The lore of graveyard-haunting ghouls is unexpectedly best explained in a seminal work on the subject of werewolves. We hear in this episode from the 1865 volume, The Book of Were-Wolves, by Sabine Baring-Gould, an Anglican priest known for his voluminous writings on folklore, local curiosities, and church history. While our episode is called “Ghouls,” and ghouls are indeed what the author had in mind, Baring-Gould named this chapter “The Human Hyæna.” probably to better harmonize with the book’s theme of human-animal transformations.
Engraving showing François Bertrand, the “Vampire of Montparnasse,” from “Mémoires de M. Claude, chef de la police de sûreté sous le second Empire Paris,” Jules Rouff, 1880
Six historical witchcraft cases as related in the 1880 volume by James Grant, The Mysteries of All Nations, Rise and Progress of Superstition, Laws Against and Trials of Witches, Ancient and Modern Delusions Together with Strange Customs, Fables, and Tales.
Mr. Ridenour and Mrs. Karswell also share listener comments on the Halloween season as well as a remix of a seasonal viral video.
The folklore of Russian vampires describes a creature slightly different than what we’re accustomed. In tonight’s show we share a number of traditional tales from the 1873 volume Russian Folk-Tales by W. R. S. Ralston, a leading light of the Imperial Geographical Society of Russia and author of The Songs of the Russian People.
Tales of animal ghosts are usually relegated to the periphery of ghost story collections, but in this episode, we showcase this class of apparition. Our stories were collected in a volume from 1915 called Human Animals by Frank Hamel. It covers werewolves, animal transformations through witchcraft, possession by totemic animal spirits, and the phantom animals that haunt lonely roads, ancestral homes, and the storytellers’ imaginations.
For centuries, strange births, often sounding like mythological monsters, were regarded as portents of ill omen. We hear a number of these fantastical accounts, including a description of the birth of the”Monster of Ravenna” believed to foreshadow not only the defeat of Louis XII’s forces during the 1512 Battle of Ravenna but also taken later as a sign of God’s wrath and religious turmoil roiling up in the Reformation.
The accounts related are compiled in the 1820 volume, edited by R.S. Kirby, and entitled Kirby’s wonderful and eccentric museum; or, Magazine of remarkable characters. Including all the curiosities of nature and art, from the remotest period to the present time, drawn from every authentic source.
An Irish ghost story seems a good way to add a bit of Halloween spice to your St. Patrick’s Day. Our selection, which will be read by Mrs. Karswell, comes from the 1825 publication Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland. It’s the first of three volumes of stories told by the Irish antiquarian Thomas Crofton Croker, one of the earliest collector of the island’s folk tales.
Croker’s Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland.
Spirits of the corn (grain) fields from the United Kingdom to Russia have been imagined as embodiments of the harvest and guardians of the fields, sometimes evolving into fantastically cruel fear-figures in the process.
We begin with a look at the Scottish and English ballad “John Barleycorn,” first appearing as a broadside in 1568. The suffering hero of the song, “Sir John,” allegorically endures the brutal process of being buried, harvested, threshed, and eventually turned into beer. We hear some snippets of the song from The Watersons and Fred Jordan.
Some, like the turn-of-the-century mythologist James Frazer, imagined the ballad as an allegorical representation of ancient human sacrifice ensuring good harvest, and while that’s not generally believed now, by way of evidence, Frazer assembled an invaluable and encyclopedic catalog of now extinct agricultural folk customs in his 1890 magnum opus, The Golden Bough.
We examine a number of rituals, documented by Frazer, in which the spirit of the fields is said to take up residence in last grain to be harvested, often as an animal. One such creature, around which a substantial mythology has been spun, is a goat-like being called the Habergeiss. I’ve mentioned this bit of Alpine folklore previously in the context of Krampus and Perchten traditions, but here provide a more in-depth look at the many ways in which it’s been imagined.
Habergeiß at Nicholas play in Tauplitz. Photo by Wolfgang Böhm.
Also from German-speaking lands, the Bilwis, a sort of goblin or witch said to protect fields but more often described as a nocturnal thief of grain, employs small sickles attached at its feet. We also hear some methods of defeating this sort of mischief as described by Jacob Grimm.
Another German bit of folklore discussed is the Rye Wolf, often closely associated with a female embodiment of the grain. While more broadly referred to as the “Corn Mother,” she assumes her most fearful aspect in German rye fields, where she becomes the Rye Aunt (Roggenmuhme).
