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Hey, y’all, it’s Weird Wednesday! Where on some Wednesdays, I blog about weird stuff and give writing prompts.

Today: The Brocken Spectre: Angel in the Clouds

Welcome on this Weird Wednesday! Today, we’re chasing our shadows.

A Brocken spectre or Brocken bow is a type of atmospheric phenomenon called a glory. A person stands in front of a light source and their shadow is thrown onto mist, fog, or clouds. When this happens, the person’s shadow is surrounded by what seems to be a halo: rainbow-colored concentric rings, caused by light refracting off water droplets in the air.

A Brocken spectre specifically is formed when a person stands in front of a light source (usually the sun) while at a great height, casting a shadow onto clouds below themselves. Not only is there a glory visible, but the shadow appears to be enormous. The size is an optical illusion caused by the person’s inability to gauge how close their shadow actually is: it seems to be quite far away, and thus looks huge compared to objects on the horizon. But in reality, the shadow is cast onto water droplets that are very close.

The phenomenon is named after the Brocken, the tallest mountain in the Harz range in Germany, which often has clouds below its summit. But the Brocken spectre can be seen from any suitably high place under the right conditions, including tall buildings and even airplanes.

To make the phenomenon even cooler, when the mist and clouds shift with the wind, the Brocken spectre often seems to dance or move. You can see a video of a Brocken spectre moving here.

Check out the blog post for the whole story and some writing prompts, such as:

Anointed leader. Let’s say your fictional society uses the Brocken spectre as a way of choosing political or military leaders. That is, folks march up to the top of the hill one by one, and when a candidate is seen in glory, that’s assumed to be the choice of the Mountain God or other deity. It would be spectacular to see one’s future leader illuminated in a rainbow glow. But is the phenomenon actually a divine decision or the randomness of weather? And could it possibly be faked?

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ The Vampire Haven erotic romance series ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers

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ALT

Hey, y’all, it’s Weird Wednesday! Where on some Wednesdays, I blog about weird stuff and give writing prompts.

Today: Corpse Roads and Coffin Stones

Welcome to Weird Wednesday! Today we’re wandering weird roads that go to graveyards. Sound fun? Let’s go!

Corpse roads are paths over which one carries a coffin to its final resting place. Like crossroads, corpse roads are physical places with metaphysical properties, according to folklore. Such pathways are found all over the world, but the origin of corpse roads in Great Britain is a little more political than you might expect.

Back in late medieval times, the population was growing, so people were building new churches and their associated graveyards. Some established churches insisted that new outlying churches were under their spiritual (and financial) control. Thus, they had to use the graveyards of the mother church, even though they were sometimes quite a distance away.

So how to get the dearly departed to their final destination? Unless you had money for transportation, you and a few friends had to carry the coffin. Thus, paths sprung up between far flung churches and central cemeteries. These paths were called corpse roads, funeral roads, coffin walks, lych ways (lych or lich is a Germanic word for corpse), and other similar names. Eventually, the outlying churches did break away and make their own cemeteries, so corpse roads ceased to be used, though some are still preserved today as footpaths.

Often, corpse roads were as straight as possible through rough terrain, because, well, coffins are pretty heavy. In fact, sometimes large stones along the way were used as places to rest the dearly deceased for a while. These are called “coffin stones.”

But there may have been other reasons for straight roads and resting stones. 

Check out the blog post for the whole story and some writing prompts, such as:

The long and winding road. Not all stories about a corpse road have to be creepy. You could have a family drama that takes place in one scene: the hours-long journey over a corpse road. Let the reader glean the family’s backstory: its loves, arguments, history, and future. All crystalized around the death of someone central to the family, and the difficult march where they share the burden of carrying the coffin.

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ The Vampire Haven erotic romance series ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers

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ALT

Hey, y’all, it’s Weird Wednesday! Where on some Wednesdays, I blog about weird stuff and give writing prompts.

Today: Corpse Roads and Coffin Stones

Welcome to Weird Wednesday! Today we’re wandering weird roads that go to graveyards. Sound fun? Let’s go!

Corpse roads are paths over which one carries a coffin to its final resting place. Like crossroads, corpse roads are physical places with metaphysical properties, according to folklore. Such pathways are found all over the world, but the origin of corpse roads in Great Britain is a little more political than you might expect.

Back in late medieval times, the population was growing, so people were building new churches and their associated graveyards. Some established churches insisted that new outlying churches were under their spiritual (and financial) control. Thus, they had to use the graveyards of the mother church, even though they were sometimes quite a distance away.

So how to get the dearly departed to their final destination? Unless you had money for transportation, you and a few friends had to carry the coffin. Thus, paths sprung up between far flung churches and central cemeteries. These paths were called corpse roads, funeral roads, coffin walks, lych ways (lych or lich is a Germanic word for corpse), and other similar names. Eventually, the outlying churches did break away and make their own cemeteries, so corpse roads ceased to be used, though some are still preserved today as footpaths.

Often, corpse roads were as straight as possible through rough terrain, because, well, coffins are pretty heavy. In fact, sometimes large stones along the way were used as places to rest the dearly deceased for a while. These are called “coffin stones.”

But there may have been other reasons for straight roads and resting stones. 

