A limited-run, lenticular decoration from the 2015 Halloween season "BLONDE WOMAN/SUCCUBUS DEMON" LENTICULAR ART POSTER CARD
DETAILS:
Pretty scary!
The
extraordinarily macabre lenticular print poster card shifts from a portrait of a beautiful, young blonde woman who appears to be from the 1940s to a haunted black & white image of her as a red-eyed, deranged succubus zombie. This super spooky, Halloween-time poster card makes a great addition to any home of horrors or hang it at the office to display your Halloween spirit. Top edge has two tabs with holes for easy hanging. The backside is blank and has the original barcode sticker tag attached. Imported to the U.S. by Greenbrier International INC.
Looks great framed!
Perhaps you love the creepy and eerie aesthetic side of Halloween so why not treat this lenticular print as artwork and put in a frame and hang on a deserving wall to enjoy all-year-round. If you choose, you can cut off the hanging tabs so the poster card fits better when framed.
Dimensions:
Height (including hang tab): approx. 17 1/8"
Length: approx. 12"
CONDITION:
New with sticker tag. The lenticular poster card may have very light shelf wear from previously hanging in a retail store. Please see photos.
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"Halloween or Hallowe'en (less commonly known as Allhalloween,[5] All Hallows' Eve,[6] or All Saints' Eve)[7] is a celebration observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Saints' Day. It begins the observance of Allhallowtide,[8] the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed.[9][10][11][12]
One theory holds that many Halloween traditions were influenced by Celtic harvest festivals, particularly the Gaelic festival Samhain, which are believed to have pagan roots.[13][14][15][16] Some go further and suggest that Samhain may have been Christianized as All Hallow's Day, along with its eve, by the early Church.[17] Other academics believe Halloween began solely as a Christian holiday, being the vigil of All Hallow's Day.[18][19][20][21] Celebrated in Ireland and Scotland for centuries, Irish and Scottish immigrants took many Halloween customs to North America in the 19th century,[22][23] and then through American influence Halloween had spread to other countries by the late 20th and early 21st century.[24][25]
Popular Halloween activities include trick-or-treating (or the related guising and souling), attending Halloween costume parties, carving pumpkins or turnips into jack-o'-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, divination games, playing pranks, visiting haunted attractions, telling scary stories, and watching horror or Halloween-themed films.[26] Some people practice the Christian religious observances of All Hallows' Eve, including attending church services and lighting candles on the graves of the dead,[27][28][29] although it is a secular celebration for others.[30][31][32] Some Christians historically abstained from meat on All Hallows' Eve, a tradition reflected in the eating of certain vegetarian foods on this vigil day, including apples, potato pancakes, and soul cakes.[33][34][35][36]
Etymology
"Halloween" (1785) by Scottish poet Robert Burns, recounts various legends of the holiday.
The word Halloween or Hallowe'en ("Saints' evening"[37]) is of Christian origin;[38][39] a term equivalent to "All Hallows Eve" is attested in Old English.[40] The word hallowe[']en comes from the Scottish form of All Hallows' Eve (the evening before All Hallows' Day):[41] even is the Scots term for "eve" or "evening",[42] and is contracted to e'en or een;[43] (All) Hallow(s) E(v)en became Hallowe'en.
History
Christian origins and historic customs
Halloween is thought to have influences from Christian beliefs and practices.[44][45] The English word 'Halloween' comes from "All Hallows' Eve", being the evening before the Christian holy days of All Hallows' Day (All Saints' Day) on 1 November and All Souls' Day on 2 November.[46] Since the time of the early Church,[47] major feasts in Christianity (such as Christmas, Easter and Pentecost) had vigils that began the night before, as did the feast of All Hallows'.[48][44] These three days are collectively called Allhallowtide and are a time when Western Christians honour all saints and pray for recently departed souls who have yet to reach Heaven. Commemorations of all saints and martyrs were held by several churches on various dates, mostly in springtime.[49] In 4th-century Roman Edessa it was held on 13 May, and on 13 May 609, Pope Boniface IV re-dedicated the Pantheon in Rome to "St Mary and all martyrs".[50] This was the date of Lemuria, an ancient Roman festival of the dead.[51]
In the 8th century, Pope Gregory III (731–741) founded an oratory in St Peter's for the relics "of the holy apostles and of all saints, martyrs and confessors".[44][52] Some sources say it was dedicated on 1 November,[53] while others say it was on Palm Sunday in April 732.[54][55] By 800, there is evidence that churches in Ireland[56] and Northumbria were holding a feast commemorating all saints on 1 November.[57] Alcuin of Northumbria, a member of Charlemagne's court, may then have introduced this 1 November date in the Frankish Empire.[58] In 835, it became the official date in the Frankish Empire.[57] Some suggest this was due to Celtic influence, while others suggest it was a Germanic idea,[57] although it is claimed that both Germanic and Celtic-speaking peoples commemorated the dead at the beginning of winter.[59] They may have seen it as the most fitting time to do so, as it is a time of 'dying' in nature.[57][59] It is also suggested the change was made on the "practical grounds that Rome in summer could not accommodate the great number of pilgrims who flocked to it", and perhaps because of public health concerns over Roman Fever, which claimed a number of lives during Rome's sultry summers.[60][44]
On All Hallows' Eve, Christians in some parts of the world visit cemeteries to pray and place flowers and candles on the graves of their loved ones.[61] Top: Christians in Bangladesh lighting candles on the headstone of a relative. Bottom: Lutheran Christians praying and lighting candles in front of the central crucifix of a graveyard.
By the end of the 12th century, the celebration had become known as the holy days of obligation in Western Christianity and involved such traditions as ringing church bells for souls in purgatory. It was also "customary for criers dressed in black to parade the streets, ringing a bell of mournful sound and calling on all good Christians to remember the poor souls".[62] The Allhallowtide custom of baking and sharing soul cakes for all christened souls,[63] has been suggested as the origin of trick-or-treating.[64] The custom dates back at least as far as the 15th century[65] and was found in parts of England, Wales, Flanders, Bavaria and Austria.[66] Groups of poor people, often children, would go door-to-door during Allhallowtide, collecting soul cakes, in exchange for praying for the dead, especially the souls of the givers' friends and relatives. This was called "souling".[65][67][68] Soul cakes were also offered for the souls themselves to eat,[66] or the 'soulers' would act as their representatives.[69] As with the Lenten tradition of hot cross buns, soul cakes were often marked with a cross, indicating they were baked as alms.[70] Shakespeare mentions souling in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593).[71] While souling, Christians would carry "lanterns made of hollowed-out turnips", which could have originally represented souls of the dead;[72][73] jack-o'-lanterns were used to ward off evil spirits.[74][75] On All Saints' and All Souls' Day during the 19th century, candles were lit in homes in Ireland,[76] Flanders, Bavaria, and in Tyrol, where they were called "soul lights",[77] that served "to guide the souls back to visit their earthly homes".[78] In many of these places, candles were also lit at graves on All Souls' Day.[77] In Brittany, libations of milk were poured on the graves of kinfolk,[66] or food would be left overnight on the dinner table for the returning souls;[77] a custom also found in Tyrol and parts of Italy.[79][77]
Christian minister Prince Sorie Conteh linked the wearing of costumes to the belief in vengeful ghosts: "It was traditionally believed that the souls of the departed wandered the earth until All Saints' Day, and All Hallows' Eve provided one last chance for the dead to gain vengeance on their enemies before moving to the next world. In order to avoid being recognized by any soul that might be seeking such vengeance, people would don masks or costumes".[80] In the Middle Ages, churches in Europe that were too poor to display relics of martyred saints at Allhallowtide let parishioners dress up as saints instead.[81][82] Some Christians observe this custom at Halloween today.[83] Lesley Bannatyne believes this could have been a Christianization of an earlier pagan custom.[84] Many Christians in mainland Europe, especially in France, believed "that once a year, on Hallowe'en, the dead of the churchyards rose for one wild, hideous carnival" known as the danse macabre, which was often depicted in church decoration.[85] Christopher Allmand and Rosamond McKitterick write in The New Cambridge Medieval History that the danse macabre urged Christians "not to forget the end of all earthly things".[86] The danse macabre was sometimes enacted in European village pageants and court masques, with people "dressing up as corpses from various strata of society", and this may be the origin of Halloween costume parties.[87][88][89][72]
In Britain, these customs came under attack during the Reformation, as Protestants berated purgatory as a "popish" doctrine incompatible with the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. State-sanctioned ceremonies associated with the intercession of saints and prayer for souls in purgatory were abolished during the Elizabethan reform, though All Hallow's Day remained in the English liturgical calendar to "commemorate saints as godly human beings".[90] For some Nonconformist Protestants, the theology of All Hallows' Eve was redefined; "souls cannot be journeying from Purgatory on their way to Heaven, as Catholics frequently believe and assert. Instead, the so-called ghosts are thought to be in actuality evil spirits".[91] Other Protestants believed in an intermediate state known as Hades (Bosom of Abraham).[92] In some localities, Catholics and Protestants continued souling, candlelit processions, or ringing church bells for the dead;[46][93] the Anglican church eventually suppressed this bell-ringing.[94] Mark Donnelly, a professor of medieval archaeology, and historian Daniel Diehl write that "barns and homes were blessed to protect people and livestock from the effect of witches, who were believed to accompany the malignant spirits as they traveled the earth".[95] After 1605, Hallowtide was eclipsed in England by Guy Fawkes Night (5 November), which appropriated some of its customs.[96] In England, the ending of official ceremonies related to the intercession of saints led to the development of new, unofficial Hallowtide customs. In 18th–19th century rural Lancashire, Catholic families gathered on hills on the night of All Hallows' Eve. One held a bunch of burning straw on a pitchfork while the rest knelt around him, praying for the souls of relatives and friends until the flames went out. This was known as teen'lay.[97] There was a similar custom in Hertfordshire, and the lighting of 'tindle' fires in Derbyshire.[98] Some suggested these 'tindles' were originally lit to "guide the poor souls back to earth".[99] In Scotland and Ireland, old Allhallowtide customs that were at odds with Reformed teaching were not suppressed as they "were important to the life cycle and rites of passage of local communities" and curbing them would have been difficult.[22]
In parts of Italy until the 15th century, families left a meal out for the ghosts of relatives, before leaving for church services.[79] In 19th-century Italy, churches staged "theatrical re-enactments of scenes from the lives of the saints" on All Hallow's Day, with "participants represented by realistic wax figures".[79] In 1823, the graveyard of Holy Spirit Hospital in Rome presented a scene in which bodies of those who recently died were arrayed around a wax statue of an angel who pointed upward towards heaven.[79] In the same country, "parish priests went house-to-house, asking for small gifts of food which they shared among themselves throughout that night".[79] In Spain, they continue to bake special pastries called "bones of the holy" (Spanish: Huesos de Santo) and set them on graves.[100] At cemeteries in Spain and France, as well as in Latin America, priests lead Christian processions and services during Allhallowtide, after which people keep an all night vigil.[101] In 19th-century San Sebastián, there was a procession to the city cemetery at Allhallowtide, an event that drew beggars who "appeal[ed] to the tender recollectons of one's deceased relations and friends" for sympathy.[102]
Gaelic folk influence
An early 20th-century Irish Halloween mask displayed at the Museum of Country Life
Today's Halloween customs are thought to have been influenced by folk customs and beliefs from the Celtic-speaking countries, some of which are believed to have pagan roots.[103] Jack Santino, a folklorist, writes that "there was throughout Ireland an uneasy truce existing between customs and beliefs associated with Christianity and those associated with religions that were Irish before Christianity arrived".[104] The origins of Halloween customs are typically linked to the Gaelic festival Samhain.[105]
Samhain is one of the quarter days in the medieval Gaelic calendar and has been celebrated on 31 October – 1 November[106] in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man.[107][108] A kindred festival has been held by the Brittonic Celts, called Calan Gaeaf in Wales, Kalan Gwav in Cornwall and Kalan Goañv in Brittany; a name meaning "first day of winter". For the Celts, the day ended and began at sunset; thus the festival begins the evening before 1 November by modern reckoning.[109] Samhain is mentioned in some of the earliest Irish literature. The names have been used by historians to refer to Celtic Halloween customs up until the 19th century,[110] and are still the Gaelic and Welsh names for Halloween.
Snap-Apple Night, painted by Daniel Maclise in 1833, shows people feasting and playing divination games on Halloween in Ireland.[111]
Samhain marked the end of the harvest season and beginning of winter or the 'darker half' of the year.[112][113] It was seen as a liminal time, when the boundary between this world and the Otherworld thinned. This meant the Aos Sí, the 'spirits' or 'fairies', could more easily come into this world and were particularly active.[114][115] Most scholars see them as "degraded versions of ancient gods [...] whose power remained active in the people's minds even after they had been officially replaced by later religious beliefs".[116] They were both respected and feared, with individuals often invoking the protection of God when approaching their dwellings.[117][118] At Samhain, the Aos Sí were appeased to ensure the people and livestock survived the winter. Offerings of food and drink, or portions of the crops, were left outside for them.[119][120][121] The souls of the dead were also said to revisit their homes seeking hospitality.[122] Places were set at the dinner table and by the fire to welcome them.[123] The belief that the souls of the dead return home on one night of the year and must be appeased seems to have ancient origins and is found in many cultures.[66] In 19th century Ireland, "candles would be lit and prayers formally offered for the souls of the dead. After this the eating, drinking, and games would begin".[124]
Throughout Ireland and Britain, especially in the Celtic-speaking regions, the household festivities included divination rituals and games intended to foretell one's future, especially regarding death and marriage.[125] Apples and nuts were often used, and customs included apple bobbing, nut roasting, scrying or mirror-gazing, pouring molten lead or egg whites into water, dream interpretation, and others.[126] Special bonfires were lit and there were rituals involving them. Their flames, smoke, and ashes were deemed to have protective and cleansing powers.[112] In some places, torches lit from the bonfire were carried sunwise around homes and fields to protect them.[110] It is suggested the fires were a kind of imitative or sympathetic magic – they mimicked the Sun and held back the decay and darkness of winter.[123][127][128] They were also used for divination and to ward off evil spirits.[74] In Scotland, these bonfires and divination games were banned by the church elders in some parishes.[129] In Wales, bonfires were also lit to "prevent the souls of the dead from falling to earth".[130] Later, these bonfires "kept away the devil".[131]
photograph
A plaster cast of a traditional Irish Halloween turnip (rutabaga) lantern on display in the Museum of Country Life, Ireland[132]
From at least the 16th century,[133] the festival included mumming and guising in Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man and Wales.[134] This involved people going house-to-house in costume (or in disguise), usually reciting verses or songs in exchange for food. It may have originally been a tradition whereby people impersonated the Aos Sí, or the souls of the dead, and received offerings on their behalf, similar to 'souling'. Impersonating these beings, or wearing a disguise, was also believed to protect oneself from them.[135] In parts of southern Ireland, the guisers included a hobby horse. A man dressed as a Láir Bhán (white mare) led youths house-to-house reciting verses – some of which had pagan overtones – in exchange for food. If the household donated food it could expect good fortune from the 'Muck Olla'; not doing so would bring misfortune.[136] In Scotland, youths went house-to-house with masked, painted or blackened faces, often threatening to do mischief if they were not welcomed.[134] F. Marian McNeill suggests the ancient festival included people in costume representing the spirits, and that faces were marked or blackened with ashes from the sacred bonfire.[133] In parts of Wales, men went about dressed as fearsome beings called gwrachod.[134] In the late 19th and early 20th century, young people in Glamorgan and Orkney cross-dressed.[134]
Elsewhere in Europe, mumming was part of other festivals, but in the Celtic-speaking regions, it was "particularly appropriate to a night upon which supernatural beings were said to be abroad and could be imitated or warded off by human wanderers".[134] From at least the 18th century, "imitating malignant spirits" led to playing pranks in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. Wearing costumes and playing pranks at Halloween did not spread to England until the 20th century.[134] Pranksters used hollowed-out turnips or mangel wurzels as lanterns, often carved with grotesque faces.[134] By those who made them, the lanterns were variously said to represent the spirits,[134] or used to ward off evil spirits.[137][138] They were common in parts of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands in the 19th century,[134] as well as in Somerset (see Punkie Night). In the 20th century they spread to other parts of Britain and became generally known as jack-o'-lanterns.[134]
Spread to North America
The annual New York Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, is the world's largest Halloween parade, with millions of spectators annually, and has its roots in New York’s queer community.[139]
Lesley Bannatyne and Cindy Ott write that Anglican colonists in the southern United States and Catholic colonists in Maryland "recognized All Hallow's Eve in their church calendars",[140][141] although the Puritans of New England strongly opposed the holiday, along with other traditional celebrations of the established Church, including Christmas.[142] Almanacs of the late 18th and early 19th century give no indication that Halloween was widely celebrated in North America.[22]
It was not until after mass Irish and Scottish immigration in the 19th century that Halloween became a major holiday in America.[22] Most American Halloween traditions were inherited from the Irish and Scots,[23][143] though "In Cajun areas, a nocturnal Mass was said in cemeteries on Halloween night. Candles that had been blessed were placed on graves, and families sometimes spent the entire night at the graveside".[144] Originally confined to these immigrant communities, it was gradually assimilated into mainstream society and was celebrated coast to coast by people of all social, racial, and religious backgrounds by the early 20th century.[145] Then, through American influence, these Halloween traditions spread to many other countries by the late 20th and early 21st century, including to mainland Europe and some parts of the Far East.[24][25][146]
Symbols
At Halloween, yards, public spaces, and some houses may be decorated with traditionally macabre symbols including skeletons, ghosts, cobwebs, headstones, and scary looking witches.
Development of artifacts and symbols associated with Halloween formed over time. Jack-o'-lanterns are traditionally carried by guisers on All Hallows' Eve in order to frighten evil spirits.[73][147] There is a popular Irish Christian folktale associated with the jack-o'-lantern,[148] which in folklore is said to represent a "soul who has been denied entry into both heaven and hell":[149]
On route home after a night's drinking, Jack encounters the Devil and tricks him into climbing a tree. A quick-thinking Jack etches the sign of the cross into the bark, thus trapping the Devil. Jack strikes a bargain that Satan can never claim his soul. After a life of sin, drink, and mendacity, Jack is refused entry to heaven when he dies. Keeping his promise, the Devil refuses to let Jack into hell and throws a live coal straight from the fires of hell at him. It was a cold night, so Jack places the coal in a hollowed out turnip to stop it from going out, since which time Jack and his lantern have been roaming looking for a place to rest.[150]
In Ireland and Scotland, the turnip has traditionally been carved during Halloween,[151][152] but immigrants to North America used the native pumpkin, which is both much softer and much larger, making it easier to carve than a turnip.[151] The American tradition of carving pumpkins is recorded in 1837[153] and was originally associated with harvest time in general, not becoming specifically associated with Halloween until the mid-to-late 19th century.[154]
Decorated house in Weatherly, Pennsylvania
The modern imagery of Halloween comes from many sources, including Christian eschatology, national customs, works of Gothic and horror literature (such as the novels Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus and Dracula) and classic horror films such as Frankenstein (1931) and The Mummy (1932).[155][156] Imagery of the skull, a reference to Golgotha in the Christian tradition, serves as "a reminder of death and the transitory quality of human life" and is consequently found in memento mori and vanitas compositions;[157] skulls have therefore been commonplace in Halloween, which touches on this theme.[158] Traditionally, the back walls of churches are "decorated with a depiction of the Last Judgment, complete with graves opening and the dead rising, with a heaven filled with angels and a hell filled with devils", a motif that has permeated the observance of this triduum.[159] One of the earliest works on the subject of Halloween is from Scottish poet John Mayne, who, in 1780, made note of pranks at Halloween; "What fearfu' pranks ensue!", as well as the supernatural associated with the night, "bogles" (ghosts),[160] influencing Robert Burns' "Halloween" (1785).[161] Elements of the autumn season, such as pumpkins, corn husks, and scarecrows, are also prevalent. Homes are often decorated with these types of symbols around Halloween. Halloween imagery includes themes of death, evil, and mythical monsters.[162] Black cats, which have been long associated with witches, are also a common symbol of Halloween. Black, orange, and sometimes purple are Halloween's traditional colors.[163]
Trick-or-treating and guising
Main article: Trick-or-treating
Trick-or-treaters in Sweden
Trick-or-treating is a customary celebration for children on Halloween. Children go in costume from house to house, asking for treats such as candy or sometimes money, with the question, "Trick or treat?" The word "trick" implies a "threat" to perform mischief on the homeowners or their property if no treat is given.[64] The practice is said to have roots in the medieval practice of mumming, which is closely related to souling.[164] John Pymm wrote that "many of the feast days associated with the presentation of mumming plays were celebrated by the Christian Church."[165] These feast days included All Hallows' Eve, Christmas, Twelfth Night and Shrove Tuesday.[166][167] Mumming practiced in Germany, Scandinavia and other parts of Europe,[168] involved masked persons in fancy dress who "paraded the streets and entered houses to dance or play dice in silence".[169]
Girl in a Halloween costume in 1928, Ontario, Canada, the same province where the Scottish Halloween custom of guising was first recorded in North America
In England, from the medieval period,[170] up until the 1930s,[171] people practiced the Christian custom of souling on Halloween, which involved groups of soulers, both Protestant and Catholic,[93] going from parish to parish, begging the rich for soul cakes, in exchange for praying for the souls of the givers and their friends.[67] In the Philippines, the practice of souling is called Pangangaluluwa and is practiced on All Hallow's Eve among children in rural areas.[26] People drape themselves in white cloths to represent souls and then visit houses, where they sing in return for prayers and sweets.[26]
In Scotland and Ireland, guising – children disguised in costume going from door to door for food or coins – is a traditional Halloween custom.[172] It is recorded in Scotland at Halloween in 1895 where masqueraders in disguise carrying lanterns made out of scooped out turnips, visit homes to be rewarded with cakes, fruit, and money.[152][173] In Ireland, the most popular phrase for kids to shout (until the 2000s) was "Help the Halloween Party".[172] The practice of guising at Halloween in North America was first recorded in 1911, where a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, reported children going "guising" around the neighborhood.[174]
American historian and author Ruth Edna Kelley of Massachusetts wrote the first book-length history of Halloween in the US; The Book of Hallowe'en (1919), and references souling in the chapter "Hallowe'en in America".[175] In her book, Kelley touches on customs that arrived from across the Atlantic; "Americans have fostered them, and are making this an occasion something like what it must have been in its best days overseas. All Halloween customs in the United States are borrowed directly or adapted from those of other countries".[176]
While the first reference to "guising" in North America occurs in 1911, another reference to ritual begging on Halloween appears, place unknown, in 1915, with a third reference in Chicago in 1920.[177] The earliest known use in print of the term "trick or treat" appears in 1927, in the Blackie Herald, of Alberta, Canada.[178]
An automobile trunk at a trunk-or-treat event at St. John Lutheran Church and Early Learning Center in Darien, Illinois
The thousands of Halloween postcards produced between the turn of the 20th century and the 1920s commonly show children but not trick-or-treating.[179] Trick-or-treating does not seem to have become a widespread practice in North America until the 1930s, with the first US appearances of the term in 1934,[180] and the first use in a national publication occurring in 1939.[181]
A popular variant of trick-or-treating, known as trunk-or-treating (or Halloween tailgating), occurs when "children are offered treats from the trunks of cars parked in a church parking lot", or sometimes, a school parking lot.[100][182] In a trunk-or-treat event, the trunk (boot) of each automobile is decorated with a certain theme,[183] such as those of children's literature, movies, scripture, and job roles.[184] Trunk-or-treating has grown in popularity due to its perception as being more safe than going door to door, a point that resonates well with parents, as well as the fact that it "solves the rural conundrum in which homes [are] built a half-mile apart".[185][186]
Costumes
Main article: Halloween costume
Halloween costumes were traditionally modeled after figures such as vampires, ghosts, skeletons, scary looking witches, and devils.[64] Over time, the costume selection extended to include popular characters from fiction, celebrities, and generic archetypes such as ninjas and princesses.
