Agartha, Shambhala, and Hyperborea are all names for a a mythic spiritually and scientifically advanced  kingdom, always in some hidden location, sometimes within the earth, a legend which became an obsession of early Soviet spies, a mad soldier of fortune, and a mystical Russian artist during the 1920s.

We begin with a clip from the 1939 German documentary, Secret Tibet, which records the activities of visiting  Nazi researchers in that country. While we can’t establish to what extent the expedition focused on Third Reich mythology connecting their Nordic Aryan with South and East Asia cultures, we examine other efforts by the Reich’s department of Ahnenerbe (ancestral heritage) to make such connections.  Alongside this, we  look at some 19th-century precedents associating an ancient, primal race with both the far north and Vedic culture of the subcontinent.  We also examine the classical concept of Thule (a far-north Neverland) appropriated by the pre-Reich Thule Society.

We next look have a brief look at 1871 book by French writer Louis Jacolliot, The Son of God, which introduces the name “Agartha,” (and its many forms) to designate an underground city or land serving as a repository of ancient wisdom. Jacolliot places this land in the East and associates it with a sort of universalized Vedic culture.

It’s Alexandre Saint-Yves’ 1886 book The Mission of India in Europe, that really defines Agartha as its come to be understood, placing it underground, in the East, and probably within the Himalayas. His fascination with the topic probably was inspired by his Sanskrit tutor, a mysterious Afghan, who called himself Hardjji Scharipf, and claimed to be “of the Great Agartthian School.” Scharipf, however, had little to do with the specific content of Saint-Yves’s book, which in part reads like Hollow Earth fiction of our previous episode. Mrs. Karswell reads for us some fantastical passages from his text.

The majority of Saint-Yves’s work, however, is devoted to the ruling principle of this hidden kingdom, something he calls “Synarchy,” (from Greek words for “together” and “rule.”  Fearing the West’s descent into anarchy (Synarchy’s opposite) and its inability to receive the “Synarchic radiations” of Agartha, he calls upon the East to unify with Europe and guide the world toward a Synarchic utopia (the titular “Mission of India to Europe”). Saint-Yves is particularly concerned with Britain and Russia’s competition for the lands of Central Asia, an area poised  to become  the hypothetical capital of a united East and West.

This brings us Russia or the competing Red and White armies of the Russian Civil war fighting in this region.The Polish writer, Ferdynand Ossendowski, who served with the White Guard in this setting documents these conflicts in his 1922 best-seller, Beasts, Men, and Gods. Ossendowski not only mentions encountering the local myth of Shambhala (Tibetan Buddhism’s equivalent of Agartha). but also relates tales of Baron Roman Ungern von Sternberg, a  German cavalry officer  loosely allied with the Whites, but fighting not so much for the Tsars as for Mongolia’s Bogd Khan, third highest  lama of Tibetan Buddhist, whom Ungern imagines rebuilding the empire of Genghis Khan. Ossendowski describes the Baron’s use of Tibetan legends, including that of the King of Shambhala, to promote this cause.  He also describes some of the German’s more perversely brutal ways, which earned him the moniker, “the Bloody Baron” which we naturally share.

Next we come to a figure who represents a sort of nexus of all we’ve discussed — a Russian occultist and mythographer, Aleksandr Barchenko. We hear a bit about his early life, involving extracurricular ESP experiments, lecturing sailors of the St. Petersburg fleet on Shambhala, and his meeting with the occult-minded chief of the Secret Police, Gleb Bokii, who is attracted by Barchenko’s talk of an ancient body of knowledge that might be mined for new techniques of psychic control, surveillance, or manipulation.

While Barchenko was denied funding he sought for an expedition to locate Shambhala, Bokii sent him to investigate a phenomenon with of possible supernatural import on  the far northern Kola Peninsula.  There he was study a collective outbreak among the Sámi people of a trance-like state peculiar to Artic regions, known locally as “menerik” and elsewhere as, “the Call of the as North Star.” We hear some details of this bizarre condition and of  Barchenko’s  alleged discovery of vestiges of ancient Hyperborean culture on the Peninsula. We also hear of his search among the people of the Altai Mountains for legends related to Shambhala.

