literature Archives - Page 2 of 3

The Frankenstein Method

By boneandsickle | August 20, 2020

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:59 — 56.1MB)

The method Frankenstein employed to create life is left mostly a mystery in Mary Shelley’s 1818 book. How then did the notion of stolen body parts stitched together and animated by lightning become so firmly entrenched in popular imagination?

Our episode begins with a clip from Universal’s pattern-setting 1931 production, Frankenstein, in which Henry Frankenstein rhapsodizes about building the creature’s body from the dead. While the idea’s suggested in Shelley’s novel, the process doesn’t quite seem to match the cinematic treatment in which the creature’s fabricated from whole human body parts stitched together. We’ll hear some passages read by Mrs. Karswell, that seem to suggest Shelley’s Frankenstein fabricates his creature instead from component materials — tissues and whole systems built up slowly over bones obtained from the charnel house. The creature’s large stature in films, however, matches the literary prototype — for very practical reasons, as is explained.

Next we have a look at how Shelley portrays Victor Frankenstein’s desire to create life as influenced by his study of alchemical texts (by Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus,) Of particular interest here is the work of his Swiss countryman, Paracelsus, who in the 16th century set down directions for the creation of a homunculus, a tiny human-like being grown in a glass bottle.

These comments, in a general way, seem to have influenced an odd inclusion in the script for 1935’s The Bride of Frankenstein, in which Frankenstein’s partner in monster-making, Dr. Pretorius, presents his own experiments in creating homunculi (as in the clip played).

Pretorius and “Devil” homunculus, Bride of Frankenstein

As further evidence that Bride’s screenwriters went digging in some rather obscure texts, the film’s portrayal of the miniature king escaping his bottle to pursue a homunculus-queen in an adjacent bottle appears to be directly lifted from a legend of an Austrian freemason Count Johann Ferdinand von Kufstein, creating homunculi in 1755 — a legend appearing only as a footnote in an 1896 biography of Paracelsus by the Theosophist Franz Hartmann.

While none of this appears in Shelley’s novel, some scholars have attempted to locate the inspiration for her novel in the work of another alchemist: Johann Conrad Dippel, in particular because the location of his birth in 1673 is listed as Burg Frankenstein, Castle Frankenstein on a hill near the city of Darmstadt Germany. We look at evidence for parallels in Shelley’s story and von Dippel’s career, and though the linkage appears to be fairly speculative, we end up with some good stories involving the misuse of bone oil, and a corpse dyed blue.

We next examine references to Victor Frankenstein’s interest in lightning and galvinism (early notions of electricity), and how this supplants his earlier interest in alchemy. The connection between galvinism, 18th-century researcher Luigi Galvani, and frog legs is explained, as is Mary’s husband Percy Shelley’s hands-on dabbling in this field.

While both Percy and Mary had an interest in this evolving field, their understanding of these matters could often be of a more poetic than scientific. In Mary’s introduction to the 1831 reissue of her novel, she references galvinism as a possible source of the creature’s animation, though the idea here is inspired by her highly idiosyncratic understanding of an experiment conducted by Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles). A reference to what seems to be living pasta is also muddled into all this.

Next we hear a a bit about Luigi Galvini’s nephew Giovanni Aldini, and his use of electricity to produce convulsions in the carcasses of oxen as well as a notorious 1803 experiment with the body of a recently executed convict from London’s Newgate Prison. We don’t know if Shelley was aware of these experiments, but it’s certainly possble.

Even more ambitious than Aldini’s experiment was one conducted by the Scottish physician Andrew Ure in Glasgow in 1818. Ure also worked with the body of an executed convict but with stated intention of actually reviving the deceased using electricity. The date on this one (the same year as Shelley’s composition of the novel) makes it highly unlikely to have influenced her composition, but the grisly details seem nonetheless worth relating.

Ure’s experiment, illustr. “Les merveilles de la science” 1867

Another suggested source of inspiration for Frankenstein is the researcher Andrew Crosse, known to locals living near his isolated mansion in Somerset’s Quantock Hills as “The Thunder and Lightning Man.” Crosse converted his home into a lab for the study of electrostatic energy produced in the atmosphere, channeling this into an immense array of homemade batteries, and releasing thunderous charges mistaken by neighbors for lightning of his own creation.

