Who was this Mark guy?

And why is he still scaring everybody?

By THAYER TYMON

JHop Times Literary Critic

                                         St. Marks Eve

'Tis now, replied the village belle,
   St. Mark's mysterious eve,
And all that old traditions tell
   I tremblingly believe;
How, when the midnight signal tolls,
   Along the churchyard green,
A mournful train of sentenced souls
   In winding-sheets are seen.
The ghosts of all whom death shall doom
   Within the coming year,
In pale procession walk the gloom,
   Amid the silence drear.'

Afraid of Death? Want to see if you get to live through the next year or possibly die a horrible and tragic death? That’s what St. Marks Eve is for.

St. Marks Eve is known as a paranormal day. It is said that on St. Marks Eve you will see the people who will die that year walking as ghosts in front of their church. This myth - or reality - has been going on for years and years on end.

There are many accounts on this actually happening to people when they might soon be walking dead. They don’t say, “Hi, neighbor! I’m gonna die this year! Hooray!”

Well, maybe they wouldn’t say “Hooray!”, but you get the picture. The dead walk like how they might die. There are accounts recorded that people were walking headless, as a rotting corpse, and even once it was said that coffins were coming at people like they were going to attack them. (Now the coffins are a little over dramatic.)

Some people believe that they have to sit on a church porch all night on St. Marks Eve for three years in a row before they see any walking dead. There are plenty religions, personal beliefs, and old stories based on St. Marks Eve.

St. Marks Eve has been around as far back as the 1500s. No one knows when it started, how it started, or even if someone with a wild imagination made it all up this just to have a good laugh. We don’t know.

There are no pictures, no videos. There have only been personal experiences.

So is St. Marks Eve fact or fiction?

You decide.