Lights Out With Sylvia Shults: Recent Episodes
Sylvia Shults
Many people in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, leave their cars and houses unlocked in case pedestrians need to make a quick escape from polar bears. (from Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Undoubtedly Odd)
Sixty-eight year old Jean-Marie Sevrain was forced to obtain a letter from his doctor certifying that he was still alive after the French health service refused to pay his medical expenses on the grounds that he was dead. When he applied for a $30 refund after renewing a prescription, he was informed that he was not entitled to one because, according to health service records, he had died four years earlier. (from Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Undoubtedly Odd)
Before releasing 10,000 pigeons for the 2014 National Day celebrations in Beijing, officials examined the butts of every bird in case any one of them was carrying a bomb. (from Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Undoubtedly Odd)
Farmer Sying P’an, of Weinan, China, set up a zip line as a way to stop his pigs from running off when he takes them to market. He created a series of harnesses and pulleys to transport the 220-pound pigs through the air from his own truck straight into the truck of their new owner, without allowing their trotters to even touch the ground. (from Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Undoubtedly Odd)
The face of English composer Sir Edward Elgar was chosen to appear on the British 20-pound note for more than a decade because his distinctive bushy mustache was difficult for would-be forgers to copy. (from Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Undoubtedly Odd)
In 2014, grasshopper swarms in Albuquerque, NM, were so large they showed up as rainfall on local weather radar. (from Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Undoubtedly Odd)
During World War II, anticipating heavy losses in taking mainland Japan, the United States produced so many Purple Heart medals that the surplus was still being used until the late 1990s.
After losing a bet in a poker game, a 22-year-old man from Dunedin, New Zealand, has legally changed his name to Full Metal Havoc More Sexy N. Intelligent Than Spock And All The Superheroes Combined With Frostnova. The name had been chosen for him by his fellow card players. (from Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Undoubtedly Odd)
Since 2007, Peter Fletcher from Birmingham, England, has carefully logged every one of his sneezes — more than 4,000 in total. Whenever he sneezes, he makes a note of the time and date, where he was, and what he was doing at the time. Looking back through his records, he realized that he has never sneezed while on the toilet. He is particularly proud of sneeze #42, which, although powerful, he managed to avoid getting on a quiche. (from Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Undoubtedly Odd)
In 2019, first-year student Eimi Haga handed a blank sheet of paper to her professor and hoped for the best. She was studying ninja history, which had been a passion of hers since childhood, and she had to write an essay about a visit to the Ninja Museum at Igaryu. The night before her essay was due, Haga spent hours soaking soybeans, crushing them, and squeezing the liquid out through a cloth. Then she took another two hours to mix the soybean juice with just the right amount of water. After doing all this, she quickly jotted her essay down, not even caring much about the content of the work.
The essay was written in invisible ink — the soybean extract. The words only appeared when the paper was heated over a gas stove. (Haga did give the teacher a note, written in regular ink, telling him to heat the paper on which the essay was written.) The professor gave Haga an A without even reading the whole essay.
Victoria’s Secret was named in honor of Queen Victoria, as a way to make people think of the elegance of the Victorian era. (The “secret,” of course, refers to what’s under the lingerie.)
Birds have been observed intentionally lining their nests with cigarette butts. While the nicotine in them is toxic to the birds, it’s a low enough dose that it it’s not a significant risk to them in the short term (they don’t live long enough for the long term effects to be a problem), and it kills parasites that may infect the chicks in the nest.
Crows have been observed stealing lit cigarette from ashtrays and wafting the smoke through their feathers to kill parasites.
And smaller bird species have been seen stealing anti-bird spikes from buildings and putting them in their nests like little palisade walls against other birds and predators. The smaller birds can get through the spikes easily, but it makes it more difficult for a predator like a hawk or a rat to get into the nest.
Pistachio ice cream is about 2,000 years older than chocolate or vanilla ice cream. Persians were making a sort of ice cream as early as 500 BCE, and it was often flavored with pistachio. Both chocolate and vanilla are native to the New World, so the very earliest ice cream makers had no idea they even existed.
When a caterpillar spins a cocoon and undergoes metamorphosis, it essentially liquefies itself before turning into a butterfly, a process called larval ecdysis. A scientific study trained caterpillars to be scared of some stimulus like a bad odor or a specific light pattern. Then the researchers tested the butterflies after metamorphosis and found that the learned fear remained, suggesting that somewhere in that goo, the memory persisted.
Chloroplasts are the organelles responsible for photosynthesis. There is an ocean creature called the emerald green sea slug (Elysiachlorotica) that eats algae and incorporates their chloroplasts into its own cells. The algae chloroplasts continue to photosynthesize, providing the sea slug with around 80% of the calories it consumes.
The details surrounding Duke Jing of Jin’s death are written in the ancient Chinese text Zuo Zhuan. According to the text, upon dreaming of an evil spirit, the duke consulted a shaman. The shaman gave the duke some distressing news: he would not live to eat the wheat of the new harvest. Naturally, the duke set out to beat the shaman’s dire prophecy. After several more disturbing dreams, Jing broke down and went to see a physician. The doctor diagnosed him with incurable gaohuang, a fatty deposit between the heart and the diaphragm. Jing accepted this diagnosis, then realized that it was time for the harvest, and he was still alive. As the farmers brought the newly harvested wheat to him, Jing decided to taunt the shaman for being wrong. He summoned the shaman, pointed to the wheat, then had him executed for his incorrect prophecy. Shortly after the execution, the duke began to feel bloated. and decided to use the bathroom before sampling the new harvest. While in the bathroom, Jing somehow fell into the toilet and died, without ever having taken a bit of the newly-harvested wheat. (From Buzzfeed)
I’m pleased to say that Gone On Vacation: Endless Summer has won second place in the Spring 2026 BookFest Awards. (It picked up an Honorable Mention in the BooksShelf competition last December, so there’s that.) So I’m not the only one who thinks it’s good! Pick up a copy and see what all the fuss is about. https://bookshop.org/p/books/gone-on-vacation-endless-summer-sylvia-shults/5bbea9da0381d03b?ean=9781958589267&next=t
Allan Pinkerton, the 19th century spy best known for founding the Pinkerton Detective Agency, died — not from any of his undercover adventures — but rather from an unfortunate collision with a poodle. The story goes that one day, Pinkerton was walking his wife’s poodle when the dog apparently tangled its leash around his legs, causing him to trip and fall. When he hit the sidewalk, he bit his tongue quite severely. Several days later, it was reported that he had died due to a gangrenous infection in his tongue. (From Buzzfeed)
There is a species of crab known as ghost crabs (because they have pale shells and only come out at night, get it?) that have teeth in their stomach. This sort of arrangement is known scientifically as a gastric mill. They use these teeth not only to process food, but also to growl at predators. They do this by grinding their stomach-teeth together to cause vibrations, creating sound. This leaves their claws free to nip at the predator if it comes too close.
Wounds that occur during the day heal faster than those that happen at night. Scientists discovered that injuries heal noticeably faster when the hurt happens during the day versus at night, largely because of the circadian rhythm of fibroblasts, the skin cells that pave the way for new cell growth. The study found that daytime burn injuries healed eleven days sooner that those that occurred at night.
Parts of the Great Wall of China are held together by rice. Scientists at Zhejiang University in China were researching the makeup of mortar used for building the Great Wall when they realized something unusual was added to the standard mixture of lime (limestone that has been heated to a high temperature) and water: sticky rice. In their tests, the scientists compared the quality of mortar made with and without sticky rice, and found that “sticky rice lime mortar has more stable physical properties … which makes it a suitable restoration mortar for ancient masonry.” Using sticky rice as a construction ingredient was one of the greatest innovations of the Ming dynasty, researchers said, helping their structures (including tombs and pagodas as well) survive earthquakes and the elements. (From Smithsonian)
In 2008, an Australian special forces explosives detection dog named Sarbi spent almost 14 months MIA in Afghanistan after disappearing during an ambush. Eventually, an American soldier noticed her with a local man. Knowing that the Aussies were missing one of their troops, he confirmed that she was a trained military dog by using voice commands. Sarbi was reunited with her handlers. She retired soon afterward, and in February 2015, a dog park in Brisbane was named in her honor.
In 1984, a teenager named Zak Brown appeared on the game show Wheel of Fortune and won $3,050. He spent all the money to but a go-kart. He went on to become the CEO of McLaren F1 racing.
In an early version of his dictionary, Noah Webster defined “cat” with the entry: “The domestic cat needs no description. It is a deceitful animal, and when enraged, extremely spiteful.” (from Bored Panda)
Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys wrote their first single “Surfin'” for a high school music class. He got an F on the assignment. In 2018, the school retroactively changed his grade to an A.
Japanese war criminal Hitoshi Imamura believed that his sentence of ten years after World War II was too light. So he built a replica prison in his garden, where he stayed until his death in 1968. (from the Reddit community via Bored Panda)
The next time you’re hitting the treadmill at the gym, think about this: the Victorians used treadmills as a method of punishment for prisoners, making the convicts walk on them for eight hours a day. The prison guards could make the treadmills harder to use by tightening screws on the devices. To this day, prison officers in the United Kingdom are known as “screws”.
In 1954, United Fruit Company — now known as Chiquita — talked the CIA into overthrowing a government. In 1952, the goverment of Guatemala started giving unused farmland to landless peasants. The fallow land actually belonged to the United Fruit Company. Even though the company wasn’t using the land for anything at that time, they certainly didn’t want peasants to have it. So the higher-ups lobbied the United States government, asking it to intervene, and telling the CIA that the Guatemalan government was run by a bunch of Communists. It wasn’t; the Guatemelan president, Jacobo Arbenz, had come to power in a fair and democratic election in 1950. But the Central Intelligence Agency bought the fruit company’s story, and held a coup d’etat. They overthrew the elected government and replaced it with a military dictatorship that was pro-business. This is where we get the term “banana republic.”
On the first Sunday in February, All Saints Church in London hosts the Clowns’ Service. Clowns come in full costume and makeup to honor the legendary Georgian-era clown Joseph Grimaldi. Grimaldi is considered the father of modern clowning, and was the first clown to use makeup professionally. The clowns usually put on a show for the public in the church hall after the service.
The Netherlands sends Canada 20,000 tulips every year in gratitude for liberating the country during World War II, and for hosting the Dutch royal family in exile.
Ancient Romans would put sandals on the hands of sleeping people, then tickle their face so they would slap themselves.
During Prohibition, people could buy a product called Vine-Glo, which was a brick of grape juice concentrate. On the packaging, there was included a very specific warning: “After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine.” And we wouldn’t want that during Prohibition, now would we?
Willie Francis was set to be executed by electric chair on May 3, 1946, but he managed to survive, due to the chair malfunctioning. The 17-year-old described the experience as having the taste of cold peanut butter, adding, “[There were] little blue and pink and green speckles, like shines in a rooster’s tail … I tried to say goodbye, but my tongue got stuck in the peanut butter, and I felt a burnin’ in my head.” He did not survive his secind encounter with the chair the very next year. (From Ranker.com .)
Well this is a cool way to begin a new year.
Gone On Vacation: Endless Summer has won her first award, following in her big sister’s footsteps. It’s not huge, but I’ve got an Honorable Mention in the BooksShelf Awards. (I’m in the top five, so that’s something.)
Now go out there and boot 2025 out the door, and hope that 2026 is better behaved when it comes in!
The small village of Villar de Corneja in Spain celebrates New Year at noon instead of midnight, becasue many of the residents are elderly and want to go to bed early. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Level Up)
On December 1, 1958, one of the worst tragedies in Chicago’s history took the lives of 93 children and three nuns. The fire at Our Lady of the Angels grade school is still remembered today as one of the darkest days of Chicago’s past. Join me for a visit to the Shrine of the Holy Innocents, a memorial to those lost in the fire. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR6p5l5yQcY&t=14s
Does your family have holiday traditions? Dressing up in matching pjs, opening one present on Christmas Eve, hanging a pickle ornament on the tree?
Maxine Menster’s family traditions included baking cookies during the holiday season. She lived in rural Iowa, and some of her favorite memories were made in the kitchen. Every Christmas Eve, the home would be filled with the sweet scent of baking cookies. Then the treats would be hung on the tree as decorations. The next morning, everyone would enjoy the festive breakfast. “Every year, Mom would talk about how it was such a wonderful thing to wake up on Christmas morning and have those cookies on the tree,” says Maxine’s daughter, Jane Menster.
So when Maxine passed away in 1994, her family decided to honor that tradition in stone. Maxine had shared cookies on Christmas with generations of loved ones: children, then grandchildren. And now, anyone who visits Maxine can also enjoy her recipe. It’s carved on her gravestone, to carry on her sweet legacy. Maxine Menster is buried in Cascade Community Cemetery in Cascade, Iowa.
People in Chumbivilcas province, Peru, are encouraged to settle disputes by fighting each other in public on Christmas Day as part of a festival called Takanakuy. The word “takanakuy” means “to hit each other” in the indigenous Quechua language. Each fistfight lasts for about a minute, and the combatants range from young children to the elderly. The goal of all this is to get aggressions out and to end the year in peace. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Level Up)
Along with ghost stories at Christmas, I like to share stories that have their start during the holiday season. Here’s an episode of my true crime podcast, Grave Deeds and Dead Plots. It tells the story of Thelma Todd, who was murdered December 16, 1935, at her home in Pacific Palisades, California.
She was the Ice Cream Blonde, a firecracker of an actress in the golden age of movies. But Thelma Todd’s success came at a price, and her cheerful nature hid a backstory of struggle and strife. Also in this episode, William Terriss was the toast of the London theater scene in the late nineteenth century. Famed and feted, the actor was at the height of his career when he was murdered by a jealous bit player. And, sadly, it was all over a miscommunication. Find out more in this riveting episode of Grave Deeds and Dead Plots. https://www.voyagemedia.fm/show/grave-deeds-and-dead-plots/shows-5/
Based on the series Grave Deeds and Dead Plots, by Sylvia Shults (Bookshop link: https://bookshop.org/p/books/grave-deeds-and-dead-plots-sylvia-shults/18714132?ean=9781637897645, Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Grave-Deeds-Plots-Sylvia-Shults/dp/1637897642/ref=monarch_sidesheet)
The holiday season is a time of treats — good food, extra nibbles, and lovely things to drink. One of my favorite drinks is this exquisite Irish Cream. Enjoy!
Irish Cream
3 eggs
1/4 teaspoon each vanilla and almond extract
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 1/2 cup half and half
1 1/2 Tablespoon chocolate syrup
1 cup whiskey
Mix briefly after adding each ingredient. (You can make this in a bowl for ease of beating the eggs in the first place, then add the other ingredients.) After adding the whiskey, beat on medium for about two minutes. Refrigerate overnight. Lasts for two to three weeks in the fridge.
Kallikantzaroi – The Holiday Demons of Armageddon
The kallikantzaroi are Greek demons who can vary in appearance. Sometimes they are described as gigantic hairy demons with a pair of horse legs and boar tusks, and at other times they are just described as small black Satanic-looking imps. They are said to eat frogs and other adorable woodland creatures.
According to Greek folklore, the kallikantzaroi spend most of the year living underground, sawing at the trunk of the World Tree. The World Tree’s trunk connects the earth to the heavens, and keeps the heavens from crashing down onto the earth. In other words, the kallikantzaroi spend all year long trying to destroy the world.
They are usually nearly finished on Christmas Eve, but they are allowed to come up to the earth’s surface during the twelve days of Christmas. So at dawn on Christmas Day, the goblins come topside and wreak all kinds of havoc, mayhem, and murder (if they can get away with it). Fortunately for the world’s continued existence, the damaged trunk of the World Tree heals itself completely during the time the demons are away on the surface. On January 6, the demons return to the underworld and start their destruction of the tree trunk once more.
Any child born within the twelve days of Christmas ran the risk, when reaching adulthood, of turning into a kallikantzaros themselves. The antidote for this was to swaddle the baby in wisps of straw or braids of garlic, and to singe the child’s toenails.
Fortunately, there are ways to protect yourself against the kallikantzaroi. One is to leave a Yule log burning for all twelve days of Christmas, so the demons can’t enter your house through the chimney. Another method is to toss a pair of smelly old shoes onto a fire. The stink of burning sweat and shoe leather repels the demons, possibly because it reminds them of the stink of the underworld.
