Edgar Allen Poe Archives - Bone and Sickle

Inside the Hollow Earth

By boneandsickle | July 1, 2024

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:01:00 — 69.8MB)

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 story of a young woman abducted into the earth by the Mountain King, and follow this an anecdote from Gerald of Wales’ 12^th-century Itinerarium Cambriae (Journey through Wales) describing a kidnapping of a young boy by “two tiny men,” and the interior world he visits.

We then hear from Margaret Cavendish, a 17th-century poet, playwright, and writer on a variety of philosophical, political, and scientific topics. Her poem “The Fairy Queen’s Kingdom”(1653) and prose fantasy The Blazing World (1666) introduce the idea of interior kingdoms accessible only through entrances at the polar ends of the earth.

Over the next couple centuries, at least a half dozen novels describing travels into an interior world appeared. We briefly touch on Danish-Norwegian writer Ludvig Holberg’s Niels Klim’s Underground Travels (1741), Giacomo Casanova’s Icosaméron (1788), American writer Mary Bradley Lane’s Mizora: A Prophecy (1880), and Irish-American writer William R. Bradshaw’s The Goddess of Atvatabar (1892), the last coming closer to what we would think of today as science fiction. Universal to these hollow earth tales is portrayal of the interior civilization as a utopia, highlighting the failings of our own.

We then spend some time examining the particularly weird hollow 1895 earth novel by John Uri Lloyd, Etidorhpa, or, the end of the earth: the strange history of a mysterious being and the account of a remarkable journey, an underground adventure tale larded with odd religious, philosophical and pseudoscientific theories. It describes the education of a character identified only as “I—Am—The—Man—Who—Did—It,” guided by an eyeless amphibious humanoid along a subterranean route, with stops for various knowledge-imbuing experiences, i.e., “How to See Your Own Brain,” as one chapter is titled.

Next we explore a late 19th-century cult founded in upstate New York by Cyrus Tweed, who went by the name “Koresh.” Koreshanity, as it was called, regarded Tweed as a second coming of Christ and taught that earth’s inhabitants actually live on the inside of our hollow planet. His teachings began with an 1869 vision experienced during his laboratory pursuit of what he called “electro-alchemy.” Mrs. Karswell reads for us his account in which he encounters God in his female aspect. We hear of the cult’s heyday in the first years of the 20th century on Estero Island, of the coast of Fort Myers, Florida, and of the uncomfortable situation that attended Tweed’s death in 1908.

We then hear a bit about the man most widely associated with hollow earth pseudoscience, the American John Cleves Symmes, Jr., who in 1812 declared these beliefs in published his “Circular No. 1,” and later lobbied Congress to mount an expedition that would verify his theory. Symmes’ bold proposition was so widely known at the times as to be spun into a novel, our next topic, the anonymously penned Symzonia: Voyage of Discovery (1819), a work of utopian fiction with steampunk-style details.

Edgar Allan Poe’s only novel, written in 1838, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, describes a voyage into the South Polar seas. Passages from the novel’s startling ending, which appears to describe entrance into the hollow earth, are read by Mrs. Karswell. Poe is believed to have been introduced to this concept by writer, and explorer J.N. Reynolds, who figures into the mystery of the writer’s mysterious death, as we hear.

A bizarre culinary experience is next described in passages from William F. Lyon’s 1821 book, The Hollow Globe. We hear how meat from the frozen remains of mammoths, is taken as evidence for their survival in the earth’s interior.

Finally, we discuss Journey to the Center of the Earth, not just the 1864 novel by Jules Verne but a same-name French novel written earlier in 1821 by Jacques Collin de Plancy. Mr. Ridenour offers some final thoughts on the dinosaurs from Verne’s novel as well as its 1959 film adaptation.

Walled Up Alive

By boneandsickle | January 17, 2020

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:26 — 49.7MB)

Walling up a living victim, or immurement, has been used both as a punishment and for darker, magical purposes. In this episode, we detangle the history from the folklore of this grisly act.

We begin with an instance of immurement from Edgar Allan Poe’s 1846 story “The Cask of Amontillado” (including a clip from a dramatization in 1954 radio show, Hall of Fantasy) and also get a glimpse of director Roger Corman’s freewheeling use of this element from Poe his 1962 anthology film, Tales of Terror, as well as 1961’s The Pit and the Pendulum.

Tales of Terror still — Peter Lorre walls up Vincent Price in Roger Corman’s Tales of Terror (1962)

Poe’s interest in immurement is typical of Gothic writers and their fascination with crypt-like spaces, often including the cells and catacombs within Catholic churches and monastic communities. Tales of immured nuns, abbots, and abbesses are particularly common, with the deed understood most typically as a punishment for unchastity but also occasionally for other outrageous deeds or teachings (including a case of dabbling in the black arts). We have a look at some cases in which actual immured skeletons were said to have been discovered in religious communities and then consider the lore explaining their presence. We also look at ways in which writers like Sir Walter Scott and H. Rider Haggard blurred the line between historical and literary stories.

