She waits at the roadside, she is beautiful, she loves you — and she is fattening you to drink your blood. The Lamia is one of humanity's oldest bogeys and one of its saddest. In this episode we follow her from an ancient vampire bride in Corinth, back to a queen of Libya whose children were all taken by a jealous goddess, and down to the rivers of Mesopotamia, where her ancestor Lamashtu was feared a thousand years earlier. And we ask what this demoness reveals about a fear that never went away — the fear for our children, of death without reason, and of the woman who was given the face of the monster.

📚 SOURCES & FURTHER READING

• Duris of Samos (c. 280 BC), fragment (FGrH 76 F 17) – transmits the archetypal Lamia legend of the Libyan queen, daughter of Belus.
• Aristophanes, Peace (421 BC) and its scholia – earliest literary mentions; the scholiast derives the name from laimós ("gullet").
• Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 20.41 (c. 30 BC) – rationalized version of the Lamia as a cruel, hard-drinking queen; explanation of the "removable eyes."
• Plutarch, On Curiosity 2 (c. 100 AD) – the fable of the eyes the Lamia sets in a vessel.
• Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 4.25 (c. 220 AD) – the vampire bride of Corinth and Menippus; calls the creature empousa/lamia.
• Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses 8 (c. 150 AD, after Nicander) – the legend of the Lamia/Sybaris on Mount Cirphis near Delphi and her killing by Eurybatus.
• Statius, Thebaid 1.562–669 (92 AD) – the child-killing monster Apollo sends against Argos, slain by the hero Coroebus.
• Byzantine Sisinnios/Gyllou incantation texts – the demoness is forced to reveal her "twelve and a half names"; the background to protective amulets against infant death.
• Sappho, fragment 178 (c. 600 BC) – earliest naming of the related Gello.
• Jerome, Vulgate, Isaiah 34:14 (c. 400 AD) – translates the Hebrew Lilith as Lamia.
• Walter Farber, Lamaštu. An Edition of the Canonical Series (Eisenbrauns, 2014) – standard edition on the Mesopotamian precursor Lamashtu.
• Sarah Iles Johnston, Restless Dead. Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece (University of California Press, 1999) – reads Lamia, Gello and Mormo as "reproductive demons," the ghosts of those who died too young or in childbirth.
• John Keats, Lamia (1819), after Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) – shapes the modern image of the serpent-bodied seductress.

Note: the ancient sources contradict one another on many details. This video presents the main strands of the tradition.

At the edge of a spring, on the shortest night of the year, a woman of unearthly beauty sits combing her golden hair. She offers you a treasure — for a single kiss, without fear. Almost no one passes the test. The Moura Encantada is one of the best-known figures of Portuguese and Galician folklore — and one of the most misunderstood. In this episode we follow her from the spring all the way into real, excavated graves, and discover that her name tells a very different story from the one about the Moorish princess: a story about the dead, about the renaming of the defeated — and about why some boundaries must not be crossed.

📚 SOURCES & FURTHER READING

• José Leite de Vasconcelos, Tradições Populares de Portugal (1882) – foundational work of Portuguese ethnography; gives the classic definition of the Moura as a being under "state of siege" and the hypothesis that she absorbed older spring and nature deities.

• José Leite de Vasconcelos, Etnografia Portuguesa (posthumous, 1933–1988) – multi-volume standard work placing the Moura in the wider context of folk belief.

• Zófimo Consiglieri Pedroso, Contribuições para uma Mitologia Popular Portuguesa (1882) – describes the Mouras as "feminine water genies."

• Teófilo Braga, Contos Tradicionais do Povo Português (1883) – early collection of the tale material, including variants of the disenchantment legends.

• Alexandre Herculano, Lendas e Narrativas (1851) – literary treatment of the Reconquista legend of the Moorish princess.

• Francisco Martins Sarmento – excavations at the Citânia de Briteiros (from 1875); used Moura legends and place-names as clues to Lusitanian and Celtiberian sites.