Another way to protect yourself against a murderous kallikantzaros is to leave a colander on your doorstep. A kallikantzaros can’t count above two. Because three is a holy number, pronouncing it will make the demon explode. So it sits on the doorstep all night, trying in vain to count the holes in the colander, and completely forgetting that it wanted to get into your house to kill you. (Excerpted from Spirits of Christmas: The Dark Side of the Holidays, by Sylvia Shults)
One of the most puzzling and (to modern eyes) grotesque example of a Christmas ritual reversal is the English custom of the hunting, killing, and displaying of wrens. Wrens are the smallest bird native to Europe, and killing one has for centuries been regarded as a cowardly act sure to bring bad luck down on the perpetrator. This belief goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. The early medieval Irish writer Cormac of Cashel said that the wren got its Old Irish name (drean) from drui-en, or druid-bird. The ancient Irish used the wren for fortune-telling.
But by the seventeenth century, the Irish were killing wrens at Christmas. This was also a custom in the British Isles and in the south of France. Teenage boys would carry a holly-bush with bunches of dead birds and colorful ribbons tied to it from house to house, displaying their grisly trophies and asking for money. Later, the dead bird was carried in a box, and the “wren-boys” would put on small skits or mock combats for the entertainment of their audiences. This custom continued through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Most of the time, the tiny corpse was carried around and displayed on a ribbon-bedecked bier, but in England by the nineteenth century, the hunters had switched to putting the wrens alive into a box. The box, too, was festively decorated, with colored paper or ribbons hung from the top, two candles at the sides, and glass windows at either end so the captive birds could be viewed. This box was slung between two poles, and carried around to accompany the carolers. This method of capturing the birds alive took more skill, and meant that the birds could be released, safe and sound, after Christmas.
Wren-hunting, along with caroling and wassailing, was one of several ritual reversals carried on by working-class people in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Much earlier than that, though, members of higher social classes were getting up to their own Christmas shenanigans. And some took it, well, a little too far.
Most of the records we have of the medieval period in Europe come down to us from the church, as priests and monks were generally the record-keepers of the time. By the twelfth century, some of the clergy in France had developed a Christmas celebration that evoked the pagan merrymaking of ancient Saturnalia. They called it the Feast of Fools, or Asses, or Sub-deacons, and it spread rapidly from France into Flanders and then to England.
The point of this, originally, was for the higher-ranking clergy to practice humility by letting the lower orders lead the worship services at New Year’s. Soon, though, it evolved into a general Christmastime celebration, with the rites being changed to suit the burlesque revelry. As early as 1236 and 1238 Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, had to issue an edict forbidding his clergy to completely upend the order of worship—they were pretending to worship demons.
In 1333 John de Grandisson, bishop of Exeter, began a thirty-year campaign to abolish the Feast of Fools at his cathedral. Apparently, the lower clergy talked the choirboys into throwing mud at each other during services on the three holy days after Christmas. The congregation loved it—they “dissolved into disorderly laughter and illicit mirth”–but the bishop was not amused. By the early fifteenth century, the practice was no longer tolerated.
There was, however, a much more endearing tradition; the choosing of the boy bishop. In the early tenth century in Germany, the junior clergy and assistants of cathedrals were recognized and honored by being allowed to hold procession on the three holy days after Christmas; deacons on St. Stephen’s Day, priests on St. John’s Day, and choirboys on the feast day of the Holy Innocents, the children slaughtered by Herod’s men in their search for the infant Jesus. This spread quickly to France and England, and remained a custom throughout the Middle Ages. In the twelfth century, the cult of St. Nicholas of Myra, patron saint of children, became popular in western Europe, and this reinforced the popularity of the tradition of the “feast of boys”.
The “boy bishop” was chosen by the choirboys, being one of them. He had to be good-looking, with a fine singing voice. The “boy bishop” was dressed in a jeweled mitre and velvet vestments embroidered with gold. He and his retinue paraded around the town collecting alms in return for singing at monasteries, convents, and the houses of nobles. Sometimes, the money collected was donated to the boys’ school. In other areas, the boy was allowed to keep whatever money was left after the cost of providing a large supper for his mates on the feast day of the Holy Innocents. (Excerpted from Spirits of Christmas: The Dark Side of the Holidays, by Sylvia Shults)
It just wouldn’t be Christmas without cookies. Lots and lots of cookies. Santa Claus is powered by them, after all. And many of these delectable treats have history behind them. Take, for example, animal crackers.
As far back as the 17th century, bakeries were producing little cakes and crackers shaped like animals. Archaeologists theorize that in ancient times, people who were too poor to afford to buy real live animals for sacrificing to the gods made do with a baked substitute. (If you really wanted to stretch, you could point out that modern cultures, like the Hindu religion, still do this today. Cakes in shape of animals are used in ceremonies instead of sacrificing real goats. It’s kinder to the animals, way less messy, and keeps the animal-rights folks happy.)
In 1871, the Stauffer Biscuit Company in New York led the way by introducing baked crackers in the shape of animals. These quirky confections soon became popular, because they were just plain fun. Later, in 1902, the National Biscuit Company, or Nabisco (the company behind Oreo cookies), revolutionized the animal cracker industry with the launch of Barnum’s Animals. These animal-shaped crackers were named after the famous circus showman, P.T. Barnum, and came in a rectangular box designed to resemble the circus train cars used to transport animals.
The packaging came with a nifty marketing strategy built right in. There was a string handle glued to the top of each box, which made it perfect for hanging them on Christmas trees. This clever concept was a marketing strategy that made animal crackers popular during the Christmas season. Early versions of Nabisco’s animal crackers typically featured only a few animal types, such as lions, elephants, bears, camels, and others. However, in 1948, the company added new animal species, and in 2002, they added a koala to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Barnum’s Animals. Currently, Nabisco offers a remarkable 37 different animal shapes, including tigers, cougars, rhinoceroses, kangaroos, hippopotamuses, cows, bison, hyenas, zebras, sheep, gorillas, monkeys, seals, and giraffes.
The original boxes, as well as being reminiscent of circus cars, also depicted the animals behind bars, in cages. Modern sentiments have changed, though, and in 2020, Nabisco changed the design to depict animals roaming freely in grasslands, replacing the previous images of caged animals. This was a response to animal rights groups and changing societal attitudes regarding animal welfare. The new box perfectly reflects that our society no longer tolerates animals being confined in cages.
So the next time you bite the head off a camel, take a moment to look at the package your cookies came in, and reflect on the freedom and change that picture represents. We’ve lost the cool Christmas ornament, and the circus vibe of the animal cracker box. But maybe we’ve learned to be a little kinder to the creatures we share the planet with.
Pull up a chair, tuck yourself in with a cozy blanket, and make sure there’s a cup of something warm and sweet on the table next to you. We’re going to revisit a few Lights Out episodes!
Lights Out 2022: Smee. In this episode, we’ll hear a reading of “Smee”, a short story by A. M. Burrage from 1931. Burrage brings the spooky with this ghostly tale. Merry Christmas!
Here’s a little present from me to you: a reading of A Visit From Saint Nicholas.
https://five.libsyn.com/show/episodes/view/29097618 The tragic disappearance of the Sodder children, on Christmas Eve 1945, began in flames and ended in enduring mystery. How could five children simply vanish from their bedrooms without a trace? The unsolved mystery continues to haunt West Virginia today.
An eight-foot-tall Christmas tree in London, England, was lit up by a battery powered by brussels sprouts. Copper and zinc electrodes were inserted into each sprout to create a chemical reaction that generated a current. The power was then stored in a capacitor and released through 100 LEDs.
The Romans started the custom of giving gifts at the Solstice celebration. (Winter solstice, the shortest day and the longest night of the year, comes from the Latin for “the sun stands still”, although the winter solstice was called bruma, to distinguish it from solstitia, the summer solstice.)
Saturnalia and Kalendae were both well-loved Roman holidays. At Saturnalia, slaves were allowed the run of the house, and masters were obliged to serve them. And Kalendae marked new beginnings.
The fourth-century writer Libanius had this to say about the celebrations: “The Feast of the Kalendae is honored as far as the Roman Empire stretches … Everywhere is singing and feasting; the rich enjoy luxury but the poor also set better food than usual upon their tables. The desire to spend money grips everybody … People are not merely bountiful to themselves but to their fellow humans. A stream of presents pours itself out on all sides … The Kalendae bring all work to a halt, and allow humans to surrender themselves to pure pleasure.”
Saturnalia was just one of the many holidays that made up the Roman calendar, but it was one of the biggest. The lower classes looked forward to the role reversal that came at the turning of the year. Household slaves, especially, jumped at the chance to be in charge for a while, to be served by their master and mistress.
One of the foods served at celebrations, including Saturnalia, was a cake called satura, a very dense confection made with barley, honey, wine, and dried fruits. (Dense, sweet, made with dried fruit … yeah, you got it. The Romans gave the world the first holiday fruitcake. You’re welcome.) Another food that might have found its way to an ancient Roman table at a party was globi, or a very early form of cheesecake bites. Cato the Elder gives us the recipe in his book De Agri Cultura: “Recipe for globi: Mix the cheese and spelt in the same way, sufficient to make the number desired. Pour lard into a hot copper vessel, and fry one or two at a time, turning them frequently with two rods, and remove when done. Spread with honey, sprinkle with poppy-seed, and serve.”
A modern version of this recipe can be found in Max Miller’s excellent book, Tasting History.
1 cup and 1 Tablespoon spelt, durum, or other whole-wheat flour
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 quart olive oil
1/3 cup honey
1 Tablespoon poppy seeds
- Mix the flour, cheese, and salt in a large bowl until well combined.
- Form the muxture into balls 1 inch across. This recipe should make 20 to 24 balls.
- Pour the oil into a medium pan and place over high heat until it reaches 325 degrees.
- Once the oil reaches the desired temperature, turn the heat down to medium and carefully place two to three balls into the hot oil at a time, turning every 10 to 15 seconds with metal tongs. at 60 seconds, check the color. Once they are golden brown (60 to 90 seconds) take them out and set them on a wire rack over paper towels to drain. Repeat until all of the globi are fried.
- Once the globi are drained, dip them in honey. Then sprinkle them with poppy seeds and serve warm.
Hey hey, Merry Saturkwanzukah! It’s the time of year when the long, cold nights make us want to hibernate, preferably with some warm drinks, yummy food, and fun stories to keep us entertained. You’ll find all of that here, with my annual Twelve Nightmares of Christmas series. We’ll have some lovely refreshments for the season, maybe learn a few fun Christmas facts … and oh yes, there will be ghost stories. So settle back and let’s make some holiday memories by the fireside.
I grew up surrounded by books (lucky me!!!). When I was in fifth grade, I discovered a book at my grandmother’s house called Mysterious New England. I blame this book in part for encouraging my childhood obsession with the weird and strange.
One of the stories in the book that has stayed with me all these years is the tale of the Vermont Resurrections. In the 1880s, a man wrote in to a Vermont newspaper to tell a tale he’d found in his uncle’s diary.
The uncle had been invited to a cabin deep in the Vermont woods to witness a strange and shocking process. Six people — two women, four men — were going to be frozen alive.
One of the men was young, only about thirty, but was crippled. The other five people were elderly. All six of them were given some sort of drugged drink. When they were knocked out, they were undressed down to their underclothes, and taken outside and placed on wooden boards. There, as the winter night fell and the hours dragged past, they were allowed to freeze. Their limbs stiffened, and their faces, hands and feet turned waxy. When they were considered ready, they were buried in a deep pit and covered with straw, then branches to keep out predators. The people overseeing this process encouraged the narrator to come back in May, when the frozen corpses would be brought back to life.
The narrator was appalled at this, but he couldn’t stay away. The next spring, he came back. The bodies had been dug up and placed in tubs full of warm water. After several hours, color began to seep back into the waxen faces, and one by one, the people blinked, sat up, and looked around. They seemed none the worse for wear — refreshed, in fact, by their long winter’s nap.
Do you call shenanigans on this story? It seems crazy, too strange to be true. I read it as an impressionable fifth-grader who wanted to believe. There were strange things afoot in the New England woods in the nineteenth century. Was this just a tall tale? Or did six people actually sleep the Vermont winter away under twenty feet of snow?
Find more tales of winter weirdness in Spirits of Christmas: The Dark Side of the Holidays, available online at Barnes and Noble and Amazon, and at fine booksellers everywhere.
When Kieran White married Tilly Christmas in Bath, England, they combined their surnames as White-Christmas. (Because really, how could you not?) (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Level Up)
A bear cub attacked and wrestled a giant inflatable Christmas reindeer in the front yard of a house in Monrovia, California. Grabbing the 6-foot-tall fake reindeer by the neck, the cub temporarily brought the lawn decoration to its knees while the mother bear watched the one-sided fight from a few yards away. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Level Up)
The role of John McClane in the movie Die Hard, played to perfection by Bruce Willis, was originally offered to Frank Sinatra. Of course, it was just a formality at that point, as Sinatra was 72 years old by then. Sinatra had starred in a 1968 movie called The Detective, and Die Hard was technically a sequel to it. Sinatra’s contract gave him right of first refusal to any sequels, so he had to be offered the role first. The Detective was the movie adaptation of a book by Roderick Thorp, published in 1966. In 1979, Thorp published the sequel to The Detective, titled Nothing Lasts Forever. In that book, a gang of criminals led by a guy named Gruber takes over an Los Angeles highrise during a company party, and holds John McClane’s family member hostage. Oh, and it’s set during the Christmas season.
Mel Brooks, yes, the comedy film director beloved for Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles, fought in World War II. He enlisted in 1944, cutting his senior year in high school short, and was made a combat engineer. One of his contributions to the war effort drew on his wicked sense of humor.
Some of his duties as a combat engineer in the European theater included helping to build bridges that swung out over a river or creek, bridges strong enough to drive a tank across. One dark night, Brooks was in the middle of putting one of these bridges together when he heard Nazi soldiers singing somewhere on the other side of the river.
“The ja, ja at the end of each phrase was a dead giveaway,” Brooks writes in his autobiography All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business. He thought the singing was terrible, so he grabbed a huge bullhorn, went to the bank of the river, and started belting out minstrel tunes by the Jewish singer Al Jolson.
Gather ’round for another creepy UK episode of Lights Out! 39 Hilldrop Crescent. It sounds like a pleasant English address, maybe a small cottage off a cobblestone street, with flowers in the windowboxes. But this building sits in the heart of a busy London neighborhood. And in 1910, it was the scene of one of the most horrific murders in modern British history. Join me for a look at Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, the London Cellar Murderer. https://youtu.be/1CCtJGoZEo4
Today is International Podcast Day! I’m working on another UK episode of Lights Out, which will be up for your enjoyment soon. But I have more news! Wonderful news!
I’ve been beavering away behind the scenes on a brand-new podcast, and I’m happy to announce it today. Grave Deeds and Dead Plots, the true crime series you know and love, will become a podcast in October, just in time for the spooky season. It will be hosted by Voyage Media, and it will be available on Voyage FM and on Apple, Spotify, and generally everywhere you enjoy your podcasts. So if you like Lights Out, or true crime, or true ghost stories, you won’t want to miss Grave Deeds and Dead Plots! Curl up with the lights down low, and give it a listen.
