Bone And Sickle

This episode looks at puppets given life through magical or mechanical means, holy puppets of the Catholic Church, medieval robots, an early automata of gothic literature, some related films, and an Alpine sex puppet that only puts up with so much. We begin at the end of Carolo Collodi’s  original Pinocchio story, or at least … Read More Read More The post Holy Puppets, Medieval Robots, and More appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

The Great Plague of London of 1665 to 1666 is vividly portrayed in Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, which we’ll be examining closely in this episode.  As the text is quite entertaining (much more so than his better known Robison Crusoe) we’ll be hearing more extensive quotes from the material than usual, delivered … Read More Read More The post A Journal of the Plague Year appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

The figure of the masked plague doctor is an object of intense fascination but also the subject of much misinformation. This episode sorts things out while seeking particular evidence for such handsomely dressed character in the historical record. We begin with a few clips from horror films in which plague doctors figure, including the 2008 … Read More Read More The post The Plague Doctor Unmasked appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

Banshees are spirits of Irish folklore, who warn of impending deaths.  Originally considered fairies, their Irish name, bean sídhe, means “woman of the mounds,” those mounds (sídhe) being the ancient burial mounds believed in Ireland to be the home of fairies. The banshee’s wailing, which betokens imminent death of a blood relative, is probably based upon the wailing of … Read More Read More The post Banshees appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

Explore the folklore of the Tooth Fairy and teeth, particularly dead teeth — those lost by children or adults, and those removed from skulls. We open with a brief look at the Tooth Fairy as inspiration for horror films, hearing a bit about (and a montage of clips from) Darkness Falls (2003), The Tooth Fairy … Read More Read More The post Dead Teeth: Fairies, Rats, and Worms appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

As a special Valentine’s episode, we present collection of folk songs known as “sweetheart murder ballads.”  We begin with two newer songs dating to the 19th century, “On the Banks of the Ohio” and “Down in the Willow Garden.”  While considered American songs and first documented in Appalachia, these ballads appear to borrow elements from … Read More Read More The post Murdered Sweetheart Songs appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

The bestiaries of the Middle Ages and Renaissance were books describing animals (some recognizable and others fantastic) in terms borrowed from classical texts and framed by Christian teachings.  In this episode, we examine a few of the stranger beasts and strange customs and beliefs associated with them. Here’s a brief look at the animals we’ll … Read More Read More The post Beasts of the Bestiaries appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

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 … Read More Read More The post Walled Up Alive appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

Bone and Sickle continues its holiday tradition of Christmas ghost stories, or a goblin story, in this case. Our tale about an encounter between a gravedigger, or sexton, and a host of goblins is extracted from Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella, The Pickwick Papers.  Strangely, it is not Dickens’ only Christmas goblin story. As a special … Read More Read More The post The Goblins and the Gravedigger appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

Frau Perchta, sometimes known as “the Belly-Slitter” for the trademark punishment she’s said to inflict on disobedient or lazy children, is figure of Alpine folklore of Austria and Germany in many ways similar to the Krampus. “Perchta” is only one spelling or name for this figure, who may also go by Pehrta, Berchte, Berta, and … Read More Read More The post Frau Perchta, the Belly-Slitter appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

Our seasonal look at butcher lore begins with the slaughter of an immense ram as related in the centuries-old English song, “The Derby Ram” (AKA “The Darby Ram”).  In the lyric, a butcher and his boy assistant are “washed away in the blood,” giving us our episode’s title.  The song is roughly enacted in an old … Read More Read More The post Drowned in Blood: Butcher Lore appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

This Halloween we have five stories of witches from all the way back to around 1125AD to the 1960s. Some of them are actual historic personage, some seem more purely folkloric. It’s a somewhat longer episode for which I”ll provide somewhat shorter show notes here.  So, I won’t going into the details of each story, but just … Read More Read More The post All of Them Witches appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

Here’s a short bonus show celebrating Halloween. It’s a bit different format. Whereas most of our shows look at folklore and incidents happening centuries ago in Europe or further afield, in this one we’re staying in the United States looking at how Halloween was celebrated, for better or worse, from the turn of the last … Read More Read More The post #35 Vintage Halloween appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

Goblin lore from old folk tales, literature, ancient and modern legends is our topic this time around. We begin with the poem from which we take our episode title, James Whitcomb Riley’s “Little Orphant Annie” in which the poet remembers his childhood nanny and her “witch tales” and threats about goblins coming. Next, we take a … Read More Read More The post #34 The Goblins Will Get You! appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

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 14th–century British song sung or chanted as a sort of charm over the body of the deceased in the night before … Read More Read More The post #33 Ghosts from Purgatory appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

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 … Read More Read More The post #32 Vampires, Shroud-Eaters, and the White Plague appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

This episode explores the Russian witch, the Baba Yaga, tales in which she appears, possible origins, and regional variations on the character. We begin by retelling one of the skazi (folk tales) in which she’s particularly well-definined, “Vasilisa the Beautiful,” a version recorded in the mid-1800s by the folklorist Alexander Afanasyev, Russia’s answer to the … Read More Read More The post #31 Baba Yaga appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

The werewolf (Fr: loup-garou) epidemic of 16th-century France forms the core of our show, but we also include some medieval French werewolf tales as well as the legend of a figure connected to both werewolves and Bluebeard. In our last episode on Bluebeard, I promised to recount a legend that may have inspired Charles Perrault’s … Read More Read More The post #30 Loup-Garou, Werewolves in France appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

Bluebeard and his bloody chamber full of murderous secrets is widely known as one of Charles Perrault’s fairy tales, but it’s part of a larger family of folk tales and ballads we examine in this episode. Our show begins with a brief summary of this tale in which a young woman is courted by the … Read More Read More The post #29 The Bloody Chamber appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

This time we look at the myths of British giants Gog and Magog, and a belief in biblical giants seemingly confirmed by giant bones dug from the earth. We begin with a 1953 newsreel welcoming reconstructed figures of Gog and Magog back to the London Guildhall after the Nazi bombing of the city destroyed the … Read More Read More The post #28 Gog, Magog, and the Bones of Giants appeared first on Bone and Sickle.