Supernatural

Hey! So reading Sam and Dean's comments totally reminded me.

You know how I mentioned that I had to go back through my book a few times? Of course you do.

Look at this.

Cool, right? Found it at Half-Price Books. Only copy there. Told Nick that was my Christmas present.

Now look at this.

Before any of you says anything, I know it's from a TV show and everything in this must be taken with a grain of skepticism.

But a lot of it is based on truth. By 'truth' I mean they did actual research into the myths they put on the show.

This particular episode was really neat. And hilarious. And spawned the running gag of the Ghostfacers.

In fact, I didn't even know it was tulpa related until I read this entry. Let me pull some snippets out...

"They say if enough people believe something, it's true."

"A tulpa is, pure and simple, a being created by the act of someone imagining it."

"In the Tibetan mystical tradition, highly advanced lamas and laymen could give their thoughts and imaginings an actual physical appearance."

This is an interesting tidbit paraphrased from their father's notes: "A tulpa created through intense ritual visualizations are called Dubthab. The ones that are created specifically to harm people are called Dragpoi Dubthab."

And: "A tulpa will inevitably turn on its creator."

As for the actual episode the tulpa appeared in, it starts off with some kids doing what appears to be hazing in what is proclaimed as a "haunted house". One of them ends up dead (surprise, surprise), the rest run off.

Apparently, the house is haunted by the ghost of Mordecai Murdock. Except it really isn't, it's just an urban legend....until Sam and Dean (the actual characters, not the real life siblings :P) encounter two ghost hunters that call themselves the Ghostfacers and learn that the pair has taken the legend and spread it onto their website, greatly increasing the popularity of the story.

Which helps Mordecai become real. You read that right - a fictional killer was brought to life by the internet.

I'll let that sink in.

Okayokayokay. I'll finish the story now.

Mordecai's behavior is never consistent due to there being several versions of the legend. 

(He only targets girls, only targets girls with certain hair, hangs girls, doesn't hang girls...or something like that.

Regardless, people are actually dying. Sam and Dean have to fix that. That's kind of their job.

So there's this thing, a sigil. A Tibetan sigil used to focus thought and belief.

ADDENDUM: Because Dean is a cool person and he caught this...the picture above is not the sigil. That is a symbol from a band called the Blue Oyster Cult. I forgot about that part of the episode. This is both my fault for not double checking and the book's author's fault because HE didn't double check either. The REAL sigil looks like this:

 There we go. You may carry on with the reading now.

Sam and Dean think, "Okay, we'll just go destroy the sigil then."

Except nothing happens when they do that. So they go seek out one of the kids from the beginning and interrogate him. Turns out he and another girl vandalized the place to look demonic and spray painted weird symbols everywhere. Good going, kids.

The Winchesters' last idea? Hunt down the Ghostfacers. And get them to publish a story that Mordecai was...either killed by or accidentally shot himself (can't remember) with a gun. And now Mordecai is terrified of guns. The result they're hoping for being that shooting at the ghost tulpa will get rid of it.

So they do that and it looks like it's going to work but the server crashes and the story ends up NOT working.

And I'm pretty sure they just solved the problem by burning that entire house down.

The details are foggy there.

So let's review:

- Tulpa was an urban legend.

- Tulpa was created through the belief spreading through the internet.

- Tulpa's behavior changes based on how the legend goes.

- Tulpa was almost destroyed by spreading a story that changed its behavior.

I know these things haven't worked for most of us. The stories didn't help Zero (purportedly). Frap says that He says He can't be harmed by changing His story.
No I'm stupid. Frap said that ROBERT said that He/It/Whatever can't be harmed with stories. Frap himself believes in the stories. Thinking back...yeah. I completely mixed that up. Eheh...

But they have to work somewhere.

They have to work for someone.

He doesn't behave the same for everyone. Not everyone has quite the same story. This all has to make sense somehow...

I have to go make cupcakes for Casey's belated birthday present. Toodles.

Edit: Yes, I still have to make cupcakes. I just thought I'd point out that I didn't know the episode was tulpa related because I'm stupid sometimes and despite remembering a ridiculous amount of otherwise useless crap, I did not remember this.
And any curious people can watch the episode here: Season 1, Episode 17 - Hell House