Newspaper Clipping of the Day, Halloween Edition

via Newspapers.com

As the writer of this AP story suggests, this story would indeed make an excellent first act for a Halloween movie: volunteers move into an old residence to create a holiday-themed "haunted house," and then begin to realize they have the real thing on their hands...

"The Pantagraph," October 31, 1988:

It reads like a script from a drive-in movie. Volunteers turn a vacant home into a haunted house for Halloween visitors, but end up getting scared by lights that mysteriously turn themselves on, tools that move and doors that seem to unlock by themselves.

"When I first walked into the house I had an eerie feeling. The hair stood up on my arms and I didn't even want to go in," parent volunteer Rita Rledel said yesterday. Mrs. Reidel was one of several adults who helped the Swansea Black Knights Drum and Bugle Corps transform an old brick house on a corner in this Southern Illinois town into a haunted house for their sixth annual Halloween fund-raising project.

This year's house, donated for the project by local owners who live elsewhere, seemed haunted from the start, though its owners and a former resident don't believe the tales being told.

First, there was the basement, "dug out of the earth. It looks like a burial ground," Mrs. Riedel said. Workers puzzled over the stubborn light that appeared nightly there, said Michael Saak, a 16-year-old bugle corps member. "We turned it off every night before we left and even boarded up the door. Inevitably, the light was back on by the time we got in our cars," Mrs. Riedel said. Thinking vandals or transients had gotten inside, workers began checking doors and windows before leaving. The light continued to come on. But the light wasn't the only spooky thing, Saak said.

"When we'd leave, we'd lock the doors, and when we'd come back in the morning they'd be unlocked," he recalled.

"One night we had boarded the basement door ... and the next day everything was open," Mrs. Riedel said.

Weird things continued to happen even after the volunteers finished the project two weeks ago.

"Yesterday we were over there, and ... candles that had been downstairs on the table were upstairs. All the lights were on and the doors were unlocked. We had left it locked and lights off," Judy Saak, Michael's mother, said yesterday.

"There's kind of weird books downstairs," Mrs. Saak said, including ones on psychology and how to operate on oneself. "I don't believe in ghosts ... but sometimes it kind of gives you a weird feeling."

There also was the mystery of the wayward tools. "I'm not kidding about this. We pooled our tools every day on the kitchen counter," Mrs. Riedel said. The next day some of them would be in the makeshift coffin the workers had set up In the living room.

"I don't have any explanation," she said. Police say they never heard of any strange happenings at the house before this year, and that nobody from the bugle corps reported anything.

"I didn't really think there would be anything they could do," Mrs. Riedel said. "If there's actually a spirit in there, the police wouldn't be able to do anything about it."

The house has been vacant for a year, since Lydia Krim, daughter of the original owners, moved out when she and her husband bought a new house. Mrs. Krim doesn't think the house is haunted. "This was my family's home since the early 1900s," she said. "It's all a bunch of fairy tales, and I resent it."

Mary Eitzenhefer, who has owned the house since 1971 with her husband, also doubts that the place is haunted. "I've never heard of any of this stuff," she said.

Any spirits that might be hanging around will have to find a new home. The Eitzenhefers, who donated the house for the bugle corps' project, plan to tear it down.

Cynics will say these reports were just part of a publicity stunt to sell tickets, but you have to concede it's a pretty darn good one.

The Guru and the Black Magician

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) was an influential Indian guru, poet, and nationalist. He founded an ashram in Pondicherry which is still active today. The community's history has largely been peaceful and uneventful, with the exception of one period in the 1920s. The following narrative, taken from M.P. Pandit's biography of Sri Aurobindo, describes what modern observers would call a classic poltergeist case, but in centuries past, it would be labeled as "witchcraft"--with a vengeful cook as the responsible party. It is somewhat reminiscent of the more famous case of the 17th century "Phantom Drummer of Tedworth."

[Note: "The Mother" was Mirra Alfassa, an occultist who was Sri Aurobindo's most important collaborator.]

About of December 1921 a curious incident took place which was witnessed by a number of people--a poltergeist happening. It was one of those phenomena that constantly occur and baffle the empirical mind of physical science but are easily explicable to those who have some knowledge of the occult side of life, who are aware of the fact that the physical state is not the only state of existence. There are other states, other levels of being and consciousness and there is an interchange, interaction between one plane and another. It is possible to cause things to happen on the physical plane by action on or from the subtler, occult planes.

There are many accounts of this bizarre incident that took place in the house where Sri Aurobindo and his associates lived. The Mother’s recollection to the Ashram children throws more light and touches upon more details than others and we may quote her in full:

“We had a cook called Vatel. This cook was rather bad-tempered and didn’t like being reproved about his work, Moreover, he was in contact with some Mussulmans who had, it seems, magical powers--they had a book of magic and ability to practise magic. One day, this cook had done something very bad and had been scolded, and he was furious. He had threatened us, saying, ‘You will see, you will be compelled to leave this house.’ We had taken no notice of it.

Mirra Alfassa

"Two or three days later, I think, someone came and told me that stones had fallen in the courtyard--a few stones, three or four: bits of brick. We wondered who was throwing stones from the next house. We did exactly what we forbid children to do: we went round on the walls and roofs to see if we could find someone or the stones or something, we found nothing.

"That happened, I believe, between four and five in the afternoon. As the day declined, the number of stones increased. The next day, there were still more. They started striking the door of the kitchen specially and one of them struck Datta’s (an inmate) arm as she was going to the courtyard. The number increased very much. The interest was growing. And as the interest grew, it produced a kind of effect of multiplication. And the stones began falling in several directions at the same time, in places where there were neither doors nor windows; there was a staircase, but it had no opening in those days: there was only a small bull’s eye. And the stones were falling in the staircase this way (vertically); if they had come through the bull’s eye, they would have come like this (sideways), but they were falling straight down. So I think they all began to become truly interested. I must tell you that this Vatel had informed us that he was ill and for the last two days (since the stones had started falling) he hadn’t come. But he had left his undercook, a young boy of about thirteen or fourteen, quite fat, somewhat lifeless and a little quiet, perhaps a little stupid. And we noticed that when this boy moved around, wherever he went the stones increased. The young men who were there shut the boy up in a room, with all the doors and windows closed; they started making the experiments the spiritists make, ‘Close all the doors, close all the windows.’ And there was the boy sitting there inside and the stones began falling, with all the doors and windows closed! And more and more fell, and finally the boy was wounded in the leg. Then they started feeling the thing was going too far.

