While the dummies may be inherently creepy, they were not the source of ventriloquism’s dark reputation in earlier times. This originates with the understanding that the voice heard, when no mouth seems to speak, belongs to a demon.
We begin with a bit of audio mixing bits from various frightful ventriloquist films, including Devil Doll (1964), Magic (1978), and the earliest example of the sub-genre The Great Gabbo (1929). Also adding to the mix, is a scene from the 1945 British anthology, Dead of Night, the head-and-shoulders stand-out among these, offering a truly satisfying wraparound story and use of ventriloquist and wooden colleague.
Perhaps a third of our episode is dedicated to detailing the accounts of mysterious voices emerging from the possessed as documented in pamphlets and broadsheets of 16th- and 17th-century England. Witches are frequently involved, not as the ventriloquist themselves but as those who’ve sent these talkative demons into the bodies of their victims. One exception discussed is that of 16th-century case of Elizabeth Barton, also known as “The Holy Maid of Kent” or “The Nun of Kent,” in whose case, the voice happens to be divine rather than demonic.
From “Dead of Night” (1945)
Several linguistic issues are discussed along the way, including the source of the word “ventriloquist” from the Latin “venter” meaning belly (or more broadly “insides,” gut, or even womb) and “loqui,” meaning, “to speak.” While to many, the mysterious voices was understood to issue from the demoniac’s belly, other writers looked for a means of trickery employed, focusing on the Hebrew word “ov” taken from the Old Testament story of the “Witch of Endor,”in which King Saul, seeks out a medium who can foretell the outcome of his imminent battle with the Philistines. The future, in this story, is revealed by the spirit of the prophet Samuel, summoned from the dead. (The Witch of Endor is also discussed in our 2018 “Ancient Necromancy” episode).
This necromancer of Endor, is identified in many translations as “a woman who has a familiar spirit,” but in fact, the original Hebrew only describes her as a ba’alat ov, literally meaning “mistress” or “possessor of the ov.” The mysterious word can be used to designate a bottle or wineskin, a meaning some have used to paint the medium at Endor as a fake, employing a sort of bottle or bottle-like device acoustically to create an illusion of voice emerging from elsewhere, but the word also has a clearly supernatural meaning in other contexts, one fairly well matched by “familiar.”
Skeptical Protestants likely engaged in their tortured interpretations of the term “ov” as a ventriloquist’s prop thanks to the Greek translation of this story with which they were already better acquainted. Around the middle of the 3rd century BCE, when Greek was more widely spoken among the Jewish Diaspora than Hebrew, this widely circulated translation (known as the Septuagint) designated the necromancer at Endor as an engastrimythia, literally, “one who has words in his belly.
Around the 1st century, as we hear from Plutarch, the Greek and Latin terms for “belly-speaker” were beginning to be swapped out for Pythia, Python/Pythonesse, or “one who has the spirit of Python.” All of these refer to the ancient world’s most famous diviner, through whom a supernatural voice spoke, the Oracle (or Pythia) of Delphi. The temple to Apollo where she served was said to be the site where that god slew the monster Python, and hence that name,”Pythia,” was applied both to the location and its resident soothsayer.
“The Oracle,” Camillo Miola, 1880. Depicting the Pythia at Delphi.
A vapor said to rise from a cleft within the rocks at Delphi was often said to be the source of her inspiration and was personified as the spirit of Apollo rising within her or even uniting with her sexually. Much was made of this by medieval Christian writers in efforts to demonize the Oracle. In this way, the voice that spoke from within her, while sometimes said to issue from her belly, was also described by these writers as having its source within her “filthy parts,” (bowels or genitals). We hear some particularly lurid passages along these lines, which bring us to some commentary on the spirit of Python” by the 17th- century German polymath, Athanasius Kircher, who weaves together noises from the belly, ancient Egyptian religion, and flatulence. From there, it gets really out of hand with a discussion of the supposed Roman or Greek “god of farts,” Crepitus Ventris.
We end with brief discussion and audio sampling from the 1970’s Christian ventriloquist, Marcy Tigner, better known under her puppets’ name, “Little Marcy.”
A dybbuk is a “clinging spirit” of Jewish folklore, a ghost that can possess a human host.
Dybbuk, by Ephraim Moshe Lilien (1923)
Stories of dybbuks (pl. dibbukim in Hebrew for sticklers) date to the 16th century but have never traditionally included the idea of trapping a dybbuk in a box, a trope that only dates to a 20o3 eBay ad placed by a Portland antique refinisher Kevin Mannis. Although Mannis would later confess to having made up his listing’s backstory as a sort of creative experiment, the box has continued to be the center of an evolving mythology advanced first by its 2003 buyer, Jason Haxton. In 2016, the box was purchased by Ghost Adventure‘s TV personality Zak Bagans, for display in his Haunted Museum in Las Vegas. We open the show with some clips from a July 2020 episode in which Bagans opens the box.