George Washington once vowed that he would never set foot on English soil again. Therefore, in the 1920s, when the state of Virginia gifted a statue of Washington to the United Kingdom, they added some American soil to go beneath the plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square so that his wish could be honored. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Out of the Box)
H.G. Wells, who wrote the sci-fi novel The War of the Worlds, once worked as a math teacher at Henley House School in London, England. One of his brightest students was A.A. Milne, the future author of Winnie the Pooh. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Out of the Box)
As a struggling actor, Sylvester Stallone was so poor that he sold his bull mastiff dog, Butkus, for $40 to a stranger outside a 7-11 store. When Stallone became rich by selling the script for Rocky, he waited outside the same store for three days for Butkus’ new owner to show up again, and bought the dog back for $15,000. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Out of the Box)
Actor Steve Buscemi was a New York City firefighter from 1980 to 1984. The day after the 9/11 attacks in New York, he returned to his old firehouse to volunteer; he worked 12-hour shifts for several days along other firefighters, searching for survivors in the rubble of the World Trade Center. (from Weird-Facts.org via Bored Panda)
In the course of the 12 novels and 20 short stories that feature English writer Agatha Christie’s amateur detective Miss Marple, the characters drink 143 cups of tea. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Out of the Box)
Pluto is still officially recognized as a planet in Illinois. Three years after it was controversially downgraded to a dwarf planet, the state decreed that Pluto should be restored to its former status to mark its discovery in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh, who was born on a farm in Streator, Illinois. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Out of the Box)
In 2014, a group of South Korean students protested against the amount of air found in potato chip packets by building a raft out of 160 unopened bags and paddling it for a little under a mile across the Han River. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Out of the Box)
Woody in Toy Story was originally intended to be a talking ventriloquist’s dummy, but film company execs decided that would be too creepy and changed the character to a talking cowboy doll. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Out of the Box)
They say that dinosaurs went extinct because they didn’t have a space program. But actually, dinosaurs have been to space. The Carnegie Museum of Natural History sent a Coelophysis skull beyond the surly bonds of Earth, aboard space shuttle Endeavor on January 22, 1998. The fossil skull also spent some time on the Russian space station Mir before returning to its home planet. (from The Science of Jurassic World, by Mark Broke and John Arase)
Mozart disliked a certain performer he knew, a singer named Adriana Ferrarese del Bene. So, knowing her tendency to drop her chin on low notes and throw back her head on high notes, Mozart wrote a song with constant leaps from low to high in order to make her head “bob like a chicken” on stage. (from Weird-Facts.org via Bored Panda)
I’m pleased to say that Gone On Vacation: Haunted Zoos, Museums, and Amusement Parks has collected another award! It’s been named an International Book Awards Finalist, which I think is pretty cool. You can find it on Amazon, of course, and also at Bookshop.org, where your purchase helps support independent bookstores. So grab your copy and hit the road for some spooky fun! And don’t forget, Tenny Brossity is always hanging out at the back of the book for photo ops, so take a picture of the two of you at some haunted place and post it on social media. #goneonvacation
The painter Bob Ross used to receive up to 200 letters from fans per day. When regular letter-writers fell out of touch, he would phone them, just to make sure they were okay. (from Weird-Facts.org via Bored Panda)
Are you guys ready for a new book? It’s summer … maybe you’re on vacation, maybe you need a fun way to pass some time lazing by the pool in the sunshine. I’ve got just the thing: a brand-new book of stories for your enjoyment!
Grave Deeds and Dead Plots Volume 2 is out now. This second volume in the series continues the theme of true crime cases that have resulted in hauntings. Honestly, I think I had even more fun writing this one than I had doing the first one. There are some REALLY cool stories in here. There’s a haunted English castle, a ghost named Johnny One-Arm, a sweet girl whose only crime was trusting the wrong people — her family, and much, much more. So grab your copy today, stretch out on a beach towel, and get swept up in tales of criminals and the folks who ran afoul of them. Happy reading!
In the United States, if your dog needs a kidney transplant, you can take one from a stray. The only stipulation is that you must adopt the donor animal afterwards, so that “two lives are saved, rather than one lost to kidney disease and one to euthanasia.” (from Weird-Facts.org via Bored Panda)
An Australian man named Bill Morgan was declared dead for 14 minutes. He somehow survived. To celebrate his survival, he bought a scratch card and won a $27,000 car. A news show asked him to re-enact the scratch card moment for the cameras, so he bought another card … and won $250,000. (from Weird-Facts.org via Bored Panda)
Billy Joel never sells tickets to the front rows of his concerts. Aside from wanting to beat the scalpers, he got tired of all the bored, rich people staring up at him — so now, he sends his road crew out to bring down the fans from the worst seats so there’ll be “people in the front row that are really happy to be there, real fans.” (from Weird-Facts.org via Bored Panda)
On October 28, 1928, John Sabo, nicknamed “The Kid”, turned twenty-one. He also happened to be an inmate in Columbus Ohio who was scheduled to go to the electric chair. He celebrated the milestone birthday with a party to which seven other death row convicts were invited. John did the best he could with his ten-dollar budget — though the cons had to eat their cake with cardboard knives and forks, since they were not permitted metal cutlery. On June 28, 1929, the governor commuted the young prisoner’s sentence to life in prison. Perhaps that’s what John wished for when he blew out his candles. (from Horror in the Heartland: Strange and Gothic Tales From the Midwest, by Kevin McQueen)
They say money doesn’t grow on trees, but there’s a dog in Columbia that would certainly argue with that. The clever pup started paying for biscuits with tree leaves after seeing students give bank notes to a food stall attendant in exchange for tasty treats. He decided to try it for himself one day, and after getting the result he wanted, he’s been doing it ever since. (from Weird-Facts.org via Bored Panda)
Welcome to Scotland, home of Nessie, really good whiskey, melt-in-your-mouth shortbread, and all kinds of ghosts. Let’s wander the streets and alleys of Edinburgh and see what we can find. https://youtu.be/O8-DHrR4cp0
Dogs can shake 70 percent of the water out of their fur in four seconds, generating more G-force than Formula One drivers experience when taking tight corners. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
A thief painted his entire face green in an attempt to avoid being identified while stealing a woman’s purse at a train station in Krasnodar, Russia. A man was quickly arrested because he was the only person in the vicinity with a green face. And a shoplifter in Leicester, Massachusetts, used a blob of Play-Doh to cover the lens of the store’s security camera — but in doing so left detectives with a perfect impression of a fingerprint in the Play-Doh.
Duncan Robb, of Chesterfield, England, flew his girlfriend to Belfast, Northern Ireland, for what he thought was a concert by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, only to discover that it was a performance by a bagpipe cover band, the Red Hot Chili Pipers. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
Mel Blanc did the voice of Barney Rubble in 65 episodes of The Flintstones from his bed. In 1961, Blanc spent 70 days bedridden following a serious car crash, but even though he was so badly injured he was wearing a full-body cast and was unable to sit up, the TV show’s crew managed to record episodes by arranging microphones around his bed. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
Vincent Van Gogh’s “yellow period”, during which he painted The Starry Night, was probably the result of doctors treating his epilepsy by giving him digitalis — a medicine extracted from the foxglove plant — a side effect of which adds a yellow tinge to everything the patient sees. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
Actor Kit Harington (who played Jon Snow in the TV series Game of Thrones) is a descendant of Robert Catesby, one of the Gunpowder Plot leaders who tried unsuccessfully to blow up the English Parliament in 1605. Harington actually played Catesby in the British TV series Gunpowder. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
A giant tortoise named Abu that escaped from Japan’s Shibukawa Animal Park was found two weeks later — just 500 feet away. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
Globally, spiders eat twice as much meat as humans do each year — 800 million tons of insects compared to humans’ 400 million tons of meat and fish. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
Every Titanic fan has heard the theory that the sailors in the crow’s nest didn’t have binoculars, which is why they didn’t see the iceberg until it was far too late to avoid hitting it. The commonly held rumor is that the binoculars were left behind in Southhampton — but this isn’t true. The binoculars WERE on board Titanic. They were actually in the crow’s nest, exactly where they were most needed. But they were in a locker … and no one had the key. Second Officer David Blair was supposed to sail on Titanic, but he was reassigned to a different ship at the last minute. He forgot to leave the key when he left Titanic. The key was in Blair’s pocket. (from How Stuff Works)
… because I recently found out that the wildly popular Gone On Vacation just won first place in the Best Books Awards for Spring 2024! Check it out! K thx bye!
https://bookshop.org/p/books/gone-on-vacation-sylvia-shults/20456275?ean=9781958589021
Prince Yogi Ram, a Hindu astrologer from Lakewood, NJ, was killed in Cincinnati Ohio when a train hit his car on April 9, 1959. Strewn around the tracks were copies of his book Astrological Forecast, which said April 9 was an “unlucky day.” The astrologer’s fellow mystics had warned him that 5 was a deadly number for him. After the fatal accident, some noted that he was killed by train number 25 on US Route 5 at 5:05. The dead astrologer had 55 cents in his pocket and his wreck was coroner’s case number 5500. (from Horror in the Heartland: Strange and Gothic Tales From the Midwest, by Kevin McQueen)
White-faced capuchin monkeys greet each other by sticking their fingers up each other’s noses. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
A 25-ton humpback whale appeared to protect American marine biologist Nan Hauser from a 15-foot long tiger shark while she was swimming off the Cook Islands in the South Pacific. As the shark circled, the huge whale lifted Hauser right up out of the water with its head, then shielded her with its pectoral fin for nearly ten minutes before pushing her through the ocean to safety while another whale warded off the shark with its tail. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
Ready for another episode of Lights Out? Great, me too! Pretend you’re a wealthy English lord in the middle of the 18th century. You’ve just gotten back from a Grand Tour of the Continent, and you want to keep the party going. How do you do that? You start up a not-so-secret club, and you build yourself a super cool underground cave fort for you and your friends to hang out in. Let’s visit Sir Francis Dashwood’s Hellfire Caves with our guide, Cieran O’Keeffe, host for 14 seasons of Most Haunted. https://youtu.be/9k-mMZ6hTJM
Convicted Missouri deer poacher David Berry Jr. was ordered to watch the Disney movie Bambi at least once a month during his year-long jail sentence. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
When Roland Hendel and his family were forced to flee their Sonoma County, CA, home to escape the wildfires that devastated the area in October 2017, they had to leave behind their dog, Odin, who refused to be parted from the family’s eight goats that he guards from coyotes and mountain lions at night. The next day, Hendel returned to his incinerated home, expecting to find that Odin and the goats had perished, but found that Odin not only survived, but also managed to rescue all eight goats and some baby deer by guiding them to a clearing that was protected from the flames by high rocks. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
A cliff near Gulu, Guizhou Province, China, is said to “lay” mysterious egg-shaped stones every thirty years. Part of Mount Gandeng, Chan Da Ya — Mandarin for “egg-producing cliff” — is 20 feet high and 65 feet wide. It has an uneven surface, and every three decades, erosion causes each hollow to emit an oval-shaped, perfectly smooth rock, which eventually falls to the ground, like a hen laying an egg. These are collected by villagers who believe the stones bring good luck. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
Defying odds of one in 2.1 million, a baby girl was born on Leap Day just like her father. Ivan Rebollar Cortez was born on February 29, 1988, and daughter Camila entered the world on February 29, 2020, just as her 32-year-old father was celebrating his eighth leap-year birthday. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Escape the Ordinary)
It is estimated that 24,568 gallons — equal to 195,419 pints — of beer are lost in facial hair each year in the United Kingdom alone. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
A calf born at James McAuley’s farm in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, on Valentine’s Day 2020 had a perfectly shaped heart pattern on her forehead. Her owners named her Be My Valentine. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Out of the Box)
There is a church in Brazil that is made out of wine. Brazil’s Vale de Vinhedos (Valley of Vineyards) was settled in the late 1800s by Italian immigrants, who grew grapes and made wine just as they had done in their native country. In 1904, construction began on Capela Nossa Senhora das Neves, or the Chapel of Our Lady of the Snow. Soon into the project, the area suffered a drought, which meant no water for mortar. To keep construction on the chapel going, each of the twenty families that were working on the building project donated 300 liters of wine, which was kneaded with clay and wheat straw to make mortar. The chapel was completed in 1907. (from Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer’s Guide, by Cecily Wong and Dylan Thuras)
A woman in Sweden who lost her wedding ring found it sixteen years later — around a carrot that was growing in her garden. She lost it while cooking Christmas dinner in 1995. She looked everywhere, and even had the kitchen floor pulled up. While gardening in 2012, she was digging carrots, and there was the ring … with a carrot growing through it. Her best guess is that she’d lost the ring somewhere in a pile of vegetable scraps that were then put into the compost bin. The ring sat quietly in the bin while the scraps rotted into compost, then was spread onto the garden, where it turned up years later.
Curl up in a comfy chair, brew yourself a cuppa, and let me take you to London just after the Blitz.
Lights Out #110: Stairway to Heaven. On March 3, 1943, tragedy struck in London, at the Bethnal Green Tube station. People on their way down to the station to seek shelter from a air raid were caught in a crush when one person fell. Fifteen seconds later, 173 people were dead. The Stairway to Heaven is the Bethnal Green memorial, where the victims are remembered. But the ghosts of this tragedy do their own remembering late at night, when the trains fall silent. Join me for a walk around this touching monument. https://youtu.be/a3lDk1wHwTM
McDonald’s introduced its drive-thru service for the convenience of the military. The first McDonald’s drive-thru was installed in a restaurant in Sierra Vista, AZ, near the Fort Huachuca military base. Military rules forbade the soldiers from wearing uniforms in public, and they weren’t about to change into civilian clothes just to run out to grab a burger. Restaurant manager David Ricj came up with a solution: he cut a hole in the wall for members of the military to pick up their orders without getting out of their car.
Every military working dog holds the rank of noncommissioned officer (NCO). Also, a military working dog is always one rank higher than its handler. Some say the custom was implemented to prevent handlers from mistreating their dogs. (Reader’s Digest, October 2023)
Did you have a good time listening to the Haunted Chronicles podcast I posted last week? I hope so — I had a great time chatting with Michelle. Here’s another fun conversation we had, this time about haunted zoos, museums, and amusement parks. (And it is thanks to Michelle that there will be a second volume of Gone on Vacation in a couple of years. :D) https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hauntedchronicles/episodes/Ghostly-Exhibits-Haunted-Museums–Zoos–and-Amusement-Parks-with-Sylvia-Shults-e2c13qf
Ever wonder where the game “rock, paper, scissors” came from? You know the one: “Scissors beat paper: after all they can cut the paper to shreds. Rock beats scissors: after all it can blunt the scissors. And finally paper beats rock because, well, just because.” But why should this be? “The calm assertion of paper’s power to defeat a rock hints at the Chinese origins of the game. In ancient times a petition to the Chinese emperor was symbolized by a rock. The emperor would indicate whether he’d accepted the petition by placing a piece of paper above or below the rock. If the rock was covered by the paper, the petition was refused and the petitioner defeated.” — from Marcus du Sautoy, Around The World In Eighty Games
Sometimes I am invited to be a guest on someone’s podcast, and the host and I just … click. The hour flies by, and we just have the best time chatting! This is what happened with Michelle Fisher, host of Haunted Chronicles. I must confess, I fell for her as soon as I heard her English accent. You can listen to our conversation about the Peoria State Hospital here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hauntedchronicles/episodes/So-No-Other-Human-Would-Suffer-As-You-Rhoda-Derry-and-the-Ghosts-of-Peoria-State-Hospital-e2c3u6r Enjoy!
The town of Cameron Corner straddles the border of three Australian states with three different time zones. So the New Year is rung in three times in the town, each half an hour apart — first New South Wales, then South Australia, and finally Queensland. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Out of the Box) Happy New Year, and may 2024 be joyful, productive, and prosperous!
Join me for a chat with Charlotte Sanchez-Kosa, host of California Haunts Radio. We’ll revisit the Peoria State Hospital, and share some fun spooky stories. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ0-u2y9dx0
So that he could spend Christmas 2018 with his daughter Pierce, who was working as a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines, Hal Vaughan, from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, bought tickets to fly with her as a passenger on all six of her flights on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Out of the Box)
Here’s hoping you don’t have to go that far to spend time with the ones you love this year. Merry Christmas!
Merry Saturkwanzukah! It’s time for our Christmas Eve story. Here is one of my favorites.
Every so often, we hear of ghosts helping the living. It’s rarer still when a living person has the chance to help a ghost.
Mary Pepper was an orphan living in Liverpool in the 1880s. At seven years old, she was on her own, living in the cellar of an abandoned building. Like many other street waifs of the Victorian era, Mary scavenged the streets for anything of value – lumps of coal that had fallen from carts, coins dropped from the pockets or purses of those more fortunate. She would beg for day-old bread from the Dow Street bakery. Sometimes she would hang around the door of the candy shop, hoping for a few hard candies or bits of toffee from Mr. Mallard, the owner. That was a real treat.
Even in her poverty, Mary found beauty on the rough streets. On Christmas Eve, 1887, she was following a robin as it hopped down Crosshall Street. The bird’s red breast was a cheerful spot of color against the snow. Mary’s reverie was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a ghost.
Mary knew the man was a spirit. For one thing, she’d seen ghosts all her life. For another, this man was completely devoid of color – he was stark white, from the top hat perched on his white hair to the tips of his polished boots. And for a third, she recognized him. It was Henry Silver, who had died in the 1860s.
The ghost stared at her with shocking-pink eyes, the only part of him with any color at all. It reached out for her with bony pale hands, groaning as if in distress. It staggered through the snow, leaving no footprints. Mary just sighed. He’d scared the robin away.
