Black Zodiac Minimals

* The Angry Princess
* The Bound Woman
* The First Born Son
* The Great Child & The Dire Mother
* The Pilgrimess
* The Torn Prince
* The Torso
* The Withered Lover

The **Black Zodiac Minimals** are minor antagonists in the 2001 film, THIR13EN Ghosts.

The thirteen signs of the Black Zodiac are *The First Born Son, The Torso, The Bound Woman, The Withered Lover, The Torn Prince, The Angry Princess, The Pilgrimess, The Great Child, The Dire Mother,* The Hammer, The Jackal, The Juggernaut, *and The Broken Heart*.

Once all thirteen signs on Thirteen Ghosts' Black Zodiac are represented by their corresponding ghosts in one place, they can be used to activate Basileus's Machine, opening the Ocularis Infernum, aka The Eye of Hell.

## Appearance

The Black Zodiac Minimals are lesser horrific ghosts of the Black Zodiac. In the film, they play minor roles with less screentime but are still vital to the overall story. Description Source

#### The Angry Princess

Appearing as a pale, unclothed woman with sopping wet hair whose body is covered in deep cuts, she carries the knife that she used on herself. In life, she was Dana Newman, a "young woman whose beauty became her ruin". After a string of foul boyfriends, she sought employment with a plastic surgeon, where her wages were paid in "an endless array of needless procedures." After attempting to perform an operation on herself, she finally took her own life in the bathtub - which probably explains why she appears in the bathroom of the house. The Latin next to the illustration of the Angry Princess in The Arcanum essentially says that she ended her life, and the illustration depicts a young woman in a cloak and hood, at the end of a noose.

#### The Bound Woman

The illustration in The Arcanum shows a dour-looking woman in an Elizabethan ruff. Susan LeGrow, "born with a silver spoon in her mouth." "Her parents were the wealthiest people in town, which made Susan the most popular girl in school." Susan flirted, toyed with, and rejected men at her whim, leaving "a long trail of broken hearts" until star quarterback Chet Walters found her with another man on the night of the senior prom. Chet clubbed her lover, and Susan disappeared. Two weeks later, she was found "beneath the football field's 50-yard line." While Kriticos acknowledges that the "jealous monster" Chet would have made a "nice complement" to his cabal of sinister ghosts, the Bound Woman was what Basileus's Machine required, and Susan's ghost fit the bill. In the film, her ghost appears dangling from a rope, although the illustration in The Arcanum depicts that fate for another ghost, the Angry Princess.

#### The Firstborn Son

In The Arcanum, the Firstborn Son (rendered in Latin as Primus Filius) is depicted as a young boy with a split in his head. Billy Michaels, the boy who became the Firstborn Son ghost, is "simply a stubborn brat" whose "obsession with the world of cowboys and Indians took precedent over all else." Billy was done in when he was playing "cowboys and Indians" with a neighbor boy who found a real bow and arrow. Billy perished while dressed as a cowboy, though in the film he is also wearing a Native American headband, with an arrow sticking out of his forehead. "His rebellious attitude and refusal to accept defeat was a perfect fit for my... circle of angry spirits," Kriticos concludes.

#### The Great Child & The Dire Mother

Two ghosts for the price of one, the Great Child and the Dire Mother are depicted in the Black Zodiac as a giant clutching the head of a more diminutive figure - the mother, perhaps, though the figure looks only barely human and is possibly male. The Latin word next to the illustration doesn't help much, as it simply says Mures, which translates as "mice." Given that Harold Shelburne, the ghost who represents the Great Child, had the mental development of an infant in life, this may be a reference to the novel Of Mice and Men, which features a large and very strong but developmentally disabled protagonist. Margaret Shelburne, his mother, was only three feet tall. Taken without consent by the Tall Man, a member of the traveling "freak show" where she worked, Margaret later gave birth to Harold, who also went to work in the show. She was very protective of her son and babied him well into adulthood, to the degree that he was unable to feed himself and still wore diapers. This led to the two of them being outcasts even among the "freaks," who one day snatched Margaret as a joke on Harold. Unfortunately, the cruel joke went wrong when Margaret suffocated in the bag they placed her in. When Harold found out, he took an axe and "had his revenge" on most of the carnival, "displaying what was left of them for every paying customer to see." When the owner found out what had happened, he had Harold done away with in gruesome fashion.

#### The Pilgrimess

In The Arcanum , the Pilgrimess is shown only as a dour-looking woman in an old-fashioned hood. Unlike most of the other ghosts, there is no Latin next to her picture, only the symbol that represents her in the Black Zodiac. In the film, she is shown only briefly, where she appears as an elderly woman in stocks. "Her story began in 1675, when the orphaned Isabella journeyed from England in the hope of finding a comfortable home in a quaint New England town." However, the "tight-knit townsfolk didn't trust outsiders," and when their livestock started to waste away, they decided Isabella must be a witch. They cornered her in a barn and set it ablaze. When she survived without so much as a scratch, they considered that proof of their suspicions and sentenced her to the stocks. She stayed there for weeks before finally perishing from extreme hunger.

#### The Torn Prince

Born in 1940, the boy who would become Kriticos's Torn Prince was named Royce Clayton. Living a "miserable small-town life," Royce's ticket out was his skill as a "slugger" on his high school baseball team - hence the bat, which the ghost carries with him. A "local hero," according to the newspaper, Royce perished in a fiery car collision during a drag race, which also explains the upside-down car that's with him inside his cell. In The Arcanum, the Torn Prince (in Latin Eques Scissus, which would be more aptly translated as "torn knight"), is depicted as a painter, holding a brush and easel in his left hand while his right arm is missing from the elbow down. All the flesh is also flayed from the right side of his body, just as it is on the ghost of Royce.

#### The Torso

The Arcanum depicts the Torso (Truncus, or simply "trunk") as a long-haired human figure with no lower body, walking around on its hands. In the film, the Torso's head is also separated from its body, and both the torso and the head are wrapped in plastic. The Torso was once Jimmy "The Gambler" Gambino. Jimmy made a bet with Larry "The Finger" Vatelo and lost, so Vatelo made "several small examples" of Jimmy when he couldn't pay his debt, then wrapped the pieces in cellophane and dumped them into the ocean.

#### The Withered Lover

To fulfill the role of the Withered Lover, Kriticos selected his own niece by marriage, Jean Kriticos. Jean perished in a fire, which separated her from her husband - Kriticos's nephew, Arthur - and their two children. The fire also left half of her body badly burned, making her the ideal choice for the Withered Lover. In The Arcanum, the Withered Lover (Amator Marcidus) is one of the only ghosts to be depicted beneficently, seemingly floating in a long dress with vines in the background - possible echoes of Jean's hospital gown and IV tubes?

#### The Broken Heart

The 13th ghost in the Black Zodiac, the Broken Heart is "a sacrifice of life... The only ghost to be created out of an act of pure love." In the film, the Broken Heart Ghost never came to be and thus does not apply.

## Powers and Abilities

The Black Zodiac Minimals possess the following powers and abilities:

* Ghost scares only

## Fate

All Twelve Ghosts survive the events of this film. Some get released back on Earth and some are able to move on.

## Photo Gallery

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