While the case for any of these serving as direct inspiration to Shelley is rather tentative, it’s actually the more familiar figure of Benjamin Franklin whom the author mentions in her novel. In a passage removed from the 1831 publication, Franklin’s kite experiment is referenced, making him the only contemporary electrical researcher mentioned in the text. An article about Franklin is also a likely source for the reference to Prometheus in the novel’s subtitle, The Modern Prometheus.

The Frankenstein of Universal films and beyond has its roots in theater. For many years Shelley’s novel was actually better known from theatrical adaptations, which began appearing not long after the book’s publication. The first was 1823’s, Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein, which Shelley herself attended with a mix of irritation and delight. It’s in this play that the character of the laboratory assistant first appears, here as “Fritz” (as in the 1931 film) and later acquiring the name “Igor.” Only three years later, The Man and the Monster; or, the Fate of Frankenstein appeared giving audiences the first direct representation of the monster’s animation.

There is still no electricity involved in all of this by the time the first cinematic adaptation appears in 1910 — Edison Studio’s 13-minute production called simply Frankenstein. Here we see Victor Frankenstein brewing up his creation in a vat, pouring in flashing chemicals.

The 1927 play Frankenstein: An Adventure in the Macabre by Peggy Webling, served as the basis for Universal’s 1931 film, but even here, there is no electricity animating the creature, a feat accomplished instead by Frankenstein administering the alchemist’s “Elixir of Life.” In 1931, this play was itself reworked into another theatrical adaptation by writers of the studio’s Dracula, John Balderston and Garrett Fort. It’s only here that electrical apparatus is employed, an aspect director James Whale whole-heartedly embraced based on his fondness for the mad scientist’s lab in the 1927 film Metropolis.

We finish this novel-to-film progression with a quick look at elements of Shelley’s novel brought to the fore in 1935’s The Bride of Frankenstein and the creator of the props that populated the film’s laboratory, Kenneth Strickfaden.

Then there’s a few bizarre footnotes on Ben Franklin from recent history. Very strange indeed!

#33 Ghosts from Purgatory

By boneandsickle | September 26, 2019

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:13 — 40.5MB)

Hear how notions of Purgatory influenced medieval ghost stories, the tradition of All Souls’ Day, and a Neapolitan “cult of skulls.”

We set the scene with a clip from “The Lyke Wake Dirge,” a 14^th–century British song sung or chanted as a sort of charm over the body of the deceased in the night before burial. It describes the perils confronted by the soul during its journey into the afterlife, describing a “thorny moor,” and “Bridge of Doom,” which must be traversed to arrive in a none-too-friendly Purgatory.

We take a moment to review the historical Catholic concept of Purgatory, one usually associated with fire and torment, albeit of a temporary rather than everlasting nature and geared toward the further purification of the soul bound for Heaven.

Souls in Purgatory, Missal of Eberhard von Greiffenklau, Walters Manuscript

Gregory the Great, the 6th-century pope, is one of the earliest influences on the notion of Purgatory offering as evidence a ghost story of a wicked bishop condemmed to haunt the baths. We also hear of a grisly apparition of Gregory’s dead mother that supposedly appeared in a church where, legend has it, Gregory was saying mass.

From the 8th-century English chronicler Bede, we hear of a man named Drythelm who is granted a vision of Hell, that is “not the Hell you imagine,” (i.e., Purgatory instead) and of the Irish saint. Fursey, who was flown by an angel over purgatorial fires, where a surprising encounter with a demon provides him a curious souvenir.

St. Patrick went one better than ghost stories, at least according to legend. With a tap of his bishop’s crook, he’s said to have cracked open the earth to reveal a gateway to Purgatory itself, all in an effort to convert those stubborn pagans who wanted something a bit more concrete to validate the gospel. A variety of medieval legends chronicle adventures through this underworld, and the site (though not the cave itself) is still open to visitors to a tiny Irish island in Loch Dergh (“the lake of the cave.”)

Though it’s not specifically Purgatory, descriptions of hellish torments identical to those that might be experienced there are particularly plentiful in the 12^th-century Irish text The Vision of Tondal. Mrs. Karswell reads for us all the best passages.

Following a snippet of a late medieval ballad from Norway, Draumkvedet* or “The Dream Poem,” which relates its own story of a visionary journey into the afterlife, we discuss the relationship between All Souls’ Day, prayers for the dead, the cult of the Anima Sola (“lonely soul” suffering in purgatory), and the strange Neapolitans “cult of skulls,” including that of “Princess Lucia,” a legendary lovesick suicide.

