Anna, Josh, and the M-Kids, Part 10: Genes and Bedsheets

[Coy Koi]

1 minute ago, Kittikatz said:

@Coy Koi those camps sound terrifying. I'm glad your sister survived. I knew of a couple of kids who had similar experiences, and it makes me sick that so many of those kind of places are still around, and how easy it is for parents to stick so called 'troubled teens' into unregulated environments like that.

There are a lot of really scary stories about such places! I'm so glad my sister was okay too, thank you. A lot of the kids were sent straight from the camp to "therapeutic" boarding schools that sound really scary too, so for once we can just be thankful that our family isn't rich and couldn't afford that.

The thing with my sister was that she was always so easily influenced. The same quality that made her so "good" as a kid, made her "bad" as a teenager when her peers became her main influence. She's gotten so much more assertive and sure of herself now though. But the "troubled teens" industry sure as hell didn't teach her that. They just taught her to blindly follow a different authority.

[Million Children For Jesus]

39 minutes ago, Kittikatz said:

also the Grendel from Beowulf seems like a different sort of creature from what my mother was told of. 

Sounds like a wendigo. They live in forests. 

[Kittikatz]

@Million Children For Jesus thanks for the info - the wendigo do sound similar to what my Great Grandmother told my mother. I'd heard about wendigo psychosis, but didn't realize it was linked to a mythical or legendary creature. It's kind of curious how similar so many of these creatures are from a global perspective. Makes me wonder if there is something to the stories.

[infooverload]

There's a great episode about camps and boarding schools for troubled teenagers on the podcast Cracked.

[CoveredInBees]

Well, damn. 

I'm so late to this news that I've missed an entire thread and what looks like some cracking ancestry thread drifts

I promise to be properly on board for the next Duggar sporning  

[MsSaylor]

My friend got sent to one of those religious boarding schools for troubled teens when we were about 16.  She was not a troubled teen at all. Her mom was convinced that she was "deceptive" and she got mad at her for having diet pills when she was the one constantly calling her daughter fat. As far as i know those were the reasons her parents sent her there. It was horrendous, these peopke came and "kidnapped"her in the middle of the night and we didnt even know where she was for several weeks. Her parents spent a shit load of money on this for her to barely get the basic necessities. Very abusive emotionally, spiritually and even physically. It was also sketch as hell academically. She supposedly graduated high school there but when she needed documentation of such they were not ever able to provide it.  They were in no way an accredited school as far as i can tell. They didnt teach her crap and my friend has some learning differences so it sure as hell did her no favors. 

Anyway, im horrified that these places exist and operate completely outside any regulations. 

[Carm_88]

12 hours ago, Kittikatz said:

 It's kind of curious how similar so many of these creatures are from a global perspective. Makes me wonder if there is something to the stories.

Did someone call me? I'm joking! I did a lot of Supernatural Lore in my Folklore degree. Many cultures have a lot of the same stories, Cinderella is told in some variety in most cultures, and similar creatures. It's quite fascinating and you can spend hours cross referencing and realizing "Oh in Sweden, they are this, but in Italy, it's this." 

[Million Children For Jesus]

12 hours ago, Kittikatz said:

@Million Children For Jesus thanks for the info - the wendigo do sound similar to what my Great Grandmother told my mother. I'd heard about wendigo psychosis, but didn't realize it was linked to a mythical or legendary creature. It's kind of curious how similar so many of these creatures are from a global perspective. Makes me wonder if there is something to the stories.

I hadn't heard of wendigo psychosis. I googled it. Yuck. Now I'm traumatized. I love folklore, mythology, and paranormal creatures. I haven't had time to study any of it, but I know there are some creatures that appear throughout history in multiple locations, where people could not have crossed paths to share customs. Old Hag is one example. It's a type of sleep paralysis, but people from different cultures have blamed it on a demon sitting on their chest sucking their energy. 

As far as wendigos go, I think that's how parents scared their kids into staying out of the woods and not getting lost. Wendigos are supposedly cannibalistic spirits who live in forests, but demons don't have bodies, so they don't have sin of the flesh, such as lust or gluttony. They aren't sexual and they don't eat. There's a hole in that wendigos story. 

