Within months, the creature, which the family apparently hadn’t yet seen directly, began speaking increasingly fluent English, relating to the Irvings that it had been born in New Delhi, India on June 7, 1852. No explanation was given as to how the animal got to Britain. Other paranormal activity began happening around the house, such as objects flying across the room inexplicably. The voice of the creature began spying on the neighbors and reporting back to the Irvings, and shortly after the creature revealed itself to be a mongoose, or something similar and even allowed itself to be petted by Margaret Irving.

Other locals began hearing odd sounds that they attributed to the Irving’s mongoose, and the animal reportedly began ranging around the town, always reporting the local comings and goings of the day back to the Irving’s. The press became infatuated with the story of the talking mongoose, and soon Gef, which it claimed to be its name, became a celebrity in the British media.

An investigation done by paranormalist Harry Price in 1935 revealed little. Hairs thought to be from Gef turned out to belong to the family dog, and the few photographs Price was able to take were of poor quality, and one of them appeared to show a cat. The Irvings left the farmhouse, and Gef, in 1937. Sometime after, the new owner shot a large mongoose-like animal which may have been the creature. 

Mongooses normally do not speak, nor was Gef definitively determined to have been one. One theory is that Gef was a poltergeist that had the ability to appear as a mongoose, or trick the family into believing that he was one. He might have been some type of bizarre mongoose-like cryptid, or he may even have been a hoax. In any case, the tale of Gef the Talking Mongoose remains an unusual story that today is obscure, but in the 1930′s had delighted and gripped the British public.

Unlike most relics, which tend to be medieval forgeries, the Sudarium is much different in both its clear provenance and history, and the fact that it really isn’t all that impressive to look at. It has no miraculous images, its not a spear or a nail, or a crown of thorns. Its a blood stained cloth that covered the head of someone who died a very brutal death. An investigation by Dr. Jose Villalain showed that the victim died in an upright position, and the stains are comprised mostly of fluid from the lungs, along with blood. This illustrates death by asphyxiation while bleeding, consistent with crucifixion, which tends to suffocate the victim rather than cause death from blood loss. The stains are superimposed on top of one another, suggesting that some of the stains were at least partly dried when the body was moved again causing new fluid to deposit. The folds of the Sudarium suggest that the cloth was put in place while the body was in an upright position, perhaps still on the cross. There are smaller bloodstains present that may suggest a crown of thorns. Pollen samples taken from the cloth by Dr. Max Frei are consistent with Jerusalem, North Africa and Spain.

It has also been argued that there are clear correlations between the stains on the Sudarium and the Shroud of Turin, and the two seem to be made from very similar cloth. While the debate rages on about the authenticity of the Shroud, the Sudarium’s clear history has protected it from the same level of controversy. Radiocarbon dating done by Baima Bollone showed the Sudarium to date from the 6th century, but Bollone stated that the dating is probably unreliable.

We know that the person who wore the Sudarium died a violent death consistent with crucifixion. We know it dates from at least the 6th century, probably before. And we know that the cloth was in Jerusalem. The one question that remains is who’s head did it cover. In the world of relics, most are highly questionable. Some are outright ridiculous, such as The Most Holy Umbilical Cord. But this one simple piece of cloth may be as close as we will ever get to a true relic of the passion.

Word spread through England, and hysteria formed. Multiple sightings ensued, and the descriptions of the creature grey to include have metallic claws on his hands. Girls were claimed to be assaulted and struck dumb by the creature, and all manner of supernatural phenomena were associated with the creature, including a claim that he was an incarnation of the devil. Mixed with these widely varying accounts were more sexual assaults. On February 20th, Jane Alsop answered the door of her father’s house to find the voice of a man claiming to be a police officer saying that he had caught spring-heeled jack and that she should bring him a light. When she did, she was assaulted by the creature, who ripped at her dress and hair. A suspect was apprehended, and even confessed, but Alsop claimed that he was not the perpetrator in that he could not breathe blue flame.

