#the vast graveyards out in the middle of nowhere are probably a response to the whole death = faster hauntings thing

[stylishanachronism]

Okay so no Caed Nua as an abandoned haunted house, but would you write about Neketaka as a not at all abandoned but still haunted AF city?

I would!!! Especially as it’s got a lot of overlap, given both Caed Nua and Neketaka just..... plastered over the Remains of What Came Before, and everyone just sort of forgot about it, but the House City Did Not Forget.

(A note: I’m on much much shakier ground as far as the real life cultures that inspired the devs with this one, so like, if you’ve got more info let me know if I’m wildly off base or like, rude, because all I’ve got is two years of Polynesian art and a thorough grounding in modern American, nebulously European, and fairly specifically 17th c Japanese haunted house archetypes.)

So Neketaka, canonically, is built on top of several centuries worth of Other Cities, not all of which are holding up that well. (I suspect most of the, uh, old empire(?) construction actually was built into the caves under the current city on purpose, given the Gullet hasn’t been swallowed up yet; despite all the shaky platforms there’s solid rock somewhere under all that, and that buildings for the living were repurposed for the dead at some point when they decided to start building on top of the mountain as well. All of that was more or less sealed off by Engwith, to my understanding, in an attempt to hide the God Battery Ukaizo, likely with people still living there, given the sheer number of corpses you see both below the Gullet and in Berath’s temple, which, again to my understanding, leads into the same complex, deep enough down. So you’ve got a whole city under the city, plus whatever layers of construction ended up in between (and there’s at least a couple of places that have two or three of those, given where we’re allowed to go), and that city did not go quietly.

(To circle back around to the Caed Nua essay nobody gets to read yet, it’s fairly canon that anything that exists long enough gets pretty damn haunted, for whatever definition of haunted applies. Places and things involved with death do this more quickly, obviously, but even sufficiently strong emotion will do, based on all the soul bound objects. Caed Nua is explicitly canonically odd because it Went Haunted almost before it was finished being built, not because it *is* haunted, and Haunted Hill scares people because that shit happened literally overnight, not because it happened at all; nobody cares about the equally (but much more gradually) haunted sewers, after all. Neketaka was essentially buried alive, as far as I know, and history swallowed that fact up whole, so the highly reasonably fact the city is haunted is not well remembered, and it’s real sad about that.)

A small part of the reason Neketaka is such a mess (99% of it is absolutely outside politics But) is that I doubt the Huana are as a general rule used to living in haunted spaces; some tribes certainly are, and all the Watershapers are probably at least a little Concerned by non-haunted places, considering, but anybody whose tribe used to live outside the city is probably not having a great time with that bit, on top of, y’know, living in a city at all. Neketaka seems fairly inclined to leave the surface city to itself, though in addition to being at least partially built on solid rock, the reason the Gullet is still standing is definitely because the city wants it to be, and it’s definitely more ‘active’ about Berath’s temple, and probably Delver’s Row as well. It also probably doesn’t help that p much nobody can recognize the haunting for what it is, for various reasons, and anyone who should is very throughly ignoring the situation, mostly for political and/or health reasons. (The Watcher is special, and the city loves them, for better or worse; not everyone can say the same!) Digging too far into the City’s city-ness just means you get it’s attention, and then it probably tries to help you, and it’s idea of helpful is not exactly a good time.

Speaking of, I suspect that to Neketaka the City, killing anyone who ends up in the Old City quickly looks like a kindness; the original people who died there either died fast or suffered for a long time, and the City as an Entity is definitely influenced by that drawn out despair, the way the city as a city is, even if they don’t recognize that about themselves. It certainly doesn’t look like a kindness to anyone else, but I really do think that’s the City’s idea of trying to help.

There’s definitely a lot more to unpack here, like why the City is sad and how that affects things like, oh, the Vailian and Rautai presence, but I haven’t felt it out yet, and I need to do some work with the map but yeah! Neketaka is Real Damn Haunted and nobody wants to acknowledge that, and it’s very sad about everything. Tune in next time for why my gut feeling says the priest dude in Berath’s temple and also Dereo in Delver’s Row are having the best luck with the thing, while Her Majesty is accidentally fighting a war on an extra front.

