Ghost Dancing

Many, many years ago a string of connections online brought me in contact with Issy Reyes, poet, writer, and professor. She used to have several websites, but they all seem to have grown still; one of them is on the verge of being purged. She does appear to have a Facebook, but until I give in and sign up for yet another social networking site, I will not be able to visit her there.

She lives in the Philippines. Early on in our contact I asked her describe for me some local item of folklore, a local monster or something like that. I probably got onto this topic by way of discussing the B'Gunk. This would have been in 1999 or 2000.

What she described to me was utterly horrible: a manananggal, a creature that appeared by day to be a female, but by night her head would detach, dragging her internal organs along, and would fly about looking for human flesh to dine on...

"I know that one!" I replied. "That's a pennangalan!"

Yes, studying the monsters of the Dungeons & Dragons Fiend Folio has made me wise in the secrets of the world.

A pennangalan is the first "ghost" - referred to as a "Kra-Sue" - seen in this hilarious Sylvania lightbulb commercial from Thailand, lifted from this post on Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy:



Meanwhile, over at Francesco Explains It All: I have seen the "globetrotting dancing guy" dozens of times on TV and in references on the Internet, but I've never seen this video before. See if your reaction to Matt Harding's "Dancing" video is anything like what I describe in my comments on Francesco's site.



You can read more about this video here, or if you're very patient and/or very lucky you might just stand a chance of getting through the traffic to see the site wherethehellismatt.com. I'm thinking of going out and buying some Stride Gum as a way of saying "thank you" to them for underwriting Matt Harding's travels.


Title reference: Well, this post is about ghosts and dancing. It really has nothing to do with the Ghost Dance.