Sightings continued. In 1870 a group of soldiers spotted him, and even shot at him. The creature disappeared before suddenly reappearing, slapping one of the soldiers and bouncing off. Later that year, a mob cornered the creature and shot him, but claimed that while he was obviously hit, the bullets bounced off and made a sound as though they were hitting metal. The creature then defiantly leapt away. In 1953, across the world in Texas, a creature that may have been spring-heeled Jack was sighted in a pecan tree near an apartment complex. Three witnesses described a creature in tight fitting pants, a black cape and boots

The last recorded sighting involved a travelling salesman in England, who claimed have seen the creature leaping in his legendary fashion in 1986, dressed in the usual skin tight clothing, with an elongated chin. Once again, the creature stopped and slapped him.

What exactly this creature was, or is, is unknown. Human suspects have been put forth, but none hold up to scrutiny. Often the creature is attributed to mass hysteria, and brought to the level of a folk-talk, but this would be inconsistent with victorian attitudes in discussing sexual crimes. It seems that Spring-heeled Jack is one of those strange cases where a kernel of truth hides under a heap of exaggeration. The extremely long span of time that the sightings cover, if the accounts are to be believed, suggest that the creature wasn’t human. In any case, perhaps Jack is not yet done, and will leap again into the public eye. However, this seems to be one creature that one would hope never returns.

Devils appearing to people are nothing new. Most of the time, they leave no physical evidence, and usually are the result of overactive imaginations or mental illness. But in the case of the Devon Devil, it left a trail of foot prints 100 miles long across the English county of Devon. In February of 1855, after a heavy snow, the footprints appeared. They measured 4 inches long and 2 1/2 inches wide, and seem to have been made by a cloven-hoofed creature walking on two feet. They began in the middle of a garden and ended abruptly in a field in the town of Littleham. They went through a six inch hole and crawled through a drainpipe, seemingly through walls, and across rivers stopping at one bank and starting again on the other. They even appeared to have been melted into solid ice through high heat like that of a branding iron. Not a single person saw the creature, but dogs brought to track the creature refused and whimpered.

The mystery of the prints remains unsolved, and nothing remotely close to it has happened since.

In 1881 a magazine called the South Australian Register ran a story by a traveler called Carle Liche. He tells us that while travelling through Madagascar, he was horrified to watch the native Mdoko tribe sacrifice a woman to a man-eating tree. He stated that the places the woman near the tree, and after laying there for a few seconds, the tree’s tendrils took the woman by the neck and strangled her, before apparently engulfing the body. In his 1924 book “Madagascar, land of the man-eating tree” former Michigan Governor Chase Osborn recounted Liche’s tale, and mentioned that missionaries and locals in Madagascar all knew of the deadly tree. Unfortunately, Liche’s accounts may have been an exaggeration, as both the Mdoko tribe nor the man-eating tree have ever been found, and the governor may simply have been embellishing a little bit more to make for good reading.

 

From the steppes of Mongolia comes another type of creature that is particularly memorable by its rather disgusting appearance. The Mongolian Death Worm is a supposedly poisonous worm that has the appearance of a bright red bloody cow intestine. That’s right, a deadly cow intestine. Said to be about four feet long, the animal is said to spit a yellow substance when threatened that is deadly on contact with human skin, and is even claimed to be able to kill with electricity in a manner similar to the electric eel. Shocking, but does it really exist? Expeditions to Mongolia to find the creature haven’t been particularly fruitful, however the story is so wide-spread that there may well be truth to it. With new species of animal, even large ones, seemingly being found all the time in such places as the jungles of Vietnam, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to suspect that the same may be found under the earth in the extremely desolate Gobi desert.
 
