Fallen Angels . . . and Spirits of the Dark

by Robert Masello

  FAIRIES

  A separate race of tiny creatures, seldom seen and best left alone, were the fairies. Also known to us as elves, pixies, or sprites, the fairies have, over time, come to be thought of as benign or playful little beings, hiding in flowers or granting lovers’ wishes. But they weren’t always so nice.

  In the Middle Ages, some of the church authorities condemned the fairies as unmitigated devils. Others believed that they were the spirits of those who had died before their time, or the souls of those who were just a little too good to go to Hell and a bit too bad for Heaven. In Ireland, the fairy people were considered a part of Lucifer’s host, fallen angels who weren’t wholly responsible for their actions; true, they had followed the wrong banner, but chiefly because they’d been taken in by the Devil’s blandishments. While the rebel angels were plummeting from Heaven, Christ raised His hand, and the most gullible (and therefore least culpable), of the fairies stopped short before landing in Hell. Some splashed down in the sea, becoming mermaids and water spirits, and others, who landed near towns and houses, turned into brownies and hobs. The really wicked ones — the Lucifugi — kept right on going, becoming gnomes and kobolds (in Germany) in the caverns of the Earth.

  Though a few fairies were reputedly bigger than humans, most were thought to be on the smallish side — often just a few inches high. All of them were thought to have magical powers, for good or ill; so it was wise, whenever dealing with one, to proceed with caution and a fair amount of deference. Fairies were easily irritated.

  In general, fairies were favorably disposed toward humans who displayed a cheerful, open demeanor. They put great stock in hospitality, and they were particularly fond of lovers. They hated stinginess. And while they thought nothing of stealing from humans — anything was fair game, from a pie cooling on a windowsill to a cow grazing in the field — they were outraged if a human made off with something of theirs. Once crossed, a fairy could become a dangerous adversary.

  Some didn’t even need a reason. They were just plain malicious by nature. In the Fen country, on the east coast of England, the Yarthkins were small and hideous, and always waiting for their next victim. The Border Redcaps of Scotland lived in tower houses, and wore caps dyed red with the blood of hapless travelers they had killed. The Highland glaistigs made themselves up to look like beautiful women, but sucked the blood of any mortal foolish enough to dance with them. The water kelpies sometimes took on the form of horses, but anyone who rode them was carried into the water and devoured there. Shellycoat, another water fairy, wore strands of seaweed and a necklace of clattering shells; like the will-o’-the-wisp, he drew the unwary into dangerous places, and sometimes, while “playing” with them, left them for dead.

  The one common safeguard against the fairy race was iron — or, even better, steel. The denizens of the supernatural world have long had a certain antipathy to metal, in part because it has provided humans with such powerful weapons as guns and swords. Anyone entering a fairy’s home was warned to wedge something of metal — a knife, a needle, a fishhook — in the doorway to keep the fairy from shutting the door. Hunters carrying home their game were advised to leave a knife stuck in the carcass, since that would keep the fairies from laying their own weight on it. Mothers who wanted to protect their babies at night hammered nails into the foot of the bed, or to be even more cautious laid the smoothing iron under the bed and a reaping hook in the bedroom window. Other ways of protecting the child were to hang an open scissors above it, lay its father’s trousers across the cradle, or to draw around it a circle of fire. These maternal precautions were well warranted: fairies, according to the popular lore, often stole unchristened human babies and left one of their own kind — a changeling — in its place.

  GOBLINS

  Famous for both their mischief and their ugly faces, the goblins were fairies who seemed drawn to meddle in men’s affairs. They were forever hanging around farms and villages, usually to no good purpose. Their skin was swarthy, or altogether black, and they delighted in scaring people out of their wits, stealing things from them, or even taking their horses out for a wild ride across the fields at night. (The next morning, the horse’s mane would be plaited and tied into inexplicable knots.)

  On occasion, goblins were known to perform routine household chores — though unbidden and unseen — and in return it was expected that the housekeeper would leave for them a bit of bread and a bowl of cream, close to the warmth of the hearth. There, the goblin could stretch out (though he wasn’t very tall) and enjoy the creature comforts of which he was so fond. Goblins, and their French cousins the lutins, had a taste for fine wine and pretty girls.

  Hobgoblins, on the other hand, were rougher, hairier, a little bit larger, and definitely given to country life. In his Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton observes that they would “grinde corne for a messe of milke, cut wood, or doe any manner of drudgery work.” In a good mood, the hobgoblin could act as a kind of guardian spirit of the house, keeping an eye on the servants, and watching over any hidden treasures: in a bad mood, he could drink up all the cream, stop the butter from coming in the churn, hide the necessary household implements. He could prove, as this seventeenth-century prayer by John Day attests, an unfriendly spirit:

  “Graunt that no Hogoblins fright me,

  No hungrie devils rise up and bite me;

  No Urchins, Elves, or drunkards Ghoasts

  Shove me against walles or postes.

  O graunt that I may no black thing touch,

  Though many men love to meete such.”

  By and large, hobgoblins were thought to be something like the country folk they consorted with — slow and simple, with a penchant for practical jokes and broad physical humor. They were the hayseeds, so to speak, of the relatively sophisticated fairy world.