The dybbuk-in-a-box trope was also furthered by the “based on a true story” 2012 horror film, The Possession, for which Mannis and Haxton served as consultants. We hear a clip from that film as well as a clip from the ridiculous 2009 dybbuk-without-a-box film TheUnborn. The 2015 Polish film (in English and Polish) Demon is also recommended as a more traditionally European take on the dybbuk folklore, thanks in part to its incorporation of a wedding motif.
A wedding dance with Death from 1937 film.
The idea of a dybbuk appearing at a wedding is borrowed from a classic 1937 film from Poland, The Dybbuk, a cinematic adaptation of Russian ethnographer S. Ansky’s highly successful 1914 play by the same name. Described as a sort of Romeo and Juliet meets The Exorcist, this classic of Yiddish theater was first performed in Warsaw in 1920, but was quickly was translated into dozens of languages and performed throughout Russia, Europe and the United States, popularizing this previously obscure figure of Yiddish or Ashkenazi folklore.
The story of the dybbuk begins with a 16th-century explosion of incidents in Safed (Tsfat) a mountain city in Northern Israel considered one of Judaism’s four holiest cities thanks to its role in the development of the Kabbalah and the particularly saintly occupants of its hillside cemetery.
The first and foremost figure in Safed’s association with Kabbalah is Isaac Luria, whose teachings are recorded by his student Chaim Vital in The Tree of Life, foundational text of Lurianic Kabbalism, the dominant school of Kabbalistic thought since the 16th century. Luria’s school converted Safed into a sort of spiritual hothouse, characterized by extremes of devotion, asceticism, and visionary experience — an environment that has been tied to the proliferation of dybbuk encounters recorded in 16th-century Safed.
Of these Safed accounts, we hear two lengthier narratives said to have transpired in 1571 and 1572 read by Mrs. Karswell, Without revealing too much that could spoil the stories, there are a few commonalities worth noting — the fact that dybbuks have a strange method of leaving their human host and that their hosts needn’t always be human.
We also learn the Kabbalistic explanation for the dybbuks compulsion to take a human host. It’s related to the notion of gilgul, or transmigration of souls, a process which ideally moves from lower forms to higher as ordered by the principle of tikkun olam, the “repair of the world,” or rectification.
A brief story from Chaim Vital’s spiritual autobiography, Book of Visions, illustrates a phenomenon paralelling that of the dybbuk, namely, the ibbur, the spirit of a good but still to be perfected individual, who may return to earth and possess a human host to accomplish required mitzvahs. We also hear of a strange grave rjte said to provoke encounters with these heavenly beings.
Our show wraps up with audio clips from modern instances of dybbuk possessions and banishings performed by Jerusalem Rabbis David Batzri and Menashe Amon between 1999 and 2019.
Western tales of bottled spirits, imps, devils, and even ghosts are largely borrowed from the Islamic and Jewish legends of jinn captured by King Solomon. In this episode, we explore how this is expressed in folk tales, demonological treatises, and literary borrowings.
We begin with a nod to the Assyrian god Pazuzu (and a clip from Exorcist II, The Heretic.) Here, aconnection between feared Assyrian spirits such as the jinn is mentioned. Pazuzu’s identity as a spirit of ill winds, brings us to a wind-related track from the original Exorcist soundtrack (from 1972’s oddball album Songs from a Hill.) It’s a recording of a wind harp, or Aeolian harp. And this brings us to the Greek god of winds, Aeolus.
Pazuzu figurine in Louvre.
Aeolus features in the Odyssey in an episode that anticipates our bottled spirit motif. He presents Odysseus a bag of wind to speed him on his journey. The wind spirits contained in this bag then brings us to a story about King Solomon trapping a wind demon in Arabia to aid him his construction of the Jerusalem Temple. We hear this particulsar tale from the medieval text, The Testament of Solomon read by Mrs. Karswell.
We then look a bi from further medieval texts commenting on Solomon’s capture of demons in various vessels, and how thesee are later broken open by heedless conquerors of Jerusalem, releasing a Pandora-style plague of demons upon the world.
Our motif entered the literary world via 17th-century Spain, in Luis Velez de Guevara’s satirical novel El Diable Cojuelo, “the lame devil.” We also hear a bit about a French adaptation, Alain-René Lesage’s 1707 novel, Le Diable Boiteux. Both of these feature the demon Asmodeus, and referenced Asmodeus’s identity as demon of lust, a notion taken up in various demonological treatises.
Alain-René Lesage’ss 1707 as Le Diable Boiteux, The Lame Devil
Next we look at folk tales, beginning in County Cork, Ireland, with the “Legend of Bottle Hill,” which takes its name from a curious (and curiously inhabited) bottle obtained by one Mick Purcell on this particular Irish hill. Both good and rather surprising bad luck follow.
From Scotland, we hear the legend of the Wizard of Reay and of his efforts to evade Satan’s over-eager efforts to claim his soul, as well as his bottle-imp story, involving a cask in the Cave of Smoo, a reputedly haunted sea cave in Sutherland.