Madagascar and Mongolia aren’t the only places where one finds man-eating trees and deadly worms. South America is also a fruitful land for stories of deadly trees, and even more amazing are the stories of the enormous Minhocao. This giant cryptic has been reported to live in the forests of South America and has been claimed to reach astonishing lengths of up to 75 feet. Old accounts tell of a huge tunnel digging worm with two appendages on its head, perhaps similar to those of a snail or slug. Unfortunately, no one has seen the Minhocao in over a century, suggesting that it has either gone extinct or may never have existed at all.
 
Often cryptids are misidentified known animals, sometimes they defy explanation. In any of the cases detailed in this article, there would be few animals with appearances close enough to be mistaken. It might be that the man-eating trees simply stem from exaggerated accounts of venus fly traps, but the worms are more difficult to dismiss. Slimy worms aren’t particularly scary, nor do they make good fodder to make up legends about. They are simply worms, and stories of 75 foot long docile giants and blood red disgusting-but-deadly creatures are not something that cultures would normally invent out of thin air. They probably have a grain of truth somewhere, hidden along with the animals themselves in the least explored places on planet earth.

As it turns out, there’s quite alot.

Firstly are the prophetic circumstances surrounding the wreck itself. In 1898 an author named Morgan Robertson published a short story entitled ‘Futility’ that bore striking resemblances to the Titanic disaster of 1912. Everything from striking an iceberg on it’s maiden voyage, it’s home port of Southampton, claimed unsinkability due to watertight compartments and a lack of sufficient lifeboats were all eerily similar. Perhaps the most creepy aspect is that Morgan’s ship was named The Titan.

Another paranormal tidbit in Titanic lore are the artifacts. Owned more or less by a single company, and the whole lot coming up for auction soon, there are numerous accounts of the exhibit being haunted. Stories abound from people touring the exhibit seeing things, a famous television investigation team capturing EVP’s, and employees emphatically claiming paranormal activity. Claims range from an employee feeling hands in her hair, shadowy figures walking the corridors, and even an elderly woman haunting a replica of a cabin.

One famous story about Titanic is unfortunately not true. A legend has developed about a mummy shipped aboard the vessel, suggesting, as usual, that a mummy curse sank the Titanic. In fact, there was no mummy on the ship, and the mummified Egyptian in question never existed (except in Ancient times). The whole thing traces to the only extant artifact, a coffin lid in the British Museum, that’s still there to this day. The mummy story must be chalked up to a typical gilded age tall tale, a textbook one, as Tutankamun’s curse must also be. The simple fact is, the man that opened the tomb, Howard Carter… lived for years after his discovery. The curse story persisted, and the model seems to have been recycled into the Titanic saga.

Perhaps the most interesting paranormal phenomena associated with the Titanic is the Captain of the ship, Edward Smith, haunting his birthplace. Located in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire England, the victorian era home has been claimed to be flagrantly haunted by Smith. He is reportedly seen in the bedroom of the home in anthropomorphic form, and cold chills (fitting, perhaps) are reported in other areas of the house. Disconcertingly, residents reported a mysterious kitchen flood that they suspect had something to do with the ghost. The house is on the market for what seems to be an unusually low price, should any Titanic aficionado wish to buy it and investigate further.

It should be no surprise that such a traumatic and emotional event as the Titanic disaster would create ghosts, or at least stories about them. 1500 people died that night under truly horrific circumstances, and if the paranormalists are to be believed these emotions imprinted on the artifacts and surely the ship itself. I could find no reliable reports of anything being seen on the wreck itself, but this is not surprising. Low light, explorers confined to submarines, murky water and the fact that most of the victims would have perished floating on the freezing surface of the ocean instead of miles down on the wreck would tend to explain that. But one must wonder if someday, some expedition might catch something unusual on it’s cameras.

