Join Kelli as she goes over the Ball of the Burning Men, an event during King Charles VI's reign in France where 6 men - charivari dancers dressed as wild men in very flammable costumes - caught fire. And one of the men was the King himself - Charles VI.

In today's episode, we go over the historical context of the time, including the Hundred Years War. Then, we look into Charles VI, sometimes called Charles the Mad, to understand how he ended up in a flammable costume on fire at a ball.

And don't worry - the King survived. But not everyone was so lucky.

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Join Kelli as she goes over the history of the Wicker Man!

The Wicker Man was popularized first by the Christopher Lee movie from 1973, and later with Nicholas Cage's remake. The first was folk horror, the second more action suspense. But was the Wicker Man a real thing?

Let's go back into the primary sources to read the first ever mention of a Wicker Man in the historical record - Julius Caesar's Commentary of the Gallic Wars. Once we get all the facts, analyze the sources, and take note of the context, we'll figure out if the Wicker Man was a real, Celtic/Gallic method of human sacrifice, or if it's simply just fiction.

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Intro and Outro music credit:  @nedricmusic
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Join Kelli as she goes over New Jersey's most famous cryptozoological son - the Jersey Devil. Though the Jersey Devil was the devil-born son of the Leeds Family, not much is known about it; it lives in the Pine Barrens, it looks like a weird, winged amalgamation of animals, and it was once "caught" and put in a Philly museum in 1909 (spoiler: they painted a kangaroo with stripes).

But beneath the myth is a real history - who were the Leeds family, and why is there a story about them birthing a devil? What did they do - and who did they annoy enough - to warrant this story?

So let's dive back into colonial-era New Jersey history to hear how what politics, the Quakers, almanacs, and Ben Franklin have to do with the myth of the Jersey Devil.

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Join Kelli as she goes over the mythology of the Headless Horseman. Most of us associate the headless horseman with Washington Irving's book, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. But the idea of a ghostly rider looking for his head, or perhaps a decapitated ghost haunting local villages, goes all the way back to medieval Europe, perhaps even deeper into ancient Celtic mythology.

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Intro and Outro music credit:  @nedricmusic
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Join Kelli as she goes over the Pendle Witch Trial of 1612, England's most infamous trial. 12 people from the Pendle Hill Area in Lancashire were accused of witchcraft in James I's England, a monarch who hated all-things witches and demons. Of the 12, eleven were put on trial, and ten were hanged.

But, like we saw with Salem, two of the main sources of evidence came from hearsay and children's testimonies. Worse still, a nine-year-old girl helped get most of her family convicted!

What happened at Pendle helped pave the way for the Salem Witch Trials. So for the 2024 spooky APHOUT season, let's take a look at one of the most well-known witch trials in English history.

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Join Kelli as she goes over the ORIGINAL Dracula- Vlad Dracula, the Impaler. Although the fictional character is only loosely based on Vlad, the two are inextricably linked forever because of Bram Stoker's Dracula. So today, we'll go over the real Vlad Dracula - who is he, what did his world look like, and how did he earn the moniker "the Impaler?" Then, we'll look at the connections between the real Vlad and his Hollywood counterpart.

Happy 2024 spooky APHOUT season! 🎃👻💀

The translation for the German "Prince Dracula" pamphlet:
https://web.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/prince.dracula.html

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Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric Music
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Join Kelli as she goes over the legend of Madame Delphine LaLaurie, a torturess from New Orleans who tortured, mutilated, and killed at least 20 slaves at her mansion on 1140 Royal Street.

But like we saw with the Blood Countess Elizabeth Bathory... is LaLaurie's story grossly exaggerated? How much is fact, and how much is fiction?

Let's dive into the mysterious world of New Orleans legend to find out what really happened in Delphine LaLaurie's Murder Mansion.

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Join Kelli as she goes over ANOTHER shipwreck that ended in cannibalism - that of the Mignonette, a sailing yacht that went down in the South Atlantic. But the Mignonette wasn't really seaworthy, and should never have been out that far... so when a rogue wave destroyed it, and the four men on board had to take their chances on a small dinghy with essentially no supplies... it didn't end well for one of them.

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Join Kelli as she goes over the history behind the Spanish Inquisition. How and why did Spain hunt down heretics to purge the country of non-Catholics? 

And there will be a LOT of medieval torture devices in today's episode!

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Join Kelli as she goes over the Great Plague of London, 1665-1666, which ended in part thanks to the Great Fire of London, 1666.

These are two big events that killed off a good chunk of London's population and destroyed four-fifths of the city. The new London that was built was better suited to withstand fires and plague, and though it still had some sanitation problems, the days of plague-infested roofs and damaging fires was over.

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Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric
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