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The Headless Lady

How was she 'looking' though, with no head?

If she's reading this, it's OK, I don't need a demonstration.
 
How was she 'looking' though, with no head?
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who knows. she knew though I would assume. This is my favorite part:


She would open the lid, reach in, and start moving my toys around. Obviously looking for something -- and what else would a headless woman be looking for?
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Dear God!


~Kim
 
The fact that this "Headless Lady" is reported as a first-person experience of Bernie Wrightson, one of the real geniuses of modern horror art, makes it much more interesting than many of the stories of the type, which seem to be largely folkloric.

So it brings up the question as to how many first-person accounts there are of headless ghosts.

The spectral lore of the United Kingdom, especially, is replete with stories of ghosts "carrying their 'eads underneath their arms," but how many firm encounters are there, first-person and attested-to?
 
:shock: *shudder*

I've never seen a headless ghostie. I have a real fear of dead people walking around when they shouldn't, so that's probably a good thing.
 
PlagueRider said:
I have a real fear of dead people walking around when they shouldn't....
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That's okay. I have a fear of dead people even when they're acting real still and quiet.
 
Weren't the Celts allegedly obsessed with severed heads? Could that be the root of our tradition of headless ghosts? Or are they also common in other cultures?
 
graylien said:
Weren't the Celts allegedly obsessed with severed heads? Could that be the root of our tradition of headless ghosts? Or are they also common in other cultures?
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Good question. Slavic and other vampire legends place as much importance on cutting off the vampire's head (and filling the mouth with garlic) as they do on staking the heart.

But headless vampires don't come back.

And do the (traditional) head-hunting tribes of South America or the South Pacific have any legends of headless ghosts? I'm unaware that they do. It would seem to me that the prevention of ghostly reappearances would be at least one of the reasons for the decapitation. (Please note that I do not write the only reason or even the main reason.)

P. S. Were there ancient Celtic legends or reports of headless ghosts? Or do such tales date only from individuals executed by late mediaeval/early modern British monarchs such as Henry VIII?
 
graylien wrote:
Weren't the Celts allegedly obsessed with severed heads? Could that be the root of our tradition of headless ghosts? Or are they also common in other cultures?
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I think the Celts belived that the head was the seat of "soul" / "power" in a person, so very much like the Vampire folklore removing the head would surely leave the body...well frankly lifeless! (animated or otherwise)

Mr P[/b]
 
Anyone have any headless ghost stories? Online?

I tried to think of one and the only one I can remember is ficticious!

mooks

EDIT - S'alright! Googled!

Edited again - That Anne Boleyn gets around a bit!
 
If there are indeed few if any actual reports of headless ghosts, how and why did the stereotype manage to become so common?

You'd expect the ghost of a decapitated person to return as a whole entity, just like ghosts of individuals who have long-since rotted away to dust in their graves. And individuals who've been destroyed by fire or explosion or even cut in half by conveyences seem to return as intact spectres.

But as I've written before even early moderns didn't make the distinction we do today between ghosts, per se, and the just plain reanimated corpse. That, in fact, seems to be the origin of the traditional sheeted ghost. The "sheet" is the winding-sheet.

So the "reanimated cadaver" of a beheaded person might very well show up carrying his or (her) head....or at least looking for it.

P. S. I still don't know how far this goes back. Dragging chains date at least to the ancient Athenian ghost story related by Pliny the Younger.
 
Old Joe and His :antern

Wait a minute, I've just thought of another tradition of headless ghosts.

In the United States and Canada the "spooklights" which have been observed running along railroad tracks have often been "explained" as "Old Joe, the 19th Century signalman, decapitated by a locomotive, out with a lantern searching for his head."

Now it follows that "Old Joe" is headless. But have there been any accounts in which he himself has actually been seen, rather than just his "lantern"?

P. S. And of course ths question - what is Joe using for eyes?
 
Oh Carlos, you beat me to it!!!

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is one of my all-time favorite ghost stories--I used to watch it on TV every Halloween!

There was a live-action TV movie done of it years ago (maybe sometime in the 70's??) and I think Jeff Goldblum played the part of Ichabod Crane, but as I am lousy with names it could have been another actor.

Does anybody remember this program--and know whatever became of it? As I recall, it was a great retelling of the old story!

I would dearly love to see it again!!! :D
 
There's also a rather ghastly story by Washington Irving in which a young man falls in love with a girl who had previously (and all unknown to the swain) been guillotined during the French Revolution. She's still ambulatory but her head is attached to her body by nothing more than a ribbon affixed around her neck.

At least that's the way that I remember the tale - it's been a long time.
 
"Then she would walk across the room, up to my bed where the toy box was. I had a big, maybe two by three foot, toy box with a hinged wooden lid. She would open the lid, reach in, and start moving my toys around. Obviously looking for something -- and what else would a headless woman be looking for?
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Obviously she was looking for her head!
:p
 
escargot1 said:
How was she 'looking' though, with no head?
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I'd assume by feeling around, as with the toy box. I wish the author had told us whether the next day he found his toys disarrayed, but he probably hadn't remembered what was where in the toy box, since normally things are probably just thrown in.

Pretty creepy story!

OTR, I remember hearing a version of that as a kid in a popular "ghost story" where a man marries a woman who tells him he must never remove the ribbon around her neck, and one night while she's sleeping, he does, and her head falls off. But I never knew it was from a literary work, or that the woman was, in the story, a victim of the guillotine!
 
lkb3rd said:
"Then she would walk across the room, up to my bed where the toy box was. I had a big, maybe two by three foot, toy box with a hinged wooden lid. She would open the lid, reach in, and start moving my toys around. Obviously looking for something -- and what else would a headless woman be looking for?
Click to expand...

Obviously she was looking for her head!
:p
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Perhaps she was merely trying to get a head in the world?
 
Probably! But that doesn't excuse such heady behavior :D ;)
 
Re: Old Joe and His :antern

OldTimeRadio said:
P. S. And of course ths question - what is Joe using for eyes?
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Nothing and just his hands?

Trying to post the best I can think of. :eek:
 
I've seen a battery-operated Halloween decoration in which a black-garbed headless woman holds her decapitated head in one hand - and the eyes flash.

The inference is that she is carryhing her head like a "seeing lantern," with the eyes still functioning.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
There's also a rather ghastly story by Washington Irving in which a young man falls in love with a girl who had previously (and all unknown to the swain) been guillotined during the French Revolution. She's still ambulatory but her head is attached to her body by nothing more than a ribbon affixed around her neck.

At least that's the way that I remember the tale - it's been a long time.
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this was retold in a recent horror movie. i'm pretty sure it was Campfire Tales. Surprisingly good movie
 
synchronicity said:
Oh Carlos, you beat me to it!!!

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is one of my all-time favorite ghost stories--I used to watch it on TV every Halloween!

There was a live-action TV movie done of it years ago (maybe sometime in the 70's??) and I think Jeff Goldblum played the part of Ichabod Crane, but as I am lousy with names it could have been another actor.

Does anybody remember this program--and know whatever became of it? As I recall, it was a great retelling of the old story!

I would dearly love to see it again!!! :D
Click to expand...

Yes it was Jeff Goldblum and he made a pretty good Ichabod
 
[/quote] decipheringscars wrote:

I'd assume by feeling around, as with the toy box. I wish the author had told us whether the next day he found his toys disarrayed, but he probably hadn't remembered what was where in the toy box, since normally things are probably just thrown in.

[/quote]

Remember the boy is quite young, only Four years old. As a child that young it would be kind of hard to remember to check the toy box after such a horrible event, you know, connecting things like that and all wouldn't be as clear to someone so young.
 
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