• Isidoro Millán – philological derivation of Mouro/Moura from the Celtic root mrvos ("the dead"), cognate with Latin mortuus.

• Isabel Cardigos, The Enchanted Calendar of the Mouras Encantadas – reads the serpent-woman as the "unavailable" woman and analyses why disenchantment structurally has to fail.

Note: Folk legends exist in countless regional variants. This video presents the most widespread motifs.

In the autumn of 1589, near Bedburg in the German Rhineland, a wealthy farmer is broken to death as a werewolf. His name: Peter Stubbe. His case was printed across Europe and shaped our image of the werewolf to this day. But the closer you look, the less the story adds up — right down to a guest at the scaffold who had no business being there. An investigation across the records, the pamphlet, and the war that explains it all.

📚 Sources & further reading (selection):

• "The Damnable Life and Death of one Stubbe Peeter," London 1590 (trans. George Bores) – the central primary source; the German original print is lost.
• Diary of Hermann von Weinsberg, Cologne alderman – independent contemporary attestation.
• Woodcut/broadsheet attributed to Lukas Mayer (Nuremberg); engraving by Franz Hogenberg.
• Montague Summers, "The Werewolf" (1933) – reprint of the pamphlet, rediscovered 1920.
• Rolf Schulte, study of men in the witch trials (c. 2000) – the werewolf as the male counterpart to the witch.
• Elmar Lorey (1945–2019), research on early modern werewolf trials – the werewolf as an instrumentalised variant of the charge (elmar-lorey.de).
• On the political context: the Cologne / Truchsess War, 1583–1588.

⚠️ Note: Several details of this case (birth year, the reading of the name, the question of guilt, the political motive) are uncertain or scholarly interpretation.

#Werewolf #PeterStubbe #Bedburg #History #Folklore #WitchTrials #TrueCrime #Medieval #EarlyModern #Cologne

In the year 858, the Annals of Fulda — one of the most important historical sources for the East Frankish kingdom — record an incident that sits utterly out of place between Viking raids and comet sightings. On an estate near Bingen on the Rhine, an "evil spirit" spent three years throwing stones, hammering on walls, exposing thefts, revealing an affair involving the village priest, driving an innocent man and his family out into open fields, and finally burning almost the entire settlement to the ground. The exorcism sent from Mainz failed.

In this episode we walk through the source step by step, look at who wrote it and why, unpack the legal procedure of the ordeal by hot iron, and lay four readings side by side — from simple human agency through serial arson to the question of how much of this was created at a writing desk in Fulda. Nothing gets resolved. But everything we genuinely know ends up on the table.

SOURCES & READING LIST

Primary source

• Annales Fuldenses (Annals of Fulda), entry for the year 858
• Latin edition: Friedrich Kurze (ed.), Annales Fuldenses sive Annales regni Francorum orientalis, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Hanover 1891
• English translation with commentary: Timothy Reuter, The Annals of Fulda (Ninth-Century Histories, vol. 2), Manchester University Press

On the author and the monastery of Fulda

• Rudolf of Fulda: Vita Leobae (836) and Miracula sanctorum in Fuldenses ecclesias translatorum (c. 843–847), ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS 15/1, 1887
• Gangolf Schrimpf (ed.), Kloster Fulda in der Welt der Karolinger und Ottonen (Fuldaer Studien 7), Frankfurt am Main 1996

Region and society

• Matthew Innes, State and Society in the Early Middle Ages: The Middle Rhine Valley 400–1000, Cambridge University Press 2000

Trial by ordeal

• Robert Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water: The Medieval Judicial Ordeal, Oxford 1986

Medieval belief in ghosts and demons

• Claude Lecouteux, Geschichte der Gespenster und Wiedergänger im Mittelalter, Böhlau, Cologne 1987
• Jean-Claude Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society (French original 1994)

Word history

• Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, entry "Poltergeist"
• Erasmus Alberus, Novum dictionarii genus, 1540