An extremely comprehensive and grisly catalog of her terrifying traits was compiled in Richard Beitl’s 1933 study, Investigations into the Mythology of the Child. We take a loving and lingering look at some of these horrific aspects and hear the Rye Aunt described in a tale from the Grimms as well as a story from 1926, told as true (even then) by the grandmother of Otto Busch, author of Thuringian Legends.
We also examine a lighter side of this figure, literally lighter, as she only appears at the hour of noon. Particularly common more in northeastern Germany and Slavic lands (Polednice in Czech, Poludnitsa in Russian) in English literature, she is usually called “Lady Midday,” or “The Noonday Witch.” Not only does she function as a fear-figure preventing kids from running into the fields but also serves to warn workers to cease their labors at the hour the sun is hottest lest she strike them down with exhaustion, pains, or madness.
Polednice/Noonday Witch., by Jiří Farský (1938)
A couple Czech films featuring this character are discussed — 2016’s The Noonday Witch/ Polednice and 2000’2 Wild Flowers/Kytice. The latter is based on an 1853 anthology of folkloric tales (Kytice) folkloric by Czech poet Karel Erben. Mrs. Karswell reads for us a recent translation of “The Noonday Witch.”
The show closes with some cinematic scarecrows, primarily a smuggler disguised as a scarecrow created by Russell Thorndike for his 1915 novel, Doctor Syn: A Tale of the Romney Marsh. We hear some clips from adaptations of Thorndike’s work, the 1962 Hammer film (with Peter Cushing) The Night Creatures, and Disney’s 1964 production The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh starring Patrick McGoohan.
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Master of the Wolves: Transylvanian and Balkan Wolf Lore
The Master of the Wolves is a supernatural figure central to Transylvania’s (modern Romania’s) voluminous body of wolf lore, a mythology that extends more broadly into Balkan regions once occupied, like Romania, by the ancient Dacians.
We begin with a snippet from a contemporary recording of the 1857 poem “St. Andrew’s Night,” by the Romanian poet and statesman Vasile Alecsandri. The poem’s association between the undead strigoi and moroi and the Romanian St. Andrew’s Night (November 30) was explored in our Transylvanian Vampires episode last year, but there is perhaps an even deeper connection between the St. Andrew, Romania, and the wolf.
Naturally, this brings us to the topic of werewolves. There are two wolflike monsters in Romanian folklore, the vârcolac and the pricolici, the latter being a closer match to our idea of the werewolf.
We discuss pricolici superstitions, which overlap largely with beliefs about the undead, of which the pricolici is often said to be a member.
The vârcolac, as we see, is rather different. Originally, it seems to have occupied a very limited and specific mythological niche as a creature that rises into the heavens at night to eat the moon, thereby causing an eclipse, or sometimes, the lunar phases. Over time, the vârcolac seems to have merged with more widespread werewolf beliefs.
The animal form associated with both pricolici and the vârcolac, however, is not always strictly defined as wolf-like. While the pricolici is sometimes said to assume the form of any number of “unholy” (but real-world) animals, the vârcolac has sometimes been compared to a dragon.
Dacian draco from Trajan’s Column
This wolf-dragon hybridization can also be found in the draco battle standard carried into by the Romanian Dacians in their wars against Rome. In its original form, the draco, consisted of a wolf head crafted of light metal, trailing a dragon-like windsock body. When in motion, a sort of whistle within the head emitted a shrieking sound that contributed to the Dacian’s fearsome reputation as warriors.
The historian Herodotus commenting on this reputation, also offered some observations on a particularly brutal Dacian rite, that of sending a “messenger” to their god Zamoxis. Mrs. Karswell provides the gory details in her reading of this account.
More modern Romanian myth-making brings together the man-god Zamolxis and the Dacian wolf, in the legend of The Great White Wolf, also read by Mrs. Karswell. This tale of a wolf leader seems to borrow from genuinely old legends describing St. Andrew as the “Master of the Wolves.”
Romanian cave said to have been the home of St. Andrew
In this role, Andrew is said to return to earth on his night to share with the wolves what prey they are to be allotted in the coming year. The gathering of wolves from all quarters and apparition of the saint on the occasion is a sight mortals witness only with dire consequences, as we hear in another legend related by Mrs. Karswell. Nor is it a good time to be abroad with wolves racing off after their pray, especially so as they’re sometimes said to be supernaturally enabled on this night.
The Master of the Wolves myth did not exclusively attach St. Andrew and his day (or night). St. Martin’s on November 11, can be the setting as in Greece and Germany. (Germany is is also home to a folk tradition discussed, Wolfauslassen (“Letting out the Wolves” or “Ringing in the Wolves” in which shepherds returning from the fields for the year parade through towns ringing bells to let the wolves know they are free to roam the pastures.
