Hi all, seasons greetings! In Simone's latest tale we tell the stories of William Sydney Porter aka O Henry, and one of the greatest Christmas tales of all time.... and Lee Shelton aka Stagger Lee, and how a barroom murder turned a young pimp and murderer into a folk hero.

If Woodstock was the zenith of the hippy counterculture movement, a high point of peace, love and understanding, then The Altamont Racetrack Free Concert of December 6th 1969 had to have been it's nadir - a fine day in hell. Simone T. Whitlow examines just what happened, why it happened, and why it was such an important event.

Half a century before a certain other Jack stalked the ladies of Whitechapel, England, Spring Heeled Jack - The Terror of London roamed the streets of London looking for mischief. Who, or what, was this claw-handed, seemingly super-human revenant who attacked perhaps dozens of women from 1837 till maybe as late as 1904, and how has our perceptions altered his legacy?

To some the tale of Ignaz Trebitsch Lincoln is a spy story... I tend to take the long view and sell it as a picaresque novel. In the picaresque the protagonist - you can't always say hero cause sometimes they aren't very heroic - is a likeable rogue... lowly born, who has to live by their wits in a cruel, often corrupt world....The following tale is the story of one such rogue, and the many twists and turns his remarkable life took.

On 20th August 1612, in Pendle, Lancashire - 8 women and one young man were executed - largely on the testimony of a 9 year old girl. In the time leading up to this trial two others would die, one by hanging, another- the octogenarian 'Old Demdike' as a result of the squalid conditions prisoners were kept in, in those times. The cause? a young lady by the name of Alizon Device had an argument with the pedlar John Law, and things got out of hand. Bertrand Russell once said "Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom" ... how much can fear and superstition cost two families. Tune in, dear listener, to this episode of Tales of History and Imagination.