Magic and Evolution

When I was a kid the whole world was magical. I remember sneaking into the kitchen trying to steal a cookie from the cookie jar, but my mom always caught me. I could have sworn my mother had magical powers, or at the very least, eyes in the back of her head. I just couldn’t figure how she knew what I was doing.

As time passed I had my own kids and my hearing sharpened to inhuman capabilities. The hushed whispers of plotting children and that distinct rattle of the cookie jar lid could be heard whether I was in the room or in the basement pantry. I became just as ‘magical’ as my own mother.

I miss that magic. It was a time in my life when anything and everything seemed possible. Back then, idea of finding a leprechaun at the end of the rainbow was a secret ambition of mine and the thought of becoming a butterfly when I grew up sounded fantastic. Then again, I was a strange child.

But what if there was magic out there? Real honest to goodness magic.

When you’re thinking really hard about someone and wondering how they are, is it coincidence when the phone rings and it’s the person you were thinking about? What about those CIA astral projectors that were paid to find enemy bases through out-of-body experiences and mental pictures? Is that what magic is? Is it even real, or just a hoax on the tax payers and government?

I like to think some things are real. That the mind is capable of things we all just don’t have access to yet, that maybe we just haven’t finished evolving into our true potential.

Maybe we’ll all have the ability to bend spoons, send empathic or telepathic messages, and project ourselves into other place while our bodies are safely tucked into bed. What magical powers would you like to evolve to have?

The Djinn in the Tree

Djinn or Genie, are supernatural beings that are neither angles nor the traditional ‘fallen angel’ demon. There are good and bad djinn, male and female, and some are said to grant wishes or make deals with us mere mortals but woe betide the man (or woman) who breaks a deal with them.

The mythology has Islamic root and some believe that they were created by Allah while others believe they came before humans. Of course, if you’ve read 1001 Arabian Nights, many of the stories in there features Djinni, the most familiar story being, Aladdin’s Magical Lamp.

My story is not nearly as fantastic, but interesting nonetheless.

I was 13 years old and we had move into a rundown duplex that we rented for cheap if my dad would do repairs on the place. Whoever had lived in the place before us had done a serious number on the place. There were holes in the walls, cabinets had been torn down and the yard was nothing but bare dirt and a gnarled old tree in the front yard.

The tree was twisted and old, and being a mesquite tree, didn’t really provide much shade and gave more of a creepy feeling to the front of the house.

Over the next few weeks, odd things began to happen in the house. Things would come up missing, there were strange noises and my dad began to have serious headaches. Fights became common place in the house and some of the objects reappeared near the tree outside. My sister was convinced something strange was happening. She called it a ghost, but she’s always been easy to scare and I ‘might’ have added to her fears, because, well, it was fun to mess with her. (Yes, it might have been mean, but hey, I was 13.)

My dad however, took it seriously, and began to study the tree. After some time, announced that there was a djinn in our tree.

I have to say, I didn’t really believe all that nonsense. I made a point in saying as much. Anyone of my younger siblings could have put the things under the tree, or dropped stuff outside. The house had sat for a while; the sounds could have been mice. But my dad insisted it was a djinn and went about the task of ridding the tree of the spirit.

A few days later, I was on my way home, my sister met me at the bus stop when I got off school. She was very excited and was babbling about the djinn-tree and that our dad had made the djinn leave.

I was skeptical, but as I rounded the corner to our house, there in the front yard the tree was dead. A main branch was broken and lying on the ground and it looked as if it had been dead awhile and the sparse leaves were gone.

Whether there was really a djinn in the tree, I will never know, but there are a lot of things in this world that make you wonder. It’s quite possible my dad killed the tree to put my sister’s mind at ease and get rid of the eyesore. Or maybe it really was a djinn. Either way it made me think, left me curious, and drove me to look into the supernatural and paranormal and for that, I’m glad there was a djinn in my tree.

Death and Storytellers

The Grim Reaper has this dark stigma surrounding him. He’s this guy who sneaks around just to steal away your soul away whether you like it or not. The whole reaping of souls thing is bound to hit the creep factor. Charon the ferryman, the Angel of Death, the Plague Hag, Yama and many more are all depicted as dark and grim creatures that are waiting to take ones soul to some unknown place.


Humans are great storytellers, which is why we get all these interesting forms of Death in mythology. It has to be one of our most interesting abilities. Our ability to take the unknown and give it a face or attempt to explain the dark and frightening has got to be in our genes somewhere. The ability to explain seems to make things less scary, not just when it comes to death, but with everything. Lightening, for example, is like billions of volts of electricity buzzing through the sky, but hey we know what it is, so it’s not as scary.

When it comes to death the Plague Hag, Pesta carried a rake and a broom, one meant you’d survived the black plague and the other meant you were toast. Charon, the ferryman, expected payment for the task of delivering your soul to the underworld, or you’d be trapped by the river for 100 years. But hey, we know what they are and that they’re just doing their jobs, so it’s not as scary.



I have a huge affection for the unknown. My curiosity is almost as big as my imagination, which is probably true of most writers. I’m not above taking the unknown and twisting it to my advantage. Taking myths like those surrounding death and asking questions is what I do best. What if there really was a Grim Reaper? What if he didn’t like his job? What if he had been reaping soul for so long, he’d become lost and lonely? Hell, the questions could go on and on, and they often do.

This is how I end up with a story. This is how humans have always made up stories, by asking questions. Whether it’s Death, or other fantastic question that created a myth, we writers use the foundation of those wonderfully dark stories and make them our own. And who can resist, really? With all those spooky myths and interesting creatures to choose from, there might just be a grain of truth in those tales. And maybe, just maybe, one of us got it right.