Gloom Girls Project: Lizzie Borden

This is a project about demonic ladies, iron maidens and evil queens. It's the opposite to my "Golden Girl Project" series that I made years ago on this blog. Golden Girls is all about ladies of light. The Gloom Girls Project is about ladies of darkness. Obsidiously evil and dangerous by nature, they're cold blooded as they're so vicious, tainted and cruel. Each post will focus on one such lady of gloom.

Lizzie Borden

Lizzie Borden took an axe

And gave her mother forty whacks.

And when she saw what she had done,

She gave her father forty-one.

The above is a rhyme doggerel that children can sing and remember. It was created out of thin air in the year 1893, the time of Lizzie's trial. Who was this Lizzie Borden and why is there a strange creepy song about her?

Lizzie was born on 19th July 1860 in Fall River, Massachusettes. Her father, Andrew Jackson Borden, was from a respectable family but he had financial difficulties. He ended up working in the furniture business where he did better and provided for his family. He later turned to property and managing, seeing over various factories and manufacturing. He was raised as a president of a banking company, and his salery grew and his estate reached a value of over two hundred thousand dollars. Andrew's friends and relatives were of the trend setting and gentlemen and lady types. They found Andrew somewhat shabby as he didn't live their wealthy lifestyle. 

His house was like a haunted house. It was a grey walled house, three storyes high, filled with rooms and secret passages, surrounded by a white picket fence and a spooky tree stood just outside the front. It had a terrible plumbing system and decay. Today, that house still stands there but it's been redourated, painted green and there are more flowers growing in the yard turned garden. It's now a B&B.

Growing up, Lizzie was playing with her older sister, Emma, within the crumbling house. Their strict stepmother, Abby, wanted both to have a religious upbringing. They attended church and other Christian groups. Lizzie went to Morgan Street School. According to her school friends and teachers, Lizzie spoke unkindly of her stepmother. However, people remembered Abby as a kind sweet lady. It seems clear that of her school reports, Lizzie didn't do too fantastic but not bad at her achievments. She also didn't get on well with others. Described as a small "blooming strapping lass", with brown hair and such cold eyes.

Some former school buddies remember her as a loner and "sarcastic" who kept one friend. After Lizzie grew up, she became a secretary and a member of the Fruit and Flower Mission. Around the time of the infamous event, everyone had become ill. On 4th August 1892, Lizzie picked up an axe and then killed both her father and stepmother. Abby was given 18 or 19 whacks of the blade, while Adrew got 11 hits. Some believe that she didn't do it. However, during police investigations and interviews, Lizzie changed her story. Despite her notorious media character, she was acquited. The mystery is still ongoing. 

After the trial, Lizzie was caught shoplifting and arrested. She was made an outcast but later befriended a celebrity called Nance O'Neil, who introduced Lizzie to parties and a wild flamboyant lifestyle. Lizzie became ill and died on 1st June 1927. She left a Will and $500,000 went towards an animal shelter and the rest towards her remaining relatives.    

By Rayne

Art by Krista Hout

Rumpelstiltskin

There was a girl who was the daughter of a miller. She was pretty and also clever at spinning pure gold silk from ordinary cotton. That was because she used colourings and some of her own strands of hair. The king heard stories about this amazing girl weaving and spinning gold. He sent for her and then he locked her up inside a tower room full of straw. He ordered her to make as much gold thread as possible using the straw by morning or he’ll cut her head off.

Scared and wondering what to do, a little imp creature appeared magically in the room. He told her that he would help her to spin gold from straw if she gave him her pretty necklace (pink Mother-of=Pearls that was a birthday gift from her late father).

The following morning, the king was impressed by the gold that the girl managed to make from straw. The ungrateful king took her into another room and it was filled with much more straw and some bits of rubbish. Again he threatened to chop off her head if she didn’t make gold by tomorrow. 

Again the imp arrived and spun all of the straw as well as some rubbish, turning into piles of pure sparkling gold. The imp wanted the girl’s ring. It was a silver ring with a small diamond, a heirloom gift from her late mother.

