Yes. You might find:

• Stuffed owls
• Foxes
• Birds with glass eyes
  They thought it looked elegant. Instead: Victorian Horror Aesthetic

Victorian Christmas gatherings weren’t complete without wild parlour games involving blindfolds, stolen kisses, accidental tackles, and questionable dares. From “Snapdragon” to “Blind Man’s Buff,” Amy explores the rowdy social chaos that turned polite society into a Regency-era frat party.

Victorians loved giving handmade holiday gifts — including woven hair wreaths, braided lock jewelry, and embroidered mourning designs using the hair of the living and dead. Amy explores why these tactile treasures were considered heartfelt keepsakes rather than eerie reminders of mortality. Bonus: one London girl school reportedly held a best hair craft competition. Imagine the judging table.

Feasting on Goose Was More Common than Turkey Turkey was expensive. Goose was the people’s bird.
Cue Dickens describing Cratchit’s goose with reverence.

Step into the wonderfully unhinged world of America’s Gilded Age in this hilarious and true deep dive into butter sculptures, breakfast champagne culture, and the day thousands of decorative turtles escaped and caused chaos across New York City. In this episode of The Strange History Podcast, we uncover bizarre fairground art, dark-dining scandals, portable mansions of the elite, and the infamous Ice Cream Riot that shook the streets. Packed with absurd historical details, humor, eyewitness accounts, and societal chaos, this episode is perfect for fans of strange history, vintage oddities, and stories too ridiculous to be fiction.

Step inside the glittering absurdity of America’s Gilded Age, where the wealthy elite bathed in milk, invented imaginary husbands, staged ostrich parades, built ballrooms for cats, and weaponized fashion with bird-covered hats. In this hilariously decadent episode of The Strange History Podcast, we explore real Gilded Age scandals, bizarre behavior, ghost weddings, diamond-filled soup, and etiquette meltdowns—told with the wit of a gossip columnist and the accuracy of a historian who has emotionally given up. Perfect for fans of strange history, high-society chaos, vintage scandals, and stories so odd they feel fictional.

The Victorians didn’t just burn a yule log — they studied it. Cracks were omens, smoke signaled future fortunes, and if the flame died before morning? Someone in the household was doomed. Amy explores true accounts of families who fed their logs ale, decorated them like honored family members, and guarded the ash like sacred treasure. Cozy? Yes. Chill-inducing? Also absolutely.

Before the Victorians romanticized it, Christmas was basically: Drunk caroling + street parades + people demanding food from wealthy homeowners. It was the original trick-or-treat, but louder

Victorians adored decorating their Christmas trees — but many ornaments were crafted from arsenic-rich green paint, mercury-coated glass, and lead-based glitter. Amy explores how a little holiday sparkle occasionally led to dizziness, nausea, or sudden fainting — and why newspapers still called it “the height of elegance.” Forget festive — Victorian trees were basically weaponized foliage.

In Part Two of this nostalgic and entertaining series, we explore the stranger side of vintage household hacks — including beauty rituals, pantry tricks, old medical remedies, DIY fixes, and bizarre home solutions passed down through generations. From freezing sweaters to stop shedding, polishing shoes with banana peels, deodorizing clothes with vodka, clarifying soup with eggshells, and boiling orange peels and cloves to freshen the house, these forgotten techniques reveal a fascinating chapter of everyday life before modern products and convenience culture existed. This episode blends real historical accounts, questionable medical treatments, proven hacks still used today, and the weirdest pieces of domestic wisdom from the 1800s to the 1970s. Whether you’re interested in cleaning history, traditional home skills, lost domestic arts, natural remedies, sustainable living, or just love quirky vintage facts, this episode is a funny, educational deep dive into how households once survived without Amazon, Pinterest, or disinfecting wipes. Laugh, learn, gasp, and occasionally say, “Wait… people really did that?”