  MERMAIDS AND MERMEN

  The best protection against mermaids and mermen was to stay on dry land, where they were generally — though not always — powerless.

  Human from the waist up and fish from the waist down, the mermaids, and their less common counterparts the mermen, lived in the oceans, lakes, and streams. The mermaid was usually described as lovely and alluring, with long hair and supple limbs; in her hands, she often held a mirror and a comb. And her singing was so seductive it could lure sailors to leap overboard. Once they did, the mermaid dragged them to her magnificent underwater kingdom, where their souls were kept prisoner forever. In Cornwall, the mermaid of Zennor charmed a lovelorn boy, the squire’s son, into the sea, and for many years after that, the local people swore they could hear him singing, too, beneath the crashing waves.

  But there were also accounts of beached mermaids becoming tamed and almost human. In 1403, a mermaid washed up in shallow water near Edam in Holland. The townsfolk rescued her and nursed her back to health. But she never learned to speak. For fifteen years she lived among them, and when she died, she was given the traditional Christian burial rites.

  In Germany, bodies of fresh water were said to be haunted by nixies, green-haired maidens who could transform themselves into old crones and travel to town on market days. So disguised, they would lure their victims into dangerous waters and drown them there. To survive, each nixie had to have at least one victim a year. In the lakes of northern England, another green-haired maid, known as Jenny Green Teeth, had a special fondness for drowning children who trespassed in her waters.

  To keep from succumbing to a mermaid’s charms, it was a good idea to stop up your ears against her singing (as Ulysses did when sailing past the Sirens) or to somehow get hold of her cap or belt; if you had either one of these, you had power over the creature who normally wore them.

  THE KNOCKERS

  Between the late seventeenth and the early nineteenth centuries, the crags and moors of Cornwall were dotted with black chimney stacks and engine houses, where shafts had been sunk deep into the land to mine the rich veins of tin, lead, and silver. The workers, who descended into the mines each day clutching a
rope with a candle mounted in their hats, were well aware that they had company underground, company that they must be careful not to offend. These tiny creatures, who also lived and worked in the mines, were known as the knockers.

  Often, the human workers could hear the sound of the knockers’ tools, drilling and scraping at the ore, not far away — just around the bend, perhaps, or in the next tunnel over. Though it was considered unwise to disturb them, it was a good idea to listen to where they were working — the knockers, it was thought, had an uncanny ability to find the richest veins of ore. But if you spied on them, or attempted to make off with their ore, they could inflict a painful condition called “Barker’s Knee” — a sort of rheumatism that left its victims hobbled for the rest of their lives.

  Still, one old man decided to take the chance. His name was Trenwith, and he was a miner in an area called the Bockles. On a midsummer night, he and his son lay in wait for the knockers, quietly marking off the hours, until they saw a crew of them struggling to pull their load of ore to the surface. With his hat in hand, and many apologies for disturbing them at their work, the old man approached the little miners and offered to make them a deal. Why should they work all night, he asked, when he and his son could do the work for them? In return for their showing him the best places to wield his pick, Trenwith would leave the knockers one-tenth of his haul each day. The knockers conferred among themselves and decided to accept the deal.

  For a long time, both sides prospered: the knockers enjoyed their newfound leisure, and every day the old man left them their promised share. Soon, Trenwith was a very wealthy man. But one day he died, and his son was left alone to work the mine. Tired of honoring the bargain his father had struck, the son began to shortchange the knockers and keep the difference for himself. But the knockers weren’t to be fooled. Angered at his bad faith and greed, they no longer held up their end of the bargain either. In no time, the lode had failed, and the son, who had squandered his father’s money on drinking and carousing, was forced to go looking for work. Knowing that he had already defied the knockers, no one would take a chance on hiring him, and he died soon after, a penniless outcast.

  GREMLINS

  Although most of the denizens of the fairy world have been known to man for time immemorial, there is one — the gremlin —whose discovery was made only in this century. An airy spirit, he may have been hovering about forever, but it was only with the advent of airplanes that the gremlin truly came into his own.

  “Ever since the days of Wilbur and Orville Wright,” wrote one authority in a 1942 edition of The Aeroplane, “pilots have scratched their heads over the more obscure technical mysteries of aviation. An engine run up the previous night fails to start in the morning. The unaccountable leakage of petrol and air from tyres and brakes has always been a headache. . . . Only since the expansion of the R.A.F. has the source of the trouble been unearthed . . . Gremlin action.”

  It was over twenty years earlier that pilots of the Royal Air Force and the Royal Naval Air Service first noticed the effects of gremlin activity. Navigational controls would go awry, radios would go out, engines would stall, and a wing would suddenly and for no perceptible reason dip sharply —just as if a horde of malicious sprites had all at once weighed it down. As far as the pilots were concerned, that’s exactly what it was.

  Gremlins, they claimed, were living in underground warrens in and around the airfields. When no one was looking, they climbed aboard the aircraft, creating all kinds of mischief, and hitching a ride when the plane took off. Most of the time, they were just up to pranks, but on many occasions their fooling around put the crew and the plane into very real danger.

