠I want him to touch me, just a touch, a blessing, something I could bring home to my sons and grandchildren, that I was there, that I approached him, and he touched me.â
How Widespread Are the Beliefs?
According to The Daily Dot, many local people believe in Walking Sam and he has made his presence known at tribal council meetings with government officials. Blogger, Mike Crowley, explained how at one meeting:
âA woman, who was elderly but otherwise quite lucid, described Walking Sam as a big man in a tall hat who has appeared around the reservation and caused young people to commit suicides. â
He also reported meeting a local bookstore owner who told him
âThere really are bad spirits out there on the reservation, and you need to be careful. She said that if you go looking for them, you might just find them.â Â
The arid âbad landsâ in Pine Ridge
Another Explanation
Although Walking Sam a captivating tale, the real reason for the dramatic spate of tragic suicides is probably more to do with the extreme poverty that the Oglala Lakota tribe live in.
The Pine Ridge Reservation has some of the worst rates of alcoholism and drug abuse, violence and unemployment in America, and life expectancy for men is below 50 years, the lowest in the Western Hemisphere.
Racism has also been cited as a reason that so many Oglala Lakota teens are driven to kill themselves. Santana Janis, who killed herself aged just 12 years old, was called a âfilthy Indianâ in a hotel lobby just days before she died, and Pine Ridge students were doused with beer and forced to leave a hockey game outside the reservation for their own safety just two months ago. In the words of Santanaâs grandfather:
âOur kids today just want to die because theyâre sick of all this oppression.â
Walking Sam might have become the spiritual totem for these suicides, and a figure that the teens themselves empathize with, but this shouldnât distract the eyes of the world from the very real challenges the Oglala Lakota people face in their day to day life.
Walking Sam might be a compelling myth, but the teen suicides are real and tearing the soul of the reservation apart.
Most of this information is taken from the book âThe Readers Digest Book of Strange Stories and Amazing Factsâ copyright 1975, revised 1976. I apologise for any inaccuracies, please remember this is just for fun.
The first recorded victim of the curse, at least according to legend, was a Hindu priest who fell under its spell 500 years ago soon after it was mined. He stole it from the forehead of an Indian temple idol but he was caught and put to death by torture.The diamond turned up in Europe in 1642 in the hands of French trader-smuggler Jean Baptiste Tavernier.He made enough money from selling it to buy himself a title and an estate. Then his son got so badly into debt through gambling that Tavernier was forced to sell everything he owned. Bankrupt, he headed back to India to remake his fortune, only to be torn apart by a pack of wild dogs. (Though this is disputed and some believe the official story that he lived to the age of 84 and died of natural causes but whereâs the story in that?)The gem reappeared in the possession of the French King Louis XIV, The Sun King.He had the diamond cut from itâs original 112.5 carats down to 67.5 carats.
From around 1985 onwards, a series of mysterious house fires were brought to the attention of the general public, following the discovery that in each case, the buildings and all their contents were completely destroyed apart from a painting – the âCrying Boyâ, which remained unscathed. In the years that followed, some 40-50 cases were recorded in which a housefire had destroyed everything except for the picture It became known as the âCurse of the Crying Boyâ, and even made headline news at one point.
The picture itself was a portrait painted by a Spanish artist of an orphan. It is said that his studio burnt to the ground, and the boy was later killed in a car crash. The picture is one of the first to be mass produced in the UK, there are several thousand of them in circulation, but the curse still appears to apply to all the copies. It is said that the curse will only effect someone if the owner of the painting becomes aware of it. Some psychics have claimed that the painting is Haunted by the spirit of the boy it depicts.
At the falls in Minnesota, along Lake Superiorâs north shore, a river forks at a rock outcropping. While one side tumbles down a two-step stone embankment and continues on like a normal waterfall, the other side vanishes into a deep hole and disappears â apparently forever.
A giant pothole, the Devilâs Kettle, swallows half of the Brule and no one has any idea where it goes. The consensus is that there must be an exit point somewhere beneath Lake Superior, but over the years, researchers and the curious have poured dye, pingpong balls, even logs into the kettle, then watched the lake for any sign of them. So far, none has ever been found.
One theory is that the river flows along an underground fault and comes out somewhere under Lake Superior. This is unlikely, because for this to happen, the fault would have to be precisely oriented towards the lake, and would have to be large enough to allow the flow of half the river. Even if such a fault exist, it would have likely been clogged over the years as rocks, sand, logs and other materials fell into the kettle. Besides, there is no evidence of such a fault in the area.
Another theory is millions of years ago a lava tube formed when the rocks first solidified. The problem with this theory is that the rock at Devilâs Kettle waterfalls is rhyolite, and lava tubes never form in rhyolite. Lava tubes form in basalt flowing down the slopes of volcanoes, and the nearest basalt layer to Devilâs Kettle is located much too far underground to be any kind of factor in the mystery. The existence of a large underground cave is also ruled out because underground caves form in limestone rock, and there are no limestone in the area.