Halloween shop in Derry, Northern Ireland, selling masks
Dressing up in costumes and going "guising" was prevalent in Scotland and Ireland at Halloween by the late 19th century.[152] A Scottish term, the tradition is called "guising" because of the disguises or costumes worn by the children.[173] In Ireland and Scotland, the masks are known as 'false faces',[38][187] a term recorded in Ayr, Scotland in 1890 by a Scot describing guisers: "I had mind it was Halloween . . . the wee callans were at it already, rinning aboot wi’ their fause-faces (false faces) on and their bits o’ turnip lanthrons (lanterns) in their haun (hand)".[38] Costuming became popular for Halloween parties in the US in the early 20th century, as often for adults as for children, and when trick-or-treating was becoming popular in Canada and the US in the 1920s and 1930s.[178][188]
Eddie J. Smith, in his book Halloween, Hallowed is Thy Name, offers a religious perspective to the wearing of costumes on All Hallows' Eve, suggesting that by dressing up as creatures "who at one time caused us to fear and tremble", people are able to poke fun at Satan "whose kingdom has been plundered by our Saviour". Images of skeletons and the dead are traditional decorations used as memento mori.[189][190]
"Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF" is a fundraising program to support UNICEF,[64] a United Nations Programme that provides humanitarian aid to children in developing countries. Started as a local event in a Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood in 1950 and expanded nationally in 1952, the program involves the distribution of small boxes by schools (or in modern times, corporate sponsors like Hallmark, at their licensed stores) to trick-or-treaters, in which they can solicit small-change donations from the houses they visit. It is estimated that children have collected more than $118 million for UNICEF since its inception. In Canada, in 2006, UNICEF decided to discontinue their Halloween collection boxes, citing safety and administrative concerns; after consultation with schools, they instead redesigned the program.[191][192]
The yearly New York's Village Halloween Parade was begun in 1974; it is the world's largest Halloween parade and America's only major nighttime parade, attracting more than 60,000 costumed participants, two million spectators, and a worldwide television audience.[193]
Since the late 2010s, ethnic stereotypes as costumes have increasingly come under scrutiny in the United States.[194] Such and other potentially offensive costumes have been met with increasing public disapproval.[195][196]
Pet costumes
According to a 2018 report from the National Retail Federation, 30 million Americans will spend an estimated $480 million on Halloween costumes for their pets in 2018. This is up from an estimated $200 million in 2010. The most popular costumes for pets are the pumpkin, followed by the hot dog, and the bumblebee in third place.[197]
Games and other activities
In this 1904 Halloween greeting card, divination is depicted: the young woman looking into a mirror in a darkened room hopes to catch a glimpse of her future husband.
There are several games traditionally associated with Halloween. Some of these games originated as divination rituals or ways of foretelling one's future, especially regarding death, marriage and children. During the Middle Ages, these rituals were done by a "rare few" in rural communities as they were considered to be "deadly serious" practices.[198] In recent centuries, these divination games have been "a common feature of the household festivities" in Ireland and Britain.[125] They often involve apples and hazelnuts. In Celtic mythology, apples were strongly associated with the Otherworld and immortality, while hazelnuts were associated with divine wisdom.[199] Some also suggest that they derive from Roman practices in celebration of Pomona.[64]
Children bobbing for apples at Hallowe'en
The following activities were a common feature of Halloween in Ireland and Britain during the 17th–20th centuries. Some have become more widespread and continue to be popular today. One common game is apple bobbing or dunking (which may be called "dooking" in Scotland)[200] in which apples float in a tub or a large basin of water and the participants must use only their teeth to remove an apple from the basin. A variant of dunking involves kneeling on a chair, holding a fork between the teeth and trying to drive the fork into an apple. Another common game involves hanging up treacle or syrup-coated scones by strings; these must be eaten without using hands while they remain attached to the string, an activity that inevitably leads to a sticky face. Another once-popular game involves hanging a small wooden rod from the ceiling at head height, with a lit candle on one end and an apple hanging from the other. The rod is spun round and everyone takes turns to try to catch the apple with their teeth.[201]
Image from the Book of Hallowe'en (1919) showing several Halloween activities, such as nut roasting
Several of the traditional activities from Ireland and Britain involve foretelling one's future partner or spouse. An apple would be peeled in one long strip, then the peel tossed over the shoulder. The peel is believed to land in the shape of the first letter of the future spouse's name.[202][203] Two hazelnuts would be roasted near a fire; one named for the person roasting them and the other for the person they desire. If the nuts jump away from the heat, it is a bad sign, but if the nuts roast quietly it foretells a good match.[204][205] A salty oatmeal bannock would be baked; the person would eat it in three bites and then go to bed in silence without anything to drink. This is said to result in a dream in which their future spouse offers them a drink to quench their thirst.[206] Unmarried women were told that if they sat in a darkened room and gazed into a mirror on Halloween night, the face of their future husband would appear in the mirror.[207] The custom was widespread enough to be commemorated on greeting cards[208] from the late 19th century and early 20th century.
Another popular Irish game was known as púicíní ("blindfolds"); a person would be blindfolded and then would choose between several saucers. The item in the saucer would provide a hint as to their future: a ring would mean that they would marry soon; clay, that they would die soon, perhaps within the year; water, that they would emigrate; rosary beads, that they would take Holy Orders (become a nun, priest, monk, etc.); a coin, that they would become rich; a bean, that they would be poor.[209][210][211][212] The game features prominently in the James Joyce short story "Clay" (1914).[213][214][215]
In Ireland and Scotland, items would be hidden in food – usually a cake, barmbrack, cranachan, champ or colcannon – and portions of it served out at random. A person's future would be foretold by the item they happened to find; for example, a ring meant marriage and a coin meant wealth.[216]
Up until the 19th century, the Halloween bonfires were also used for divination in parts of Scotland, Wales and Brittany. When the fire died down, a ring of stones would be laid in the ashes, one for each person. In the morning, if any stone was mislaid it was said that the person it represented would not live out the year.[110]
Telling ghost stories, listening to Halloween-themed songs and watching horror films are common fixtures of Halloween parties. Episodes of television series and Halloween-themed specials (with the specials usually aimed at children) are commonly aired on or before Halloween, while new horror films are often released before Halloween to take advantage of the holiday.
Haunted attractions
Main article: Haunted attraction (simulated)
Humorous tombstones in front of a house in California
Humorous display window in Historic 25th Street, Ogden, Utah
Haunted attractions are entertainment venues designed to thrill and scare patrons. Most attractions are seasonal Halloween businesses that may include haunted houses, corn mazes, and hayrides,[217] and the level of sophistication of the effects has risen as the industry has grown.
The first recorded purpose-built haunted attraction was the Orton and Spooner Ghost House, which opened in 1915 in Liphook, England. This attraction actually most closely resembles a carnival fun house, powered by steam.[218][219] The House still exists, in the Hollycombe Steam Collection.
It was during the 1930s, about the same time as trick-or-treating, that Halloween-themed haunted houses first began to appear in America. It was in the late 1950s that haunted houses as a major attraction began to appear, focusing first on California. Sponsored by the Children's Health Home Junior Auxiliary, the San Mateo Haunted House opened in 1957. The San Bernardino Assistance League Haunted House opened in 1958. Home haunts began appearing across the country during 1962 and 1963. In 1964, the San Manteo Haunted House opened, as well as the Children's Museum Haunted House in Indianapolis.[220]
The haunted house as an American cultural icon can be attributed to the opening of The Haunted Mansion in Disneyland on 12 August 1969.[221] Knott's Berry Farm began hosting its own Halloween night attraction, Knott's Scary Farm, which opened in 1973.[222] Evangelical Christians adopted a form of these attractions by opening one of the first "hell houses" in 1972.[223]
The first Halloween haunted house run by a nonprofit organization was produced in 1970 by the Sycamore-Deer Park Jaycees in Clifton, Ohio. It was cosponsored by WSAI, an AM radio station broadcasting out of Cincinnati, Ohio. It was last produced in 1982.[224] Other Jaycees followed suit with their own versions after the success of the Ohio house. The March of Dimes copyrighted a "Mini haunted house for the March of Dimes" in 1976 and began fundraising through their local chapters by conducting haunted houses soon after. Although they apparently quit supporting this type of event nationally sometime in the 1980s, some March of Dimes haunted houses have persisted until today.[225]
On the evening of 11 May 1984, in Jackson Township, New Jersey, the Haunted Castle (Six Flags Great Adventure) caught fire. As a result of the fire, eight teenagers perished.[226] The backlash to the tragedy was a tightening of regulations relating to safety, building codes and the frequency of inspections of attractions nationwide. The smaller venues, especially the nonprofit attractions, were unable to compete financially, and the better funded commercial enterprises filled the vacuum.[227][228] Facilities that were once able to avoid regulation because they were considered to be temporary installations now had to adhere to the stricter codes required of permanent attractions.[229][230][231]
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, theme parks entered the business seriously. Six Flags Fright Fest began in 1986 and Universal Studios Florida began Halloween Horror Nights in 1991. Knott's Scary Farm experienced a surge in attendance in the 1990s as a result of America's obsession with Halloween as a cultural event. Theme parks have played a major role in globalizing the holiday. Universal Studios Singapore and Universal Studios Japan both participate, while Disney now mounts Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party events at its parks in Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo, as well as in the United States.[232] The theme park haunts are by far the largest, both in scale and attendance.[233]
Food
Pumpkins for sale during Halloween
On All Hallows' Eve, many Western Christian denominations encourage abstinence from meat, giving rise to a variety of vegetarian foods associated with this day.[234]
A candy apple
Because in the Northern Hemisphere Halloween comes in the wake of the yearly apple harvest, candy apples (known as toffee apples outside North America), caramel apples or taffy apples are common Halloween treats made by rolling whole apples in a sticky sugar syrup, sometimes followed by rolling them in nuts.
At one time, candy apples were commonly given to trick-or-treating children, but the practice rapidly waned in the wake of widespread rumors that some individuals were embedding items like pins and razor blades in the apples in the United States.[235] While there is evidence of such incidents,[236] relative to the degree of reporting of such cases, actual cases involving malicious acts are extremely rare and have never resulted in serious injury. Nonetheless, many parents assumed that such heinous practices were rampant because of the mass media. At the peak of the hysteria, some hospitals offered free X-rays of children's Halloween hauls in order to find evidence of tampering. Virtually all of the few known candy poisoning incidents involved parents who poisoned their own children's candy.[237]
One custom that persists in modern-day Ireland is the baking (or more often nowadays, the purchase) of a barmbrack (Irish: báirín breac), which is a light fruitcake, into which a plain ring, a coin, and other charms are placed before baking.[238] It is considered fortunate to be the lucky one who finds it.[238] It has also been said that those who get a ring will find their true love in the ensuing year. This is similar to the tradition of king cake at the festival of Epiphany.
A jack-o'-lantern Halloween cake with a witches hat
List of foods associated with Halloween:
Barmbrack (Ireland)
Bonfire toffee (Great Britain)
Candy apples/toffee apples (Great Britain and Ireland)
Candy apples, candy corn, candy pumpkins (North America)
Chocolate
Monkey nuts (peanuts in their shells) (Ireland and Scotland)
Caramel apples
Caramel corn
Colcannon (Ireland; see below)
Halloween cake
Sweets/candy
Novelty candy shaped like skulls, pumpkins, bats, worms, etc.
Roasted pumpkin seeds
Roasted sweet corn
Soul cakes
Pumpkin Pie
Christian religious observances
The Vigil of All Hallows' is being celebrated at an Episcopal Christian church on Hallowe'en
On Hallowe'en (All Hallows' Eve), in Poland, believers were once taught to pray out loud as they walk through the forests in order that the souls of the dead might find comfort; in Spain, Christian priests in tiny villages toll their church bells in order to remind their congregants to remember the dead on All Hallows' Eve.[239] In Ireland, and among immigrants in Canada, a custom includes the Christian practice of abstinence, keeping All Hallows' Eve as a meat-free day and serving pancakes or colcannon instead.[240] In Mexico children make an altar to invite the return of the spirits of dead children (angelitos).[241]
The Christian Church traditionally observed Hallowe'en through a vigil. Worshippers prepared themselves for feasting on the following All Saints' Day with prayers and fasting.[242] This church service is known as the Vigil of All Hallows or the Vigil of All Saints;[243][244] an initiative known as Night of Light seeks to further spread the Vigil of All Hallows throughout Christendom.[245][246] After the service, "suitable festivities and entertainments" often follow, as well as a visit to the graveyard or cemetery, where flowers and candles are often placed in preparation for All Hallows' Day.[247][248] In Finland, because so many people visit the cemeteries on All Hallows' Eve to light votive candles there, they "are known as valomeri, or seas of light".[249]
Halloween Scripture Candy with gospel tract
Today, Christian attitudes towards Halloween are diverse. In the Anglican Church, some dioceses have chosen to emphasize the Christian traditions associated with All Hallow's Eve.[250][251] Some of these practices include praying, fasting and attending worship services.[1][2][3]
O LORD our God, increase, we pray thee, and multiply upon us the gifts of thy grace: that we, who do prevent the glorious festival of all thy Saints, may of thee be enabled joyfully to follow them in all virtuous and godly living. Through Jesus Christ, Our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. —Collect of the Vigil of All Saints, The Anglican Breviary[252]
Votive candles in the Halloween section of Walmart
Other Protestant Christians also celebrate All Hallows' Eve as Reformation Day, a day to remember the Protestant Reformation, alongside All Hallow's Eve or independently from it.[253] This is because Martin Luther is said to have nailed his Ninety-five Theses to All Saints' Church in Wittenberg on All Hallows' Eve.[254] Often, "Harvest Festivals" or "Reformation Festivals" are held on All Hallows' Eve, in which children dress up as Bible characters or Reformers.[255] In addition to distributing candy to children who are trick-or-treating on Hallowe'en, many Christians also provide gospel tracts to them. One organization, the American Tract Society, stated that around 3 million gospel tracts are ordered from them alone for Hallowe'en celebrations.[256] Others order Halloween-themed Scripture Candy to pass out to children on this day.[257][258]
Belizean children dressed up as Biblical figures and Christian saints
Some Christians feel concerned about the modern celebration of Halloween because they feel it trivializes – or celebrates – paganism, the occult, or other practices and cultural phenomena deemed incompatible with their beliefs.[259] Father Gabriele Amorth, an exorcist in Rome, has said, "if English and American children like to dress up as witches and devils on one night of the year that is not a problem. If it is just a game, there is no harm in that."[260] In more recent years, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has organized a "Saint Fest" on Halloween.[261] Similarly, many contemporary Protestant churches view Halloween as a fun event for children, holding events in their churches where children and their parents can dress up, play games, and get candy for free. To these Christians, Halloween holds no threat to the spiritual lives of children: being taught about death and mortality, and the ways of the Celtic ancestors actually being a valuable life lesson and a part of many of their parishioners' heritage.[262] Christian minister Sam Portaro wrote that Halloween is about using "humor and ridicule to confront the power of death".[263]
In the Roman Catholic Church, Halloween's Christian connection is acknowledged, and Halloween celebrations are common in many Catholic parochial schools in the United States.[264][265] Many fundamentalist and evangelical churches use "Hell houses" and comic-style tracts in order to make use of Halloween's popularity as an opportunity for evangelism.[266] Others consider Halloween to be completely incompatible with the Christian faith due to its putative origins in the Festival of the Dead celebration.[267] Indeed, even though Eastern Orthodox Christians observe All Hallows' Day on the First Sunday after Pentecost, The Eastern Orthodox Church recommends the observance of Vespers or a Paraklesis on the Western observance of All Hallows' Eve, out of the pastoral need to provide an alternative to popular celebrations.[268]
Analogous celebrations and perspectives
Judaism
According to Alfred J. Kolatch in the Second Jewish Book of Why, in Judaism, Halloween is not permitted by Jewish Halakha because it violates Leviticus 18:3, which forbids Jews from partaking in gentile customs. Many Jews observe Yizkor communally four times a year, which is vaguely similar to the observance of Allhallowtide in Christianity, in the sense that prayers are said for both "martyrs and for one's own family".[269] Nevertheless, many American Jews celebrate Halloween, disconnected from its Christian origins.[270] Reform Rabbi Jeffrey Goldwasser has said that "There is no religious reason why contemporary Jews should not celebrate Halloween" while Orthodox Rabbi Michael Broyde has argued against Jews' observing the holiday.[271] Purim has sometimes been compared to Halloween, in part due to some observants wearing costumes, especially of Biblical figures described in the Purim narrative.[272]
Islam
Sheikh Idris Palmer, author of A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam, has ruled that Muslims should not participate in Halloween, stating that "participation in Halloween is worse than participation in Christmas, Easter, ... it is more sinful than congratulating the Christians for their prostration to the crucifix".[273] It has also been ruled to be haram by the National Fatwa Council of Malaysia because of its alleged pagan roots stating "Halloween is celebrated using a humorous theme mixed with horror to entertain and resist the spirit of death that influence humans".[274][275] Dar Al-Ifta Al-Missriyyah disagrees provided the celebration is not referred to as an 'eid' and that behaviour remains in line with Islamic principles.[276]
Hinduism
Hindus remember the dead during the festival of Pitru Paksha, during which Hindus pay homage to and perform a ceremony "to keep the souls of their ancestors at rest". It is celebrated in the Hindu month of Bhadrapada, usually in mid-September.[277] The celebration of the Hindu festival Diwali sometimes conflicts with the date of Halloween; but some Hindus choose to participate in the popular customs of Halloween.[278] Other Hindus, such as Soumya Dasgupta, have opposed the celebration on the grounds that Western holidays like Halloween have "begun to adversely affect our indigenous festivals".[279]
Neopaganism
There is no consistent rule or view on Halloween amongst those who describe themselves as Neopagans or Wiccans. Some Neopagans do not observe Halloween, but instead observe Samhain on 1 November,[280] some neopagans do enjoy Halloween festivities, stating that one can observe both "the solemnity of Samhain in addition to the fun of Halloween". Some neopagans are opposed to the celebration of Hallowe'en, stating that it "trivializes Samhain",[281] and "avoid Halloween, because of the interruptions from trick or treaters".[282] The Manitoban writes that "Wiccans don't officially celebrate Halloween, despite the fact that 31 Oct. will still have a star beside it in any good Wiccan's day planner. Starting at sundown, Wiccans celebrate a holiday known as Samhain. Samhain actually comes from old Celtic traditions and is not exclusive to Neopagan religions like Wicca. While the traditions of this holiday originate in Celtic countries, modern day Wiccans don't try to historically replicate Samhain celebrations. Some traditional Samhain rituals are still practised, but at its core, the period is treated as a time to celebrate darkness and the dead – a possible reason why Samhain can be confused with Halloween celebrations."[280]
Geography
Main article: Geography of Halloween
Halloween display in Kobe, Japan
The traditions and importance of Halloween vary greatly among countries that observe it. In Scotland and Ireland, traditional Halloween customs include children dressing up in costume going "guising", holding parties, while other practices in Ireland include lighting bonfires, and having firework displays.[172][283][284] In Brittany children would play practical jokes by setting candles inside skulls in graveyards to frighten visitors.[285] Mass transatlantic immigration in the 19th century popularized Halloween in North America, and celebration in the United States and Canada has had a significant impact on how the event is observed in other nations.[172] This larger North American influence, particularly in iconic and commercial elements, has extended to places such as Brazil, Ecuador, Chile,[286] Australia,[287] New Zealand,[288] (most) continental Europe, Finland,[289] Japan, and other parts of East Asia." (wikipedia.org)
"A lenticular lens is an array of lenses, designed so that when viewed from slightly different angles, different parts of the image underneath are shown.[1][2][failed verification – see discussion] The most common example is the lenses used in lenticular printing, where the technology is used to give an illusion of depth, or to make images that appear to change or move as the image is viewed from different angles.
Applications
Lenticular printing
Main article: Lenticular printing
Lenticular printing is a multi-step process consisting of creating a lenticular image from at least two existing images, and combining it with a lenticular lens. This process can be used to create various frames of animation (for a motion effect), offsetting the various layers at different increments (for a 3D effect), or simply to show a set of alternate images which may appear to transform into each other.
Corrective lenses
Lenticular lenses are sometimes used as corrective lenses for improving vision. A bifocal lens could be considered a simple example.
Lenticular eyeglass lenses have been employed to correct extreme hyperopia (farsightedness), a condition often created by cataract surgery when lens implants are not possible. To limit the great thickness and weight that such high-power lenses would otherwise require, all the power of the lens is concentrated in a small area in the center. In appearance, such a lens is often described as resembling a fried egg: a hemisphere atop a flat surface. The flat surface or "carrier lens" has little or no power and is there merely to fill up the rest of the eyeglass frame and to hold or "carry" the lenticular portion of the lens. This portion is typically 40 mm (1.6 in) in diameter but may be smaller, as little as 20 mm (0.79 in), in sufficiently high powers. These lenses are generally used for plus (hyperopic) corrections at about 12 diopters or higher. A similar sort of eyeglass lens is the myodisc, sometimes termed a minus lenticular lens, used for very high negative (myopic) corrections. More aesthetic aspheric lens designs are sometimes fitted.[3] A film made of cylindrical lenses molded in a plastic substrate as shown in above picture, can be applied to the inside of standard glasses to correct for diplopia. The film is typically applied to the eye with the good muscle control of direction. Diplopia (also known as double vision) is typically caused by a sixth cranial nerve palsy that prevents full control of the muscles that control the direction the eye is pointed in. These films are defined in the number of degrees of correction that is needed where the higher the degree, the higher the directive correction that is needed.
Lenticular screens
Screens with a molded lenticular surface are frequently used with projection television systems. In this case, the purpose of the lenses is to focus more of the light into a horizontal beam and allow less of the light to escape above and below the plane of the viewer. In this way, the apparent brightness of the image is increased.
Ordinary front-projection screens can also be described as lenticular. In this case, rather than transparent lenses, the shapes formed are tiny curved reflectors. Lenticular screens are most often used for ambient light rejecting projector screens for ultra-short throw projectors.[4] The lenticular structure of the surface reflects the light from the projector to the viewer without reflecting the light from sources above the screen.
3D television
As of 2010, a number of manufacturers were developing auto-stereoscopic high definition 3D televisions, using lenticular lens systems to avoid the need for special spectacles. One of these, Chinese manufacturer TCL, was selling a 42-inch (110 cm) LCD model—the TD-42F—in China for around US$20,000.[5]
In 2021 only specialist manufacturers are making these kinds of display.[6]
Lenticular color motion picture processes
Lenticular lenses were used in early color motion picture processes of the 1920s such as the Keller-Dorian system and Kodacolor. This enabled color pictures with the use of merely monochrome film stock.[7]
Angle of view of a lenticular print
The angle of view of a lenticular print is the range of angles within which the observer can see the entire image. This is determined by the maximum angle at which a ray can leave the image through the correct lenticule.
Angle within the lens
Sq3d-angle-refraction.gif
The diagram at right shows in green the most extreme ray within the lenticular lens that will be refracted correctly by the lens. This ray leaves one edge of an image strip (at the lower right) and exits through the opposite edge of the corresponding lenticule. " (wikipedia.org)
"Lenticular printing is a technology in which lenticular lenses (a technology also used for 3D displays) are used to produce printed images with an illusion of depth, or the ability to change or move as they are viewed from different angles.
Examples include flip and animation effects such as winking eyes, and modern advertising graphics whose messages change depending on the viewing angle.
Colloquial terms for lenticular prints include "flickers", "winkies", "wiggle pictures", and "tilt cards". The trademarks Vari-Vue and Magic Motion are often used for lenticular pictures, without regard to the actual manufacturer.
Process
How a lenticular lens works
Lenticular printing is a multi-step process which consists of creating a lenticular image from at least two images, and placing it behind a lenticular lens. It can be used to create frames of animation, for a motion effect; offsetting the various layers at different increments, for a 3D effect; or simply to show sets of alternative images that appear to transform into each other. Once the images are collected, they are arranged in individual frame files, then digitally combined into a single file in a process called interlacing.
The interlaced image may be printed directly on the back (smooth side) of the lens, or on a substrate (ideally a synthetic paper) which is laminated to the lens. When printing on the backside of the lens, the critical registration of the fine "slices" of interlaced images must be absolutely correct during the lithographic or screen printing process to avoid "ghosting" and poor image definition.
The combined lenticular print shows two or more images by changing the angle from which the print is viewed. If a sequence of images is used, it can even show a short animation.
Though normally produced in sheet form by interlacing simple images or colors throughout the artwork, lenticular images can also be created in roll form with 3D effects or multi-color changes. Alternatively, several images of the same object, taken from slightly different angles, can be used to create a lenticular print with a stereoscopic 3D effect. 3D effects can be achieved only in a lateral (side-by-side) orientation, as each of the viewer's eyes must see them from a slightly different angle to achieve the stereoscopic effect. Other effects, like morphs, motion, and zooms work better (with less ghosting or latent effects) in top-to-bottom orientation, but can be achieved in both orientations.
There are many commercial processes in the manufacture of lenticular images, which can be made from PVC, APET, acrylic, and PETG, as well as other materials. While PETG and APET are the most common, other materials are becoming popular to accommodate outdoor use and special forming due to the increasing use of lenticular images on items such as gift cards. Lithographic lenticular printing allows for the flat side of the lenticular sheet to have ink placed directly onto the lens, while high-resolution photographic lenticulars typically have the image laminated to the lens.[citation needed]
Lenticular images saw a surge in popularity in the first decade of the 21st century, appearing on the cover of the May 2006 issue of Rolling Stone, trading cards, sports posters, and signs in stores that help to attract buyers.[citation needed]
Construction
Images are interlaced on the substrate
Each image is arranged (slicing) into strips, which are then interlaced with one or more similarly arranged images (splicing). These are printed on the back of a piece of plastic, with a series of thin lenses molded into the opposite side. Alternatively, the images can be printed on paper, which is then bonded to the plastic. With the new technology, lenses are printed in the same printing operation as the interlaced image, either on both sides of a flat sheet of transparent material, or on the same side of a sheet of paper, the image being covered with a transparent sheet of plastic or with a layer of transparent, which in turn is printed with several layers of varnish to create the lenses.