The last Russian Shambhala-enthusiast discussed is Nicholas Roerich, an artist and writer best known for his paintings of glowing Himalayan landscapes and spiritually charged scenes from Asian and Russian mythology. Along with his wife, Helena, a psychic in communication with Theosophy’s “Hidden Masters,” Roerich hatched a scheme he promoted (unsuccessfully) to Soviet officials, a “Great Plan” for uniting East and West, in which the mythical King of Shambhala (or the Last Buddha, the Maitreya) were to play a key roles. We hear  tales of Shambhala collected during Roerich’s travels through the Himalayas and of a physical token allegedly from that kingdom, the Chintamani stone.  Details are provided of stone’s mysterious delivery to a Paris hotel where the couple was staying in 1923, its role in developing Roerich’s status among his following, and the not entirely convincing evidence presented in support of the tale.

We end with some audio from the Hollow Earth itself, from a Tibetan cave — so says the Russian YouTube account, along with a collage of sonic anomalies collected under the the title, “The Earth Groans,”  and (strangest of all)  sounds that seemed to issue from within a Chinese mountain in Guizhou Province in July of 2020.

Borrowed from fairy lore, the notion of a hollow earth peopled by superior beings became a theme of literary fantasies as early as the 17th century and went on to influence fringe theories of the earth’s structure into the 19th century.

We begin with a snippet of the medieval Norwegian ballad “Liti Kjersti,” telling the fairy story of a young woman abducted into the earth by the Mountain King, and follow this an anecdote from Gerald of Wales’ 12th-century Itinerarium Cambriae (Journey through Wales) describing a kidnapping of a young boy by “two tiny men,” and the interior world he visits.

We then hear from Margaret Cavendish, a 17th-century poet, playwright, and writer on a variety of philosophical, political, and scientific topics. Her poem “The Fairy Queen’s Kingdom”(1653) and prose fantasy The Blazing World (1666) introduce the idea of interior kingdoms accessible only through entrances at the polar ends of the earth.

Over the next couple centuries, at least a half dozen novels describing travels into an interior world appeared. We briefly touch on Danish-Norwegian writer Ludvig Holberg’s Niels Klim’s Underground Travels (1741), Giacomo Casanova’s Icosaméron (1788), American writer Mary Bradley Lane’s Mizora: A Prophecy (1880), and Irish-American writer William R. Bradshaw’s The Goddess of Atvatabar (1892), the last coming closer to what we would think of today as science fiction. Universal to these hollow earth tales is portrayal of the interior civilization as a utopia, highlighting the failings of our own.

We then spend some time examining the particularly weird hollow 1895 earth novel by John Uri Lloyd, Etidorhpa, or, the end of the earth: the strange history of a mysterious being and the account of a remarkable journey, an underground adventure tale larded with odd religious, philosophical and pseudoscientific theories. It describes the education of a character identified only as “I—Am—The—Man—Who—Did—It,” guided by an eyeless amphibious humanoid along a subterranean route, with stops for various knowledge-imbuing experiences, i.e., “How to See Your Own Brain,” as one chapter is titled.

Next we explore a late 19th-century cult founded in upstate New York by Cyrus Tweed, who went by the name “Koresh.” Koreshanity, as it was called, regarded Tweed as a second coming of Christ and taught that earth’s inhabitants actually live on the inside of our hollow planet. His teachings began with an 1869 vision experienced during his laboratory pursuit of what he called “electro-alchemy.” Mrs. Karswell reads for us his account in which he encounters God in his female aspect. We hear of the cult’s heyday in the first years of the 20th century on Estero Island, of the coast of Fort Myers, Florida, and of the uncomfortable situation that attended Tweed’s death in 1908.

We then hear a bit about the man most widely associated with hollow earth pseudoscience, the American John Cleves Symmes, Jr., who in 1812 declared these beliefs in published his “Circular No. 1,” and later lobbied Congress to mount an expedition that would verify his theory. Symmes’ bold proposition was so widely known at the times as to be spun into a novel, our next topic, the anonymously penned Symzonia: Voyage of Discovery (1819), a work of utopian fiction with steampunk-style details.

Edgar Allan Poe’s only novel, written in 1838, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, describes a voyage into the South Polar seas. Passages from the novel’s startling ending, which appears to describe entrance into the hollow earth, are read by Mrs. Karswell. Poe is believed to have been introduced to this concept by writer, and explorer J.N. Reynolds, who figures into the mystery of the writer’s mysterious death, as we hear.

A bizarre culinary experience is next described in passages from William F. Lyon’s 1821 book, The Hollow Globe. We hear how meat from the frozen remains of mammoths, is taken as evidence for their survival in the earth’s interior.

