Long ago, in ancient China, there were four magnificent Dragons: the Long Dragon, the Black Dragon, the Pearl Dragon, and the Yellow Dragon.  They lived in palaces under the only sea in China.

One day, they emerged from the Sea to fly high above the clouds to see the beautiful world from above.  The Pearl Dragon heard the voices of the people and called upon his brothers to hear them. He heard them crying and praying desperately for help.

An old woman held a young child close and cried, “Please bring us rain, so that our crops won’t die! We are starving, and if we don’t eat soon, we’ll also die!”

The dragons felt sympathy for the people and decided to ask the Jade Emperor, the supreme ruler of Heaven and Earth, to send rain to them, but when they went to ask the great Emperor, he became angry that the dragons disturbed his fun.  He had been enjoying a performance and was enthralled at the beauty of a fairy dance that he was watching.

The dragons respectfully asked for the rain to be sent for the people, to which the king replied, “Go back to your palace, and I will send them rain tomorrow.”  The dragons were happy, so they complied. The Emperor, however, forgot about their request as soon as they left, as he got lost in watching the beautiful performance.

After 10 days had passed, the dragons ventured out again, only to find that the people were even more desperate than before.  They were so hungry that they had to resort to eating bark from the trees, roots, and clay.

The dragons despaired for the people and felt anguish for having an Emperor that cared more about his selfish pleasure than about the people he ruled.

That’s when the Black Dragon remarked, “I wish there was a way that we can help them.”

The Long Dragon had an idea.  He said let’s scoop up water from the sea and spray it into the clouds.  Surely, it will fall back to the Earth as rain and save the people?”

His brothers agreed, but the Long Dragon warned that the Emperor may be angry with them for overstepping their bounds.  The other dragons were not deterred and agreed that they’d do anything for the people.

The Black Dragon said, “Let’s begin brothers”, and they took large mouthfuls of the sea water and sprayed it into the clouds, and the rain fell on the land.  The people rejoiced as the grass grew green again and the crops became fertile and thrived.  The dragons were overjoyed.

Their joy was not to last long, however, as the Sea God became angry that they had stolen a large amount of his water, so he went to complain to the Jade Emperor.

The Jade Emperor was livid and stormed, “How could they bring rain without my permission!?!?”

He used powerful magic and ordered his Generals to capture the dragons.  They managed to outnumber and overwhelm them, and the dragons were helpless to escape.

The Sea God was commanded to bring four mountains to place on top of them so that they’d never be able to escape again.

The Dragons never forgot their love for the people though and decided to turn themselves into rivers that would never let the people thirst again, and these rivers run through the valleys and fields and run into the Sea, thus becoming the four rivers of China.  The Heilongjiang, or Black Dragon, flows through the North. The Huanghe, or Yellow River, flows through Central China. The Changjiang, or Long River, flows through Southern China. And finally, the Zhujiang or Pearl River flows through the Lower South.  

Ghouls are not Ghosts and Ghosts are not Ghouls.  Many people combine these two types of Paranormal entities into a single description

...which is not correct.

You may ask...

What are the differences then?  

In terms of Folklore, Ghosts are the spirits of the dead.  We will delve deeper into exactly what this means in a future episode but for all intents and purposes, they are apparitions that may or may not be able to interact or communicate with the living.  They have no form, no mass, and are ethereal.

Ghouls, however, are usually associated with the undead (Zombies, Vampires and the likes).  It should be known that they are not technically undead creatures and should be more associated with demons or demonic creatures and in some cases, Jinn.  

In modern fiction, the ghoul is treated as an undead creature that consumes the dead (usually humans) and is often seen hanging around graveyards or places where it can feast on corpses.

Traditionally, the Ghoul comes from middle eastern, pre-Islamic folklore.  The first accounts of Ghouls are recorded from Ancient Egypt but there are additional accounts that go back to ancient Mesopotamia.

Every person, at some time, has entertained the thoughts of having superpower or mutant abilities - like their favorite comic book characters.  The supernatural world is full of beings able to walk through wall, teleport or shift into various creatures.  The shapeshifters are a very popular sort of supernatural creature.

Well, there’s one kind of shapeshifter that may not be so popular. In Native American tradition, it actually considered taboo.

Navajo legend tells of a creature, one that can appear as a Wolf, a Coyote, an Owl, a Fox or a Crow.  Some say that this creature can, in fact, be any animal form that they wish. The Skinwalker, or (Yeenal gloo-shi) Yenaldlooshi, as it’s been called, has been around a long time, and there have been many sightings and encounters of this beast, but only by studying native culture and tradition can we know the story behind its existence.

(Yeenal gloo-shi) Yenaldlooshi literally means, in Navajo language, “He who trots along here and there on all fours.”

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Dedra Stevenson's book, The Skinwalker: Resurrection which is mentioned in this episode is available from Blue Jinni Media at the following link.

Jinn

For thousands of years, they’ve been around…

By some accounts, they were around 2000 years before man was created.

Yet when Westerners think of them, they usually imagine a form consisting of a blue mist -- usually coming out of a bottle or an ornate oil lamp -- that forms into a friendly human-like creature that is eager to offers you -- three wishes.

These are the Jinn, unseen beings from another dimension.  

In fact, Jinn in Arabic means, “hidden”, to indicate their usual state of being, hidden from the human world.

The lore surrounding the Jinn is mostly from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.  Although the Middle Easterners and Asians think that what a Westerner refers to as a “ghost” is nothing more than a Jinn.

Ibn Taymiyyah, an Islamic scholar, believed the jinn were generally untrustworthy, and account for a great deal of the so-called "magic" perceived by humans, cooperating with magicians to lift items in the air while remaining invisible, delivering distorted truths to fortune tellers, and imitating the voices of deceased humans during séances.

In fact, Jinn are believed to be the explanation for a great deal of paranormal activity, particularly that of Ghosts, Black Dogs, Orbs, Ectoplasms, and Fairy sightings. The Jinn are skilled shapeshifters and can take on the form of beautiful seductresses, demons, horned creatures, and many types of animals.  Their favorite animal forms are snakes and black dogs.

The Jinn were popularized internationally after the English translations of the One Thousand and One Nights began to be published as early as 1706. This title is more popularly known as The Arabian Nights. This work is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age.  

Jinn are creatures of folktales, with a diverse range from Middle Eastern, Jewish, African, and Egyptian lore.  The jinn are believed to be very real by millions of believing Muslims across the world, but unlike humans, who are made of Earth, the Jinn are made from smokeless fire and have supernatural abilities.

Find out more about Dedra Stevenson's book series The Hakima's Tale and read the first book of the Trilogy - The Revenge of the Blue Jinni

The legends that surround curses, especially those types of curses that cause a human being to be transformed into another creature -- is part of a narrative that spans history through oral traditions around the world.  The folklore surrounding these types of legends is varied and is usually deep seeded in the cultural traditions where these stories are told.

In the southern United States, in the state of Louisiana, the Cajun people have tales and lore about such a curse.

A man or a woman is said to start appearing sickly and weak to their friends and family.  They start to isolate themselves from friends and family and start to wander or just disappear at night.

After a while, the stories of a wild man-like creature stalking the roads and bayous at night would begin to increase in frequency. Reports of attacks on people, walking home at night, working or hunting would become a familiar tale that you hear around the breakfast table or at the local diner.   Missing people, missing pets, and vandalism of various types would start to become a common problem in the community.  Children would be warned, the elderly will already know better, and everyone in the community will be on the watch for a particular type of cursed creature -- The Rougarou.

Lore Hunters will be produced monthly by Rodney W. Harper and Dedra L. Stevenson.