have gone to a Voodoo-Hoodoo Queen and asked her to use her powers to help her deliver a boy child.
Unbeknownst to the desperate mother-to-be, the Voodoo Queen hated the plantation owner because of his past actions against her, so under the guise of manifesting a healthy male heir for the woman to deliver to her husband, the Voodoo Queen cursed the unborn child, making certain that the woman would bear Satan’s son. The Voodoo Queen’s magic was strong, for the boy child was delivered from the womb with horns, red eyes, cloven hooves, claws, and a tail. The Devil Baby’s birthday was said to be on a Mardi Gras Day.
The Devil Baby of Bourbon Street is said to look like a small, bald-headed child with hooves and a ratlike tail. (Art by Ricardo Pustanio).
The horrific newborn proceeded to eat the neighbors’ children, bare its teeth at its terrified siblings, and was locked away in the attic garret room. It was here that his parents held him captive before he escaped to begin his reign of terror on New Orleans’ citizens.
The legend of a Devil Baby invites a number of accounts of its origin. Rather than the desperate wife of a plantation owner insistent upon the birth of a male heir, certain versions of the lore have the monster born of a slave girl who was raped by a plantation owner. Still others state that the horrid abomination was born of a French aristocrat’s daughter who was addicted to absinthe. As the lurid story goes, she was drunk to the very hour that she gave birth, and that she abandoned the grotesque infant in Pirates Alley. His demonic cries are said to have disturbed the Ash Wednesday Mass.
St. Anthony’s Garden, sometimes called the Devil Baby’s Playpen or simply the Devil’s Garden, is said by some to be the place where the Devil Baby hides at night to attack unsuspecting passersby. The garden is thought by some locals to be one of the very seven gates of Hell.
Another old New Orleans oral tradition tells that the Devil Baby was born in that very garden. According to this version of the creature’s birth, its mother took refuge here in the late hours of her labor just before dawn on a Mardi Gras Day. As dawn approached and the long early morning hours turned to day, some churchgoers at early Mass later testified that they had seen a bloodied young woman staggering from the garden, just as a scream from Hell could be heard coming from the low hedges. The woman managed to walk toward the church and leave the newborn devil infant on the back door steps before she died.
The large open garden behind the eighteenth century St. Louis Cathedral is said to be the best spot to sight the Devil Baby today. A history of duels fought and much bloodshed on the grounds is said to be the reason that he haunts the spot.
Bowery at Midnight
Some movies of the undead are very good. Others are extremely bad. Many are downright mediocre. Then there are those which are just plain weird. One of those that most definitely falls into the latter category is Bowery at Midnight, a movie whose name gives away absolutely nothing at all about its odd plotline. Despite the fact that the production, made in 1942, starred Hollywood horror legend and crowd puller Bela Lugosi, it has long since vanished into much welcome obscurity.
To say that the story is a strange one is an understatement of mammoth proportions. Lugosi takes on no less than two roles: by day he is Professor Frederick Brenner, a noted expert in the field of psychology who is employed at the University of New York. By night, however, Brenner has not just a different trade but an entirely different name, too: that of Karl Wagner. Lugosi, in his Wagner guise, is presented to the viewer as a kindly character, one who helps the needy, the broke, the homeless, and the sick, by giving them much needed shelter and food. Wagner even has his nurse, Judy, dishing out medicine to help those that need it. It is, however, all a big sham. Behind the scenes, Wagner has major, controversial plans in store for the growing numbers of the needy.
The dark reality of the situation is that, unbeknownst to Judy, Wagner and another of his associates are using mind-altering drugs to render the dregs of society into zombified states, and near identical conditions to those undead of Haitian lore. Or are they actually Night of the Living Dead-style zombies, after all? Confusingly, we never really know the truth. Neither, it seems, do the writer, director, and producer, since the movie is hardly easy to follow, as it meanders along its curious way. Wagner then uses his gang of dead or alive controlled characters to go robbing here and there, after which they take their dutiful steps into the cellar of the building in which he, Wagner, works, and where they remain until the next job looms on the horizon.
Judy’s boyfriend, Richard, just happens to be a student of Professor Brenner and views him as something of an inspiration—in terms of his dedication to the realm of psychology. So, one night Richard decides to visit the professor and Judy, chiefly because he, Richard, hopes that speaking with Brenner at a personal and private level will help his grades at school. It does not. Instead, Brenner—in his Wagner guise—drugs unfortunate Richard, turning him, too, into a walking and thieving automaton of the night.
Judy finally realizes the gravity of the situation, however—particularly so when Richard first vanishes then transforms—and the police are soon on the scene. Richard miraculously (and, for the viewer, confusingly) comes out of his undead state, while Brenner/Wagner meets a gruesome end at the hands of his zombie slaves. He does so deep in an old cellar: shades of a certain, memorable scene in George A. Romero’s 1968 production of Night of the Living Dead when young Karyn Cooper, perhaps the definitive zombie child of all time, kills her parents, Harry and Helen, in the basement of the farmhouse in which they are hiding.
That, however, is where the Night of the Living Dead parallels end. Of Romero quality Bowery at Midnight is most definitely not. Arguably, it’s not of any quality, except mediocre.
Brain Eaters of Ancient Kenya
See also: Brains
When it comes to the matter of eating brains, our ancient ancestors had a deep understanding of just how tasty and nourishing the average brain could really be. Millions of years ago, early man was engaging in the sorts of actions that, today, are chiefly relegated to the world of on-screen horror.
In May 2013 a series of amazing and controversial discoveries were made at a place called Kanjera South in Kenya, which is located in East Africa. Archaeologists discovered, to their amazement, evidence of widespread hunting and scavenging of animals by primitive man—better known as Homo erectus—up to around three million years ago, and possibly even earlier than that. But there was something very special, and almost unique, about the particular type of hunting and scavenging that was afoot on the plains of Kenya. The fossilized remains of numerous animals our ancestors secured for food revealed that one specific part of the slaughtered beasts were being targeted for food: no less than the heads.
Securing the heads of dead animals would actually not have been a difficult task, as it’s a fact that the big cats that roamed the plains of Africa millions of years ago were very partial to antelope and wildebeest flesh—as are their descendents to this day. Such big cats are, however, far less partial to the heads, which are very often the only remaining telltale sign of a big cat attack.