"I was with Sri Aurobindo: quietly we were working, meditating together. The boys cast a furtive glance to see what was going on and began warning us, for it was perhaps time to tell us that the thing was taking pretty serious proportions. I understood immediately what the matter was.

"I must tell you that we had made an attempt earlier to exhaust all possibilities of an ordinary, physical explanation. We had called in the police, informed them that there was somebody throwing stones at us, and they wanted very much to come and see what was happening. So a policeman--who was a fine good fellow--immediately told us: ‘Oh! you have Vatel as your cook! Yes, yes, we know what it is!’ He had a loaded pistol and stood waiting there in the courtyard--not a stone! I was on the terrace with Sri Aurobindo; I said to Sri Aurobindo: ‘That’s a bit too bad, we call the police and just then the stones stop falling! But that is very annoying, in this way he will think we haven’t told the truth for no stones are falling. Instantaneously the stones began falling again. You should note that the stones were falling quite a way off from the terrace and not one of them came anywhere near us. So the policeman said: ‘It is not worthwhile, my staying here. I know what it is, it is Vatel who has done this against you. I am going’.

"It was after this we made the experiment of shutting up the boy, and the stones began to fall in the closed room and I was informed that the boy had been wounded. Then I said: ‘All right, send the boy out of the house immediately. Send him to another house, anywhere, and let him be looked after, but don’t keep him here, and that’s all. Keep quiet and don’t be afraid.’ I was in the room with Sri Aurobindo and I thought: ‘We’ll see what it is.’ 1 went into meditation and gave a little call. I said: ‘Let us see, who is throwing stones at us now! You must come and tell us who is throwing stones.’

"I saw three little entities of the vital, those small entities which have no strength and just enough consciousness confined to one action--it is nothing at all: but these entities are at the service of people practising magic. When people practise magic, they order them to come and they are compelled to obey. There are signs, there are words. So, they came, they were frightened--they were terribly frightened! I said: ‘But why do you fling stones like that! What does it mean, this bad joke?’ They replied: ‘We are compelled. We are compelled...It is not our fault. We have been ordered to do it, it is not our fault.’

"I really felt so much like laughing, but still I kept a serious face and told them: ‘Well, you must stop this, you understand!’ Then they told me: ’Don’t you want to keep us? We shall do all that you ask.’ ‘Ah!’ I thought, ‘let us see, this is perhaps going to be interesting.’ I said to them, ‘But what can you do?’ ‘We know how to throw stones.’--‘That doesn’t interest me at all, I don’t want to throw stones at anyone...But could you perchance bring me some flowers? Can you bring some roses?’ Then they looked at each other in great dismay and answered: ‘No, we are not made for that, we don’t know how to do it.’ I said: ‘1 don’t need you, go away, and take care specially never to come back for otherwise it will be disastrous!’ They ran away and never came back.

"There was one thing I had noticed: it was only at the level of the roof that the stones were seen--from the roof, downwards, we saw the stones; just till the roof, above it there were no stones. That meant it was like an automatic formation. In the air nothing could be seen: they materialised in the atmosphere of the house and fell.

And to complete the movement, the next morning (all that happened in the evening), I came down to pay a visit to the kitchen--there were pillars in the kitchen--and upon one of the pillars I found some signs with numbers as though made with a bit of charcoal, very roughly drawn, and also words in Tamil. Then I rubbed out everything carefully and made an invocation, and so it was finished, the comedy came to an end.

"However, not quite. Vatel’s daughter was ‘ayah’ in the house, the maidservant. She came early in the afternoon in a state of intense fright saying: ‘My father is in the hospital he is dying; this morning something happened to him; suddenly he felt very ill and he is dying, he has been taken to the hospital, I am terribly frightened.’ I knew what it was. I went to Sri Aurobindo and said to him: ‘You know Vatel is in the hospital, he is dying.’ Then Sri Aurobindo looked at me, he smiled; ‘Oh! just for a few stones!’

"That very evening Vatel was cured. But he never started anything again.”

Answering the question, how the stones could be seen, Mother explains: “That’s what is remarkable. There are beings that have the power of dematerialising and rematerialising objects. These were quite ordinary pieces of bricks, but these pieces materialised only in the field where the magic acted. The magic was practised for this house, specially for its courtyard, and the action of vital forces worked only there. That is why when I sent away the boy and he went to another house, not a single stone hit him any more. The magical formation was made specially for this house and the stones materialised in the courtyard. And as it was something specially directed against Datta, she was hit on her arm. There was yet something else. We came to know later to which magician Vatel had gone. He had gone to a magician who, it seems, is very well known here and had said that he wanted definitely to make us leave that house--I don’t know why. He was furious. And so he asked the magician to make stones fall there. The magician told him: ‘But that’s the house Sri Aurobindo lives in!’ He said: ‘Yes.’--‘Ah, no, I am not going to meddle in this business: you manage it, I am not getting involved.’ Then Vatel insisted very much; he even promised him a greater reward, a little more money. The magician said: ‘Well, look here; we are going to make a rule. In a circle of twenty-five metres around Sri Aurobindo the stones will not fall. Always there will have to be twenty-five metres’ distance between the stones and Sri Aurobindo.’ And that was why never did a single stone come anywhere near us, never. They fell at the other end of the courtyard.”

Weekend Link Dump

This week's Link Dump is sponsored by more of our Halloween Cats!

Asking the important questions:  What the hell are Pringles?

Watch out for those haunted cabs!

Watch out for those haunted teapots!

Watch out for those headless horsemen!

Watch out for those headless chicken sea monsters!  Wait, what?

This may be the world's most valuable library.

I presume we all want to avoid being buried alive.  Here's how.

When vintage Halloween plays go very, very wrong.

A Victorian two-faced cad.

The Electric Poltergeist Girl.

It turns out that Peter Falk's widow runs a Los Angeles pet cemetery.

In related news, it also turns out that Budapest has a Columbo statue.

A witchcraft trial in Canada...in 2018.

Ghosts who dress the part.

The Georgian era really liked whist.

A Good Samaritan gets the usual reward.

Italy's most haunted house.  It looks it, too.

A 5,000 year old musical instrument.

A lonely war cemetery.

A reminder that there really is a Man in the Moon.

In more related news, here is the man buried four billion miles from Earth.  And counting!