The lenses are accurately aligned with the interlaces of the image, so that light reflected off each strip is refracted in a slightly different direction, but the light from all pixels originating from the same original image is sent in the same direction. The end result is that a single eye looking at the print sees a single whole image, but two eyes will see different images, which leads to stereoscopic 3D perception.
Types of lenticular prints
There are three distinct types of lenticular prints, distinguished by how great a change in angle of view is required to change the image:
Transforming prints
Here two or more very different pictures are used, and the lenses are designed to require a relatively large change in angle of view to switch from one image to another. This allows viewers to easily see the original images, since small movements cause no change. Larger movement of the viewer or the print causes the image to flip from one image to another (the "flip effect"). An example of this is the lenticular print of hockey player Mario Tremblay at Centre Mario-Tremblay in Alma, Quebec where he is transformed from a minor hockey playing boy as an Alma Eagle into the professional hockey playing man, four years later, as a Montreal Canadien.[1]
Animated prints
Here the distance between different angles of view is "medium", so that while both eyes usually see the same picture, moving a little bit switches to the next picture in the series. Two or more sequential images are used, with only small differences between each image and the next. This can be used to create an image that moves ("motion effect"), or can create a "zoom" or "morph" effect, in which part of the image expands in size or changes shape as the angle of view changes. The movie poster of the film Species II, shown in this article, is an example of this technique.
Stereoscopic effects
Here the change in viewing angle needed to change images is small, so that each eye sees a slightly different view. This creates a 3D effect without requiring special glasses, using two or more images. For example, the Dolby-Philips Lenticular 3D display produces 28 different images.
Motorized lenticular
With static (non-motorized) lenticular, the viewer either moves the piece or moves past the piece in order to see the graphic effects. With motorized lenticular, a motor moves the graphics behind the lens, enabling the graphic effects while both the viewer and the display remain stationary.
History
Predecessors
Tabula scalata
Main article: Tabula scalata
Corrugated images that change when viewed from different angles predate the development of lenticular printing. A few examples from the paleolithic era exist in French caves.[2][3] Tabula scalata or "turning pictures" were popular in England since the 16th century.[4] Extant double paintings, with two distinct images on a corrugated panel, are known from the 17th century.[5][6]
H.C.J. Deeks used a similar technique with minute vertical corrugations pressed into photographic paper and then exposed to two different images from two different angles.[7] Under a 1906 patent H.C.J. Deeks & Co marketed a Puzzle Post Card or Photochange Post Card. In 1907 a Colorchange Post Card followed, featuring identical pictures on each side of the corrugations that were sprayed with different "liquid pigment or coloring matter" on (parts of) each side.[8]
Barrier grid autostereograms and animation
Main article: Barrier grid animation and stereography
Berthier's diagram: A-B=glass plate, with a-b=opaque lines, P=Picture, O=Eyes, c-n=blocked and allowed views (Le Cosmos 05-1896)
The oldest known publication about using a line sheet as a parallax barrier to produce an autostereogram is found in an article by Auguste Berthier in the French scientific magazine "Le Cosmos" of May 1896.[9] Berthier's idea was hardly noticed, but American inventor Frederic Eugene Ives had more success with his very similar parallax stereogram since 1901. He also patented the technique for a "Changeable sign, picture, &c." in 1903, which showed different pictures from different angles (instead of one stereoscopic image from the right angle and distance). Léon Gaumont introduced Ives' pictures in France and encouraged Eugène Estanave to work on the technique. Estanave patented a barrier grid technique for animated autostereograms. Animated portrait photographs with line sheets were marketed for a while, mostly in the 1910s and 1920s. In the US "Magic Moving Picture" postcards with simple 3 phase animation or changing pictures were marketed after 1906. Maurice Bonnett improved barrier grid autostereography in the 1930s with his relièphographie technique and scanning cameras.
On 11 April 1898 John Jacobson filed an application for US patent No. 624,043 (granted 2 May 1899) for a Stereograph of an interlaced stereoscopic picture and "a transparent mount for said picture having a corrugated or channeled surface".[10] The corrugated lines or channels were not yet really lenticular, but this is the first known autostereogram that used a corrugated transparent surface rather than the opaque lines of most barrier grid stereograms.
Gabriel Lippmann's integral photography
Main article: Integral imaging
French Nobel Prize winning physicist Gabriel Lippmann represented Eugène Estanave at several presentations of Estanave's works at the French Academy of Sciences. On 2 March 1908 Lippmann presented his own ideas for "photographie intégrale", based on insect eyes. He suggested to use a screen of tiny lenses. Spherical segments should be pressed into a sort of film with photographic emulsion on the other side. The screen would be placed inside a lightproof holder and on a tripod for stability. When exposed each tiny lens would function as a camera and record the surroundings from a slightly different angle than neighboring lenses. When developed and lit from behind the lenses should project the life-size image of the recorded subject in space. He could not yet present concrete results in March 1908, but by the end of 1908 he claimed to have exposed some Integral photography plates and to have seen the "resulting single, full-sized image". However, the technique remained experimental since no material or technique seemed to deliver the optical quality desired. At the time of his death in 1921 Lippmann reportedly had a system with only twelve lenses.[11]
Early lenticular methods
On 11 April 1898, John Jacobson filed an application for US patent No. 624,043 (granted 2 May 1899) for a Stereograph of an interlaced stereoscopic picture and "a transparent mount for said picture having a corrugated or channeled surface".[10]
In 1912, Louis Chéron described in his French patent 443,216 a screen with long vertical lenses that would be sufficient for recording "stereoscopic depth and the shifting of the relations of objects to each other as the viewer moved", while he suggested pinholes for integral photography.[11]
In June 1912, Swiss Nobel Prize winning physiologist Walter Rudolf Hess applied for a US patent for a Stereoscopic picture with a "celluloid covering having a surface composed of cylindrical lens elements".[12] US patent 1,128,979 (published 16 February 1915) was one of several patents in different countries he would register for this technique. The company Stereo-Photographie A.G., registered in Zürich in 1914 and 1915, would produce pictures on transparencies through Hess' process. Few examples of these pictures are still known to have survived. They are circa 3 1/6 × 4 inches black and white pictures (with discolored or intentional hues) and labeled on their passe-partouts "Stereo-Photo nach W.R. Hess - Stereo-Photographie A.G. Zürich. Patente: "Schweiz / Deutschland / Frankreich / Italien / England / Oesterreich / Vereinigte Staaten angemeldet". The Société française de photographie has three lenticular "Stereo-photo" plates in their collection, three more were on auction in 2017.[13][11][14]
Herbert E. Ives, son of Frederic Eugene Ives, was one of several researchers who worked on lenticular sheets in the 1920s. These were basically simpler versions of Lippmann's integral photography and had a linear array of small plano-convex cylindrical lenses (lenticules).[15]
The first successful commercial application of the lenticular technique was not used for 3D or motion display but for color movies. Eastman Kodak's 1928 Kodacolor film was based on Keller-Dorian cinematography. It used 16 mm black and white sensitive film embossed with 600 lenses per square inch for use with a filter with RGB stripes.[16] In the 1930s several US patents relating to lenticular techniques were granted, mostly for color film.[17]
On 15 December 1936, Douglas F. Winnek Coffey was granted US patent 2,063,985 (application 24 May 1935) for an "Apparatus for making a composite stereograph".[18] The description does not include changing pictures or animation concepts.
Further history
During World War II, research for military purposes was done into 3D imaging, including lenticular technologies. Mass production of plastics and the technique of injection moulding came about around the same period and enabled commercially viable production of lenticular sheets for novelty toys and advertisements.[19]
Victor Anderson and Vari-Vue
Victor G. Anderson worked for the Sperry Corporation during World War II where 3D imaging was used for military instructional products, for instance on how to use a bomb sight. After the war Anderson started his company Pictorial Productions Inc. A patent application for a Process in the assembling of changeable picture display devices was filed on 1 March 1952 and granted on 3 December 1957 (US patent 2,815,310. Anderson stated in 1996 that the company's first product was the I Like Ike button.[19] The presidential campaign button's image changed from the slogan "I Like Ike" (in black letters on white) into a black and white picture of Ike Eisenhower when viewed from different angles.[20] It was copyrighted on 14 May 1952.[21] In December 1953 the company registered their trademark Vari-Vue.[22] Vari-Vue further popularized lenticular images during the 1950s and 1960s. By the late sixties, the company marketed about two thousand stock products including twelve-inch-square (30 cm) moving pattern and color sheets, large images (many religious), billboards, and novelty toys.[citation needed] The company went bankrupt in 1986.[23]
Xograph
Look magazine of 25 February 1964 introduced the publisher's "parallax panoramagram" technology with 8 million copies of a 10x12 cm black and white card with a photographic 3D image of an Edison bust surrounded by some inventions. A 10 x 12 cm full color picture of a model promoting Kodel followed on 7 April. The technique was soon trademarked as "xograph" by Cowles' daughter company Visual Panographics Inc. Magazines like Look and Venture published xographs until the mid 1970s. Some baseball cards were produced as xographs.[24][25] Images produced by the company ranged from just a few millimeters (0.1 inch) to 28 by 19.5 inches (71 by 50 cm).[citation needed]
Other early companies
In the 1960s, more companies manufactured lenticular products, including Hallmark Cards (registering the Magic Motion trademark in 1964[26]), Reflexa (Nürnberg, Germany), Toppan (Tokyo, Japan) and Dai-Nippon (Japan).[15]
OptiGraphics Corporation of Grand Prairie, Texas[27] was formed in 1970 and—under the guidance of Victor Anderson, working well into his 80s. The company trademarked Magic Motion in 1976.[28] Optigraphics produced the lenticular prizes for Cracker Jack in the 1980s, 7-Eleven Slurpee lenticular sports coins from 1983 to 1987,[29] and in 1986 it produced the first set of 3D traditional baseball cards marketed as Sportflics, which ultimately led to the creation of Pinnacle Brands.[30] In 1999 Performance Companies bought OptiGraphics after Pinnacle Trading Card Company went bankrupt in 1998.[27]
While lenticular images were very popular in the 1960s and 1970s, by the 1980s OptiGraphics was the only significant manufacturer left in the US.[15]
21st century
The techniques for lenticular printing were further improved in the 21st century. Lenticular full motion video effects or "motion print" enabled viewing of up to 60 video frames within a print.
Common and notable products
Political campaign and pop star "flasher" badges
After their first presidential campaign badge I like Ike in 1952, Pictorial Productions Inc. made many more similar political campaign buttons, including presidential campaign badge like Don't blame me! - I voted democratic (1956), John F. Kennedy - The Man for the 60s (1960), I Like Ben (1963) and I'm for Nixon (1968?).[31]
Official "flasher" badges for pop stars like Elvis Presley were manufactured by Vari-Vue at least since 1956,[32] including badges for Beatles, Rolling Stones' and other bands in the 1960s.
Cheerios and Cracker Jack prizes
Pictorial Productions/Vari-Vue produced small animated picture cards for Cheerios in the 1950s, of which founder Victor Anderson claimed to have produced 40 million. He also stated that the cards were originally stuck to the outside of the packaging and were only put inside the boxes after too many cards were stolen before the boxes reached the store shelves.[19]
Many different lenticular "tilt cards" were produced as prizes in Cracker Jack boxes. These were first produced by Vari-Vue (1950s-1970s), later by Toppan Printing, Ltd. (1980s), and Optigraphics Corporation (1980s-1990s).[33]
Novelty toys
In 1958 Victor Anderson patented an Ocular Toy: an eye glass mount with lenticular winking eyes.[34]
Lenticular images were used in many small and cheap plastic toys, often as gumball machine prizes. These include: miniature toy televisions with an animated lenticular screen, charms in the shape of animals with lenticular faces, "flicker rings", etcetera.
In 1960 Takara's Dakkochan - a little plastic golliwog toy with lenticular eyes - originally intended for toddlers, became very popular with Japanese teenagers as a fashion accessory worn around the arm.[35]
Postcards
Around 1966 several companies started producing lenticular postcards. Common themes are winking girls, religious scenes, animals, dioramas with dolls, touristic sites and pin-up models wearing clothes when viewed from one angle and nude when viewed from another angle.
Covers for books, music albums and movies
The lenticular picture on the album cover for the Rolling Stones' 1967 LP Their Satanic Majesties Request was manufactured by Vari-Vue, as well as the postcards and other promotional items that accompanied the release.[36] Other lenticular LP covers include Johnny Cash's The Holy Land (1969)[37] and The Stranglers' The Raven.[38] In the 2010s lenticular covers for LPs became a bit more common, especially for deluxe re-releases.[39]
Saturnalia 1973 LP with lenticular label that switches from "Magical love" to a logo.
In 1973 the band Saturnalia had lenticular labels on their Magical Love picture disc lp.[40]
From around the mid-1990s some lenticular cd covers were produced (mostly for limited editions), including Pet Shop Boys' Alternative (1995) with an image of Chris changing into Neil,[41] The Sacrilicious Sounds of the Supersuckers (1995),[42] Tool's Ænima (1996), Velvet Underground's Loaded 2CD version (1997),[43] Kraftwerk Expo2000 (1999) and David Bowie's Hours (1999).[44] Ministry's 2007 The last sucker had an image of George W. Bush changing into a monstrous, alien-like face.[45]
In the 2010s lenticular covers for movies on DVD and Blu-ray became quite common.
Lenticular covers have also been used as a collectible cover variant for comic books since the 1990s; Marvel, DC, and other publishers have created such covers with animated or 3-D effects.[46]
Lentograph
In August 1967 the trademark Lentograph was filed by Victor Anderson 3D Studios, Inc. (registered in October 1968).[47][48] Lentographs were marketed as relatively large lenticular plates (16 x 12 inches / 12 × 8 inches), often found in an illuminated brass frame. Commonly found are 3D pictures of Paul Cunningham's biblical displays with sculpted figurines in dramatic poses based on paintings (Plate 501-508), a family of teddy bears in a domestic scene, Plate No. 106 Evening Flowers, Plate No. 115 Goldilocks and 3 bears, Plate No. 124 Bijou (a white poodle), Plate No. 121 Midday Respite (a taxidermied young deer in a forest setting), Plate No. 213 Red Riding Hood. Also known are a harbor scene (Plate No. 114), Plate No. 118 Japanese Floral, Plate No. 123 Faustus (a yorky dog) and Plate No. 212 of a covered bridge.[49]
Lenticular postage stamps
In 1967 Bhutan introduced lenticular 3D postage stamps as one of the many unusual stamp designs of the Bhutan Stamp Agency initiated by American businessman Burt Kerr Todd.[50][51] Countries like Ajman, Yemen, Manama, Umm Al Qiwain and North Korea released lenticular stamps in the 1970s. Animated lenticular stamps have been issued since the early 1980s by countries like North Korea.[52]
In 2004 full motion lenticular postage stamps were issued in New Zealand. Over the years many other countries have produced stamps with similar lenticular full motion effects, mostly depicting sport events.[52] In 2010 Communications agency KesselsKramer produced the "Smallest Shortest Film" on a Dutch stamp, directed by Anton Corbijn and featuring actress Carice van Houten.[53]
In 2012, Design Consultancy GBH.London created the UK's first 'Motion Stamps' for Royal Mail's Special Stamp Issue, The Genius of Gerry Anderson. The minisheet featured four fully lenticular stamps based on Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Thunderbirds TV series. The Stamps and their background border used 48 frame 'MotionPrint’ technology and were produced by Outer Aspect from New Zealand.
In August 2018 the United States Postal Service introduced "The Art of Magic" lenticular stamp, sold in a souvenir sheet of three. The stamp was designed to celebrate the art of magic and "by rotating each stamp, you can see a white rabbit popping out of a black top hat."[54]
In August 2019 the United States Postal Service introduced a second stamp with lenticular technology, this time featuring the dinosaur Tyrannosaurus Rex. The USPS explained that "two of the four designs show movement when rotated. See the skeletal remains with and without flesh and watch as an approaching T. rex suddenly lunges forward."[55]
Books
In 2012, Dan Kainen's first "photicular" book Safari was published, with processed video images animated by having a lens sheet slide by turning the page,[56] much like Rufus Butler Seder's "scanimation" process. It was followed by Ocean (2014), Polar (2015), Jungle (2016), Wild (2017), Dinosaur (2018) and Outback (2019).
Related techniques
Han-O-Disc manufactured for Light Fantastic with metal flake outside and Dufex process print within.
Han-O-Disc record with diffraction grating 'Rainbow' film (outside ring), color shifting Rowlux (middle ring) and "silver balls" Rowlux film (center of record).
A related product, produced by a small company in New Jersey, was Rowlux. Unlike the Vari-Vue product, Rowlux used a microprismatic lens structure made by a process they patented in 1972,[57] and no paper print. Instead, the plastic (polycarbonate, flexible PVC and later PETG) was dyed with translucent colors, and the film was usually thin and flexible (from 0.002" or 0.051 mm in thickness).
While not a true lenticular process, the Dufex Process (manufactured by F.J. Warren Ltd.)[58] does use a form of lens structure to animate the image. The process consists of imprinting a metallic foil with an image. The foil is then laminated onto a thin sheet of card stock that has been coated with a thick layer of wax. The heated lamination press has the Dufex embossing plate on its upper platen, which has been engraved with 'lenses' at different angles, designed to match the artwork and reflect light at different intensities depending on angle of view.
Lenticular cinema and television
Since at least the early 1930s many researchers have tried to develop lenticular cinema. Herbert E. Ives presented an apparatus on 31 October 1930 with small autostereoscopic motion pictures viewable by only small groups at a time. Ives would continue to improve his system over the years. However, producing autostereoscopic movies was deemed too costly for commercial purposes. A November 1931 New York Times article entitled New screens gives depth to movies describes a lenticular system by Douglas F. Winnek and also mentions an optical appliance fitted near the screen by South African astronomer R.T.A. Innes.[59]
Lenticular arrays have also been used for 3D autostereoscopic television, which produces the illusion of 3D vision without the use of special glasses. At least as early as 1954 patents for lenticular television were filed,[60] but it lasted until 2010 before a range of 3D televisions became available. Some of these systems used cylindrical lenses slanted from the vertical, or spherical lenses arranged in a honeycomb pattern, to provide a better resolution. While over 40 million 3D televisions were sold in 2012 (including systems that required glasses),[61] by 2016 very little 3D content was offered and manufacturers had stopped producing 3D TV sets. While the need to wear glasses for the more affordable systems seemed to have been a letdown for customers, affordable autostereoscopic televisions were seen as a future solution.[62]
Further information: 3D television
Manufacturing process
Printing
Lenticular front sheeting and image-processing software are both sold for home computer printing, where the interlaced image backing is inkjet printed in photo resolution and affixed behind the lenticular sheet. [63]
Creation of lenticular images on a commercial scale requires printing presses that are adapted to print on sensitive thermoplastic materials. Lithographic offset printing is typically used, to ensure the images are good quality. Printing presses for lenticulars must be capable of adjusting image placement in 10-µm steps, to allow good alignment of the image to the lens array.
Typically, ultraviolet-cured inks are used. These dry very quickly by direct conversion of the liquid ink to a solid form, rather than by evaporation of liquid solvents from a mixture. Powerful (400-watt-per-square-inch or 0.083 hp/cm2) ultraviolet (UV) lamps have been used to rapidly cure the ink. This allowed lenticular images to be printed at high speed.
In some cases, electron beam lithography has been used instead. The curing of the ink was then initiated directly by an electron beam scanned across the surface.
Defects
Design defects
Double images on the relief and in depth
Double images are usually caused by an exaggeration of the 3D effect from some angles of view, or an insufficient number of frames. Poor design can lead to doubling, small jumps, or a fuzzy image, especially on objects in relief or in depth. For some visuals, where the foreground and background are fuzzy or shaded, this exaggeration can prove to be an advantage. In most cases, the detail and precision required do not allow this.
Image ghosting
Ghosting occurs due to poor treatment of the source images, and also due to transitions where demand for an effect goes beyond the limits and technical possibilities of the system. This causes some of the images to remain visible when they should disappear. These effects can depend on the lighting of the lenticular print.
Prepress defects
Synchronization of the print (master) with the pitch
This effect is also known as "banding". Poor calibration of the material can cause the passage from one image to another to not be simultaneous over the entire print. The image transition progresses from one side of the print to the other, giving the impression of a veil or curtain crossing the visual. This phenomenon is felt less for the 3D effects, but is manifested by a jump of the transverse image. In some cases, the transition starts in several places and progresses from each starting point towards the next, giving the impression of several curtains crossing the visual, as described above.
Discordant harmonics
This phenomenon is unfortunately very common, and is explained either by incorrect calibration of the support or by incorrect parametrization of the prepress operations. It is manifested in particular by streaks that appear parallel to the lenticules during transitions from one visual to the other.
Printing defects
Color synchronization
One of the main difficulties in lenticular printing is color synchronization. The causes are varied, they may come from a malleable material, incorrect printing conditions and adjustments, or again a dimensional differential of the engraving of the offset plates in each color.
This poor marking is shown by doubling of the visual; a lack of clarity; a streak of color or wavy colors (especially for four-color shades) during a change of phase by inclination of the visual.
Synchronization of parallelism of the printing to the lenticules
The origin of this problem is a fault in the printing and forcibly generates a phase defect. The passage from one visual to another must be simultaneous over the entire format. But when this problem occurs, there is a lag in the effects on the diagonals. At the end of one diagonal of the visual, there is one effect, and at the other end, there is another.
Phasing
In most cases, the phasing problem comes from imprecise cutting of the material, as explained below. Nevertheless, poor printing and rectification conditions may also be behind it.
In theory, for a given angle of observation, one and the same visual must appear, for the entire batch. As a general rule, the angle of vision is around 45°, and this angle must be in agreement with the sequence provided by the master. If the images have a tendency to double perpendicularly (for 3D) or if the images provided for observation to the left appear to the right (top/bottom), then there is a phasing problem.
Cutting defects
Defects, in the way the lenticular lens has been cut, can lead to phase errors between the lens and the image.
Two examples, taken from the same production batch:
First image
Second image
The first image shows a cut which removed about 150 µm of the first lens, and which shows irregular cutting of the lenticular lenses. The second image shows a cut which removed about 30 µm of the first lens. Defects in cutting such as these lead to a serious phase problem. In the printing press the image being printed is aligned relative to the edges of the sheet of material. If the sheet is not always cut in the same place relative to the first lenticule, a phase error is introduced between the lenses and the image slices. " (wikipedia.org)
"The most characteristic North American fashion trend from the 1930s to 1945 was attention at the shoulder, with butterfly sleeves and banjo sleeves, and exaggerated shoulder pads for both men and women by the 1940s. The period also saw the first widespread use of man-made fibers, especially rayon for dresses and viscose for linings and lingerie, and synthetic nylon stockings. The zipper became widely used. These essentially U.S. developments were echoed, in varying degrees, in Britain and Europe. Suntans (called at the time "sunburns") became fashionable in the early 1930s, along with travel to the resorts along the Mediterranean, in the Bahamas, and on the east coast of Florida where one can acquire a tan, leading to new categories of clothes: white dinner jackets for men and beach pajamas, halter tops, and bare midriffs for women.[1][2]
Fashion trendsetters in the period included Edward VIII and his companion Wallis Simpson, socialites like Nicolas de Gunzburg, Daisy Fellowes and Mona von Bismarck and such Hollywood movie stars as Fred Astaire, Carole Lombard and Joan Crawford.
Womenswear
1930s
Width at the shoulders was achieved by many means. In Dorothy Gish's outfit of 1932, the width is in the sleeve cap, which is pleated into the armscye.
Classic fashion in the Thirties in Europe (Hungary 1939).
Elizabeth Arden's coat features broad, rounded shoulders cut in one piece with the yoke, 1939.
Fashion in Sweden, 1938.
Overview
The lighthearted, forward-looking attitude and fashions of the late 1920s lingered through most of 1930,[3] but by the end of that year the effects of the Great Depression began to affect the public, and a more conservative approach to fashion displaced that of the 1920s. For women, skirts became longer and the waist-line was returned up to its normal position. Other aspects of fashion from the 1920s took longer to phase out. Cloche hats remained popular until about 1933 while short hair remained popular for many women until late in the 1930s and even in the early 1940s. The Great Depression took its toll on the 1930s womenswear due to World War II which dates from 1939 to 1945. This greatly affected the fashion of how women dressed during the 1940s. According to dress historian Jayne Shrimpton: "Committed to ensuring the fair distribution of scarce but essential resources, namely food, clothing, and furniture, the government introduced a comprehensive rationing scheme based on allocation of coupons - a system deriving, ironically, from the German rationing plan devised in November 1930."[4]
Because of the economic crash, designers were forced to slash prices for clothing in order to keep their business afloat, especially those working in couture houses. Designers were also forced to use cheaper fabric and materials, and dress patterns also grew in popularity as many women knew how to sew. Hence, clothing was made more accessible. Incidentally, there was also a continuation of mass production, which had been rising in popularity since the 1920s. The 1930s allowed women from all classes and socio-economic backgrounds to be fashionable, regardless of wealth. With prices slashed on types of fabrics utilized for designing, new inventions such as the zipper made the manufacturing of garments quicker and cheaper. This was also influenced by the rise in women entering the workforce alongside the rise of the working woman, as they still were able to afford to dress well and stay in style. Daywear also had to be functional, but it never lost its touch of elegance or femininity, as the dresses would still naturally highlight the female or womanly shape: with cinched waistlines, skirts fitted to the hip and fullness added to the hem with flared gores or pleats. Frilled rayon blouses also went with the cinched waist.[5]
Because clothes were rationed and fabric was scarce, the hemlines of dresses rose to knee length. The main sort of dress in the 1940s included features such as an hour glass shape figure, broad shoulders, nipped in high waist tops and A line skirts that came down to just at the knee. Many different celebrities who embraced this type of style such as Joan Crawford, Ginger Rogers, Barbara Stanwyck, and Ava Gardner. Even though daywear dresses were influenced by the war, evening dresses remained glamorous. Women's undergarments became the soul of fashion in the 1940s[6] because it maintained the critical hourglass shape with smooth lines. Clothes became utilitarian. Pants or trousers were considered a menswear item only until the 1940s.[6] Women working in factories first wore men's pants but over time, factories began to make pants for women out of fabric such as cotton, denim, or wool. Coats were long and down to the knee for warmth.
