pushingbandcandy:

glumshoe:

One of my favorite past times with R is browsing the ‘paranormal’ category on eBay. There are mind-numbing amounts of ‘haunted dolls’ for sale, dybbuk boxes, cursed items, and possessed jewelry. Almost every single one is an embarrassingly transparent attempt to sell worthless antiques, tourist trinkets, and other literal junk to gullible people with pocket change. It’s a little offensive and a little funny - I kind of love it. On any given day, the number of items being offered by sellers who genuinely believe that they have a paranormal object can be counted on one hand, and I can usually discern who’s being honest and who’s making shit up. 

I have a whole folder of screencaps of some of the most bizarre or ludicrous offers. It’s a fascinating informal study on charlatans, hoaxes, and desperate attempts to make money by exploiting people: 

These are hilarious. But there’s a whole genre of ‘demons for sale’ that I wrote about in a term paper for my class on magic. There are people have whole businesses built on selling cheap, tacky (usually sterling) pendants to which demons, djinn, faeries, leprechauns, and other spirits have been “bound”. They’re usually upwards of $50 USD, with item descriptions that namedrop a bunch of covens (main offender is ‘Coven of Selini’), rituals, made-up demons, fake ancient civilizations, and wildly inaccurate folklore that looks like it was drawn from someone’s middle school fantasy novel rather than actual magical tradition. It’s a trip. 

Some are relatively harmless - though your mileage may vary, considering ‘demon-summoning’ is not something most people would call ‘harmless’:

Others are really, really creepy. There’s a whole market for ‘demon sex slaves’: 

“With a custom Full Affinity Demon Imperatrix you are likely to encounter and experience a truly life-altering relationship. This is what makes a Full Affinity spirit so powerful, so personal, so uniquely attuned to you alone! When you’re ready to go beyond the ordinary, seek the extraordinary…select a Full Affinity one who’s waiting just for you!”

It’s a strange world.

One of those it’s literal the Millennium Puzzle.