Now, this is my idea of a scientific study.

How William Cody became Buffalo Bill.

Why Morocco is full of abandoned movie sets.

A look at Aphra Behn.

Why you wouldn't want to wrestle a Mongolian princess.

The world's oldest intact shipwreck.

The "Chinese Pompeii."

Spirits among the spirits.

"Courtesan and preacher" is a heck of a resume.

A brief history of Oktoberfest.

The confession of an 18th century criminal.

The "Ghostwatch" panic.

The plots to kill Hitler.

The possible archaeological evidence for Goliath.

19th century mesmerism.

A disappearance on Mount Ararat.

The Case of the Reincarnated Nazi.

A surgery that was fatal to the doctor.

The cats of Largo Argentina.

Becoming a ghost for fun and profit.

In England, it was once forbidden to be buried wearing anything but wool.

A look at Edgar Allan Poe's cottage.  (Although there is NO WAY that is a photo of Virginia.  Argh.)

Celebrating George III's Golden Jubilee.

Life in Victorian era Cambridge.

A famed 18th century French actor.

Fake fairies and Arthur Conan Doyle.

I'm not the biggest Mark Twain fan, but he and I had at least one thing in common.

A newly-rediscovered Holocaust diary.

The East India Company's boy apprentices.

Bad undertakers.

The dangers of Regency London.

That's it for this week!  Tune in on Monday, when we'll visit a hexed ashram.  In the meantime, here's my favorite song from an underrated album of the early country-rock era.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

via Newspapers.com

A while back, I posted a story about how use of a Ouija board led to a lawsuit. Well, imagine my delight when I found a similar case reported in the "Pittsburgh Press," April 25, 1894:

Brookville, Ind., April 5. The famous Rockdale ouija board is to come to court. It is the property of the family of George Doty, a resident of Rockdale, and has before figured in several exciting affairs. The ouija is an "improved planchette," and this particular board is credited with unusual talent. Its answers often, so declare its friends, have been proved true.

The Dotys are respectable people, and outside their strange belief in the intelligence and reliability of the ouija board are not different from their neighbors. The Doty home was a Mecca for many people. This was particularly the case on Sunday afternoons, when crowds of people flocked to it to receive hints of their future. One day the correspondence in a county paper from Rockdale intimated that a girl of that vicinity would soon be excluded from her circle of friends by her own indiscretion. The mysterious announcement caused wide remark, and it was decided by a crowd of young women to consult the ouija board. Mechanically the indicator moved from letter to letter until "Otie Hallowell" was spelled, the name of one of the best and most beloved girls in all the neighborhood.

Miss Hallowell soon noticed a growing coldness among her friends. For some time she failed to find any reason for the change against her, but at last she was told and was almost crazed at the information. She told her mother all she had heard, and in turn the father was told. He started out to run the talk down, and finally traced it to the ouija board. The Misses Doty, who manipulated the board that day, were arrested on a charge of malicious libel, and have been required to produce the board in court. The women and their friends declare they are not responsible for what the board said, but say they believe what the ouija spelled. The title of the suit is the state of Indiana vs. Eva Doty and Nora Doty. The development of the case will be watched with great interest, as it will establish a precedent in regard to the responsibility of the operator for the statement of the board.

"The Speaker" for May 19, 1894 recorded the lawsuit's denouement:

In a word, this Ouija has managed to wreck the peace of an idyllic Indiana village, a quaint and rural community numbering not more than a hundred families. It was brought into the village in all innocence by the Doty family, and the neighbours used to assemble after church of an evening and amuse themselves by asking it questions. It uttered some remarkable prophecies, and gave the rustics some sage advice about their private affairs, in which they had faith, notwithstanding that it set them all one day digging up the village green in search of a buried treasure. The girls of course made great use of it, and at last one night it said some very wicked things about Miss Eva Hollowell [sic], a village belle and a rival of the Doty girls in church-work and other accomplishments. This came to the ears of Miss Hollowell's father, a choleric man, and there was a row. The Dotys said they believed the Ouija, and Mr. Hollowell summoned them all to court, including the Ouija. The latter being produced as a witness, we are told, gave some samples of its work; but the verdict went for the plaintiff, and the Doty girls were fined five dollars apiece and costs. Mr. Hollowell, however, is too angry to be satisfied with this slight vengeance, and he is bringing the case to a higher court, where the Ouija will again appear in the witness-box. “The country hereabouts,” says the report, “is intensely agitated over the matter.”

The lesson is obvious: If you insist on playing around with Ouija boards, be aware that you may be summoning up something far more frightening than mere ghosts or devils: Lawyers.

Weldon Atherstone's Final Performance

"O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on."
~William Shakespeare, "Othello"

Thomas Weldon Anderson may not have been a great show business success, but he accomplished one thing achieved by very few actors: he starred in a real-life mystery story which topped anything he ever performed on stage.

Anderson was born in the English village of Much Woolton in 1861. As a young man, he decided to become an actor, changing his name to the more romantic "Weldon Atherstone." The newly-rechristened Atherstone was not a particularly talented thespian, but he was a tall, handsome man with an impressive voice. These attributes were sufficient to get him a steady stream of roles in the lesser theatrical companies. He was never an acclaimed performer, but he was a regularly employed one, which is more than most actors can say.

In 1886, he married an actress named Monica Kelly, and the two had four children. Unfortunately, the marriage quickly hit the skids. Atherstone was a jealous, hot-tempered individual, and the pair spent much of their time quarreling. By the late 1890s, Atherstone had enough, and he abandoned his family. He was not on his own for long. In 1899, while performing in an otherwise forgettable melodrama called "The Power of Gold," he fell in love with one of his co-stars, a pretty young American named Elizabeth Earle. In 1902, Earle retired from the stage, settling down with her mother in a small flat in Battersea. Atherstone lived with them when he was not "on the road" with touring companies.

"The Era," July 15, 1899 via Newspapers.com

When Earle's mother died in 1905, Earle remained in the flat. She became a teacher at the Academy of Dramatic Arts, and also held private acting lessons in her home. Earle developed a warm, motherly relationship with Atherstone's two sons, and for some time the irregular Earle/Atherstone household was the picture of tranquility.

Sadly, this domestic bliss did not last forever. Atherstone's career began hitting the skids. He was getting too old for leading man roles, and his hammy, melodramatic acting style was falling out of vogue. He did not take his professional problems well. Atherstone became increasingly moody, paranoid, and generally angry at the world. He fell into jealous rages against Earle, forbidding her to have any male pupils. In May 1910, Atherstone accused her of infidelity. When she indignantly denied the charge, he struck her across the face and moved out of the flat.

