#iknowdarkness

Part of the Italian cheap and subversive publications known as fumetti comics, Jacula was the answer to Americas Vampirella. The offspring of Giorgio Cambiotti (1931-2004), Jacula verged on the fine edge between pornography and gothic darkness. The first issue published in 1969 under the title "Queen of the Vampires" was the first of 327. More realistic erotic comics, unfortunately, signalled Jacula's demise in 1982.

Today marks the 25 year release anniversary of “The Downward Spiral”, by Nine Inch Nails. An album that helped propel NIN to wider audiences, and brought new blood into our scene! And some Trivia Obscura™ for you, in connection to the album:

Did you know that Trent Reznor, recorded the album in a studio he built himself in 10050 Cielo Drive, the exact same place where actress Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski’s first wife was murdered by members of the Manson Family in 1969? Following the murder, Tate’s blood was used to scrawl the word “Le Pig” on the front door. Reznor gave that name to his studio and proceeded to record the Downward Spiral. Marilyn Manson’s debut album “Portrait of An American Family”, which Reznor co-produced, was also recorded in “Le Pig”.

Here is David Bowie singing Reptile…Enjoy…

We frequently hear terms such as dark matter or dark energy, but do we really know what they are?

Well in cosmology the universe is made up of three parts: matter, radiation, and dark energy. So there you have it Dark Energy is one of the standard constants of the universe. Problem is we know nothing about it! All we can do is guesswork, (hence the name). Scientists have roughly come up that 68% of the universe is made out of Dark Energy.

Then we also have matter that we know nothing about! …Material in the universe that does not emit or reflect light and is, therefore, invisible. Yes, you guessed it! This goes by the name Dark Matter and it makes up for another 27% of the universe.

Trivia Obscura™ @AthensCON 2018 Teaser! More videos coming soon…! Stay tuned!

Proud to be supported by: Cultartes rockyourlife.gr Nyctophilia.gr Dark Sun Club Athens

The very word trivia derives from the Latin Trivium; meaning "the place where three roads meet" (tri + via). The spot marked by the meeting of three roads is a very powerful place in folkloric traditions around the world as it symbolically signifies the meeting of two realms. You know: our realm and that other one. At such a site of being “neither here nor there”, “betwixt and between” is where most contact with the supernatural occurs.

So, anyone wishing to cut a deal from beyond, has best do so at the Trivium. Faust struck his pact there. Hoodoo religion claims that a 3 time visit at the strike of midnight will turn someone into a mean musician or dice-thrower.  In ancient Greece Oedipus murdered his father at such a spot, and in Britain up until the mid-18th century, the bodies of the unclean dead (suicides and criminals) where buried there.

Instruments of public execution such as Gibbets, (a low budget type of gallows), where often placed at such spots. Those usually convicted of treason or murder where put in a cage suspended in the air and where left in the trivium to die of thirst and hunger.

The Yokai is a Japanese class of monsters and the word roughly can be translated to “phenomenon that surpasses human knowledge”. Very prominent in early folklore, the Japanese approached the Yokai with academic fervour and went to great lengths to class, categorise and write down their attributes, but never actually depicted them.

As the world progressed and people begun to find rational explanations behind certain phenomena they attributed to the Yokai, their numbers started dwindling. The Yokai started living a second life n the 1700’s as the printing press made it possible for their stories to reach a wider audience and writers begun inventing new yokai to incorporate into their storytelling.

Toriyama Sekien (1712 –1788) is a key figure of that era, as Sekien begun to actually draw the Yokai, and thus give a visual anchor to the story. Yokai today are ultra popular as they have moved to manga, dolls, movies and even some odd looking kitchen utensils.

Here are three of our favorite Yokai and what they do:

Makuragaeshi: This lot have a bedding fetish. They appear in a bedroom where someone is asleep and rearrange the pillows. That’s it.

Kappa: They live in the water and they attack you when you get too close…There are two ways that you can use to catch a kappa. Lure it out with a cucumber, (Kappas are suckers for cucumbers). Or you can try method 2: Expose your anus to it, (there is one thing Kappas like more than cucumbers)

Just outside Mexico City, one can find the infamous isla de las munecas. Not really an island but a floating garden whose inhabitants are hundreds of mutilated dolls, hanging from its trees in various stages of decomposition. There is no escaping their blank eyes as literally every surface of the island is covered with dolls.

The locals firmly believe that the whole island is possessed by the spirit of an unfortunate girl, who found tragic death in the garden in the 1950s. There is some truth to this story, as the islands’ caretaker, did find the unfortunates girls corpse and a doll floating in the waters nearby! From that moment on the caretaker started hanging dolls in the garden to keep the girl company.  A habit that soon after his own death in 2001, was taken up by tourists.  Anastasio, the original caretakers’ cousin, now responsible for the island says: “The spirit of the little girl is still here […] It’s important not to remove the dolls.” At night Anastasio maintains that the dolls “…move their heads and whisper to each other. It’s very spooky, but I have gotten used to it.”

Niccolò Paganini, (1782 – 1840), was such a virtuoso with the violin that most of his contemporaries were split into two groups: Those that argued that Paganini was possessed by the devil, and those that thought that he had made a pack with the devil. No-one believed that man alone can show such musical skill!

He began composing at seven and gave public performances when twelve, but by the age of sixteen he had descended into full blown alcoholism. He disappeared from the public eye only to emerge at age twenty-two as the violinist to end all violinists. Paganini was capable of playing three octaves across four strings in a hand span, a nearly impossible feat, even by today’s standards.

Paganini, was always dressed in black, dancing frantically whilst performing and having what one might call, a cadaverous physique (extremely tall and thin, coupled with pale skin, unnaturally long fingers and hollowed out eyes), did not make it easy on himself. “Flaming eyes” and “thin lips that held a sardonic smile”, was what his contemporaries described him like.

His deviant behavior coupled with a repertoire that would not be out of place in today’s left-field music, (his 1829 Berlin concert was billed “Hexentanz - Witches'  Dance”), plus the fact that he turned away the priest that came to give him the last rites, made the local churches initially refuse to give Paganini a Christian burial and accept his body into consecrated ground.

Paganini’s remains proved to have quite an adventurous afterlife as they have been twice embalmed, moved to 10 different locations, and have had a total of 6 burials. So you know what they say: There is no rest for the wicked ones….