Tag: Supernatural

Mazza Oshkosh

femme appearing person with green-grey hair, heterochromic eyes that look faded, one pink, one purple a green coat with fur around the neck wearing normal jeans and sneakers, light brown complexion and two earings in one ear with a stud through the top of their ear. they are smiling and have their hands in the pockets of their coat

Mazza Oshkosh is an inhabitant of the Backrooms and has lived there for a long time, having set up a marketplace for people who appear there. In lieu of money they accept favors in exchange for goods.

Their voice is different from what one would expect them to sound like and they seem to be able to influence people once they make a deal with them, a sort of way to guarantee that the favor is actually done.

They either refuse to leave the Backrooms or can’t, that’s up to interpretation. As is a lot of things but that’s the general idea behind them. They generally use they/them pronouns and are nonbinary.

Mazza Oshkosh first appeared in the Jenny Everywhere Day ’24 story Jenny: Out of the Backrooms by me.

Notes

  • The name comes from Bob Mazza, owner of the HobbyTown USA location where the original Backrooms photo comes from. Said location is located in Oshkosh, Wisconsin which is where their last name comes from.
  • Image was drawn by igioogo for a commission for Sasha Henriksen and as commercial rights was included was released into the public domain.

Casper

A cartoon ghost with a smile on his face walks around with arms outstretched on a starry night background.

Casper is a happy and pleasant ghost that depending on the media can be found in the cemetery or a haunted house. Despite being a ghost he likes to make friends with people.

Originating in the Noveltoon “The Friendly Ghost” he eventually became the subject of comics by Harvey Comics who eventually purchased the character outright.

In 1984 Harvey Comics sued Columbia Pictures for the Ghostbusters logo, feeling like it looked too much like Fatso, a side character of their Casper comics. The judge found that they had failed to renew copyright and therefore Fatso was public domain. Later research found this to be the case for Casper as well.

Notes

Dreamworks owns the trademark for “Casper, the Friendly Ghost” through its Classics Media subsidiary. Therefore any media using Casper can not be advertised under that moniker, but still can be freely used if trademark is respected.

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Hakaba Kitaro

image of a young boy with a disheveled hair, one bulging eye and one eye partially shut. his hands are claw like and he's wearing tattered clothing. he's in a cemetery in front of an officer with a sword. the image is in black and white

Kitaro originates from 1930s kamishibai, which were a kind of paper theaters where traveling storytellers would mix oral storytelling with illustrations.

Kitaro was born in a cemetery after his parents died and is an adaptation of earlier yokai folklore Kosodate Yūrei or “the candy-buying ghost” about a woman who appears for seven days and buys candy, turns out to be dead and when the shopkeeper digs up her grave she has a live baby in her arms.

This folklore is similar and most certainly inspired by the Chinese story of “the woman who buys rice cakes” which first appeared in print in 1198 in Yijian Zhi, a compilation of Chinese stories put together by Hong Mai of the Southern Song dynasty.

These days Kitaro is known primarily because of the manga and anime GeGeGe no Kitarō and also its crossover with Yokai Watch where he appears as a character in some games and other media.

Notes

Kamishibai stories were not registered for copyright at the time due to that just not being really a priority or due to the medium. Therefore they fall outside the parameter of the Uruguay Round Agreement Act of 1996 and are therefore public domain in the United States and everywhere else.

Any appearance outside of the initial Kamishibai appearance are still under copyright, such as the manga and anime.

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