Such was the unhappy situation on July 16, 1910. Earle still remained close to the Atherstone boys, and on that evening she was visited by Weldon's 21-year-old son Thomas Frederick. As the two were having supper, they were startled by the sound of two gunshots. They seemed to come from the flat underneath Earle's, which was then unoccupied. However, neither went outside to investigate the noise. A short time later, a policeman came to the door. Apparently, a neighbor had just reported hearing the shots, after which he saw a man jump down from the wall of the next-door building and run off.

Thomas escorted the officer downstairs and into the rear yard, where they found a man lying unconscious. He had been shot twice in the head. The gun was not at the scene, and, in fact, never was found. Although doctors were immediately summoned, the victim soon died. Thomas claimed not to recognize the man. The victim was wearing carpet slippers instead of boots, and had been carrying a homemade cosh in his pocket, suggesting that he had not been engaged in any sort of benign enterprise. Also in his pocket was a business card bearing the name of "Weldon Atherstone."

When police asked Thomas if he knew anyone by that name, he hesitantly replied, "my father," but he could not believe his parent was the dead man. However, when he later viewed the body at the mortuary, he immediately acknowledged that it was indeed his dad.

Naturally, the prime suspect in Atherstone's murder was the man seen fleeing the scene. Witnesses described him as a small man in his twenties, and wearing a dark suit. He was definitely not Thomas Anderson, who was notably tall. But who was he, and--assuming he was the killer--what was his motive for shooting Atherstone?

Ross-Shire Journal, July 29, 1910

The actor's reason for being on the scene could be explained more easily. Atherstone was spying on his ex-lover. A diary found in his pocketbook revealed a man driven half-mad by jealousy, and he was convinced that Earle was seeing other men. In this diary, he named his suspected rivals, but these men all had alibis for the time of the shooting, and were soon cleared by police. (Incidentally, there is absolutely no reason to believe that Atherstone's obsession had any basis in reality.)

At the coroner's inquest, Earle--who seemed genuinely grief-stricken--was asked about her odd lack of curiosity when she heard the two gunshots. (She had assumed someone was scaring off a thief, or shooting at alley cats.) Thomas Anderson received questions regarding his equally peculiar inability to initially recognize his own father. He attributed this to a combination of the darkness and the victim's facial injuries. Both these witnesses struck observers as completely sincere, and no one could come up with any adequate motive for either of them to murder Atherstone. The inquest jury, faced with a remarkable paucity of evidence, gave the inevitable verdict of "murder by some person or persons unknown."

We know no more about the murder of Weldon Atherstone than that long-ago jury did. The near-total lack of clues in the case has provided a fertile field for a wide variety of theories. The simplest and most popular scenario imagines that Atherstone was out on a spy mission, hoping to catch Earle in the company of a romantic rival. He concealed himself in the empty flat below Earle's, expecting to confront her lover. Instead, he encountered a burglar. The two men fought, which ended with the burglar shooting Atherstone and disappearing into the night. Early 20th century true crime writer Hargrave L. Adam doubted that a burglar was afoot--early on a summer night, he said, was not a time for housebreakers to ply their criminal trade. He suggested that the gun had actually belonged to Atherstone, but during his encounter with "some petty sneak-thief," the weapon wound up being used against him. Sir Neville Macnaughten, a senior official at Scotland Yard, also scoffed at the burglar theory: "Burglars don't start business at 9:30 on a summer's night, nor do they crack cribs which contain nothing."

In more modern times, Jonathan Goodman--who had a taste for devising convoluted "solutions" to crime mysteries--proposed that Atherstone's murder was not due to a chance encounter with a stranger, but from a conspiracy among those closest to him. Atherstone, Goodman pointed out, had not been a very good father, and would hardly win any prizes as a boyfriend, either. Perhaps, he thought, long-suffering Elizabeth Earle and the two Anderson boys worked together to kill Atherstone. In Goodman's view, Thomas Anderson shot his father, with his brother William on hand to make off with the murder weapon. However, William had an alibi for the time of the shooting, and he did not match the description of the man seen fleeing the scene.

In his "Murder Houses of South London," Jan Bondeson diffidently speculated that Earle and/or the Andersons hired a "hit man," but immediately undercut his own theory by pointing out that none of them had sufficient funds to indulge in murder-for-hire. In any case, Bondeson felt that none of the three had sufficient motive to "swear into a murderous conspiracy." He cast doubt on the "burglar" hypothesis as well: the mystery man was described by witnesses as wearing an "elegant suit"--hardly likely in the case of a burglar stalking a lower-class neighborhood.

In his book about the case, "Mr. Atherstone Leaves the Stage," Richard Whittington-Egan listed the various questions surrounding the murder:

Had the dead man reason to believe that someone might come to the back of the mansion premises?
If so, for what purpose?
Was Atherstone anticipating an attack on himself, his son, or Miss Earle?
Who was there with whom he had at any time quarrelled who might cherish sufficient ill-will to take his life, or bribe an agent to do so?
Who anticipated a possible meeting with Atherstone, and a possible attack by him?
What was the reason for the meeting, and the motive for the attack?

"There were no answers," he sighed.

[Note: Understandably, Elizabeth Earle moved from her flat soon after the murder. What happened to her next is uncertain, but she may have emigrated to Australia. All we know of Atherstone's younger son William is that he served with distinction in World War One. As for Thomas Anderson, he joined the Merchant Navy, and eventually settled in New Zealand, where he became an active member of the Federated Seamen's Union of New Zealand. He died in 1964 with a dark cloud over his name, as he had just admitted to having spent the last several decades stealing funds from his union.

It would be interesting to know their theories about Atherstone's messy and untimely death, but, unfortunately, they seem to have kept whatever ideas they had to themselves.]

Weekend Link Dump

This week's Link Dump is sponsored by more of our Halloween Cats!

Who the hell was B. Traven?

What the hell was the Wakulla Volcano?

Watch out for those haunted paintings!

Watch out for those haunted effigies!

Watch out for those banana merchants!  Wait, what?

Here's your opportunity to buy the home of a Salem witch.

Cooking with human ashes.  Martha Stewart, call your office.

The murderer's ghost.

America's first "celebrity burglar."

