The Haunted Vodka
Generations ago, a family in Western Canada had a proud but small farm. They raised crops and livestock so plentifully, they outproduced all the other farms in the colony. Soon, people began to realize that the spring that watered their land was the sweetest and purest in the area and was thought to be the source of their success.A jealous neighbor schemed to divert their water to his own property. Stealing onto their land one bitterly cold winter night, he was confronted by the farm’s owner, known only as Tobias. The neighbor struck him with his shovel, knocking him unconscious into a pond near the mouth of the spring. The water thief completed his work, diverting some of the spring’s output to his property by means of the underground channel he dug.
Tobias’s body was later discovered in the ice that froze the pond deep on that frigid winter night.
No one knew how he died. The secret was safe until the neighbor began to report a strange presence of Tobias that haunted his every step. A presence that ultimately drove him mad. He confessed everything as he was driven in a prison cart to the colony’s sanitarium.
The farm has changed hands many times over the centuries, and now that same spring’s water is used to produce Frozen Ghost Vodka.
There is a vodka made by ghosts, out of water under ghosts' control, and, if its packaging is to be believed, out of actual ghosts. There's also a startling short documentary about its history.
Frozen Ghost, the "supernatural, super-premium vodka," is only available in the South. Have you tried it? Are you still with us? If any ghosts are present, please describe yourself in the comments. If you can't type, channel yourself through the hands of living commenters, Ouija-style. Here, I'll go first.
My name is Lonnn. I am 9,000, and my favorite drink is wine.
Whoa!
[Via]
So wait, the decomposing corpse was found in the source of water they make this stuff from? Sounds yummy.
@boyofdestiny Should be Frozen Remains Vodka.
@boyofdestiny It wasn't decomposing, it was frozen solid. Like a yeti, or Han Solo.
;alkfadkl;dsjkla
(Why yes, my Ouija board has semicolons)
When I was in Maine, I saw an island where a boat full of rum had shipwrecked and the locals left all the people on the boat to die over the winter so they could come back in the spring and take all the booze. Now THAT rum was haunted as shit.
@parallel-lines: Wouldn't all the dead people have drunk? drank? drinked? all the rum over the winter? I mean, if I was going to starve/freeze to death and I had a big cache of rum, well…
@spiralbetty Drinking alcohol when you are in cold temperatures will actually hasten your death by hypothermia (hence frozen bums on park benches). So if they were really optimistic about getting saved they probably would avoid drinking the rum. And if they were really pessimistic their last hours would be AWESOME.
@spiralbetty According to local legend, the locals told the crew they were going to go call their insurance company to bail them out, then left them on the island intended to return in the spring when everyone would have died off of starvation/hypothermia. If I was one of the crew members, I would have dumped all the rum just to spite everyone.
@parallel-lines Woooooah I want to visit this island?
@parallel-lines where is this island??
@parallel-lines Wasn't this a Shirley Jackson story?
@antarcticastartshere Oops, it looks like the guide was slightly off.
Wreck Island – four miles SW of Friendship Harbor
Lights, and the forms of people outlined in light, are seen at Wreck Island at night. They are the eleven passengers of the Winnebec which went down in a December 1768 storm. They may have drowned before washing ashore, or been killed by some fishermen for their belongings. It is said that the fishermen each experienced the sensation of being strangled, shortly after the 1768 disaster, and many of them said their attackers were people in drenched clothing, surrounded by white light.
apparently people who've camped on the island have said they felt like someone was trying to strangle them/heard screaming and lobstermen won't say the name of the island (they call it Round Island) or go there.
@parallel-lines (I think I mixed up my haunted islands and now I can't remember the name of the other one)
@parallel-lines I enjoy that there's a Scottish Play equivalent in haunted islands.
@parallel-lines It is absolutely killing me right now that I can't remember the name of the haunted island in the R. L. Stine Fear Street book where some unsuspecting teens go camping. Fear Island? Probably. Anyway.
Oh good. I love a cocktail with a good back story.
Somebody's giving Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Head Vodka a run for its money.
http://crystalheadvodka.com/welcome
Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my spade, but first it is better to speak of my friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump which he manufactured himself out of a hollow iron bar. Divney was a strong civil man but he was lazy and idle-minded. He was personally responsible for the whole idea in the first place. It was he who told me to bring my spade. He was the one who gave the orders on the occasion and also the explanations when they were called for….
–Flann O'Brien
I prefer Blair Witchskey.
@atipofthehat or a bottle of Frankenwine
@unicornparty The Texas Chainsaw Massliquor? No…must try again…
@jen325 Death by Qreamotine? (guillotine)
If you drink enough, you'll start seeing things!*
*note: may also occur with non-ghost vodka
And there is always RUM with a SURPRISE!
@atipofthehat: Next up, Zombie Vodka! The packaging may not be quite as elegant.
@spiralbetty
I think I have a bottle of Grey Ghost in the freezer.
My name was Neveah, I'm 16 years old, and my favorite drink was Qream.
Finally, we have found a way to ruin vodka. BY PUTTING GHOSTS IN IT. I hope nobody gets me this, ever. I can already see myself getting drunk, getting terrified, and flushing the rest of the ghosts down the toilet.
Gotta give the guy credit for digging an underground trench in the middle of a bitterly cold night during a Canadian winter (after killing a guy). No way someone that badass would crack from a minor haunting.
