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Post by dem bones on Jun 9, 2021 13:59:18 GMT
William Croft Dickinson - Can These Stones Speak?: ( The Sweet Singers & other Remarkable Occurents, 1953: Dark Companions, 1963). "May her soul be sunk in the nethermost pit of Hell ever there to remain." Henderson, medieval historian, relates his strange and creepy experience while staying in the "haunted room" of a former nunnery in unidentified Scots university town. In what he initially takes to be a particularly horrible dream, the scholar overhears the excommunication and live entombment of an errant sister via a telephone that can't possibly be functioning. Admittedly, the "knocking nun" is not the creepiest we've encountered to date. Sarah Wilkinson's The Mysterious Novice; or, Convent of the Grey Penitents is good for both a murderous Abbess and the skin-crawling creepy Sister Clara, "a woman of repulsive manners, artful, penetrating, and apt to put malicious constructions on the most innocent events." Those of sensitive disposition (i.e., men) may prefer to avoid Matthew Parris's account of The Nun of Watton.
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Post by Middoth on Nov 1, 2021 15:29:06 GMT
"‘The Penitents of La Merci" by Jean-Louis Bouquet
Professor Klap was working on a work summarizing his philosophy of Eros called "The Lamp of Psyche" when he was overtaken by a sudden and violent death. His student Jean-Jacques F *** is trying to collect a great work from scattered notes. After several nights, He discovers that he and the deceased are connected not only by common studies, but also by a common waking dream in which creepy nuns act very active role.
My Halloween reading. no one seems to be in a hurry to translate it
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Post by Swampirella on Nov 1, 2021 22:21:29 GMT
"‘The Penitents of La Merci" by Jean-Louis Bouquet
Professor Klap was working on a work summarizing his philosophy of Eros called "The Lamp of Psyche" when he was overtaken by a sudden and violent death. His student Jean-Jacques F *** is trying to collect a great work from scattered notes. After several nights, He discovers that he and the deceased are connected not only by common studies, but also by a common waking dream in which creepy nuns act very active role.
My Halloween reading. no one seems to be in a hurry to translate it
Hopefully somebody will hurry before next Hallowe'en.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 16, 2021 19:36:24 GMT
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Post by helrunar on Dec 16, 2021 20:18:50 GMT
Very interesting, Dem. I have to wonder if the motif of the "immured nun" may have been a kind of belated remembrance or modulation of the punishment meted out to a Vestal Virgin in ancient Rome who broke her vow of chastity, or committed certain other transgressions. According to one source: The original punishment for sexual transgression was allegedly whipping or stoning to death the guilty party, but an even crueller punishment was later devised by Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king of Rome. No one was allowed to spill the blood of a Vestal Virgin, so to solve this problem, it was decided that a guilty Vestal Virgin should be buried alive. However, this led to another problem, as technically no burials were allowed within the city of Rome. The solution? Give the condemned woman enough food to keep her alive for a few days so that her grave could be called “a room”. In this way, the Vestal Virgin was not buried alive but was simply sent to a room with some provisions, where she would die a natural death. The grim procession to this “room” is described in a nineteenth-century book, A School Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities: When condemned by the college of pontifices, she was stripped of her vittae and other badges of office, was scourged, was attired like a corpse, placed in a close litter, and borne through the forum attended by her weeping kindred, with all the ceremonies of a real funeral, to a rising ground called the Campus Sceleratus, just within the city walls, close to the Colline gate.There a small vault underground had been previously prepared, containing a couch, a lamp, and a table with a little food. The pontifex maximus, having lifted up his hands to heaven and uttered a secret prayer, opened the litter, led forth the culprit, and placing her on the steps of the ladder which gave access to the subterranean cell, delivered her over to the common executioner and his assistants, who conducted her down, drew up the ladder, and having filled the pit with earth until the surface was level with the surrounding ground, left her to perish deprived of all the tributes of respect usually paid to the spirits of the departed. This extraordinarily sadistic punishment is reported to have been carried out only on a few occasions, and there were also a couple of lucky escapes. The Vestal Virgin Tuccia was accused of having breached her vow of chastity, but she proved her innocence by carrying water in a sieve. This apparent miracle saved her life. Another Vestal Virgin named Postumia was put on trial merely because of the way she dressed, and the fact that she liked to make jokes. According to Livy, this suspicious behaviour led to a warning from the chief priest “to stop making jokes and to dress in future with more regard to sanctity and less to elegance”. The Vestal Virgins who survived their thirty years of service were rewarded with a comfortable pension and permission to marry, but most women chose not to. They remained respected members of society until their deaths, well-off and reasonably independent regardless of their relationship status.Quoted from this article: www.througheternity.com/en/blog/history/vestal-virgins-in-ancient-rome.html#H.
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Post by Middoth on Dec 19, 2021 10:54:49 GMT
The Wicked Nun by Karl Hans Strobl
Illustrator Carl Hoffmann
'The orgies that took place in the monastery soon ceased to satisfy her. She was, apparently, a very extraordinary woman, endowed with an insatiable, truly devilish lust, which destroyed everything that she possessed. She apparently possessed the insatiability of a predatory beast, since the chronicle says that she often secretly left the monastery and wandered around the city at night. Sister Agatha visited call houses and brothels of the suburbs and sat there among the rabble, gamblers and drunks, like an equal. And yet she was of noble birth, the daughter of one of the most noble families in the country. All the vices of her family, carefully hidden by generations, manifested themselves in her in such a terrible way. If she liked a young man, she threw herself at him, clinging to a stranglehold, and with the wild passion of a bacchante, toppled him over herself. Soon she was known throughout the city and spoke of her as a living nightmare, a ghost".
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Post by dem bones on Feb 16, 2022 10:03:48 GMT
Bereft of creepy, but nice illo. REAL “GHOST STORIES” FROM SCOTLAND. THE PHANTOM NUN OF AUCHANACHIE Alastair Flattely: The Phantom Nun of Auchanachie.
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Post by helrunar on May 11, 2023 21:19:56 GMT
I read the "Roger Pater" tale "De Profundis" today on my commute and was surprised at how well done it was. Of particular note to me were the descriptions of the physical symptoms "Father Sigismund" would experience when receiving his "communications"--a realistic observation of typical experiences trance mediums have described in various religious contexts.
The nuns in the story weren't so much creepy as misguided and delusional. Perhaps characteristically for this author (this is the only thing by him I have read; his collection was reprinted once, by Ash-Tree Press, and I presume is now long out of print), the tale ends with a defense of "contemplative orders" in an after-note.
Hel.
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