Next we hear some stories of frustrated demons and a graveyard full of grumbling corpses from Jacobus da Varagine,1260 compilation of saint stories, Legende Aurea, or The Golden Legend, followed by the utterly bizarre ghost stories written on some spare pages of a manuscript collection by a 13th-century Cisterian monk from the abbey of Byland in Yorkshire, or “The Byland Ghost Stories.”

From 14th-century France, we hear a story known in modern English as The Ghost of Guy, describing a series of ghostly visitations by a soul condemned to Purgatory — and the surprisingly colorful reason they were necessary!

Our last ghost story comes from The Adventures of Arthur, a story from northern England, probably set down in the late 14^thcentury. It tells of a particularly loathsome manifestation of Queen Guinevere’s mother that rises from within a lake with some pious advice for her daughter.

Cult of Skulls, Fontanelle Cemetery, Naples

We end with two more modern efforts to provide evidence of souls suffering in the afterlife: Rome’s very small, and very odd Museum of the Souls in Purgatory created by a particularly obsessive 19th-century priest and a classic urban legend in audio form captured from late-night airwaves of a few decades ago.

* Norwegian listeners: my apologies for any errors in pronunciation of “Draumkvedet.”

#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.”

#21 A Deal with the Devil

By boneandsickle | February 27, 2019

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:57 — 52.1MB)

The legend of Faust is the archetypal deal with the Devil. This episode looks at the figure as represented in folklore, local legends, plays, puppet shows, literature, films, and opera.

A precedent for the tale seems to be the story of St. Theophilus, a cleric in 6^th-century Adana (in modern Turkey) who, as legends have it, summoned the Devil to help elevate him to the status of bishop (and, yes, there is some repentence involved in this one, seeing as how he went down in Church history as a saint). He is the subject of a 13^th-century French play, The Miracle of Theophilus, which happens to be the source of a chant to summon Lucifer written in an unknown language — one, which made its way into Wiccan traditions via Gerald Gardner, and which even ended up in the lyrics of the 1969 album Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls by the band Coven. The segment starts with a snippet from this cult album.

There does seem to have been an actual magician, astrologer, or alchemist by the name of Faust wandering southern Germany in the late 15^thand early 16^thcentury, though very little is known of his life other than passing references in a few letters and some town records noting that individuals by this who were banned for fraudulent or roguish activities. We look at a few of these historic references.

Legends regarding the figure are more plentiful. We hear of a number of supposedly dangerous grimoires attributed to Faust said to be kept at sites in Germany and also discuss a number of legendary feats of magic (including conjuring an entire castle along with a sumptuous, if unsatisfying, banquet for castle guests). We also have a look at a number of towns offering “evidence” that they were the site where the Devil came to claim the doctor, including one town that rents a room in an ancient inn where the grim event was said to have transpired.

Frontispiece "The remarkable life of Dr. Faustus, a German astrologer and enchanter" (1838) — Frontispiece “The remarkable life of Dr. Faustus, a German astrologer and enchanter” (1838)

The meat of our show is a look at the earliest written narrative on Faust, a chapbook published anonymously in Frankfurt in 1587, The History of Doctor Johann Faustus. We hear a dramatic, even cinematic, passage describing Faust’s summoning of the Devil in Germany’s Spessart forest (an area rich in folklore and home to the Brother’s Grimm). Also related are Faust’s whirlwind tour of of Hell, a number of comic supernatural pranks he plays, and, of course, the dramatic hour of reckoning and its grisly aftermath.

Richard Burton in his 1967 film, Doctor Faustus

We next hear some snippets from one of the legend’s most prominent film treatments, the 1967 Richard Burton-Elizabeth Taylor vehicle Doctor Faustus. Though the subject of numerous negative reviews, the film may appeal to horror fans thanks to its visual styling similar to a Hammer film of the period. The wonderful 1926 German silent, Faust, by F.W. Murnau (director of Nosferatu) is also mentioned.