Finally, we discuss Journey to the Center of the Earth, not just the 1864 novel by Jules Verne but a same-name French novel written earlier in 1821 by Jacques Collin de Plancy. Mr. Ridenour offers some final thoughts on the dinosaurs from Verne’s novel as well as its 1959 film adaptation.

While the dummies may be inherently creepy, they were not the source of  ventriloquism’s dark reputation in earlier times. This originates with the understanding that the voice heard, when no mouth seems to speak, belongs to a demon.

We begin with a bit of audio mixing bits from various frightful ventriloquist films, including Devil Doll (1964), Magic (1978), and the earliest example of the sub-genre The Great Gabbo (1929).  Also adding to the mix, is a scene from the 1945 British anthology, Dead of Night, the head-and-shoulders stand-out among these, offering a truly satisfying wraparound story and use of ventriloquist and wooden colleague.

A vapor said to rise from a cleft within the rocks at Delphi was often said to be the source of her inspiration and was personified as the spirit of Apollo rising within her or even uniting with her sexually.  Much was made of this by medieval Christian writers in efforts to demonize the Oracle. In this way, the voice that spoke from within her, while sometimes said to issue from her belly, was also described by these writers as having its source within her “filthy parts,” (bowels or genitals). We hear some particularly lurid passages along these lines, which bring us to some commentary on the spirit of Python” by the 17th- century German polymath, Athanasius Kircher, who weaves together noises from the belly, ancient Egyptian religion, and flatulence.  From there, it gets really out of hand with a discussion of the supposed Roman or Greek “god of farts,” Crepitus Ventris.

We end with brief discussion and audio sampling from the 1970’s Christian ventriloquist, Marcy Tigner, better known under her puppets’ name, “Little Marcy.”

Our understanding of hypnotism, once known as “mesmerism,”  has radically evolved over the centuries. This episode looks at where it all began, examining the  fascinating (and rather weird) story of the 18th-century German doctor, Franz Anton Mesmer, after whom “mesmerism” is named.

We begin, with a look at the mesmerist’s sinister reputation in the 19th century, as reflected in the British writer George du Maurier’s 1894 novel, Trilby.  While the book’s named for its protagonist, Trilby O’Ferrall, an Irish girl working as a model in a British artist’s colony in Paris, her nemesis is better known, namely, her vocal instructor, Svengali, an Eastern European musician whose hypnotic powers not only propel the aspiring singer to stardom  but also come to dominate and ruin her life.  We look at the novel’s forgotten popularity in its day, the phenomenon of “Trilbyana,” and the book’s cinematic adaptations,  including the 1931 film, Svengali, with John Barrymore in the title role.  Along the way, we note some surprising parallels with more prominently gothic novels and films.

Beginning with Mesmer’s dubious scholarship at the University of Vienna, we make an attempt to untangle his concept of “animal magnetism,” describing  an invisible, dynamic fluid, comparable to the “cosmic magnetism” that guides the planets, but particular to “animals” (i.e., creatures sharing an “animus” (L) or animating spirit.

We particularly focus on Mesmer’s experiences  while in Hungary, where in 1775  he was summoned by a Baron Horeczky de Horka, who hoped the German doctor’s new form of therapy might succeeds where treatments of his condition by others had failed. We hear of several curious incidents occurring in the castle, which were documented in detail  the family tutor and interpreter Herr Seifert, who had observed Mesmer with a skeptical fascination, expecting the man  to be a charlatan.

We next look at Mesmer’s return to Vienna where he attempted the cure of Marie Paradies, a talented musician blind since the age of three who mingled with the musical elites of her city and was regarded with favor by the Imperial court.

As the results here were dubious at best, we then follow Mesmer on his escape to Paris, where he becomes a faddish celebrity. Mrs. Karswell reads for us a lengthy descriptions of his “magnetic salons,” as observed by a Scottish physician, John Grieve, during a visit to Paris in 1784.  During that same year, however, Mesmer’s increasing fame drew the attention of the state, and his techniques were the subject of two Commissions called by Louis XVI.  The results were unfortunate for Mesmer but provide listeners with some tasty descriptions of the collective madness involved in those salons.

We  then have a look at the connection between Mesmer and the Mozarts (primarily father Leopold but to some extent also his musical Wunderkind, Wolfgang,) and here we note Mozart and Mesmer’s mutual fondness for the glass harmonica — Ben Franklin’s invention consisting of a series of glass bowls of descending size mounted on a horizontal spindle, rotated by a foot treadle and played with a wetted finger. While Mesmer considered its sound to have healing “magnetic” properties, others regarded the unearthly sounds with suspicion, and so we hear a bit of lore about the  glass harmonica’s “cursed” (and even lethal) reputation during the 18th century.

