Candles and owls

The mention of ghostly highway robbers [ FT401:35] reminded me obliquely of a curiously morbid tale recounted in The Guernsey Star (19 Jan 1889), which also offered a rather recherché explanation for Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror. According to the paper, four peasants from Kursk in Russia unsuccessfully tried to rob an elderly farmer and priest. After their failures, they murdered a girl to make candles from her corpse. The paper reports that superstitions about the power of candles made from corpse fat were “firmly enshrined” among thieves in continental Europe. German criminal codes from the 17th and 18th century, for example, included penalties for making Diebslichter (thief candle) and Schlafslichter (sleep candle) that supposedly allowed thieves to pass unseen. Apparently, the peasants hoped that the candles would render them invisible during a planned robbery, but the candles didn’t do them much good. The candles made the thieves visible; they were caught, confessed, and received “comparatively short terms of imprisonment”. The paper reported the views of Rabbi Bloch, a man “of great learning” and a member of the Austrian Reichsrat (Parliament), who suggested that “it was quite probable” that Jack the Ripper might have motives similar to those of the Kursk peasants.

• Barry Metcalfe’s comment on mental templates of owls and ghosts [ FT401:67] resonates with my thoughts – especially if there’s even a grain of truth to the story of owl luminosity (FTs passim). Driving around the Fens near where I live, I often catch owls in flight in the headlights. They certainly seem almost luminescent and even ghostly. A softer light could, perhaps, enhance their ghostly ambiance.

Mark Greener

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