St. Pio had been surrounded by paranormal phenomena since childhood. As a youngster, he was believed to be able to see apparitions of Jesus and Mary, and even went so far as to assume that every person could see them.  These continued into adulthood, until eventually Pio became a capuchin friar. During his time as a novice waiting to become a capuchin, the paranormal phenomena seem to have become more dark and increasingly powerful. In once incidence, the devil appeared to him in his room in the form of a large black dog with glowing red eyes. As early as 1911, he first manifested the stigmata, which he described in a letter as red marks on his hands and feet that caused severe pain. The wounds eventually became visible, sometimes bleeding profusely and would continue the rest of his life. He often prayed for the wounds to disappear, but not the pain, as he found the marks to be an embarrassment. They would never completely disappear, so he was known to hide them.  The visions of the devil continued as well, appearing to Pio as everything from a dancing naked girl, Pope Pius X, St. Francis and most disturbingly, the virgin Mary. One wonders how difficult of a time he had in distinguishing between visions from heaven, and apparitions from hell. Pio died in 1968, still afflicted with the stigmata.

About 300 or so stigmatics have been reported over the last two millenium. The first was St. Paul, who claimed to have them in a letter to the Galatians. St. Francis of Assisi also exhibited them in the 13th century, and cases continue to this day. A number of explanations have been given for the stigmata, ranging from fraud to the wounds somehow being created by the sufferer’s own mind. The phenomena is usually restricted to catholics, however, in the case of the hindu holy man Chaitanya Mahaprabu (1486-1534) he was said to spontaneously bleed from multiple areas of his body.

Often, stigmatics also exhibit a separate phenomena called inedia, which is the act of going without food or water, other than the daily eucharist host, for extended and impossible periods of time. This was seen with Padre Pio, who abstained from eating or drinking for long periods, and even stopped sleeping for a time. The phenomena was most pronounced with the stigmatic Therese Neumann, who is said to have eaten nothing but a single communion host each day from 1922 until she died in 1962. Its also said that she did not drink water during this period either, and suffered no ill health affects. Oddly, the stigmata is known to vary significantly in the location of the wounds. Sometimes they appear at the wrists, or directly in the hands, and the damage from the lance varies between stigmatics on which side of the body it appears.

The bizarre phenomena of the stigmata is something that one might expect from a medieval text, but not in modern times. Yet it almost seems that it is increasing. Never the less, it is likely to remain unexplainable any time soon, as those who suffer from it are still few and far between. The stigmata remains one of the strangest and most frightening phenomena noted in the annals of the paranormal.

The Battle of Mons was the first major action by the British Army in World War I. After the forced withdrawal of French and Belgian forces, the British were left exposed and while they fought valiantly, they too were forced to take a costly retreat in the face of overwhelming German forces. In the midst of this retreat a strange apparition of angels holding back the Germans was claimed to occur. Accounts filtered to the media in Britain of three angels appearing between the British and Germans, protecting the British in their retreat. The angels appeared as larger than men, with a center angel in bright light, with wings extended, seemingly protecting the two smaller angels in the face of the Germans. The British interpreted it as St. George, and the story was used in the recruitment of British soldiers.

But did it really happen? The seed for the story may have been planted by occult novelist Arthur Machen, who wrote a short story in the London Evening News about a month after the battle called “the Bowmen”. Machen himself said the story was fictional, and it wasn’t specifically about Mons. In fact, it wasn’t even about angels, the story relates that a soldier prayed to St. George, who brought back a spectral host of bowmen from the Battle of Agincourt who fought on the side of the British.  But a number of soldiers present at the battle swore that St. George himself had appeared at the battle and staved off the Germans. Its a fact that something did cause the Germans to waver, for a time they recoiled and withdrew which allowed the British to retreat, but was it St. George? The story of the Angels of Mons bears so little resemblance to Machen’s story that its hard to swallow that it was the seed that led to the legend.