The show closes with a charming story about a canary kept by the great mesmerist until the day of his death, which is also described.

NOTE: This episode also references the new publication, We Need to Talk About Death, a book by our very own Sarah Chavez, which is now available from Amazon and through stores near you.

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 Irish mourners called “keeners,” from the Irish word caoineadh, or “lament.”  You can hear some snippets of traditional keeners in this segment, incliuding  a 1957 field recording released by Smithsonian Folkways.

Next we look at how the banshee’s appearance and behavior derives in part from that of Irish keeners, including some odd details having to do with petticoats.  Her origins in the fairy world also has often suggested that she may be small of stature.  We also examine some folktales involving combs lost by or stolen from banshees, and what you should or should not do should you find one.

While the banshee is attached strictly to particular families, she is not bound to the Emerald Isle.  We hear some accounts of her following travelers to other countries, including a surprising tale involving a party aboard an Italian yacht.

The figure, as she’s known today, receives no mention in print until the 17th century.  Mrs. Karswell reads for us what is probably the earliest account, retelling an incident experienced by Lady and Sir Richard Fanshawe, an English ambassador and his wife visiting Ireland.

This account also introduces the notion that a banshee may not originate in the fairy world, but may also be a vengeful ghost.  We hear another tale in this mode associated with Dunluce Castle in County Antrim, a location known for its “banshee room,” a feature duplicated in Shane’s Castle, about an hour to the south.  Both of these castle banshees are sometimes called “the red sisters,” so named for the color of their hair.

After a brief side trip to make note of figures similar to the banshee in Scotland (the caoineag) and Wales, the cyhyraeth and gwrach y rhibyn, we turn to older figures of the fairy realm regarded as banshees, but rather different from the figure born in the Early Modern Period.

The first of these is Clíodna, who was known as the queen of the banshees of southern Ireland, particularly the province of Munster. Unlike the modern banshee, a solitary figure who does little more than wail and make those well-timed appearances, Clíodna engages in romantic affairs, including a romantic rivalry with her banshee sister Aoibhell, a matter culminating in a magical battle with both transformed into cats.

Aoibhell also appears in an important story about Brian Boru, founder of the O’Brian Dynasty, whose army defeats an alliance of Vikings and Irish lords fought at the Battle of Clontarf, near Dublin in 1014. While Boru’s forces are victorious, he and his son are visited by Aoibhell, who heralds their deaths not with a wail, but music played on her harp from the fairy world.  We hear a similar story about the Irish hero and demi-god Cúchulainn encoutering Aoibhell as a death omen.

Cúchulainn also encounters a banshee-like figure of the type folklorists call, “the Washer at the Ford,” or in Celtic regions elsewhere, like Celtic Britanny, “the Midnight Washer.”  The figures appear at lonely bodies of water washing bloody shrouds, or often armor, as they are particularly inclined to predict the deaths of soldiers and armies. We hear a particularly splendid account of one such figure from the 12th-century Triumphs of Torlough — one, which in its generous use of horrific adjectives sounds as if it were written by H.P. Lovecraft.

The episode ends with a quick look at a couple cinematic bamshees, including one which has earned a place in the nightmares of children encountering it in the 1950s-70s.  The two movies we hear bits of are Damned by Dawn and Darby O’Gill and the Little People.

The story of Snow White, as told by the Brothers Grimm, is only one of many narratives involving girls who have fallen into a deathlike state and are displayed in a glass coffins. In this episode, we examine the sordid details of the Grimm’s original 1812 version of the tale and compare it with analogous stories  dating back to the 12th century.

We begin with a review of the Grimms’ original story, many aspects of which have been subsequently muddled and obscured not only by Disney but by later alterations made by the Grimms. These include the identify of the Evil Queen, the malevolence of her intent, the purported benevolence of the Huntsman, and particularly, the nature of Snow White’s resurrection.

After  this, we have a look  at the immediate predecessor to the 1812 story, a children’s play of the same name by the (unrelated) German author Albert Ludwig Grimm. Though it  features dwarves who aid Snow White, a magic mirror addressed in rhyme, poisoned fruit, deception involving the heroine’s purported death, and glass coffin, it proves to be a very different story.

