The Animals’ Christmas Carol: The Beasts Speak on Christmas Eve It is said, in traditions ranging from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia, that animals are magically able to speak at midnight on Christmas Eve. You might look for innocent barnyard chatter about a Baby in a manger or a bright new Star in the East. And yet, in many parts of Europe, you would put your head under the covers for fear of what sinister things you might hear.
Two Black Dogs: Stories to Read at Christmas Stories of two phantom (?) Black Dogs, one from Ohio and one from Minnesota, for your traditional Christmas ghost story reading pleasure.
Breathe Once for ‘Yes’: Guibal and Greville’s Mind-Reading Act Arthur Guibal and Marie Greville use a breathing code to mystify audiences of their mind-reading act.
Chignon Satire: Victorian Hairpiece Humor (part 2) We have previously looked at the hair-raising horrors of the parasitic “gregarines” in fashionable ladies’ chignons and waterfalls. Today let us comb through the archives for chignon satire. As with any extreme fashion, these appendages were the subject of much coiffure comedy.
he Chignon Horror: Dis-tressing News about False Hair (part 1) Fashionable ladies in the 1860s and 1870s wore their chignons and waterfalls proudly. They would have been shocked by the horrors that lurked in their modish hairdos.
These mysterious luminaries of the paranormal world have a variety of names: Spook lights, corpse candles, will-o-the-wisps, jack-o-lanterns, ball lightning, ignis fatuus, swamp gas, ghost lights. Yet no matter what the designation, their nature is elusive. They always float just out of reach when scientists try to study them. This is a post about spook lights that harm.
Since today is St. Nicholas’s Day and I do not wish to dwell on his companion, Krampus, let us look ahead to Christmas and some historic cribs of the Infant Jesus.
The Little Match Girls: Incendiary Poltergeists Hellish blue flames and mysterious outbreaks of fire: the fire-spook has struck again. Is it a concoction of combustible chemicals? a poltergeist girl? Or a ghost playing with matches?