Most cite a lack of direct accounts as being supporting evidence that the vision never happened. However, some direct accounts do in fact exist of the Angels of Mons. Harold Begbie’s book “On the side of the angels”. contains his collection of accounts describes the three luminous angels, though unfortunately most of his accounts are anonymous in nature.  Other accounts exist claim that the number of angels was as many as five. All accounts claim that the German cavalry stopped in their tracks as their horses would go no further, allowing the British retreat. Significantly, accounts from the German side are almost entirely lacking. This general lack of witnesses isn’t surprising in light that most of the people present at Mons did not survive the beginning of the war, which would grow into war of attrition mostly spent in trenches. In any case, the story became legendary in Britain throughout the war, and served to both boost morale and recruitment.

Did Angels save the British Army in August of 1914, or did a public desperate for good news latch onto a fictional story and mould it into a legend? We can’t be certain. But the fact remains that the Germans did waver in the face of something, whether it was fierce British firepower, or angels siding with the British Army, we will never know for sure.

In the United States alone, there have been no less than 20 unexplained booms over the last decade. Some near water, some not. Of course some can be explained by meteorites entering the atmosphere, and there are many other theories about just what could create a boom, but this Wisconsin affair seems most interesting in that the booms were clearly coming from the ground. There are far less rational explanations for a non-aerial boom. And it wasn’t just one location, we all know about the Clintonville booms, but more were heard 80 miles away in Montello, WI. And, there wasn’t just one boom. There were many over at least a four day period, possibly even months, some reports saying the booms slowed down in the morning and went full force again in the evening!

Seasonal or time sensitive booms are again nothing new. The “Barisal Guns” of Bengladesh were noted to sound like cannon, ran for years in the late 19th century before stopping, and seemed to prefer the summer months and hardly ever happened in the winter. No thunderstorms were ever in the area during the booms, and in this case the booms seemed to have stopped completely by the 1890′s. Clearly, it was not sonic booms from jets.

The most interesting case is the Bell Island boom. This particular boom did some serious damage to local homes in 1978. More interestingly, it damaged the electrical wiring of the homes in a manner that might be similar to what a natural EMP, or a weapon, might do. This specific case was blamed on an unusally large lightning bolt, though meteorologists deny that the conditions were present for lightning, and a ‘crater’ of sorts was pointed out as the impact zone. That’s a hard buy, lightning doesn’t usually make craters, it makes fulgerites which tend to look like small fused glass tubes going into the ground with the surrounding soil undisturbed. Big holes with apparently no fused glass isn’t very consistent, and wierder still Los Alamos labs sent a pair of scientists all the way out to the Island, off Newfoundland in Canada, to investigate. The official story is that the infamous Vela satellite detected the huge lightning bolt, and they were sent on that basis, but that doesn’t seem to add up. Why go out there if you know what it was? Were other superbolts detected by Vela and investigated with the same vigor and expense?

So what did the powers that be do in response to the Wisconsin booms? They’ve called it a small earthquake followed by an earthquake swarm. The media, or at least most of it, took the answer happily and closed the case. Never mind that the explanation was entirely inconsistent with their earlier reports. Witnesses note that the booms began much earlier than the 1.5 magnitude miniquake that the USGS advanced as a possible cause. The dual locations of the booms is also inconsistent with an earthquake. The shaking alone reported by some witnesses should exceed 1.5 magnitude from the reports, which is well below the 2.0 threshhold of usually being feelable by humans.

Residents in Clintonville seem unsatisfied, and well they should be. When illogical, inconsistent concepts are advanced in an authoritative “case closed” manner, it can be insulting and smacks of the want to get the whole thing buried and made to go away. In fact, the Wisconsin underground booms remain unexplained, as do a great many others, and if the ground of Wisconsin continues to boom, we will not have heard the end of this story.

In the small town of Sedlec in the Czech republic is something truely extraordinary. A Roman Catholic chapel profusely decorated with the skeletal remains of the dead. 40,000 skeletons were used in the decoration of the chapel, with the bones forming up chandeliers, coats of arms, and other accents to the gothic interior. The story of the Sedlec ossuary starts in 1278, when a certain Henry, Abbot of the Cistercian monastary at Sedlec, made a pilgrimage to the holy land. He brought back a handful of earth from Golgotha and sprinkled it over the cemetery where the ossuary now lies. Soon, the desire to be buried in this cemetary exploded,  and during the period of the black death thousands were laid to rest here.