As well as on St. Martin’s day, the Wolf Master can also appear a bit later, on December 6 when St. Nicholas serves as the Master of the Wolves in Russia and Poland.
While generally associated with the late fall and winter when dwindling food sources makes wolves more aggressive, the Master of the Wolves could also appear in the spring, when the herds would return to pasture, and predators might require a different sort of magical wrangling. The saint controlling wolves in these cases is almost always St. George.
While versions of this figure are found throughout eastern Europe and Russia (and certain parts of western Europe), it is in Romania where the wolf is most prominent — celebrated with no less than 35 designated “wolf holidays,”of which St. Andrew’s is only the most well-known. This season runs from October into January and its observance is marked by an arcane body of superstitious practices designed to keep the animals at bay. These include reciting prayers, locking corrals with charmed locks, and binding scissors to keep shut the predator’s jaws, and the like. A folk figure called “St. Peter of Winter” appears at the end of his season with dire consequences for those who have neglected the requirements of the season.
Strangely, the most dreaded wolf of all during this season, is a lame wolf, who not only attacks livestock but man. Several of Romania’s wolf holidays pay homage to this figure in their name, such as “Lame Philip,” ostensibly named for the apostle Philip, but undoubtedly rooted in older pagan tradition. In Serbia, which shares Romania’s Dacian heritage, a similar figure appears during this season as Lame Daba, a demon portrayed in the company of wolves.
A possible clue to this association between lameness and a dreadful power over human life may lie in Romania’s version of the Three Fates, the ursitoare. The third member of this trinity, the one given the ultimate power to cut the thread of human life, is traditionally portrayed as lame.
We end the show with a look at a wonderfully bizarre 1976 Romanian-French-Russian co-production, Rock and Roll Wolf AKA Mama, a retelling of a Romanian tale also collected in Germany by the Grimms as “The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats.” Here’s a short preview clip of the film, which you can find in its entirety with English dubbing here on YouTube.
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 described that is, circular configurations of mushrooms sprouting overnight or ringlike markings of grass in fields.
Mushrooms in early fairy ring formation.
The pseudo-scientific 19th-century notion that these rings were caused by lightning strikes as espoused by Sir Walter Scott and Erasmus Darwin is then discussed with a modern parallel connecting this with flying saucer lore provided by Jacques Vallée’s 1969 book Passport to Magonia.
A more ancient connection between lightning and the fruition of mushrooms is then discussed with examples of this belief provided by the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder and poet Juvenal.
A connection between lightning and the production of a strange slime occurs in a contemporary pamphlet recounting the terrors of 1638’s Great Thunderstorm of Dartmoor England. Mrs. Karswell reads for us this lurid account believed to be the first description of ball lightning.
Rather than ball lightning, however, most accounts of heaven-sent “fireballs” from the early modern and modern era are believed to describe meteors, understood at the time as “falling” or “shooting stars.”
Folklore connects falling stars with the deposit upon the earth of a sort of slime or gelatinous substance known most commonly as “star jelly,” but a dozen or so other names from European folklore are also provided, with the sinister-sounding Welsh term “pwdre ser,” meaning, “rot from the stars” also being fairly common in more modern literature.
Some literary references to this belief are also provided, most of which contrast the beauty or hopeful wishes associated with a falling star and the loathsome heap of jelly it becomes on landing.
A few more modern theories attempting to provide a more scientific account are then provided. Most commonly these include star jelly as frogspawn, jelly fungi, or nostoc, a a single-celled organism that forms into filaments and these into colonies that look like gelatinous piles of dark green (and putrefying) grapes.
The traditional application of nostoc as a food source and medicine are also discussed, as the source of its name in the writings of the 16th-century Swiss natural philosopher and physician Paracelscus who regarded it as something blown “blown from the nostrils of some rheumatick planet.”
Thanks to its seemingly supernatural appearance with the nocturnal dew, the alchemists assigned an elevated role to nostoc, calling it “the water of the equinoxes.” Some illustrations of alchemists attempting to collect nostoc and touting its qualities are provided from the enigmatic Mutus Liber or “Mute Book” of 17th century France, as well as in the work of the modern alchemist Fulcanelli from his 1926 book The Mystery of the Cathedrals. The mystery of the identity of this writer calling himself “Fulcanelli” as well as the claims of his student Eugène Canseliet, who supposedly transmuted lead into gold in 1922 are touched upon.