Rationalist assessment and modern cases

• Herbert Schäfer, Poltergeister und Professoren. Über den Zustand der Parapsychologie, Bremen 1994
• F. Karger / G. Zicha, "Physikalische Untersuchung des Spukfalls in Rosenheim 1967," in: Zeitschrift für Parapsychologie und Grenzgebiete der Psychologie 11 (1968), pp. 113–131

On the ergotism debate

• Alessandra Foscati, Saint Anthony's Fire from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century, Amsterdam University Press 2020
• Annales Xantenses (Annals of Xanten), entry for the year 857

Every year on the first weekend after Ash Wednesday, thirty-metre wooden towers are erected across Vorarlberg, Austria — and set ablaze along with a gunpowder-filled witch doll. The custom is called "Funken," it's UNESCO-listed, and the standard explanation is: ancient paganism, driving out winter demons. But is that really true?

In this episode, I follow up on a viewer suggestion and uncover a story far more surprising than any myth. The fire may trace back to Roman antiquity — to the Vestal Virgins and the sacred flame rekindled on 1 March, the old Roman New Year. The witch, however, is barely 200 years old: a nineteenth-century invention inspired by the Brothers Grimm, designed to revive a dying tradition. And she stands in sharp contrast to the real witch persecutions in Vorarlberg, where more than 120 people — ninety per cent of them women — were executed.

An episode about fire, myth, political identity, and the question of who actually has the right to tell a story.

Sources & Further Reading:
— Manfred Tschaikner: "Damit das Böse ausgerottet werde." Hexenverfolgungen in Vorarlberg im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. Bregenz, 1992.
— Manfred Tschaikner: "Die Lust, Hexen zu verbrennen." In: Der Bludenzer, 1996.
— Manfred Tschaikner: "Wohin mit den Funkenhexen?" In: Vorarlberger Nachrichten, 3/4 February 2024.
— Reinhard Johler: Die Formierung eines Brauches. Der Funken- und Holepfannsonntag. Vienna, 2000.
— Matthias Zender: Die Termine der Jahresfeuer in Europa. Göttingen, 1980.
— Franz Josef Fischer: Der Funken- und Küachlesonntag in Vorarlberg und Liechtenstein. 1921.
— Hermann Bausinger: Zur Kritik der Folklorismuskritik, 1969.

The grand finale of our four-part series on the real myths behind the monsters of "The Witcher" takes us away from the Slavic forests – south, to Portugal, Spain and Galicia. There the bruxa waits: in the games a beautiful, deadly vampire; in real folk belief a child-killing night-witch who turns into a bird and comes through any crack.

We follow her trail all the way back to ancient Rome – to the strix in Ovid – and with that we close the circle to the striga from Part 2: because the bruxa and the strzyga are, in truth, the same ancient creature. We visit the Basque witch trials of Zugarramurdi, meet the inquisitor Salazar Frías, who ended the Spanish witch-burnings – and ask, one last time: who tells a story, and why?

📖 Further reading & sources:

• Andrzej Sapkowski: "A Grain of Truth" (Ziarno prawdy, 1989; in "The Last Wish")

• Oswald Crawfurd: Portugal, Old and New (1880) – Northern Portuguese bruxa folklore

• José Leite de Vasconcelos: Tradições Populares de Portugal (1882 ff.)

• Ovid: Fasti, Book 6 (c. 8 AD) – the strix

• Daniel Ogden: The Strix-Witch (Cambridge University Press, 2021)

• Carmelo Lisón Tolosana: Brujería, estructura social y simbolismo en Galicia (1979) •

Julio Caro Baroja: The World of the Witches (Las brujas y su mundo, 1961)

• Gustav Henningsen: The Witches' Advocate – Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition (1980)

• Carlo Ginzburg: The Night Battles (1966) & Ecstasies (1989)

• José Miguel de Barandiarán: Diccionario de mitología vasca

• Aurelio de Llano: Del folklore asturiano (1922) – the guaxa

#Bruxa #TheWitcher #Witcher3 #BloodAndWine #Vampire #Witch #IberianMythology #Folklore #Zugarramurdi #strix #GreyTales

A note: this episode touches on historical witch persecution, infant death, and violence against women. Take good care of yourself.

