Stories of witchcraft and folk-healers in early Pennsylvania are surprisingly plentiful. In this episode, we examine the state’s German-American tradition of Braucherei that spawned these tales. The practice came over with immigrants from Germany’s southwestern Rhineland beginning in the late 1700s and established itself among the Pennsylvania “Dutch” (a misunderstanding of “Deutsch”) in the state’s …
Emperor Nero’s reputation for wickedness and depravity had already attained mythic status within a century of his death, making him a prototype for early Christian beliefs regarding the Antichrist. We begin the show with a look at the role poison played in Nero’s ascent, putting him on the throne at the age of 17 in …
We’re doing something different this time out. As we are celebrating Bone and Sickle’s third anniversary on April 30, we’re taking a week or two off to rejuvenate and prepare new material for year four. To fill the gap, we’re offering listeners a sample of the short bonus episodes all our $4-and-up Patreon subscribers hear every …
In this episode, we continue our survey of supernatural sailors’ lore of the North with a look at mermen, Iceland’s “evil whales,” and sea-draugs. After a brief audio tidbit recalling our previous discussion of the Norse World Serpent, Jörmungandr (courtesy of the TV show Vikings), we briefly reconsider the Kraken in the context of the 13th-century Norwegian …
The Kraken is only one of the monsters said to inhabit the storied northern seas of Scandinavia. This episode is the first of two that will examine fantastical nautical tales of these regions. We begin with a bit of dialogue about the Kraken uttered by Davy Jones in Disney’s 2006 Pirates of the Caribbean film Dead …
As I announced in our Bees episode, we’ll be printing a second batch of Bone and Sickle shirts at the end of April. Because there was a high demand last time, and because we need to generate a bit more support for the show, shirts orders will only be available to our Patreon subscribers, though …
The mythology of bees has been tied for centuries to notions of the otherworld and death. In this episode we trace some of that folklore along with examining some highly peculiar uses of honey. Horror or sci-fi films referencing bees exploit the more mundane fears bee holds for mankind. Our survey of these includes clips …
Medusa was one of the Gorgons, creatures originally considered quite monstrous, who over the centuries came to be humanized and even regarded as beauties transformed into snake-haired villains. In this episode, we’ll dig back to the most ancient sources to examine the bare bones of the myth. We begin with a nod or two to the …
The motif of lovers retaining the head of a decapitated partner is surprisingly widespread. In this — our romantic Valentine’s Day episode — we have a look at old ballads, literature, fairy tales, legends, and even a few historical anecdotes in which such things occur. We begin with the English murder ballad, “In Bruton Town,” …
The macabre feelings stirred by waxwork figures go far beyond their use in horror films, back to the Terror of the French Revolution, and beyond to their use as funeral effigies and in magic rites of popular Italian Catholicism and Roman-Etruscan witchcraft. We begin with a brief look at wax museums in horror cinema (going …