Charles Fort’s “Book of the Damned”
We then have a look at nostoc through the writings of Charles Fort, whose 1919 volume, The Book of the Damned, provided inspiration for all future writings on scientific anomalies, the paranormal, and (to some extent science fiction.) Fort’s arguments about the identification of nostoc with star jelly are illustrated in his discussion of “the Amherst object,” a particularly weird lump of something-or-other said to have fallen in a field near Amherst, Massachusetts in 1819. We also hear a sampling of his eccentric prose echoing his facetiously posited theory of the “Super Sargasso Sea,” an inter-dimensional repository responsible for occasionally teleporting things (or people) in and out of our world.
A few more choice cases of meteors associated with mysterious gelatinous substances are discussed.
We conclude with a look at the inspiration for the 1958 film The Blob, in which a meteor crashes to earth releasing the titular menace upon a small Pennsylvania town. One possible inspiration is Joseph Payne Brennan’s novella, “Slime” published in Weird Tales in 1953, five years before the film’s release. However there are substantial differences between the storylines, which are discussed.
More interesting (in light of our topic) is the notion that the film was inspired by true events, namely an incident documented in newspaper reports of September 26, 1950, describing something bizarre encountered by Philadelphia police during their patrol. It doesn’t seem likely this story played a big role in inspiring the film, and while the newspaper account attempts to categorize the phenomenon as a particularly weird sort of “flying saucer” (saucers being particularly trendy at the time), eyewitnesses describe the object as something more akin to the fairy world. Mrs. Karswell reads the entire newspaper account.
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 völva (pl. völvur, völur) — the last meaning “staff bearer,” as a staff was a signifying attribute of the völva, one possibly also used as a magic wand. Staffs discovered in graves of certain high-status women, as suggested by luxurious grave goods, suggest these individuals may have been völvur. We hear some details regarding such discoveries in Denmark and Sweden.
Wands (grave-goods) believed to belong to seeress. Danish National Museum.
Next we provide a quick overview of the Nordic magic that may have been part of the völva‘s repertoire. Two Old Norse designations for witchcraft are galdr and seiðr (Anglicized as seidr). The latter has more to do with spoken or sung charms, and the latter most prominently with control of mental states but can also involve manipulation of physical realities.
We also address briefly the notion that, like the sibyls of the Classical world, the völva likely entered a trance in order to produce her utterances. Drumming is popularly associated with this, as it is central to the shamanic practice of the Sammi people on the northern and eastern fringes of Scandinavia and Lapland.
The first accounts we have of völvur come from Roman encounters with Germanic peoples on Europe’s mainland. A particularly important account we hear comes from Tacitus’ Histories, in which he describes a seeress by the name of Veleda, who guided the Bructeri tribe through their conflicts with the Romans. We also hear about a sacred grove of the Germans, one likely described to Tacitus by a Germanic priestess by the name of Ganna during her visit to Rome.
Illustration of Veleda and Romans from Alois Schreiber, Teutschland und die Teutschen (1823)
We also hear from the Greek historian Strabo, who in his Geographic portrays female seers of the Cimbri people, sacrificing prisoners of war, bleeding them, and telling fortunes from their entrails. Mrs. Karswell provides a lovely reading of this passage.
The earliest of our Scandinavian texts. one written anonymously probably around 960, is the Völuspá, (literally: “the prophecy of the völva). In the narrative the seeress in question is sought out by Odin himself, a dynamic testifying to the importance of the völva in Germanic culture.
Odin and the Völva by Karl Gjellerups, from Det kongelige Bibliotek, 1895
A particular episode in this epic poem features a seeress by the name of Gullveig (later changed to Heidr) who is attacked by the gods in Odin’s hall, an event leading to the war between the two divine races, the Aesir and Vanir. It’s speculated that this seeress may be the narrator of the prophecies recounted in the poem.
Probably the most finely detailed account of the völva’s activities in the real comes from the 13th-century Saga of Erik the Red. Its description emphasizes the honor with which the seeress was treated while visiting farmsteads to relate her prophecies. It also notes the use of galdr (singing magic) and lavishly details the special attire worn by a seeress.
Our next selected episode featuring a völva comes from the 13th-century Icelandic saga, the Saga of Örvar-Odd, a name translated usually as “Arrow-Odd”. This one involves the seer’s prophecy of an inescapable fate involving a horse.
Our final story of a Nordic witch is from Gesta Danorum or”Deeds of the Danes,” a 12th-century chronicle of the country by Saxo Grammaticus. It features a witch who transforms herself into a walrus at a critical moment and a body that really needs to be buried.
We close with some audio snippets from Freyia Norling, a modern practitioner of seidr, who from her home in the Arctic Circle, hosts the intriguing YouTube Channel “A Discovery of Nordic Witches.”