Check out the blog post for the whole story and some writing prompts, such as:

The long and winding road. Not all stories about a corpse road have to be creepy. You could have a family drama that takes place in one scene: the hours-long journey over a corpse road. Let the reader glean the family’s backstory: its loves, arguments, history, and future. All crystalized around the death of someone central to the family, and the difficult march where they share the burden of carrying the coffin.

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ The Vampire Haven erotic romance series ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers

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This month in 1906 the E.F. Benson story The Bus-Conductor was published in Pall Mall Magazine. It's one of the earliest appearances of the urban legend Room For One More?

The story goes like this: a traveler is staying the night at a friend’s house. Shortly after midnight, a sound from outside brings them to the window. On the driveway below, the traveler sees a hearse pull up. There is no coffin inside, but instead a group of living people. The hearse driver, a man with a sinister appearance, looks up at the traveler in the window and says, “There’s room for one more.”

Shaken, the traveler returns to bed, and in the morning, dismisses the creepy encounter as a dream. But later that day the traveler goes to board a bus, and finds the driver looks exactly like the hearse-driver from the night before. And he repeats his invitation— “There’s room for one more.” 

Terrified, the traveler backs away from the bus, letting it leave without them. A moment later, a truck slams into the bus, killing everyone on board.

Read all about it on my blog, and get writing prompts, such as:

Let’s talk about the driver. Who is this creepy dude? Is he a real person who is doomed along with his fellow travelers? Or maybe he’s a psychopomp (I love that word so much), who is there to guide his passengers to the Other Side. Maybe he’s a man under a bad luck curse, who really should not be getting onto crowded elevators, or a murderous bus driver who wants to cause a crash. Maybe the storyteller is the only one who sees him—if so, why are they lucky enough to get a warning?

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ The Vampire Haven erotic romance series ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers 

ALT

On this day in 1945, a group of five US Navy Planes known as Flight 19 vanished in the Bermuda Triangle. Such accidents unfortunately do happen. So why is Flight 19 so famous? Because after the disappearance, people made up a bunch of stuff about space aliens. No, really.

Flight 19 was led by US Navy Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor. The other aviators were his student pilots for the exercise, and their crews. They took off around 2 pm from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

In 1945, there was no GPS, so pilots found their way by various means, including dead reckoning using elapsed time, compasses, and simply looking out the window. Unfortunately for aviators in the Florida area, there are a lot of little islands down there that look alike.

Lt. Taylor was having a very confusing flight. The training exercise involved flying east to the Bahamas, then north for a while, then southwest to complete the triangle and return to Florida. But when Taylor reached the Bahamas by flying east, he somehow thought he was 200 miles to the southwest, over the Florida Keys. So then he tried to take the flight further east to where he expected the mainland to be. But of course, east from the Bahamas will lead you out to open ocean, and that’s where Flight 19 ended up.

No one knows how Taylor made the bizarre error and why he stuck to his strange belief of being over the Keys in the face of mounting contrary evidence. It’s possible his compass may have been broken, and he may not have had a watch to help with dead reckoning. But when the mainland of Florida did not appear below, he should have believed what his eyes were telling him. In fact, it’s such an inconceivable mistake that writers made up aliens to explain it.

The radio tower, who in 1945 also could not tell exactly where Flight 19 was, tried to guide him, but it didn’t help. Some of the student pilots were heard on the radio urging Taylor to fly west, showing they were not confused about where they were and presumably had working compasses. But no one deserted the group and saved themselves, possibly because that would be going against military discipline.

Check out the blog post for the whole story and writing prompts, such as:

“The ocean doesn’t look as it should.” This fake quote has a lot of possibilities. One way to go would be to have something Very Seriously Wrong with the ocean: for example, it’s red, it’s boiling, or it’s not the ocean anymore but some strange landscape. Or you could have things gradually get creepy, slowly building dread. For example, what if every once in a while, the waves run backwards, like you’re watching a video rewind? Or if the water looks normal, but it seems thicker, moving more like honey?

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ The Vampire Haven erotic romance series ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers

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ALT

On this day in 1816 Keats published On First Looking into Chapman's Homer. The poem gave a name to a kind of deathbed vision called “A Peak in Darien.”

People who are dying or who have gone through near-death experiences (NDE’s) often report deathbed visions, in which they see apparitions of family members or friends who have passed on. A “Peak in Darien” experience refers specifically to seeing the apparition of someone who has died, but whose death is unknown to the experiencer. It describes gazing into the afterlife and inexplicably seeing someone that you believe to still be alive, only to find out later that the person has indeed died.

Sometimes, the news of this death is a surprise to everyone in the room with the dying person, and sometimes the news of the death is known, but has been kept from the dying person as a type of mercy.

Check out my Weird Wednesday blog post for the whole story, and some writing prompts, such as:

Rumors of my demise. Obviously, the fact that someone has died but no one knows about it yet would be very unsettling. As mentioned, it might be the case that the news has been kept from the person on their deathbed because it would upset them and they are already in poor health. Or it could be the case that no one in the room knows of the death because it hasn’t been announced yet, and thus everyone is distressed later when they find out. You could have a group of characters off doing something dangerous, like mountain climbing, and at the news that one of them has died, their friends and family must attempt to rescue the rest.

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ The Vampire Haven erotic romance series ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers

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