Walled up Nuns book — An 1895 booklet debating the topic of “Walled up Nuns & Nuns Walled In”

It’s likely that tales of nuns immured for unchastity were particularly prevalent as they echo the fate of Rome’s Vestal Virgins who failed to protect their virginity. We hear some details of immurements, not only from ancient Rome, but also Greece as well as a particularly gruesome account read by Mrs. Karswell describing an ancient Assyrian revenge spree featuring immurement.

Cornelia the Vestal Virgin — “The Death of Cornelia, Vestal Virgin” by G. Mochetti.

Medieval accounts of immurement we look at include the Christian legend of The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus and one recounted in Dante’s Divine Comedy, that of Count Ugolino della Gherardesca of Pisa (and his children/grandchildren, who are involved in a particularly grisly way).

Our next segment looks at punitive immurement from a cluster of legends in Scandinavia and the Baltic states. We begin with a story from the Swedish island of Gotland, that of the Jungfrutornet (“maiden’s tower”) in the town of Visby. The tower’s name is taken from the story of a maiden, who falls in love with a spy from Denmark, who uses her to obtain keys to the city gate in preparation for a devastating invasion. The maiden’s punishment for betraying her town is, as you would have guessed, immurement.

We hear a similar story from Finland, which serves as the basis of the song (from which we hear a clip) Balladi Olavinlinnasta or the ballad of Olaf’s Castle, and also a tale from a castle in Haapsalu, Estonia, said to be haunted by the maiden immured there. Then we look at a church in the Estonian town of Põlva, where a particularly devout maiden was said to have allowed herself to be interred in a position of kneeling devotion as a sort of religious talisman forever protecting the church.

Walled in Wife — Sculpture of the walled in wife Rozafa, an Albanian version of the stonemason legend.

This notion of self-sacrificing immurement in a Christian context figures into the bizarre legend recounted of the 6^th-century Irish saint Columba and his companion Odran, who allowed himself to be entombed in the foundation of a church on the Scottish island of Iona.

Our last segment looks at further stories of living humans entombed in buildings and other structures in what’s called a “foundation sacrifice.” A cluster of tragic legends and ballads from southeastern Europe tell similar stories of women immured in structures by their husbands who work as stonemasons. We hear these tales illustrated by a clip from the Hungarian ballad Kőműves Kelemen (“Kelemen the Stonemason”) as well as a bit of the soundtrack from the 1985 film The Legend of Suram Fortress by Sergei Parajanov — it’s based on a Georgian folk tale, so geographically close, though not quite one of the stonemasons-who-wall-up-their-wives genre. But it’s a lovely film I just wanted to include.

We then move west in Europe to hear some stories of foundation sacrifices collected largely in Germany. These include ancient sacrifices of children to the security of city walls, castles, and bridges, including a panic around a child sacrifice presumed necessary to a railroad bridge constructed near the town of Halle as late as the 1840s.

We end with a look at “church grims,” protective spirits of animals buried in church foundations (or churchyards) in Scandinavia and England, with lambs being preferred in the former and dogs in the latter — providing a connection to England’s black dog mythology.

And there’s one last story, much more modern, a 2018 news story from Houston Texas.

#32 Vampires, Shroud-Eaters, and the White Plague

By boneandsickle | September 4, 2019

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:08 — 38.6MB)

This episode explores the connection between vampires and disease, beginning in 19th-century New England with a strange graveyard ritual involving the exhumation of the bodies of Mercy Brown and family members in 1892. The gruesomely ritualistic destruction of Mercy’s body parts was spurred by a belief that those who succumbed to tuberculosis might live on in the grave and infest loved ones with the disease.

Mercy Brown's Grave — Mercy Brown’s Grave

Mercy’s case is the last and best known of cases like this beginning in the late 1700s and occurring throughout the area, particularly in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Vermont. Accounts of several more cases involving cursed vines growing from corpses and a shockingly macabre and bloody ritual occurring on an idyllic village green in the town of Woodstock, Vermont, are read by Mrs. Karswell. (We even hear a clip of a little tourism spot for Woodstock, though surely not in the context it was imagined when produced.)

The association of vampiric entities with times of plagues and epidemics came to New England from Europe, and might be compared to the German belief in the Nachzehrer, an undead creature known to appear in times of pestilence to spread disease. A defining attribute of the Nachzehrer is its tendency to feed upon its shroud and even its own body, a repast providing the creature the nourishment necessary to then rise and continue feasting on the living. Another interesting term for the Nachzehrer deriving from the noises that it produced in its grave would be schmatzende Toten or “smacking dead.” We hear a number of accounts of such creatures from German/Latin texts dating to the 1400s, including the definitive work on the topic, the 1679 volume by theologian Philippus Rohr, called in Latin, “The Masticating Dead.”

