saints Archives - Bone and Sickle

Walled Up Alive

January 17, 2020 boneandsickle ballads, black magic, cannibalism, Catholicism, Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Allen Poe, EPISODE, execution, folk music, folk tales, folklore, foundation sacrifice, Gothic, gothic literature, history, horror, human sacfrifice, immurement, legends, literature, magic, Middle Ages, movies, murder, murder ballads, nuns, Rome, saints, superstition

Walling up a living victim, or immurement, has been used both as a punishment and for darker, magical purposes. In[…]

Read more

#23 Ghastly Saint Stories

March 30, 2019 boneandsickle Catholicism, EPISODE, folklore, history, horror, legends, martyrdom, mortification, mummies, saints, Southern Gothic

Our collection of ghastly stories of saints highlights notions of extreme self-mortification as a spiritual practice along with a preoccupation[…]

Read more

#18 Wild Men, Furry Saints, and Burning Dancers

January 14, 2019 boneandsickle Edgar Allen Poe, EPISODE, folklore, gothic literature, history, horror, legends, madness, mythology, pagan, paganism, Pan, Wild Men

This time round we look at the medieval myth of the Wild Man, its connection to seasonal folk traditions, peculiar[…]

Read more