#look I can talk fairly intelligently about a bunch of different cultures’ art I’m just using Polynesian because they’re all thereabouts #also being able to talk about art does not make me an expert on any level about the actual cultures so uh #also to my knowledge polynesia in general doesn’t really go for haunted houses as a supernatural thing #haunted boats haunted weapons haunted sharks (?) sure but not really haunted houses #anyways #unrelated Things of Note: #Defiance Bay has sewers and running water and people have at least vaguely figured out germ theory #given it’s not a particularly modern city we can expect all those things are The Norm #caed nua almost certainly has plumbing as does Dyrford odd as that might seem #they probably have a septic tank and a leech field for dyemaking purposes however #the vast graveyards out in the middle of nowhere are probably a response to the whole death = faster hauntings thing #because it’s a smidge ridiculous to carry your dead All the Way Out There without a really good reason #I would really like to know if Neketaka also loves Adaryc; that’s ether a watcher thing or a Watcher thing and I’d like some more data #I suspect the thesis here is for Caed Nua the other side of love is possession; for Neketaka it’s grief #alternately: caed nua is v haunted and everyone would like to ignore that; Neketaka is also v haunted and everyone’s forgotten that #given that what causes a haunting to manifest is probably the same ground in uh soul dust the gods eat #and that that canonically is heavily influenced by the people it came from #I expect that the gods have changed more than they or anyone else knows or expected #like I bet if you put Magran the baby god next to Magran during Deadfire they wouldn’t recognize each other #....also entirely unrelated to any of this but I would not be surprised if people who eat adra #started showing physical side effects to go with the metaphysical ones #don’t eat adra kids you won’t like the results #I am once again laughing at the fact that if something is old enough to have a personality it unabashedly loves the Watcher #because that’s also a theme #I really need a better timeline on the Caed Nua was originally buried x Neketaka was originally buried y front #Caed Nua is.... arguably older? in terms of grief-stricken haunted shit not like in general #I’d need way more information for which place is Actuallh Older #it certainly had more time to stew in its resentment and less people to look after in the interim #...also y’know it’s a lot smaller and was tied into that adra pillar for a long goddamned time #which definitely helped it form a personality fast

[jakattax]

You wanted a scary story, I’ll give you one

May I introduce you all to St. Botolph’s Church, Lincolnshire (aka Skidbrooke church, aka demon church)

A 13th century Anglican church near the market town of Louth in my home county. As you can see the church is disused, abandoned and was declared officially redundant in 1973.

Like all abandoned buildings, especially places of worship, ghost stories abound. The church is widely regarded as one of the most haunted locations in Lincolnshire with tales of phantoms, demons and satanic activity.

https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/1891120/the-most-haunted-derelict-demon-church-in-the-uk-has-been-cursed

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bostonstandard.co.uk/news/offbeat/lincolnshire-s-top-8-terrifying-and-bizarre-paranormal-cases-1-8190903/amp

https://hauntedhistoryoflincolnshire.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/surrounding-areas/skidbrooke/

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.louthleader.co.uk/news/experts-claim-church-is-paranormal-paradise-1-1015932/amp

https://youtu.be/mZdlERW6iJI

So the story goes is that a coven of satanists performed dark and profane rituals in the church in the 1970’s and 80’s and there was a resurgence in 2004 of animal sacrifices, occult symbology and evidence of fires being burned. Now any self respecting occultist will know that just because a pentagram is involved and a few chickens were sacrificed it does not make it satanic (well certainly not LaVeyan Satanism which was at its most popular in the 60’s and 70’s as killing an animal goes against the tenth Satanic Rule on Earth) and that the deeds could have been carried out by any magical practitioner. It just sounds more dramatic and spooky to blame the satanists.

Anyway.

Skidbrooke church has a very menacing and a very infamous reputation among pretty much every one in the county, it becomes a rite of passage almost to go there and check it out. And so I did.

It was perhaps 4 years ago around midsummer and my best friend Dom decided he wanted to drive to the church and see what ghosts and ghouls we would encounter. This was a point where my occult side was just one of my many eccentricities, I certainly wasn’t an open magician yet so I was asked to tag along. It was myself, Dominic, Laura, Yas and Sam.

The drive from Grimsby to Skidbrooke isn’t long , probably around 40 minutes through the gorgeous Lincolnshire wolds, just expansive farmlands and rolling hills of woodlands. Proper farmers country. I remember the drive profoundly well because I was desperate for the toilet, and these long country roads don’t really have lay-bys. I was genuinely on the verge of pissing myself and Dom refused to stop until I threatened to piss in his new car and he eventually found somewhere so I could relieve myself. Weird diverge i know but I need to recount the tale from memory.

So we got to the church, or should I say the gated road that leads to the church. It was twilight so the sky was that beautiful dark orange colour, just as it meets the pale blue. The sun was setting and darkness was coming. The thing about Skidbrooke church is that it’s in the middle of fielded land and the only way to it is to park by the road and walk down a small country road to it. The road towards the church is gated off so driving there is not an option. The fields were wide and open so the sound of the wind and rustling of nearby trees were quite loud. Sound carried very well. It was very children of the corn, as in the grass in this field was huge. Very daunting, very atmospheric.