  Just the sight of one was enough to make a pilot lose control.

  About a foot high, and generally green in color, they had large, fuzzy ears and wide, webbed feet. The feet came in handy, first because they provided suction grips for walking on the wings, and second because they could expand, like parachutes, when the gremlins had to bail out of a crashing plane. Unaffected by extremes of temperature, the gremlins sometimes went naked. At other times, they displayed a marked taste for smart clothing —spats and top hats and red jackets embroidered with neat ruffles. Their favorite food was aircraft fuel, which they drank in prodigious amounts. (This explained how the tanks, which were thought to be full, could so often turn out to be empty.)

  Still, the gremlins could occasionally pitch in when the going got especially rough. According to one Lancaster pilot in the Second World War, “One night we got bounced by a snapper [fighter] and the rear gunner was hit. I sent the wireless operator back to get him out of the turret while we carried on the battle with the upper turret only, corkscrewing like hell.” The navigator dragged the rear gunner forward, to get a look at his wounds. But while he did, the rear turret guns opened up again, blazing away at the German fighters and keeping them at bay. The guns didn’t stop until the ammunition had run out.

  Lucifer

  After the plane had managed to land, the ground staff armourers carefully examined the rear turret, and in their judgment there was “nothing wrong with the guns or their controls and, in fact, there was no way in which the guns could fire like that.” Shaking their heads, they chalked it up to a friendly gremlin — and the Group Armament Officer signed off on their report.

  In recent years, it should be noted, gremlins have been branching out. Devoted to the latest technologies, they’ve started to invade all kinds of office and household gadgets, including televisions and, of course, computers.

  But first, on earth as vampire sent,

  Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent:

  Then ghastly haunt thy native place,

  And suck the blood of all thy race;

  There from thy daughter, sister, wife,

  At midnight drain the stream of life. . . .

  Wet with thine own best blood shall drip

  Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;

  Then stalking to thy sullen grave

  Go — and with the ghouls and afreets rave,

  Till these in horror shrink away

  From specter more accursed than they!”

  Lord Byron, The Giaour (1813)

  A TASTE FOR BLOOD

  The vampire — a human being raised from his or her grave — and the werewolf — a man or woman transformed into a wolf — have much in common. To begin with, both are made of mortal stuff: they are not angels fallen from grace, nor are they demons (by all but one or two accounts) sent by Satan to tempt or corrupt mankind. They are, indeed, evil agents, but the evil they do is their own.

  They share certain physical traits—hairy palms, for one, and eyebrows that almost meet — and both display a preternatural strength and agility. They share the ability to transform themselves (the vampire often assuming the shape of a wolf himself) and both use their well-developed incisors in constant quest of the same refreshment—ruby-red, warm, human blood.

  The vampire needs this blood to survive, draining his victims lest he sacrifice his own eternal life. The werewolf relishes the hunt, as any wolf would, and he revels in the blood and flesh of his victims. The werewolf is a cannibal and a carnivore (making the vampire, by comparison, look positively dainty). But both, for their savagery, are cursed by God. And according to much of the occult lore, the werewolf, on his death, becomes a vampire. It might almost be considered a kind of bizarre graduation ceremony.

  Partners in crime, allies of evil, the vampire and the werewolf have come down to us trailing a long history of death and destruction, their footprints etched each step of the way in the blood they have spilled for centuries.

  ORIGINS OF THE VAMPIRE

  The word itself is of Magyar derivation, and much of the lore of the vampire, as we now know it, is of eastern European provenance. Bram Stoker, the Irishman who wrote Dracula, borrowed his story and background from the tales of Vlad IV, the original Count Drakul, a Transylvanian nobleman who lived in the fifteenth century and beat back the invad
ing Turks. Vlad was also a sadist of epic proportions, who enjoyed the torture of his prisoners. Legend has it that Vlad often staged picnics amdist a forest of sharpened wooden stakes, driven through the bodies of Turks he had captured in battle; thus was born the nickname “the Impaler,” with which he has passed into history.

  He was no less a terror to his own countrymen. His castle, where people vanished, was loathed and feared. Within its high stone walls, terrible and sacrilegious deeds, it was said, were done, and at least one local account referred to the count as a wampyr.

  His taste for blood apparently was shared by other members of the Carpathian nobility. In 1610, Countess Elizabeth Bathory was executed by order of the King of Hungary. A fancier of the occult, the countess had become convinced that she could prolong her own youth and beauty by bathing in the blood of young girls. Many unsuspecting victims were lured to her castle, drained, and buried. One of them managed to escape and tell the tale. The Blood Countess was walled up alive in her own bedchamber as punishment for her crimes.

  From just such gruesome accounts, the vampire legend began and grew. And with Stoker’s 1897 novel, it concretized around the image–part historical, part imaginary — of Count Dracula himself.

  THE COUNT, AS HE FIRST APPEARS TO JONATHAN HARKER, IN BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA

  “Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere . . . He moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength that made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed as cold as ice — more like the hand of a dead than a living man. . . .