“Aren’t you afraid of me?” the ghost demanded.
“No. You’re nothing – just a sad ghost,” Mary replied calmly.
“I’m not nothing!” Silver retorted. “I’m an evil spirit!”
Mary just wandered away, unimpressed. Perhaps she could spot the robin once more.
Silver followed Mary down Crosshall Street. Trying to scare her, he swooped through her several times. He followed her home to the dank cellar where she lived, and squeezed through a hole in the wall. Finally, seeing that Mary could not be spooked, he told his story.
During his life, Henry Silver had a curious, unpleasant hobby. He would plant fake love letters that led to quarrels between couples, often making them break up as a result. One of these pranks backfired terribly when a young woman, thinking she’d been deceived by her lover, threw herself into the Mersey River and drowned. She happened to be a Gypsy, and here’s when Silver’s penchant for mischief caught up with him. A relative of the girl came to see him and placed a Gypsy curse on him. Because of his cold-hearted tricks, the old woman cursed him to be cold forever. Despite his doctor’s best efforts, Silver soon died of hypothermia … in summer.
Silver cried out to Mary that he longed to feel warmth once more – the cozy fireside, the glow of love – as he wept for his loss. Mary snapped, “Then go into St. John’s Church and ask for forgiveness.”
“I can’t – I’m too proud!” Silver argued. Mary finally talked him into it, and led him to the church herself. Silver squared his shoulders, and walked into the church.
He was in there for quite some time. Mary waited for him patiently outside. She felt a bit responsible for the poor sad ghost. When he came out, Silver was a changed man … literally. His color had returned; now he sported a black top hat and a brown suit, and his cheeks were a healthy, rosy pink. He gave Mary a hug, and said, “Thank you, little one.” Then he disappeared.
The ghost’s gratitude wasn’t just lip service. Several years later, when she was fifteen, Mary was adopted, and later emigrated to America. There, she married a rich oil tycoon and, presumably, lived happily ever after.
And we’ve come to Christmas Eve — how about that! If you’ve enjoyed these ghost stories, and want more, tune in to Ron’s Amazing Stories (www.ronsamazingstories.com) for the monthly segment “Ghost Stories With Sylvia”, or seek out the new book Gone On Vacation: Haunted Zoos, Museums, and Amusement Parks, at amazon.com or bookshop.org. While you’re browsing the Web, take a peek at www.weirddarkness.com. If Darren Marlar left any cookies and milk out for Santa, you have my permission to take a couple. (And if he left schnapps out for Krampus, you just bring that right back here to me.) Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good fright!
The Tower of London comes by its ghostly reputation honestly. Built by William the Conqueror in 1078, it has stood as a symbol of the might of England for nearly a thousand years. It was originally a royal palace as well as a defensive fortress. In fact, Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress, The Tower of London (to use its proper name) is still officially a residence of the monarch. The King even has a house on site called, appropriately enough, “The King’s House”.
The kings and queens of England realized quite soon after its construction that the Tower was just as good at keeping people in, as it was at keeping people out. So it has been used as a prison since 1100, when Ranulf Flambard was imprisoned within the Tower by Henry I. Flambard was also, by the way, the first person to escape from the Tower.
There have been many prisoners, royal, noble, and otherwise, who have met their ends either on the Tower grounds or on nearby Tower Hill. Only seven people were executed within the Tower before the twentieth century. One of these unfortunates was Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, who was beheaded for treason in 1536. Her ghost is said to haunt the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, where she is buried, but she is also known to roam the grounds of the White Tower while carrying her own severed head.
Anne Boleyn is arguably the most famous ghost who wanders the Tower, due to her ill-fated relationship with Henry VIII. Queen Anne even almost got one poor sentry court-martialed.
The guard was found unconscious at his post outside the King’s House one winter morning in 1864. He was accused of falling asleep while on duty, and put on trial.
At the hearing, though, the sentry had a really good explanation for his unconscious state. He had been standing guard when a white figure came towards him out of the early morning mist. The sentry challenged the figure three times, but the silent figure never answered … it just kept walking slowly towards him.
Alarmed, the sentry lunged at the figure with his bayonet fixed, intending to run it through, whatever it was. But a flash of fire raced up the rifle barrel and knocked the sentry out cold.
Luckily, other guards (including officers) came forward to testify at the hearing. They said they had seen the apparition too, from a window in the Bloody Tower. After some discussion, members of the court realized that the phantasm had been seen by multiple witnesses just below the room where Anne had spent her last night alive, the night before her execution on May 19, 1536.
The sentry was cleared. As for the doomed queen, she still wanders the Tower “with her head tucked underneath her arm”, as far as anyone knows.
There is a startling ghost photograph that was taken in a stately English home, Raynham Hall in Norfolk. This might just be the most famous ghost photograph of all time.
Raynham Hall was once the home of Lady Dorothy Townshend, who married Viscount Charles Townshend in 1713. As in many ghost stories, all was not peaceful country life at the Hall. Lady Townshend died on March 29, 1726 at the age of forty, under mysterious circumstances. The official cause of death was smallpox. However, there were rumors that her ladyship had been pushed down the grand staircase, and the fall had broken her neck.
During the Christmas season of 1835, a Colonel Loftus stayed at Raynham Hall as a guest. His stay was interrupted by a nighttime visitation from a beautiful woman. The colonel described her as a noble-looking lady, who was wearing a fashionable dress of brown satin. Her regal looks were spoiled, though, by the terrifying fact that she had no eyes. Only empty sockets gaped where her eyes should have been.
Colonel Loftus made a sketch of his midnight visitor, and a portrait was painted from the sketch and hung in the guest bedroom where the Brown Lady made most of her appearances. (Decades earlier, in 1786, the future King George IV was a guest at the hall and stayed in that particular room. The Brown Lady’s appearance sent the Prince Regent shrieking into the hallway in his nightshirt—a rather embarrassing situation for royalty. After that, he swore he would never set foot in Raynham Hall again—a promise he kept for the rest of his days.)
The Brown Lady continued her haunting of the hall well into the twentieth century. On September 19, 1936, two photographers from the magazine Country Life were on assignment taking pictures of the stately hall. Indre Shira was snapping the photos, accompanied by art director Captain Hubert Provand.
Shira and Provand were setting up a shot of the grand main staircase of the house at around 4 pm, when Shira saw “an ethereal, veiled form coming slowly down the stairs”. Provand didn’t see a thing. He even bet Shira five quid that nothing weird would show up when the picture was developed.
He lost the bet. The Brown Lady had exchanged her customary brown satin dress for a filmy white veil, but her form showed up distinctly in the picture. One of the most famous ghost photographs in the world ran for the first time in Country Life magazine. Appropriately enough, it ran in that year’s December issue.
I was privileged, this spring, to spend three weeks ghost hunting in England and Scotland with Dale Kaczmarek. Our host for those three weeks was Paul Adams, a renowned writer of ghost stories himself. One evening as we were sitting around talking after supper, Paul brought out file after file of newspaper clippings he had collected over the years, of ghostly tales from all over England. He graciously allowed me to have a copy of this next story, the winner of the Evening Standard ghost story competition.
Just before Christmas, during the blitz, I was waiting for my husband to come home early to look after our two children so I could go out to do the Christmas shopping.
He had not arrived by half-past four. If there was to be any food in the house for Christmas I had to make a dash to the grocer’s before the shops closed.
I put the children in the air-raid shelter with strict instructions that they were not to come out until I returned.
As I was leaving the shop with my bag loaded, what seemed like a stick of bombs came down in the direction of my home. I ran for all I was worth.
The windows were blown in, a large part of the ceiling had come down, the kitchen fire had been blown into the middle of the floor, heavy plates had crashed off the dresser, and our apology for a Christmas tree was covered with soot.
The children were playing happily in the shelter untroubled by it all.
”We were naughty,” the older child confessed. “We came out to play in the kitchen after you had gone, but the lady you sent to look after us brought us back into the shelter just before the bang. She stood by the shelter watching us and we weren’t a bit frightened when everything shook.”
I had not sent anybody. The lady from the children’s description was certainly not any of the neighbours. She had taken them by the hand and led them back to the shelter. She had not spoken, but kept smiling at them and went away when my footsteps sounded in the kitchen.
But I met no one coming out of the shelter.
Some weeks afterwards the children were looking through a bundle of old photographs and books.
”Oh, Mum,” my little girl exclaimed, “this is the lady who looked after us that day in the raid!”
She handed me a photograph. It was a picture of my mother who had been dead for 22 years. — [Mrs.] A.V. Hartley, Cambridge Street, S.W.1.I
Thanks very much to Paul Adams for sharing this story with me — and incidentally, making possible the next half-dozen or so Lights Out episodes. Lights Out will return in the next few weeks, with loads of really great adventures.
Do be sure to pop ’round to www.weirddarkness.com for some tea and crumpets. Or bagels and cream cheese. Or hotdogs and beer, I don’t judge. G’wan, go!
Still here? Okay, here’s another fun Christmas story for you. It’s from the same article in the Evening Standard, and it’s called “A German Airman.”
Late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, 1943, I was returning to our WAAF hostel, an old rambling house. Halfway up the tree-lined drive I saw before me a German airman with dishevelled clothes and his hands roughly bandaged.
He came slowly towards me, bandaged hands outstretched. Then he seemed to melt away.
I learned from the duty sergeant that a Luftwaffe pilot had been shot down, but had escaped and was heading in our direction. He was burned on the hands and was desperate.
Later, another signal said that the man had been found dead in a wrecked car 20 miles from the hostel — and several hours before I “saw” him. — [Mrs.] A.R. Loveland, Artillery Road, Guildford.
Ready for another ghost story as we creep up on Christmas? Me too! Let’s dive in! Here’s another story from Spirits of Christmas.
The winter winds whistled around the cabin in the South Carolina woods, but inside the snug home, all was well. The cabin’s owner, David Miles, was a Quaker, and held himself and his family aloof from the fighting that raged around them. The Revolutionary War was a necessary evil, but Miles prayed it would not touch his two teenaged children.
Nineteen-year-old Charity, David’s daughter, heard the light hoofbeats of a horse just outside the rear of the cabin. Her heart leapt, and she jumped up from her chair, leaving her knitting forgotten on the table. A sharp knock on the door brought her father and brother to their feet as well. Charity eased the door open just a crack.
Young Henry Galbreath, a scout with the Continental Army, stood outside. Charity grabbed his hand and pulled him into the safety of the cabin.
Tears, both of joy and of worry, stood in Charity’s eyes. “Henry, I almost wish you hadn’t come. It’s too dangerous. You can’t keep coming here, not with General Tarleton’s Redcoats patrolling the area. You know I love you, but you must stay away!”
Henry bent and kissed Charity. “I can’t, love. I have to see you, or I’ll go mad. Besides, no one knows these woods better than I do. I’ll be safe, I promise.”
David Miles pulled a chair closer to the fire, and the young patriot plumped into it with a grateful smile. Henry enjoyed the company of Charity’s family, and he loved Charity. After this war was over, after the Americans won their freedom, he’d make Charity his wife.
Charity poured four mugs of chicory coffee, and Henry wrapped his cold fingers around his mug, happy for the warmth. He gazed up at Charity.
“My love, I’ll come back for you. One year from now, whether or not the war is over, I will come back.”
Charity nodded. “I will wait for you, Henry.”
David took a sip of his coffee, then stiffened. Over the sounds of the wind he’d heard the pounding of horses’ hooves—several of them. The Tories were out searching for the young scout.
Henry tossed his coffee into the fire, and Charity hastily dried the mug on her apron and threw it into the cabinet. Her brother rushed to the back of the cabin and, with the skill of long practice, removed a plank from the wall near the floor. Henry squirmed through the opening into the back yard, where his horse waited.
Scarcely had Charity’s brother replaced the board when a barrage of knocks came on the cabin door. Rough voices called out, “Open up, in the name of King George!” Gun butts smashed against the door, which sagged inwards under the blows.
Three Tories burst into the cabin, their muskets held at the ready. “Where is he?” one of the soldiers demanded.
David Miles, still seated by the fire, closed his Bible and calmly took a sip of coffee. “I have no idea who you might be looking for. My children and I are the only ones here.”
A flurry of fading hoofbeats, and the soldiers knew their prey was lost. They mounted up and thundered after the scout, but the thickly falling snow hid his tracks well.
The fighting dragged on. Weeks turned into months with no word from Henry. Even the Continental soldiers who sometimes passed through had no news of him.
One night, Charity was sitting up late after her father and brother had gone to bed. Henry’s words still echoed in her heart: One year from now, I will come back. It hadn’t yet been a year, but she longed to see Henry again, no matter the danger. She reached for her shawl and stepped out of the cabin. She felt oddly drawn to the edge of the clearing.
At the edge of the woods, a strange bluish light began to glow. Raising her hand to her eyes to shield them, Charity saw movement in the light. A rider came galloping out of the woods. He was dressed all in black, the better to blend into the shadows. He was riding hard, intent on some urgent business. He didn’t stop at the cabin, but urged his foam-flecked horse onward.
The rider hadn’t even glanced at Charity, but she knew him anyway. At that moment, she knew Henry Galbreath was dead.
Five long years passed. The Revolution, begun in hope, ended in victory. David Miles and his family gave thanks that the terrible war was over. One December night, five years after they’d last seen Henry, the family was once again enjoying a cozy winter evening together.
Charity still carried a flame of hope in her heart. Maybe she’d been wrong about the identity of the ghostly rider. Maybe the ragged rider and his sweating horse had been a trick of the moonlight. She put on a new dress and joined her father and brother, hoping that that evening, Henry would keep his promise and return to her at last.
The cabin door slammed open and a shining light filled the room. Henry Galbreath stood in the brilliance. His army uniform hung in tatters from his broad shoulders, and his eyes were raw sockets in his haggard face. His ghostly gaze fell on Charity, and she cowered in terror in spite of herself. Then, just as suddenly as he had appeared, the specter was gone.
Charity Miles never did marry. She never found out for certain what happened to her Henry, either. Being a scout, his whereabouts were often unknown. It was assumed that he had been killed in battle.
The cabin in which Henry Galbreath pledged his love to Charity Miles is long gone. But legends say that when winter winds blow cold on a December night, and the snow falls thick, a ghostly horse and rider still gallop through the woods, forever carrying news for Washington’s army.
I had a fabulous time chatting with Jon Mallard, host of the Odd to Newfoundland podcast. Listen in as I spin some spooky tales of Christmas hauntings. https://podfollow.com/oddtonewfoundland/view?fbclid=IwAR0_FlxyNn0BRuyKLYV16pIAr713xclaqyPJPaWkYl6bFDklXajyTgp2xT8#_=_
Drop in on www.weirddarkness.com, too. You’re sure to find even more exciting ghost stories over there. Tell Darren I sent you!
Aileen Sterling’s family, from Renfrew, Scotland, has decorated the same ornamental Christmas tree for over 100 years. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Out of the Box)
Short and sweet, right? Need more spooky Christmas goodness? Check out www.weirddarkness.com. I know there’s some great stuff going on over there.
(This story, and many others, can be found within the pages of Spirits of Christmas, available from Bookshop.org and Amazon.)
This tale comes from the brooding mountains and dark hollows of Appalachia. A young man from West Virginia was engaged to be married to a beautiful girl. But the dark clouds of World War I loomed on the horizon, far across the ocean from his mountain home. The young man was called up sooner than he had expected, and he was shipped off to the front before he could marry his sweetheart.
After he had gone, the man’s older brother came a’courting. He convinced the girl that the soldier had never really loved her. Why, if he had, he wouldn’t have left her all alone, now would he? Soon, he talked the girl into marrying him instead.
On Christmas Eve, the soldier returned home unexpectedly. He went straight to the house where his brother lived with his wife — the wife that should have been his. The soldier knocked on the door, and the brother let him in.
The brother was on edge during the whole conversation, as his wife was just upstairs. In an irritated whisper, he told the soldier that yes, he had married the girl simply for her money and for her family’s position in society. He warned his younger brother, in a low but urgent tone, that if he interfered with the marriage in any way, he would kill him dead.
The soldier nodded in grudging understanding. The conversation had gone just about the way he’d expected it to. He left the house, hearing the door close firmly behind him.
The younger brother returned to the house a little while later — with a revolver. He shot his older brother, then stormed out of the house.
The young wife heard the shot and hurried downstairs. She found her husband dying in a spreading pool of his own blood on the floor. With his final agonized breaths, he told her what had happened.