Jump to Gallery

In the year 1400 the present church was built in the center of the cemetery, which was by then extraordinarily overcrowded. New burial space was required, so thousands of graves were exhumed and stacked in the lower section of the church. In 1870, the Schwarzenberg family commissioned a local artist named Frantisek Rint to use the piled up bones to decorate the church. The result was nothing short of amazing. Even the artist’s signiture is in bone, and the great chandelier contains examples of every bone in the human body.

Crypt of the Capuchins

In the heart of Rome lies the church of Our Lady of the Conception of the Capuchins. The church was constructed in the early 17th century, and is the burial place of over 4,000 Capuchin friars. Between 1528 and 1870 these bones were carefully arranged in the rococco and baroque style, culminating in an oddly decorative and cheery arrangement of the dead, in contrast to the austere gothic arrangement used at Sedlec.

Each of the rooms comprising the ossuary is themed. One celebrates the resurrection, another celebrates death itself. The so-called Mass chapel is composed entirely of unarticulated free bones, to symbolize freedom from purgatory. Quantities of heads make up the crypt of skulls which is crowned by an hourglass with wings made from shoulder blades. The adjacent room is dedicated to pelvises, and the one after to legs and thighs. The final crypt bears the reaper on its cieling, as a skeleton, holding his characteristic scythe and a scale. The whole display serves as a reminder that life is finite, and at its end a sign alludes that you too will someday meet the reaper.

Bones in Paris and Portugal

Possibly the most visually disturbing ossuary lies in Portugal in the city of Evora. This ossuary contains the bones of 5,000 people, again arranged decoratively, but accented with several corpses hanging from chains that are not skeletal, but are dessicated mummies. Above its entrance are the words “We bones that are here, for your bones we wait”.

To the north lies by far the largest of all ossuaries, located in the catacombs of Paris. Containing the bodies of over 7 million people, these chambers span miles, with no one really certain as to their full extent. The bodies were disinterred from multiple Paris cemeteries to make room for more burials, or when a church became defunct and new construction facilitated the need to exhume the graves. One Paris cemetary had so many burials, that the repeated burials of mass graves led to the ground level rising almost twenty feet. Starting in the 18th century, the bones were removed as needed and placed against the stone walls of the catacombs, which were originally Roman-period limestone quarries. To get to the original stone walls of the corridors, one would have to climb over an average of nine feet of human bones. During WWII, both the Germans and the French Resistance used these caverns, and in 1871 the communards in Paris killed a group of Royalists in one of the chambers.

Modern Ossuaries

A more modern ossuary lies in Douaumont, France. Dedicated to soldiers who died at the Battle of Verdun in 1916. 130,000 unidentified soldiers, both Axis and Allied, lie in the ossuary. The bones in the ossuary can be seen through small windows, carefully stacked in small alcoves. This ossuary serves as a burial place, but also as a reminder of the horrors and sheer enormity of the first world war.

Ossuaries are a fascinating reminder of our mortality, and while they may seem macabre, they serve a purpose. As our population expands, and our available burial space declines, new ossuaries may be built to house the disinterred bones of old cemetaries. While they will likely lack the artistic flare of the past, they will be no less potent in their ability to remind us that death is always around the corner.