I don't understand why he didn't just wack the guy with all the pipe he must have brought with him to lay in the "underground trench" that he dug from the dead guy's property to his own.
/liquor backstory plumbing logic eludes me
I TOTALLY drank haunted beer on the weekend! Between the actual drinking and a rather spooky hangover, I had NIGHTMARE in which I was being stalked by some weird, anthropomorphized beer. I woke up a few times in the night and I could feel the beer in my stomach, laughing at me…
HAUNTED BOOZE = A REAL THING
Jennifer Love Hewitt endorses this vodka.
Plan for the weekend:
1) Make a bloody Mary out of ghost vodka.
2) Drink in a dark bathroom.
3) Wait to die.
@MollyculeTheory: In other words, same as every other weekend.
@MollyculeTheory Don't forget to say "I love Bloody Mary" three times into the mirror!
@MollyculeTheory
1) Please wait at least another 80 years or so, and not in a dark bathroom
2) Why ghost vodka, when you know:
When things go wrong and will not come right,
Though you do the best you can,
When life looks black as the hour of night -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
When money's tight and hard to get
And your horse has also ran,
When all you have is a heap of debt -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
When health is bad and your heart feels strange,
And your face is pale and wan,
When doctors say you need a change,
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
When food is scarce and your larder bare
And no rashers grease your pan,
When hunger grows as your meals are rare -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
In time of trouble and lousy strife,
You have still got a darlint plan
You still can turn to a brighter life -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.”
–Flann O'Brien
I imagine this kind of like The Ring, where they had to combine my greatest love (TV!) with my greatest fear (ghosts!) but instead of the dead well girl coming out of the TV, now she's coming out of my other greatest love, a bottle of booze.
I can't help picturing Tobias Funke in this story.
@mk rilea My brain is switching back and forth between him and Tobias Beecher.
Please allow me (as a western Canadian and as a historian to point out a few of the flaws or questions that I now have)
1)Generations ago, a family in Western Canada had a proud but small farm." Seeing as tey have crops and live stock I shall assume that this is in Alberta or Saskatchewan. As such springs are not really common in what is an area of extreme calm, geologically speaking
2)"one bitterly cold winter night" Ok, so winter in the prairies we're talking -20 to -40 degrees celsius, (-4F to -40F for the metricly impaired)
3)"The water thief completed his work, diverting some of the spring’s output to his property by means of the underground channel he dug." Um, digging? In a Canadian Prairie winter? Yeah fucking right (see point 2)
4) "Tobias’s body was later discovered in the ice that froze the pond deep on that frigid winter night." So now we are talking about a super freeze a la "Absolute zero" where things freeze solid in a night that deep? a huh.
5)"driven in a prison cart to the colony’s sanitarium." THERE WERE NEVER COLONIES IN THE WEST. There were fur trading posts (2 plus centuries ago); and settlements and religious missions (1.5 centuries ago)
6)"The farm has changed hands many times over the centuries," We are not in Eastern Canada, farming has only happened since the 1840s at the EARLIEST and mostly from the 1890s onwards. Using centuries is a bit generous.
7)"and now that same spring’s water is used to produce Frozen Ghost Vodka." Ew. Seriously? Dead body water for vodka? Yummy.
Conclusion: Whoever wrote this has never been to Western Canada. In the summer or in the winter. Interestingly, this is not a product that is sold in Western Canada.
There you go folks: Thick description of a vodka schtick. Geertz would be proud
P.S Who on earth gets paid to write this kind of shit? Isn't there a law against blatant lies?
@ReginaChristina Well if they only sell it in the South, I guess they probably haven't. Western Canada is apparently a glamourous place down south or something?
@Megan Patterson@facebook "Y'all ain't from around these parts, is ya? I reckon y'all be from some place real fancy-like. Some place like Saskay-chew-wain."
@ReginaChristina I was wondering about that "colony" bit myself. Didn't sound quite right. And all I know about Canadian history I learned from a well rounded educational book aimed at 8 year olds.
@Megan Patterson@facebook that's what baffles me. It's not a particularly exciting place. I mean we have buffalo and cows, and… wheat?
Based on what I know about western Canada from watching Corner Gas you are right. But mostly just wanted to say I LOVE your avatar.
@Pizzahut I love corner gas. I wish that was reality. It's a huge show in Canada hehehe
I guess they ran out of things to infuse vodka with? I was wondering what was going to come after the whipped cream vodka, the cotton candy vodka, and the bacon vodka. I bet frozen ghost vodka tastes like shrouds and ice, with with the aroma of moist earth and mildew.
@punkahontas
I hope we're having some tomorrow!
@punkahontas — This have given me ideas! Perhaps there is a way to infuse vodka with that 'spring rain' smell?
@leon.saintjean Stick a dryer sheet in there?
The ghost on the label reminds me disturbingly of the posters for the human centipede.
@themegnapkin This was my first thought, human centipede vodka would be unpleasant
Did the beginning of that little backstory remind anyone else of Jean de Florette?
All right. I have resolved to take one for the team and try this because I am in The South. I saw a haunted vodka truck making deliveries the other day and I wondered just how long it would take for Edith to find out about it.
On a semi-related note, can anyone recommend some books or websites that have really good ghost stories? Or other scary reading? I LOVE THIS STUFF.
I watched the video and had low expectations… it was still disappointing and stupid. :/
@kayarr You mean to tell me the vodka ad didn't live up to your standards of horror in film?