Inter-college Occult Quiz in honour of Halloween

1. Occult quiz
By Akshara Maurya
Nanditha Menon

2. Rules
1. 24 questions
2. +10 on bounce, +10/-5 on pounce
3. Please refrain from Googling. Google is the devil. Have a
moral conscience.
4. Say “hail Satan” to begin

3. A huge thank you to Ria Chopra for being the
Devil’s Advocate :)

5. 1.
Singer-songwriter X’s recent album Y has sparked interest in her fans as she
seems to be adopting the witch motif associated with her in her work and self-
image as she tweeted:
In one of the songs in Y, X explicitly refers to herself as a witch: “Now I breathe
flames each time we talk,/my canons all firing at your yacht,/ and women like hunting
witches too,/doing your dirtiest work for you”. This is not a first either; In one of her
songs from the album before, she sang: “They're burning all the witches even if you
aren't one”. Her body of work seems to be moving away from victimhood and
towards sisterhood.
ID X and Y.

6. TAYLOR SWIFT, FOLKLORE

7. 2.
According to traditional belief, this saint and martyr was
killed during the Roman emperor Diocletian's persecution
of Christians. He was initially tied to a post or tree and shot
with arrows, though this did not kill him. Due to this, he
was regarded as a protector from X in the medieval times.
The arrow wounds are said to resemble the _______, which
was closely related to X.
(Image in the next slide)
FITB.

9. Plague, the arrow wounds resembled “buboes”

10. 3.
The _____ _____ tarot deck was inspired by a particularly
controversial 1960 movement. The people featured on the
card include: Billie Holiday as the Moon, gospel singer and
activist Sister Rosetta Tharpe in the World card,
Temperance card features Curtis Mayfield, famous for his
falsetto voice, and Tina Turner as Strength.
What inspired this tarot deck?

11. Black Power

12. 4.
Aleister _______ was an English occultist, ceremonial
magician, poet, painter and mountaineer. He was branded
“The most evil man alive” by newspaper publisher Lord
Beaverbrook. He conducted rituals to produce to try to
produce the Antichrist who he named Moonchild. He was
taken up by the counter culture of the 1960s and can be
seen on the cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts
Club Band album.
FITB, or give me how he has become popular.

13. Crowley, Inspiration for David Tennant’s character
Anthony Crowley in Good Omens

14. 5.
A _____ ____ starts when the mycelium of X falls in a
favourable spot and sends out a subterranean network of
fine, tubular threads called hyphae. They then spread out
evenly in all directions. The mycelium network feeds upon
organic matter and decomposes it as travels. Eventually it
forms a large area of withered land. There are many myths
associated with _____ _____, one of which is that anyone
who encounters it will die at a young age. Dutch
superstition claimed this to show where the Devil set his
milk churn.
FITB

15. Fairy rings; X - mushrooms

16. 6.
NASA scientists are now giving unofficial names to some of
the things they’ve spotted on Pluto, names they can submit
to the International Astronomical Union for approval. They
have tentatively named a previously observed elongated,
dark, whale-shaped splotch after _______, a dark deity,
going with the trend of underworld creatures and gods,
Pluto being the Roman god of the underworld.
FITB

17. Cthulhu

18. 7.
Filmmaker Utpal Borjapuri’s Assamese feature film ‘Ishu’,
based on the Assamese writer Monikuntala Bhattacharaya’s
novel with the same name, won the National Film Award for
Best Feature Film in Assamese. Borjapuri spoke of the film,
"My film like a literary work sees the happenings from the
child's point of view. And if you see from a child's point of
view, you can get an unbiased view and a new perspective".
What outlawed practice does it depict from a child’s point
of view?

19. Present-day Witch-hunts
More specifically in the north-east

20. 8.
___ _______ ____ is a Pre-Raphaelite painting by John
WIlliam Waterhouse. The painting is a depiction of an
occult technique , which saw a resurgence in popularity in
the latter half of the 19th century. There have been other
methods too, such as smoke and fire, but this has been the
most popular one. This method is widely depicted in media,
finding mention in books like Harry Potter and The Wizard
of Oz.
FITB (the name of the painting will give you the occult
technique)

21. The Crystal Ball

22. 9.
The first instance of this event in the TV show Community
is in the episode “Introduction to Statistics”, a horror
themed episode in the first season. It again occurs in the
season two episode, “Epidemiology”. There is a final
occurrence in the season three episode, “Horror Fiction in
Seven Spooky Steps”. The third time (inadvertently) signals
a particular event.
What is this event?