He's one of the most iconic creatures in "The Witcher 3": the Leshen, a towering forest terror with a deer skull and antlers. But in Part 3 of our four-part series on the real myths behind the monsters of "The Witcher," we uncover the truth: that face is largely invented – a modern "invented tradition."

We dig up the real Leszy: the master and shepherd of the forest, neither good nor evil, who leads travellers astray, makes pacts with shepherds and hunters, and punishes greed. We follow the famous "leading astray" motif all the way to a genuine scientific study on walking in circles (Souman et al., Current Biology, 2009), watch Christianity turn the guardian into a horned devil – and ask, at the end, why we summon this forest monster back today.

📖 Further reading & sources:

• Tomasz Z. Majkowski, Magdalena Kozyra & Aleksandra Prokopek: "The Invention of Leshy," in: Games and Culture (2025)

• Alexander Afanasyev: Poetic Views of the Slavs on Nature (1865–1869)

• Sergei Maksimov: Nechistaya, nevedomaya i krestnaya sila (1903)

• Dmitry Zelenin: Ocherki russkoi mifologii (1916)

• Kazimierz Moszyński: Kultura ludowa Słowian, Vol. II (1929–1939)

• Aleksander Gieysztor: Mitologia Słowian (1982)

• Linda J. Ivanits: Russian Folk Belief (1989)

• W. F. Ryan: The Bathhouse at Midnight (1999)

• Jan L. Souman et al.: "Walking Straight into Circles," in: Current Biology 19 (2009)

• Vic Tandy & Tony Lawrence: "The Ghost in the Machine," in: Journal of the SPR (1998) – infrasound

It's the very first monster of the Witcher saga – and the moment Geralt became a hero: the striga, a cursed princess who rises from her crypt by night. In Part 2 of our four-part series on the real myths behind the monsters of "The Witcher," we uncover where this creature truly comes from.We follow the trail from Andrzej Sapkowski's debut (1986) back to Roman Zmorski's fairy tale "Strzyga" (1852) – plagiarism accusation and all – then on through the Roman owl-demon strix in Ovid, to the disturbing folk belief in two souls, two hearts and two rows of teeth. We open the "vampire graves" of Drawsko and Pień, hear the literary echo in Gogol's "Viy" – and ask, at the end, who the real monster was.📖 Further reading & sources: • Roman Zmorski: "Strzyga," in: Podania i baśni ludu w Mazowszu (1852) • Andrzej Sapkowski: "Wiedźmin" (in: Fantastyka, 1986; collected in "The Last Wish") • Magdalena Roszczynialska: "Nowa baśń: 'Strzyga' Romana Zmorskiego i 'Wiedźmin' Andrzeja Sapkowskiego" (2003) • Ovid: Fasti, Book 6 (c. 8 AD) – the strix and the boy Proca • Aleksander Brückner: Mitologia słowiańska i polska (etymology strix → strzyga) • Szymon Gonet: "Strzygonie," in: Lud, vol. 3 (1897) • Henryk Biegeleisen: Śmierć w obrzędach, zwyczajach i wierzeniach ludu polskiego (1930) • Kazimierz Moszyński: Kultura ludowa Słowian, vol. II (1929–1934) • Jarosław Kolczyński: "Jeszcze raz o upiorze (wampirze) i strzygoni (strzydze)," in: Etnografia Polska 47 (2003) • Gregoricka, Betsinger, Scott & Polcyn: "Apotropaic Practices and the Undead," in: PLOS ONE (2014) – Drawsko cemetery • Prof. Dariusz Poliński, Nicolaus Copernicus University Toruń – Pień excavation / "Zosia" (2022/2023) • Nikolai Gogol: "Viy" (1835) • Paul Barber: Vampires, Burial, and Death (Yale University Press, 1988)#Striga #Strzyga #TheWitcher #Witcher #SlavicMythology #Vampire #Folklore #Zmorski #Gogol #GreyTalesA note: this episode deals with historical folk beliefs around death and burial. If these themes feel heavy for you right now, take good care of yourself.

