Horror, Fact, Fiction, and a Revelation

The Christmas Eve ghost story is a fine old tradition associated with Victorian and Edwardian England, one that’s been making a comeback on both sides of the Atlantic. Since 2018, Bone and Sickle has enthusiastically embraced the custom. Our offering for 2025, is “The Other Bed” written by E.F. Benson in  1912 and read for us by Mrs. Karswell. Previous Christmas ghost stories are linked here in our website show notes  (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 , 2023, and 2024.)

Historically, the celebration of Christmas and Carnival could overlap, and there is some reason to believe that customs associated with the former were inherited by the latter. A clue to this calendrical shift is offered by the Christmas song, “Carol of the Bells,” which uses the melody of an old Ukrainian New Year;s carol, one which dates back to the era in which New Year was celebrated in March (hence the springtime imagery of its original Ukrainian lyrics). Ukrainian postcard commemorating the folk song”Shchedryk” source of “Carol of the Bells” After a brief look at the variable date chosen to celebrate the New Year throughout European history, we take some time to rethink our modern understanding of what constitutes the Christmas season.  The common notion that the season ends on December 25 or January 1, possibly including the weeks leading up to those dates, in historical understanding, was reversed, with Dec. 25 representing the start of Christmastide, which at the very least ran until Epiphany (Jan. 6) or Candlemas (Feb. 2). The merger of Christmas and Carnival is not only aided by the historically later end date of Christmastide, but also the variable start date for Carnival. A number of regional dates preferred for those festivities are discussed with Germany’s initiation of festivities on November 11 being the earliest. Another reason to suspect that Carnival inherited some of its customs from Carnival is the carnivalesque quality of the Christmas Feast of Fools celebrated anywhere from Dec. 26 to January 6.  The wild, and sometimes dangerous revels celebrated on those days (and discussed in Episode 100) were ended by local bishops at roughly the same time that Carnival celebrations in France and Germany emerged, suggesting  re-channeling of anarchic impulses and customs. Our discussion then turns to the Roman New Year, the January Kalends, which likely inspired chaotic elements around the Feast of Fools. Of particular interest here are accounts of celebrants dressing in animal hides and horns. a custom that seems to have survived in certain Carnival traditions, including a number discussed in my Carnival book.  One of these, the Kurent of Slovenia, who happens to be rather similar to the Austrian Krampus across the country’s northern border. In Western Bulgaria too, another Carnival figure, the Kuker, in western regions also makes  use of animal hides and horns (as well as bells).  Bulgaria also provides us with an interesting 20th-century case study of the merger of the traditions of Christmas (or “Surva,” the Bulgarian New Year) merging with springtime fertility customs of Carnival, both strands being associated with the Kuker. We wrap up with a brief look at Slavic celebrations of the Christmas cycle as Koliade (various spellings), a name for Christmastide and the customs associated with it, particularly door-to-door “good luck visits” incorporating short plays and songs, kolyadka in Ukrainian, the original of “Carol of the Bells” (Shchedryk/”Bountiful Evening”) being one of these songs “New Year’s Carols” (Kolędnicy noworoczni) from “A Polish Year in Life, Tradition and Song” (1900). The sources for this show are Mr. Ridenour’s books The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas and A Season of Madness, Fools, Monsters, and Marvels of the Old-World Carnival.          

In our second short episode for November, we take a close look at a the 1692 trial of Thiess of Kaltenbrunn, a purported werewolf in the town of  Jürgensburg, in Livonia, (a Baltic region now divided between Estonia and Latvia). “Old Thiess,” as he was known, described himself as being a  particularly exotic form of werewolf — one who served God in Hell.  The testimony offered was so curious that we will be presenting the court transcripts verbatim, with nearly all exchanges between witness and judges included. Decide for yourself!

This is a special short episode looking at fictional evidence used to bolster horror narratives in literature, film, and broadcast media.  We compare the found-footage phenomenon with earlier literary techniques and discuss some famous hoaxes and Halloween pranks, some historical and others closer to home.

