Stories – Tricksters Road

They say that every writer (artist, whatever) has one story that they keep returning to over and over again.

I think there’s truth in that. I’m not sure what the foundation story that I keep returning to is, exactly, but I have my suspicions. The face it wears most often is “Auntie Yaga’s Home For Wayward Monsters”. At it’s heart, it’s a story about found family, animal welfare, and caring for those deemed “monstrous” by society. Also soup and fresh bread.

Alright, fine, yes…it also includes gingerbread houses, mortars, pestles, chicken-legged huts, and all that…

There have been several iterations of Auntie Yaga’s Home since the original fibercraft accident that created Fester the Zombie Bunny and his fondness for wasabi peas more than a decade ago, and there will likely be several more before it’s done with me. The most recent shape and stories seem to have run their course, for the time being at least, and now it’s time to move on to the next variation.

A YouTube channel was not where I expected it to go next but, well, here we appear to be.

But, you say, don’t you already have a YouTube channel?

I do, and I have every intention of returning to that one, however it has some critical issues that I’m stuck on that I can’t find the way around just yet. Some of them are as simple as not having suitable winter clothes for being outside in the New England winter for long, while others are a bit more complicated.

One of the issues can be solved by splitting off and starting a secondary channel for Indoor Things like cooking, small craft projects, and whatnot. When it’s too cold to go outside (or smokey in summer, because let’s face it, Smoke Season is now an annual occurrence), I can make videos that include things like making easy soups, breads, and other tasty goodness while mixing in bits of folklore and stories.

So where did this come from? Well, a couple of weeks ago, after 17 years together, Himself and I got married. We just had a very wee ceremony/slash Halloween party at home, nothing fancy. While looking for wedding clothes (surprising no one, I dressed up as a witch, complete with pointy hat), I had to consider what my “witch aesthetic” is, and realized that it can best be described as “Hobbitcore Baba Yaga”. When I mentioned this on social media, the sheer number of people who agreed with this assessment was rather impressive.

It sort of stuck around in my head and eventually it dawned on me that this was the answer to a couple of my YouTube problems. A second channel, built on the niche of that concept. It wasn’t until I was talking to Himself, trying to figure out a name for the channel, that the idea of rebooting “Auntie Yaga’s Home” came up. I wasn’t sold at first, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more the idea makes sense. I’ll probably modify the name to something like “At Home With Auntie Yaga” or whatever, because this is less about the monster adoption and more about the homey things, but yeah.

Anyway, that’s where things are at. I’m really looking forward to getting back to making videos again, and seeing where this new direction takes me. It should be an interesting adventure.

How’s things with you?

Sometimes I write folktales that never were. This is one from the archives.

Rattlesack Road cuts through a marsh in northeastern Massachusetts, not far from the coast. Folks who live near it will tell you to stay out of the marsh and to avoid the road that cuts across it between sunset and sunrise. Most won’t say much more than that it’s a bad road, and leave it at that, but if pressed, there are some who will tell you it’s because of old Rattlesack Jack, who the road is named for.

Some say Jack’s a ghost, the spirit of some farmer who died badly out in the marsh. Some say his is a stolen story, reskinned over an older Indigenous tale, or historical recollection twisted out of recognition (not uncommon in New England, sadly). Others say he’s an urban legend told to scare off tourists, since the road serves as a shortcut to a local beach and year-round residents aren’t keen on having every possible road blocked up with traffic. Others still say that he’s something someone brought with them from the Old Country that made itself at home. Personally, I’m inclined toward the last, myself, given how similar the stories are to old Irish or Scottish tales of boggarts and bogles.

Conflicting origins aside, the tales are always the same, and have been for as long as anyone can remember. Local historians have found references to him in journals that date back as far as the old Colonies. Tales of traveling through the marsh after dark and having a horse throw a shoe, or a car breaking down, and hearing sounds like bones being rattled and laughter, or seeing a short, heavy-built man with long, spindly arms and legs watching them from the trees while they changed a flat tire, grinning and shaking a leather bag whose contents made a disturbing rattling sound at them until they hurried away. Even in the days of cellphones and cell towers everywhere, signal’s notoriously hard to come by in the marsh, making it all but impossible to reliably call for assistance if one finds oneself broken down, despite strong connection at either end of the road.

There are also darker tales and a centuries-long record of abandoned horses, wagons, and cars whose owners are rarely found again that’s higher than it should be for a road as out of the way as Rattlesack Road.

The thing with boggarts is that they aren’t always dangerous, generally speaking. Capricious and something to be careful of, sure, but not that much of a threat. However, giving them names? They don’t like that, and that’s when they turn malicious and become dangerous, and that sounds an awful lot like Rattlesack Jack.

(If you liked what you just read, please toss a few coins at your mostly friendly resident word-witch to help keep her little monsters fed!)

Tag: Stories

The Story I Keep Returning To

Rattlesack Jack