Geralt calls her a "Noonwraith." The Poles call her Południca. And in Lusatia she was feared as the Noon Woman — sickle in hand. In Part 1 of our new four-part series on the real myths behind the monsters of "The Witcher," we dig up where the deadliest ghost in Slavic legend truly comes from: a demon who doesn't appear in the night, but in the merciless light of the noon hour.

We follow her from the Witcher contract "The White Lady" through the Sorbian legends of Lusatia and the biblical "noonday demon" to Dvořák's chilling tone poem — and ask, at the end, what CD Projekt Red changed about the old myth. And why.

📖 Further reading & sources:

• Karl Haupt: Sagenbuch der Lausitz, Vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1862) – "Die Mittagsfrau. Připolniza"
• Johann Georg Theodor Grässe: Der Sagenschatz des Königreichs Sachsen, Vol. 2 (Dresden, 1855/1874) – "Das Mittagsgespenst"
• Edmund Veckenstedt: Wendische Sagen, Märchen und abergläubische Gebräuche (Graz, 1880)
• Friedrich Sieber: Wendische Sagen (1925) – "Die Mittagsfrau fragt zu Tode"
• Elias Canetti: Crowds and Power (Masse und Macht, 1960), chapter "Question and Answer"
• Kazimierz Moszyński: Kultura ludowa Słowian (Folk Culture of the Slavs)
• Karel Jaromír Erben: Kytice (1853), ballad "Polednice"
• Antonín Dvořák: The Noon Witch (Polednice), Op. 108 (1896)
• Research of the Sorbian Institute / Serbski institut on the Noon Woman
• Psalm 91:6 (Vulgate 90:6): "daemonium meridianum"

#LadyMidday #Poludnica #Noonwraith #TheWitcher #SlavicMythology #Folklore #Lusatia #Sorbs #Mythology #GreyTales

Forty minutes east of Munich lies one of the largest unbroken forests in Germany — ninety square kilometres, with not a single settlement to break it up. Cutting straight through it runs State Road 2080, and along it, level with the lonely Hubertus Chapel, a "White Lady" is said to walk at night: the ghost of a cyclist who supposedly bled to death in the forest after a hit-and-run. She waves drivers down, gets in without a word, and vanishes again — or grabs the wheel and steers the car into a tree.

The problem: that accident never happened. No record, no bicycle, no body. And yet the locals would rather take a nightly detour than drive the stretch.

In this episode we ask how a ghost is born out of nothing. We trace the White Lady back to the death omen of the House of Hohenzollern and the pagan-Germanic goddess Perchta, we meet the international "Vanishing Hitchhiker," and we descend into a forest that lies over a pagan boar cult, Iron Age graves, and the skull of a plague saint. What we're left with is an unsettling realisation: the White Lady of the Ebersberg Forest is the only ghost whose birth we can watch almost in real time — a legend that formed before our eyes, in the age of the internet.

Further reading / sources:

• Jan Harold Brunvand: The Vanishing Hitchhiker. American Urban Legends and Their Meanings (1981)
• Johann Georg Theodor Grässe: Sagenbuch des Preußischen Staats, Vol. 1 (the legend of the White Lady)
• Oskar Schwebel: Die Sagen der Hohenzollern (1878)
• Jacob Grimm: Teutonic Mythology / Deutsche Mythologie (on Frau Holle / Perchta and white female figures)
• Wikipedia: "White Lady (ghost)," "Ebersberg Forest," "Ebersberg Abbey," "St. Sebastian (Ebersberg)"
• Bavarian State Office / BfN on the Ebersberg Forest (history as a sovereign hunting forest, forest layout)
• Süddeutsche Zeitung, Ebersberg local section, on the modern haunting legend

Note: This episode deals with a legend. It is folklore and folk studies, not a documented criminal case.