This statement may be right or wrong, because these old fairytales may seem like a joke to you, but some old people in Albania really believe these legends. According to the person I interviewed, a witch was:
-A woman. She might be an old lady, or a young one.
- Someone who made children sick. She doesn't necessarily eat them. But if someone knows her identity, she will eat his/her liver.
- Someone close to the victim. Someone, who knows the victim. She is envious of the victim.
After writing that piece of information in my notebook, I asked the old lady again:
"Grandma (you usually call old people this way, even thought you don't have any blood relations with them), tell me how do you protect yourself from witches?"
"There are some ways. Something my mother would do was to put a mixture of seeds (the one you use to feed birds) into a bag, and then let it hang on the door. When the witch will enter, she will start counting the seeds, and because she can't, she will leave. It would help putting a religious book, or object near the seeds."
That answer baffled me. I remember watching a greek TV series with vampires, and there was a legend that if you put rice at the entrance of your room, the vampires will start counting the rice.
The old grandma also told me the story when she met a witch.
"It was night. I hear my son taking a deep breath, and having difficulty breathing. I enter in his room, and in the darkness I find a woman with a blue towel on her head hiding her eyes, and her hand on my son's forehead. I tried to grab her, but she dissappeared. She was someone I knew, that's why she had put her towel in order not to let me see her face."
Well, this was indeed a scary story, but I don't know if it was true or not. Regardless this was a very interesting creature, and I plan to continue my research. I will make sure to give the Albanian witch a lot more importance. By the way in Albanian "shtrige" means "witch". That ca be used even to offend someone.
This was the second episode of "Creature Feature"
Have a great day!
Happy Scary Reading!
As usual, it was very interesting. So a witch is not necessarily an old, wrinkled lady for once ;). Also, it sounds like "witch" is an insult in every language LOL (you sure know that in Italy we sometimes refer to a desplicable woman as a "strega"). I suppose those who still use this word to offend someone have never seen the TV show "Charmed" and its sexy witches ;P.
ReplyDeleteThe bit about the seed (or rice) remembered me of a series I haven't recommended to you...yet. There's this vampire woman who has a compulsion to count, so that, if you throw, say, a box of pencils on the floor, she will be forced to stop every other activity and start counting them. It's a unique compulsion though - her friends are OCD in different ways. The series is "WVMP Radio" if you want to check it out (see the Adult section of my blog). Oops, self promotion! Hehe.
P.S.: and as usual, great artwork! Simple and effective at the same time.
DeleteAww... Thank you for your sweet comments (as usual) . Stop recommending books to me, haha! (Just kidding) Though I will try to not check the series, since I want to finish The Last Vampire Series before Halloween (in order to review them ). Actually, I don't like witches. I am a scarred of them. When I was little, I could watch horror movies, but still I was scared of Snow White's witch. Also I was so scarred of Befana, that I would ran away every time I heard that name. :)
DeleteLooking forward to your TLV reviews!
DeleteScared of Befana? That's really unusual. But you are an unusual girl, after all ;).
There is going to be more fangirling moments, than usual reviews. Haha, I tend to amaze myself with my weirdness :)
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