Sketches of Georgian-era beauties.

The palomino vs. the hurricane.

A murder in Brooklyn.

The many adventures of a 19th century showman.

The real-life stories behind famous horror movies.

The biggest battle of the Napoleonic Wars.

A Welsh warrior princess.

Cappy Ricks and the poltergeist.

The world's worst lighthouse?

A newly-discovered Viking boat burial.

The victims of Vesuvius met an even more unpleasant end than you might think.

Speaking of which, the eruption probably happened on a different date than you might think.

The still-controversial murder case that helped lead to the end of the death penalty in Britain.

Attack of the Fairy Folk.

Yet another deadly love triangle.

Emblems fit for a king.

This week's Advice From Thomas Morris: vipers are not for kissing.

Betsy Balcombe, friend to Napoleon.

This week in Russian Weird looks at a gruesome and mysterious murder.

Did Nessie pop up on Google Earth?

A street of scandals and scoundrels.

The enigmatic Walworth murders.

Wheelbarrow Men meet the gallows.

The spooky Drummer of Tedworth.

A self-cleaning house.

That's it for this week! See you on Monday, when we'll look at the puzzling murder of an actor. In the meantime, here's some Bach.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

via Newspapers.com

Novels and movies about vengeful spirits angered over their last living wishes being ignored are so commonplace, you would think everyone would be aware of the danger, but some people just can't be told. The "Frankfort Daily Review," July 20, 1909:

Sterling, Ill. Friends and neighbors throughout Whiteside county are discussing in awestruck whispers the strange events associated with the burial of Mrs. Emma Stelzer, who vowed in a death message that unless her funeral was conducted from the house of the man she loved she would send her spirit to haunt him and to vex him for the remainder of his life.

Mrs. Stelzer killed herself by taking strychnine. She left a note saying that she loved Jacob Warner, a farmer, and that she wished her funeral to take place from his home. She also commanded Warner to see that her divorced husband did not witness the burial.

Warner scoffed at the strange threats. He said he never loved Mrs. Stelzer and that he would have nothing to do with her funeral. News of the woman's threat and the man's defiance spread over the countryside. and there was intense interest in the plans for the funeral.

Mrs. Stelzer's body was taken from the morgue, where it had lain since Warner refused to admit it to his home, and was carried out to the cemetery at the head of a long cortege of carriages, containing friends, neighbors, and many who were drawn by curiosity. The pastor had scarcely begun to read the burial service when the earth around the open grave caved in.

There was a suppressed movement of alarm among the crowd about the grave. The minister sent for workmen, who repaired the damage, and the burial service was resumed. Just as the pallbearers were about to lower the casket into the grave, one side of the grave caved in again and caught the casket, holding it like a vise. It was necessary to raise the casket to remove the dirt. On the second attempt there was another cave-in, and it was necessary to remove the casket again and remove the obstruction.

There was none in the funeral assemblage that believed the woman's threat had been anything more than the distracted message of a troubled woman, but all those present were visibly impressed by the two accidents.

Warner, who laughed at the threat that her spirit would return to haunt him all his life, keeps up his air of bravado. But he has noticeably grown pale and is failing in health, and friends who saw him the other day said he was a sick man. They attribute it to his brooding over Mrs. Stelzer's vow.

I have no idea what became of Warner, but I think it's safe to say that Emma was not a woman to be trifled with. Alive or dead.

The Leg-Stretcher of Odcombe

Thomas Coryat

You would think that someone who was a popular Early Modern travel writer, and who also knew pretty much everybody who was anybody in his era--half Baedeker, half Zelig--and who was dubbed "The Odd," would be better remembered today. But such are the vagaries of history.

This week, let us pay tribute to this undeservedly obscure Englishman, one of the quirkier figures of a decidedly quirky era.

Thomas Coryat (or Coryate) was born circa 1577 in the Somerset town of Crewkerne, although he grew up in the village of Odcombe, where his father George Coryat was rector. The family was not wealthy, but George was able to see to it that his son got a good education at Winchester College and Oxford. After Thomas left the university, he found himself unable to decide what to do with his life. His class-conscious era offered few desirable opportunities for a young man who had more brains than he did money.

Coryat, like so many people in his situation, made use of his wits as best he could. He had enough "connections" to get himself a place in the court of James I's son Henry. Coryat was a gregarious, witty fellow with a gift of gab, so he managed to earn his keep by keeping his wealthy, important acquaintances amused. Prince Henry granted him ten pounds a year to act as his unofficial court jester. His contemporary Thomas Fuller wrote that "Sweetmeats and Coryate made up the last course of all court entertainments. Indeed, he was the courtiers' anvil to try their wits upon; and sometimes the anvil returned the hammers as hard knocks as it received, his bluntness repaying their abusiveness."

It was a comfortable enough job, but a demeaning one.  Like so many other comedians, Coryat wanted to be taken seriously. He cared little for mere money, but he longed for fame and, even more importantly, respect. Playing the fool for the entertainment of the nobility was no way to achieve either of those desires. He came up with a remarkable career plan. He would travel--alone--across Europe, then write a book about his adventures. Surely, then, he would win lasting acclaim?

Coryat set off on his journey in May 1608. His limited funds meant that he had to walk a good part of the way. (He proudly dubbed himself "The Oddcombe Legge-Stretcher.") In the course of nearly half a year, Coryat "leg-stretched" his way through France, Italy, Venice, Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. Once back in England, he gave thanks for his safe return by donating his well-worn clothes and shoes to Odcombe Church, apparently with the thought that they should be venerated as relics. (The items, rather remarkably, remained on display until the 18th century.) In 1611, he recorded his achievement in a book, "Coryat's Crudities, hastily gobbled up in Five Months Travels in France, Italy, &c." His friend Ben Jonson arranged to have the work published, and also wrote a forward where he described Coryat as "an Engine, wholly consisting of extremes, a Head, Fingers, and Toes. For what his industrious Toes have trod, his ready Fingers have written, his subtle Head dictating." Coryat enlisted his other literary friends, such as John Donne and Inigo Jones, to write promotional verses (the 17th century equivalent of "blurbs") for the beginning of the book. He perhaps did not anticipate that his pals would gleefully take this as an opportunity to satirize and mock him. This literary celebrity roast proved so popular that a pirated reprint of the verses was published, omitting Coryat's material "for thine and thy purses good."