Major fashion magazines at the time including Vogue continued to cater to the fashionable and wealthy women of the 1930s, regularly reporting and reflecting the most popular trends in that time period, despite the impact the economic crash had on them. The wealthiest still managed to afford and keep up with the most high-end or the most coveted designs and maintain their lifestyle.
Fashion and the movies
Indian saree made from chiffon fabric, inspired by the evening dresses of Hollywood starlets.
Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, a second influence vied with Paris couturiers as a wellspring for ideas: the American cinema.[7] As Hollywood movies gained their popularities, general public idolized movie stars as their role models. Paris-based fashion houses were losing their power and influences in most major fashion trends during these years. Many American and European moviegoers were fascinated by and got interested in overall fashion including clothes and hairstyles of movie stars which led to various fashion trends.[8] After the movie Tarzan, animal prints became popular. On the other hand, different styles such as bias-cut, satin, Jean Harlow-style evening dresses and the casual look of Katharine Hepburn also became famous.[9] Paris designers such as Elsa Schiaparelli and Lucien Lelong acknowledged the impact of film costumes on their work. LeLong said "We, the couturiers, can no longer live without the cinema any more than the cinema can live without us. We corroborate each others' instinct.[10]
The 1890s leg-o-mutton sleeves designed by Walter Plunkett for Irene Dunne in 1931's Cimarron helped to launch the broad-shouldered look,[11] and Adrian's little velvet hat worn tipped over one eye by Greta Garbo in Romance (1930) became the "Empress Eugénie hat ... Universally copied in a wide price range, it influenced how women wore their hats for the rest of the decade."[11] During late 1920s to early 1940s, Gilbert Adrian was the head of the costume department at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the most prestigious and famous Hollywood movie studio. He produced numerous signature styles for the top actresses of the period, as well as countless fashion fads during those times. One of his popular dresses was the gingham dress, a cotton dress with a checked or striped pattern, that he made for Judy Garland for the movie The Wizard of Oz in 1939, and for Katharine Hepburn for the movie The Philadelphia Story in 1940.[8] Movie costumes were covered not only in film fan magazines, but in influential fashion magazines such as Women's Wear Daily, Harper's Bazaar, and Vogue.
Adrian's puff-sleeved gown for Joan Crawford in Letty Lynton was copied by Macy's in 1932 and sold over 500,000 copies nationwide.[12] The dress was appraised as one of the most influential pieces in the era's fashion, inspiring numerous designers to showcase similar styles in their own work.[13] One of Crawford's widely influential pieces was a white organdy dress with ruffle adornments. With the use of shoulder pads, the dress made the movement freer, emphasizing the back by removing adornments previously popularized in the 1920s.[14]
One of the most stylistically influential films of the 1930s was 1939's Gone with the Wind. The dresses in the movie were designed with simplified adornments and a mixture of different monotone hues as opposed to using a varied color palette. This was considered to be Plunkett's intentional design to utilize modernism, the emerging aesthetic of the 1930s. Plunkett received praise for producing costumes that adequately harmonized the era of the movie with the aesthetic sense of the late 1930s. The costumes brought back the Neo-Victorian style, as well as strong use of symbolic color.[15] It inspired the Princess Ballgown, a Victorian style dress reduced to full A line skirts with petticoats underneath for fullness.[6] It was the most popular style for teens going to prom.[6] Plunkett's "barbecue dress" for Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara was the most widely copied dress after the Duchess of Windsor's wedding costume, and Vogue credited the "Scarlett O'Hara" look with bringing full skirts worn over crinolines back into wedding fashion after a decade of sleek, figure-hugging styles.[11]
Lana Turner's 1937 film They Won't Forget made her the first Sweater girl, an informal look for young women relying on large breasts pushed up and out by bras, which continued to be influential into the 1950s, and was arguably the first major style of youth fashion.
Travis Banton gained his fame by, after working at a couture house in New York, designing costumes for Marlene Dietrich as a head designer of Paramount. His style was softer and more alluring than Adrian's, embodying femininity by his sense of balance with the use of Vionnet's bias-cut, and was known for refined concepts of simple lines and classic styles. Many famous movie stars during the 1930s such as Marlene Dietrich and Mae West at Paramount became the models of wit, intellect and beauty through Banton's elegant costumes. The costumes he made for Dietrich for various movies such as Shanghai Express 1932, and The Scarlet Empress 1934 portray her sharp regality.[13]
Retail clothing and accessories inspired by the period costumes of Adrian, Plunkett, Travis Banton, Howard Greer, and others influenced what women wore until war-time restrictions on fabric stopped the flow of lavish costumes from Hollywood.[11]
Hard chic and feminine flutters
Queen Elizabeth wears long gloves with a short-sleeved dress and dramatic hat to visit the 1939 New York World's Fair.
Jean Patou, who had first raised hemlines to 18" off the floor with his "flapper" dresses of 1924, had begun lowering them again in 1927, using Vionnet's handkerchief hemline to disguise the change. By 1930, longer skirts and natural waists were shown everywhere.[16]
But it is Schiaparelli who is credited with "changing the outline of fashion from soft to hard, from vague to definite."[16] She introduced the zipper, synthetic fabrics, simple suits with bold color accents, tailored gowns with matching jackets, wide shoulders, and the color shocking pink to the fashion world. By 1933, the trend toward wide shoulders and narrow waists had eclipsed the emphasis on the hips of the later 1920s.[16] Wide shoulders would remain a staple of fashion until after World War II.
In contrast with the hard chic worn by the "international set".[16] designers such as Britain's Norman Hartnell made soft, pretty dresses with fluttering or puffed sleeves and loose calf-length skirts suited to a feminine figure. His "white mourning"[17] wardrobe for the new Queen Elizabeth's 1938 state visit to Paris started a brief rage for all-white clothing.[18]
Feminine curves were highlighted in the 1930s through the use of the bias-cut. Madeleine Vionnet was an early innovator of the bias-cut, using it to create clinging dresses that draped over the body's contours.[19]
Advertisement for women's fashion at McWhirters department store, Brisbane, Australia, 1941
Through the mid-1930s, the natural waistline was often accompanied by emphasis on an empire line. Short bolero jackets, capelets, and dresses cut with fitted midriffs or seams below the bust increased the focus on breadth at the shoulder. By the late 1930s, emphasis was moving to the back, with halter necklines and high-necked but backless evening dresses with sleeves.[2][16] Dinner dresses with matching jackets were worn to the theatre, nightclubs, and elegant restaurants.
Skirts remained at mid-calf length for day, but the end of the 1930s Paris designers were showing fuller skirts reaching just below the knee;[20] this practical length (without the wasteful fullness) would remain in style for day dresses through the war years.
Other notable fashion trends in this period include the introduction of the ensemble (matching dresses or skirts and coats) and the handkerchief skirt, which had many panels, insets, pleats or gathers. The clutch coat was fashionable in this period as well; it had to be held shut as there was no fastening. By 1945, adolescents began wearing loose, poncho-like sweaters called sloppy joes. Full, gathered skirts, known as the dirndl skirt, became popular around 1945.[21]
Accessories were vital components of an outfit, this 1943 black business suit was accessorized with a halo hat, black gloves and pink clutch bag
Accessories
Gloves were "enormously important" in this period.[18] They were a type of accessory that came to be seen as more of a comfort rather than for style. The elaborate trim was removed and was replaced by plain gloves. Evening gowns were accompanied by elbow length gloves, and day costumes were worn with short or opera-length gloves of fabric or leather.
Manufacturers and retailers introduced coordinating ensembles of hat, gloves and shoes, or gloves and scarf, or hat and bag, often in striking colours.[18] For spring 1936, Chicago's Marshall Field's department store offered a black hat by Lilly Daché trimmed with an antelope leather bow in "Pernod green, apple blossom pink, mimosa yellow or carnation blush" and suggested a handbag to match the bow.[22]
When war broke out in 1939, many women purchased handbags with a respirator pouch due to fear of poison gas attacks.[23]
Sportswear
During the mid to late 1930s, swimsuits became more revealing than those of the 1920s, and often featured lower necklines and no sleeves. These were made from nylon and rayon instead of the traditional wool, and no longer included a short modesty skirt.[24] Experimental swimsuits made from spruce wood veneer were a fad in the early 1930s, but did not catch on among the mainstream.[25]
Marriage of Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII (from January 1936 until his abdication)
Notable American socialite was Wallis Simpson and her marriage to Prince Edward was also seen as influential trendsetters during the 1930s period of fashion. Their marriage was historical, been called “The Greatest Love Story of the 20th Century” by some, due to the fact that Prince Edward was royalty and in line for the throne. However, his love affair with Wallis Simpson is what attracted attention and made headlines.
Simpson was not only a socialite, but she was American and a divorcee, both of which were deal breakers for the royal family at the time. As Prince Edward found he could not marry Simpson on these circumstances, he did the unthinkable by giving up the throne to marry her. As the two wed in 1937, their marriage marked a more progressive mindset that people slowly began to adopt, as people already wanted to ditch old traditions and trade it for new ones, especially for those in the royal family.
Their wedding and marriage was well chronicled by Vogue, including a spread of Wallis Simpson before her wedding day, captured by iconic fashion photographer, Cecil Beaton, which included the iconic Lobster dress by Elsa Schiaparelli, which included a hand-painted lobster by Salvador Dalí, a significant surrealist artist and painter in the 1930s.[5]
War years
Wartime austerity led to restrictions on the number of new clothes that people bought and the amount of fabric that clothing manufacturers could use. Women working on war service adopted trousers as a practical necessity. The United States government requisitioned all silk supplies, forcing the hosiery industry to completely switch to nylon. In March 1942 the government then requisitioned all nylon for parachutes and other war uses, leaving only the unpopular cotton and rayon stockings. The industry feared that not wearing stockings would become a fad, and advised stores to increase hosiery advertising.[26] When nylon stockings reappeared in the shops there were "nylon riots" as customers fought over the first deliveries.[27]
In Britain, clothing was strictly rationed, with a system of "points", and the Board of Trade issued regulations for "Utility Clothes" in 1941.[18] In America the War Production Board issued its Regulation L85 on March 8, 1942, specifying restrictions for every item of women's clothing.[28] Because the military used so much green and brown dye, manufacturers used more red dye in clothing.[26] Easily laddered stockings were a particular concern in Britain; women were forced to either paint them on (including the back seam) or to join the WRNS, who continued to issue them, in a cunning aid to recruitment. Later in the war, American soldiers became a source of the new nylon stockings.
Most women wore skirts at or near knee-length, with simply-cut blouses or shirts and square-shouldered jackets. Popular magazines and pattern companies advised women on how to remake men's suits into smart outfits, since the men were in uniform and the cloth would otherwise sit unused. Eisenhower jackets became popular in this period. Influenced by the military, these jackets were bloused at the chest and fitted at the waist with a belt.[21] The combination of neat blouses and sensibly tailored suits became the distinctive attire of the working woman, college girl, and young society matron.[29]
The shirtwaist dress, an all-purpose garment, also emerged during the 1930s. The shirtwaist dress was worn for all occasions, besides those that were extremely formal, and were modest in design. The dress could either have long or short sleeves, a modest neckline and skirt that fell below the knee. The bust was rounded but not particularly emphasized and the waistline was often belted in its normal position. Pockets were both functional and used for decoration and were accompanied by buttons down the front, around the sides or up the back of the dress. These dresses often were accompanied by coordination coats, which were made out of contrasting fabric but lined with the dress fabric. The jacket was often constructed in a boxy fashion and had wide lapels, wide shoulders and numerous pockets. The dress and coat combination created an overall effect of sensibility, modesty and girl next door lifestyle that contrasted the very popular, second-skin like style of the bias-cut evening gown.[29]
Women wearing snoods in a factory
Women's fashion in vacation in Lake Balaton in Hungary (1939).
Headwear
Woman wearing a turban during wartime with all the fashionable accessories.
The 1940s was a period marked by iconic headwear. Because of the war, current European fashion was no longer available to women in the United States. In 1941, hatmakers failed to popularize Chinese and American Indian-based designs, causing one milliner to lament "How different when Paris was the fountainhead of style". As with hosiery hatmakers feared that bareheadness would become popular, and introduced new designs such as "Winged Victory Turbans" and "Commando Caps" in "Victory Gold".[26] American designers, who were often overlooked, became more popular as American women began to wear their designs. American designers of ready-to-wear contributed in other ways too. They made improvements to sizing standards and began to use fiber content and care labels in clothing.[30] Hats were one of the few pieces of clothing that was not rationed during WWII, therefore there was a lot of attention paid to these headpieces. Styles ranged from turbans to straw hats.[31] The snood was an important accessory to a woman working in the factory. Snoods were fashionable and functional at the same time, they enabled factory women who were wearing pants and jumpsuits to still look feminine. Snoods pulled hair out of the face by containing it all at the back of the head in a hanging net. With all the long hair hanging in the net, the front of the hair was left out and could be curled and styled to glamourize the factory uniforms. Other popular headpieces were variations of headscarves, such as the bandana Rosie the Riveter is pictured wearing in the recruitment posters. Another variation of the headscarf was simply tying a square scarf folded in half under the chin. Later in the 1950s and 60s these headscarves became highly glamorized by celebrities like Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot, and Jacqueline Kennedy. This glamorized look came from women in the 1940s who wore headscarves over their victory rolls in order to make their simple clothes look dressed up. Draped turbans – sometimes fashioned from headscarves – also made an appearance in fashion, representing the working woman of the period. These were worn by women of all classes.This type of headwear could be glamorous or practical. Turbans were the most functional for the working woman because she was able to have all her hair out of her face and skip washing her hair by covering it with the turban. Both turbans and headscarves were useful for hiding curlers so when a woman got off work all she had to do was take out her curlers and her hair would be set for a night out.[32] All these alternative options to hats were popular, not only for function and glamour, but also because the look could be achieved quite inexpensively.
Swimwear
Woman wearing a swimsuit in swimming pool in Hungary in 1938.
Typical 1945 two-piece swimsuit worn by Gene Tierney
An important style that became popular due to the war was the two-piece swimsuit which later led to the Bikini. In 1942, the War Production Board passed a law called the L-85 which put restrictions on clothing production.[33] For swimwear companies the L-85 meant they had to use 10 percent less fabric in all their designs, as a result swimsuits became smaller. Swimsuits had been becoming more minimal for a while but in 1944 Tina Leser debuted one of the first two-piece swimsuits. Even though the bottoms were high waisted, cut low on the legs, and paired with a modest bandeau, Lesers’ two piece was still considered a daring style for the era. According to Sarah Kennedy, author of The Swimsuit: A History of Twentieth-Century Fashion, unlike the bikini the two-piece was created out of necessity and was not meant to be shocking. Apparently there was an unspoken rule that bellybuttons must never show which accounts for the high waisted bottoms.[34] Despite it being scandalous to some, the two-piece was eventually accepted because there really wasn't another option. The L-85 did not only make swimsuits smaller, but it also pushed designers to become more creative with their designs, this led to suits that accentuated and drew attention to women's bodies. This was done by putting boning in the swimwear. Two years after Leser debuted one of the first two-pieces, the bikini was invented in 1946 by a French engineer named Louis Réard. It was apparently named after the Bikini Atoll, which was the site of a nuclear bomb test in 1946, because Réard hoped its impact would be explosive in the fashion world.[35] The bikini was even more daring than the two-piece, thus it did not become popular until 1953 when Brigitte Bardot was photographed in one at the Cannes Film Festival. Although the bikini did become popular in Europe in 1953 it did not become popular in the United States until the 1960s." (wikipedia.org)
"Creepiness is the state of being creepy, or causing an unpleasant feeling of fear or unease.[1] A person who exhibits creepy behaviour is called a creep. Certain traits or hobbies may make people seem creepy to others. The internet has been described as increasingly creepy.[2] Adam Kotsko has compared the modern conception of creepiness to the Freudian concept of unheimlich. The term has also been used to describe paranormal or supernatural phenomena.
History and studies
In the abstract the feeling of "creepiness" is subjective: for example some dolls have been described as creepy.[1]
The adjective "creepy", referring to a feeling of creeping in the flesh, was first used in 1831,[3] but it was Charles Dickens who coined and popularized the term "the creeps" in his 1849 novel David Copperfield.[4]
During the 20th century, association was made between involuntary celibacy and creepiness.[5]
The concept of creepiness has only recently been formally addressed in social media marketing.[6]
The sensation of creepiness has only recently been the subject of psychological research, despite the widespread colloquial use of the word throughout the years. Frank McAndrew of Knox College is the first psychologist to do an empirical study on creepiness.[7]
Causes
The state of creepiness has been associated with "feeling scared, nervous, anxious or worried", "awkward or uncomfortable", "vulnerable or violated" in a study conducted by Watt et al.[8]: 61 This state arises in the presence of a creepy element, which can be an individual or, as recently observed, new technologies.
Individuals
Creepiness can be caused by the appearance of an individual. Another study[7] investigated the characteristics that make people creepy. Creepy people were thought to be more often male than female by an overwhelming majority of participants (around 95% of both male and female participants).[7]: 12 Another study conducted by Watt et al. also found that participants associated the ectomorphic body type (more linear) with creepiness, more than the other two body types (51% vs mesomorphic, 24% and endomorphic, 23%). Other cues of creepiness included low hygiene, especially according to female participants, and a disheveled appearance. Participants also identified the face as an area with potentially creepy features: in particular the eyes and the teeth. Both of those physical features were deemed creepy not only for their unpleasant appearance (ex. squinty eyes or crooked teeth) but also for the movements and expressions they engaged it (ex. darting eye movements and odd smiles).[8]: 61
In fact, appearance doesn't seem to be the only factor making an individual creepy: behaviors provide cues as well.[8]: 58 Behaviors such as "being unusually quiet and staring (34%), following or lurking (15%), behaving abnormally (21%), or in a socially awkward, "sketchy" or suspicious way (20%)" are all contributing to a feeling of creepiness, as described by Watt et al.'s study.[8]: 61
Technology
In addition to other individuals, new technologies, such as marketing's targeted ads and AI, have been qualified as creepy.
A study by Moore et al.[9] described what aspect of marketing participants considered creepy. The main three reasons are the following: using invasive tactics, causing discomfort and violating of norms. Invasive tactics are practiced by marketers that know so much about the consumer that the ads are "creepily" personalized. Secondly, some ads create discomfort by making the consumer question "the motives of the company advertising the product". Finally, some ads violate social norms by having inappropriate content, for example by unnecessarily sexualizing it.[9]: 48
It is marketing's extensive knowledge used in an improper way, together with a certain loss of control over our data, that creates a feeling of creepiness.[9]: 44
Another creepy aspect of technology is human-looking AI: this phenomenon is called the uncanny valley.
Humans find robots creepy when they start closely resembling humans. It has been hypothesized that the reason why they are viewed as creepy is because they violate our notion of how a robot should look. A study focusing on children's responses to this phenomenon found evidence to support the hypothesis.[10]: 1210
Evolutionary explanation
Several studies have hypothesized that creepiness is an evolutionary response to potentially dangerous situations.[7]: 10 It could be linked to a mechanism called agent detection which makes individuals expect malignant agents to be responsible for small changes in the environment. McAndrew et al. illustrates the idea with the example of a person hearing some noises while walking in a dark alley. That person would go in high alert, fearing that some dangerous individual was there. If that was not the case the loss would be small. If, on the other hand, a dangerous individual was actually in the alley and the person had not been alerted by this creepy feeling, the loss could have been significant.[7]: 11
Creepiness would therefore serve the purpose of alerting us in situations in which the danger is not outright obvious but rather ambiguous. In this case, ambiguity both refers to the possible presence of a threat and to its nature, sexual or physical for example.[7]: 10 Creepiness "may reside in between the unknowing and the fear"[8]: 58 in the sense that individuals experiencing it are unsure if there truly is something to fear or not. Creepy characteristics are not simply caused by threat potential: in fact, ectomorphic body types are not the most powerful bodies and facial expressions are not a proxy of physical strength either.[8]: 63 Therefore, creepiness is not only related to how threatening a characteristic is, in the sense of how dangerous and strong the individual can be. There are more facets to consider.[clarification needed][11][unreliable source?]
Another characteristic of creepiness is unpredictable behavior.[7]: 12 Unpredictability links back to this idea of ambiguity.[7]: 11 When an individual is unpredictable it is not possible to tell when his behavior will turn violent: this adds to the ambiguity of a potentially dangerous situation. This theory is endorsed by studies. Not only is unpredictability directly listed as a creepy characteristic,[7]: 13 but other behaviors, such as norm-breaking behaviors are indirectly linked with unpredictability. Such behaviors show that the individual does not conform to some social standards others would expect in a given situation.[12]: 773 For example, the aforementioned staring at strangers or lack of hygiene—behaviors that make us uneasy or creeped out because they do not fit the norm and therefore are not expected. More generally, participants tended to define creepiness as "different" in the sense of not behaving, or looking, socially acceptable.[8]: 62 Such differences point towards a "social mismatch".[7]: 10
Humans have a natural system of detection of such mismatch: a physical feeling of coldness.[7]: 10 When an individual is creeped out, they report feeling those "cold chills". This phenomenon has been studied by Leander et al, with relation to nonverbal mimicry in social interactions, meaning the unintentional copying of another's behavior. Inappropriate mimicry may leave a person feeling like something is off about the other.[12]: 772 Absence of non-verbal mimicry in a friendly interaction, or the presence of it in a professional setting, raises suspicion as it does not follow the relevant social norms. Individuals are left wondering what other unusual behavior the other might engage in." (wikipedia.org)
"Trick-or-treating is a traditional Halloween custom for children and adults in some countries. During the evening of Halloween, on October 31, people in costumes travel from house to house, asking for treats with the phrase "trick or treat". The "treat" is some form of confectionery, usually candy/sweets, although in some cultures money is given instead. The "trick" refers to a threat, usually idle, to perform mischief on the resident(s) or their property if no treat is given. Some people signal that they are willing to hand out treats by putting up Halloween decorations outside their doors; houses may also leave their porch lights on as a universal indicator that they have candy; some simply leave treats available on their porches for the children to take freely, on the honor system.
The history of trick-or-treating traces back to Scotland and Ireland, where the tradition of guising, going house to house at Halloween and putting on a small performance to be rewarded with food or treats, goes back at least as far as the 16th century, as does the tradition of people wearing costumes at Halloween. There are many accounts from 19th-century Scotland and Ireland of people going house to house in costume at Halloween, reciting verses in exchange for food, and sometimes warning of misfortune if they were not welcomed.[1][2] In North America, the earliest known occurrence of guising – children going from house to house for food or money while disguised in costume[2] – is from 1911, when children were recorded as having done this in the province of Ontario, Canada.[3] The interjection "trick or treat!" was then first recorded in the same Canadian province of Ontario in 1917. While going house to house in costume has long been popular among the Scots and Irish, it is only in the 2000s that saying "trick or treat" has become common in Scotland and Ireland.[4] Prior to this, children in Ireland would commonly say "help the Halloween party" at the doors of homeowners.[4]
The activity is prevalent in the Anglospheric countries of the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Canada, and Australia. It also has extended into Mexico. In northwestern and central Mexico, the practice is called calaverita (Spanish diminutive for calavera, "skull" in English), and instead of "trick or treat", the children ask, "¿Me da mi calaverita?" ("[Can you] give me my little skull?"), where a calaverita is a small skull made of sugar or chocolate.
History
Ancient precursors
Traditions similar to the modern custom of trick-or-treating extend all the way back to classical antiquity, although it is extremely unlikely that any of them are directly related to the modern custom. The ancient Greek writer Athenaeus of Naucratis records in his book The Deipnosophists that, in ancient times, the Greek island of Rhodes had a custom in which children would go from door-to-door dressed as swallows, singing a song, which demanded the owners of the house to give them food and threatened to cause mischief if the owners of the house refused.[5][6][7] This tradition was claimed to have been started by the Rhodian lawgiver Cleobulus.[8]
Souling
Since the Middle Ages, a tradition of mumming on a certain holiday has existed in parts of Britain and Ireland. It involved going door-to-door in costume, performing short scenes or parts of plays in exchange for food or drink. The custom of trick-or-treating on Halloween may come from the belief that supernatural beings, or the souls of the dead, roamed the earth at this time and needed to be appeased.