23. The character “Beetlejuice” appearing after the
characters say its name thrice

24. 10.
In the 1600s, witches were burned at the stake and
beheaded for their perceived sorcery. In 2020, witches go
viral for “hexing the moon” on a platform the US president
wants to ban, facing mockery and criticism. This eccentric
community spends hours exchanging tips, tricks and ideas
with like-minded witches in virtual family-like groups
known as covens.
Answer with an uninspired portmanteau for this recent
trend/community from the information given above.

25. Witchtok

26. 11.
Between 1972 and 1974, the press ran headlines on black
masses, animal sacrifices and child abductions alongside the
usual articles in Northern Ireland, while the country was on
the brink of civil war. Ireland’s strong religious culture and
supernatural folklore reinforced these ideas of black magic
that discouraged people - especially children and teenagers
to stay home at night.
What led to this phenomenon?

27. The British Army running a smear campaign against
paramilitary operations and scare kids into staying
indoors

28. 12.
The Secret History (1992) by Donna Tartt is a bestselling
novel that has gained a characteristically cult-like
following among self-proclaimed dark academics™ on
Tumblr. The novel tells the story of a closely knit group of
six classsics students at a small, elite, Liberal Arts college. It
is an inverted detective story about a manslaughter
resulting because of an earlier murder during a night of
passion that hoped to bring them closer to their studies.
What were the students attempting and achieved on the
night of the murder?

29. Bacchanalia

30. 13.
King _____ (blank(s) not indicative) was the ruler of the
Neighborhood of Make-Believe, a fictional, puppet-
populated realm to which Mr. Rogers travelled in most
episodes of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Fred Rogers
explained the reasoning behind his name was to remove the
superstitions around it, especially amongst children so as to
make them feel better at a particular time.
What was the King’s name? Explain why Mr. Rogers named
him thus.

31. King Friday the XIII
The King’s birthday fell on
Friday the 13th. So, if there was
any child watching whose
birthday incidentally fell on
Friday the 13th, they would
open the television and see Mr.
Rogers celebrating it as a
happy day, or simply a fun day
for other children.

32. 14.
Claviceps pupura (ergot) is a fungus that grows on rye. It
contains a large number of potent pharmacologic agents,
the ergot alkaloids. Ergotism is a condition resulting from
eating contaminated rye bread. There are two types of
ergotism - gangrenous and convulsive. The former implies
dry gangrene on limbs, and the symptoms of the latter
include tingling in the skin, vertigo, hallucinations and
tinnitus.
This is from a paper published in the 1970s about the effect
of ergot in the 17th century in a particular location, where
this fungus grew rapidly due to the weather. What is this
paper about?

33. Ergotism in Salem, one of the theories for what led
to the Salem Witch Trials

34. 15.
It is widely recognised that the fear of Xs existed before Tim
Curry’s portrayal of Y in 1993 gave children nightmares yet
the World X Association blames him for costing their
industry.
The 2016 worldwide X sightings led to mass hysteria which
was incorrectly seen as a promotional stunt for a 2017 film.
In fact, the World X Association even had to create a press
kit with advice on how to handle the release of this film and
went so far as to put out a statement disavowing Y as “not a
X”.
ID X and Y

35. X = Clowns
Y = Pennywise

36. 16.
______ ____ : The Dark Romantic is a book on the artworks
of (blank). The most striking aspect of the artworks is that
they are a contrast from his main body of work that he is
famous for. The main characteristic of the art is their
supernatural unreality, compared to the illusion of the
miserable reality in the main body of work. The artwork
featured cathedrals and bent and grotesque humans,
something derived from his own experiences from
spiritualist séances in the 1850s.
(Image follows)
FITB.

37. “The Gnome of the Night”

38. Victor Hugo

39. 17.
“A priest (Channing Tatum) and a demon (Jillian Bell)
absolutely despise each other—until their friends trick them
into believing that the other is in love with them.”
This is from a New Yorker article titled, “Classic Horror
Films Remade as Rom-Coms”. Channing Tatum and Jillian
Bell are a product of the journalist’s imagination, that is to
say, they were not in the original work. Which movie does
this refer to?

