Human Salamander. 1906. Don’t try this at home.

A salamander is an amphibious creature, right? You know, sort of like a squidgy water lizard.

Well, salamanders also live in myth as a creature that is comfortable living in the heat of a fire. This myth appears to have originated with the damp-loving salamanders hiding in a nicely rotting log, only to make a hurried escape when that log was thrown onto a roaring fire.

Imagine the surprise that everyone would get from that unexpected fireside arrival. I am sure the salamander would be just as surprised as those huddled around the fire on a cold night!

Clarence and Richmond Examiner 4 Dec 1906 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article61455249

Interestingly this article from 1906 is something of a double myth. A human seeming to have the ability to behave in the manner of a mythological creature, a human salamander.

Chamouni was a man from Russia who claimed to be incombustible. Hmmm…. That is a claim that is just asking to be tested to the bitter end, isn’t it?

Chamouni would reportedly encourage people to pour melted lead on his tongue and press their seal into it. He would also have visitors melt lead, or boil mercury, and drink it, apparently with relish. (I think we all know that the mercury drinking could have bought its own unpleasant end, without the one you already suspect is coming!)

Chamouni’s ‘grandest experiment’ was to enter an oven with a raw leg of mutton only exiting alongside the cooked joint. Yeah, you know where this is going, don’t you?

Clearly Chamouni’s superpower failed him one day, and he exited the oven as a pile of ash.

I wonder who was in charge of the knob on the oven? After all, the worst roast burning you could do in the average oven is only going to render the meat inedible, it won’t actually be a pile of ash in the bottom of the baking dish will it?

Now, don’t get me wrong, I know that the oven they were using was completely different from the one I cook my lamb roasts in. After all, if I could fit a grown man in my oven the Man would never set foot in the kitchen while I was cooking again…. Still, what on earth were they cooking in? Had they borrowed the oven from the local crematoria?!

Chamouni’s ashes were sent home to Mojaisk, Russia where a monument was reported to have been erected with a Latin inscription commemorating his fate. What do you think it said?

Death of a werewolf. 1893.

I couldn’t resist this article from 1893 for a few reasons. How could I not love a story about a werewolf for a start! I loved the details in this tale from 1558, it seems to be the re-telling of an old fairy story.

Camperdown Chronicle 17 Aug 1893 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article19365982

The story is a re-telling of a tale from 1558 about a woman who was burned at the stake after being charged with werewolfery (yeah, I made that word up but you know what I mean…).

Apparently a gentleman, who was visiting her husband’s château in Auvergne, went out to hunt early one morning, the man of the house telling him “Mind you bring me what you take.”

Clearly the hunt was none too successful as the guest returned at night fall, ‘weary and footsore’.

I think he was lucky it was only his feet that were sore! He reported that the only creature he saw was a large wolf, which attacked him.

His story ended only with him only just managing to escape with his life after severing one of the creatures front paws.

After telling the master of the house the tale of his desperate struggle he opened the bag containing the paw and, amazingly, it had changed into a womans bejewelled hand.

The master of the house recognized one of the jewels as belonging to his wife. She was quickly tracked down to the kitchen and was found to be minus one hand. Off she went to trial and was unsurprisingly found guilty and quickly executed.

Now, you know I love a Fortean tale but this one…. all I could think of as I was reading was the poor wife and what on earth had gone on in Auvergne that day for her to lose her hand and be conveniently accused of this supernatural crime?

The most surprising thing about this article is the last paragraph. “It is a pity that history does not tell us what became of this pair of scheming villains. Their crime does not seem to have been brought home to them judicially, so they probably escaped the fate they richly deserved.” Even in 1893, when some strange things were still believed, people could see right through a story like that.

I wonder what the wife’s real crime was? Not inheriting enough money? Not producing the right amount of sons?  I wonder if the master of the house had another wife already lined up? If so, I wonder what dreadful fate was in store for her if she didn’t live up to expectations?

Chardeva, Beard Stealer. 1953.

The Courier-Mail 7 Jan 1953 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article50555305

One morning in January, 1953, the men of Ranchi, India, woke up to find that their beards and moustaches had unexpectedly vanished…..

The mythical Chardeva was blamed for this unusual event. Apparently the Chardeva was a small rat-like creature which had not been seen for the previous 10 years. Being licked on the head or face by this creature while sleeping is believed to cause baldness.

Being licked by a rat and then having your hair disappear? I wonder if all the hairy-legged women waiting for their wax to heat would prefer to be gently licked in their sleep, and the hair to fall out painlessly, rather than suffering the riiiiiip of waxing? Doubtful.

Interestingly, my searching didn’t give me any other results for the term Chardeva and vanishing beards. Brace yourself people, this may the only reported ‘sighting’ of this creature… At least we are forewarned, time to stock up on the Ratsak guys!

As much as I would like to believe in a depilatory rat I wonder what was really going on here? Did the affected men wake up in a nest of unattached hairs, or had the face fur just vanished?

Sounds a bit like the traditional drunken shaving prank gone wrong in the course of an out of hand bucks night, but on a village-wide scale!

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It is not unusual to see similar stories about men in some communities having problems with unexpectedly and drastically reduced ummm…. family jewels…. You might be interested in this link to the Fortean Times if you haven’t heard of this phenomenon before.