[VelociRapture]

27 minutes ago, Carm_88 said:

Did someone call me? I'm joking! I did a lot of Supernatural Lore in my Folklore degree. Many cultures have a lot of the same stories, Cinderella is told in some variety in most cultures, and similar creatures. It's quite fascinating and you can spend hours cross referencing and realizing "Oh in Sweden, they are this, but in Italy, it's this." 

You can see similarities between Christianity and different mythologies as well. A son of God who dies and ascends to Heaven (Jesus/Hercules), a massive worldwide flood (Noah and the Ark/Norse mythology), One man and woman populating the Earth (Adam and Eve/Ask and Embla), an old and wise male deity (God/Odin/Zeus)....

I only know a bit about Norse and Greek/Roman mythology. I'm sure there are examples worldwide though.

[Carm_88]

1 minute ago, VelociRapture said:

You can see similarities between Christianity and different mythologies as well. A son of God who dies and ascends to Heaven (Jesus/Hercules), a massive worldwide flood (Noah and the Ark/Norse mythology), One man and woman populating the Earth (Adam and Eve/Ask and Embla), an old and wise male deity (God/Odin/Zeus)....

I only know a bit about Norse and Greek/Roman mythology. I'm sure there are examples worldwide though.

Exactly! Many folktales/mythologies are similar (to an extent) is because they were oral tales. So our culture's fascination with 3, 7, 13 came about because they were cues. If you had told of two of the trials or six, if it was a longer story, you knew that the hero succeeds at this one. There's always a question, helpers, an evil being keeping the hero from their prize, and the glorious happily ever after. Also, following the number theme, people believe that the 7th son of a 7th son will have certain unworldly qualities, being healers and so on. 

[Fun Undies]

10 minutes ago, VelociRapture said:

You can see similarities between Christianity and different mythologies as well. A son of God who dies and ascends to Heaven (Jesus/Hercules), a massive worldwide flood (Noah and the Ark/Norse mythology), One man and woman populating the Earth (Adam and Eve/Ask and Embla), an old and wise male deity (God/Odin/Zeus)....

I only know a bit about Norse and Greek/Roman mythology. I'm sure there are examples worldwide though.

I can't remember now if it was mesopatemia or another ancient middle eastern culture . . . But the flood story is also present in their mythology as well.

Ancient Egypt's mythology of Osiris is supposedly comparable to Jesus.

^ makes you wonder if Jesus and other biblical characters/events just keep being reincarnated to continue a constant world cycle of repetition

[Georgiana]

8 minutes ago, Million Children For Jesus said:

I hadn't heard of wendigo psychosis. I googled it. Yuck. Now I'm traumatized. I love folklore, mythology, and paranormal creatures. I haven't had time to study any of it, but I know there are some creatures that appear throughout history in multiple locations, where people could not have crossed paths to share customs. Old Hag is one example. It's a type of sleep paralysis, but people from different cultures have blamed it on a demon sitting on their chest sucking their energy. 

As far as wendigos go, I think that's how parents scared their kids into staying out of the woods and not getting lost. Wendigos are supposedly cannibalistic spirits who live in forests, but demons don't have bodies, so they don't have sin of the flesh, such as lust or gluttony. They aren't sexual and they don't eat. There's a hole in that wendigos story. 

Generally, if native children are misbehaving, their elders threaten to throw them out of their lodge at night so the animals can eat them.  

The purpose of the wendigo legend is NOT to scare children to stay out of the woods: it's to scare children about the dangers of greed, gluttony, and selfishness, and the way these traits can consume you, turning you into a monster that is NEVER satiated.  That's how greed works:  you always want more, you can never be satisfied because there is always more more more to get.  More food to eat, more stuff to get, more blood to spill...the desire becomes overpowering...a person is consumed with an insatiable hunger to possess everything.  What WOULDN'T they do to get what they want?!?  To a tribal/village society, this represented a poignant danger, because in a small village/tribe, one person acting selfishly, being greedy, over-consuming, etc. can threaten the survival and stability of the whole group.  

People can also become wendigos.  This is a common hallmark of the story.  If they are possessed by the wendigo spirit and surrender themselves to carnal desires, they will be consumed by the spirit and transform, so there's where your physical form comes from.  But the most dangerous wendigos are the ones who still have their human form.  Associating with a wendigo is very dangerous because you too may become corrupted.  