The imposing (over 200,000 words) "Crudities" is entirely characteristic of its author: Energetic, garrulous, amusing, eclectic, and slightly cracked. (It is the only book I know of to feature a frontispiece showing the author being pelted with eggs.) The streets of Paris "are the dirtiest, and so consequently the most stinking of all that ever I saw in any citie in my life." After describing a harrowing trip through the Alps, he noted that Aiguebelle featured many people with throat goitres, which he attributed to "the drinking of snow water." Savoy had beds so high "that a man could hardly gette into his bedde without some kind of climbing." Coryat deplored the Italian habit of sprinkling cheese over their food, "which I love not so well as the Welchmen doe." He did, however, appreciate one aspect of Italian dining: how they "doe alwaies at their meales use a little forke when they cut their meat...This forme of feeding I understand is generally used in all places of Italy, their forkes being for the most part made of yron or steele, and some of silver...The reason of this their curiosity is, because the Italian cannot by any means indure to have his dish touched with fingers, seeing all mens fingers are not alike cleane." Forks were not entirely unknown in England, but it took Coryat's promotion of their hygienic benefits to bring them into wider use.

Coryat also took note of another Italian innovation: "what they commonly call in the Italian tongue umbrellaes, that is, things that minister shadow unto them for shelter against the scorching heate of the Sunne. These are made of leather something answerable to the forme of a little canopy, & hooped in the inside with divers little wooden hoopes that extend the umbrella in a pretty large compasse." This is believed to be the earliest use of the word "umbrella" in English, although it would take about a century for the instruments to come into general use among Coryat's countrymen.

Venice fascinated him. It "yeeldeth the most glorious and heavenly shew upon the water that ever any mortal eye beheld." He described the architecture in astounding detail (often borrowed wholesale from earlier guide books.) Coryat earned the undying gratitude of music historians for his vivid descriptions of performances of the Venetian School, considered to be one of Europe's most well-known and influential musical movements.

On a less sublime note, he recorded the city's ubiquitous brothels, complaining that "if a stranger entereth into one of their Gondolas, and doth not presently tell them whither he will goe, they will incontinently carry him of their accord to a religious house [his sarcastic term for a bordello] forsooth, where his plumes shall be well pulled before he commeth forth againe." Coryat estimated that Venice had at least 20,000 prostitutes, "whereof many are esteemed so loose, that they are said to open their quivers to every arrow." He added his fear "least I shall expose my selfe to the severe censure and scandalous imputations of many carping Criticks, who I thinke will taxe me for luxury and wantonnesse to insert so lascivious a matter into this Treatise of Venice." Our Thomas knew that nothing sells books like a little sex.

Coryat followed up the success of "Crudities" with a sequel, "Coryats Crambe," a grab-bag of material consisting of some verses that had been submitted too late for inclusion in the previous book, petitions to Prince Henry and other members of the Royal Family, and the text of a speech Coryat made in the Court of Chancery. It too had a respectable sale, earning the author a decent amount of fame. Coryat became an accepted member of London's lively literary society, hobnobbing with (in the words of John Aubrey,) "all the witts then about the towne." John Hoskyns wrote a lengthy poem about this Jacobean Algonquin Round Table where Coryat ("This orator of Odcombe towne") was immortalized with lines such as,

But yet the number is not righted;
If Coriate bee not invited,
The jeast will want a tiller.
For wittily on him, they say,
As hammers on an anvil play,
Each man his jeast may breake.
When Coriate is fuddled well,
His tongue begins to talke pel-mel,
He shameth not to speake.

Hoskyns concluded his "tribute" by noting,

But Coriate liveth by his witts,
He looseth nothinge that he getts,
Nor playes the fool in vayne.

Coryat was still feeling restless and unfulfilled. His wanderlust urged him on to tackle even more exotic adventures. On October 20, 1612, he set out on another solo journey. He walked through Greece, the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and India. Coryat was one of the few Englishmen to tour the Ottoman Empire while it was still nearly at the height of its power and renown. He joined up with a caravan traveling through Palestine to Jerusalem. Coryat was utterly charmed by the region. His letters carry rapturous descriptions of monasteries with beautiful walled gardens, grand mosques with a thousand pillars, and cheap but excellent food. He called Damascus "an earthly paradise." In Jerusalem, Coryat piously had his arm tattooed with the arms of Jerusalem and the words "Via, Veritas, Vita" ["the Way, the Truth, the Life"] and visited the Temple of the Holy Sepulchre and other religious sites. By July 1615, he had arrived in India, where he was pleased to encounter a small group of Englishmen who were doing negotiations on behalf of the East India Company. He had been walking for some nine months, and was ready to take a rest in this little British enclave. The letters he sent home during this period were published in 1616 under the title of "Greetings from the Court of the Great Mogul." (A sequel appeared in 1618.)

Coryat made an appearance the court of the Emperor Jahangir in Ajmer. He presented a petition to Jahangir where he described himself as a "poore traveler and World-Seer," come to see "the blessed face of your Majesty," elephants, and the Ganges, presumably in that order. He asked the Emperor's permission to travel to Samarkand. Jahangir replied that his hostile relations with the Tartars made it impossible to help Coryat make the journey, but he did give the traveler a small sum of money. Coryat was grateful for this donation, as "I had but twentie shillings sterling left in my Purse."

Coryat visited Agra, which was then a great trading city. He observed religious festivals (as a devout Protestant, he did not really approve of any of them,) and toured grand tombs and exotic holy sites.

However, Coryat was tired. The strain of months of foot travel through largely inhospitable lands was finally taking its toll. He confided to an Englishman of his acquaintance that as he usually traveled alone, he feared he might die and "be buried in obscurity and none of his friends ever know what became of him."

In November 1617, Coryat made his way to Surat, popular as both a trade city and a port of embarkation for Mecca pilgrimages. It was his final journey. According to Edward Terry, an East India Company chaplain who had befriended the wanderer, Coryat's end was characteristically serio-comic: "He lived to come safely thither, but there being over-kindly used by some of the English, who gave him sack which they had brought from England; he calling for it as soon as he first heard of it, and crying: 'Sack, sack, is there such a thing as sack? I pray give me some sack'; and drinking of it (though, I conceive, moderately, for he was a very temperate man,) it increased his flux which he had then upon him."

This combination of English wine and Indian dysentery proved fatal for Coryat in December 1617. The location of his grave is now uncertain. Just outside of Surat is a domed Muslim-style monument which legend says is his burial site, but it is also possible that Coryat was laid to rest in Surat's English graveyard.