She called the police, who searched the property thoroughly. They could find no trace of the murderous young soldier.
On Christmas Day, a telegram arrived. It was addressed to the older brother. His widow opened it and read it.
The telegram said that the younger brother had been killed in action on December 21.
(This story, and many others, can be found within the pages of Spirits Of Christmas: The Dark Side of the Holidays. https://bookshop.org/p/books/spirits-of-christmas-the-dark-side-of-the-holidays-sylvia-shults/10267269?ean=9780999604007
It was a cold winter afternoon early in the last century. A mother huddled in her cabin on the west fork of the Little Pigeon River in Tennessee. She held two of her children in a tight embrace … but one was missing. Her two-year-old son had wandered away from the cabin earlier that day. Since then, the temperature had been falling steadily, along with a heavy snow.
A neighbor came in, stamping the snow from his boots, to grab a few moment’s warmth by the fire. The mother looked up, hope dawning briefly in her eyes — then looked back down, defeated, at the shake of the neighbors’s head. She was grateful, of course, that all the menfolk were out looking for her precious lost little one. Word had been passed from cabin to homestead, from house to church, and soon the entire community was looking. Her own husband was off in Europe in the trenches, fighting the Germans. All she could do was pray that one of her neighbors would find her little boy — and soon.
Dr. Thomas appeared at the door of the cabin. He’d dressed warmly for the trudge through the woods. He’d come thinking to help the young mother. One look at her stricken face, though, and he realized that he could best help not by doctoring her, but by finding her missing son. Pulling his heavy overcoat closed, he headed out into the snowstorm with the other searchers.
Dr. Thomas struck off in a random direction, hoping he was looking at ground that hadn’t already been covered. With the snow falling so thickly, the footprints of the searching men were soon being covered over. Dr. Thomas held his lantern high in the gathering dusk as he scanned the area.
The shadows of the evening crowded close under the pines as the last light of the day slipped away. The doctor stopped for a moment, listening to the silence of the woods. Somewhere, he knew, men were searching for the little boy with dogs. But he hadn’t yet heard the deep bay of a hound on the scent.
All around him, the snow fell in a silent hush. The branches of the pines swayed with the wind, even as laden with snow as they were. As night fell, the snowstorm grew worse. Dr. Thomas trudged along the dwindling path in the woods, stopping every so often to look closely at any fallen log that might shelter a shivering little boy. His toes were beginning to go numb, even with the three pairs of thick woolen socks he wore. But he kept wandering the woods, his lantern held high in search of any sign of the boy. If he was cold, the toddler would be even worse off.
Dr. Thomas stopped and turned in a slow circle. He couldn’t give up hope, not while the boy was still out there lost in the storm. He held his lantern high … and there on the ground was one footprint. Dr. Thomas bent closer to study it. It wasn’t the track of a deer, or a dog.
It was the footprint of a child. A child who was barefoot.
The doctor’s heart leapt, and adrenaline spun in his cold fingers and toes, warming them briefly. Finally, here was some sign of the boy! The doctor looked around carefully for more footprints.
There was another one, and a third! The bare footprints were just visible in the hard-packed old snow, and as the doctor watched, more appeared, the feathery new snow blowing off of the old prints. Carefully, the old doctor followed the prints. The doctor no longer cursed the biting wind, because oddly enough, the wind seemed to be blowing the fresh snow off of the prints, revealing the path the barefoot toddler had taken through the woods.
Dr. Thomas followed the footprints as they led him to a patch of evergreens. The doctor lifted a low-hanging branch, and gasped. There, curled up on a soft bed of fallen leaves, was the young boy. But the doctor had come too late. The boy’s skin was waxy-white, and his little chest didn’t rise and fall with peaceful sleeping breath.
The boy had frozen to death in the storm.
Dr. Thomas stifled a low moan, and gathered the child up in his arms. He unbuttoned his coat and his woolen shirt, and cradled the boy to his chest. The boy had died in the freezing cold. Although he was too late, the doctor could at least keep him warm for the sad walk home. He rebuttoned his coat and headed back to the cabin.
As the doctor approached the cabin, the young mother came out to meet him. Seeing her there, silhouetted against the yellow glow of the lit cabin behind her, Dr. Thomas felt his spirits sink. How could he break this woman’s heart?
The mother caught sight of the doctor, with his sad burden, and ran to him. Dr. Thomas reached the open cabin door just as the woman came out, crying joyful tears at the return of her baby. The doctor unbuttoned his coat and opened his shirt.
“I’m so sorry. At least I found him…”
And to his shock, the little boy blinked sleepy brown eyes at him. The child turned his head, hearing his mother’s cry of joy. “Momma?”
Stunned, Dr. Thomas handed the toddler to his mother, who cuddled him fiercely. She looked up, tears of gratitude standing in her eyes.
“Thank you, doctor, thank you so much. You saved my little boy. Please, come inside and get warm.”
The doctor followed her into the cabin. His analytical mind fumbled for an explanation. The boy must have been chilled to the point where his vitals had slowed, putting him into a state of suspended animation. The walk back, cuddled against the doctor’s warm chest and wrapped in the heavy overcoat, must have warmed the child slowly, enough for him to recover with no harm done. The gentle warming had brought the child back to life as surely as a violet blooms in the spring. Vaguely, he became aware that the boy’s mother was still talking.
“I’m so grateful to you for finding him!” She kissed the toddler, who sighed sleepily in her arms.
Dr. Thomas roused himself from his thoughts. “Yes, I followed his footprints in the snow. I’m amazed he was able to wander so far with bare feet.”
“Bare feet?” the mother said, puzzled. “But he’s wearing shoes.”
Frowning, Dr. Thomas lifted one of the boy’s feet. Sure enough, the boy was wearing sturdy brogans.
“I have to tie his shoes on tightly, with double knots, so he won’t kick them off,” the mother explained.
“Here, have some coffee, it’ll warm you right up. Good job!” a neighbor said, putting a tin cup into the doctor’s hand. Dr. Thomas accepted the congratulations and heartfelt thanks of his neighbors. The little boy was safe. That was all that mattered.
But the doctor’s scientific mind wouldn’t rest until he’d figured out the answer to the mystery. Several nights later, he woke from a sound sleep, sitting bolt upright in bed, reeling from a thunderclap of realization.
The wind hadn’t blown the fresh snow off of the child’s old prints. The bare footprints had been appearing in the snow, step by step, as he’d been following them. He hadn’t been tracking a living child. He’d been following an invisible child — a ghost, or an angel.
Here’s another Lights Out for your listening enjoyment: the Christmas edition, brand-new for 2023. The tragic disappearance of the Sodder children, on Christmas Eve 1945, began in flames and ended in enduring mystery. How could five children simply vanish from their bedrooms without a trace? The unsolved mystery continues to haunt West Virginia today. https://five.libsyn.com/show/episodes/view/29097618 (Please note: YouTube is being obstreporous, and for some reason, won’t let me post an MP4 file. I keep getting a message that “it has to be an MP4 file.” Uhhhh…okay? So you’re getting the straight-up podcast version this time, that DID post to all my podcast platforms.)
You know who else has really cool podcasts? Darren Marlar, over at www.weirddarkness.com , that’s who. You should hop on over there and see what’s going on.
Welcome to the annual roundup of Christmas episodes of Lights Out with Sylvia Shults. You’ll get a brand-new episode tomorrow — this year’s Christmas present to you guys — but today, we’ll have a chance to revisit some episodes from past years. Kick back with a mug of hot chocolate (extra marshmallows encouraged), and immerse yourself in stories brought to you by yours truly.
(And when you’re done listening here, go over to http://www.weirddarkness.com . Will they have cookies? I’ll bet they have cookies.)
Lights Out Christmas 2016: The Roving Skeleton of Boston Bay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alg6AOjuQvE&t=46s
Lights Out Christmas 2017: Up In Flames https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1o74O6A-aw&t=57s
Lights Out Christmas 2018: Clet Hall, poltergeist, and the Veiled Ghost of Highgate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvAANf27Eb4&t=49s
Lights Out Christmas 2020: A Visit From Saint Nicholas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcFUsqrKSUI&t=8s
Lights Out Christmas 2022: “Smee” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9o1k1wUauE
That’s right! This year makes lucky number seven for the collaboration between myself and Darren Marlar, of Weird Darkness. Start off here, then hop over to his site, http://www.weirddarkness.com for more spooky treats. (Right now he’s gearing up for the holidays too, with The Twelve Slays of Christmas. FUN!)
Let’s start off by getting in the spirit of the season. Here’s a recipe for a truly delightful holiday drink called coquito. It’s sort of like eggnog, but not all recipes use eggs (and there are loads of recipes besides the one given here). The creamy drink, tasting faintly of coconut and liberally laced with rum, comes from Puerto Rico. I whipped up a batch this morning, and GOSH it is good.
Coquito
1 can evaporated milk
1 inch fresh ginger, thinly sliced
3 cinnamon sticks
1 t whole cloves
1-2 star anise pods
1 can coconut milk
1 can condensed milk
1 can cream of coconut
1 1/2 c rum
Pour evaporated milk into a small saucepan. Add spices. Bring to a quick boil, then simmer for three minutes. Let cool to room temperature.
Pour the spiced milk through a sieve. Pick out cinnamon sticks and set the aside. Put the other spices in the compost (or leave the ginger slices in for this next step).
Put spiced milk and all other ingredients in a blender. (It will be FULL.) Blend thoroughly at medium speed. Pour into a glass bottle and add cinnamon sticks back in. Chill overnight; store in fridge. Serve cold with a dusting of cinnamon.
Pour yourself a big glass of this lovely creamy dreamy concoction, and settle back into your favorite chair for twelve days of Christmas ghost fun. And do visit Darren over at http://www.weirddarkness.com . He’d love to see you!
Does this look amazing or what?
Villagers in Chekka, Lebanon, spent 20 days building a 28 1/2 foot tall Christmas tree using 129,000 plastic water bottles. It had taken them eight months to collect the bottles needed for the tree. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Out of the Box)
A mass snowball fight involving 9,000 people, which was scheduled to take place at the Six Flags Great Adventure theme park in Ocean County, New Jersey, on December 16, 2017, was cancelled because of too much snow. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
Welcome to December, everyone! We’re going to start the month off with a bang; here’s a link to the Odd to Newfoundland podcast. Jon and I got into a surprisingly deep discussion, and of course we chatted about Spirits of Christmas. https://podfollow.com/oddtonewfoundland/view… Enjoy! And stay tuned throughout the rest of the month, because if it’s December, you know the Twelve Nightmares of Christmas are on the way!
I had a great time chatting with the incomparable Jim Harold on his show, The Paranormal Podcast. If you’d like to join us around the campfire for some wonderfully spooky stories, just follow the link! https://content.blubrry.com/paranormalplus/Haunted_Amusement_Parks_and_More-Ghost_Insight_212.mp3
Toby Evans, owner of the 3 Sheets waterfront restaurant in Perth, Western Australia, placed a watergun on every outdoor table so that customers could fend off annoying seagulls. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
A trip to two of the most haunted castles in England? Yes please! We kick off our UK visit with a look at the history and hauntings at Hampton Court Palace, Henry VIII’s stomping grounds, and Berry Pomeroy Castle, home to not one, but two ghostly ladies. https://youtu.be/CPFyUT6L6fg
Point Nemo in the South Pacific Ocean is located so far from land that the nearest humans are often astronauts. The International Space Station orbits Earth at a maximum altitude of 258 miles, while the nearest inhabited land mass to Point Nemo is more than 9,942 miles away. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
The Boerne 0.5 K run — a charity race for “underachievers” — was staged at Boerne, Texas, on May 5, 2018. The course was only 0.3 mile long, and for an entry fee of $25, participants received free beer at the start and finish. Those not wishing to expend any energy at all could pay an extra $25 to have an old bus transport them the length of the course. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
In 2018, Josiah and Anthea Carelse, from Lakewood, Colorado, unknowingly bought and ate a box of granola that had expired in 1997. The cereal was a decade older than the couple’s daughter. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
In 1903, butcher Jacob W. opened a meat market at 2359 Wentworth Avenue in Chicago. Shortly afterward his whole family died and Jacob committed suicide. Jacob’s clerk Fred K. took over the business. In short order his daughter fell into a pickling vat and was scalded to death. A week later Fred died “under mysterious circumstances.”
Then a man bought the house and was murdered there. A few weeks later an Italian committed suicide under the porch.
The house was destroyed on March 19, 1913, in a fire that killed a woman and her two children. Happy Halloween! (From Horror in the Heartland: Strange and Gothis Tales From the Midwest, by Keven McQueen)
A $2 million house in Miami, Florida, built in 1968 by American architect Alfred Browning Parker for himself, has a 90-foot-long stream running through its three connecting buildings, allowing the owners to swim or float between rooms. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
In 1799, a American privateer warship, the Nancy, was seized by a British warship, the Sparrow, in the Caribbean, a region forbidden to American ships at the time. Anticipating capture, the Nancy‘s skipper, Thomas Briggs, threw the ship’s American registration papers overboard and replaced them with Dutch forgeries. Charged in Jamaica with smuggling contraband, Briggs looked set to walk free for lack of evidence until, toward the end of the trial, another British warship, HMS Ferret, arrived in port. The Ferret had caught a large shark off the coast of Haiti, and inside the shark’s stomach were the incriminating American papers that Briggs had thrown in the ocean. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
Jimmy Newell, of Devon, England, was born at exactly noon on October 11, 1913, and died at exactly noon on October 11, 2016 — his 103rd birthday. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: A Century of Strange)
Welcome to October! The month of spooky has begun! Here are a few of the places you’ll find me this month (the first one’s coming up quick, so mark your calendars).
On Weds. October 4, I’ll be at the Lakeview branch of the Peoria Library, doing a brand-new talk on Oddities and Mysteries at 6:30 pm. And if you can’t make that one, I’ll also be presenting this talk at the Germantown Hills branch of the Illinois Prairie District Library on Weds. October 11 at 5:30 pm.
On Tues. October 24, I’ll be doing another brand-new talk, on the brand-new book! I’ll be at Salem Township Library (in Yates City, outside of Peoria) at 6:30 to present on Gone On Vacation: Haunted Zoos, Museums, and Amusement Parks. It’ll be a blast!
A little farther afield, I’ll be up in Thornton, Illinois, for Midwest Spirit Fest on Sunday, Oct. 8. I’ll be doing a presentation at 5 pm, on the Donnelly murders. And on Saturday Oct. 14, I’ll be in Bishop Hill, Illinois, from 10 am to 4 pm for the pottery festival. (Yeah yeah, I know. But they invited me.)
And on the Big Day (Halloween), I’ll be at Eye of Newt (on Court Street in Pekin) hanging out, looking at crystals, and signing books, starting at 7 pm.
Hope to see you out and about, enjoying the crisp fall weather!
Clive, a Norwegian Forest cat owned by Tanya and Jonathan Irons, disappeared from his home in Nottinghamshire, England, in December 2014, and when he was found in February 2016, he had grown to twice his original size. It turned out that he had spent the intervening 14 months living in a nearby pet food factory. … Continue reading Today I Learned …
More than 60,000 people entered an Airbnb contest to sleep in a bedroom in Paris, France, that was submerged in a huge tank containing 37 sharks. The temporary underwater room for two at the city’s Shark Aquarium had a 360-degree transparent wall, which was all that separated the guests from the sharks. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: A Century of Strange)
During World War II, fuel was delivered from Sandown Fort on the Isle of Wight to Cherbourg, France, through pipes laid on the seabed. The operation to secretly deliver fuel to occupied France was codenamed PLUTO, for PipeLine Under The Ocean. (Most adorable code name EVER.)
Every so often, I get asked if I’d like to do an article for some other author’s newsletter. I always say yes, because I know how important it is to have stuff to put INTO these newsletters. Ophelia Julien has been a friend for years, so it was a treat to be asked to contribute … Continue reading Ever Wanted to Visit the Villisca Axe Murder House?
Ah, vacations. There’s nothing like getting away from it all, enjoying a change of scenery, and maybe visiting a museum. Or enjoying animal antics at a zoo. Or scaring yourself silly on a rollercoaster at an amusement park. But not all vacations are days at the beach filled with sunshine and fun – the unseen … Continue reading Word on the street is .. there’s a new book out!