This year, in the tradition of Halloween fortune-telling, we have an interactive divination game you can play at home.  It comes from aa 19th-century book on cartomancy called, The oracle of human destiny: or, the unerring foreteller of future events, and accurate interpreter of mystical signs and influences; through the medium of common cards. TO PLAY ALONG,  you will need an ordinary DECK OF CARS or you could can draw your cards from a VIRTUAL DECK  like the one on deck.of.cards. (https://deck.of.cards). You will also need to know the ELEMENTAL GROUP of your ASTROLOGICAL SIGN. They are: FIRE SIGNS: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius EARTH SIGNS: Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn AIR SIGNS: Gemini, Libra, Aquarius. WATER SIGNS: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces. Fortunes read fall into these categories (in this order): Absent Friends and Relatives Travel Friendship and Enmity Health and Longevity Property Lost Love Wealth and Fortune Success A Potential Spouse Happiness, Misfortune There are 88 fortunes provided, so you’ll have more fun listening with friends who have different astrological signs. Or write down the signs of absent friends and draw cards on their behalf. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!    

If you’ve been curious regarding Mr. Ridenour’s and Mrs. Karswell’s troubles with anomalous events in the house, this short episode should answer some of your questions as Dr. Bartusch and crew attempt to restore order.

(SPOILER ALERTt: Do not listen to this until you have heard Episode 146 “Urban Legend”.) This is  a short postscript to our “Urban Legend” episode based on feedback from a listener. It has to do with a very curious grave in Chesterton, Indiana, which may be related to our story.  And here is the grave:

A 1968 Halloween “Spook Show” in the Midwest left an unsettling heritage of urban legends possibly rooted in even more unsettling facts.  What little is definitively known regarding this event comes from the newspaper archives of the Danville News-Gazette, in which we find a short October 28  promo piece in the “Entertainment” section featuring this photo presumed to be of the impresario behind it all, J. Jolly. “Dr. Killer Hertz” will speak to “Space Spirits” (courtesy News-Gazette). There is also this advertisement for the event: Courtesy News-Gazette. That’s all the story you need for now.  You can form your own opinions as we grope our way between fact and fiction. Headphones and lights out for best results!