The script for Richard Burton’s film was the classic of Elizabethan stage,The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. Though the story presented by Marlowe is rather similar to the chapbook version previously discussed, we hear of a few comic additions made then jump forward a bit in theater history to William Mountfort’s pointedly comic 1697 work, The Life and Death of Dr Faustus, Made into a Farce, with Harlequin and Scaramouche. Wilkinson shares some monologues from the play spoken by two of the Seven Deadly Sins. We also have a look at the legend’s treatment in Faust puppet shows popular in Germany and Bohemia, a tradition that proved influential on the 1994 Czech film, Faust, Jan Švankmajer’s must-watch stop-motion/live-action treatment of the story. We hear bits of the audio from the Švankmajer film as well as a couple more Faust films, the Peter Cooke-Dudley Moore comedy Bedazzled (1967) and the nicely dreadful 2000 horror-superhero film, Faust: Love of the Damned.

From Jan Švankmajer's Faust (1994) — From Jan Švankmajer’s Faust (1994)

The show closes with a look at Faust at the opera, namely Hector Berlioz’ 1846 work,The Damnation of Faust (with a nod to Charles Gounod’s operatic take on the tale). In particular we look at a famously disastrous staging of the Berlioz work by the Paris National Opera in 2015.

#20 The Undead Come Courting

By boneandsickle | February 13, 2019

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:36 — 39.0MB)

Vampire mythology first appears in the West in works as early Romantic authors meld themes from folk ballads of resurrected lovers with Balkan folklore of the undead.

Valentine’s Day seemed a fitting occasion for this show’s look at the vampire’s tragically romantic tendency to prey upon those they love.

We begin with a (very seasonal) snippet of one of Ophelia’s “mad songs” from Hamlet, “Tomorrow is St. Valentine’s Day.” The song speaks of a lover’s clandestine nocturnal visit to a partner’s bedchamber. It represents a class of folk song called “night visit ballads.” A more ghoulish subset of these deals with lovers who happen to be dead, or undead actually.

We hear two sample songs of revenant lovers from the 16th-17th century: “Fair Margaret and Sweet William” (referencing “cold corpsey lips”) and “The Suffolk Miracle,” which bears comparison to the German poem “Lenore,” much beloved by the Romantics and Gothics, and mentioned in Dracula as discussed in Episode One.

Next we discuss the “Vampire Panic” that took place in Serbia in the 1720s-30s. We hear of Petar Blagojević, who was said to have been exhumed and found incorrupt with fresh blood at his mouth and flowing from his heart once properly staked. We hear of a similar case involving the foot soldier Arnold Paole, whose staking produced more disturbing results and whose alleged vampiric deeds led to two distinct waves of panic.

Illustration (colorized) from 18th century vampire panics in Balkans.

We learn how these reports were assimilated by the literary world, with an early example being German poet Heinrich August Ossenfelder’s 1734 poem “Der Vampir.” Then we look at a more nuanced suggestion of vampirism in Goethe’s “The Bride of Corinth,” a poem based on a classical account of revenant lovemaking, the story of Machates and the undead Philinnion.

Next we have a look at two other important early uses of the vampire motif in literature — two Orientalist poems — Thalaba by Robert Southey and Lord Byron’s The Giaour. Both reference Balkan folklore and superstition, and footnotes to Southey’s work include a lengthy narrative of an absurd and gruesome vampire panic on the Greek island of Mykonos in 1701. Wilkinson reads prettily from this account. Along the way, we have a look at Greek vampires in Val Lewton’s moody 1945 film Isle of the Dead starring Boris Karloff.

Byron’s contribution to Gothic literature (as host to Mary Shelley during her early writing of Frankenstein) is illustrated with another snippet from Ken Russel’s cinematic work, his 1986 film Gothic. More central to our theme, however, is The Vamyre by John Polidori, Byron’s personal physician who also shared in the evenings of ghost stories that inspired Shelley.

We learn how The Vampyre grew out of Byron’s The Giaour, of the influence its vampiric character exerted on Stoker’s Dracula, and of the unlikely spin-offs the story generated.

Polidori's "Vampyre" misattributed to Byron in first printing. — Polidori’s “Vampyre” misattributed to Byron in first printing.

Then we have a look at Tolstoy’s lesset known 1839 vampire novella The Family of the Vourdalak and its treatment in Mario Bava’s 1963 horror anthology Black Sabbath, also featuring Boris Karloff.

Tolstoy’s story also happens to be set in Serbia, bringing us back to the country’s long history of vampirism, the famous Serbian Vampire Sava Savanović, and the bizaare 1973 Yugoslavian film featuring Savanović, Leptirica.