In 2011, a vial of unmatured malt whiskey from Scotland’s Ardbeg Distillery was sent to the International Space Station with pieces of charred oak, and after it returned in 2014, experts said it tasted much better than identical samples that had stayed on Earth. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: A Century of Strange)
Hey hey, and happy Sunday to all! And guess what? There is (at long last) a brand-new Lights Out to enjoy. We visit the haunted Willard Library, home of the Grey Lady. https://youtu.be/fWXXPw3xneI Enjoy!
British soldier Gordon Heaton was killed in World War I, but his family was never told of his death. The offical telegram, and his last will and testament, went undiscovered for 67 years after a delivery boy left them on a bus. They were found in November 2011 in a lost and found box at … Continue reading Today I Learned …
When a horse thief in 17th century Scotland was sentenced to decapitation by the Scottish Maiden (an early form of guillotine), the stolen animal was used to pull the cord that brought the blade down on the criminal’s neck. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Eye-Popping Oddities)
When two men climbed onto a wall in 2014 to pose for a photo at the Enchanted Forest theme park in Salem, Oregon, they accidentally knocked Humpty Dumpty off his perch. The cement statue crashed onto the ground below where it smashed into pieces. The sculptor, artist Roger Tofte, was faced with the task of … Continue reading Today I Learned …
The town of Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, holds an annual Rain Day Festival — complete with a Miss Rain Day pageant — on July 29 to recognize the fact that it has rained there on that date 114 times in the past 141 years. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Eye-Popping Oddities)
The edible ink cap mushroom causes vomiting and fever if eaten within three days of drinking alcohol. For this reason, it has been used to treat recovering alcoholics. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Eye-Popping Oddities)
The handheld communicator that Liam Neeson’s character, Jedi aster Qui-Gon Jinn, uses in the 1999 movie Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, is based on a Gillette Sensor Excel women’s razor. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Eye-Popping Oddities)
John Hancock is buried in the Granary Burying Ground in downtown Boston, along with other famous luminaries of the Revolutionary War era. However, he may not be all there. There was a rumor, widely circulated, that on the night after Hancock was buried, grave robbers dug him up and hacked off his right hand. This … Continue reading Today I Learned …
British actor David Suchet perfected the quick, mincing walk of Agatha Christie’s fictional detective Hercule Poirot by clenching a penny coin between his butt cheeks and walking so that he didn’t drop the penny. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Eye-Popping Oddities)
Vali, a grizzly bear at Budapest Zoo, Hungary, came to the rescue when it saw a crow drowning in the pond in the bears’ enclosure. The bear reached into the water, gently pulled the bird out with its mouth and left it poolside to recover. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Eye-Popping Oddities)
Marine iguanas sneeze more than any other animal — as a way to expel excess salt and keep them from becoming dehydrated. As they eat food that’s been soaked in saltwater, salt builds up in their bloodstream. Most of this salt collects in a special gland above the iguana’s eyes, where the animal can sneeze … Continue reading Today I Learned …
A giant squid’s food passes through its brain before it reaches its stomach. As a result, it has to eat small morsels because anything too large might get caught in its brain and cause brain damage. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Eye-Popping Oddities)
Plesiosaurs, a long-extinct marine reptile, suffered from the bends. This sickness, caused by nitrogen gas bubbling out of the animal’s bloodstream, caused pits and erosions to form on the plesiosaurs’ snout and rib bones.
When you’re thinking about getting your freak on, be glad you’re not a giraffe. In order to determine the best time to mate, a male giraffe will continuously head-butt the female in the bladder until she urinates. Then he tastes the pee and determines whether or not the female is ovulating.
Urine from male cape water buffaloes is so flammable that some tribes use it for lantern fuel. (From 1001 Gruesome Facts, by Helen Otway)
May 9 is National Lost Sock Memorial Day, when people are encouraged to let go of all their remaining single socks and to hold a minute’s silence for all the socks that have been lost. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
Postage stamps that went on sale in China to celebrate the Year of the Pig were sweet-and-sour pork flavored. (From 1001 Gruesome Facts, by Helen Otway)
Pub owners in Southhampton, England, checked their closed circuit TV when a urinal disappeared. It showed a man removing the urinal and taking it away in a backpack. (From 1001 Gruesome Facts, by Helen Otway)
In 2002, in Peterborough, England, paleontologists discovered 160 million year old fossilzed vomit from a marine reptile. (From 1001 Gruesome Facts, by Helen Otway)
The Russian space program used female dogs in their spaceflight experiments because they squat to pee instead of lifting their leg. No room for that in a tiny space capsule. (From 1001 Gruesome Facts, by Helen Otway)
In 1920, Ray Chapman became the only major league baseball player to be killed by a pitch. The sound of the ball hitting his skull was so loud that one player mistook it for the ball being hit with the bat and fielded it. (From 1001 Gruesome Facts, by Helen Otway)
Scientists have found sharks living in an underwater volcano. (From National Geographic Kids Weird But True 8: 300 Outrageous Facts)
If you could drive a car from the Earth to the Moon, at 60 mph it would take you almost six months to get there. (From National Geographic Kids Weird But True 8: 300 Outrageous Facts)
Charles VI of France (1368-1422) suffered from a mental illness that made him believe his body was made of glass. He even put metal rods in his clothes so he wouldn’t shatter. (From National Geographic Kids Weird But True 8: 300 Outrageous Facts)
Research by scientists Ben Wilson and Bob Batty revealed that herring fish fart frequently … but only at night. (from National Geographic Kids Weird But True 8: 300 Outrageous Facts)
Volkswagen sells more sausages than cars. In 2019, the company produced 6.2 million cars at its factories across the world, but at its Wolfsburg, Germany, plant, it made 6.8 million currywurst sausages, which sell in more than a dozen countries. (from Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Out of the Box)
Fearing that he might lose his job at a New Zealand ad agency, Joshua Jack took an emotional support clown to an important work meeting. He hired Joe the Clown for $200 in an attempt to lighten the mood with his employers. In the end, he was still fired, but he did have two balloon animals — a unicorn and a poodle — that the clown had made noisily during the meeting. (from Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Out of the Box)
At the height of the Battle of Germantown in 1777 during the Revolutionary War, George Washington ordered a ceasefire to return a lost dog to its owner, enemy general Sir William Howe. The little terrier was found wandering the battlefield between the American and British lines. Washington took the dog to his tent, fed him, and had him washed and brushed before returning him to Howe. Once this was done, the battle resumed. (Unfortunately, this bid for karma didn’t succeed. The British won the battle.) (from Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Out of the Box)
The Ayam Cemani chicken of Indonesia not only has black feathers and a black beak, it also has black bones, black organs, and even black meat. Its meat is said by natives to possess mystical powers. (from Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Out of the Box)
A whole orange will float in water, but a peeled orange will sink. This is because the peel is spongy and contains tiny pockets of air, making the density of the whole orange less than the density of water, therefore allowing it to float. (from Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Out of the Box)
While filming the 2019 movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Tom Hanks discovered that he is related to Fred Rogers, whom he plays in the film. The pair are sixth cousins. (from Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Out of the Box)
Hitler gave gifts of honey to wounded soldiers with a sweet note that read “Ein Gruss des Fuhrers an Seine Verwundeten” (“Greetings from the Fuhrer to his wounded”) — though, fittingly, it was really just cheap imitation honey made from beet syrup and yellow food coloring. (from The Secret History of Food, by Matt Siegel)
When the Eighteenth Amendment outlawed the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol in the 1920s, many American breweries such as Anheuser-Busch turned to making ice cream to stay afloat. (After all, the ingredients for ice cream — fat, sugar, and vanilla — are a decent substitute for alcohol in drowning one’s feelings.) In fact, ice cream stood in for alcohol as a source of national comfort so much that by 1929, ice cream consumption in the United States had grown to about a million gallons per day. This crashed, along with the rest of the country, in the Great Depression … but the Depression also brought us Rocky Road ice cream. We don’t know who actually invented the flavor, but it was popularized in 1929 by two ice cream makers from California. William Dreyer and Joseph Edy used “rocky road” as a culinary metaphor for the hard times the country was going through. Before this, toppings were primarily just available at the point of sale and sprinkled on top (think of the Dairy Queen business model). The idea of mixing marshmallows and nut chunks was weird, but people dug it. It was a reminder that life could be sweet, even when filled with broken, rocky pieces. (from The Secret History of Food, by Matt Siegel)
Mount Olive, North Carolina, home of the Mount Olive Pickle Company (located at 1 Cucumber Boulevard),rings in the New Year with a pickle drop. At the stroke of 7 pm, a 3-foot-long pickle drops from the top of a 45-foot flagpole into a redwood pickle tank. The pickle hits, splashing brine all over spectators as they cheer and applaud. Part of the event is a canned food drive — all participants are entered to win an inflatable pool pickle. Why 7 pm? 7 pm EST happens to be midnight Greenwich Mean Time, which makes things official. (from Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer’s Guide, by Cecily Wong and Dylan Thuras.)
And we’re here together on Christmas Eve. Here is my Christmas present to you all: an extra episode of Lights Out. In this episode, we’ll hear a reading of “Smee”, a short story by A. M. Burrage from 1931. Burrage brings the spooky with this ghostly tale. Merry Christmas! https://youtu.be/J9o1k1wUauE
And I wish you all a very Merry Saturkwanzukah, and the best of all possible New Years. Be safe, be well, and be good to each other. Thanks so much for dropping by, and on your way out, swing by www.weirddarkness.com and wish Darren and the rest of the weirdos a Merry Christmas as well.
Welcome to the Dead of Winter! Today we’re going to revisit a couple of Lights Out episodes from years past. Curl up by the Christmas tree, turn on the tree lights, have a cup of something warm and lovely handy, and let’s go … Lights Out.
Lights Out Extra: Christmas 2020. https://youtu.be/tcFUsqrKSUI
Lights Out #66: Christmas 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvAANf27Eb4&t
Lights Out #52: Christmas 2017. The Roving Skeleton of Boston Bay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1o74O6A-aw&t=27s
Lights Out #51: Plymouth Courthouse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZY-ntKexJk
Lights Out #32: Christmas 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alg6AOjuQvE&t=6s
Stay tuned, because tomorrow, for Christmas Eve, I have a special present for you guys. And you know what else you should do? You should go visit Darren Marlar over at Weird Darkness, see what he’s got going on. Get curious! Tell him I sent you.
Today’s story comes from Spirits of Christmas: The Dark Side of the Holidays, by your hostess with the mostest ghosties…
Rufus Porter was a well-regarded journalist who lived in the Pike’s Peak region near Cascade, Colorado. Porter was known as the “Hard Rock Poet”, and he wrote many short poems about the human condition — not fancy poetry, but words that ordinary people could enjoy.
In December 1960, Porter was riding the rails from Spokane to Seattle. For want of a ticket, he was huddled in an open boxcar. When the train started to cross the Cascade Mountains, the temperature, already brutally cold, fell to below zero.
Porter knew he couldn’t survive much longer. Near Leavenworth, Washington, he caught a glimpse of a work camp. He jumped the train and headed painfully towards the camp to seek shelter. He made his way to the watchman’s cabin, where a light burned a cheerful welcome in the window. With the last of his fading strength, Porter pounded on the door.
An older, bearded man with kind eyes opened the door. He ushered Porter into the cabin, out of the bitter cold. He sat him down next to the fire, knelt before him, and slipped his cold boots off. He fed Porter, and treated his frostbite. But when Porter tried to thank him, or engage him in conversation, the man would only reply with one simple phrase: “I am your brother.”
After a night spent in a warm, comfortable bed, Porter left the work camp and made his way to Leavenworth. When he got to town, he told his story of being rescued by the watchman, and of being invited into the warmth and safety of the cozy cabin.
Porter’s tale was met with sideways looks and outright denial. The work camp outside of town had been deserted for years, people told him, and the watchman who had supposedly cared for him was long dead.
Porter refused to believe this. The man’s glances of kindness, his generous care, the humble way in which he would say, “I am your brother” — it all stayed planted firmly in Porter’s mind. He decided to go to the work camp in daylight to see things for himself.
He found the camp abandoned, just as the men in town had told him. There was no sign of life anywhere in the camp. And the ashes of the fire on the hearth in the watchman’s cabin were cold and dead.
If you enjoyed this story, there are many, many more between the pages of Spirits of Christmas: The Dark Side of the Holidays. You can find copies on Amazon — the ebook version is here — or at Bookshop.org. (Here’s the Bookshop link. I like sending people to Bookshop.org because with every purchase, you’re supporting independent bookstores. Amazon doesn’t need our help.)
Also if you enjoyed this story, head on over to www.weirddarkness.com . I’ll bet they have cookies …
Do you guys send out Christmas cards? I know people who still do. And like so many of our holiday customs, it started with the Victorians. Exchanging greeting cards with relatives, friends and neighbors originated over 170 years ago in Victorian Britain, at a time when early Christmas rituals like carols were being revived and new customs embraced. The first commercial Christmas card was introduced by Sir Henry Cole, an inventor who had helped launch the Uniform Penny Post in January 1840. Previously, postage had been prohibitively expensive, but the penny post made sending things through the post office much more affordable for the average person. On May 1, 1843, Cole commissioned the artist John Callcott Horsley to design a special card for people to send at Christmas. Horsley’s picture of a well-to-do family enjoying a lavish meal and raising their wine glasses was reportedly controversial, considered irreligious by some. That didn’t stop people sending them, though. The novelty was too much to resist, and people were thrilled at this new way to send greetings. Two runs of Horsley’s cards were printed, totalling 2,050, and all sold within that year at one shilling each. The Christmas card tradition was born. New advances in color-printing processes revolutionised the industry. Soon, high quality printed cards became more widely affordable and 11.5 million cards were produced in 1880 alone.
Many of these cards featured scenes that we’d be okay with sending out today. Picturesque country churches, their windows glowing with soft golden light, snowy landscapes, angels bearing stars, cute animals and adorable snowmen, and families celebrating the holiday were pretty standard fare. Some of the cards were even embossed with gold and silver leaf. But as people started sending out more and more of these cards, they wanted different scenes on them. Some of these other cards were just plain bizarre.
“But Sylvia,” I hear you say, “how weird can Christmas cards really be?”
How about murderous frogs, children boiled alive, and assorted random strangeness?
The Victorians, as we’ve seen, had … different ideas about how to celebrate the holidays. Victorian Christmas cards might feature a frog shivving another frog. They might depict a child in a teapot — and not looking very happy about it. Insects were a popular motif. And others … well, just see for yourself.
Uhhhh … ohhh-kayyyy …
Sure, why not?
‘Cause yeah, this just screams “Christmas” …
Well. That was … interesting. See, I learn just as much as you guys do when I do research for these blog posts.
Can’t get enough weird? There’s loads more over at Weird Darkness. You should meander over there and look. www.weirddarkness.com
Guilelma Sands, known as Elma, lived in a boarding house in New York City. In December 1799, she was in a relationship with another tenant, a carpenter named Levi Weeks. The couple made plans to elope on December 22.
Around 8 pm that evening, Elma’s cousin, Catherine Ring, heard the front door open and close. She assumed it was Elma sneaking out to meet Levi. But Levi showed up at 10 pm demanding to know where Elma was. This unexpected development led to a search of the neighborhood.
Witnesses saw Elma in Lispenard’s Meadow, a nearby lover’s lane of sorts, walking with two unidentified men. Lispenard’s Meadow was also the site of the Manhattan Well. On January 2, Elma’s body was pulled from the well. She’d been dumped there, her neck broken.
Levi Weeks was accused of Elma’s murder. For his trial, his wealthy oldest brother Ezra hired the best lawyers in town: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. The two-day trial was the first recorded murder trial in American history.
The case was expected to be a slam-dunk for the prosecution. Levi Weeks was in a relationship with Elma, and he was the last person to actually be seen with her. There were rumors (untrue) that Elma was pregnant, which seemed to give Levi motive for her murder.
But Hamilton and Burr knew their business. They cast serious reasonable doubt on the case, painting Elma as a loose woman, addicted to laudanum. Any guy could have killed her, they said. After only five minutes of deliberation, the jury found Levi Weeks not guilty.
Not that it did him any good. Weeks was so hated after the trial, he had to leave town. And Catherine Ring, Elma’s cousin, had a few tart words for Alexander Hamilton.
“If thee dies a natural death, I shall think there is no justice in heaven!”