40. The Exorcist

41. 18.
In the 2020 film, The Witches, based on the Roald Dahl
book of the same name, the Grand High Witch's potion
"Formula 86" is shown being kept on ice when Bruno tries
to steal a vial from room 666. This is humorous because
when the potion is first seen the Grand High Witch pulls it
from her bra, fitting a popular colloquial expression.
What is the expression?

42. “cold as a witch’s tit” / “colder than a witch’s teat”

43. 19.
The iconic horror film X’s inspiration is an even more frightening
condition than the fiction it inspired. After the Vietnam War, Laotian
refugees who had migrated to the US were experiencing what was later
classified as Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome (SUNDS).
X’s director read articles that ran in the L. A. Times with headlines
such as “Mysterious Fatal Malady Striking Hmong Men” and “Night
Deaths of Asian Men Unexplained” hence feeding his creative
lightbulb. He recounted a story they had read of a child, a Cambodian
refugee, who was terrified to sleep for fear that he would be attacked
in his dreams and never wake up. “When he finally fell asleep, his
parents thought this crisis was over. Then they heard screams in the
middle of the night, by the time they got to him, he was dead.” Many
Hmong men believed they were being punished by the spirits of their
ancestors for leaving their homeland.
ID X

44. A Nightmare on Elm Street

45. 20.
Los Espookys is a Spanish language series which focuses on
a bunch of “horror technicians” who run a business staging
creepy stunts for a host of eccentric clients. The debut
episode features a priest who is losing his congregation to
another new priest in town, and he calls upon Los Espookys’
services to reignite people’s faith in him. What service do
they “perform” for the priest?
The business card of the group says, “We’re not
____________, it’s different”
FITB with another popular group.

46. They perform an “exorcism”, Ghostbusters

47. 21.
A bizarre cyber subculture seems to have popped up on sites like eBay
and Etsy, as discovered by a journalist. He had stumbled across this
online trade on Ebay’s Everything Else section although these are sold
under the prospering witchcraft section in Etsy now. To his surprise,
this £10 - £50 product sold for £1000. Flabbergasted, he dug around and
found that the reasons cited for buying these are as follows:
companionship, to connect to the spirit, fascinated collectors and black
or white magic practitioners requiring help from the spirit to conduct
spells and rituals.
What is being sold?

48. Haunted dolls

49. 22.
This plant has long been associated with witchcraft and
featured in Druidic ceremonies in Britain. Dioscorides
called it a ‘sacred herb’ and in Roman society it was
regarded as a cure-all. Roman soldiers carried it when
travelling in foreign countries to protect them from sorcery.
The bored matrons of Rome served its tea to handsome
young men in the belief that it would act as a love potion. In
classical times it was worn as a garland to ward off the
plague.
Name the plant.
(P.S.: If anyone watches The Vampire Diaries, you already
know the answer.)

50. Vervain
Or Holy Wort

51. 23.
In 1615, 24 witnesses accused Katharina ____ (blank not
indicative) of witchcraft. Just as any good son would do, her
son defended her year-long trial. As befitted his career, he
used logic and reason to combat the rumors and lies spread
about his client.
It is theorized that he felt guilty that he may have
inadvertently caused his mother’s ordeal. One of his books
combined real and imagined elements, including a narrator
whose mother is a witch who consults with a demon to
learn how to travel to the moon. In fact, his most popular
contribution to understanding the universe is based on
Pagan elements like the sun.
Who is her more famous son?

52. Johannes Kepler

53. 24.
The famous singer and *witch* Lana Del Rey sent out a
tweet in 2017: “At the stroke of midnight… Feb 24, March
26, April 24, May 23…Ingredients can be found online.” As
her followers noted, these are all dates of the waning
crescent moon, which believers of the occult deem a time to
rid your life of stress and negative energy.
While the hex might not have worked at the time, it is well
on its way out now. What did LDR hope to achieve along
with her followers?

54. Lana Del Rey promoting witchcraft as a way to remove
Donald Trump from office

55. LAST QUESTION TO KEEP
BRAIN SHARP FOR ZERO
POINTS.
What has been blanked out?

56. Yakult, of course. Take
care of your digestive
systems. Devil be with
you!