It is a sadly anonymous fate for someone so eager to make his mark in the world. However, although Coryat did not achieve the level of permanent historical recognition he probably craved, his could not be called an unsuccessful life. He was a brave, likable man who had adventures unheard of by most of his contemporaries and, for the most part, he seems to have had a jolly good time doing them. He deserves to be remembered.

I for one raise my fork to him.

Weekend Link Dump

This week's Link Dump is sponsored by some of the Cats of Halloween!

Where the hell is Lord Lucan?

Where the hell is Atlantis?

Where the hell is the Holy Grail?  What the hell is the Holy Grail?

Who the hell was Suitcase Jane Doe?

Watch out for those novels!

Watch out for the Yowie!

Watch out for the Woman in Black!

Watch out for those hopping ghosts!

Watch out for those haunted tunnels!

Watch out for those haunted mines!

Watch out for those haunted cemeteries!  Especially the ones that come with a side order of smallpox!

Watch out for those haunted desks!  ( Here is another example.)

You want to know what Henry VIII's castles really needed?  Porta Potties.

An Irish soldier in India writes home.

Early 20th century identity theft.

A landmark legal case dealing with slavery.

Why the Welsh love their dragons.

The horrors of the dickey.

The 19th century murder of Charlotte Dymond.

Early Modern dietary tips.

The Witch of Chesapeake.

Saint Galgano and the sword in the stone.

One really freaking old knife.

Japan's ancient "rock ship."

The history-changing death of Princess Charlotte.

The importance of Regency-era circulating libraries.

Frankly, I'd love to see more modern artists do this.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Fattest Bear in Alaska.

England's last fatal duel.

When your goal is to be the ugliest man in the world, maybe you need to rethink your life.

What it was like to be an 18th century poacher.

Victorian Barbies.

Identifying the woman in the iron coffin.

Robert Peary and the meteorite.

Speaking of meteorites, here's the world's most expensive doorstop.

Lincoln's Butter Market.

A Neanderthal girl's gruesome end.

Games banned by George Washington.

A 1000-year-old schoolbook.

The unsolved murder of a manuscript dealer.

The Case of the Stagnant Slabs.

The Case of the Perfumed Missionaries.

The Case of the Vanishing Monk.

A day in the life of a 12th century merchant.

Charles Dickens' veterinarian.

The man who was both a dwarf and a giant.

"He opened the conversation by announcing that he had a pig’s nerve inside his bladder."  Try out this line at your next cocktail party.

The mysterious gender of the Chevalier d'Eon.

The French Mustache Strike.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at an eccentric 17th century traveler.  In the meantime, here's Steve Forbert.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

via Newspapers.com

If there's one topic that defines this blog, it would probably be "ticked-off ghost cat." So I am pleased to share this item from the (Bridgewater, New Jersey) "Courier News," November 23, 1910:

Montclair, N. J., Nov. 23. Frederick G. Johnson, who lives at 9 Oxford street, in this town, thinks that the ghost of a pet cat which he owned haunts his alarm clock.

Up to a few weeks ago the clock behaved as well as any good domesticated alarm clock should. On November 13 the alarm clock, which had been set inadvertently for the noon hour, went off. The Johnson cat was dozing near where the clock stood and the noise awakened her. She dashed about in a frenzy. The kitchen door was open and through it the cat ran. That evening Johnson found the cat dead in the yard back of his home.

The next night the alarm clock began its strange antics. The timepiece switched suddenly into the Ananias circuit. The hands would suddenly jump forward for several swings about the face and the alarm would go off at all hours without any apparent cause. Johnson says he does not remember having wound the clock before these untimely capers. The climax came last night. Johnson was sound asleep. He had left the clock on a chiffonier in his room. About 2 o'clock he was awakened by something striking him in the chest. When he got his bearings he found it was the alarm clock. The thing was ripping out alarms. Johnson says that when he went to sleep the clock was at least four feet from the bed. The clock was today relegated to Johnson's cellar. The owner ascribes the strange actions to the transmigration of the spirit of his vengeful cat.

Sadly, I was unable to find any follow-ups to this story.

The Haunting of Slawensik

An old castle out in the middle of nowhere. Two Napoleon-era soldiers who are its reluctant houseguests. Then, strange and inexplicable things begin to happen...

It sounds like the classic setting for a Gothic novel. In this case, however, we are dealing with real life.

The starting point for our story is October 1806, when the Prussians were defeated by the French in the battle of Jena. Among the prisoners of war was one Prince Friedrich Hohenlohe. One of the Prince's councilors, Augustus Hahn, was more fortunate: the French granted him parole. Hohenlohe asked Hahn to take over the management of his main residence, Castle Slawensik in Upper Silesia, until he obtained his release from Napoleon's custody.

Despite his natural desire to return to his own home, Hahn loyally agreed. He would take with him his personal servant, John Reich, two coachmen, and the castle's housekeeper, Frau Knittel. To stave off the loneliness of his temporary exile, Hahn persuaded an old friend, Karl Kern, to accompany him. The little group settled in at Slawensik on November 19, 1806. Both men had a contemptuous skepticism towards anything that smacked of the supernatural. Hahn, in particular, was proud to describe himself as a thoroughgoing materialist.

Nothing unusual was noted until the third night after their arrival. As Hahn and Kern sat reading in a room on the first floor, they were suddenly pelted with bits of plaster. At first, the two startled men assumed the ancient ceiling was beginning to crumble. Then they noted that there were no cracks or any other signs of weakness on the ceiling. It looked perfectly sound. As they examined the apparently pristine surface, another shower of lime fell on them. Kern noticed that the pieces felt oddly cold to the touch.

The next morning, the men were disconcerted to find that the room was now thickly carpeted by fragments of plaster. And the ceiling was still completely uncracked.

That evening, the mystery took an even more alarming turn. The bits of lime began not merely falling, but flying across the room, hitting the two men as if they were guided missiles. As Hahn and Kern fled, they heard rapping noises following them down the dark, ancient halls.

The two soldiers were beginning to think that there were worse fates than being captured by Napoleon.

Kern accused Hahn of pulling some deranged practical joke on him. He had to abandon that relatively comforting theory when a series of earth-shaking knocks were heard at a time when Hahn clearly could not have made the sounds.