[Million Children For Jesus]

35 minutes ago, Georgiana said:

To a tribal/village society, this represented a poignant danger, because in a small village/tribe, one person acting selfishly, being greedy, over-consuming, etc. can threaten the survival and stability of the whole group.  

Fascinating! I know a few wendigos! Okay, and now they seem real and scary. Hmmm.

That's really interesting about Natives telling their kids to sleep outside if they misbehave. I'll admit, that even though my Apache raised great-grandmother turned out to be genetically Jewish, my grandmother, mom, and I have always told kids they would sleep on the porch if they didn't go to sleep on time. Not to be eaten by animals though. It's just a thing that I thought my great-grandma made up. It worked on me as a kid, but it backfired when I had kids. My kids love to camp, so after awhile, they were like... "Wait. We can stay up late AND camp on the porch?! Sign us up!" I guess getting eaten by animals is an important part of that story. 

[VelociRapture]

1 hour ago, Fun Undies said:

I can't remember now if it was mesopatemia or another ancient middle eastern culture . . . But the flood story is also present in their mythology as well.

Ancient Egypt's mythology of Osiris is supposedly comparable to Jesus.

^ makes you wonder if Jesus and other biblical characters/events just keep being reincarnated to continue a constant world cycle of repetition

I can't remember. I want to say it's linked to the legend of Gilgamesh though. I'm almost positive a great flood is mentioned at some point in that story.

I took a course in college, The New Testament as Literature. We talked about the great flood and how it pops up across different cultures. Our consensus was, it was likely that there were many communities throughout time and across the world who faced catastrophic floods in their area. At those times, people didn't necessarily travel too far or too often... so if you lived in a valley your whole life and there was a really bad flood, it would make absolute sense to think the whole world was flooded. Because your whole world had been flooded.

[singsingsing]

2 hours ago, Carm_88 said:

Did someone call me? I'm joking! I did a lot of Supernatural Lore in my Folklore degree. Many cultures have a lot of the same stories, Cinderella is told in some variety in most cultures, and similar creatures. It's quite fascinating and you can spend hours cross referencing and realizing "Oh in Sweden, they are this, but in Italy, it's this." 

Omg! Please tell me you did the Folklore degree at Memorial! You actually don't have to tell me, hahaha, but I was looking at that once and thought it would be the coolest thing ever, but I just couldn't justify the expense of, like... moving to Newfoundland... and all that. But seriously. Folklore degree. Coolest. Thing. Ever!

[Carm_88]

31 minutes ago, singsingsing said:

Omg! Please tell me you did the Folklore degree at Memorial! You actually don't have to tell me, hahaha, but I was looking at that once and thought it would be the coolest thing ever, but I just couldn't justify the expense of, like... moving to Newfoundland... and all that. But seriously. Folklore degree. Coolest. Thing. Ever!

Yep! I did the folklore degree at MUN and lived in the Archives. It was a great little department!  

[Thorns]

21 hours ago, Kittikatz said:

On the topic of slightly odd/unusual ancestors, my Great Grandmother was quite the character. She was an almost 6' tall Norwegian, with red hair, iron grey eyes and something of a reputation for being a witch. Anyway, Great Grandmother was enraged when she discovered that one her adult sons was being served liquor at a bar in a small town hotel. She grabbed her axe, saddled up and headed for the hotel bar. According to local accounts, she marched into the bar and, without a saying a word, smashed all the liquor bottles and the bar itself with her axe. The customers mostly ran for it, but the barman and a few hardcore drinkers took shelter under a table. When Great Grandmother was done trashing the bar, she embedded the axe in the bartop, pulled the barman out from under his table, gave him a good shake, and told him that his establishment was never again to serve a member of her family, and if it did the bar and the entire hotel "would burn". She then got back on her horse and returned to the farm.

The lady with the axe must have been pretty scary, because approximately fifty years after this incident, my mother went to the bar with some of her friends and tried to order. The barman (not the same one) asked her if she was "one of those __insert last name here's_". She replied that she was, and he told her to get out and said that they didn't serve "her kind". She was mortified.

