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The Blood Moon finds Babiole and The Alibi Tent at a fall festival in a quaint yet infamous town where Mennonites, George Washington and zombies have converged. Babiole relates the difficulties of consulting with both the living and the dead across generations to help an unfortunate ghost. 

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Transcript

Hello... Welcome. You may think you found your way here by mistake but...we both know that's not true. You've been wandering for a while, casting furtive glances and making hesitant false starts in search of just the right fit. Nothing too crazy while also being maybe not too safe? You want to know but you don't...want to know, isn't that the case? 

Well, you are here now. Cozy in my little tent, hidden from the rest of the harsh, strange world to spend some time in a slightly stranger albeit softer world. Sit, make yourself comfortable. Your secrets are safe here.

You've visited on a very auspicious day. The 13th. It’s a Full Moon. Gratitude and thanks are the best Full Moon magic. 

But this isn’t just any Full Moon. The 13th is the Blood Full Moon in Aries. Fire Sign. Traditionally male energy. Any kind of spellworkings to do with invoking your own will or force, fearlessness. Those are the good spells to do with an Aries moon. 

Today is also Sunday. Sunday is a good day for rituals or spells to do with healing, blessing, or anything generally positive. 

From the 13th to the 17th is also the time of the Demon Bathim. Duke Bathim. Familiar of wortcunning, herbalism, stone and crystal magic and also a very powerful ally when it comes to astral projection and dreamwork. 

The time for Bathim’s invocation or evocation is Sunrise to 12 noon

We are currently camped on the edge of a rather old town in the Commonwealth and one of dubious beginnings. 

The original settlement was a Lenni Lenape community comprised of several smaller villages. It later became known as Mutheringtown or "Murdering Town" and in the mid 1700's George Washington passed through one late December while on a mission to Fort Le Boeuf and was shot at by a French allied Native. Years later there was a rock placed to mark the location and locals commemorate it now and then.

About 50 years after Washington's near hit, a German pietist and his followers came to the area and named the land they bought after their society, Harmony. When the Harmonists decided to take their show west, they sold Harmony to a Mennonite man and it is his people that in 1869 built the walled cemetery which includes a revolving one ton stone door that is very interesting from both an aesthetic and engineering standpoint. It is said the door represents the entrance to the afterlife but once you push past it you will find only one headstone. Harmonists did not believe in marking graves but for some reason, a non-Harmonist erected a headstone marking the grave of the son of the Harmonists Society's founder, 57 years after his death. Just goes to show that no matter the time or religious orientation, people have always vandalized graveyards. In this case it was Mennonites desecrating a Harmonist cemetery... not by knocking down headstones but by installing one.

So many superstitions about burial; the deceased must be carried feet first, wear gloves to prevent contact with casket, burial must take place before sundown, preferably on the day of death, cemeteries must be oriented to face east,... 

You seem dubious of what I'm saying but I invite you to conduct a little experiment. Take a compass or your smartphone with compass app to a cemetery and stand next to a headstone, making sure that the side of the stone with writing is facing the same way you are and see which way the compass needle is pointing. And if you should happen to find that the graves are not oriented to face East, make note of the section you were in and inquire at the cemetery office if they have a section reserved for non-xtian or non-jewish buriel and see if that is where you were. If you find that the section you were in was, in fact, for xtian and Jewish burials, ask the person at the cemetery office why the graves aren't oriented facing East and see what reactions you get 😈

All this talk of cemeteries reminds me of a family. They live in an area not far from where we are camped this very moment. Where the mountains are taller, the valleys are deeper and cultural practices tend toward the older and traditional. In these places, death and burial is dealt with more intimately. The dead are buried on family land and are, quite literally, never far away from the lives of the living. 

This family had a terrible and tragic event transpire that was sadly preventable but, unfortunately, not so easily rectified...even by someone such as myself. 

This family I'm speaking of is neither rich nor conventionally powerful but they are prolific and their land has been in their family for centuries, before the birth of this nation. Even before George Washington had his incident with the Native fellow we were talking about just a little bit ago. 

Like other families in their region, they have a family cemetery on property and the way the location was decided is a chilling tale on it's own but that story will be for another time.

I mentioned before that this family is not wealthy but, just as is the case with majority of humans, despite economic status, there are a few costly purchases a person must make in life, some examples being funeral and burial. There are some details with these matters that can be done more cheaply than others, grave marking being one. As a result, most of their family members had simple or homemade grave markers. Since family was who tended to the maintenance of the cemetery, location of graves and making sure the fragile markers are replaced to the appropriate grave when they had to be moved for mowing was not an issue. Generations of people lived their lives knowing nothing but this cemetery practice. 

Well, it happened that one female member of the family, named Mary, married and went on to have 9 children, 7 of which were girls. The eldest son was paralyzed by an attempt on his life which limited his ability to contribute financially to the family, as was common practice. A few years later their father passed but by this time several of the daughters managed to marry men that had decent paying jobs that allowed them to get ahead financially enough that they pooled their money to buy their mother and father REAL HEADSTONES! The third eldest daughter made all the arrangements with the memorial mason for a double headstone and after it was installed, she hatched a plan to present the "gift" to Mary on Mother's Day. 