We close with a strange story of the the Serbian undead from the year 2012. A musical setting is provided.

#19 Worm Songs and Beastly Sucklers

By boneandsickle | January 28, 2019

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:58 — 37.5MB)

This episode examines the Lambton Worm, a dragon legend that inspired works by Bram Stoker and Ken Russel as well as well as the curious role of milk plays that story and in superstitions surrounding witchcraft.

The show begins with Wilkinson and Ridenour reviewing a phone message from Blake Smith of the Monster Talk podcast, then proceed to briefly examine the 1989 Ken Russel Film The Lair of the White Worm, mentioning along the way his other film Gothic, which would be of interest to listeners.

Bram Stoker’s final novel The Lair of the White Worm, upon which the Russel film is loosely based, is sadly far from his best work, written late in his life during a time of ill health. The story revolves around an aristocrat, Lady Arabella March, suspected of harboring an ancient, monstrous creature within a well hidden on her estate. While the novel is a bit of a muddle, it does contain some intriguing descriptive passages that Wilkinson reads for us.

A snippet of a song from Russel’s film, presented as a folk song telling the story of the local worm legend is played and revealed to be a slightly revised version of an actual 1867 ballad about the Lambton Worm of Northeast England. The legend tells how John Lambton of Lambton Hall hooked a weird and highly inedible creature while fishing, discards the beast, and lives to regret it. Without giving too much away, the story also involves a bloody battle with a dragon, a witch, a curse, and a lot of milk.

From English Fairy Tales (1913). Illus by iHerbert Cole & R. Anning Bell

The legend and song (which is written in the local Sunderland dialect) have become part of the identity of residents of County Durham and towns along the river Wear. In 2014, an entertaining symphonic retelling of the legend was presented in Durham Cathedral by The Durham University Brass Band, and we use a clip or two in the show. Most other clips are from one of two folk-play-style pub performances of the story by The Jeffreys and Hexham Morris.

We also look at a connection between the 1973 folk-horror classic The Wicker Man and the Lambton Worm legend.

The peculiar fondness of dragons for milk is next examined, beginning with a number of other dragon legends from England, some medieval tales briefly mentioned, and even an American newspaper from the 1930s.

Tilberi display from The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery & Witchcraft

We then turn our attention to the “beastly sucklers” of the title. These include various animals into which witches transformed themselves or created in order to steal milk (sucking it from livestock by night). They are mlk-hares, the troll-cat, the troll-ball, and the Icelandic tilberi.

The show ends with a quick look at a couple other dragon ballads that also include witches, including the particularly strange “The Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea” in which a king’s daughter is transformed into a mackerel then obstinately refuses to be transformed back.

#17 Christmas Ghosts

By boneandsickle | December 24, 2018

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:12 — 35.9MB)

Traditionally Christmas was a time for ghost stories, and tonight we’re doing our part to bring back the custom. A bit of history on supernatural stories of the season and then something a bit different for the holiday — a bit of storytelling for your fireside enjoyment — a ghost story from the Victorian master of the genre, M.R. James. An unfortunate holiday incident experienced by Wilkinson and your narrator is also discussed. Merry Christmas to you all! (This episode also provides an example of one of our Patreon rewards: audio texts from classic old books of horror and folklore delivered over a brooding soundscape.)

#13: Ancient Necromancy

By boneandsickle | October 31, 2018

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:21 — 54.1MB)

Finishing up with our October theme of “talking to the dead,” we examine necromancy in the ancient world in this episode. While the word has been generalized in its present use to mean cover any form of magic of a sinister bent, in its original meaning, it was simply what the Latinized-Greek etymology suggests: “necro-” for “dead” and “-mancy” for “divination by.” Not that it wasn’t always regarded as a rather sinister activity. It certainly was, and particularly by the Roman era, we’ll see the practice associated with most ghoulish sort of atrocities imaginable. But it’s Halloween, so the more ghoulish, the better.

We begin around 630-540 BC when a necromancer was written into the Biblical book of 1 Samuel (or 1010 BC, if we are to date the figure by the time the events were alleged to have occurred — in any case, this is our oldest tale of a necromancer, known most commonly as the “Witch of Endor.” It’s also our first of several examples of not getting particularly good news when you consult the dead on your future. Much doom and gloom, when King Saul talks to the dead prophet Samuel, who never really liked him anyway.