One of the most popular questions around the mystery is: âWhy donât Geologists just drop a GPS tracker into it?â
And the answer : âProbably because standard GPS trackers arenât waterproof, run on electricity, and transmit their position using an aerial. They donât work indoors and if you drop them out of an upstairs window, they break. What you would need is a ruggedized GPS tracker strong enough to continue working if it was bashed around on rocks by strong water pressure for several weeks (in an environment which apparently destroyed all the ping-pong balls). It would need to be waterproof to some depth. It would need a big enough battery to allow it to go on transmitting for many weeks, and big enough aerials to receive and transmit from tens of metres below the ground, yet be small enough to pass through twisty rock passages and smooth enough not to get caught on any rocks. It would have to be light enough not to simply sink to the bottom of the initial waterfall and go no further, but not so buoyant that it floated to the surface of the first cave and was carried no further. And the grant proposal to fund all this will need to have a better reason than âto find out where it goesâ. â
âEagleâs Nest Sinkhole (also known as the âLost Sinkâ) near St. Petersburg, Florida has been called the Mount Everest of diving. From ground level, it appears to be nothing more than a pond, but narrow shafts at the bottom of the pond lead into a much larger underwater cave system with over 2 kilometers (1 mi) of charted passages, rooms larger than a football field, and shafts no wider than a doorway. The caveâs deepest point is 94 meters (310 ft) below the surface.
The comparison to Mount Everest is due to its remoteness, difficulty, and spectacular beauty. Itâs also an incredibly dangerous dive site. Like the Samaesan Hole, the depth of Eagleâs Nest Sinkhole is such that Trimix certification is recommended. The use of only regular air can lead to disorientation below 46 meters (150 ft). Cave diving certification, previous cave diving experience, and diving with a guide familiar with the area are also highly recommended. Guidelines are used for divers to find their way back to the surface.
Even with experience and equipment, veteran divers have died in Eagleâs Nest. Some have simply blacked out; others have become tangled in their own guidelines, eventually running out of air. The siteâs remoteness also means that help is not close, and only other cave divers are qualified to attempt a rescue. In 1999, Eagleâs Nest was closed due to the deaths, but it was reopened in 2003. A day pass for diving costs $3.â
âI know that she spent her childhood in exile, impoverished, living on dreams and schemes, running from one city to the next, always fearful, never safe, friendless but for a brother who was by all accounts half-madâŠa brother who sold her maidenhood to the Dothraki for the promise of an army.âÂ
Nightmare Death Syndrome is a phenomenon reported among certain men of Thailand, who are apparently being killed in their sleep by spirits known as âwidow ghosts.â These are said to be the ghosts of particularly sexual womenwho met a violent death. Now, theyâre out to kill men and take their souls as husbands.
A widespread panic over the widow ghosts broke out in northeastern Thailand in 1990. Since the ghosts only attacked men, some young Thai fellows took to wearing lipstick and nail polish in bed in order to trick the spirits into thinking they were actually women. Yet the main strategy for warding off the ghosts was penises hung around the neck or in close proximity to the sleeping man.
Most were carved from wood, some more crude than others. Some artistic types added testicles made of coconuts, and pubic hair made from fishing nets. The residents of Ban Thung Nang Oak were very proud of their giant communal phallus, which was almost a meter (3 ft) long and had a red tip.
One couple crafted an entire scarecrow with the relevant appendage, and hung a sign around its neck that read âwidow ghost hunter.â In one village, there were rumors that the ghosts had finally acquired enough husbands, and the spirits were going to start seeking out female companions as well.
Thereâs actually a proper explanation for these ghost attacks, which have caused hundreds of deaths over the years. Autopsies revealed that the men had died due to poor nutrition. Many lived on a diet of nothing but sweet rice, which led to overproduction of insulin and a bunch of nutrient deficiencies. Combined with stress, the awful diets were enough to kill men in their sleep.Â
Tent Graveyards are usually located in the Highland Rim and western Cumberland Plateau area of Tennessee. Reasons for their construction are often given as protection from animals such as cattle walking on the graves or to protect the grave from the weather.  The date of the tent graves generally is between the middle 1800âs to the mid 1900âs. (Source)
Necromancy is a form of magic involving communication with the deceased â either by summoning their spirit as an apparition or raising them bodily â for the purpose of divination, imparting the means to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge, or to use the deceased as a weapon, as the term may sometimes be used in a more general sense to refer to black magic or witchcraft.
Through the Middle-Ages, as divination -a direct undertaking of spiritual manipulation for gain, and a classical example of the ancient definition of necromancy- became known as a demonic practice, by way of the growing influence of the Roman Catholic teachings.Â
Somewhere between the gilded era of the round table knights, the misinformation of Catholic heresies and the superstitions passed on through the 17th centuries, the modern idea of necromancy became a fantastic tale of spiritual reanimation, of directed possession and of demonic worship.
đ„ There is beauty in destructionđ„ 