Random Origins Of 'Thirteen Ghosts': The Spirits Of The Black Zodiac (12 items)

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  (#1) The Firstborn Son

  In The Arcanum, the Firstborn Son (rendered in Latin as Primus Filius) is depicted as a young boy with a split in his head. In a featurette describing the origins of the 13 ghosts that accompanies the DVD, the voice of F. Murray Abraham as Cyrus Kriticos describes Billy Michaels, the boy who became the Firstborn Son ghost, as "simply a stubborn brat" whose "obsession with the world of cowboys and Indians took precedent over all else."

  According to the featurette, Billy was done in when he was playing "cowboys and Indians" with a neighbor boy who found a real bow and arrow. The featurette claims that Billy perished while dressed as a cowboy, though in the film he is also wearing a Native American headband, with an arrow sticking out of his forehead.

  "His rebellious attitude and refusal to accept defeat was a perfect fit for my... circle of angry spirits," Kriticos concludes.
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  (#2) The Torso

  The Arcanum depicts the Torso (Truncus, or simply "trunk") as a long-haired human figure with no lower body, walking around on its hands. In the film, the Torso's head is also separated from its body, and both the torso and the head are wrapped in plastic.

  According to Kriticos in the featurette that accompanies the DVD, the Torso was once Jimmy "The Gambler" Gambino. Jimmy made a bet with Larry "The Finger" Vatelo and lost, so Vatelo made "several small examples" of Jimmy when he couldn't pay his debt, then wrapped the pieces in cellophane and dumped them into the ocean.
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  (#3) The Bound Woman

  The third ghost referred to in the Black Zodiac is the Bound Woman, and the illustration in The Arcanum shows a dour-looking woman in an Elizabethan ruff. Kriticos chooses Susan LeGrow to fill this role, a woman he describes as "born with a silver spoon in her mouth." In the featurette describing the ghosts, Kriticos adds, "Her parents were the wealthiest people in town, which made Susan the most popular girl in school."

  However, Susan flirted, toyed with, and rejected men at her whim, leaving "a long trail of broken hearts" until star quarterback Chet Walters found her with another man on the night of the senior prom. Chet clubbed her lover, and Susan disappeared. Two weeks later, she was found "beneath the football field's 50-yard line."

  While Kriticos acknowledges that the "jealous monster" Chet would have made a "nice complement" to his cabal of sinister ghosts, the Bound Woman was what Basileus's Machine required, and Susan's ghost fit the bill. In the film, her ghost appears dangling from a rope, although the illustration in The Arcanum depicts that fate for another ghost, the Angry Princess.
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  (#4) The Withered Lover

  To fulfill the role of the Withered Lover, Kriticos selected his own niece by marriage, Jean Kriticos. Jean perished in a fire, which separated her from her husband - Kriticos's nephew, Arthur - and their two children. The fire also left half of her body badly burned, making her the ideal choice for the Withered Lover.

  In the featurette where he explains the origins of each ghost, Kriticos says that Jean had "just the magnitude of suffering I required." The featurette describes a fire on Christmas night, in which Arthur, in his haste to save his children, inadvertently left his wife to perish in the blaze. However, the film, which shows Jean in a hospital gown with a rolling IV stand, makes it clear she met her end not in the house itself, but later, in St. Luke's Hospital.

  In The Arcanum, the Withered Lover (Amator Marcidus) is one of the only ghosts to be depicted beneficently, seemingly floating in a long dress with vines in the background - possible echoes of Jean's hospital gown and IV tubes?
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  (#5) The Torn Prince

  Born in 1940, the boy who would become Kriticos's Torn Prince was named Royce Clayton. Living a "miserable small-town life," Royce's ticket out was his skill as a "slugger" on his high school baseball team - hence the bat, which the ghost carries with him. A "local hero," according to the newspaper that we see in the featurette, Royce perished in a fiery car collision during a drag race, which also explains the upside-down car that's with him inside his cell.

  In The Arcanum, the Torn Prince (in Latin Eques Scissus, which would be more aptly translated as "torn knight"), is depicted as a painter, holding a brush and easel in his left hand while his right arm is missing from the elbow down. All the flesh is also flayed from the right side of his body, just as it is on the ghost of Royce.
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  (#6) The Angry Princess

  The Angry Princess is one of the ghosts featured most prominently in the film. Appearing as a pale, unclothed woman with sopping wet hair whose body is covered in deep cuts, she carries the knife that she used on herself. In life, she was Dana Newman, a "young woman whose beauty became her ruin," as Kriticos tells us in a featurette on the DVD. After a string of foul boyfriends, she sought employment with a plastic surgeon, where her wages were paid in "an endless array of needless procedures."

  After attempting to perform an operation on herself, she finally took her own life in the bathtub - which probably explains why she appears in the bathroom of the house.

  The Latin next to the illustration of the Angry Princess in The Arcanum essentially says that she ended her life, and the illustration depicts a young woman in a cloak and hood, at the end of a noose.
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  (#7) The Pilgrimess

  In The Arcanum , the Pilgrimess is shown only as a dour-looking woman in an old-fashioned hood. Unlike most of the other ghosts, there is no Latin next to her picture, only the symbol that represents her in the Black Zodiac.

  In the film, she is shown only briefly, where she appears as an elderly woman in stocks. The featurette that accompanies the DVD tells us that Miss Isabella Smith was Kriticos's choice for the Pilgrimess ghost. "Her story began in 1675, when the orphaned Isabella journeyed from England in the hope of finding a comfortable home in a quaint New England town." However, the "tight-knit townsfolk didn't trust outsiders," and when their livestock started to waste away, they decided Isabella must be a witch.