"The Shade of Samuel Invoked by Saul" Nikiforovich Martynov (1857) — “The Shade of Samuel Invoked by Saul” Nikiforovich Martynov (1857)

Our next tale of ancient necromancy comes from Homer’s Odyssey, and though there’s no actual necromancer in this story, Odysseus follows instructions for summoning the dead in Hades given him by a pretty legitimate enchantress, namely, Circe. We’ll see an interesting parallel here with the story of the Witch of Endor and learn of the vampiric love of blood attributed to the dead in ancient Greece.

Up next is a lesser known Greek tale of Periander, a tyrannical ruler of Corinth, who sends servants to consult the necromancers to discover the location of some money hidden on his estate, the location of which, only his deceased wife Melissa would know. Some interesting details here as we learn just why the late Melissa finds herself chilly in the afterlife and Periander demonstrates just how tyrannical a tyrant he really is.

A little background is then furnished the rather elaborate pantheon of the underworld and death-related spirits known to the Greeks, much of which was inherited by the Romans and one element even borrowed into a Sam Raimi film. Interesting etymological links to modern curiosities abound! Thanatos, Hypnos, Nyx, The Keres, Manes, Achlys, Lemures, and Lamia are all discussed.

Then there’s the story of Pausanias, King of Sparta, who led the Greeks in victory over the Persians in 479 BC. Troubles begin when he becomes infatuated with a beautiful virgin, Cleonice, in Byzantium. One tragedy and betrayal follows another in this sad tale, and following instructions from a ghost summoned by necromancers only makes things worse.

Then we turn to the Romans for the most gruesome stories.

Detail: "Sextus Pompeius consulting Erichtho" John Hamilton Mortimer (1776) — Detail: “Sextus Pompeius consulting Erichtho” John Hamilton Mortimer (1776)

The necromancer or witch Erichtho appears in the poem Pharsalia, Lucan’s epic on Caesar’s Civil War. Her characterization was so she’s later picked up by other authors, such as Dante, who uses her in his Divine Comedy, the Jacobean writer John Marston, who uses her in a play, and Goethe, who in Faust features her in the Walpurgisnacht scene we talked about in Episode Two. Erichtho hangs around graveyards and her spells and rites involve the most abominable elements you can imagine. Her memorably weird resurrection of a dead soldier in Pharsalia was said to have inspired Mary Shelley in her imaginings of dead things brought to life.

Next we have a look at a necromancer or witch appearing in the works of Horace, who uses her to darkly lampooning those who supported or engaged in the practice of magic in his poetry. He embodies witchcraft in the figure of Canidia, who reappears in several of his works. She’s nearly as ghastly as Erichtho, walking around with “tiny snakes twined in her hair,” perhaps to outdo her witch pal Sagana, whose coiffure Horace describes as “rough” and “standing on end, like a sea-urchin or some bristling wild boar.” After some serious spookery, Horace has some weird fun with the his story of Canidia, providing a particularly vulgar touch, while also taking a jab at a lover who rejected him.

We finish up with some actual cases of Roman necromancy, or at least some purported to have been real, though we can assume there’s probably an element of nasty gossip in some of the accounts. Still, they make for good Halloween listening with spilled blood, entrails, and flayed skin.

"Tiresias appears to Ulysses" Johann Heinrich Füssli (1785) — “Tiresias appears to Ulysses” Johann Heinrich Füssli (1785)

Episode 10: Victorian Mummies

By boneandsickle | August 24, 2018

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:30 — 98.0MB)

This time round we explore the way in which the death-obsessed Victorians fetishized the equally death-obsessed Egyptians, creating a number of gothic mummy tales, which often veer into storylines that are almost necrophilic.

To begin we have a look at how the Victorians interacted with mummies as artifacts. We hear an 1899 story from Philadelphia’s The Times making clear that the demand for mummies as displays for educational institutions and even as curios for private homes of the well-to-do, was so great that entrepreneurial types in Egypt came up with rather unsavory ways of meeting the needs of the market.

Examination of a Mummy by Paul Dominique Philippoteaux c 1891

We discuss Thomas Pettigrew and his promotion, not only of “mummy unwrapping” parties in the 1830s and ’40s, but also of the “miracle” of germinating seeds or “mummy wheat” allegedly found in ancient tombs. A peculiar story of a Scottish duke and his morbid preoccupation with Pettigrew’s mummy ballyhoo should also be of interest to listeners.

