Bone and Sickle

The folklore of fairy rings and “star jelly” is strangely connected to celestial phenomena, including lightning and shooting stars. We begin with a description of a folkloric fairy ring and its dancing population from John Aubrey’s 1690 book  Natural History of Wiltshire,  following this with a few other folkloric takes on the topic. The botanical phenomena of fairy rings is then descr...

In pagan Germanic cultures, the seeress played an extremely important role, not only as a clairvoyant, but also often fulfilling the role of a priestess, wisewoman or witch. We begin with a short clip from Robert Eggers’ The Northman , in which Björk plays a seeress.  Old Norse words used to describe this role include spákona,  or völva (pl. völvur , völur ) — the last meaning “s...

The best known of the 18th-century Hellfire Clubs, one founded by Francis Dashwood, is largely remembered today because of the theatrical settings in which they were said to gather, namely a ruined abbey and a network of caves. The latter is represented in the 1961 period drama,  The Hellfire Club ,  from which we hear a brief snippet (although other details and characters of the film are strictly...

The Hellfire Clubs of 18th-century Great Britain were gatherings of upper-class libertines dedicated to hedonism, blasphemous jests and taboo activities expressing a cultural and political opposition to the Church. They were also the subject of lurid rumor and legend.  In this episode and the next we attempt to tease out Hellfire Club fact from folklore. We begin with a nod to the Hellfire Club of...

Grottos are a peculiar subset of caves, usually small and picturesque, and often associated with wonders both otherworldly and manmade. NOTE: Details on our Patreon raffle for the 15-disc set, All The Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium Of Folk Horror , are at the bottom of this post. We begin with what is likely the best known example of the sacred grotto, the Catholic shrine at Lourdes, France, where i...

Whether freshly removed or strangely preserved after death, the dead lover’s heart occasionally has continued to be embraced as a repository of intensely shared romantic experience. This Valentine’s Day episode explores two different narratives touching on that theme: a historical tale from the 19th-century literary culture of England and a collection of related medieval legends, liter...

Folklore of the blacksmith portrays him as a semi-magical figure, a wily opponent of the Devil, a mythic creator in classical and biblical narratives, and an embodiment of occult wisdom within certain secret societies and neopagan groups. We begin with an audio snippet from the excellent 2017 horror-fantasy  Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil , a cinematic elaboration of the Basque folktale...

In keeping with the old tradition of whiling away the nights of Christmas telling ghost stories, we bring you a tale published in 1912 by E.F. Benson.  Read by Mrs. Karswell, complete with sound FX and music as always. If you’d like some additional listening of this type, we have three more recorded in previous years going back to 2018: Christmas Ghost Story III ,   Christmas Ghost Story II...

In earlier centuries, Americans partook in many of the same dark Christmas traditions that gave birth to Europe’s Krampus.  This episode examines our untamed holiday history. The most obvious example of this is the character of Belsnickel, (sometimes: Pelznickel, Belschnickle, Bells Nickel, etc.), who, like the Krampus, usually appeared on St. Nicholas Day, carrying a whip with which to thre...

Transylvania’s vampire lore inspired the setting of Bram Stoker’s Dracula , if not the character of the Count, and encompasses not only undead monsters, but living beings akin to witches.  (The show is introduced with an audio snippet from Maria Tănase , premiere interpreter of Romanian folk song.) Mrs. Karswell begins the show, reading a passage Stoker wrote for Jonathan’s Harke...

A break from the usual themes for the Halloween season: the second part of our survey of 40 years of  Horror hosts, this time the hosts of the 1960s and a couple years of the ’70s. Included in this installment: Morgus the Magnificent, Sammy Terry, Chilly Billy Cardille, Ghoulardi, The Vegas Vampire, The Cool Ghoul, Svengoolie, and Sir Cecil Creape. Also: Psychic Bee fortune-telling with Mrs....

Something a little different for the Halloween season: horror hosts and their evolution in the early years.  We’ll be doing a second episode (out before Halloween) rounding out our survey to include the horror hosts of the 1960s. Included in this installment: Vampira, John Zacherle, Gorgon, Marvin the Nearsighted Madman, Tarantula Ghoul, The Old Witch, Raymond, The Mysterious Traveler, The S...