"A soul-cake, a soul-cake, have mercy on all Christian souls for a soul-cake." — a popular English souling rhyme[9]
It may otherwise have originated in a Celtic festival, Samhain, held on 31 October–1 November, to mark the beginning of winter, in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man, and Calan Gaeaf in Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany. The festival is believed to have pre-Christian roots. In the 9th century, the Catholic Church made 1 November All Saints' Day. Among Celtic-speaking peoples, it was seen as a liminal time, when the spirits or fairies (the Aos Sí), and the souls of the dead, came into our world and were appeased with offerings of food and drink. Similar beliefs and customs were found in other parts of Europe. It is suggested that trick-or-treating evolved from a tradition whereby people impersonated the spirits, or the souls of the dead, and received offerings on their behalf. S. V. Peddle suggests they "personify the old spirits of the winter, who demanded reward in exchange for good fortune".[10] Impersonating these spirits or souls was also believed to protect oneself from them.[11]
Starting as far back as the 15th century, among Christians, there had been a custom of sharing soul-cakes at Allhallowtide (October 31 through November 2).[12][13] People would visit houses and take soul-cakes, either as representatives of the dead, or in return for praying for their souls.[14] Later, people went "from parish to parish at Halloween, begging soul-cakes by singing under the windows some such verse as this: 'Soul, souls, for a soul-cake; Pray you good mistress, a soul-cake!'"[15] They typically asked for "mercy on all Christian souls for a soul-cake".[16] It was known as 'Souling' and was recorded in parts of Britain, Flanders, southern Germany, and Austria.[17] Shakespeare mentions the practice in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593), when Speed accuses his master of "puling [whimpering or whining] like a beggar at Hallowmas".[18] In western England, mostly in the counties bordering Wales, souling was common.[13] According to one 19th century English writer "parties of children, dressed up in fantastic costume […] went round to the farm houses and cottages, singing a song, and begging for cakes (spoken of as "soal-cakes"), apples, money, or anything that the goodwives would give them".[19]
Guising
"Guising" redirects here. For other uses, see Guising (disambiguation).
Halloween shop in Derry, Northern Ireland. Halloween masks are called ‘false faces’ in Ireland and Scotland.
In Scotland and Ireland, "guising" – children going from door to door in disguise – is traditional, and a gift in the form of food, coins or "apples or nuts for the Halloween party" (and in more recent times, chocolate) is given out to the children.[4][20][21] The tradition is called "guising" because of the disguises or costumes worn by the children.[2][22] In the West Mid Scots dialect, guising is known as "galoshans".[23] In Scotland, youths went house to house in white with masked, painted or blackened faces, reciting rhymes and often threatening to do mischief if they were not welcomed.[24][25]
Guising has been recorded in Scotland since the 16th century, often at New Year. The Kirk Session records of Elgin name men and women who danced at New Year 1623. Six men, described as guisers or "gwysseris" performed a sword dance wearing masks and visors covering their faces in the churchyard and in the courtyard of a house. They were each fined 40 shillings.[26]
A record of guising at Halloween in Scotland in 1895 describes masqueraders in disguise carrying lanterns made out of scooped out turnips, visit homes to be rewarded with cakes, fruit, and money.[27] In Ireland, children in costumes would commonly say "Help the Halloween Party" at the doors of homeowners.[4][28]
Halloween masks are referred to as "false faces" in Ireland and Scotland.[29][30] A writer using Scots language recorded guisers in Ayr, Scotland in 1890:
I had mind it was Halloween . . . the wee callans were at it already, rinning aboot wi’ their fause-faces (false faces) on and their bits o’ turnip lanthrons (lanterns) in their haun (hand).[30]
Guising also involved going to wealthy homes, and in the 1920s, boys went guising at Halloween up to the affluent Thorntonhall, South Lanarkshire.[31] An account of guising in the 1950s in Ardrossan, North Ayrshire, records a child receiving 12 shillings and sixpence, having knocked on doors throughout the neighbourhood and performed.[32] Growing up in Derry, Northern Ireland in the 1960s, The Guardian journalist Michael Bradley recalls children asking, “Any nuts or apples?”.[33] In Scotland and Ireland, the children are only supposed to receive treats if they perform a party trick for the households they go to. This normally takes the form of singing a song or reciting a joke or a funny poem which the child has memorised before setting out.[32][20] While going from door to door in disguise has remained popular among Scots and Irish at Halloween, the North American saying "trick-or-treat" has become common in the 2000s.[4][28]
Spread to North America
Girl in a Halloween costume in 1928 in Ontario, Canada, the same province where the Scottish Halloween custom of "guising" is first recorded in North America
The earliest known occurrence of the practice of guising at Halloween in North America is from 1911, when a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario, Canada reported on children going "guising" around the neighborhood.[3]
American historian and author Ruth Edna Kelley of Massachusetts wrote the first book length history of the holiday in the US; The Book of Hallowe'en (1919), and references souling in the chapter "Hallowe'en in America"; "The taste in Hallowe'en festivities now is to study old traditions, and hold a Scotch party, using Burn's poem Hallowe'en as a guide; or to go a-souling as the English used. In short, no custom that was once honored at Hallowe'en is out of fashion now."[34] Kelley lived in Lynn, Massachusetts, a town with 4,500 Irish immigrants, 1,900 English immigrants, and 700 Scottish immigrants in 1920.[35] In her book, Kelley touches on customs that arrived from across the Atlantic; "Americans have fostered them, and are making this an occasion something like what it must have been in its best days overseas. All Hallowe'en customs in the United States are borrowed directly or adapted from those of other countries".[36]
While the first reference to "guising" in North America occurs in 1911, another reference to ritual begging on Halloween appears, place unknown, in 1915, with a third reference in Chicago in 1920.[37]
The emergence of "Trick or treat!"
The interjection "Trick or treat!" — a request for sweets or candy, originally and sometimes still with the implication that anyone who is asked and who does not provide sweets or other treats will be subjected to a prank or practical joke — seems to have arisen in central Canada, before spreading into the northern and western United States in the 1930s and across the rest of the United States through the 1940s and early 1950s.[38] Initially it was often found in variant forms, such as "tricks or treats," which was used in the earliest known case, a 1917 report in The Sault Daily Star in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario:[39]
Almost everywhere you went last night, particularly in the early part of the evening, you would meet gangs of youngsters out to celebrate. Some of them would have adopted various forms of "camouflage" such as masks, or would appear in long trousers and big hats or with long skirts. But others again didn't. . . . "Tricks or treats" you could hear the gangs call out, and if the householder passed out the "coin" for the "treats" his establishment would be immune from attack until another gang came along that knew not of or had no part in the agreement.[40]
As shown by word sleuth Barry Popik,[41] who also found the first use from 1917,[39] variant forms continued, with "trick or a treat" found in Chatsworth, Ontario in 1921,[42] "treat up or tricks" and "treat or tricks" found in Edmonton, Alberta in 1922,[43] and "treat or trick" in Penhold, Alberta in 1924.[44] The now canonical form of "trick or treat" was first seen in 1917 in Chatsworth, only one day after the Sault Ste. Marie use,[45] but "tricks or treats" was still in use in the 1966 television special, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.[41]
The thousands of Halloween postcards produced between the start of the 20th century and the 1920s commonly show children but do not depict trick-or-treating.[46] The editor of a collection of over 3,000 vintage Halloween postcards writes, "There are cards which mention the custom [of trick-or-treating] or show children in costumes at the doors, but as far as we can tell they were printed later than the 1920s and more than likely even the 1930s. Tricksters of various sorts are shown on the early postcards, but not the means of appeasing them".[47]
Trick-or-treating does not seem to have become a widespread practice until the 1930s, with the first U.S. appearance of the term in 1932,[48] and the first use in a national publication occurring in 1939.[49]
Behavior similar to trick-or-treating was more commonly associated with Thanksgiving from 1870 (shortly after that holiday's formalization) until the 1930s. In New York City, a Thanksgiving ritual known as Ragamuffin Day involved children dressing up as beggars and asking for treats, which later evolved into dressing up in more diverse costumes.[50][51] Increasing hostility toward the practice in the 1930s eventually led to the begging aspects being dropped, and by the 1950s, the tradition as a whole had ceased.
Increased popularity
Almost all pre-1940 uses of the term "trick-or-treat" are from the United States and Canada. Trick-or-treating spread throughout the United States, stalled only by World War II sugar rationing that began in April, 1942 and lasted until June, 1947.[52][53]
Magazine advertisement in 1962
Early national attention to trick-or-treating was given in October, 1947 issues of the children's magazines Jack and Jill and Children's Activities,[54] and by Halloween episodes of the network radio programs The Baby Snooks Show in 1946 and The Jack Benny Show and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet in 1948.[55] Trick-or-treating was depicted in the Peanuts comic strip in 1951.[56] The custom had become firmly established in popular culture by 1952, when Walt Disney portrayed it in the cartoon Trick or Treat, and Ozzie and Harriet were besieged by trick-or-treaters on an episode of their television show.[57] In 1953 UNICEF first conducted a national campaign for children to raise funds for the charity while trick-or-treating.[58]
Although some popular histories of Halloween have characterized trick-or-treating as an adult invention to re-channel Halloween activities away from Mischief Night vandalism, there are very few records supporting this. Des Moines, Iowa is the only area known to have a record of trick-or-treating being used to deter crime.[59] Elsewhere, adults, as reported in newspapers from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, typically saw it as a form of extortion, with reactions ranging from bemused indulgence to anger.[60] Likewise, as portrayed on radio shows, children would have to explain what trick-or-treating was to puzzled adults, and not the other way around. Sometimes even the children protested: for Halloween 1948, members of the Madison Square Boys Club in New York City carried a parade banner that read "American Boys Don't Beg."[61] The National Confectioners Association reported in 2005 that 80 percent of adults in the United States planned to give out confectionery to trick-or-treaters,[62] and that 93 percent of children, teenagers, and young adults planned to go trick-or-treating or participating in other Halloween activities.[63]
Phrase introduction to the UK and Ireland
Despite the concept of trick-or-treating originating in Britain and Ireland in the form of souling and guising, the use of the term "trick or treat" at the doors of homeowners was not common until the 1980s, with its popularisation in part through the release of the film E.T.[64] Guising requires those going door-to-door to perform a song or poem without any jocular threat,[32] and according to one BBC journalist, in the 1980s, "trick or treat" was still often viewed as an exotic and not particularly welcome import, with the BBC referring to it as "the Japanese knotweed of festivals" and "making demands with menaces".[65] In Ireland before the phrase "trick or treat" became common in the 2000s, children would say "Help the Halloween Party".[4] Very often, the phrase "trick or treat" is simply said and the revellers are given sweets, with the choice of a trick or a treat having been discarded.
Etiquette
Two children trick-or-treating on Halloween in Arkansas, United States
Trick-or-treating typically begins at dusk on October 31. Some municipalities choose other dates.[66][67][68][69][70][71] Homeowners wishing to participate sometimes decorate their homes with artificial spider webs, plastic skeletons and jack-o-lanterns. Conversely, those who do not wish to participate may turn off outside lights for the evening or lock relevant gates and fences to keep people from coming onto their property.
In most areas where trick-or-treating is practiced, it is considered an activity for children. Some jurisdictions in the United States forbid the activity for anyone over the age of 12.[72] Dressing up is common at all ages; adults will often dress up to accompany their children, and young adults may dress up to go out and ask for gifts for a charity.
Local variants
U.S. and Canada
Children of the St. Louis, Missouri, area are expected to perform a joke, usually a simple Halloween-themed pun or riddle, before receiving any candy; this "trick" earns the "treat".[73] Children in Des Moines, Iowa also tell jokes or otherwise perform before receiving their treat.
In some parts of Canada, children sometimes say "Halloween apples" instead of "trick or treat". This probably originated when the toffee apple was a popular type of candy. Apple-giving in much of Canada, however, has been taboo since the 1960s when stories (of almost certainly questionable authenticity) appeared of razors hidden inside Halloween apples; parents began to check over their children's fruit for safety before allowing them to eat it. In Quebec, children also go door to door on Halloween. However, in French-speaking neighbourhoods, instead of "Trick or treat", they will simply say "Halloween", though it traditionally used to be "La charité, s'il-vous-plaît" ("Charity, please").[74]
Trunk-or-treat
Trunk-or-treating event held at St. John Lutheran Church & Early Learning Center in Darien, Illinois
Some organizations around the United States and Canada sponsor a "trunk-or-treat" on Halloween night (or, on occasion, a day immediately preceding Halloween, or a few days from it, on a weekend, depending on what is convenient). Trunk-or-treating is done from parked car to parked car in a local parking lot, often at a school or church. The activity makes use of the open trunks of the cars, which display candy, and often games and decorations. Some parents regard trunk-or-treating as a safer alternative to trick-or-treating,[75] while other parents see it as an easier alternative to walking the neighborhood with their children.
This annual event began in the mid-1990s as a "fall festival" for an alternative to trick-or-treating, but became "trunk-or-treat" two decades later. Some have called for more city or community group-sponsored trunk-or-treats, so they can be more inclusive.[76] By 2006 these had become increasingly popular.[77]
Portugal
In Portugal, children go from house to house in All Saints Day and All Souls Day, carrying pumpkin carved lanterns called coca,[78] asking everyone they see for Pão-por-Deus singing rhymes where they remind people why they are begging, saying "...It is for me and for you, and to give to the deceased who are dead and buried"[79] or "It is to share with your deceased"[80] In the Azores the bread given to the children takes the shape of the top of a skull.[81] The tradition of pão-por-Deus was already recorded in the 15th century.[82]
Scandinavia
In Sweden, children dress up as witches and monsters when they go trick-or-treating on Maundy Thursday (the Thursday before Easter) while Danish children dress up in various attires and go trick-or-treating on Fastelavn (or the next day, Shrove Monday). In Norway, the practice is quite common among children, who come dressed up to people's doors asking for, mainly, candy. The Easter witch tradition is done on Palm Sunday in Finland (virvonta).
Europe
In parts of Flanders, some parts of the Netherlands, and most areas of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, children go to houses with home-made beet lanterns or with paper lanterns (which can hold a candle or electronic light), singing songs about St. Martin on St. Martin's Day (the 11th of November), in return for treats.[83] The equivalent of "trick-or-treat" in German language is "Süßes oder Saures", asking for sweeties or threatening something less pleasant.
In Northern Germany and Southern Denmark, children dress up in costumes and go trick-or-treating on New Year's Eve in a tradition called "Rummelpott [de]".[84]
Trick-or-treat for charity
UNICEF started a program in 1950 called Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF in which trick-or-treaters ask people to give money for the organization, usually instead of collecting candy. Participating trick-or-treaters say when they knock at doors "Trick-or-treat for UNICEF!"[85] This program started as an alternative to candy. The organization has long produced disposable collection boxes that state on the back what the money can be used for in developing countries.
In Canada, students from the local high schools, colleges, and universities dress up to collect food donations for the local Food Banks as a form of trick-or-treating. This is sometimes called "Trick-or-Eat"." (wikipedia.org)
"A ghoul (from Arabic: غول, ghūl) is a demon-like being or monstrous humanoid. The concept originated in pre-Islamic Arabian religion,[1] associated with graveyards and the consumption of human flesh. Modern fiction often uses the term to label a certain kind of monster.
By extension, the word ghoul is also used in a derogatory sense to refer to a person who delights in the macabre or whose occupation directly involves death, such as a gravedigger or graverobber.[2]
Etymology
Ghoul is from the Arabic غُول ghūl, from غَالَ ghāla, "to seize".[3] In Arabic, the term is also sometimes used to describe a greedy or gluttonous individual. See also the etymology of gal and gala: "to cast spells," "scream," "crow," and its association with "warlike ardor," "wrath," and the Akkadian "gallu," which refer to demons of the underworld.
The term was first used in English literature in 1786 in William Beckford's Orientalist novel Vathek,[4] which describes the ghūl of Arabic folklore. This definition of the ghoul has persisted until modern times with ghouls appearing in popular culture.[5]
Folklore
Ghouls gathering for combat in a Persian poem
In Arabic folklore, the ghul is said to dwell in cemeteries and other uninhabited places. A male ghoul is referred to as ghul while the female is called ghulah.[6] A source[who?] identified the Arabic ghoul as a female creature who is sometimes called Mother Ghoul (ʾUmm Ghulah) or a relational term such as Aunt Ghoul.[7] She is portrayed in many tales luring hapless characters, who are usually men, into her home where she can eat them.[7]
Some state[who?] that a ghoul is a desert-dwelling, shapeshifting demon that can assume the guise of an animal, especially a hyena. It lures unwary people into the desert wastes or abandoned places to slay and devour them. The creature also preys on young children, drinks blood, steals coins, and eats the dead,[8] then taking the form of the person most recently eaten. One of the narratives identified a ghoul named Ghul-e Biyaban, a particularly monstrous character believed to be inhabiting the wilderness of Afghanistan and Iran.[9]
It was not until Antoine Galland translated One Thousand and One Nights into French that the Western concept of ghouls was introduced into European society.[citation needed] Galland depicted the ghoul as a monstrous creature that dwelled in cemeteries, feasting upon corpses.
Islamic theology
Ghoul are not mentioned in the Quran, but in hadith. While some consider the ghoul to be a type of jinn, other exegetes of the Quran (tafsir) conjectured that the ghouls are burned devils. Accordingly, the shayatin (devils) once had access to the heavens, where they eavesdropped, and returned to Earth to pass hidden knowledge to the soothsayers. When Jesus was born, three heavenly spheres were forbidden to them. With the arrival of Muhammad, the other four were forbidden. The marid among the shayatin continued to rise to the heavens, but were burned by comets. If these comets didn't burn them to death, they were deformed and driven to insanity. They then fell to the deserts and were doomed to roam the earth as ghouls.[10]
In one[which?] hadith it is said, lonely travelers can escape a ghoul's attack by repeating the adhan (call to prayer).[11] When reciting the Throne Verse, a ghoul might decide to convert to Islam.[12]
The ghoul could appear in male and female shape, but usually appears female to lure on male travelers to devour them.[13] Al-Masudi reports that on his journey to Syria, Umar slew a ghoul with his sword.[13] According to History of the Prophets and Kings, the rebellious (maradatuhum) among the devils and the ghouls have been chased away to the deserts and mountains and valleys a long time ago.[14]
According to the prophet Muhammad, ghouls are demons or enchantresses of genies that hurt humans by eating or spoiling food to frightening travelers when they are in the wilderness.
Other Muslim scholars, like Abī al-Sheikh al-Aşbahânī, describe the ghoul as a kind of female demon that was able to change its shape and appear to travelers in the wilderness to delude and harm.[15]
Ancient Mesopotamia
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In ancient Mesopotamia, there was a monster called 'Gallu' that could be[weasel words] regarded as one of the origins of the arabic ghoul. Gallu was an Akkadian demon of the underworld responsible for the abduction of vegetation god Damuzi to the realm of death.
Modern Ghoul
the word ghoul entered the english tradition and was further identified as a grave robbing creature that feeds on dead bodies and children. In the west ghouls have no specific and have been described by Edgar Allen Poe as "neither man nor woman... neither brute nor human."[16]
Pickman's Model a H.P. Lovecraft short story, a ghoul is a member of a subterranean race. Their adherence to an exclusive diet of dead human flesh mutated them into beastial humanoids able to carry on intelligent conversations with the living. H.P. Lovecraft's Pickman's Model has ghouls set underground with ghoul tunnels that connect ancient human ruins with deep underworlds. H.P Lovecraft hints that the ghouls emerge in subway tunnels to eat on train wreck victims." (wikipedia.org)
"A goblin is a small, grotesque, monstrous creature that appears in the folklore of multiple European cultures. First attested in stories from the Middle Ages, they are ascribed conflicting abilities, temperaments, and appearances depending on the story and country of origin, ranging from mischievous household spirits to malicious, bestial thieves.[1][2] They often have magical abilities similar to a fairy or demon, such as the ability to shapeshift.[2]
Similar creatures include brownies, dwarves, duendes, gnomes, imps, leprechauns, and kobolds, but it is also commonly used as a blanket term for all small, fay creatures.[2] The term is sometimes expanded to include goblin-like creatures of other cultures, such as the pukwudgie, dokkaebi, or ifrit.[2]
Etymology
Alternative spellings include gobblin, gobeline, gobling, goblyn, goblino, and gobbelin. The term "goblette" has been used to refer to female goblins.[3][4]
The word goblin is first recorded in the 14th century and is probably from unattested Anglo-Norman *gobelin,[5] similar to Old French gobelin, already attested around 1195 in Ambroise of Normandy's Guerre sainte, and to Medieval Latin gobelinus in Orderic Vitalis before 1141,[6][7] which was the name of a devil or daemon haunting the country around Évreux, Normandy. It may be related both to German kobold and to Medieval Latin cabalus - or *gobalus, itself from Greek κόβαλος (kobalos), "rogue", "knave", "imp", "goblin".[6] German Kobold contains the Germanic root kov- (Middle German Kobe "refuge, cavity", "hollow in a rock", Dial. English cove "hollow in a rock", English "sheltered recess on a coast", Old Norse kofi "hut, shed" ) which means originally a "hollow in the earth".[8][9] The word is probably related to Dial. Norman gobe "hollow in a cliff", with simple suffix -lin or double suffixation -el-in (cf. Norman surnames Beuzelin,[10] Gosselin,[11] Étancelin,[12] etc.)[13]
Alternatively, it may be a diminutive or other derivative of the French proper name Gobel, more often Gobeau,[14][5] diminutive forms Gobelet, Goblin, Goblot, but their signification is probably "somebody who sells tumblers or beakers or cups".[15] Moreover, these proper names are not from Normandy, where the word gobelin, gobelinus first appears in the old documents.
The Welsh coblyn, a type of knocker, derives from the Old French gobelin via the English goblin.[16]
In folklore
An illustration of a group of goblins surrounding a small child.
The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald, illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith, 1920
European folklore
Goblins are common in English, Scottish, and Irish folklore, serving as a blanket term for all sorts of evil or mischievous spirits.
A redcap is a type of goblin who dyes its hat in human blood in Anglo-Scottish border folklore.
Hobgoblins are friendly trickster goblins from English, Scottish, and Pilgrim folklore and literature.[2]
The Erlking is a malevolent goblin from German legend.
The trasgu is a Northern Spanish and Northern Portuguese mythological creature of Celtic and Roman origin.
Goblin-like creatures in other cultures
A pukwudgie is a type of goblin from Wamponoag folklore.
The muki is a pale goblin who lives in caves in the Andes in Quechuan folklore.
In South Korea, goblins, known as dokkaebi (도깨비), are important creatures in folklore, where they reward good people and punish the evil, playing tricks on them.[2]
In Bangladesh, Santal people believe in gudrobonga which is very similar to goblins.
In South African mythology, the tokoloshe (or tikoloshe or tikoloshi) is a dwarf-like creatures similar to a goblin.
Goblins have at times been conflated with the jinn, specifically ifrit and ghilan, of Islamic culture.[17]
In fiction
Fairy tales and folk stories
"The Goblin Pony", from The Grey Fairy Book (French fairy tale)
"The Benevolent Goblin", from Gesta Romanorum (England)[18]
"The Goblins at the Bath House" (Estonia), from A Book of Ghosts and Goblins (1969)
"The Goblins Turned to Stone" (Dutch fairy tale)[19]
King Gobb (Moldovan Gypsy folktale)[citation needed]
Goblins are featured in the Danish fairy tales The Elf Mound, The Goblin and the Grocer, and The Goblin and the Woman.
Goblins are featured in the Norwegian folktale The Christmas Visitors at Kvame.
Goblins are featured in the Swedish fairy tales The Four big Trolls and little Peter Pastureman and Dag, and Daga and the Flying Troll of Sky Mountain where they live among trolls alongside sprites and gnomes.
Goblins are featured in the French fairy tale called The Golden Branch.
Chinese Ghouls and Goblins (England 1928)
"The Goblin of Adachigahara" (Japanese fairy tale)[20]
The Boy Who Drew Cats (Japanese fairy tale)
Twenty-Two Goblins (Indian fairy tale)[21]
The Korean nursery song 'Mountain Goblin(산도깨비)' tells of meeting a dokkaebi and running away to live.
Modern fiction
In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit the evil creatures living in the Misty Mountains are referred to as goblins. In The Lord of the Rings the same creatures are primarily referred to as orcs.
An illustration of a goblin wearing armour made of leather and skulls, wielding a cutlass.
Representation of a goblin as it appears in the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons
Goblinoids are a category of humanoid legendary creatures related to the goblin. The term was popularized in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game,[22] in which goblins and related creatures are a staple of random encounters. Goblinoids are typically barbaric foes of the various human and "demi-human" races. Even though goblinoids in modern fantasy fiction are derived from J. R. R. Tolkien's orcs, the main types of goblinoids in Dungeons & Dragons are goblins, bugbears and hobgoblins; these creatures are also figures of mythology, next to ordinary goblins.
