2-17-17 Bubak

This week I traveled to the socialist enclave known as New Jersey to introduce you to the Jersey Devil. However, I got drunk and woke up in a Czech prison. After escaping in a laundry basket, just like Lex Luthor, I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to visit Czech boogeyman, Bubak.

In the days before Adderall or Ritalin, disinterested parents could keep their children from acting like children using scare tactics involving monsters because kids are gullible as fuck. It's analogous to the boogeyman or the Germanic Krampus, but with the metal factor turned to eleven.

Depicted as a Scarecrow, this proto-Batman villain would make sounds like a distressed infant, apparently to lure ovulating women to their doom and weave their victims souls into clothing. It also boasts the sweetest whip in monsterdom this side of Dragula, and a cart drawn by a team of black cats. Fearsome indeed is a creature with that level of organizational skills.

2-24-17 Jail

Last week I woke up in a Czech prison. This week, due to some botched paperwork, the Czech Republic deported me to Australia. Free airfare! How's that for demonstrating greater financial responsibility, Mr. Myrrh? Since I found myself in the land of constant death down under, I decided to see if I could ferret out a particular Aboriginal nature spirit, known as a Mimi. I traveled to the north of Australia to an Aboriginal region known as Arnhem Land.

I had heard these little buggers lived in the cracks and crevices of rocks and caves, so I started poking around. I was met with long slender beings that began mercilessly beating me with tennis rackets. Some of the more affluent preferred badminton. After a kindly Aboriginal man negotiated my release, he told me that the Mimi had taught his people how to hunt, cook and paint. Before the arrival of humans to the island, the Mimi had human forms themselves.

However, after the arrival of the first human to Australia, they felt that was getting played out and adopted their present stick-like form. The problem is this left them open to being snapped in the wind like twigs so they took up lodging in whatever rocky cracks they could find. And as I discovered, rude tourists can get quite a beat down if they approach them sideways.

3-3-17 Nian

Yesterday morning I woke up in a roadside motel/brothel in Borroloola, Australia after sleeping off the concussion I received from a gaggle of angry Mimi. When I say motel, think Motel 6, but with an enormous spider guarding the toilet. And when I say woke up, think startled awake by two Interpol agents pounding on the door. And when I say morning, think 11:57 AM. I managed to squeeze out the bathroom window despite it also being guarded by a spider sentry. Lucky for me it was too busy wrapping up an infant-sized rat (not sure really, but I'm going with rat). Although it looked at me hard as I passed, it seemed to remain content with its current squirming parcel.

Anyhow, given that I'm wanted for questioning in connection to the deaths of two Czech nun cosplay escorts and the disappearance of a popular Prague weatherman, I stowed away aboard an Indonesian steamer ship. Destination? My guess was Indonesia. Boy, is there egg on my face. Egg Foo Yung! I was finally discovered and thrown out onto a pier in Hong Kong. Seeing as how I was several weeks late for my piece on Nian and the Chinese Lunar New Year, I couldn't believe my luck.

In China there dwells a beast, half-bull half lion. About 98% aggregate bull/lion, the remainder being unicorn. The head was the lion part, the body was the bull part and horn was logically, the unicorn part, because if you used any other part it would just be part horse.

It’s called a nian and its favorite pastime was coming out of its mountain or sea lair, during lunar new year to go eat some folks. When you figured out the wolves and panthers, you have to start making shit up to keep sharp. Children were a favorite on a nian’s menu so it served as something akin to the western boogeyman. Except in this case the children didn’t have to do anything wrong to draw its ire, just exist. People started to leave bowls of food outside their doors, come the new year, in the hopes the Nian would choose a bowl of cold grains over child flesh. Luckily, for everyone, the Nian had some completely arbitrary weaknesses, like loud noises and fear of the color red like a Nian Lantern. Once they invented the creature’s weaknesses, they began lighting firecrackers and wearing red during the lunar new year, a tradition that continues to this day.

Legend tells us of the Daoist deity Hongjun Laozu who was able to tame a Nian by tricking it into checking out his red drawers. From that point on Laozu had a nian for a mount, like what your stoner cousin, who owns katanas, would roll as a D&D character.

Is this what you wanted, Gary?