Moving even further back to the Middle Ages, we examine some stories of plague-spreading vampires from England, including a 12th-century account from William of Newburgh, which includes the grisly destruction of a corpse swollen with blood, and an account from 1135 by Geoffrey of Burton, featuring an evil spirit in the form of a crow arising from the monster’s burning heart. Both stories associate the vampire particularly with the spread of disease.

We also have a quick look at archeological evidence for the type of vampire rituals discussed — disordered graves identified as “deviant burials,” or “therapeutic burials” in which bodies believed to be undead may be mutilated, staked into the grave, or — in cases like those we are focusing on — have rocks or other objects stuffed into their mouths to stop the creature from feeding on its shroud, or worse, the blood or vitality of those above the earth.

Also discussed is the use of plague imagery in German versions of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Nosferatu, both Director F.W. Murnau 1922 version and Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake.

Whether Bram Stoker may have been influenced by reports of the New England tuberculosis vampires of the 1800s is addressed, and we have a deeper look at how romantic 19th-century ideas about tuberculosis influenced not only his portrayal of vampirism, but the work of other literary artists, painters, and composers. Among the artists mentioned are Lord Byron, Alexander Dumas, Claude Monet, John Keats, and Edgar Allan Poe. We also hear some clips of musical deaths by tuberculosis from the operas La Traviata and La Boheme.

Monet's "Camille Monet on her deathbed" — Monet’s “Camille Monet on her deathbed”

We conclude the show, as we began, with another musical composition played at graveside, and a story of heart removed and preserved in cognac, that of Frédéric Chopin, another victim of “the white plague.”

#18 Wild Men, Furry Saints, and Burning Dancers

By boneandsickle | January 14, 2019

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:46 — 34.6MB)

This time round we look at the medieval myth of the Wild Man, its connection to seasonal folk traditions, peculiar influence on Church teachings, and a macabre historical incident featuring dancers costumed as Wild Men.

We begin with a bit of Edgar Allen Poe filtered through Roger Corman, namely a clip from the director’s 1964 production The Masque of the Red Death. In the film, Corman incorporates a grisly scene borrowed from Poe’s short story “Hop Frog,” an accident revolving around highly inflammable ape costumes.

We then turn to Poe’s historical inspiration for this scene, namely a 1393 celebration held in the Parisian court of Charles VI, a masque which has come to be known as Bal des Sauvages (Ball of the Wild Men) or more commonly the Bal des Ardents (Ball of the Burning Men). As you may guess, the Wild Man suits donned for this event also proved quite flammable, leaving four courtiers dead. Graphic details are provided. While Charles also wore one of these less than safe costumes, he was not injured in the event but went on to suffer from troubles of a different sort, as we later explore.

Bals des Ardents, from Jean Froissart Chroniques, 1483

Other costume customs associated with the Wild Man are next examined — a strange case from James Frazer’s The Golden Bough (involving a blood bladder), and mention is made of Wild Man costumes of straw or vegetation often identified as “straw bears,” as in the Straw Bear Festival of Whittlesea, in the UK, or other vegetation clad Wild Men who appear in Carnival processions in Basel, Switzerland, Telfs, Austria, and the Wild Man Dance held every five years in Oberstdorf, Bavaria. Audio clips from the events in Whittlesea, and Telfs are heard in the background.

Wild Man dancers from Oberstdorf, Bavaria.

Classical figures that blended into the Wild Man mythos are discussed: the satyrs, fauns, and particularly Silvanus, as are other pagan figures that tended to overlap with the Wild Man — the Dusios of the Celts of Gaul, the schrat of German-speaking lands, and the ogre, a figure seemed particularly influential in French and Italian traditions.

While pagan versions of Wild Men were regarded by the Church as demonic, the image of the Wild Man was in some occasions adopted into saint iconography. We see a number of examples drawn from the era of the Desert Fathers, when solitary hermitage in the wild was commonly understood to be a path to God. Medieval artists, we learn, tended to take the “wild” aspect of these figures, rather literally, and certain church legends seem to support this.

St. Mary of Egypt from the Dunois Book of Hours.

Real world figures equated with the Wild Man are also examined. We meet the first historical example via a painting of the 16th-century figure, Petrus Gonsalvus, an object in the famous Wunderkammer (“cabinet of curiosities”) collection at Ambras Castle in Innsbruck, Austria. Other items in the collection, including a disturbing portraits of a deformed court jester and of a Hungarian nobleman living with lance embedded in his head are mentioned, as is an odd pop song related to one of P.T. Barnum’s sideshow personalities, Jo-Jo the Dog-faced Boy. A clip from Jean Cocteau’s 1946 adaptation of “Beauty and the Beast” is heard.

Petrus Gonsalvus, anonymous 16th-century painting.

Oh, I also promised to post this picture of Barbara van Beck…

We conclude the show returning our attention to France’s Charles VI, hearing the story of his mental breakdown and behaviors and delusions that earned him the epitaph, “Charles the Mad.”