In the Harry Potter book series and the shared universe in which its film adaptations are set, goblins are depicted as strange, but civilised, humanoids, who often serve as bankers or craftsmen.
In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, goblins are initially a despised and shunned subterranean race; however, in later books, goblins are eventually integrated with the other races, and their mechanical and engineering talents come to be valued.
The Green Goblin is a well-known supervillain, one of the archenemies of Spider-Man, who has various abilities including enhanced stamina, durability, agility, reflexes and superhuman strength due to ingesting a substance known as the "Goblin Formula". He has appeared in various Spider-Man related media, such as comics, television series, video games, and films, including Spider-Man (2002) and Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) as Norman Osborn, and Spider-Man 3 (2007) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) as Harry Osborn.
In the manga and anime Goblin Slayer, goblins are a male only race of average intelligence who abduct female humanoids to procreate and the main antagonists in the series.
In the video game series Elder Scrolls, goblins are a hostile beast race said to originate from Summerset Isle, can range in size from being smaller than a Wood Elf to being larger than a Nord and love living in dank places such as caves and sewers.
In early English translations, The Smurfs were called goblins." (wikipedia.org)
"In ghostlore, a poltergeist (/ˈpoʊltərˌɡaɪst/ or /ˈpɒltərˌɡaɪst/; German for "rumbling ghost" or "noisy spirit") is a type of ghost or spirit that is responsible for physical disturbances, such as loud noises and objects being moved or destroyed. Most claims or fictional descriptions of poltergeists show them as being capable of pinching, biting, hitting, and tripping people. They are also depicted as capable of the movement or levitation of objects such as furniture and cutlery, or noises such as knocking on doors. Foul smells are also associated with poltergeist occurrences, as well as spontaneous fires and different electrical issues such as flickering lights. [1]
They have traditionally been described as troublesome spirits who haunt a particular person instead of a specific location. Some variation of poltergeist folklore is found in many different cultures. Early claims of spirits that supposedly harass and torment their victims date back to the 1st century, but references to poltergeists became more common in the early 17th century.
Etymology
The word poltergeist comes from the German language words poltern ("to make sound" and "to rumble") and Geist ("ghost" and "spirit"), and the term itself translates as "noisy ghost", "rumble-ghost" or a "loud spirit". A synonym coined by René Sudre is thorybism, from Greek θορυβείν ("to make noise or uproar; throw into confusion").
Suggested explanations
Part of a series on the
Paranormal
Main articles
Skepticism
Parapsychology
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Many claims have been made that poltergeist activity explains strange events (including those by modern self-styled ghost hunters), however their evidence has so far not stood up to scrutiny.[2]
Natural phenomena
Many claimed poltergeist events have been proven upon investigation to be hoaxes.[3]
Psychical researcher Frank Podmore proposed the 'naughty little girl' theory for poltergeist cases (many of which have seemed to centre on an adolescent, usually a girl).[4] He found that the centre of the disturbance was often a child who was throwing objects around to fool or scare people for attention.[4][5] Skeptical investigator Joe Nickell says that claimed poltergeist incidents typically originate from "an individual who is motivated to cause mischief".[6] According to Nickell:
In the typical poltergeist outbreak, small objects are hurled through the air by unseen forces, furniture is overturned, or other disturbances occur—usually just what could be accomplished by a juvenile trickster determined to plague credulous adults.
Nickell writes that reports are often exaggerated by credulous witnesses.[7]
Time and again in other "poltergeist" outbreaks, witnesses have reported an object leaping from its resting place supposedly on its own, when it is likely that the perpetrator had secretly obtained the object sometime earlier and waited for an opportunity to fling it, even from outside the room—thus supposedly proving he or she was innocent.
According to research in anomalistic psychology, claims of poltergeist activity can be explained by psychological factors such as illusion, memory lapses, and wishful thinking.[8] A study (Lange and Houran, 1998) wrote that poltergeist experiences are delusions "resulting from the affective and cognitive dynamics of percipients' interpretation of ambiguous stimuli".[9] Psychologist Donovan Rawcliffe has written that almost all poltergeist cases that have been investigated turned out to be based on trickery, whilst the rest are attributable to psychological factors such as hallucinations.[10]
Attempts have also been made to scientifically explain poltergeist disturbances that have not been traced to fraud or psychological factors. Skeptic and magician Milbourne Christopher found that some cases of poltergeist activity can be attributed to unusual air currents, such as a 1957 case on Cape Cod where downdrafts from an uncovered chimney became strong enough to blow a mirror off of a wall, overturn chairs and knock things off shelves.[11]
Unverified natural phenomena
In the 1950s, Guy William Lambert proposed that reported poltergeist phenomena could be explained by the movement of underground water causing stress on houses.[12] He suggested that water turbulence could cause strange sounds or structural movement of the property, possibly causing the house to vibrate and move objects. Later researchers, such as Alan Gauld and Tony Cornell, tested Lambert's hypothesis by placing specific objects in different rooms and subjecting the house to strong mechanical vibrations.[12] They discovered that although the structure of the building had been damaged, only a few of the objects moved a very short distance. The skeptic Trevor H. Hall criticized the hypothesis claiming if it was true "the building would almost certainly fall into ruins."[13] According to Richard Wiseman the hypothesis has not held up to scrutiny.[12]
Michael Persinger has theorized that seismic activity could cause poltergeist phenomena.[14] However, Persinger's claims regarding the effects of environmental geomagnetic activity on paranormal experiences have not been independently replicated and, like his findings regarding the God helmet, may simply be explained by the suggestibility of participants.[15][16]
David Turner, a retired physical chemist, suggested that ball lightning might cause the "spooky movement of objects blamed on poltergeists."[17]
Paranormal
Parapsychologists Nandor Fodor and William G. Roll suggested that poltergeist activity can be explained by psychokinesis.[18][19]
Historically, malicious spirits were blamed for poltergeist activity.[20][clarification needed] According to Allan Kardec, the founder of Spiritism, poltergeists are manifestations of disembodied spirits of low level, belonging to the sixth class of the third order. Under this explanation, they are believed to be closely associated with the elements (fire, air, water, earth).[21] In Finland, somewhat famous are the case of the "Mäkkylä Ghost" in 1946, which received attention in the press at the time,[22] and the "Devils of Martin" in Ylöjärvi in the late 19th century, for which affidavits were obtained in court.[23] Samuli Paulaharju has also recorded a memoir of a typical poltergeist, the case of "Salkko-Niila", from the south of Lake Inari in his book Memoirs of Lapland (Lapin muisteluksia). The story has also been published in the collection of Mythical Stories (Myytillisiä tarinoita) edited by Lauri Simonsuuri.[24]
Psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung was interested in the concept of poltergeists and the occult in general. Jung believed that a female cousin's trance states were responsible for a dining table splitting in two and his later discovery of a broken bread knife.[25] Jung also believed that when a bookcase gave an explosive cracking sound during a meeting with Sigmund Freud in 1909, he correctly predicted there would be a second sound, speculating that such phenomena were caused by 'exteriorization' of his subconscious mind. Freud disagreed, and concluded there was some natural cause. Freud biographers maintain the sounds were likely caused by the wood of the bookcase contracting as it dried out." (wikipedia.org)
"A demon is a malevolent supernatural entity. Historically, belief in demons, or stories about demons, occurs in religion, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology, and folklore; as well as in media such as comics, video games, movies, and television series.
Bronze statuette of the Assyro-Babylonian demon king Pazuzu, c. 800–700 BCE, Louvre
Mephistopheles (a medieval demon from German folklore) flying over Wittenberg, in a lithograph by Eugène Delacroix.
Etymology
Further information: Daemon (classical mythology), Agathodaemon, Cacodemon, Daimonic, and Eudaimonia
The Ancient Greek word δαίμων (daimōn) denotes a spirit or divine power, much like the Latin genius or numen. Daimōn most likely came from the Greek verb daiesthai ("to divide" or "distribute").[1] The Greek conception of a daimōn notably appears in the philosophical works of Plato, where it describes the divine inspiration of Socrates. The original Greek word daimōn does not carry the negative connotation initially understood by implementation of the Koine δαιμόνιον (daimonion),[2] and later ascribed to any cognate words sharing the root.
The Greek terms do not have any connotations of evil or malevolence. In fact, εὐδαιμονία (eudaimonia, which literally translates as "good-spiritedness") means happiness. By the early centuries of the Roman Empire, cult statues were seen, by Pagans and their Christian neighbors alike, as inhabited by the numinous presence of the Greco-Roman gods: "Like pagans, Christians still sensed and saw the gods and their power, and as something, they had to assume, lay behind it, by an easy traditional shift of opinion they turned these pagan daimones into malevolent 'demons', the troupe of Satan. Far into the Byzantine period, Christians eyed their cities' old pagan statuary as a seat of the demons' presence. It was no longer beautiful, it was infested."[3] The term had first acquired its negative connotations in the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, which drew on the mythology of ancient Semitic religions. This was then inherited by the Koine text of the New Testament. The Western medieval and neo-medieval conception of a demon[4] derives seamlessly from the ambient popular culture of Late Antiquity.
The English use of demon as synonym for devils goes back at least as far as about 825. The German word (Dämon), however, is different from devil (Teufel) and demons as evil spirits, and akin to the original meaning of a Daimon.[5]
Belief in demons
Belief in demons probably goes back to the Paleolithic age, stemming from humanity's fear of the unknown, the strange and the horrific.[6] In ancient Near Eastern religions and in the Abrahamic religions, including early Judaism[7] and ancient-medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered a harmful spiritual entity which may cause demonic possession, calling for an exorcism. Large portions of Jewish demonology, a key influence on Christianity and Islam, originated from a later form of Zoroastrianism, and was transferred to Judaism during the Persian era.[8]
Demons may or may not also be considered to be devils: minions of the Devil.[6] In many traditions, demons are independent operators, with different demons causing different types of evils (destructive natural phenomena, specific diseases, etc.). In religions featuring a principal Devil (e.g. Satan) locked in an eternal struggle with God, demons are often also thought to be subordinates of the principal Devil. As lesser spirits doing the Devil's work, they have additional duties— causing humans to have sinful thoughts and tempting humans to commit sinful actions.[9]
The original Ancient Greek word daimōn (δαίμων) did not carry negative connotations,[2] as it denotes a spirit or divine power.[1] The Greek conception of a daimōn notably appears in the philosophical works of Plato, where it describes the divine inspiration of Socrates.
In Christianity, morally ambivalent daimōn were replaced by demons, forces of evil only striving for corruption.[10] Such demons are not the Greek intermediary spirits, but hostile entities, already known in Iranian beliefs.[11]
In Western occultism and Renaissance magic, which grew out of an amalgamation of Greco-Roman magic, Jewish Aggadah and Christian demonology,[12] a demon is believed to be a spiritual entity that may be conjured and controlled.
Belief in demons remains an important part of many modern religions and occultist traditions. Demons are still feared largely due to their alleged power to possess living creatures. In the contemporary Western occultist tradition (perhaps epitomized by the work of Aleister Crowley), a demon (such as Choronzon, which is Crowley's interpretation of the so-called "Demon of the Abyss") is a useful metaphor for certain inner psychological processes (inner demons), though some may also regard it as an objectively real phenomenon....Native North American demons
Wendigo
Main articles: Wendigo and Wechuge
The Algonquian people traditionally believe in a spirit called a wendigo. The spirit is believed to possess people who then become cannibals. In Athabaskan folklore, there is a belief in wechuge, a similar cannibal spirit.
Christianity
Old Testament
The existence of demons as inherently malicious spirits within Old Testamental texts is absent.[93][94]: 447 Though there are evil spirits sent by YHWH, they can hardly be called demons, since they serve and do not oppose the governing deity.[94]: 448 First then the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, the "gods of other nations" were merged into a single category of demons (daimones) with implied negativity.[95]
The Greek Daimons were associated with demi-divine entities, deities, illnesses and fortune-telling. The Jewish translators rendered them all as demons, depicting their power as nullified comparable to the description of shedim in the Tanakh. Although all these supernatural powers were translated, none were angels, despite sharing a similar function to that of the Greek Daimon. This established a dualism between the angels on God's side and negatively evaluated demons of pagan origin.[96]: 664 Their relationship to the God-head became the main difference between angels and demons, not their degree of benevolence. Both angels and demons might be fierce and terrifying. However, the angels act always at service of the high god of the Israelites, differing from the pagan demons, who represent the powers of foreign deities.[96]: 666 The Septuagint refers to evil spirits as demons (daimon).
New Testament
Medieval illumination from the Ottheinrich Folio depicting the exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac by Jesus
Through the New Testament, demons appear 55 times, and 46 times in reference to demonic possession or exorcisms.[97] Some old English Bible translations such as King James Version do not have the word 'demon' in their vocabulary and translate it as 'devil'. As adversaries of Jesus, demons are not morally ambivalent spirits, but evil; causes of misery, suffering, and death.[97] They are not tempters, but the cause of pain, suffering, and maladies, both physical and mental. Temptation is reserved for the devil only.[98] Unlike spirits in pagan beliefs, demons are not intermediary spirits who must be sacrificed for the appeasement of a deity. Possession also shows no trace of positivity, contrary to some pagan depictions of spirit possession. They are explicitly said to be ruled by the Devil or Beelzebub.[99] Their origin is unclear, the texts take the existence of demons for granted. Many early Christians, like Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Lactantius assumed demons were ghosts of the Nephilim, known from Intertestamental writings.[100] Because of references to Satan as the lord of demons, and evil angels of Satan throughout the New Testament, other scholars identified fallen angels with demons.[101] Demons as entirely evil entities, who have been born evil, may not fit the proposed origin of evil in free will, taught in alternate or opposing theologies.[102]
Pseudepigrapha and deuterocanonical books
A demon from The Ladder of Divine Ascent, written in Georgian by Nikrai.
Main articles: Pseudepigrapha and Deuterocanonical books
See also: Book of Tobit, Book of Enoch, and Book of Jubilees
Demons are included in biblical interpretation. In the story of Passover, the Bible tells the story as "the Lord struck down all the firstborn in Egypt" (Exodus 12:21–29). In the Book of Jubilees, which is considered canonical only by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church,[103] this same event is told slightly differently: "All the powers of [the demon] Mastema had been let loose to slay all the first-born in the land of Egypt. And the powers of the Lord did everything according as the Lord commanded them." (Jubilees 49:2–4)
In the Genesis flood narrative, the author explains how God was noticing "how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways" (Genesis 6:12). In Jubilees, the sins of man are attributed to "the unclean demons [who] began to lead astray the children of the sons of Noah, and to make to err and destroy them" (Jubilees 10:1). In Jubilees, Mastema questions the loyalty of Abraham and tells God to "bid him offer him as a burnt offering on the altar, and Thou wilt see if he will do this command" (Jubilees 17:16). The discrepancy between the story in Jubilees and the story in Genesis 22 exists with the presence of Mastema. In Genesis, God tests the will of Abraham merely to determine whether he is a true follower, however; in Jubilees, Mastema has an agenda behind promoting the sacrifice of Abraham's son, "an even more demonic act than that of Satan in Job".[104] In Jubilees, where Mastema, an angel tasked with tempting mortals into sin and iniquity, requests that God give him a tenth of the spirits of the children of the watchers, demons, in order to aid the process (Jubilees 10:7–9). These demons are passed into Mastema's authority, where once again, an angel is in charge of demonic spirits.
In the Testament of Solomon, written sometime in the first three centuries C.E., the demon Asmodeus explains that he is the son of an angel and a human mother. Another demon describes himself as having died in the "massacre in the age of giants". Beelzeboul, the prince of demons, appears as a fallen angel, not as a demon, but makes people worship demons as their gods.[101]: 670
Christian demonology
Main articles: Christian demonology, Exorcism in Christianity, Exorcism in the Catholic Church, and Demonic possession § Christianity
The Torment of Saint Anthony (1488) by Michelangelo, depicting Saint Anthony being assailed by demons
Death and the Miser (detail), a Hieronymus Bosch painting, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Painting of Saint Francis Borgia performing an exorcism, as depicted by Goya
Since Early Christianity, demonology has developed from a simple acceptance of demons to a complex study that has grown from the original ideas taken from Jewish demonology and Christian scriptures.[105] Christian demonology is studied in depth within the Roman Catholic Church,[106] although many other Christian churches affirm and discuss the existence of demons.[107][108]
Building upon the few references to daimon in the New Testament, especially the poetry of the Book of Revelation, Christian writers of apocrypha from the second century onwards created a more complicated tapestry of beliefs about "demons" that was largely independent of Christian scripture.
While daimons were considered as both potentially benevolent or malevolent, Origen argued against Celsus that daimons are exclusively evil entities, supporting the later idea of (evil) demons. According to Origen's cosmology, increasing corruption and evil within the soul, the more estranged the soul gets from God. Therefore, Origen opined that the most evil demons are located underground. Besides the fallen angels known from Christian scriptures, Origen talks about Greek daemons, like nature spirits and giants. These creatures were thought to inhabit nature or air and nourish from pagan sacrifices roaming the earth. However, there is no functional difference between the spirits of the underworld and of earth, since both have fallen from perfection into the material world. Origen sums them up as fallen angels and thus equal to demons.[109]
Many ascetics, like Origen and Anthony the Great, described demons as psychological powers, tempting to evil,[110] in contrast to benevolent angels advising good. According to Life of Anthony, written in Greek around 360 by Athanasius of Alexandria, most of the time, the demons were expressed as an internal struggle, inclinations, and temptations. But after Anthony successfully resisted the demons, they would appear in human form to tempt and threaten him even more intensely.[111]
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite described evil as "defiancy" and does not give evil an ontological existence. He explains demons are deficient creatures, who willingly turn themselves towards the unreal and non-existence. Their dangerous nature results not from the power of their nature, but from their tendency to drag others into the "void" and the unreal, away from God.[5]
Michael Psellos proposed the existence of several types of demons, deeply influenced by the material nature of the regions they dwell. The highest and most powerful demons attack the mind of people using their "imaginative action" (phantastikos) to produce illusions in the mind. The lowest demons, on the other hand, are almost mindless, gross, and grunting spirits, which try to possess people instinctively, simply attracted by the warmth and life of humans. These cause diseases, fatal accidents and animalistic behavior in their victims. They are unable to speak, while other lower types of demons might give out false oracles. The demons are divided into:
Leliouria: The highest demons who inhabit the ether, beyond the moon
Aeria: Demons of the air below the moon
Chthonia: Inhabiting the land
Hyraia/Enalia: Dwelling in the water
Bypochtbonia: They live beneath the earth
Misophaes: The lowest type of demon, blind and almost senseless in the lowest hell
Invocation of Saints, holy men and women, especially ascetics, reading the Gospel, holy oil or water is said to drive them out. However, Psellos' schemes have been too inconsistent to answer questions about the hierarchy of fallen angels. The devil's position is impossible to assign in this scheme and it does not respond to living perceptions of felt experience and was considered rather impractical to have a lasting effect or impact on Christian demonology.[112]
The contemporary Roman Catholic Church unequivocally teaches that angels and demons are real beings rather than just symbolic devices. The Catholic Church has a cadre of officially sanctioned exorcists which perform many exorcisms each year. The exorcists of the Catholic Church teach that demons attack humans continually but that afflicted persons can be effectively healed and protected either by the formal rite of exorcism, authorized to be performed only by bishops and those they designate, or by prayers of deliverance, which any Christian can offer for themselves or others.[113]
At various times in Christian history, attempts have been made to classify demons according to various proposed demonic hierarchies.
Mandaeism
Main article: Demons in Mandaeism
See also: Mandaeism and Ruha
In Mandaeism, the World of Darkness (alma d-hšuka), also referred to as Sheol, is the underworld located below Tibil (Earth). It is ruled by its king Ur (Leviathan) and its queen Ruha, mother of the seven planets and twelve constellations. The great dark Ocean of Sup (or Suf) lies in the World of Darkness.[114] The great dividing river of Hitpun, analogous to the river Styx in Greek mythology, separates the World of Darkness from the World of Light.[115] Prominent infernal beings found in the World of Darkness include lilith, nalai (vampire), niuli (hobgoblin), gadalta (ghost), satani (Satan) and various other demons and evil spirits.[114][115]
Gnosticism
Gnostic largely relies on Greek and Persian dualism, especially on Platonism. In accordance with Platonism, they regarded the idea as good while considering the material and conscious world to be inherently evil.[116] The demonized star-deities of late Persian religion became associated with a demon, thus identifying the seven observable planets with a demonic ruler.[117] These demons rule over the earth and the realm of planets, representing different desires and passions.[118] According to Origen, the Ophites depicted the world as surrounded by the demonic Leviathan.[119]
Like in Christianity, the term daimons was used for demons and refers to both the Archons as well as to their demonic assistants. Judas Iscariot is, in the Gospel of Judas, portrayed as the thirtheenth daimon for betraying Jesus and a supporter of the Archons.[120]
Examples of Gnostic portrayals of demons can be found in the Apocryphon of John in which they are said to have helped construct the physical Adam[121] and in Pistis Sophia which states they are ruled over by Hekate and punish corrupt souls.[122]
Islam
Demons depicted in the Book of Wonders, a late 14th-century Arabic manuscript
Ali slaying divs with his sword Zulfiqar in a Persian manuscript.
Shayāṭīn (or Daeva of Indo-Iranian religion) are the usual terms for demons in Islamic belief.[123][124] In Islam demons try to lead humans astray from God, by tempting them to sin, teaching them sorcery and cause mischief among humans. Occult practises albeit not forbidden per se, may include conjuring demons, which requires acts against God's laws and are therefore forbidden, such as illicit blood-sacrifices, abandoning prayer and rejecting fasting. Based on the Islamic view on Solomon, who is widely believed to have been a ruler over genies and demons, Islam has a rich tradition about conjuring demons. Among the demons are the devils (shayatin) and the fiends (div).[125] Both are believed to have worked for Solomon as slaves. While the devils usually appear within a Judeo-Christian background, the div frequently feature in beliefs of Persian and Indian origin. But it is to be noted that in Islam both angels and demons are considered to be the creatures of God and so God has ultimate power over all of them. Even the malicious div are created by God and thus have a place in the world's order.[126]
According to exegesis of the Quran the devils are the offspring of Iblis (Satan). They are said to live until the world ceases to exist, always shadow in humans (and jinn)[127] whispering onto their hearts to lead them astray. Prayers are used to ward off their attacks, dissolving them temporarily. As the counterpart of the angels, they try to go against God's will and their abode in Hell is pre-destined. They lack free will and are bound to evil.[128] The ifrit and marid are considered to be two more powerful classes of devils.
According to Abu Ali Bal'ami's work on the history of the world, Wahb ibn Munabbih explained that the divs were the first beings created by God.[129] Some argue the devils were created good, but turned evil by Iblis' act of arrogance, the div were created as vicious creatures and embodiment of evil.[130][131] When Iblis was still among the angels, he led an army against the spirits on the earth. Among them were the div, who formed two orders; one of which sided with the jinn and were banished with them, condemned to roam the earth. The other, treacherous div joined Iblis in battle, and was exiled to Hell with him. The div are often depicted as sorcerers whose misdeeds are not bound to temptation only. They could cause sickness, mental illnesses, or even turn humans to stone by touching.[132] While the devils frequently appear to ordinary humans to tempt them into everything disapproved by society, the div usually appear to specific heroes.[133][134]
Bahá'í Faith
In the Bahá'í Faith, demons are not regarded as independent evil spirits as they are in some faiths. Rather, evil spirits described in various faiths' traditions, such as Satan, fallen angels, demons and jinn, are metaphors for the base character traits a human being may acquire and manifest when he turns away from God and follows his lower nature. Belief in the existence of ghosts and earthbound spirits is rejected and considered to be the product of superstition.[135]
Ceremonial magic
While some people fear demons, or attempt to exorcise them, others willfully attempt to summon them for knowledge, assistance, or power. The ceremonial magician usually consults a grimoire, which gives the names and abilities of demons as well as detailed instructions for conjuring and controlling them. Grimoires are not limited to demons – some give instructions for the invocation of deity, a process called theurgy. The use of ceremonial magic to call demons is also known as goetia, the name taken from a section in the famous grimoire known as the Lesser Key of Solomon.[136]
Wicca
According to Rosemary Ellen Guiley, "Demons are not courted or worshipped in contemporary Wicca and Paganism. The existence of negative energies is acknowledged."[137]
Modern interpretations
The classic oni, a Japanese ogre-like creature which often has horns and often translated into English as "demon".