Ghost trains and real-life railway terrors intermingle in this episode’s exploration of old train-wreck ballads, nervous and funereally obsessed Victorians, urban legends involving train deaths, and more. Mrs. Karswell begins our show reading an imaginitive description of a phantom train written by George A. Sala for an 1855 edition of the magazine,  Household Words, published by Charles Dic...

Duties in the library unfortunately prevent us from presenting a regular episode at this time, but to fill the gap, we’re offering listeners a taste of the short bonus “Marvelous & Rare” episodes all our $4-and-up Patreon subscribers hear every month (sort of antiquarian version of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not). If you’d like to hear more in this format, another sample wa...

Bird-women hybrids of Greek legend and Russian folklore are uniquely ambivalent, sometimes bringing death and destruction and at others, prophetic wisdom and the joy of Paradise. The two Greek species we treat are sirens and harpies, both at times described as having the bodies of birds and faces or upper bodies of human females. Beginning with harpies — we hear a bit of audio from the 1963...

A dybbuk is a “clinging spirit” of Jewish folklore, a ghost that can possess a human host. Dybbuk, by Ephraim Moshe Lilien (1923) Stories of dybbuks (pl. dibbukim  in Hebrew for sticklers) date to the 16th century but have never traditionally included the idea of trapping a dybbuk in a box, a trope that only dates to a 20o3 eBay ad placed by a Portland antique refinisher Kevin Mannis....

Messages delivered by the extraterrestrials Ashtar and Orthon to Contactees of the 1950s represented a sort of repackaging of 19th-century Theosophy, a philosophical descendent of the Rosicrucianism of the 1700s. After our previous epiosde  examining George King of the Aetherius Society, this episode looks at two other Georges of the Contactee movement, George van Tassel (channeler of Ashtar) and...

The esoteric teachings of Theosophy, particularly those regarding Venus, were surprisingly influential on the tales told by flying saucer Contactees of the 1950s and ’60s. We begin with a quick review of Theosophy and its principles as defined by the Russian international adventurer Helena Blavatsky in the later decades of the 19th century. Blavatsky had worked as a spirit medium and transfo...

Cases of madness and even murder were associated with Hexerei, a form of witchcraft brought to Pennsylvania by German immigrants.  Following up on our previous examination of the tradition of Braucherei or Pow-Wow as practiced in 18th and 19th century Pennsylvania, our current episode eplores some more disturbing cases of witchcraft beliefs surviving into the 1920s and ’30s. Our show begins...

Stories of witchcraft and folk-healers in early Pennsylvania are surprisingly plentiful. In this episode, we examine the state’s German-American tradition of Braucherei that spawned these tales. The practice came over with immigrants from Germany’s southwestern Rhineland beginning in the late 1700s and established itself among the Pennsylvania “Dutch” (a misunderstanding of...

Emperor Nero’s reputation for wickedness and depravity had already attained mythic status within a century of his death, making him a prototype for early Christian beliefs regarding the Antichrist. We begin the show with a look at the role poison played in Nero’s ascent, putting him on the throne at the age of 17 in 54AD. After her marriage to Emperor Claudius, Nero’s Mother, Agr...

We’re doing something different this time out. As we are celebrating Bone and Sickle’s third anniversary on April 30, we’re taking a week or two off to rejuvenate and prepare new material for year four. To fill the gap, we’re offering listeners a sample of the short bonus episodes all our $4-and-up Patreon subscribers hear every month. If you’d like to hear more in this format, a...

In this episode, we continue our survey of supernatural sailors’ lore of the North with a look at mermen, Iceland’s “evil whales,” and sea-draugs. After a brief audio tidbit recalling our previous discussion of the  Norse World Serpent, Jörmungandr (courtesy of the TV show Vikings ), we briefly reconsider the Kraken  in the context of the 13 th -century Norwegian text Kongs...

The Kraken is only one of the monsters said to inhabit the storied northern seas of Scandinavia. This episode is the first of two that will examine fantastical nautical tales of these regions. We begin with a bit of dialogue about the Kraken uttered by Davy Jones in Disney’s 2006 Pirates of the Caribbean film  Dead Man’s Chest.   It’s particularly appropriate to our first theme: the Kr...

The mythology of bees has been tied for centuries to notions of the otherworld and death.  In this episode we trace some of that folklore along with examining some highly peculiar uses of honey. Horror or sci-fi films referencing bees exploit the more mundane fears bee holds for mankind.  Our survey of these includes clips from the dreadful 2006  The Wicker Man remake, Candyman (1992), The Deadly...