3-10-17 Krasue

Last week, after I filed my report on the Nian, I decided to stretch my legs and do a little walking tour of Hong Kong, but I noticed I was being shadowed. You figure a guy who’s been up 72 straight hours on the best crystal of his life could wander through Shenzhen and buy 300,000 LEDs if he wanted to. Not there I guess. So, with CCR on shuffle, a handful of yellowjackets and deadline in a week, I ran through the jungle. By the time the jackets and the crystal wore off I was in Thailand, which is great because I have to meet a guy in Bangkok. Also great, for this week’s Page Five Ghoul.

In Thailand lives a spirit known as the Krasue. The Krasue takes the form of a young woman, whom by night her head detaches and flits about dangling her entrails behind. One origin tale tells us that the Krasue was once a princess who was betrothed to some bigwig, but had the hots for a soldier. One night, she and her soldier were caught in flagrante delicto and she was sentenced to be burned at the steak. Fortunately, they lived in an era before all the wizards were forced underground and to hide out as psychiatrists and bartenders. The princess asked a sorceress for a spell to keep her from harm. But it was a shitty spell and didn’t kick in until all that was left was her head and a few organs.

Another, more believable, legend tells us that it’s the spirit of a girl who was badly startled. Its eating habits consist of mainly blood, fetuses and placenta. In fact, it has been known to hover around the homes of pregnant women and slip a proboscis into their wombs to get at the sweet, sweet baby meats within. What is its weakness, you may ask? Mobs of angry villagers. That’s old school.

3-17-17 Myrmekes

India! Come to find giant ants (and a guy to forge some papers), stay for the man-eating tigers.

It turns out my guy in Bangkok is doing time in a Singapore prison for eating durian on the subway one too many times, so I boomed for Kolkata. Oh, Kolkata! (doesn't have the same ring, does it?) While I was at it, I figured I should take a look at the legendary, enormous, gold-hoarding monster ants known as myrmekes.

Greek sailors named them ‘myrmekes’ after ants, because they’re giant ants. They range in size from dogs to bears and guarded a hill of gold. India doesn’t fuck with dragons. Greek historian Herodotus told of furry, fox-sized ants that would dig up gold while making their burrows, which the villagers would later collect.

In search, I left Kolkata heading southeast through Sundarban National Park. I hired a boat to take me down the winding waterways of the park and toward the Bay of Bengal. If the legend came from sailors, the coast seemed like a good place to look. After an uneventful start, the pilot spotted a tiger, then several tigers pacing alongside the boat as it drifted. The pilot started screaming about ‘buggin’ out’ and how if he died in an evil place, his soul wouldn’t make it to heaven. I offered him a handful of Xannies, which he accepted and cooled out.

Now folks, I tend to get so involved hunting down some bullshit monsters, that a few real fucking ones escape my wheelhouse. One of these goddamn hell beasts jumps onto the boat and chomps the pilot on the crown and drags his screaming meat into the jungle. That was about an hour ago. I’ve unloaded a clip into one of them but it’s still on the deck, clawing its bloody mass toward me by inches. I know my mom doesn’t read these things, but if anyone knows Angela Llewellyn, in Bellevue Washington, tell her her son Gary died as he always dreamed he would; in mortal combat with an apex predator. And that if anyone named ‘Chisel’ calls, tell him ‘it’s under the mulch in the shed.’

3-24-17 The Jersey Devil

Hey, SEG-ers! I’m so excited. This is my first column! EVAR!!! I was brought in to take over the Page Five Ghoul because the old guy got eaten by a bear or something. Gross. Anyway, Mr. Myrrh sent me to New Jersey to do a report on the Jersey Devil. Not a big hockey fan, so I asked if I could do one instead on nixies. Because faeries vs. devils is a no-brainer, right? But, Mr. Myrrh said I could do one on nixies next week, but I have to do one on the Jersey Devil first.

First of all, you don’t know how psyched I was when I found out this has nothing to do with hockey. It has to do with a woman named Mother Leeds who was pregnant with her thirteenth child. As anyone would do in her situation, she cursed the child in her womb. She gave birth to the child on a stormy night. At first, it seemed like a normal baby but quickly turned into a hideous, winged beast. It killed a bunch of people and ran off into the woods. And to this day it still walks the Pine Barrens of New Jersey making milk go bad because it doesn’t know how to deal with its pain in a constructive way.

The legend says that Mother Leeds was a witch because people love to throw shade at witches. Have you ever met a witch? They just dance funny and smell like patchouli. I see them at Disco Biscuit shows all the time. The minister at the CYO was always ranting about them, like he was dumped by one. You may be asking: "Is the Jersey Devil real?” I don’t know and I’m not walking in the woods to find out.