global-musings:

Anna Bondaruk a Szeptunka from the village of Rutka prays at her home. Bondaruk claims to have a personal connection with Mary and sees villagers throughout the day for healing.

Location: Podlasie Province, Poland

Photographer: Diana Markosian

In remote northeastern Poland there lives a group of elderly Orthodox devotees who are said to possess special powers. They can heal the sick, cast out demons — even still a foe’s heart. Living at a mystical crossroad of Christian faith and folkloric superstition, they consider themselves members of the church, though the church does not. They are called “Whisperers or Szeptun in Polish.

It was the medium of the camera itself that informed contemporary representations of ghosts and spirits. Before photography, pictorial representations of ghosts came from artistic illustrations, usually drawings and woodcuts that could only portray ghosts’ appearances as solid. Interestingly, during this time, legends and personal experience narratives of hauntings mostly featured solid or embodied spirits. Only after the advent of the daguerreotype and other photographic processes could a disembodied, ethereal form be depicted.

Michael Kinsella in “Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong’s Hat”
(via obscuritiesoffbeat)