The Halloween Jack-o’-lantern, made from pumpkins in the US and originally turnips in the UK, began its existence as a wisp of glowing marsh gas or “spooklight.” We begin our episode with a montage of modern American spooklights including that of Oklahoma’s “Spooklight Road,” North Carolina’s Brown Mountain, and the flying saucers sighted in Michigan in 1966, famously identified by investigator Allen Hynek  as “swamp gas.” “Jack-o’-lantern”  was just another name given to what’s more widely known now as a Will-o’-the-wisp — a wavering, bobbing light seen in marshy places, understood as mischievous spirit intent on leading travelers off course and into their doom in muck and mire.  Flaming methane produced by rotting vegetation in such environments, is said to the the cause of the phenomenon, though the mode of ignition is still largely a matter of debate. The Latin name for such lights, ignis fatuus  (fool’s fire), was also applied to phenomena having nothing to do with swamps, as it’s been used interchangeably with “St. Elmo’s Fire” to describe electrical discharges seen on ships; masts and other rodlike protrusions when atmospheric conditions are right. We hear a dramatic first-person account from 1847, in which St. Elmo’s Fire (identified by antiquarian Henry Duncan as ignis fatuus) appears on a coachman’s whip during a storm. A mirage in a marsh. Coloured wood engraving by C Whymper. Gas. Contributors: Charles H Whymper (1853–1941). We then hear what scientists of the 16th and 17th century made of ignis fatuus, often relating it  unexpectedly to meteors or luminous insects, while mocking “the superstitions” who imagined it as wandering spirits alight with the flames of Purgatory. Along with marsh spirits exlusively dedicated to misleading travelers, ignis fatuus could also be a temporary  form  taken by shapeshifting fairy folk like Puck or Robin Goodfellow.  We hear an example of this from  the 1628 pamphlet, Robin Goodfellow, his Mad Pranks and Merry Jests. We also see the term appearing in literature of the 16th and 17th century as a metaphor for treachery or deception, in works by John Milton and William Shakespeare. We run through the variety of colorful regional names by which Will-o-the-Wisps were known: Bob-a-longs, Pinkets, Spunkies, Merry Dancers, Nimble men, Hinkypunks, and Flibberdigibbets, as well as some female variants including Peg-a-lantern and Kitty with the Candlestick. In Wales, these mysterious lights could be omens of death, also known as “corpse candles,” or “death lights.” Appearing around the home of the dying or at the deathbed, they were also called “fetch lights,” as they would arrive when required to fetch the soul to the other side. In Cornwall, fool’s fire is associated with the piskies, in particular Joan the Wad and her partner Jack-o’-the-Lantern, the former having acquired a mostly positive reputation in the 20th century as a luck-bringer. Mrs. Karswell also reads  some tales of ignis fatuus in the western counties, where the lights are called “hobby lanterns” (from hobgoblin) or  “lantern men.” We then shift gears to discuss the pumpkin form of Jack-o’-lantern, beginning with a well-circulated Irish origin story. A quick summary: the light carried in a hollowed vegetable (a pumpkin in the New World or turnip in the Old) represents the spirit of a notorious sinner, “Jack,” or “Stingy Jack,” who upon death finds he is too wicked for Heaven and too troublesome for Hell. Consquently, he is condemned to wander the earth till Judgement Day, given the peculiar lantern to light his way. This, at least, is the most recent version of the tale, but when it first appeared in print, in a 1936 edition of the Dublin Penny Journal, there’s no mention of any hollowed vegetable, much less of Halloween — meaning this “ancient legend” actually evolved as Halloween folklore in the second half of the 20th century. We then do a bit more myth-busting on the other side of the Atlantic, checking in on Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which also turns out not to mention Halloween, nor a carved pumpkin representing the Horseman’s head.  When hollowed pumpkins first are mentioned by the 1840s, they are associated with Thanksgiving rather than Halloween, as in John Greenleaf Whittier’s 1947 poem, “The Pumpkin.”  The next  appearance of a Jack-o’-lantern, in an 1860 edition of a Wisconsin newspaper, is also not associated with Halloween but with an impromptu parade supporting Abraham Lincoln’s presidential run.  It seems that it was only by the end of the 19th century that the hollowed, lighted pumpkin was linked with Halloween, while retaining associations with Thanksgiving into the early 1900s. In the UK, hollowed and lighted turnips (occasionally beets or rutabagas) seem to have been around since the early 1800s. Originally, they’re not necessarily associated with Halloween specifically but as something created by mischievous boys eager to scare their neighbors whenever the vegetables became available for such hijinks. A Scottish source, John Jamieson’s An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language 1808), is the first to link them to Halloween pranks, and by the 1890s, we hear of lighted turnips being carried by costumed children (“guisers”) celebrating Halloween in Scotland. Carved turnip used on the Isle of Man. Courtesy www.culturevannin.im We then discuss the Jack-o’-lantern’s British evolution, namely, the replacement of  the turnip with the American pumpkin, beginning with their importation in the 1950s.  The process was slow, with both carved turnips and pumpkins used side-by-side in some regions, and the use of carved turnips longer retained in some regions.  Of particular interest here is the Isle of Man, where the Halloween celebration of Hop-tu-naa makes exclusive use of turnip lanterns in costumed door-to-door rounds during which children sing a largely nonsensical song punctuated by the rhyming syllables “Hop-tu-naa.”  An audio snippet of the song is provided courtesy of the Manx organzation Culture Vannin (https://culturevannin.im/). We wrap up  with some speculations regarding the disappearance of the Will-o-the-Wisp and its evolution through different forms, including the glowing swamp gas theorized to have inspired the 1966 Michigan saucer sightings (and our closing song by Lewis Ashmore and the Space Walkers!)