So off we went. There was definitely a sense of fear among us all, but we were quite jovial about it all, it was thrilling, fun almost. Dom and Sam are sceptics, they were adamant nothing was going to happen. Yas and Laura weren’t really 100% comfortable, especially when I was boasting that I was going to stir the supernatural pot. In all honesty I had no intention to perform a ritual as I didn’t have any tools or books with me to do so, I was just trying to spook my friends.

The thing about the church grounds is that they’re well kept and groomed. It’s a grade I protected building so I imagine the national heritage employs some poor bugger just to keep the grounds tidy. And it was a functioning church until the 70’s so it’s only respectful to keep the graves nice and clean. It was quite an awesome sight to be honest, the building is quite beautiful. Dom and Sam weren’t so much afraid of ghosts and Demons but more if the church was used by homeless people who might take umbrage to us poking around. We swept the graveyard before entering, just to make sure no one was around who’d fuck with us.

And we were indeed all alone. And so we entered the church proper.

An abandoned church is a bizarre thing. No pews, no altar, no stained glass, just a large bowel of rotting stone and pigeon shit. That’s what hit us, just the smell of dirt and decay. The only features that remained was the heavy oak doors, everything else was gone. From a place that is steeped in centuries worth of devotion and joy is now just a stone skeleton, forgotten in the middle of a field in England.

What struck me probably more than my friends was the heavy atmosphere of the place. Not saying necessarily negative but certainly a strong, musky and intense heavy energy attached to it. We explored the building briefly but honestly it was just a big empty room. It was getting progressively darker and I think we were all starting to spook ourselves a little.

So me being me, I rallied the troops and said I was going to call out. Now I applied no serious occult method here, I just gathered my friends and did the whole “I call beyond the veil, make a noise if there are spirits present” routine. I specified that if Spirits were present they should make themselves known by knocking on the oak doors. I added some flourishes to my calls, adding the names of Malach Ha’Mavet (an angel of death) and some other terms just for the dramatic effect. In hindsight very silly of me to do, but I just wanted a thrill, a bit of a spook. The worse thing was is that it was enough for Yas and Laura and they wanted out. Very douchey thing of me to do really, just to scare them for the sake of it.

We decided it was probably best to leave now. We were all realising that we’re in the middle of nowhere in the dark and me being that weird occultist was trying to commune with the dead (again in actuality I did no real magic here, bit of foolery) and me realising that I’ve scared my friends I didn’t feel too proud of myself so we go.

Our pace is significantly faster as we go back down the road to the car, now it is fully dark so we’re relying on our phones to light the road. Sam walks ahead with the girls, me and dom walk slower behind as we smoke. We decide to look back on the church, and it looked just damn ominous now under cover of night. And that’s when we saw something, or perhaps someone.

On the small belfry tower to the left of the picture, standing on top of it was the distinct figure of a dark shrouded man. It was faint to see with the figure being black against a dark sky and it was very small but it was there. It’s horribly cliche to see a dark hooded figure but that’s what we saw. Hard to define as we were a distance away but it moved and swayed in the wind violently. We thought it was a flag but as you can see there is no flagpole.

It’s fair to say we lost our shit and pelted it to keep up with Sam and the girls. We told them what we saw and they thought we were fucking with them. We were all now running back to the gate and the car. I did look back a few times but couldn’t make anything out. Back to the car and were out of there to a local pub to calm our nerves.

Was it a ghost? Was it a flag or natural phenomenon? I don’t know. It could entirely be a trick of the mind, and it could have easily been a ghost upset at petulant kids poking around his church. Or it could have been demonic, a force stirred up by the sorcery which profaned the hallowed ground. Even though I’m a practising magician and I’m use to stirring up spirits to some tangible form, it’s still chilling to see something out of the blue. Did I unintentionally summon something with my pseudo-magical calls?

In all honesty I put this one to a case of psychology. I think due to the atmosphere, the fame of the building, the situation we put ourselves in we were simply seeing things the mind wanted us to see. We went looking for s ghost and we got one. In the darkness the mind plays tricks, let alone when your in the darkness in an abandoned ‘satanic’ church with a history of haunts and black magic. Yet also as an occultist and magician I must acknowledge that places do indeed carry on the scars of magical influence, a church is such holy and sacred ground that it inherently carries vast potency, especially a church that has been there for 700 years. And i must acknowledge that “satanist” or not, groups of people do gather at the church and vandalise it with pentagrams and carry out rituals, so it is soaked in the supernatural.

Whatever we saw, if we saw anything at all was more than enough to scare away. I haven’t been back to Skidbrooke, but being a more responsible, learned and all around proficient magician makes me want to. Not to try and stir anything up, just to investigate with a more clear head.

Want to come with me?

#ghost stories #skidbrooke #haunted church #ghosts #supernatural