A couple of years ago the hotel burned down. Locals say it was because a cousin of mine (and descendant of the axe wielding Great Grandmother) had been served a beer there. Opinion is divided as to whether the cousin is responsible, or if it was the bar's fault for not checking to see if he was "one of those __insert last name here's_". Anyway, the insurance paid out, but nobody has been motivated to rebuild, leaving the town an unwilling dry zone.  I'm going with the more mundane electrical fault as a reason for the fire, but I can't help but think that my Great Grandmother would approve.

Now I reeeally want to know her surname! Though I fully understand your _____-ing

Vikings ✌ (axes and horses and violence, it is sorta in our blood I guess )

Edit: And as for "vatte", the common norwegian spelling is vette, which is just a word that denotes a supernatural/mytical creature. Usually specified with a prefix to give a location, f.i. "skogsvette" forrest-vette, and those again would usually have a specific name, like the female Huldra, who lures men to her lair. Another name for her i "vittra", and she is a forrest creature. 

Being from Northern Norway your family might have oral traditions that are influenced from the Sami people and Russia as well. The northerns have traditionally had a rich mystic lore

[apandaaries]

Oh, I am loving this thread drift.  

About the wendigo, forest creature/spirit discussion, did anyone else see this recent National Geographic article about a guy who disappeared in Bolivia?  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/03/monkeys-saved-lost-tourist-bolivian-amazon-shamans/

The guy vanished mysteriously, minutes after refusing to participate in a ritual to thank Pachamama/Mother Earth. His family flew in, and shamans were called to help find him.  Nine days later, he returned.  Very interesting story.  (If anyone ever reads the Reddit Search and Rescue/scary story threads, this will all sound familiar, too. Some stories do keep recurring.)

About Beowulf, that was set in Sweden.  Maybe the idea behind Grendel changed, but there was still a linguistic connection to the concept.  The evolution of language is always interesting.  Beowulf's Grendel seemed more monstrous than forest spirit (or demon)-like to me, but there were several hundred years between Beowulf and the Norwegian story.  That's plenty of time for words to shift meaning. 

[singsingsing]

This may be my favourite thread drift ever.

I think the weirdest bit of folklore from my own family came from my grandpa. He said that when he was a kid the adults would tell them that if you went outside when the Northern Lights were out and whistled, they would come down and 'get you'.

[neurogirl]

My apologies if this is not the right place or time for this (new thread drift), but do we know how Jessa and Ben eat at home (to contrast with Anna and He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named)? I know they take pictures at fast food/restaurants a lot, but they both seem very concerned about appearances so I can't imagine Jessa making tater tot casserole for her adult family...

[Million Children For Jesus]

2 hours ago, singsingsing said:

But seriously. Folklore degree. Coolest. Thing. Ever!

This is extremely true. I wish I could work this into my life plan. 

[Galbin]

In the other thread somebody was asking for the episode where Anna nudges Josh about how cute kids are. In a non Fundie couple, this would mean that they were avoiding.

 

[VeganCupcake]

35 minutes ago, neurogirl said:

My apologies if this is not the right place or time for this (new thread drift), but do we know how Jessa and Ben eat at home (to contrast with Anna and He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named)? I know they take pictures at fast food/restaurants a lot, but they both seem very concerned about appearances so I can't imagine Jessa making tater tot casserole for her adult family...

Their recipes are very meat and oil-heavy, but still way healthier than the usual Duggar slop. They use fresh ingredients like sweet potatoes and veggies. They've also mentioned making green smoothies. Jill and Derick make smoothies as well, and also those recipes from Nepal they eat look fairly healthy. Both girls are certainly more health-minded than Anna. Her idea of cooking is heating up a frozen lasagna and garlic bread. 

[FeministShrew]

5 hours ago, VelociRapture said:

I can't remember. I want to say it's linked to the legend of Gilgamesh though. I'm almost positive a great flood is mentioned at some point in that story.

 

Yes, there's a flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh. (I'm finishing my BA & just took a mythology class online last term. Nothing stirs up conservative evangelical Christians like a class teaching that most of their Bible stories were adapted from the myths of earlier cultures. Class discussion boards were really fun.)

[Carm_88]

My grandparents fully believed in fairies hanging out in the woods wanting to take children. So, when I was a kid, they would send me and any other kids with bread and nails in our pockets. It's funny looking back on it.