Kelly Rulison
Copy Edtior
As Halloween gets ever closer, let’s take a look at the most notorious classic baddies so we can be prepared for all their tricks and schemes.
Who doesn’t know who Dracula is; no one, but does anyone know his backstory? He is based on the historical figure Vlad the Impaler who was a notorious ruler of Wallachia.
He is best known for is extreme torture methods which included such atrocities like roasting children and then feeding them to their mothers, cutting off the breasts of women, and forcing their husbands to eat them, and finally he would impale them.
Next we have the Wolf Man a cursed soul doomed to become a werewolf at the rising of a full moon. He is based on an ancient pagan religion of Germans which talks about men who were so savage and deadly in combat that they were considered the wolves of the god Odin. The men would go into combat in a berserk rage, terrifying their foes with their sheer ferocity and wearing only a wolf pelt for protection.
Frankenstein is from a novel written by English author Mary Shelley about a scientist that wants to create life. Frankenstein is considered to be the modern Prometheus. With Frankenstein, his scariness comes from the fact that he is just a bunch of body parts forced together to create a scary looking living thing that should not exist.
And finally the Mummy is a monster that is always cursed to remain alive forever. Mummies were not considered monsters until the early 20th century when movies could be made about them.
The history of Mummies is taught through history classes in school which tells us that Egyptians believed that to insure the pharaoh’s passage into the next world the earthly body must be embalmed, preserved in a tomb, and “fed” by a priest through religious ritual.
However, you can’t blame these pharaohs for being angry spirits because people have always been interested in mummies throughout history and so their tombs have always been raided.
For more information of the history about these classic monsters visit www.unmuseum.org or www.librarypoint.org and have a safe and fun Halloween.