It's here that I need to tell you that Mary was a nervous and high-strung woman. She was continually plagued with frightening experiences, terrifying sightings of otherworldly descriptions and haunts of all varieties. Death was a constant worry and she lived her life strictly adhering to old superstitions and a crippling belief in omens. So, how her third eldest daughter thought that presenting a headstone that bore Mary's name and birth date with only an empty space for the inevitable date of her death was a good idea, no one knew or ever learned. Nevertheless, Mother's Day came and Mary was taken to the cemetery under the guise of placing flowers on her mother's and grandmother's graves and visiting the grave of her husband. Upon seeing the double headstone and her own name inscribed, she became hysterical, weeping and screaming. With the help of her daughter, her daughter's husband and children, she was taken back to the car and when inside, she demanded to be taken to her eldest daughter's house. Once there, Mary made her eldest daughter promise she would not let Mary be buried under the stone or in the grave she had been shown and, despite the bad blood it would create in the family, she promised Mary she would never allow such a thing to happen. Years passed and, eventually, so did Mary and despite her sister's insistent badgering, Mary's eldest kept her promise and saw to it that her mother wasn't buried under the double headstone but in a grave a considerable distance away and with a simple, tiny improvised marker, creating a rift in the family that has lasted to this day. 

This story could end at this point and just be regretful and a little sad but alas, there is more. 

Years went on and Mary's children died and her grandchildren moved away and had great-grandchildren that all lived in faraway places, some never even knowing Mary's name. This eventuality led to the maintenance of the cemetery being delegated to a family neighbor who then delegated it to an in-law and I'm betting that you can guess what happened. 

The in-law was not as diligent a groundskeeper as the neighbor and his neglect led to the cemetery becoming so overgrown one spring that the only way to clear it efficiently and in the time allotted, was to remove the small markers and mow with a tractor. What the in-law didn't do was keep record of where they all belonged and when it came time to replace them, the markers that he couldn't remember the location of he put into the bed of his truck, drove to where he lived and threw them away. And as you have probably already surmised, poor Mary's marker was amongst those discarded. 

You may be wondering how I came to know this story ... remember when I mentioned that Mary's family wasn't conventionally powerful? No? Well, rewind and listen, I'll wait. It’s at the  5:38 mark.

Ok, caught up? Good. Now, it just so happens that in my travels I became acquainted with a certain woman. She sought my services to see if there was anything that could be done to help her great grandmother who was deceased but very upset and far from being at peace. She then told me that she had recently traveled on Memorial Day weekend to visit the family cemetery. It had been on her mind because she hadn't been able to visit the previous couple years and she was grateful her schedule had at last let her be able to make the trip. But as she got closer, she became more and more uneasy and then felt an anxious and annoyed presence with her. She had a lifetime of similar experiences due to her inherited family gifts but this energy was so frenetic she couldn't get clear communication. After checking to make sure her loved ones were alright before she lost signal, she did her best to maintain composure until she arrived at the cemetery. There she found it not only in a disorganized state of chaos but also, alarmingly, devoid of her great grandmother's grave! 

As she was standing in the cemetery, trying to figure what had happened, the presence provided bits and pieces enough that when she drove to the nearest town with cellphone signal and activated the family phone tree, they were able to find who the guilty party was and what had happened but to no avail and could I be of help in any way? 

I could see Mary, uncharacteristically quiet but listening in earnest as her distraught great granddaughter explained her plight. Mary had been gifted as well but being raised xtian, she had been told her gifts were not from a loving benefactor but a demon, determined to condemn her to eternal damnation. Mary's efforts to deny her gifts to gain the favor of a puritanical idol had been lifelong and cost her dearly, eventually leading to the splitting of her family. Now, here was one great grandchild, equally cursed but possibly her only chance at having her desecrated remains retrieved and properly marked. The situation was delicate.

I won't go into the details of my suggestions, only to say that I do not have the legal power nor the finances to intercede and do what must be done to help these two women and the remaining family. I have made myself available to Mary's great granddaughter, to help her manage her gifts and facilitate communication between her and Mary. I also have my own line of communication with Mary herself and try to help ease her anxiety and the regret of not agreeing to accept her daughters' gift all those years ago for you see, if she had, her remains would have been safe from the laziness and ineptitude of the callous and cowardly in-law but her fear and denial now keep a part of her at that old cemetery, guarding and lamenting her now invisible grave.

Well, the night has grown older and, in a few hours,, it will bring the morning of a new day with work to do so it is time for us to say good night. 

You need not tell anyone you visited here but, if you should know of a friend or acquaintance that you think may appreciate or benefit from my services, take my info with you. Click into the show notes... you will find my patreon, email, website, phone. Ladies such as myself have always known how to make themselves available wherever and whenever they are desired.

Farewell for now. We will meet again soon in... The Alibi Tent