Wilkinson narrates a first-person experience of a mummy unwrapping during a thunderstorm penned by French RomanticThéophile Gautier, author of a number of mummy stories himself. His short, supernatural story, “The Mummy’s Foot,” is the first of several included in this episode that connect grotesque mummified remains (a foot in this case) with a rather comely, female love interest. One likely explanation for this tendency is offered via a short side-trip to French Orientalist art and Victorian pornography.

Jean Ingres' Grande Odalisque, 1814 — Jean Ingres’ Grande Odalisque, 1814

Next we explore The Jewel of Seven Stars, written in 1903 by Bram Stoker. This one also centers upon a regal Egyptian female (a queen and “sorceress”) who is missing an appendage — a hand in this case, which is wearing a ring with the valuable, titular “jewel.” The “seven stars,” we learn, wre lamps from the mummy’s tomb, which are to be used in an occult experiment to raise the spirit of the ancient queen. A mummified cat — much like the one recently gifted to the Bone & Sickle Library by Paul Koudounaris — also plays an interesting role in the story. Wilkinson narrates another strangely eroticized unwrapping scene from the novel, and there are snippets from the surprising number of films adapted from this previously neglected work.

Hammer Studios' 1972 adaptation of Stokers "Jewel" — Hammer Studios’ 1972 adaptation of Stokers “Jewel”

Then we’re off to the manly adventure-world of H. Rider Haggard who once delighted British audiences with tales of stiff-lipped men taming the Empire — and occasionally venturing into lost subterranean worlds, as in the novel She, which we discuss as another case related to the “seductive mummy” trope. Haggard’s stories generally, have more in common, perhaps, with the Indiana Jones model, but She crosses some paths with horror and science fiction, and was adapted for film by both Merian C. Cooper (director of the original King Kong) and British Lion (with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee).

A fair bit of the show is devoted to Arthur Conan Doyle’s interest in mummies, both as fictional devices and in real life. Doyle believed both in the much disputed curse upon Howard Carter’s King Tut outing and another case, the “Ingram mummy,” which happens to also have wound its way into the folklore of The Titanic.

Doyle never signed on as a member, but did attend some meetings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an occult organization popular in Edwardian literary circles and named for Hermes, more or less a Greek version of the Egyptian Thoth. We have a look at how this occult body, and many others, were influenced by Egyptian mythology and how a French novel from 1731 purporting to be the text of a newly translated papyrus shaped their ritual structure. Connections between Egypt, the Tarot, Crowley, and his religion of Thelema are also briefly discussed.

Lots of missing mummy appendages in this episode! The self-described “seer” and palmist going by the name “Cheiro” brings us another tale of a cursed mummy’s hand he supposedly kept in a wall safe for decades. He, like Doyle, also had some things to say about the Tut curse, lessons learned supposedly from a dramatic incident with this mummy’s hand.

Rising to fame in turn-of-the-century Britain, Cheiro migrated to Hollywood, where his later years were spent telling fortunes of the film stars of the 1920s and 30s, and where the idea of the cinematic mummy tale was first developed.

Having provided some background in the curse legends and literary mummy tales of Victorian and Edwardian era, we look at ways in which Doyle’s stories, particularly “Lot 249” might have been an influence on the Boris Karloff film The Mummy from 1932 as well as mummy films of the 1940s through 1960s. A few stray examples from later years are also included.

Karloff as Ardeth Bey in The Mummy, 1932

Snippets of two old, Egyptian themed recordings were used in the episode Esther Walker’s “Sahara” from 1919 and “Old King Tut” by Billy Jones and Ernest Hare from 1923.

LISTENER NOTE: Episode Ten is an extra-long deluxe episode wrapping up our Spring-Summer season. Wilkinson and I will be taking off September and returning in October with the folklore of the Fall-Winter season, Halloween, the Krampus, and more. We suggest you check back here, or even better, subscribe, so you know when we’re back.

Episode 5: The Great God Pan

By boneandsickle | June 4, 2018

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:34 — 33.5MB)

We follow our previous episode on the god Pan with a second this week, delving even deeper into the creative and bizarre ways the figure has been embraced after his much publicized “death.”

