A Christmas Ghost Story VII

A Christmas Ghost Story VII

The Victorian tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas has been celebrated by Bone and Sickle since 2018.  This year is no exception as we share two stories in this episode, one comic, and one frightening. We begin with the Introduction to the 1891 anthology, Told After Supper, by the British writer, Jerome K. Jerome, …

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La Befana, the Witch of Twelfth Night

La Befana, the Witch of Twelfth Night

A short extra episode on Befana, the gift-bringing Italian witch associated with Twelfth Night, the end of the Christmas season.  Included in the show is material from the book, “The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas,” traditional music of the season, audio from actual celebrations, and a few pop songs associated with la Befana.

Vlad the Impaler

Vlad the Impaler

A figure of mythic proportions during his lifetime, Vlad the Impaler’s notoriety receded over the centuries only to be resurrected in the 1970s, when a pair of Boston University scholars went public with theories connecting him to Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula. We begin with snippet of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the …

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Devil Boards

Devil Boards

The devilish reputation Ouija boards enjoy in horror films is a relatively new phenomenon.  In the Victorian era, they were regarded by “psychical researchers” as something to be embraced in a spirit of calm scientific inquiry, while Spiritualists saw in them a means of reaching out to those who’d passed into the “Summerland,” an anodyne …

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Missing Intro for Episode 133

Missing Intro for Episode 133

Apparently, I clipped off the beginning of the show during the initial upload.  It’s been fixed, so this would only effect those downloading yesterday, but for those who missed it, here it is..

Spirit Boards

Spirit Boards

Ouija boards, or more generally, “spirit boards” have antecedents going back to the very first days of the Spiritualist movement.  We begin our show with a seasonally spooky visit to the cottage of the Fox sisters in Hydesville, New York, where the ghost of a murdered pedlar supposedly began communicating with the family through a …

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Announcement Trick-or-Treat By Mail

Announcement Trick-or-Treat By Mail

A special short announcement regarding the October 20 deadline for Trick-or-Treat-by-Mail for listeners joining our Patreon.  Find out how you can  receive a hand-packed candy bag from the home of Bone and Sickle Podcast. Each bag this year contains a special MYSTERY ITEM from Egypt! Visit: https://www.patreon.com/boneandsickle

“Young Goodman Brown”

“Young Goodman Brown”

We’re getting into the spirit of the season with a classic tale of witchcraft set in 17th-century Salem Village, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “Young Goodman Brown.” Written in 1835 for New England Magazine, it later appeared in the 1846 collection, Mosses from an Old Manse, which also includes the excellent supernatural story, “Rappaccini’s Daughter.”  Hawthorne …

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Subterranean Sages and Russian Mystics

Subterranean Sages and Russian Mystics

Agartha, Shambhala, and Hyperborea are all names for a a mythic spiritually and scientifically advanced  kingdom, always in some hidden location, sometimes within the earth, a legend which became an obsession of early Soviet spies, a mad soldier of fortune, and a mystical Russian artist during the 1920s. We begin with a clip from the …

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Inside the Hollow Earth

Inside the Hollow Earth

Borrowed from fairy lore, the notion of a hollow earth peopled by superior beings became a theme of literary fantasies as early as the 17th century and went on to influence fringe theories of the earth’s structure into the 19th century. We begin with a snippet of the medieval Norwegian ballad “Liti Kjersti,” telling the fairy …

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