Fire from the sky. 1945.

This article sounds like a poltergeist with a grudge against an entire region, not just the usual single household. 🙂

The Sydney Morning Herald 11 Jul 1945 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article17946617

In 1945 residents of Almeria, Spain, were having a slight problem with white things left out in the sun.

Laundry left out to dry, and even white washed walls would burst into flame without warning. Not only that, people wearing white clothing would find themselves on fire! Eeeek!

I am not sure I agree with the peasants suggestion that the recent drought was followed by these unexpected fires because “God must be very angry with Spain”.

Hmmmmm… No. If there was a vengeful god up there, shooting fiery arrows, it would only seem that he was angry with the colour white.

If their god really was angry with Spain in general he was being quite selective as to who in Spain he was sending his grumpy message to, wasn’t he?

I am not sure how whitewashed walls could easily and spontaneously catch fire, and this article is punctuated in a slightly confusing way; “….laundry laid out to dry in the  fields, and threshing floors have mysteriously started to blaze under the hot sun.”

Thanks to that comma I’m not sure if they mean it is laundry laid on the threshing floors to dry, or the threshing floors themselves which caught fire!

I wonder what really caused this fire from the heavens? The scientific explanations given, St. Elmo’s Fire, the area being a good electrical conductor, or static discharges are a little unimaginative for me. Surely they could have come up with something better!

This article is not very satisfying is it? They mention “arrows of fire” targeting people running towards the fires. Really? Did someone actually see a flaming arrow plummeting down? Surely the danger of the arrow would be more talked about than the fire!

I wanted to know more about the walls. Did they burn completely down, or was it just a small flame? Do the whitewashed walls and white washing have something in common, some sort of chemical that might react to the heat of the sun?

C’mon Staff Reporter! That Peasants’ Stories Confirmed header is a bit of an exaggeration isn’t it? Maybe a more accurate one would have been just a plain old Peasants’ Stories …

Happy Mythical Birthday. 1930.

I know that one of you out there had a milestone birthday over the weekend. Happy Birthday to you! Because of you we can eat cake today, without guilt 😉

In honour of your birthday, (you know who you are) here are some extreme birthdays of mythical creatures.

The Canberra Times 8 May 1930 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2299203

Unfortunately the animals mentioned at the end of the article; serpents 300 feet long, foxes with eight legs, monkeys with four ears and seven tails, and fishes with ten heads were only mentioned in passing. I would have liked to hear the rest of the beliefs attached to each of these fantastical beasts, especially after the birthday treats the tiger and fox deliver.

Apparently, on a tigers thousandth birthday it will turn white as a polar bear. Hmmmm… I think that there would be no other colour than grey on a tiger if it had managed to stay alive for that long!

Do you think this an explanation for the rare sightings of white tigers?

Another unusual birthday celebration is the fox who lives to be fifty years old without being chased by a dog. In the case of this unlikely event the fox will find itself transformed into a beautiful woman.

Right there is a farming opportunity for the future. Who needs dating websites when you can grow your own woman! (Redhead, doesn’t like dogs. Loves chickens).

Of course the rest of the myth means the lucky man won’t be stuck with a dog-hating woman for too long.

Once she hits 50 she will gain additional powers and change into a wizard. I hope the lucky man read the fine print on the contract, imagine the surprise to find your beautiful wife changed into a wizard one morning….

Luckily for the husband he won’t have to worry about his beloveds next transformation, he won’t be around when the wizard/wife turns a thousand and becomes a ‘celestial fox’ with, what I can only imagine is terribly inconvenient, nine golden tails.

Happy Birthday Meeks! Hopefully you will not grow an extra head or tail or two or find yourself turned into a wizard one morning. 😀

Sea monster battle. 1922.

I haven’t written about sea monsters for a while so when I found this article I just had to share it with you.

In 1922 a ship steaming along the west coast of Africa found itself entering and area where a terrific battle seemed to have taken place.

Kilmore Free Press 6 Jul 1922 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article57945283

Captain Poole described what he saw;

“The sea was for miles blood-red; it took over an hour to get through the battle area. On the surface were some hundreds of whales all of them having suffered in the struggle. Some were just able to move slowly along; few, if any, could move quickly.”

None of the sailors knew what had caused the carnage, but suspected that the whales had been attacked by swordfish.

Can you imagine what it would take to cause such a massive and terrible scene? Miles of blood-red sea and hundreds of dead whales is certainly a sight that would be hard to forget.

I am not sure if whales and swordfish are usually deadly enemies though, I thought that only sharks or killer whales attacked whales.

A little more looking around and I found an article from the Wanganui Chronicle in New Zealand from 1908 about a battle witnessed by sailors between a swordfish and a whale with a calf.

After much thrashing about the whale managed to use its tail to stun the huge swordfish who was then hauled on board the nearby boat and taken off to Auckland to be frozen.

I wonder what kind of horrific battle (sharks, Orcas, swordfish….?) there was to have left such carnage in the path of Captain Poole’s ship. Imagine if they had sailed through the area a little earlier and been caught up in it. Perhaps there would have been no-one left to tell the tale…..