Zalgo
One of the earliest recordings of Zalgo was in 1862, where a one Dr. William C.
Johnson visited East India on a business trip. He noted that he found a religious
cult praying to a god called "Zalgo". In his diary he noted his feelings to what he saw:
While going through the towns of East India I came across a public mass praying
around a fire, talking in a language I believe was a mixture of my own tongue
[Welsh], Latin and another I was unsure about.
The mass consisted of twenty Indian men, all in a circle covered in what I pray
was pigs blood. Our guide advised us to move on and not look at the twenty souls
for fear of our lives.
Later that night I found a book on cults, reading the book I found a passage
about what I believe to represent what I saw in the town. The book told of an
evil god by the name of Zalgo who would kill your crops and livestock for 10
years if one does not perform a public sacrifice to the dark lord.
The book never told what one must sacrifice, I can only hope it was not a man.
Little is known about The Cult of Zalgo, one factor of this is because many
of the people in the cult were illiterate or did not want to record their dark
deeds. Recordings of Zalgo leaving East India are, most of the time, unreliable
at best, there have been recordings of the cult reaching Europ sometime in
1870, however, the mass majority of said reports were believed to be fakes
from the 1890's.
One of the last legitimate recordings of Zalgo was in 1904 where former
soldier Tom McCartney, who served in the Second Boer War found a small
tribe of people, again covered in blood praying around a fire. Much like
most British soldiers at the time, he knew some Indian but could only speak
very basic words.
McCartney noted in a letter he sent to his mother, that:
Vey little is still known about Zalgo and because there are very little
records on the cult, it is likely to stay that way.
11 September 1862
According to myth, the only way to stop the dark lord Zalgo from killing a
person's livestock and crops was indeed a human sacrifice, people are unsure
about how many sacrifices there have been to Zalgo, but it is believed to be
in the 100's.
I was with John [Gordon] when we found a group of people all around a
fire all in red, it looked like they were praying to someone. We did not
stay long but we heard them keep on saying 'zalgo, zalgo, zalgo'.