Our first several minutes are devoted to literary explorations of Pan in the decades around World War I. Naturally we examine only writers providing the more fantastic or horrific examples, including the creator of the high fantasy genre Anglo-Irish writer Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, the 18th Baron Dunsany (aka Lord Dunsany). In The Blessings of Pan, he imagines ancient rites to Pan resurrected in the England of his day. If you like what you hear, you might want to have listen to another one of his stories narrated by Vincent Price here.

Lord Dunsany wrote The Blessings of Pan in 1928.

Wilkinson also provides us a reading from “The Music on the Hill,” by writer Hector Munro, who wrote under the name “Saki”. There is a spoiler in the reading, but it’s pleasingly grisly. We make up for the spoilage by providing you this additional unsettling, darkly comic (to us) story by Saki, one in which a defiant young boy decides to provoke his caretaker by creating a religion around his ferret, whom he names “Sredni Vashtar.” As it turns out, the ferret proves to be a dreadfully vindictive god.

But I digress.

As it turns out, the idea of a return to pagan Pan worship in the Christian era written about by Dunsany and others, may be more than simply a matter of fiction. Our next segment deals with such a case. In 18th-century England, in the town of Painswick, England, a member of the gentry, one Benjamin Hyett, was known to have built “an Arcadian retreat” featuring a building known as “Pan’s Lodge.” You can have a look here at a contemporaneous painting of the lodge grounds and Hyett’s statue (one of two — the other met a curious fate).

The statue at Hyett's "Pan's Lodge in Painswick. Background: contemporary painting of grounds. — The statue from “Pan’s Lodge in Painswick. Background: contemporary painting of grounds.

Hyett eventually brought the entire community around to join in these rites to Pan. The story grows more complex and curious as these rites are resurrected roughly a century later by a priest who, as we learn, had some intriguing notions about their meaning and origin. Entangled within this story are other local oddities of Painswick culture, including a dish known as “Puppy Dog Pie,” and a practice known as “clipping the church” or “church clipping,” in which members of the congregation join hands and perambulate their place of worship.

Clipping the church. Painting by W. W. Wheatley in 1848

Somehow we then arrive at the topic of Lupercalia, the Roman festival involving priests dressed in nothing chasing the Roman woman through the streets with whips. Oddly enough this topic brings us back to Arcadia, home of Pan.

Detail: Lupercalia by Andrea Camassei. 1635.

Lupercalia brings us to some interesting myths and tales related to the Arcadian festival Lykaia and King Lycaon, whom Zeus transformed into a wolf (history’s first werewolf, some would say.) Find out what loathsome act drove Zeus to take this action as Wilkinson provides another excellent reading from Ovid.

Detail: More details Zeus turning Lycaon into a wolf. Hendrik Goltzius. 1589. — Detail: Zeus turning Lycaon into a wolf. Hendrik Goltzius. 1589.

A bit more ancient Greek werewolf lore, a ghastly story about Pan and his ill-fated pursuit of the nymph Echo, and we end up — of all places — on Summerisle, that is, talking again about The Wicker Man, as we are wont to do. Somehow, the Wicker Man leads us back to Pan. You’l have to just trust me on this.

Benjamin Hyett, was not alone in resurrecting the notion of Pan worship. We find religious devotion to Pan and other pagan nature spirits (as well as inexplicably thriving vegetables) at Northern Scotland’s Findhorn Community. Some clips from a 1973 BBC show make clear their roots in the hippy culture of the era, giving us a bit of background before we meet Findhorn’s primary acolyte of Pan, Robert Ogilvie Crombie (aka ROC). His encounters with Pan in 1970s Edinburgh bring up an interesting point about the difficulties of directly encountering Pan. And naturally, this brings us to our next and final topic.

Early Findhorn meditation circle and book by ROC.

Arthur Machen’s 1890 horror novel, The Great God Pan was highly influential not only to Lovecraft, but other writers in his circle, and in general on the genre variously identified as “weird fiction” or “cosmic horror.” Neil Gaiman, Guillermo Del Toro, and Arthur C. Clarke have all praised the story. Stephen King has called it “one of the best horror stories ever written. Maybe the best in the English language.”

Once again Wilkinson provides a couple readings of wonderfully morbid passages from the book complete with the usual Bone and Sickle audio ambiance.

We go out with the song “The Great God Pan” from the soundtrack to Mondo Hollywood, a 1967 a documentary in the “mondo” style presenting a mix of LA celebrities and countercultural oddballs, heavy on the oddballs.