Robert the Devil is a supernatural medieval legend that inspired a 19th-century French opera, which incorporates key elements from a seminal Gothic novel. The opera and legend are substantially different but both interesting. We begin with Giacomo Meyerbeer’s 1831 opera, Robert le diable, which gained notoriety for a ballet sequence in Act III, which portrays …
Trolls, as presented in medieval literature, are vastly different from the creatures we encountered in our last episode’s collection of 19th-century Norwegian folktales. These Viking Age trolls are more vividly and gruesomely described, and the “troll-women,” who frequently appear, are akin to witches. We begin the show with a traditional song from the Faroe Islands, …
Trolls in Scandinavian folklore can be a little different from what’s imagined in the rest of the world. We begin our show with a montage of clips from recent movies, Trollhunter (2010), Troll (2022), and Troll 2 (2025) — the latter two being Netflix productions that have rekindled interest in the subject while reimagining trollsin …
So it seems a good time to share some more content related to my book. This is a new video I put together emphasizing the “madness” of A Season of Madness. Enjoy!
Gammer Gurton’s Garland, published in 1784, is one of the earliest collections of English nursery rhymes, and contains verses both familiar and alarmingly unsettling. Intended to be read to toddlers (i.e., “children who can neither read nor run,” according to its subtitle) and named after a fictitious Grandma (“Gammer”) Gurton, who’d be analogous to Mother …
The Christmas Eve ghost story is a fine old tradition associated with Victorian and Edwardian England, one that’s been making a comeback on both sides of the Atlantic. Since 2018, Bone and Sickle has enthusiastically embraced the custom. Our offering for 2025, is “The Other Bed” written by E.F. Benson in 1912 and read for …
Historically, the celebration of Christmas and Carnival could overlap, and there is some reason to believe that customs associated with the former were inherited by the latter. A clue to this calendrical shift is offered by the Christmas song, “Carol of the Bells,” which uses the melody of an old Ukrainian New Year;s carol, one …
In our second short episode for November, we take a close look at a the 1692 trial of Thiess of Kaltenbrunn, a purported werewolf in the town of Jürgensburg, in Livonia, (a Baltic region now divided between Estonia and Latvia). “Old Thiess,” as he was known, described himself as being a particularly exotic form of …
This is a special short episode looking at fictional evidence used to bolster horror narratives in literature, film, and broadcast media. We compare the found-footage phenomenon with earlier literary techniques and discuss some famous hoaxes and Halloween pranks, some historical and others closer to home.
This year, in the tradition of Halloween fortune-telling, we have an interactive divination game you can play at home. It comes from aa 19th-century book on cartomancy called, The oracle of human destiny: or, the unerring foreteller of future events, and accurate interpreter of mystical signs and influences; through the medium of common cards. TO …