The next tale explored is the 1782 novella Richilde, by the German writer Johann Karl August Musäus.  Surprisingly, the title character here, Richilde, is the wicked stepmother rather than her step-daughter Bianca, whose name in Italian (i.e., “white”) might be compared to “Snow White.” Set in medieval Brabant (Belgium), this one has Bianca courted by a prince whom the jealous stepmother hopes to see married to her own daughter.  A further complication is presented by the fact that the prince here is already married.

We then take a look at the rarely mentioned Russian story,  “The Tale of the Old Mendicants,”  (my translation) published in the 1794 collection, An Old Song in a New Setting, or a Complete Collection of Ancient Folk Tales, Published for a lover of them, at the expense of the Moscow merchant Ivan Ivanov (my translation). In this one, the role of the Evil Queen is played by an innkeeper jealous that her guests have complimented the beauty of her daughter rather than her own. The alms-collecting monks of the title are used by the mother to deliver a poisoned shirt to the Snow White character, Olga the Beautiful.

Our next offering comes from the 1634 volume by Neapolitan writer Giambattista Basile,  Il Pentamerone, or The Tale of Tales, the very first collection of fairy tales, with which the Brother Grimm were definitely familiar (and one featured in our earlier “Dark Fairy Tales” episodes, both One and Two ). The  story in question is “The Little Slave,” which combines elements of Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella. Here, the Snow White character, Lisa, again falls into a death-like swoon and is kept within not one but seven glass coffins in a locked room. The story resolves itself with the aid of a doll, a whetstone, and a knife.

Our earliest story paralleling Snow White, is quite a bit older — from the 12th-century,  the Lai of Eliduc by Breton writer Marie de France. While serving a king in England, the Breton knight Eliduc  falls in love with his lord’s  daughter, Guillardun, who falls into a swoon during an ocean voyage.  Eliduc (who is not exactly innocent when it comes to Guillardun’s condition) transports the body of his love back to France and keeps it on the altar of a deserted woodland chapel.  In this case, the story resolves itself thanks to a very clever weasel.

After our more detailed  examination of these strangely paralleled stories, we take a quick look at the wide range of more recent variants that were committed to print after the Grimms published their work and at a rather ugly controversy that engulfed German town, Lohr am Main, after it claimed to be the birthplace of the Snow White Legend.

Our episode ends with Mrs. Karswell’s reading  a  particularly dark and brutal tale about seven dwarves collected by Swiss historian and folklorist Ernst Ludwig Rochholz in his 1856 volume, Swiss Legends of the Aargau.

A few listeners commented that Mrs. Karswell’s dialogue was muffled at points in “Sorcery Schools of Spain.”  That  episode is now updated with a corrected version. Thanks for letting us know.

For centuries, Spain was said to be the home of secret, underground sorcery schools, Toledo being the first city with this reputation and later Salamanca.  The notoriety of the latter was more enduring, and when the legend passed to Spanish colonies of the New World, the word, “Salamanca” was embraced as a generic term for any subterranean location said to be the meeting place of witches. We begin the show with a clip from the 1975 Argentine film Nazareno Cruz and the Wolf, which depicts just such a place.

A particularly early reference to this concept can be found in a romanticized 12th-century  biography of a particularly interesting character, a French pirate and mercenary  Eustace the Monk.  Mrs. Karswell reads for us a passage written by an anonymous poet of  Picardy, who describes Eustace’s occult schooling in the city of Toledo.  Along with this we hear  as a passage from a 1335 Tales of Count Lucanor by Juan Manuel, Prince of Villena, which adds another element to the legend, that of its underground location.

Curiously, a number of Spanish cities claim as their founder the Greek demigod Hercules, but in Toledo, he’s also credited with founding this school of magic, excavating a subterranean space in which he imparts his supernatural knowledge, at first in person, and later in the form of a magically animated sculpted likeness. Another Toledan legend, was later blended into this mythology.  It’s the story in the Visigoth King Roderick, Spain’s last Christian ruler makes a discovery prophesying his defeat by the Moors in 711 CE. Along with a parchment foretelling this, Roderick exploration of this enchanted palace or tower results in the discovery of the Table of Solomon, a construction of gold, silver, and jewels also attributed with occult powers.  Legends detailing this are believed to be of Arabic origin, first recorded in the 9th century and later appearing in One Thousand and One Nights.  In later Spanish retellings, the treasure house is conflated with the Cave of Hercules, and the fall of Spain to the Moors is attributed to Roderick breaking of a spell woven by Hercules, to keep North African invaders at bay.

