heart burial Archives - Bone and Sickle

The Hellfire Clubs, Part Two

April 19, 2022 boneandsickle caves, Devil, diabolism, England, EPISODE, folklore, Francis Dashwood, ghost stories, ghosts, Hellfire Caves, Hellfire Club, legends, local legends, London, magic, occultism, paganism

The best known of the 18th-century Hellfire Clubs, one founded by Francis Dashwood, is largely remembered today because of the[…]

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The Dead Lover’s Heart

February 13, 2022 boneandsickle ballads, cannibalism, death, Decameron, EPISODE, folklore, gore, history, holidays, homicide, horror, legends, literature, love, Mary Shelley, murder, murder ballads, Romanticism, seduction, Valentine's Day

Whether freshly removed or strangely preserved after death, the dead lover’s heart occasionally has continued to be embraced as a[…]

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#32 Vampires, Shroud-Eaters, and the White Plague

September 4, 2019 boneandsickle Bram Stoker, classical music, Edgar Allen Poe, EPISODE, folklore, gothic literature, literature, Mercy Brown, Nachzehrer, New England Vampires, opera, plague, Romanticism, shroud-eaters, tuberculosis, undead, vampires

This episode explores the connection between vampires and disease, beginning in 19th-century New England with a strange graveyard ritual involving[…]

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