When the eerie noises continued on their fifth night at the castle, Kern and Frau Knittel's son made a painstaking search of the upper floors of the castle. The rooms were all completely empty. Later that night, the men were awakened by the sound of slippered footsteps moving across their room. These sounds were then joined by the sound of a walking stick being tapped on the floor.

The ghost--for by this time everyone had to admit this was what they were facing--expanded its repertoire. Candlesticks were thrown across rooms. When the household sat at the dining table, their dishes would suddenly be tossed about by invisible hands. Other household objects would, before their eyes, levitate and dance in the air.

After three weeks of this uproar, Hahn and Kern had their belongings moved to an upper room. This helped them about as much as you think it would. In the middle of the night, Hahn was awakened by the sound of Kern whimpering. He saw Kern staring into a mirror, pale and shaking with fear. When Kern had recovered from his shock enough to speak, he said that he had seen reflected in the mirror the image of an old woman in white robes. Her face was calm and unthreatening, but the sight nevertheless filled him with horror. In the morning, the men had their things moved back downstairs.

Word spread through the area that there were some very odd things happening at Castle Slawensik. Two Bavarian officers, Lieutenant Nagerle and Captain Cornet, came by to investigate. These soldiers were determined skeptics, eager to expose the "truth" behind these allegedly spectral manifestations. Nagerle obtained permission to spend the night in the "haunted" room.

Nagerle had not been in the room for more than a few minutes when the others heard him cursing loudly. This was followed by banging noises. When they reentered the room, they saw Nagerle whacking away at tables and chairs with his saber, angrily battling some invisible foe. He explained indignantly that the minute he was left alone, "something" began pelting him with lime. Hahn and Kern had a very difficult time persuading the outraged officer that they were not pranking him. As the four men were talking, candlesticks abruptly rose in the air and fell to the ground. A lead ball hit Hahn on the forehead. A glass shattered itself on the floor. The men heard footsteps marching through the room.

Nagerle was forced to concede defeat.

The goings-on at Slawensik became increasingly varied. One day after Hahn had heated some water for shaving, before his eyes the liquid was mysteriously sucked out of the basin and vanished. On another occasion, a visitor found that his hat had disappeared. While the household was looking for it, the hat suddenly floated in the air before its owner's face. When he grabbed at it, the hat jerked away and mockingly sailed around the room before dropping at his feet.

One night, Hahn decided that he had enough. Before going to bed, he addressed the ghost, demanding that he be allowed to have one night of peaceful sleep. No sooner had he dropped into a deep slumber that a quantity of cold water was dumped on his head.

Probably the strangest event took place while Hahn was away from the castle for a few days to attend to some business. In his absence, Kern--who did not at all relish the thought of facing the ghost alone--persuaded Hahn's servant John Reich to spend the night in his "haunted" room. After they had retired to bed, the pair saw a jug of beer rise from the table and pour the contents into a glass. Then, the tumbler was raised in the air and emptied. "Oh, Lord," Reich shuddered. "It is swallowing it!"

After a moment, the now-empty glass was replaced on the table. The men examined the floor. The beer had disappeared.

This left the men more unnerved than anything that had previously taken place. If the ghost--or whatever it was--could drink beer, what else might it do?

One evening, as Hahn was walking towards the castle, he heard a dog walking behind him. Assuming it was their greyhound, Flora, Hahn turned and called to the animal. He saw nothing. As he kept walking, the sounds of the footpads continued to, well, dog him. Even inside the castle, he heard a large dog trailing after him.

Kern approached him, calling Flora's name. He too had heard what he assumed was the greyhound coming up the stairs after Hahn. The two went in search of the dog. They finally found Flora securely locked up in the stables. The coachmen told them that the dog had not running loose at any time of the day.

For whatever reason, this ghostly dog proved to be the final eerie manifestation at Slawensik. The two officers stayed at the castle without incident for six more months, when Prince Hohenlohe was released from captivity. Hahn, who had been keeping a detailed diary of his strange experiences, ended the manuscript by concluding, "I have described these events exactly as I heard and saw them; from beginning to end I observed them with the most entire self-possession. I never felt fear; nor an approach to it; yet the whole thing remains to me perfectly inexplicable."

No one ever offered an explanation for the "perfectly inexplicable" events at Slawensik. The only possible clue emerged in 1831, when the castle was destroyed by fire. It was said that the skeleton of a man, who had evidently been walled up in some secret room, was discovered in the ruins. There was a sword by his side, and his skull had been split open.

Weekend Link Dump

This week's Link Dump is sponsored by Strange Company HQ's hard-working research staff.

Why the hell is it dark in outer space?

Why the hell was this woman buried in her Ferrari?

What the hell was the Bell Witch?

What the hell was the New England Sea Serpent?

What the hell happened to the Witchfinder General?

Watch out for the Gwiber!

Watch out for those haunted rocking chairs!  [Note: I posted about another one earlier this year.]

Because I'm getting tired of being pestered with questions about how to survive mermaid attacks, here you go.

The mystery of the Horse With No Name.

Victorians did a lot of weird things, God knows, but they did not keep tear bottles.

A cautionary tale about social media: anyone can be destroyed.

A murderer who was so evil his town had to change its name.

Kelly, the Sassy Dolphin, and the intelligence of animals.

The very messy execution of an apostate monk.

Recruiting for the East India Company.

When the formula for good health was staying in bed and drinking a lot of milk.

A forgotten Norwegian witch.

The link between salt and the Civil War.

The good news: Caravaggio did not die of syphilis.  The bad news: He's still dead.

Mysterious art hints at an unknown civilization.

Horse-powered towns.

Rules for Victorian gallantry.

The coronation of England's first queen regnant.

The ancestor of badminton.

The Case of the 384,000 Squeezes.

The Case of the Sicilian Dwarf.

The Case of the Eternal Flames.

The Case of the Bog Bodies.

Mystery Blood in Scotland.

French ladies liked Ben Franklin.

The candy mastiff who was a friend to cats.

Booze and jealousy are not a good combination.

This Week in Russian Weird: Do that voodoo that they do so well.

An ancient Roman comic strip.

Vintage ghost-hunting tools.

The man who walked backwards for fun and profit.

Europe's oldest intact book.

The secret confession of a 17th century sailor.

Some lovely 18th century sketches of rural cottages.

A brief history of blood transfusions.

A DIY project goes really wrong.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a haunted castle.  In the meantime, here's some Ludwig.  I'm not usually a great fan of piano music, but I love this one.