By the 16th century, this site (now identified as an ancient Roman structure underlying Toledo’s church of San Ginés) had inspired such wild tales that Cardinal Juan Martinez Siliceo organizes a 1547 expedition into a subterranean space in hopes of putting the rumors to rest, but it hardly succeeded at that. Mrs. Karswell reads a dramatic 1625 account of that misadventure.

While talking bronze heads and magic mirrors were being added to descriptions of the Toledo site, in the late medieval period, similar legends began to be told in Salamanca. Being the site of one of Europe’s most ancient universities in a time when scholars were not infrequently misunderstood as magicians, legends of this sort would naturally be associated with  Salamanca.  But unlike the universities of Paris, Padua, and Bologna, Salamanca’s location in Spain made it a center of Moorish learning and the study of Arabic texts filled with strange calligraphy, figures and charts readily passing for books of magic.

As Salamanca’s reputation emerged later, in an era after the witch trials had begun, instruction no longer was provided by a figure from classical mythology but from the Devil, one of his demons, or a professor or student in league with the Dark One. A favorite character filling this role was the Marqués de Villena, a scholar who’d written books on alchemy and the evil eye. Villena appears in a number of literary works of the era, both in Europe and the New World.  In the 1625 play, The Cave of Salamanca, by Mexican dramatist Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, Villena figures into a scenario that became fairly standard in Salamanca stories, one involving the Devil’s payment for the lessons provided.  This would be demanded  in the form of a human soul, the victim chosen by lot among the seven students instructed at the end of a seven-years period.

In Salamanca, the underground location of this magic school is strangely associated with a Christian site, the Church of San Cyprian, a significant choice, as St. Cyprian of Antioch has strong occult associations throughout the Catholic world but especially in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking regions. Before Cyprian came to Christianity, this 3rd-century saint is supposed to have been a sorcerer and is sometimes referred to as “Cyprian the Magician”.  His story is mirrored in Portugal by that of Giles of Santarém, and both figures appear in Spanish and Portuguese literary works in which the saints play roles parallel to that of the Marqués de Villena, and the magic school becomes “The Cave of Cyprian.”

There are also legends that the magical secrets of the pre-conversion Cyprian were preserved, and on the Iberian Peninsula particularly (but also prominently in Scandinavia) grimoires and spell books attributed to Cyprian began circulating as early as the 16th century. After a brief look at the history of these magic books, we turn our attention to the New World and their legacy there. In particular, the use of such books in Portuguese folk magic brought Cyprian the Magician to Brazil where, where he was absorbed into the syncretic religions of that country. The practice of Macumba, one of  these religions synthesizing  West and Central African beliefs with those of Catholicism, and 19th-century Spiritism, Cyprian the Magician is transmogrified into São Cipriano dos Pretos Velhos, or Saint Cyprian of the “Old Blacks” an embodiment of the departed African Ancestors.  Our show ends with a Macumba  chant dedicated to this figure and a  Spanish prayer to St. Cyprian for protection against witches, curses, and the evil eye.

Tonight we bring you our sixth annual Christmas ghost story, a tradition particularly beloved in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. First published in 1908, and set in the days before Christmas, the tale is by British writer Algernon Blackwood (from whom we earlier heard “Ancient Lights“) and whom many listeners will know through his other works, particularly, The Wendigo or The Willows.  Throw a log on the fire, refill the brandy, and settle back for Mrs. Karswell’s reading of “The Kit Bag.”

The Christmas season is rich in superstitions. The whole period from the beginning of Advent, through the day itself, and especially throughout the twelve days (and nights!) between Christmas and January 6 or Epiphany are, in a sense haunted, a time when spirits are afoot and behavior is hemmed in by restrictions upon normal activities. Recently I stumbled upon a good collection of these folk beliefs in a volume from 1903 entitled Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World: (And subtitled, A Comprehensive Library of Human Belief and Practice in the Mysteries of Life). The book’s contents are indeed as comprehensive as that title, and from their section on Christmas, I’ll be sharing some of the more interesting examples.

The show closes with a recording of a song sung by costumed Swiss holiday figures known as Silvesterchläuse. In the hinterlands of the Canton of Appenzell-Ausserrhoden, the se Silvesterchläus,  groups of men and male youths wearing huge bells and ornate costumes,  go door to door to offer seasonal blessings and sing songs like the one you will hear.