Psychologist Wilhelm Wundt remarked that "among the activities attributed by myths all over the world to demons, the harmful predominate, so that in popular belief bad demons are clearly older than good ones."[138] Sigmund Freud developed this idea and claimed that the concept of demons was derived from the important relation of the living to the dead: "The fact that demons are always regarded as the spirits of those who have died recently shows better than anything the influence of mourning on the origin of the belief in demons."[139]
M. Scott Peck, an American psychiatrist, wrote two books on the subject, People of the Lie: The Hope For Healing Human Evil[140] and Glimpses of the Devil: A Psychiatrist's Personal Accounts of Possession, Exorcism, and Redemption.[141] Peck describes in some detail several cases involving his patients. In People of the Lie he provides identifying characteristics of an evil person, whom he classified as having a character disorder. In Glimpses of the Devil Peck goes into significant detail describing how he became interested in exorcism in order to debunk the myth of possession by evil spirits – only to be convinced otherwise after encountering two cases which did not fit into any category known to psychology or psychiatry. Peck came to the conclusion that possession was a rare phenomenon related to evil and that possessed people are not actually evil; rather, they are doing battle with the forces of evil.[142]
Although Peck's earlier work was met with widespread popular acceptance, his work on the topics of evil and possession has generated significant debate and derision. Much was made of his association with (and admiration for) the controversial Malachi Martin, a Roman Catholic priest and a former Jesuit, despite the fact that Peck consistently called Martin a liar and a manipulator.[143][144] Richard Woods, a Roman Catholic priest and theologian, has claimed that Dr. Peck misdiagnosed patients based upon a lack of knowledge regarding dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder) and had apparently transgressed the boundaries of professional ethics by attempting to persuade his patients into accepting Christianity.[143] Father Woods admitted that he has never witnessed a genuine case of demonic possession in all his years.[145][146][147]
According to S. N. Chiu, God is shown sending a demon against Saul in 1 Samuel 16 and 18 in order to punish him for the failure to follow God's instructions, showing God as having the power to use demons for his own purposes, putting the demon under his divine authority.[148] According to the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, demons, despite being typically associated with evil, are often shown to be under divine control, and not acting of their own devices." (wikipedia.org)
"The distinction between terror and horror is a standard literary and psychological concept applied especially to Gothic and horror fiction.[1] Terror is usually described as the feeling of dread and anticipation that precedes the horrifying experience. By contrast, horror is the feeling of revulsion that usually follows a frightening sight, sound, or otherwise experience.
Terror has also been defined by Noel Carroll as a combination of horror and revulsion.[2]
Literary Gothic
Figure 20 from Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). Caption reads "FIG. 20.—Terror, from a photograph by Dr. Duchenne."
The distinction between terror and horror was first characterized by the Gothic writer Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823), horror being more related to being shocked or scared (being horrified) at an awful realization or a deeply unpleasant occurrence, while terror is more related to being anxious or fearful.[3] Radcliffe considered that terror is characterized by "obscurity" or indeterminacy in its treatment of potentially horrible events, something which leads to the sublime. She says in an essay published posthumously in 1826, 'On the Supernatural in Poetry', that terror "expands the soul and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life". Horror, in contrast, "freezes and nearly annihilates them" with its unambiguous displays of atrocity. She goes on: "I apprehend that neither Shakespeare nor Milton by their fictions, nor Mr Burke by his reasoning, anywhere looked to positive horror as a source of the sublime, though they all agree that terror is a very high one; and where lies the great difference between horror and terror, but in uncertainty and obscurity, that accompany the first, respecting the dreader evil."[4]
According to Devendra Varma in The Gothic Flame (1966):
The difference between Terror and Horror is the difference between awful apprehension and sickening realization: between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse.
Horror fiction
Horror is also a genre of film and fiction that relies on horrifying images or situations to tell stories and prompt reactions or jump scares to put their audiences on edge. In these films the moment of horrifying revelation is usually preceded by a terrifying build up, often using the medium of scary music.[5]
In his non-fiction book Danse Macabre, Stephen King stressed how horror tales normally chart the outbreak of madness/the terrible within an everyday setting.[6] He also elaborated on the twin themes of terror and horror, adding a third element which he referred to as "revulsion". He describes terror as "the finest element" of the three, and the one he strives hardest to maintain in his own writing. Citing many examples, he defines "terror" as the suspenseful moment in horror before the actual monster is revealed. "Horror," King writes, is that moment at which one sees the creature/aberration that causes the terror or suspense, a "shock value". King finally compares "revulsion" with the gag-reflex, a bottom-level, cheap gimmick which he admits he often resorts to in his own fiction if necessary, confessing:
I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.[7]
Psychoanalytic views
Freud likened the experience of horror to that of the uncanny.[8]
In his wake, Georges Bataille saw horror as akin to ecstasy in its transcendence of the everyday;[9] as opening a way to go beyond rational social consciousness.[10] Julia Kristeva in turn considered horror as evoking experience of the primitive, the infantile, and the demoniacal aspects of unmediated femininity.[11]
Horror, helplessness and trauma
The paradox of pleasure experienced through horror films/books can be explained partly as stemming from relief from real-life horror in the experience of horror in play, partly as a safe way to return in adult life to the paralysing feelings of infantile helplessness.[12]
Helplessness is also a factor in the overwhelming experience of real horror in psychological trauma.[13] Playing at re-experiencing the trauma may be a helpful way of overcoming it." (wikipedia.org)
"Fantastic art is a broad and loosely defined art genre.[1] It is not restricted to a specific school of artists, geographical location or historical period. It can be characterised by subject matter – which portrays non-realistic, mystical, mythical or folkloric subjects or events – and style, which is representational and naturalistic, rather than abstract – or in the case of magazine illustrations and similar, in the style of graphic novel art such as manga.
Fantasy has been an integral part of art since its beginnings,[2] but has been particularly important in mannerism, magic realist painting, romantic art, symbolism, surrealism and lowbrow. In French, the genre is called le fantastique, in English it is sometimes referred to as visionary art, grotesque art or mannerist art. It has had a deep and circular interaction with fantasy literature.
The subject matter of fantastic art may resemble the product of hallucinations, and Fantastic artist Richard Dadd spent much of his life in mental institutions. Salvador Dalí famously said: "the only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad".[3] Some recent fantastic art draws on the artist's experience, or purported experience, of .
The term fantasy art is closely related, and is applied primarily to recent art (typically 20th century on wards) inspired by, or illustrating fantasy literature.
Fantastic art has traditionally been largely confined to painting and illustration, but since the 1970s has increasingly been found also in photography. Fantastic art explores fantasy, imagination, the dream state, the grotesque, visions and the uncanny,[2] as well as so-called "Goth" and "Dark" art.
Related genres
vampire, face of little green man, feather pen (quill) and fire-breathing dragon – to the right of that are scripted words "Speculative (over) Fiction"
Speculative fiction
Alternate history
Fantasy fiction
Anime Fandom Fantasy art Fiction magazines Films Genres History Legendary creatures Literature Podcasts Quests Artifacts Races Superheroes Television Themes Worlds Writers
Science fiction
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vte
Genres which may also be considered as fantastic art include the Weltlandschaften or world landscapes of the Northern Renaissance, Symbolism of the Victorian era, Pre-Raphaelites, the Golden Age of Illustration,[4] and Surrealism. Works based on classical mythology, which have been a staple of European art from the Renaissance period, also arguably meet the definition of fantastic art, as art based on modern mythology such as J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth mythos unquestionably does. Religious art also depicts supernatural or miraculous subjects in a naturalistic way, but is not generally regarded as fantastic art....Twentieth century
The rise of fantasy and science fiction "pulp" magazines demanded artwork to illustrate stories and (via cover art) to promote sales. This led to a movement of science fiction and fantasy artists prior to and during the Great Depression, as anthologised by Vincent Di Fate, himself a prolific SF and space artist.[6]
In the United States in the 1930s, a group of Wisconsin artists inspired by the Surrealist movement of Europe created their own brand of fantastic art. They included Madison, Wisconsin-based artists Marshall Glasier, Dudley Huppler and John Wilde; Karl Priebe of Milwaukee and Gertrude Abercrombie of Chicago. Their art combined macabre humor, mystery and irony[7] which was in direct and pointed contradiction to the American Regionalism then in vogue.[citation needed]
In postwar Chicago, the art movement Chicago Imagism produced many fantastic and grotesque paintings, which were little noted because they did not conform to New York abstract art fashions of the time. Major imagists include Roger Brown, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Ed Paschke, and Karl Wirsum.[8]
After 1970, modern western fantasy is influenced by illustrations from Conan the Barbarian and The Lord of the Rings,[9] as well as popular works of SF and fantasy like the role-playing game Advanced Dungeons & Dragons or the French Heavy Metal magazine. " (wikipedia.org)
"A succubus is a demon or supernatural entity in folklore, in female form, that appears in dreams to seduce men, usually through sexual activity. According to religious tradition, a succubus needs semen to survive; repeated sexual activity with a succubus will result in a bond being formed between the succubus and the man; and a succubus cannot drain or harm the man with whom she is having intercourse. In modern representations, a succubus is often depicted as a beautiful seductress or enchantress, rather than as demonic or frightening. The male counterpart to the succubus is the incubus.
Etymology
The term derives from Late Latin succuba "paramour" from succubare "to lie beneath" (sub- "under" and cubare "to lie"),[1] used to describe this being's implied sexual position relative to the sleeper's position. The English word "succubus" dates from the late 14th century. The succubus is also known as the earth wanderer.[2][3]
In folklore
As depicted in the Jewish mystical treatise Zohar and the medieval Jewish satirical text Alphabet of Ben Sira, Lilith was Adam's first wife, who later became a succubus.[4][5] She left Adam and refused to return to the Garden of Eden after she mated with the archangel Samael.[5] In Zoharistic Kabbalah, there were four succubi who mated with the archangel Samael. The four original queens of the demons were Lilith, Eisheth Zenunim, Agrat bat Mahlat, and Naamah.[6] A succubus may take a form of a beautiful young girl, but closer inspection may reveal deformities of her body, such as bird-like claws or serpentine tails.[7] Folklore also describes the act of cunnilingus on their vulvas, which drip with urine and other fluids.[8] In later folklore, a succubus took the form of a siren.
Throughout history, priests and rabbis, including Hanina ben Dosa and Abaye, tried to curb the power of succubi over humans.[9] However, not all succubi were malevolent. According to Walter Map in the satire De nugis curialium (Trifles of Courtiers), Pope Sylvester II (999–1003) was allegedly involved with a succubus named Meridiana, who helped him achieve his high rank in the Catholic Church. Before his death, he confessed of his sins and died repentant.[10]
Ability to reproduce
According to the Kabbalah and the school of Rashba, the original three queens of the demons, Agrat bat Mahlat, Naamah, Eisheth Zenunim, and all their cohorts give birth to children, except Lilith.[11] According to other legends, the children of Lilith are called Lilin.
According to the Malleus Maleficarum, or Witches' Hammer, written by Heinrich Kramer (Institoris) in 1486, succubi collect semen from men they seduce. Incubi, or male demons, then use the semen to impregnate human females,[12] thus explaining how demons could apparently sire children, despite the traditional belief that they were incapable of reproduction. Children so begotten—cambions—were supposed to be those that were born deformed, or more susceptible to supernatural influences.[13] While the book does not address why a human female impregnated with the semen of a human male would not produce regular human offspring, an explanation could be that the semen is altered before being transferred to the female host.
King James in his dissertation titled Dæmonologie refutes the possibility for angelic entities to reproduce and instead offered a suggestion that a devil would carry out two methods of impregnating women - the first, to steal the sperm out of a dead man and deliver it into a woman. If a demon could extract the semen quickly, the substance could not be instantly transported to a female host, causing it to go cold. This explains his view that succubi and incubi were the same demonic entity, only to be described differently based on the tormented sexes being conversed with. The second method was the idea that a dead body could be possessed by a devil, causing it to rise and have sexual relations with others. However, no mention has been found of a female corpse being possessed to elicit sex from men.[14]
In non-Western literature
Buddhist canon
A Buddhist scripture regarding prayer to Avalokiteśvara, the Dharani Sutra of Amoghapāśa, promises to those who pray that "you will not be attacked by demons who either suck your energy or make love to you in your dreams."[15]
Arabian mythology
In Arabian mythology, the qarînah (قرينة) is a spirit similar to the succubus, with origins possibly in ancient Egyptian religion or in the animistic beliefs of pre-Islamic Arabia.[16] A qarînah "sleeps with the person and has relations during sleep as is known by the dreams".[17] They are said to be invisible, but a person with "second sight" can see them, often in the form of a cat, dog, or other household pet.[16] "In Omdurman it is a spirit which possesses. ... Only certain people are possessed and such people cannot marry or the qarina will harm them."[18]
In fiction
Main article: List of succubi in fiction
Throughout history, succubi have been popular characters in music, literature, film, television, and more. " (wikipedia.org)
"A zombie (Haitian French: zombi, Haitian Creole: zonbi) is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. Zombies are most commonly found in horror and fantasy genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in which a zombie is a dead body reanimated through various methods, most commonly magic like voodoo. Modern media depictions of the reanimation of the dead often do not involve magic but rather science fictional methods such as carriers, fungi, radiation, mental diseases, vectors, pathogens, parasites, scientific accidents, etc.[1][2]
The English word "zombie" was first recorded in 1819, in a history of Brazil by the poet Robert Southey, in the form of "zombi".[3] The Oxford English Dictionary gives the word's origin as Central African and compares it to the Kongo words nzambi (god) and zumbi or nzumbi (fetish). Some authors also compare it to the Kongo word vumbi (mvumbi) (ghost, revenant, corpse that still retains the soul), (nvumbi) (body without a soul).[4][5] A Kimbundu-to-Portuguese dictionary from 1903 defines the related word nzumbi as soul,[6] while a later Kimbundu–Portuguese dictionary defines it as being a "spirit that is supposed to wander the earth to torment the living".[7] One of the first books to expose Western culture to the concept of the voodoo zombie was W. B. Seabrook's The Magic Island (1929), the account of a narrator who encounters voodoo cults in Haiti and their resurrected thralls.
A new version of the zombie, distinct from that described in Haitian folklore, emerged in popular culture during the latter half of the 20th century. This interpretation of the zombie is drawn largely from George A. Romero's film Night of the Living Dead (1968),[1] which was partly inspired by Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend (1954).[8][9] The word zombie is not used in Night of the Living Dead, but was applied later by fans.[10] After zombie films such as Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Michael Jackson's music video Thriller (1983), the genre waned for some years.
The mid-90's saw the introduction of Resident Evil and The House of the Dead, two break-out successes of video games featuring zombie enemies which would later go on to become highly influential and well-known. These games were initially followed by a wave of low-budget Asian zombie films such as the zombie comedy Bio Zombie (1998) and action film Versus (2000), and then a new wave of popular Western zombie films in the early 2000s, the Resident Evil and House of the Dead films, the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, and the British zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead (2004). The "zombie apocalypse" concept, in which the civilized world is brought low by a global zombie infestation, has since become a staple of modern popular art, seen in such media as The Walking Dead franchise.
The late 2000s and 2010s saw the humanization and romanticization of the zombie archetype, with the zombies increasingly portrayed as friends and love interests for humans. Notable examples of the latter include movies Warm Bodies and Zombies, novels American Gods by Neil Gaiman, Generation Dead by Daniel Waters, and Bone Song by John Meaney, animated movie Corpse Bride, TV series Pushing Daisies and iZombie, and manga/novel/anime series Sankarea: Undying Love and Is This a Zombie? In this context, zombies are often seen as stand-ins for discriminated groups struggling for equality, and the human–zombie romantic relationship is interpreted as a metaphor for sexual liberation and taboo breaking (given that zombies are subject to wild desires and free from social conventions).[11][12][13][14]
Etymology
The English word "zombie" is first recorded in 1819, in a history of Brazil by the poet Robert Southey, in the form of "zombi", actually referring to the Afro-Brazilian rebel leader named Zumbi and the etymology of his name in "nzambi".[3] The Oxford English Dictionary gives the origin of the word as Central African and compares it to the Kongo words "nzambi" (god) and "zumbi" (fetish).
In Haitian folklore, a zombie (Haitian French: zombi, Haitian Creole: zonbi) is an animated corpse raised by magical means, such as witchcraft.[15]
The concept has been popularly associated with the religion of voodoo, but it plays no part in that faith's formal practices.[citation needed]
How the creatures in contemporary zombie films came to be called "zombies" is not fully clear. The film Night of the Living Dead made no spoken reference to its undead antagonists as "zombies", describing them instead as "ghouls" (though ghouls, which derive from Arabic folklore, are demons, not undead). Although George A. Romero used the term "ghoul" in his original scripts, in later interviews he used the term "zombie". The word "zombie" is used exclusively by Romero in his script for his sequel Dawn of the Dead (1978),[16] including once in dialog. According to Romero, film critics were influential in associating the term "zombie" to his creatures, and especially the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. He eventually accepted this linkage, even though he remained convinced at the time that "zombies" corresponded to the undead slaves of Haitian voodoo as depicted in White Zombie with Bela Lugosi.[17]
Folk beliefs
Haiti
A depiction of a zombie at twilight in a field of sugar cane
Zombies are featured widely in Haitian rural folklore as dead persons physically revived by the act of necromancy of a bokor, a sorcerer or witch. The bokor is opposed by the houngan (priest) and the mambo (priestess) of the formal voodoo religion. A zombie remains under the control of the bokor as a personal slave, having no will of its own.
The Haitian tradition also includes an incorporeal type of zombie, the "zombie astral", which is a part of the human soul. A bokor can capture a zombie astral to enhance his spiritual power. A zombie astral can also be sealed inside a specially decorated bottle by a bokor and sold to a client to bring luck, healing, or business success. It is believed that God eventually will reclaim the zombie's soul, so the zombie is a temporary spiritual entity.[18]
The two types of zombie reflect soul dualism, a belief of Haitian voodoo. Each type of legendary zombie is therefore missing one half of its soul (the flesh or the spirit).[19]
The zombie belief has its roots in traditions brought to Haiti by enslaved Africans and their subsequent experiences in the New World. It was thought that the voodoo deity Baron Samedi would gather them from their grave to bring them to a heavenly afterlife in Africa ("Guinea"), unless they had offended him in some way, in which case they would be forever a slave after death, as a zombie. A zombie could also be saved by feeding them salt. English professor Amy Wilentz has written that the modern concept of Zombies was strongly influenced by Haitian slavery. Slave drivers on the plantations, who were usually slaves themselves and sometimes voodoo priests, used the fear of zombification to discourage slaves from committing suicide.[20][21]
While most scholars have associated the Haitian zombie with African cultures, a connection has also been suggested to the island's indigenous Taíno people, partly based on an early account of native shamanist practices written by the Hieronymite monk Ramón Pané [es], a companion of Christopher Columbus.[22][23][24]
The Haitian zombie phenomenon first attracted widespread international attention during the United States occupation of Haiti (1915–1934), when a number of case histories of purported "zombies" began to emerge. The first popular book covering the topic was William Seabrook's The Magic Island (1929). Seabrooke cited Article 246 of the Haitian criminal code, which was passed in 1864, asserting that it was an official recognition of zombies. This passage was later used in promotional materials for the 1932 film White Zombie.[25]
Also shall be qualified as attempted murder the employment which may be made by any person of substances which, without causing actual death, produce a lethargic coma more or less prolonged. If, after the administering of such substances, the person has been buried, the act shall be considered murder no matter what result follows.
— Code pénal[26]
In 1937, while researching folklore in Haiti, Zora Neale Hurston encountered the case of a woman who appeared in a village. A family claimed that she was Felicia Felix-Mentor, a relative, who had died and been buried in 1907 at the age of 29. The woman was examined by a doctor; X-rays indicated that she did not have a leg fracture that Felix-Mentor was known to have had.[27] Hurston pursued rumors that affected persons were given a powerful, but she was unable to locate individuals willing to offer much information. She wrote: "What is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Vodou in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony."[28]
Africa
A Central African origin for the Haitian zombie has been postulated based on two etymologies in the Kongo language, nzambi ("god") and zumbi ("fetish"). This root helps form the names of several deities, including the Kongo creator deity Nzambi a Mpungu and the Louisiana serpent deity Li Grand Zombi (a local version of the Haitian Damballa), but it is in fact a generic word for a divine spirit.[29] The common African conception of beings under these names is more similar to the incorporeal "zombie astral",[18] as in the Kongo Nkisi spirits.
A related, but also often incorporeal, undead being is the jumbee of the English-speaking Caribbean, considered to be of the same etymology;[30] in the French West Indies also, local "zombies" are recognized, but these are of a more general spirit nature.[31]
The idea of physical zombie-like creatures is present in some South African cultures, where they are called xidachane in Sotho/Tsonga and maduxwane in Venda. In some communities, it is believed that a dead person can be zombified by a small child.[32] It is said that the spell can be broken by a powerful enough sangoma.[33] It is also believed in some areas of South Africa that witches can zombify a person by killing and possessing the victim's body to force it into slave labor.[34] After rail lines were built to transport migrant workers, stories emerged about "witch trains". These trains appeared ordinary, but were staffed by zombified workers controlled by a witch. The trains would abduct a person boarding at night, and the person would then either be zombified or beaten and thrown from the train a distance away from the original location.[34]
Origin hypotheses
Several decades after Hurston's work, Wade Davis, a Harvard ethnobotanist, presented a pharmacological case for zombies in a 1983 article in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology,[35] and later in two popular books: The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985) and Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988).
Davis traveled to Haiti in 1982 and, as a result of his investigations, claimed that a living person can be turned into a zombie by two special powders being introduced into the blood stream (usually through a wound). The first,. Together these powders were said to induce a deathlike state, in which the will of the victim would be entirely subjected to that of the bokor. Davis also popularized the story of Clairvius Narcisse, who was claimed to have succumbed to this practice. The most ethically questioned and least scientifically explored is part of a recently buried child's brain.[36][37][38][verification needed]
The process described by Davis was an initial state of deathlike suspended animation, followed by re-awakening — typically after being buried — into a psychotic state. The psychosis induced by the drug and psychological trauma was hypothesised by Davis to reinforce culturally learned beliefs and to cause the individual to reconstruct their identity as that of a zombie, since they "knew" that they were dead and had no other role to play in the Haitian society. Societal reinforcement of the belief was hypothesized by Davis to confirm for the zombie individual the zombie state, and such individuals were known to hang around in graveyards, exhibiting attitudes of low affect.
Davis's claim has been criticized, particularly the suggestion that Haitian witch doctors can keep "zombies" in a state of pharmacologically induced trance for many years.[39] Symptoms of TTX poisoning range from numbness and nausea to paralysis — particularly of the muscles of the diaphragm — unconsciousness, and death, but do not include a stiffened gait or a deathlike trance. According to psychologist Terence Hines, the scientific community dismisses tetrodotoxin as the cause of this state, and Davis' assessment of the nature of the reports of Haitian zombies is viewed as overly credulous.[38]
Social
Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing highlighted the link between social and cultural expectations and compulsion, in the context of schizophrenia and other mental illness, suggesting that schizogenesis may account for some of the psychological aspects of zombification.[40] Particularly, this suggests cases where schizophrenia manifests a state of catatonia.
Roland Littlewood, professor of anthropology and psychiatry, published a study supporting a social explanation of the zombie phenomenon in the medical journal The Lancet in 1997.[41] The social explanation sees observed cases of people identified as zombies as a culture-bound syndrome,[42] with a particular cultural form of adoption practiced in Haiti that unites the homeless and mentally ill with grieving families who see them as their "returned" lost loved ones, as Littlewood summarizes his findings in an article in Times Higher Education:[43]
I came to the conclusion that although it is unlikely that there is a single explanation for all cases where zombies are recognised by locals in Haiti, the mistaken identification of a wandering mentally ill stranger by bereaved relatives is the most likely explanation in many cases. People with a chronic schizophrenic illness, brain damage or learning disability are not uncommon in rural Haiti, and they would be particularly likely to be identified as zombies.
Modern archetype evolution
Pulliam and Fonseca (2014) and Walz (2006) trace the zombie lineage back to ancient Mesopotamia.[44][45] In the Descent of Ishtar, the goddess Ishtar threatens:[46]
If you do not open the gate for me to come in,
I shall smash the door and shatter the bolt,
I shall smash the doorpost and overturn the doors,
I shall raise up the dead and they shall eat the living:
And the dead shall outnumber the living!
She repeats this same threat in a slightly modified form in the Epic of Gilgamesh.[47]
One of the first books to expose Western culture to the concept of the voodoo zombie was The Magic Island (1929) by W. B. Seabrook. This is the sensationalized account of a narrator who encounters voodoo cults in Haiti and their resurrected thralls. Time commented that the book "introduced 'zombi' into U.S. speech".[48] Zombies have a complex literary heritage, with antecedents ranging from Richard Matheson and H. P. Lovecraft to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein drawing on European folklore of the undead. Victor Halperin directed White Zombie (1932), a horror film starring Bela Lugosi. Here zombies are depicted as mindless, unthinking henchmen under the spell of an evil magician. Zombies, often still using this voodoo-inspired rationale, were initially uncommon in cinema, but their appearances continued sporadically through the 1930s to the 1960s, with films including I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959).