There’s so much more to the figure of St. George than his battle with a dragon. Legends also tell of his grisly martyrdom, capture of a demon, and postmortem abilities to cure madness through contact with his relics. In the Holy Land, there is even a tradition syncretizing St. George with a a supernatural figure of Muslim legend. We begin with a look at a modernized take on the St. George legend, the annual Drachenstich, or “dragon-stabbing,” held in the Bavarian town of Furth im Wald. Beginning in 1590 with a performer representing the saint riding in a church procession, George was soon joined by a simple, canvas dragon, which over time evolved into the the world’s largest 4-legged robot used in the event today. 19th-century Drachenstich in Furth im Walld Mrs. Karswell  next reads for us the primary source for the dragon story, Jacobus de Voragine’s collection of saint stories compiled around 1260, known as the Golden Legend. It popularized the tradition that George was a Christian soldier in in the Roman (Byzantine) army, born in Cappadocia, in central Turkey, and executed for refusing to bow to Imperial gods.  There is also a princes to be rescued from the dragon but no king gives George her hand in marriage, as you might expect.  Though Voragine set this episode in Libya, this setting  was not really retained i the  tradition. As one of early Christianity’s “soldier saints,” George held particular appeal for soldiers of the Crusades. We hear of two incidents of George leading Crusaders to victory as recounted in the Golden Legend and the Gesta Francorum (deeds of the Franks). When in 1483  William Caxton’s English translation of the Golden Legend appeared, anecdotes of British interest were added, including George’s connection to English knightood and The Order of the Garter. Elizabethan writer Richard Johnson featured George in his 1596 volume, Seven Champions of Christendom, elements of which were borrowed into mummers plays in which George became a hero.  We hear snippets of these. Returning to Germany, we learn how George was also said to have encouraged the armies of Friedrich Barbarossa at the Battle of Antioch during the Third Crusade. We then delve a bit more into the history of the Drachenstich performances. Some folksy details from 19th-century newspapers documenting the tradition are also provided. We then return to the Golden Legend for an account of George’s martyrdom.  The location of this episode is not specified, but George’s pagan nemesis here can be identified with Dacianus, the Roman prelate who governed Spain and Gaul. The tortures endured run the gamut from rack to hot lead, all of which are supernaturally endured until the saint is ultimately beheaded. Divine retribution in the form of fire falling from heaven is also included. Next, we investigate earlier sources adapted into Voragine’s dragon story, the first known being an 11th-century manuscript written by Georgian monks residing in Jerusalem. George’s background as a soldier from  Cappadocia is identical, as is the endangered princess, though the victory over the beast lacks elements of swordplay and is largely accomplished through prayer.  In this version, George is also responsible for the founding of a church complete with healing well. From the same manuscript, we hear a few more miracle stories, the “Coffee Boy” legend, George’s defeat of a loquacious demon, a cautionary tale of a murderous and greedy hermit ostensibly, and a charming story involving a unhappy boy, George, and a pancake. We then take a look at the oldest St. George text probably written in Syria around the year 600. It’s known as the “Syriac Passion of St. George,” and details an extraordinary series of tortures so fantastical as to be declared heretical by the Church in the Decretum Gelasianum, probably within a century of the story’s composition. 14th-cent Russian depiction of St. George’s Martyrdom Digging a little deeper, we then consider the Greek myth of Perseus and his rescue of the princess Andromeda, who is offered by her father as a sacrifice to a sea-monster. It’s certainly a striking parallel to the saint’s dragon legend, but the historical connections seem less profitable to trace than visual evidence found in a cave in George’s legendary homeland of Cappadocia. There, around the town of Göreme, one can find 9th- and 10th-century “cave churches” excavated by Byzantine Christians. One site known as the “Snake Church,” is named for its murals of serpents being speared and trampled by two soldiers on horseback. One rider has been identified as St. George. The other, St. Theodore, is another 4th-century martyr and soldier-saint with parallel story elements, including calling down fire on a pagan temple and destroying a dragon.  We then hear a bit more about Theodore and his connection to Constantinople and Venice.  The images of George and Theodore combatting dragons, significantly pre-date the earliest manuscript narrative of George and the dragon by perhaps a century, and it’s suspected that Theodore’s killing of a dragon may be an even older story. We also hear a bit about the St. Agapetus, whose legend offers further parallels and of the Christian mystic Arsacius, of which the same could be said. Cave Church image Visually, images of Christian soldier saints and dragons, such as those painted in Göreme, resemble an artistic motif of the Roman era known as the “Thracian Horseman” —  representations of a mounted warrior armed with a downward pointed spear. Under his horse’s legs is usually a boar, depicted as prey.  The image appears in various contexts, employed toward diverse magical purposes, which we discuss. Also discussed is related iconography of a Byzantine (and later Carolingian) motif,  “Christ in Triumph”or“Christ Trampling the Beasts,” along with images of St. George on horseback slaying a human figure believed to represent his nemesis, a pagan ruler, who in the Syriac Passion is identified as “the dragon of the Abyss.”  As these predate the more literal dragon combat, an evolution from allegorical to more literal representation is suggested. We end with stories of miracles associated with the relics of St. George, particularly chains said to have been worn by the saint in prison before his martyrdom.  Preserved in a convent church in Al-Kidr, a town on the West Bank, near Bethlehem, they are said to be particularly efficacious in curing madness in those who touch them — a belief held by local Christians and Muslims alike, We also encounter the supernatural figure of Muslim legend after whom the town is named. “Al-Kidr” — translated as the Green One — who has been syncretized in local tradition with St. George.