Catherine’s curse backsplashed on pretty much everyone involved in the trial. Hamilton was killed in 1804, in a duel with his former partner, Aaron Burr. The judge in the trial simply disappeared after leaving his hotel one night. And Burr was loathed for killing Hamilton, tried for treason in 1807, lost his beloved daughter Theodosia to shipwreck in 1812, and died broke in 1836, the same day his divorce was finalized.
In 1817, houses were built in Lispenard’s Meadow. The Manhattan Well ended up hidden in the basement of a four-story building at 129 Spring Street. The upper-middle-class home eventually became commercial property. In 1954, the building was purchased by the DaGrossa family, who opened a restaurant. In 1980, Manhattan Bistro had grown so much that they needed more storage. They excavated the cellar, and exposed the well that had been buried for nearly 200 years.
Since then, the spirit of Elma Sands has made her presence known. Witnesses have heard her screaming for her life, and have seen the apparition of a young woman, soaking wet, dressed in 18th-century clothing.
Restaurant manager Thomas King had many paranormal experiences during his time at the Bistro. One evening, he went down to the basement to get a bottle of wine from the large cage where the liquor was stored. He unlocked the gate, leaving the key in the lock, and went to the back wall for the bottle. When he turned around, he found the gate locked behind him, trapping him in the cage. The keys had been removed from the lock and placed on a box just out of reach. King was down there for an hour before other employees realized he was missing and came downstairs to rescue him.
Manhattan Bistro went out of business in 2013. In 2014, the building was gutted, renovated, and became an upscale clothing boutique. The well was preserved, and is now in the corner of the men’s department.
This story, and many others, can be found in Grave Deeds and Dead Plots, which is the first volume in a series of true crime books spiced with a touch of the paranormal. It’s available at Amazon in paperback and as an ebook, and at Bookshop.org.
Darren Marlar’s up to something, I just know it. He’s over at www.weirddarkness.com, and he’s put together a whole bunch of spooky podcasts for you to rock out to. Go, check it out! Go! Shoo!
Best friends Alan Braithwaite and Chris Oakley, from Worcestershire, England, have been sending the same Christmas card back and forth to each other for more than 50 years. There is no longer much space on the card to write a message.
You know who would love to hear from you? The weirdos over at www.weirddarkness.com, that’s who! Go over there and say hi!
This story comes from Days of the Dead: A Year of True Ghost Stories.
Old churches can hide many intriguing artifacts … especially a church like St. James Garlickhythe in London, built in the twelfth century, destroyed in the Great Fire in 1666, and rebuilt by legendary architect Christopher Wren. In 1855, workmen were clearing out a storeroom when they found a dessicated corpse. He became sort of a mascot for the church; he was displayed in a glass case in the church, and parishioners nicknamed him “Jimmy Garlick”. Prankster choirboys would regularly take Jimmy out of his case on Sunday mornings and prop him up in a pew.
During the Blitz, a German bomb came perilously close to the exquisite church, shattering the display case and sending splinters of glass all over the corpse. Since then, the ghost of Jimmy Garlick has been free to haunt the church. Later in the war, a guard saw a dark figure walking in the aisle during an air raid. He shouted for the person to take cover, but the figure vanished.
Jimmy’s corpse survived the war, and is now kept in a room in the church’s tower. There are no plans to put him back on display. Researchers have concluded that the mummy is the body of sixteen-year-old Seagrave Chamberlain, who died from a fever on December 17, 1765. His tombstone can be seen in the wall of the church.
An American tourist had a deeply unsettling experience in the 1970s. She was visiting the church with her two sons, and the older son went off exploring. He climbed the stairs to the balcony — and came face-to-face with a skeletal apparition. The silent phantom stared at the terrified boy, white eyes bulging from bony sockets. The boy shrieked for his mother, but by the time she ran to him, the specter had melted away.
(And here’s a side note: I deeply dislike mummies in general. They creep me out something fierce. I am absolutely not not NOT going to post a photograph of a mummy on my site. Eww gross. So if you want to see a picture of Jimmy Garlick — and pictures do exist — you can look him up your own dang self.)
There’s more weird fun over at www.weirddarkness.com, where Darren Marlar spends most of his time creating marvelous podcasts to entertain you. What are you waiting for?
When I was growing up, my mom, of course, would cook for Christmas. Her twin sister married a man from Holland, and shared some of the new recipes she learned. One of these, which became a bit of an obsession for me, was Oliebollen.
Literally, “oliebollen” means “fat balls” or “oil balls” in Dutch. That’s because they are deep fried, like doughnuts. But they really are nothing like doughnuts — at least I don’t think so. I could eat, like, a dozen of these by myself (and I think Child Me actually did just that, on several occasions). My mom, or my aunt, would make these for pretty much every big shindig, and I was delighted every single time.
It’s a fairly simple recipe; simpler than baking bread. The recipe below makes enough to serve 20. Why not try these for your next holiday party? They are the BOMB, trust me.
Oliebollen
2 pkg yeast
1 cup milk, warmed
2 1/4 cups flour
2 tsp salt
1 egg, beaten
1 1/2 cups raisins
1 tart apple (or 2 or 3), diced small
Blend the yeast in the lukewarm milk in a cup. In a large bowl, sift together the flour and the salt. Add the milk/yeast mixture; mix into a batter, adding the beaten egg. Stir in the raisins and diced apples. Cover the bowl with a cloth and allow the batter to rise until double. (If you add a bit of sugar, or better yet honey, to the batter, it will rise faster, and the oliebollen will be fluffier.)
Heat oil in a pan, several inches deep, to 375 degrees. Drop the batter in by spoonfuls, and fry until brown. Put on a paper-towel-covered plate. Put a bowl of sugar next to it, for rolling the oliebollen in. Bask in the accolades of your family and friends.
Spekaing of recipes, Darren Marlar is cooking up something wonderful over at Weird Darkness. Why don’t you wander over and check out what’s going on? Bet you’ll be glad you did … www.weirddarkness.com
This story is excerpted from my award-winning book, Days of the Dead: A Year of True Ghost Stories.
December (12) – A Trooper to the End, Anniston, AL (1989, recurring)
When faced with a terminal diagnosis, people can have differing reactions. Captain E.C. Dothard was 58 years old when he was admitted to Stringfellow Memorial Hospital in December 1989 following a cancer diagnosis. Dothard was no stranger to hardship and stress. The state trooper was wounded in the May 1972 assassination attempt that left Governor George Wallace paralyzed. Dothard suffered a gunshot wound to the stomach. It was a graze, but still, it dropped him to the ground. Another trooper described Dothard “still barking out orders while on the ground after being shot.”
Captain Dothard was a tough old guy, but he decided he couldn’t face a long, slow, painful death by cancer. He wanted to depart this life on his own terms. He had brought his gun to the hospital, and after getting the news, Dothard shot himself in the head.
It wasn’t a neat job, either. The gunshot obliterated part of Dothard’s face. This violent, traumatic suicide has resulted in a unique haunting.
Dothard’s headless ghost is sometimes seen in the hallways at Stringfellow Memorial. An even more unforgettable apparition is the lone eyeball that is seen rolling across the floor and out the door of the room where Dothard took his own life. The eyeball always appears in December, and sightings cease by the 25th. Some people suspect that Dothard just wants to hang around for another Christmas.
Okay, yeah, that was a pretty weird story. Want more weirdness? Of course you do. Check out www.weirddarkness.com for podcasts to make you shiver.
Okay, this one isn’t all that scary — it’s just plain weird.
There are lots of Christmas customs from all over the world: singing festive carols, leaving out cookies for Santa, feeding the log that poops out sweets … wait, what? You heard me. In Catalonia, Spain, “Caga Tio” is a hollow log decorated with a happy face at one end — and it “poops” out little presents from the other end.
Children care for Caga Tio from December 8 to Christmas Eve, feeding it orange peels, dry bread, or dried beans, and solicitously keeping it warm by covering it with a blanket. The more they pamper the log, the better the haul will be. Parents who play along, like the parents in the US who leave a plate of cookie crumbs and an empty milk glass for kids to find on Christmas morning, surreptitously replace Caga Tio with a bigger log every few days, to keep up the enchantment as the kids watch the log grow. The bigger the log gets, the more presents it will poop out. (Just follow me here, okay?)
On Christmas Eve, when Caga Tio is as big as he’s gonna get, the parents send the kids out of the room for a bit and tell them to pray for lots of presents. This gives the parents the opportunity to sneak the gifts under the blanket. Then the kids are invited back in, given a stick, and told to hit Caga Tio to make him poop out the presents. There’s a catchy little song to sing while you’re whaling away, too:
Poop, log, poop nougats,
hazelnuts and mató cheese,
don’t poop herring, it’s too salty,
if you don’t poop well,
I’ll hit you with a stick,
poop, log!
The blanket is then whisked away from the nether end of the log, revealing a pile of small presents, cookies, nuts, candies, and fruits. These treats are meant to be shared; bigger presents for each child are brought by the Three Kings.
Weird enough for you? No? Then head on over to Weird Darkness for another dose. Visit www.weirddarkness.com and see what Darren Marlar has cooked up for you today.
I did a radio interview a few weeks ago with California Haunts. We had a grand time chatting, and we spent quite a bit of time talking about Christmas spookiness. And guess what? California Haunts is doing readings all December long, from Spirits of Christmas. How fun is that?
Here’s the link for this Sunday:
And you can access it every Sunday at 6:30 pm pacific at YouTube.com/@CaliforniaHauntsRadio. The shows are listed under “live shows’, as they are broadcast every Sunday. Tune in, and listen to readings of true ghost stories of December, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the dark of winter. Make every Sunday spooky!
(The following is an excerpt from my book Spirits of Christmas: The Dark Side of the Holidays.)
December 25th as the date for Christmas was not an arbitrary choice for the early Christians. Both Yule and Sol Invictus (the festival of the Unconquered Sun) commemorated the Winter Solstice. The symbolic connotations of these holidays coincided with the Christians’ belief that the Son of God had come to the world. Pope Julius I simply co-opted dates that were already significant to pagan Romans and northern Europeans. Of course, this meant that the raucous pagan celebrations, the Saturnalia apparties and the topsy-turvy turnarounds, got brought into early Christmas celebrations too.
The Winter Solstice was also considered to be the spookier of the two solstices. Rather than long hours of daylight and a short night, the Winter Solstice marked the turning of the year with the shortest day and the longest night. (The increased hours of darkness meant, of course, that spooks and monsters and things that go bump in the night had a lot more time to roam the earth during the winter months.) It brought to mind the death of the Sun and the thinning of the veil between worlds.
The Victorian Christmas celebration, then, which already made heavy use of pagan symbols like Yule logs, holly leaves, and even Father Christmas, also embraced the holiday’s nodding acquaintance with the supernatural. This helped to create one of the Victorian era’s most enduring holdiay traditions, the Christmas ghost story.
Even Christmas games of the period held an element of terror. The popular game of Snapdragon involved putting raisins, plums, or almonds in a bowl of brandy, and then setting the brandy on fire. Players tried to snatch a raisin out of the flaming bowl and pop it into their mouth to extinguish it. Another game had the players attempting to bite apples which were tied to one end of a stick — the other end had a lighted candle stuck to it. (The phrase “Don’t try this at home, kids” had not been invented yet.)
Other games smacked of sado-masochism. The game of Hot Cockles involved putting your head in someone’s lap while trying to guess who was hitting you from behind. The kneeler, who was “It”, put their hand behind their back, palm up. The other players took turns smacking the palm in an anonymous low-five. Shoeing The Wild Mare was a similar guessing game, which involved a whack on the foot.
And guess what? If you are a semi-responsible adult, you too can play Snapdragon. All you need for this completely deranged party game is a wide, shallow flame-proof plate, a good handful of raisins and almonds, a match, and some high-test booze, like rum or vodka. This is best played in a darkened room, the better to enjoy the eerie blue flames. Keep a bit of salt around, too. When you toss salt into the fire, the flames flare a brilliant gold for a few moments.
So why does this work? Well, you could say that the Victorians were way more hard-core when it came to their party games … or you could go with boring old science. Alcohol burns at a relatively low temperature. If the flames are blue, rather than yellow, you’re doing it right. A yellow candle flame is about twice as hot as the blue flames of snapdragon. This is because blue flames are due to chemiluminescence, not thermal radiation. Chemiluminescence produces light, but not much heat. (The salt’s nifty trick is also explained by chemistry. The sodium atoms gain a little bit of energy in the fire, then lose that energy. That’s what makes the flames pop and turn that pretty shade of yellow.) And raisins and almonds are not very combustible, and they cool off quickly. They’re just going to sit there on the plate while the alcohol burns off. Also, you’re just snatching the treats from the fire, not holding your fingers over the burning plate.
Be sensible about this, if you want to try it. But if you’re game, here are the directions. (from Gastro Obscura)
SnapdragonIngredients ½ cup raisins * ½ cup almonds * ¾ cup, plus ¼ cup of around 50 percent alcohol, such as brandy or rum * Salt*
Instructions1. Take a large, flat plate, and sprinkle the raisins and almonds on top, making sure to space them out. 2. Pick where you’ll play the game. A dim-to-dark room or outside at night is best for seeing the blue flames. Make sure wherever you set the plate is free of any tablecloth or flammable materials. 3. Pour the ¾ cup of alcohol onto the plate. Add more if the bottom of the plate is not thoroughly covered. Then, heat the other ¼ cup in a pot on the stove until it sizzles and steams. (Cohen says this volatilizes the alcohol, increasing the amount of vapor and making it easier to set alight.) Carefully pour the hot liquor into a mug or a bowl, making sure not to burn yourself. 4. Gather a large spoon, matches or a lighter, the mug, and the salt. When ready to start playing, pour the liquor into the large spoon and set it alight. Then, carefully tip the flaming liquor onto the plate, letting it light the rest of the alcohol. It may not take right away. Reheat more alcohol and try again if it doesn’t work the first time. 5. Once the blue flames are leaping, players can reach for the raisins and almonds. Pinches of salt will make the fire briefly burn yellow and flare. Take care, since the plate will gradually heat up. To refresh the flames, carefully stir the mix with the spoon, or add more alcohol. Eat what you pull from the fire.
If you’ve survived your game of Snapdragon, I think it’s safe to say that you are officially a weirdo. Congrats! You’ll find plenty of company over at Weird Darkness, where Darren Marlar is also serving up spooky Christmas treats. Go check it out! www.weirddarkness.com
Can you believe it? We’re headed into the home stretch of 2022. It’s time to celebrate! And right here is the perfect place to do it. I’ve got twelve days of fun planned for you guys, with recipes, interesting Christmas traditions, a Today I Learned, and of course, ghost stories!
Darren Marlar, of Weird Darkness, joins us again too. Every day, I’ll post a link to his website so you can hop on over there and see what delicious weirdness he’s got on offer.
So snuggle up close to a roaring fire, make sure you’ve got a plate of cookies and a warming drink to hand, and let’s dive into the Twelve Nightmares of Christmas!
The chemical responsible for petrichor (that wonderful “smell” of rain or impending snow) is called geosmin. It’s given off by Streptomyces bacteria in the soil when it gets wet. Humans can detect geosmin at a concentration of 5 parts per trillion. This means that humans are 200,000 times more sensitive to smelling geosmin than sharks are at smelling blood.
Another Lights Out is here for your listening pleasure! Are you ready for another walk in the woods? Let’s visit hidden Kasey Cemetery, in Hardin County, Kentucky. But be warned … there are strange things in the forest, and not all of them are friendly… https://youtu.be/qCAwr_dNt4Mhttps://youtu.be/qCAwr_dNt4M
When it’s so quiet you can hear snow falling, you’re actually hearing the static discharge of the snowflakes hitting the ground. A snowflake gathers static electricity as it’s falling to earth, then discharges the energy when it lands.
Crawfish communicate with each other by shooting streams of urine out of pores on the sides of their heads. Clusters of fan-like appendages direct the spout straight into the face of the other crawfish during a fight or during courtship. The urine contains hormone derivatives that give clues to the sprayer’s current level of fitness, … Continue reading Today I Learned …
Ilha de Queimada Grande, known as “Snake Island”, located 20 miles off the coast of Brazil, is home to thousands of highly venomous Golden Lancehead vipers — as many as five per square yard. The snakes are so dangerous that people are forbidden to land on the island. It is the only place in the … Continue reading Today I Learned …
I’ve been having some really wonderful chats with podcast hosts in the past couple of months. I’ll be posting links to their shows as they become available; here are a couple of them. The Gritty Hour: “We spoke with Sylvia Shults, author of “Fractured Spirits: Hauntings at the Peoria State Hospital” about her particular interest … Continue reading Tea and Conversation, Anyone?