The king took the girl to a larger room fill of bales of hey. He told her aggressively that he’ll chop off her head and stick it on a spike if she doesn’t turn all of it into gold by tomorrow morning. He said if she does make all of this gold, he will marry her. The girl ran out of things to pay for the imp in exchange for turning the hey into gold. The imp told her that he will spin all of the bales of hey into gold if she agrees to give him her future baby. The girl felt obliged to agree and the imp spun the entire bales of hey into pure gold silk.

So the king married the girl and a year later she gave birth to a baby son. Shortly after the baby was born, the imp appeared. He demanded his payment, which was the baby. The young queen was scared and told him that she’ll give him her jewels and finery. The imp didn’t care about all that. He wanted her child as that was the deal agreed to. Soon the imp decided that he’ll not take her child then if the queen was able to guess what his name is. He said he’ll return after three days. The young queen was at a loss in what to do. For two days she was afraid and desperate to think of what name the imp has. 

Then the day before the imp arrived, she went out into the forest hoping to spy on him. She found him by a small house, hopping around a bonfire, singing.

"Tonight tonight, my plans I make, tomorrow tomorrow, the baby I take. The queen will never win the game, for Rumpelstiltskin is my name'.

The following day, the imp appeared to the queen and asked if she knew what his name was. She told him “Rumpelstiltskin” and the imp grew so angry that he banged his foot into the floorboard. He remained stuck there forever, always laughed at and seen as the fool.
Then end.

Written by Rayne Belladonna

This story is based on the fairytale "Rumplestiltskin" by the Brothers Grimm.

Are dragons a memory of dinosaurs?

On Quora I answered a question "Why do so many ancient cultures have dragons, even though they are on different continents." Here was my answer:

Some people believe that this is a throwback memory of prehistoric times. Early mammals were present during the dinosaur era. There wasn’t any evidence of humans living at the time of the dinosaurs. Another point is that there are theories to suggest that we have strong memories, passed down from our ancestors. Hereditary memory. It’s not fully researched yet. If this is the case, and hereditary memories are real, they could explain a lot. That may cause us to wonder how far back in time these memories stretch. Would they go back to when our own ancestors lived during the Ice Age? What about long before then when our common ancestors were just hunters and knew mammoths?

I’m sure this may be it, guys. Hereditary memory about Ice Age mammals have sort of given humans the idea of certain monsters and beasts. In Greek mythology, a cave belonging to a giant cyclops had in recent years, been found to have fossils of woolly rhino and other Ice Age animals. How did people from the Ice Age get to hunting and risking their lives with beasts to ancient Greeks with their cyclops? Could these beasts be fragmented, unexplained memories distorted with visions of fear? I guess mammoths were frightening and wonderful but awesome. How did our ancestors find them? I guess they might’ve had feelings of respect and fear. Possibly saw them as food. Either way, their memories of the mammoths would pass down though thousands of years. To the time of the ancient Greeks, the descandants of those Ice Age hunters would not remember what mammoths were or looked like. But they would carry the fear of something enormous and powerful with giant horns.

Okay dragons. Here be dragons. Could our distant ancestral relatives from a time way before the Ice Age be able to pass down memories? Mammals alive during the last era of the dinosaur age wasn’t human. Here is it:

Ancestor of Humans Lived with Dinosaurs 

Is that small mammal creature able to pass down vivid memories of dinosaurs to us modern humans? It sounds unlikely and stupid but is it? Where did the dragons come from? Surely they were real? or were they dreams? Or dreams and real both combined? Yes, a time of the dinosaurs was real, and early human ancestors that looked like this had coexisted with them.

But what about all the stories and legends of dragons? Where did that come from?

I have an idea that may be spiritual other than physical. Dragons could be the spirits or spirit guides of the deceased dinosaurs that were seen by people throughout history. Obviously modern humans have lost the ability to see things. Perhaps dinosaurs didn’t all get wiped out 65 million years ago. Perhaps some survived and became our dragons.

End of post by Rayne Belladonna.

(On further thought, dragons might've been surviving species of dinosaurs, maybe a very altered and magnificent type that breathed fire). Anyway, if humans didn't live at the same time as dinosaurs, why are there cave paintings of dinosaurs that were made by prehistoric humans?

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