The actor T. P. Cooke as Frankenstein's Monster in an 1823 stage production of the novel
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, while not a zombie novel per se, foreshadows many 20th century ideas about zombies in that the resurrection of the dead is portrayed as a scientific process rather than a mystical one and that the resurrected dead are degraded and more violent than their living selves. Frankenstein, published in 1818, has its roots in European folklore, whose tales of the vengeful dead also informed the evolution of the modern conception of the vampire.[49] Later notable 19th century stories about the avenging undead included Ambrose Bierce's "The Death of Halpin Frayser" and various Gothic Romanticism tales by Edgar Allan Poe. Though their works could not be properly considered zombie fiction, the supernatural tales of Bierce and Poe would prove influential on later writers such as H. P. Lovecraft, by Lovecraft's own admission.[50]
In the 1920s and early 1930s, Lovecraft wrote several novellae that explored the undead theme. "Cool Air", "In the Vault" and "The Outsider" all deal with the undead, but Lovecraft's "Herbert West–Reanimator" (1921) "helped define zombies in popular culture".[51] This series of short stories featured Herbert West, a mad scientist, who attempts to revive human corpses, with mixed results. Notably, the resurrected dead are uncontrollable, mostly mute, primitive and extremely violent; though they are not referred to as zombies, their portrayal was prescient, anticipating the modern conception of zombies by several decades.[citation needed] Edgar Rice Burroughs similarly depicted animated corpses in the second book of his Venus series, again without using the terms "zombie" or "undead".
Avenging zombies would feature prominently in the early 1950s EC Comics, which George A. Romero would later claim as an influence. The comics, including Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror and Weird Science, featured avenging undead in the Gothic tradition quite regularly, including adaptations of Lovecraft's stories, which included "In the Vault", "Cool Air" and "Herbert West–Reanimator".[52]
Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend, although classified as a vampire story, had a great impact on the zombie genre by way of George A. Romero. The novel and its 1964 film adaptation, The Last Man on Earth, which concern a lone human survivor waging war against a world of vampires, would by Romero's own admission greatly influence his 1968 low-budget film Night of the Living Dead, a work that was more influential on the concept of zombies than any literary or cinematic work before it.[53][54] The monsters in the film and its sequels, such as Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985), as well as the many zombie films it inspired, such as The Return of the Living Dead (1985) and Zombi 2 (1979), are usually hungry for human flesh, although Return of the Living Dead introduced the popular concept of zombies eating human brains.
Tor Johnson as a zombie with his victim in the cult movie Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)
There has been an evolution in the zombie archetype from supernatural to scientific themes. I Am Legend and Night of the Living Dead began the shift away from Haitian dark magic, though did not give scientific explanations for zombie origins. A more decisive shift towards scientific themes came with the Resident Evil video game series in the late 1990s, which gave more realistic scientific explanations for zombie origins while drawing on modern science and technology, such as biological weaponry, genetic manipulation and parasitic symbiosis. This became the standard approach for explaining zombie origins in popular fiction that followed Resident Evil.[55]
There has also been shift towards an action approach, which has led to another evolution of the zombie archietype, the "fast zombie" or running zombie. In contrast to Romero's classic slow zombies, "fast zombies" can run, are more aggressive and are often more intelligent. This type of zombie has origins in 1990s Japanese horror video games. In 1996, Capcom's survival horror video game Resident Evil featured zombie dogs that run towards the player. Later the same year, Sega's arcade shooter The House of the Dead introduced running human zombies, who run towards the player and can also jump and swim. The running human zombies introduced in The House of the Dead video games became the basis for the "fast zombies" that became popular in zombie films during the early 21st century, starting with 28 Days Later (2002), the Resident Evil and House of the Dead films and the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake. These films also adopted an action approach to the zombie concept, which was also influenced by the Resident Evil and House of the Dead video games.[56]
Film and television
Main article: Zombie film
Films featuring zombies have been a part of cinema since the 1930s. White Zombie (directed by Victor Halperin in 1932) and I Walked with a Zombie (directed by Jacques Tourneur; 1943) were early examples.[57][58][59] With George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), the zombie trope began to be increasingly linked to consumerism and consumer culture.[60] Today, zombie films are released with such regularity (at least 55 films were released in 2014 alone)[61] that they constitute a separate subgenre of horror film.[62]
Voodoo-related zombie themes have also appeared in espionage or adventure-themed works outside the horror genre. For example, the original Jonny Quest series (1964) and the James Bond novel Live and Let Die as well as its film adaptation both feature Caribbean villains who falsely claim the voodoo power of zombification to keep others in fear of them.
George Romero's modern zombie archetype in Night of the Living Dead was influenced by several earlier zombie-themed films, including White Zombie, Revolt of the Zombies (1936) and The Plague of the Zombies (1966). Romero was also inspired by Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend (1954), along with its film adaptation, The Last Man on Earth (1964).[63]
George A. Romero (1968–1985)
See also: Living Dead
Zombie
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction character
First appearance Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Created by George Romero
In-universe information
Alias "Romero zombie"
Type Undead (influenced by Haitian Zombie), Vampire, Ghoul
The modern conception of the zombie owes itself almost entirely to George A. Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead.[1][64][65] In his films, Romero "bred the zombie with the vampire, and what he got was the hybrid vigour of a ghoulish plague monster".[66] This entailed an apocalyptic vision of monsters that have come to be known as Romero zombies.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times chided theater owners and parents who allowed children access to the film. "I don't think the younger kids really knew what hit them", complained Ebert, "They were used to going to movies, sure, and they'd seen some horror movies before, sure, but this was something else." According to Ebert, the film affected the audience immediately:[67]
The kids in the audience were stunned. There was almost complete silence. The movie had stopped being delightfully scary about halfway through, and had become unexpectedly terrifying. There was a little girl across the aisle from me, maybe nine years old, who was sitting very still in her seat and crying.
A young zombie (Kyra Schon) feeding on human flesh, from Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Romero's reinvention of zombies is notable in terms of its thematics; he used zombies not just for their own sake, but as a vehicle "to criticize real-world social ills—such as government ineptitude, bioengineering, slavery, greed and exploitation—while indulging our post-apocalyptic fantasies".[68] Night was the first of six films in Romero's Living Dead series. Its first sequel, Dawn of the Dead, was released in 1978.
Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 was released just months after Dawn of the Dead as an ersatz sequel (Dawn of the Dead was released in several other countries as Zombi or Zombie).[1] Dawn of the Dead was the most commercially successful zombie film for decades, up until the zombie revival of the 2000s.[69] The 1981 film Hell of the Living Dead referenced a mutagenic gas as a source of zombie contagion: an idea also used in Dan O'Bannon's 1985 film Return of the Living Dead. Return of the Living Dead featured zombies that hungered specifically for human brains.
Relative Western decline (1985–1995)
Zombie films in the 1980s and 1990s were not as commercially successful as Dawn of the Dead in the late 1970s.[69] The mid-1980s produced few zombie films of note. Perhaps the most notable entry, the Evil Dead trilogy, while highly influential, are not technically zombie films, but films about demonic possession, despite the presence of the undead. 1985's Re-Animator, loosely based on the Lovecraft story, stood out in the genre, achieving nearly unanimous critical acclaim[70] and becoming a modest success, nearly outstripping Romero's Day of the Dead for box office returns.
After the mid-1980s, the subgenre was mostly relegated to the underground. Notable entries include director Peter Jackson's ultra-gory film Braindead (1992) (released as Dead Alive in the U.S.), Bob Balaban's comic 1993 film My Boyfriend's Back, where a self-aware high-school boy returns to profess his love for a girl and his love for human flesh, and Michele Soavi's Dellamorte Dellamore (1994) (released as Cemetery Man in the U.S.).
Early Asian films (1985–1995)
In 1980s Hong Kong cinema, the Chinese jiangshi, a zombie-like creature dating back to Qing dynasty era jiangshi fiction of the 18th and 19th centuries, were featured in a wave of jiangshi films, popularised by Mr. Vampire (1985). Hong Kong jiangshi films were popular in the Far East from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s.
Prior to the 1990s, there were not many Japanese films related to what may be considered in the West as a zombie film.[71] Early films such as The Discarnates (1988) feature little gore and no cannibalism, but it is about the dead returning to life looking for love rather than a story of apocalyptic destruction.[71] One of the earliest Japanese zombie films with considerable gore and violence was Battle Girl: The Living Dead in Tokyo Bay (1991).[72]
Far East revival (1996–2001)
See also: Japanese horror
According to Kim Newman in the book Nightmare Movies (2011), the "zombie revival began in the Far East" during the late 1990s, largely inspired by two Japanese zombie games released in 1996:[72] Capcom's Resident Evil, which started the Resident Evil video game series that went on to sell 24 million copies worldwide by 2006,[71] and Sega's arcade shooter House of the Dead. The success of these two 1996 zombie games inspired a wave of Asian zombie films.[72] From the late 1990s, zombies experienced a renaissance in low-budget Asian cinema, with a sudden spate of dissimilar entries, including Bio Zombie (1998), Wild Zero (1999), Junk (1999), Versus (2000) and Stacy (2001).
Most Japanese zombie films emerged in the wake of Resident Evil, such as Versus, Wild Zero, and Junk, all from 2000.[71] The zombie films released after Resident Evil behaved similarly to the zombie films of the 1970s,[73] except that they were influenced by zombie video games, which inspired them to dwell more on the action compared to the older Romero films.[74]
Global film revival (2001–2008)
The zombie revival, which began in the Far East, eventually went global, following the worldwide success of the Japanese zombie games Resident Evil and The House of the Dead.[72] Resident Evil in particular sparked a revival of the zombie genre in popular culture, leading to a renewed global interest in zombie films during the early 2000s.[75] In addition to being adapted into the Resident Evil and House of the Dead films from 2002 onwards, the original video games themselves also inspired zombie films such as 28 Days Later (2002)[76] and Shaun of the Dead (2004).[77] This led to the revival of zombie films in global popular culture.[75][76][78]
The turn of the millennium coincided with a decade of box office successes in which the zombie subgenre experienced a resurgence: the Resident Evil movies (2002–2016), the British films 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later (2007),[79][80] the Dawn of the Dead remake (2004),[1] and the comedies Shaun of the Dead and Dance of the Dead (2008). The new interest allowed Romero to create the fourth entry in his zombie series: Land of the Dead, released in the summer of 2005. Romero returned to the series with the films Diary of the Dead (2008) and Survival of the Dead (2010).[1] Generally, the zombies in these shows are the slow, lumbering and unintelligent kind, first made popular in Night of the Living Dead.[81] The Resident Evil films, 28 Days Later and the Dawn of the Dead remake all set box office records for the zombie genre, reaching levels of commercial success not seen since the original Dawn of the Dead in 1978.[69]
Motion pictures created in the 2000s, like 28 Days Later, the House of the Dead and Resident Evil films, and the Dawn of the Dead remake,[56] have featured zombies that are more agile, vicious, intelligent, and stronger than the traditional zombie.[82] These new type of zombies, the fast zombie or running zombie, have origins in video games, with Resident Evil's running zombie dogs and especially The House of the Dead game's running human zombies.[56]
Spillover to television (2008–2015)
The success of Shaun of the Dead led to more successful zombie comedies during the late 2000s to early 2010s, such as Zombieland (2009) and Cockneys vs Zombies (2012).[75] By 2011, the Resident Evil film adaptations had also become the highest-grossing film series based on video games, after they grossed more than $1 billion worldwide.[83] In 2013, the AMC series The Walking Dead had the highest audience ratings in the United States for any show on broadcast or cable with an average of 5.6 million viewers in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic.[84] The film World War Z became the highest-grossing zombie film, and one of the highest-grossing films of 2013.[75]
At the same time, starting from the mid-2000s, a new type of zombie film has been growing in popularity: the one in which zombies are portrayed as humanlike in appearance and behavior, retaining the personality traits they had in life, and becoming friends or even romantic partners for humans rather than a threat to humanity. Notable examples of human–zombie romance include the stop-motion animated movie Corpse Bride, live-action movies Warm Bodies, Camille, Life After Beth, Burying the Ex, and Nina Forever, and TV series Pushing Daisies and Babylon Fields.[11][85] According to zombie scholar Scott Rogers, "what we are seeing in Pushing Daisies, Warm Bodies, and iZombie is in many ways the same transformation [of the zombies] that we have witnessed with vampires since the 1931 Dracula represented Dracula as essentially human—a significant departure from the monstrous representation in the 1922 film Nosferatu". Rogers also notes the accompanying visual transformation of the living dead: while the "traditional" zombies are marked by noticeable disfigurement and decomposition, the "romantic" zombies show little or no such traits.[11]
Return to decline (2015–present)
In the late 2010s, zombie films began declining in popularity, with elevated horror films gradually taking their place, such as The Witch (2015), Get Out (2017), A Quiet Place (2018) and Hereditary (2018).[78] An exception is the low-budget Japanese zombie comedy One Cut of the Dead (2017), which became a sleeper hit in Japan, and it made box office history by earning over a thousand times its budget.[86] One Cut of the Dead also received worldwide acclaim, with Rotten Tomatoes stating that it "reanimates the moribund zombie genre with a refreshing blend of formal daring and clever satire".[87]
The "romantic zombie" angle still remains popular, however: the late 2010s and early 2020s saw the release of the TV series American Gods and iZombie, as well as the 2018 Disney Channel Original Movie Zombies and sequels Zombies 2 (2020) and Zombies 3 (2022).
Apocalypse
Main article: Zombie apocalypse
Intimately tied to the concept of the modern zombie is that of the "zombie apocalypse": the breakdown of society as a result of an initial zombie outbreak that spreads quickly. This archetype has emerged as a prolific subgenre of apocalyptic fiction and has been portrayed in many zombie-related media after Night of the Living Dead.[88] In a zombie apocalypse, a widespread (usually global) rise of zombies hostile to human life engages in a general assault on civilization. Victims of zombies may become zombies themselves. This causes the outbreak to become an exponentially growing crisis: the spreading phenomenon swamps normal military and law-enforcement organizations, leading to the panicked collapse of civilized society until only isolated pockets of survivors remain, scavenging for food and supplies in a world reduced to a pre-industrial hostile wilderness. Possible causes for zombie behavior in a modern population can be attributed to, causing them to behave in a very primitive and destructive fashion.
Subtext
The usual subtext of the zombie apocalypse is that civilization is inherently vulnerable to the unexpected, and that most individuals, if desperate enough, cannot be relied on to comply with the author's ethos. The narrative of a zombie apocalypse carries strong connections to the turbulent social landscape of the United States in the 1960s, when Night of the Living Dead provided an indirect commentary on the dangers of conformity, a theme also explored in the novel The Body Snatchers (1954) and associated film Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).[89][90] Many also feel that zombies allow people to deal with their own anxieties about the end of the world.[91] One scholar concluded that "more than any other monster, zombies are fully and literally apocalyptic ... they signal the end of the world as we have known it".[88] While zombie apocalypse scenarios are secular, they follow a religious pattern based on Christian ideas of an end-times war and messiah.[92]
Simon Pegg, who starred in and co-wrote the 2004 zombie comedy film Shaun of the Dead, wrote that zombies were the "most potent metaphorical monster". According to Pegg, whereas vampires represent sex, zombies represent death: "Slow and steady in their approach, weak, clumsy, often absurd, the zombie relentlessly closes in, unstoppable, intractable." He expressed his dislike for the trend for fast zombies, and argued that they should be slow and inept; just as a healthy diet and exercise can delay death, zombies are easy to avoid, but not forever. He also argued that this was essential for making them "oddly sympathetic... to create tragic anti-heroes... to be pitied, empathised with, even rooted for. The moment they appear angry or petulant, the second they emit furious velociraptor screeches (as opposed to the correct mournful moans of longing), they cease to possess any ambiguity. They are simply mean."[93]
Story elements
John A. Russo portrays a zombie in Night of the Living Dead.
Initial contacts with zombies are extremely dangerous and traumatic, causing shock, panic, disbelief and possibly denial, hampering survivors' ability to deal with hostile encounters.[94]
The response of authorities to the threat is slower than its rate of growth, giving the zombie plague time to expand beyond containment. This results in the collapse of the given society. Zombies take full control, while small groups of the living must fight for their survival.[94]
The stories usually follow a single group of survivors, caught up in the sudden rush of the crisis. The narrative generally progresses from the onset of the zombie plague, then initial attempts to seek the aid of authorities, the failure of those authorities, through to the sudden catastrophic collapse of all large-scale organization and the characters' subsequent attempts to survive on their own. Such stories are often squarely focused on the way their characters react to such an extreme catastrophe, and how their personalities are changed by the stress, often acting on more primal motivations (fear, self-preservation) than they would display in normal life.[94][95]
Literature
One of the various zombie panel discussion at the 2012 New York Comic Con, featuring writers who have worked in the genre (left to right): Jonathan Maberry, Daniel Kraus, Stefan Petrucha, Will Hill, Rachel Caine, Chase Novak, and Christopher Krovatin. Also present (but not visible in the photo) was Barry Lyga.
See also: List of zombie novels
In the 1990s, zombie fiction emerged as a distinct literary subgenre, with the publication of Book of the Dead (1990) and its follow-up Still Dead: Book of the Dead 2 (1992), both edited by horror authors John Skipp and Craig Spector. Featuring Romero-inspired stories from the likes of Stephen King, the Book of the Dead compilations are regarded as influential in the horror genre and perhaps the first true "zombie literature". Horror novelist Stephen King has written about zombies, including his short story "Home Delivery" (1990) and his novel Cell (2006), concerning a struggling young artist on a trek from Boston to Maine in hopes of saving his family from a possible worldwide outbreak of zombie-like maniacs.[96]
Max Brooks's novel World War Z (2006) became a New York Times bestseller.[97] Brooks had previously authored The Zombie Survival Guide (2003), a zombie-themed parody of pop-fiction survival guides.[98] Brooks has said that zombies are so popular because "Other monsters may threaten individual humans, but the living dead threaten the entire human race...Zombies are slate wipers." Seth Grahame-Smith's mashup novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009) combines the full text of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813) with a story about a zombie epidemic within the novel's British Regency period setting.[98] In 2009, Katy Hershbereger of St. Martin's Press stated: "In the world of traditional horror, nothing is more popular right now than zombies...The living dead are here to stay."[98]
2000s and 2010s were marked by a decidedly new type of zombie novel, in which zombies retain their humanity and become friends or even romantic partners for humans; critics largely attribute this trend to the influence of Stephenie Meyer's vampire series Twilight.[99][100] One of the most prominent examples is Generation Dead by Daniel Waters, featuring undead teenagers struggling for equality with the living and a human protagonist falling in love with their leader.[13] Other novels of this period involving human–zombie romantic relationships include Bone Song by John Meaney, American Gods by Neil Gaiman, Midnight Tides by Steven Erikson, and Amy Plum's Die for Me series;[100] much earlier examples, dating back to the 1980s, are Dragon on a Pedestal by Piers Anthony and Conan the Defiant by Steve Perry.[101][102]
Anime and manga
There has been a growth in the number of zombie mangas in the first decade of the 21st century, and in a list of "10 Great Zombie Manga", Anime News Network's Jason Thompson placed I Am a Hero at number 1, considering it "probably the greatest zombie manga ever". In second place was Living Corpse, and in third was Biomega, which he called "the greatest science-fiction virus zombie manga ever".[103] During the late 2000s and early 2010s, there were several manga and anime series that humanized zombies by presenting them as protagonists or love interests, such as Sankarea: Undying Love and Is This a Zombie? (both debuted in 2009).
Z ~Zed~ was adapted into a live action film in 2014.[104]
Video and performance art
Artist Jillian McDonald has made several works of video art involving zombies and exhibited them in her 2006 show "Horror Make-Up", which debuted on 8 September 2006 at Art Moving Projects, a gallery in, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.[105]
Artist Karim Charredib has dedicated his work to the zombie figure. In 2007, he made a video installation at Villa Savoye called "Them !!!", wherein zombies walked in the villa like tourists.[106]
Video games
See also: List of zombie video games and Zombies in Resident Evil
The release of two 1996 horror games Capcom's Resident Evil and Sega's The House of the Dead sparked an international craze for zombie games.[107][72] In 2013, George A. Romero said that it was the video games Resident Evil and House of the Dead "more than anything else" that popularised zombies in early 21st century popular culture.[108][109] The modern fast-running zombies have origins in these games, with Resident Evil's running zombie dogs and especially House of the Dead's running human zombies, which later became a staple of modern zombie films.[56]
Zombies went on to become a popular theme for video games, particularly in the survival horror, stealth, first-person shooter and role-playing game genres. Important horror fiction media franchises in this area include Resident Evil, The House of the Dead, Silent Hill, Dead Rising, Dead Island, Left 4 Dead, Dying Light, State of Decay, The Last of Us and the Zombies game modes from the Call of Duty title series.[110] A series of games has also been released based on the widely popular TV show The Walking Dead, first aired in 2010. In the Dead Rising series, the process of infection is described with the metaphor "The wasp kills the host and takes over body motorfuctions."[citation needed] The World of Warcraft, first released in 2004, is an early example of a video game in which an individual zombie-like creature could be chosen as a player character (a previous game in the same series, Warcraft III, allowed a player control over an undead army).[original research?]
PopCap Games' Plants vs. Zombies, a humorous tower defense game, was an indie hit in 2009, featuring in several best-of lists at the end of that year. The massively multiplayer online role-playing game Urban Dead, a free grid-based browser game where zombies and survivors fight for control of a ruined city, is one of the most popular games of its type.[111]
DayZ, a zombie-based survival horror mod for ARMA 2, was responsible for over 300,000 unit sales of its parent game within two months of its release.[112] Over a year later, the developers of the mod created a standalone version of the same game, which was in early access on Steam, and so far has sold 3 million copies since its release in December 2013.[113]
Romero would later opine that he believes that much of the 21st century obsessions with zombies can be traced more towards video games than films, noting that it was not until the 2009 film Zombieland that a zombie film was able to gross more than 100 million dollars.[114]
Outside of video games, zombies frequently appear in trading card games, such as Magic: The Gathering or Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game (which even has a Zombie-Type for its "monsters"), as well as in role-playing games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, tabletop games such as Zombies!!! and Dead of Winter: A Cross Roads Game, and tabletop wargames, such as Warhammer Fantasy and 40K. The game Humans vs. Zombies is a zombie-themed live-action game played on college campuses.[115]
Writing for Scientific American, Kyle Hill praised the 2013 game The Last of Us for its plausibility, basing its zombification process on a fictional strain of the parasitic Cordyceps fungus, a real-world genus whose members control the behavior of their arthropod hosts in "zombielike" ways to reproduce.[116] Despite the plausibility of this mechanism (also explored in the novel The Girl with All the Gifts and the film of the same name), to date there have been no documented cases of humans infected by Cordyceps.[117][better source needed]
Zombie video games have remained popular in the late 2010s, as seen with the commercial success of the Resident Evil 2 remake and Days Gone in 2019.[118] This enduring popularity may be attributed, in part, to the fact that zombie enemies are not expected to exhibit significant levels of intelligence, making them relatively straightforward to program. However, less pragmatic advantages, such as those related to storytelling and representation, are increasingly important....Music
Michael Jackson's music video Thriller (1983), in which he dances with a troupe of zombies, has been preserved as a cultural treasure by the Library of Congress' National Film Registry.[123][124] Many instances of pop culture media have paid tribute to this video, including a gathering of 14,000 university students dressed as zombies in Mexico City,[123] and 1,500 prisoners in orange jumpsuits recreating the zombie dance in a viral video.[125]
The Brooklyn hip hop trio Flatbush Zombies incorporate many tropes from zombie fiction and play on the theme of a zombie apocalypse in their music. They portray themselves as "living dead", describing their use of psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin mushrooms as having caused them to experience ego death and rebirth.
Social activism
Main articles: Zombie walk and Zombie Squad
A zombie walk in Pittsburgh
The zombie also appears as a metaphor in protest songs, symbolizing mindless adherence to authority, particularly that of law enforcement and the armed forces. Well-known examples include Fela Kuti's 1976 album Zombie and The Cranberries' 1994 single "Zombie".
Organized zombie walks have been staged, either as performance art or as part of protests that parody political extremism or apathy.[126][127][128][129][130]
A variation of the zombie walk is the zombie run. Here participants do a 5 km run wearing a belt with several flag "lives". If the chasing zombies capture all of the flags, the runner becomes "infected". If he or she reaches the finish line, which may involve wide detours ahead of the zombies, then the participant is a "survivor". In either case, an appropriate participation medal is awarded.[131]
Theoretical academic studies
Researchers have used theoretical zombie infections to test epidemiology modeling. One study found that all humans end up turned or dead. This is because the main epidemiological risk of zombies, besides the difficulties of neutralizing them, is that their population just keeps increasing; generations of humans merely "surviving" still have a tendency to feed zombie populations, resulting in gross outnumbering. The researchers explain that their methods of modelling may be applicable to the spread of political views or diseases with dormant infection.[132][133]
Adam Chodorow of the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University investigated the estate and income tax implications of a zombie apocalypse under United States federal and state tax codes.[134] Neuroscientists Bradley Voytek and Timothy Verstynen have built a side career in extrapolating how ideas in neuroscience would theoretically apply to zombie brains. Their work has been featured in Forbes, New York Magazine, and other publications." (wikipedia.org)