The geographic cone snail, which lives off the coast of Australia, drugs fish to catch and eat them: the snail releases a toxic cloud containing insulin, which causes the fish’s blood sugar levels to plummet and puts it in a coma. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Eye-Popping Oddities)
A bonsai tree survived the atomic bomb that devastated the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945 — even though it stood less than two miles from ground zero. First planted in 1625, the ornamental white pine was presented to the American people in 1976 as a gift for the Bicentennial celebrations. (From Ripley’s Believe It … Continue reading Today I Learned …
On Friday June 13, 2014, miners in Russia’s Irkutsk region found a nugget of gold that they nicknamed “the devil’s ear” because of its shape. When weighed, the nugget tipped the scales at 6,664 grams — handily incorporating the “devil’s number” of 666. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Eye-Popping Oddities)
The Romanian village of Costesti is home to strange rocks called trovants that can balloon 1000 times in size when it rains. Trovants are balls of sand that appeared on Earth following powerful earthquakes six million years ago. They grow when they come into contact with water. Stones as small as .03 inches can swell … Continue reading Today I Learned …
Parents in Japan will often warn their children to cover their tummies during a thunderstorm. Local superstition holds that Raijin, the god of thunder and lightning, likes to eat children’s bellybuttons. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Eye-Popping Oddities)
Togbe Ngoryifia runs a car repair garage in Frankfurt, Germany, but is also an African king with 200,000 subjects whom he rules via Skype. He became King Banash of the Hohoe people in southeast Ghana in 1987, after being named as the successor to his grandfather’s throne. His father and older brother were not permitted … Continue reading Today I Learned …
Here’s another episode of Lights Out for your listening pleasure! Let’s take a wander through the woods on a crisp fall evening, and see what the spirits have to say. https://youtu.be/FeaFXKEdTHk
Spotlight – Grave Deeds and Dead Plots Ron’s Amazing Stories. On the podcast this week we will have a special Ghost Stories With Sylvia. Sylvia and I will be discussing her brand new book Grave Deeds and Dead Plots. It is the first volume of an exciting new series. These collections of ghost stories feature spine-tingling tales of … Continue reading Grave Deeds and Dead Plots is on the air!
A gargoyle that was added to the 13th century Paisley Abbey in Scotland in the 1990s looks just like the monster from the movie Alien. And Washington National Cathedral has a gargoyle of Darth Vader on its northwest tower. It’s called the Vader Grotesque. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Eye-Popping Oddities)
The 2023 Days of the Dead calendars are HERE! Just $15, and that covers postage to send it straight to your doorstep. The calendars are a generous 8 1/2 by 11, with plenty of room to write in coming events: dentist’s appointments, frat parties, fun things like that. To order, simply click on the Contact … Continue reading Make Every Day Spooky!
The first and last British soldiers to die in World War I, Private John Parr and Private George Ellison, are both buried in St. Symphorien Cemetery in France, and face each other only yards apart. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Eye-Popping Oddities)
Well, here’s some fun library news! Days of the Dead: A Year of True Ghost Stories, is now available on Biblioboard. What does this mean? It means that if you’ve got a library card, you can read Days of the Dead for free in ebook format. And you can skip the hold shelf — with … Continue reading Days of the Dead Now Available With the Click of a Mouse!
A man tried to rob a convenience store in Fort Smith, Arkansas, in April 2012. His weapon of choice? A pair of hot dog tongs. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Eye-Popping Oddities)
On the day Judy Garland died, a tornado struck Kansas. Judy Garland was found dead at her London home late on the morning of June 22, 1969, twelve days after she had turned 47 years old. An F3 tornado touched down in Saline County, Kansas, on June 21. Sixty people were injured, but no one … Continue reading Today I Learned …
Great white sharks are 200 times heavier than domestic cats, but their brains weigh almost the same. (From 1,339 Quite Interesting Facts to Make Your Jaw Drop, by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, and James Harkin)
Coyotes can run faster than roadrunners. (From 1,339 Quite Interesting Facts to Make Your Jaw Drop, by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, and James Harkin)
Even when adjusted for inflation, the movie Titanic cost 50% more to make than the ship of the same name. (From 1,339 Quite Interesting Facts to Make Your Jaw Drop, by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, and James Harkin)
In Finnish an exclamation point is a “shout mark”; in Spanish it’s a “wonder symbol.” (From 1,339 Quite Interesting Facts to Make Your Jaw Drop, by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, and James Harkin)
So every month or so, I head on over to Ron’s Amazing Stories, and Ron Hood and I chat about the paranormal for a while. Ron was kind enough to get himself a copy of my brand-new book, and even better, he wrote up a glowing review of it. Here it is: “I have had … Continue reading Review of Grave Deeds and Dead Plots
The first country to ban foie gras on the grounds on animal cruelty was Nazi Germany. (From 1,339 Quite Interesting Facts to Make Your Jaw Drop, by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, and James Harkin)
How long does it take for a flower to replenish its nectar supply? It all depends on the creature the flower evolved to attract, says Gary Krupnick of the Museum of Natural History. Nectar is a sugar-based substance that lures pollinators so their bodies transfer bits of fertilizing pollen from flower to flower. Plants adjust … Continue reading Today I Learned …
An octopus has horizontal pupils; whatever angle the octopus is at, its pupils always stay aligned with the horizon. (From 1,339 Quite Interesting Facts to Make Your Jaw Drop, by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, and James Harkin)
That’s right, the first volume of Grave Deeds and Dead Plots is now LIVE! Welcome to the first volume of an exciting new series, Grave Deeds and Dead Plots. These collections feature spine-tingling tales of true crime … with added ghosts. Each story is a tale of murder, passion, or cold-blooded killing—and each case has … Continue reading There’s A New Book In Town!
Handel and Jimi Hendrix lived at the same house in London 250 years apart. (From 1,339 Quite Interesting Facts to Make Your Jaw Drop, by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, and James Harkin)
The chemical company Bayer lost the trademark for aspirin as part of Germany’s reparations for the first World War. (From 1,339 Quite Interesting Facts to Make Your Jaw Drop, by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, and James Harkin)
Who’s ready for a brand-new episode of Lights Out? We’re going to wander the gloomy halls of Pennhurst Asylum. Take my hand … https://youtu.be/71Y8BaVDeac
America’s original national motto, “E pluribus unum”, was plagiarized from an ancient recipe for salad dressing. The Latin phrase meaning “From many, one” held great symbolism for the colonies that decided to get together to form their own nation. The term made its first appearance in a poem by the Roman poet Virgil called “Moretum” … Continue reading Today I Learned …
Twins Samuel and Ronan Peterson were born in Cape Cod Hospital on November 6, 2016, to parents Emily and Seth, of West Barnstable, Massachusetts. Samuel was born at 1:39 am and Ronan arrived 31 minutes later, but by the time Emily had given birth to Ronan, the clocks had gone back one hour due to … Continue reading Today I Learned …
Twin brothers Jeremy and Nick Hart retired as British Airways pilots by landing their final flights thirty second apart at London’s Heathrow airport on September 28, 2017. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: A Century of Strange)
In 2017, an 81-year-old man called the police to tell them he had found an unexploded World War II bomb in the garden of his home near Karlsruhe, Germany, but when the officers arrived, they found it was a 16-inch-long zucchini. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
In 2017, a food bank in Cardiff, Wales, received a 46-year-old can of soup as a donation. The flavor — Heinz kidney soup — had been discontinued more than 35 years ago. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)
Francisco Rios, of Hartford, Connecticut, won $100,000 on the state lottery in 2018 by using numbers taken from a classic 1958 episode of the TV western series Bronco. He used the numbers 22, 2,18,12, and 28 because the episode was about a man who had been buried in a glacier for 22 years, 2 months, … Continue reading Today I Learned …
In the latter half of the eighth century, the Japanese began using incense to mark time by placing a stick of it horizontally in a wooden box with holes marked at specific intervals. You could tell how much time had passed by noting which hole the smoke was coming from. An incense stick could be … Continue reading Today I Learned …
During Hurricane Ophelia, tens of thousands of apples were blown off of the trees in an orchard in Clonmel, Ireland — but the fruits landed unbruised and ready for cider processing. The nearby River Suir flooded at the same time the apples were stripped from the trees, and when the water receded, the apples were … Continue reading Today I Learned …
Shuttlecocks used in badminton games at the Summer Olympics are always made of feathers from one wing (left or right) of a goose or duck. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: A Century of Strange)
Author Ray Bradbury was a descendant of a woman convicted in the Salem Witch Trials. Mary Perkins Bradbury was sentenced to be hanged in 1692 but managed to escape before she could be executed. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: A Century of Strange)
For an art festival in Kassel, Germany, Argentine artist Marta Minujin built a full-size replica of the Parthenon using 100,000 books that have been banned at one time or another. Constructed with a steel framework, the sculpture was made with books donated by the public from a list of over 170 titles, including The Da … Continue reading Today I Learned …
In April 1935, the Titanian, a tramp steamer carrying coal from Newcastle, England, to Canada, encountered an iceberg in the same area as the Titanic had done 23 years earlier. Crew member William Reeves had a premonition seconds before the iceberg came into view and yelled “Danger ahead!” to the navigator, who quickly reversed the … Continue reading Today I Learned …
During his lifetime, Edgar Allan Poe’s best-selling book was The Conchologist’s First Book, a textbook about seashells. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: A Century of Strange)
I have news! Good news! I’ve just found out that Days of the Dead: A Year of True Ghost Stories has won First Place in the Bookfest Awards. How about that? And you can go here to get your very own copy, if you haven’t already: https://bookshop.org/…/days-of-the-dead-a…/9781735668987 You can also get it here: Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735668982?ref=exp_hauntedroadmedia_dp_vv_d&fbclid=IwAR3sWUj9_YTBlM–2kxKyMMQo92XiWTOcAYgaBq8f6lHfINp-He4oeOQyH8 … Continue reading Guess Whose Book Won First Place?
At one point in his career, actor Gary Oldman had played so many American characters in movies that he lost his British accent and had to go to a speech therapist to get it back. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: A Century of Strange)
The app RunPee advises users on the best time to take an urgent toilet break during a trip to a movie theater so that they do not miss a crucial moment. It picks out three- to five-minute-long movie scenes that do not contain essential plot twists, exciting action, or laugh-out-loud moments. (From Ripley’s Believe It … Continue reading Today I Learned …
What’s even better than exploring a haunted location all evening? Getting to spend the rest of the night there! And when the spirits come out to play, that’s when things get REALLY interesting … join me for another visit to one of my favorite haunted places, Malvern Manor. https://youtu.be/AoqSaueVit8
The naked mole rat can survive for nearly twenty minutes without oxygen — by effectively turning itself into a plant. It is able to change its normal metabolism so that its body cells are powered by fructose rather than glucose, a process that requires no oxygen. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: A Century of … Continue reading Today I Learned …
Cows produce three times as much saliva as milk. On average, they produce around twenty gallons of saliva every day, compared to six gallons of milk. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: A Century of Strange)
A typo helped the Allied forces crack the famous Enigma code and ultimately defeat the Germans in World War Two. The UK Ministry of Defense recruited Geoffrey Tandy to work at its top-secret Bletchley Park headquarters in Buckinghamshire, England, in the belief that he was an expert cryptogramist — someone who deciphers codes — when … Continue reading Today I Learned …
George Romero, famous for his Living Dead zombie movie franchise, also made videos for Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. When Romero got out of college, he and a few friends started a movie company called The Latent Image, and billed themselves as “Producers of Industrial Films and Television Commercials.” Some of Romero’s earliest jobs were short films … Continue reading Today I Learned …
I KNOW, I know, it’s been positively AGES since you guys have enjoyed an episode of Lights Out! (Unless you’ve been watching or listening to past episodes, in which case, good for you!) I’ve got a great excuse — I’ve been putting the finishing touches on a new book for you all, so that’s why … Continue reading Lights Out: The Watseka Wonder
When King Louis XVI of France was a child, an astrologer warned him to be on his guard on the 21st day of each month. Consequently, he never conducted any business on that date. Even so, on June 21, 1791, following the French Revolution, Louis, and his queen, Marie Antoinette, were arrested in Varennes while … Continue reading Today I Learned …
Zookeepers at the San Antonio Zoo will name a cockroach after your old flame and serve it to a bird or lizard, for the low price of $5. For $25, a frozen rat named after your most coldhearted ex will land a date with a snake. Happy Valentine’s Day! (From Reader’s Digest, February 2021)
Salmonella is a bacteria in the Enterobacter family that causes food poisoning — we all know this. But here’s something you might not know: salmonella lurks not only in raw chicken, but also on the skin of reptiles. Which is why you really should wash your hands after handling, say, a red-eared slider turtle or … Continue reading Today I Learned …
James Patterson, the mega-uber-bestselling author, used to work in advertising. He came up with the line “I’m a Toys-R-Us kid.” (from Mental Floss: The Book)
The State Farm jingle — “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there” — was written by Barry Manilow. (from Mental Floss: The Book)
More people die every year of constipation (an average of 157 Americans, according to CDC data from 2008 to 2017) than from shark attacks (an average of six people globally, according to the International Shark Attack File). (from Gory Details: Adventures From the Dark Side of Science, by Erika Engelhaupt)
Are you still looking at your 2021 calendar? The year is over (and thank goodness for that!). There’s a great way to get your spooky fix for all of 2022. I’ve put together a new calendar, using twelve of the 366 stories in Days of the Dead: A Year of True Ghost Stories. It’s bigger … Continue reading 2022 Calendars Still Available!
The string of typographical symbols comic strips use to indicate profanity (“$%@#”) is called a grawlix. (from Mental Floss: The Book)
What can I say about 2021, besides things that would probably get my mouth washed out with soap? Good grief. (Literally. We lost many family members this past year, including a sweet dog.) But life does have a way of going on. For instance, there are now two MORE places you can listen to my … Continue reading Welcome — I Think? — To 2022.
When John Williams was tapped to compose the music for “Schindler’s List”, he was really intimidated. (Imagine, John Williams having imposter syndrome…) During an early meeting about the project, Williams told Steven Spielberg, “You need a better composer for this.” Spielberg replied, “I know, but they’re all dead.”
Of the billions of letters sent to Santa each year, most of them come from France. An incredible 1.7 million letters are written to the jolly old elf from the good boys and girls of France. Canadian kids send 1.35 million letters to him (using postal code H0H 0H0). Just over one million letters show … Continue reading Today I Learned…
Thanks for being a vital part of this blog! You guys all rock. I appreciate you tuning in every Monday morning for Today I Learned, for Lights Out episodes, and for whatever other thoughts are running around my brain. Here’s a little extra Christmas present for you guys this year: links to a couple of … Continue reading Merry Christmas 2021!
Wawel Castle rises above Krakow, Poland, the symbol of Polish national identity for centuries. Nestled in a bend of the Vistula River, it sits proudly atop Wawel Hill. The castle was built by King Casimir III the Great, who ruled Poland from 1333 to 1370. It was in the early 16th century that the castle … Continue reading The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Twelve: Wawel Castle
The Victorians LOVED telling ghost stories at Christmas. One of the most famous Christmas stories of all time has not one, but FOUR ghosts in it — A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. Join me and my host Ron Hood, of Ron’s Amazing Stories, for a look at this beloved classic tale. www.ronsamazingstories.com And for … Continue reading The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Eleven: Ghost Stories With Sylvia
Even in modern days, we still cling to a cozy Victorian ideal of the holidays. Say “Christmas”, and most of us will reflexively think of family gathered around a colorfully lit tree, a tree with presents piled underneath it. (Whether or not that imaginary family will get along with each other without the lubricating effects … Continue reading The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Ten: A Victorian Christmas
So, are you burned out on eggnog? (That is TOTALLY not a thing for me. I’d drink it all year ’round if my waistline would let me.) But if you want a change from traditional nog, why not go exotic, and give coquito a try? Coquito (Spanish for “little coconut”) is a creamy rum punch … Continue reading The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Nine: Christmas Booze
The author Washington Irving is best known for his story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, a Halloween staple featuring the terrifying specter of the Headless Horseman. But what is less-known is Irving’s contribution to the lore of Christmas. It was Irving who came up with Santa’s workaround for locked doors — a squeeze down the … Continue reading The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Eight: Today I Learned…