  They cornered her in a barn and set it ablaze. When she survived without so much as a scratch, they considered that proof of their suspicions and sentenced her to the stocks. She stayed there for weeks before finally perishing from extreme hunger.
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  (#8) The Great Child And The Dire Mother

  Two ghosts for the price of one, the Great Child and the Dire Mother are depicted in the Black Zodiac as a giant clutching the head of a more diminutive figure - the mother, perhaps, though the figure looks only barely human and is possibly male. The Latin word next to the illustration doesn't help much, as it simply says Mures, which translates as "mice." Given that Harold Shelburne, the ghost who represents the Great Child, had the mental development of an infant in life, this may be a reference to the novel Of Mice and Men, which features a large and very strong but developmentally disabled protagonist.

  The featurette accompanying the DVD tells us that Margaret Shelburne, his mother, was only three feet tall. Taken without consent by the Tall Man, a member of the traveling "freak show" where she worked, Margaret later gave birth to Harold, who also went to work in the show. She was very protective of her son and babied him well into adulthood, to the degree that he was unable to feed himself and still wore diapers. This led to the two of them being outcasts even among the "freaks," who one day snatched Margaret as a joke on Harold.

  Unfortunately, the cruel joke went wrong when Margaret suffocated in the bag they placed her in. When Harold found out, he took an axe and "had his revenge" on most of the carnival, "displaying what was left of them for every paying customer to see." When the owner found out what had happened, he had Harold done away with in gruesome fashion.

  In addition to be being the only paired ghosts, the Great Child and the Dire Mother are also unique in that they have alternative histories. According to the commentary track that accompanies the film, Harold's original fate was that he choked on his own vomit and then landed on his diminutive mother when he fell over. The filmmakers felt this backstory wasn't shocking enough compared to the others, and so they concocted a more elaborate tale for Harold and Margaret. This may also explain why they are the only ones who largely appear as they were in life, rather than showing what caused their separate fates.
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  (#9) The Hammer

  In the early 1890s, George Markley was working as a blacksmith when he was wrongfully accused of theft. After the townspeople took out their anger on Markley's wife and two children, he retaliated against those responsible with his hammer. Other townsfolk captured Markley and dragged him back to his shop, where he received "a brutal form of frontier justice." He was tied to a tree and nails were driven through his body.

  In the film, Markley's ghost is full of railroad spikes, and his hand replaced with the head of his prized hammer. In the Black Zodiac, the Hammer is shown as a muscular, bearded man in a blacksmith's apron and tongs, holding a massive hammer. The Latin inscription reads Malleus Ignis, or "fire hammer."
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  (#10) The Jackal

  One of the film's "star" ghosts, the Jackal is prominently featured and wears what looks like a ragged straitjacket with a metal cage over his head. One of the characters describes him as "the Charlie Manson of ghosts."

  According to the featurette that accompanies the DVD, the ghost who became the Jackal was once Ryan Kuhn, born in 1887. In life, he went after "stray women with the cunning of a wild animal." He committed himself to an asylum "as a means to cure his insatiable appetite," but, after years of incarceration, he went completely around the bend and began scratching at the walls. Later, he voluntarily perished when the asylum caught fire.

  The Jackal is one of the film's more memorable ghosts, getting several opportunities to maim the inhabitants of the house. He is also the only one whose position in the Black Zodiac is explained at all in the film, when one of the characters says that his is "the sign of Hell's Winter."

  In The Arcanum, only the Jackal's head is depicted, which is shown inside a cage. The Latin inscription below his sign is Canis Aureus, which translates to "golden dog."
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  (#11) The Juggernaut

  Horace Mahoney, the ghost who becomes the Juggernaut, is the only ghost we actually see Kriticos and his crew capture in the beginning of the film. Nicknamed the "Breaker" because he liked to break his targets "into as many pieces as possible," Mahoney became a serial slayer. He slew nine people while he was alive, and more than 30 after he became a ghost.

  "Oversized and horribly disfigured," Mahoney was abandoned by his mother at an early age, according to the featurette on the DVD, and spent his young life in his father's junkyard, breaking and cutting up old cars. When his father passed, Mahoney turned to more unnatural hobbies. He would break people apart and feed them to his dogs. The police eventually caught up to him and "pumped more than 50 rounds" into his giant form, which is why his ghost appears riddled with holes.

  In the Black Zodiac, only the Juggernaut's angry face and shoulders are depicted. The Latin inscription next to his zodiac sign simply reads Titan, which requires no translation into English.
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  (#12) The Broken Heart

  The 13th ghost in the Black Zodiac, the Broken Heart is "a sacrifice of life... The only ghost to be created out of an act of pure love."

  One of the characters describes the 13th ghost as a "failsafe" that is needed in order to stop the process. "A willing human sacrifice" that "stands before the Eye at the final configuration; as the Eye opens, the spirit uses the power of life to essentially short-circuit the system." As we know by the end of the film, however, this isn't true. Instead, the Broken Heart is the final spirit that Kriticos needs to power up Basileus's Machine, and he chooses his nephew Arthur as the sacrifice. This is because he knows Arthur will willingly give his own life to protect his children.

  In the Black Zodiac, the Broken Heart is depicted as a knight who appears to be piercing his chest with his own sword. The Latin inscription next to his symbol reads Corda Tacita, which translates to "silent heart." The sign of the Broken Heart is also shown on the key that Arthur uses to unlock the house at the beginning of the movie.

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