The Wizard of Rea’s tactic for controlling the demon he finds in the cask is the same as we find in the folk tale, “The Wizards of Westman Islands,” from Iceland (in which we learn what role the sinister “Sending” plays in Icelandic folklore.)
From The Brothers Grimm, we hear “The Spirit in the Glass Bottle,” involving another bottled imp discovered in the gnarled roots of an ancient tree, and of a similar tactic used to subdue his volatile nature.
Jumping ahead a bit, we look at Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1891 short story, “The Bottle Imp,” which likewise adapts themes from the previous folk tales, while adding further complications and convolutions. The story has served as basis for several films, an opera, a standard magician’s trick, and more than one radio adaptation. (We hear a bit of one from a 1974 production by CBS Radio Mystery Theater.)
Stevenson makes use of some elaborate caveats attached to his bottled spirit, conditions that will produce either good or very bad luck, involving among other things, the need to rid oneself of the infernal talisman before one’s death by selling it for less than one payed for it. This motif is also found in German Romantic writer Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s novel Galgenmännlein (“little gallows man”), a name taken from the German word for the mandrake plant, and here we dig a bit into the grim folklore of that plant. Fouqué’s story makes use of some nice, gothic elements in its resolution, a “Black Fountain,” ravening beast, and sinister black rider, among others.
Switching gears a bit, we have a look at the topic of witch bottles. It’s a perhaps questionable how well these fit our theme, but we dig up some interesting source texts describing their original use, unseemly as it is. And we hear of some startling, tragic accidents involved in their historical use.
Witch bottle from Padstow England, 1800s.
We close our show with a look at near contemporary instances of those who claim to capture demons and ghosts in bottles. Apparently, bottled ghosts can be a big money maker. At least in New Zealand.
Our episode continues from our last with more terrors of the night, the incubi, sucubi, and the most notorious succubus, Lilith — and the breeding of demons
“Burney Relief” formerly thought to represent Lilith.
We begin with a quick nod to the shoddy treatment the topic of the incubus has received in films, as represented by the 1981 misfire, Incubus. From there, we jump to the Middle Ages, clarifying with a quick quote from Claxton’s Chronicle, the role of the succubus as seducer of men, and the incubus as threat to females. A few words from St. Augustine make clear a connection with other pagan figures with lecherous reputations, and a quote from King Jame’s Daemonologie offers a more innovative notion that the incubus and succubus are two faces of the same demon. Each fulfills what Augustine sees as the purpose of the paired demons — the succubus to collect the male’s semen and the incubus to convey this to the human female.
The offspring of these demonic/human pairings (with infants nursed by the succubi) are called “cambions” by the demonic-obsessed imagination clerics, but in secular folklore are virtually “changelings.” We hear of some legendary cambions, including Merlin, the hero Hagen of the Völsung saga, and Alexander the Great (the last in a tale related by Wilkinson).
Amulet protecting infants from Lilith.
There follows another nod to the cinema’s sleazy representation of the succubi and Lilith (films linked below). From there, we make a brief survey of Lilith in high culture, in Michelangelo’s “Temptation” mural depicting her in the Garden of Eden on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, her brief appearance at the Walpurgisnacht scene in Goethe’s Faust, and the outrageous portrayal of Lilith and Satan in the “un-performable” Decadent play of 1891, Lilith, by Remy de Gourmont.
Michelangelo’s “Temptation” with Lilith as Serpent
Our look at the more ancient history of the figure begins with an Old Testament reference to Lilith as a denizen of an enemy kingdom reduced to a haunted desert wasteland by Yahweh in the book of Isaiah. The Hebrews, we learn, borrowed the figure of the child-snatching, murderous, Lilith from the Babylonians/Akkadian storm and wind spirits known as the lilitu. An individualized and somewhat elevated specimen of this class seems to be the demi-goddess Lamashtu, whom we hear fearfully described in Wilkinson’s reading of an ancient hymn to this destroyer who shares many traits with the Hebrew Lilith. We also learn of a Lamashtu’s second-hand connection to the 1973 film The Exorcist.
After a quick look at Lilith’s later appearance in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we medieval Jewish legends. including The Alphabet of Ben Sirach, which first cast Lilith as Adam’s first wife, the Midrash Abkir, which described Lilith’s rape of Adam and their breeding of demons, and finally references to Lilith’s marriage to the demonic archangel Samael, in The Zohar and Treatise on the Left Emanation, a powerful pairing sometimes referred to darkly as “the other god.” We also find out about other legends with placed Lilith in a harem of wives belonging to Samael, including the demonesses Agrat bat Mahlat and Isheth Zenunim. Wilkinson provides us with a final, dramatic narrative from The Zohar describing the seduction and damnation of a foolish man at the hands of Lilith.
The show closes with an examination of the 1966 film, Incubus, starring William Shatner (before he was Captain Kirk). We learn about the curious decision to shoot the film in the artificial language of Esperanto and the alleged “curse” that haunted the production.
