A great review for our show!! Please share if you’ve ever tried to describe Bone and Sickle to friends and couldn’t quite find the words! FROM PODCASTGEEK Bleeding saints and forest witches MAY 15, 2022 / SLUDGIEBOY / 0 COMMENTS Bone And Sickle review Rating – Honestly, I’ve been a fan of this show for …

The Seeress: Germanic Tribes, Vikings, and Witches
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 …
“All the Haunts Belong to…”
…Joshua Shockley IV, who was randomly chosen from among our last 2 months of new subscribers. As a sort of consolation prize to others who joined, we’ll be making new T-shirts available exclusively to our subscribers in a month or two.

The Hellfire Clubs, Part Two
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 …

Hellfire Clubs, Part One
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. …
Patreon Raffle: All The Haunts be Ours
We have a special offer running from now until April 30, a chance to win the 15-disc set, All The Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium Of Folk Horror. It’s a splendid collection released in conjunction with the Folk Horror documentary Woodland Dark and Days Bewitched, which is one of the included discs. Not only does …

Grottos, Caves of Wonder
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 …

The Dead Lover’s Heart
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, literature, and …

Myth and Magic of the Smith
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 …

A Christmas Ghost Story IV
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 …