Back on the T.A.R.D.I.S. who seemed thankfully more like her old self, even with circuitry, gadgets and gizmos strew around (this was fairly normal after all), Rose and the Doctor nursed another cuppa and compared notes.

“Have you ever heard of anything like this before?” Rose wondered as she gratefully sipped the steaming, hot beverage and pulled a blanket more snugly about her shoulders. 

The two of them sitting cross legged in a nest of pillows, looked like they were ruminating around a camp fire or telling ghost stories to tantalise and scare at a slumber party.

“Well many cultures and societies have their own lore and myths concerning harbingers of death.  It’s strange how fascinated the living seem about dying.  Most of these fables grew from ancient oral traditions and morphed over the centuries like Chinese whispers but such similar accounts may suggest, as in most cases, that the stories were born from some seed of truth.

The Irish have their banshees, shrieking eerie screams in the night, the Bean Sidhe, fairy woman.  Certain animals are associated with the dark arts and possession, seeing a black cat, a crow or an owl are all said to foretell a coming fatality, these beings, supernatural messengers.  Greek and Roman myth has Cerberus, the three headed dog as a guardian to the portal of the underworld and hence the British legend of the Black Shuck, dog, is often associated with imminent death like Conan Doyle’s ‘Hound of the Baskerville’s’.”

“Good old Sherlock!” they shared a pensive smile.

“Then there are the stories of vehicles that come to collect the souls of the dead like the headless horseman and the horse drawn coach rattling through the fog on cobbled streets.  The Egyptians believed in the Asphyx, a spirit that appeared at the precise moment of a person’s death to convey their soul to the underworld, though later Asphyx became a death metal Dutch band!”

“So this Asphyx then, is that like succu…succumbo…” Rose’s face scrunched into adorable dimples and frown lines in thought as the Doctor smiled fondly at her, helping her out, “Succubi or Lilith?  No a succubus was a female seductress that drained life energy from men as they…hmmm…fornicated.”