Folklore attributes the underlying power of the eye to envy. Coveting a neighbor’s property was thought to create the evil eye, intentionally or unintentionally. Eyeing the neighbor’s prized cow could have been at fault for its untimely death, looking enviously at a prime crop could cause it to wither, and seeing your neighbor’s wealth with envy could cause them to lose it. Children were thought to be particularly susceptible to the evil eye, a belief arising from the numbers of unexplainable infant deaths before modern medicine identified their causes. A barren women could be blamed for bringing the evil eye on a child, subconsciously jealous that she could not have her own. Folklorist and UC Berkeley professor Alan Dundes once made the case that the evil eye’s effects almost always involved withering, drying and death. This explains the remedies seen in many cultures which always seem to involve wetness. One remedy for countering the evil eye was the practice of washing the ground after a person with the eye had passed through, and the Jewish custom that fish were immune to the eye because they were always wet.

The evil eye is almost universal to human cultures. The Fins call it the bad eye, for the Arabs it is the eye of envy. In the Philippines its the devil’s eye, and in Portugal its called the bad gaze. Traditional among some Muslim groups is to state “Whatever God wills” as a method of warding off the evil eye, and testifying that only what God wants to happen will happen. Sailors in some areas of the mediterranean to this day paint eyes on their boats to counter the gaze of the evil eye and ensure a good catch. In Turkey the symbol has even appeared as a large blue eye on commercial aircraft and on cellphones. Ancient Egyptians used the eye prominently in their symbolism to protect the spirits of the dead, and even the bible gets in on the action with the tenth commandment, with the word covet meaning to cast an envious eye.

Its possible that the commandment itself might have been intended to prohibit casting the evil eye, rather than to simply be envious in itself, though I guess its better to be safe rather than sorry when interpreting this commandment.

The Romans made amulets in the shape of a phallus to ward off the evil eye, presumably by drawing its gaze away from the person and onto the absurdly large phallus they were prominently wearing around their neck. The latin term for this type of charm is a fascinum, from which the english verb fascinate derives. An odd variation of this concept is still alive today in the United States and Italy. A common type of horn-shaped pendant seen in nearly every jewelry store in America is the cornicello. I’ve even seen them available at the local Walmart, and they remain one of the most popular gold charms on the market today. Sometimes called a ram’s horn, most people in the US that wear them have no idea what they are, other than an attractive shape. The origin of this odd piece of jewelry comes from Italy, and is intended to protect the genitalia – and consequently fertility – from the effects of the evil eye.

Tree with apotropaion eye in Cappadocia, Pigeon valley near Uçhisar

Medical science and objectivity tells us that the eye cannot kill, though for centuries deaths were often attributed to the evil eye. In medieval Europe witches were often identified – and burned at the stake – on the evidence that they had directed an angry glare at someone that resulted in their death. So frightened was the British court system of the evil eye and its bewitching powers that it required that accused witches being brought into the courtroom had to walk backwards. Countless tales exist that attribute sudden death to the evil eye, and people to this day continue to derive lifelong employment in some parts of the world to removing its effects. Garlic is often said to ward off the eye, and the color blue is believed to counter it as well. But beware of blue-eyed people in Greece, as compliments from them can bring the effects of the eye onto you much more efficiently than brown eyes can.

King Alfonso XIII of Spain (r.1886-1931) was one of the most prominent figures of the 20th century to have been said to possess the evil eye. Benito Mussolini believed it, and refused to meet with him in person during a state visit. Apparently this was for good reason, since the Italian Navy’s demonstration celebrating the Spanish King’s visit to Italy in 1923 resulted in two sailors being washed overboard, an explosion on a submarine, an antique cannon fired in his honor blew up and killed its crew, and a navy officer who shook the king’s hand collapsed and died. To top it off, a dam broke killing 50 people during the visit.

There doesn’t seem to be any basis to the claim that the evil eye can do real physical harm. Any effect must surely be psychosomatic or coincidental. But with the myth of the evil eye being so widespread in human culture, even appearing in the most modern nations to this very day, one wonders why the superstition has such staying power. Every day some people fear to look us straight in the eye, some people go out of their way to do it, either way they are as focused on our eyes as the ancient’s were. In some small way, more mental than supernatural, the eye really does have power.