Weekend Compendium: 20 February 2016
The wind is howling like a demon outside the window, which puts me in the perfect mood to welcome all to the Weekend Compendium.
Over at Mrs Daffodil this week:
A young man’s impulsive sending of a Valentine has life-changing repercussions, in “What Became of a Valentine.” Moral: Always be kind to seamstresses.
(Being the heartless person that I am, I shared a Spiritualist sentiment for the holiday in “The Medium’s Valentine.”)
The little-known history of the techniques behind false-eyelashes in “Art Eyelashes and Eye Winkers.”
A strange story of a mysterious woman who saves the life of a dying man far from home in “A Curious Porcelain Bowl.”
On Sunday, Mrs Daffodil will relate shocking deeds and vile insults as a small town ladies’ club tries to stage a “Lady Washington Tea.”
Mrs Daffodil’s edition of this Compendium with different illustrations and her patent Tone, are found here.
This week at the Haunted Ohio blog, a young man is tormented by a “discontented daemon” who strangles him, slashes his clothes, and levitates him over his master’s house into a quagmire in “Some Discontented Daemon.” Proto-polt!
In a late example of a witchcraft trial, a beautiful foreigner is tried for being “The Witch of Leadville,” in 1899 Colorado.
From the archives, The Chignon Horror: hair-curling horror about what evils lurk in false hair and Chignon Satire: Victorian hairpiece humour.
Also art imitates life or vice-versa? in a story about a green jungle hell and a terrifyingly large spider. Of special interest to M.R. James fans.
Some of the favorite links of the week: A toothsome post on Irish fairies and Irish food. Incidentally, “The Fairy Investigation Society” now has an official Face-book page and invites all interested to visit for fairy news and art.
Speaking of “daemons,” EsoterX takes on demon-speak in They Talk Funny in West Hell.
Crash go the chariots: The discovery of the first complete Bronze-age wheel at the site called the “Peterborough Pompeii,” is confounding the experts.
Venus, in her carriage drawn by cats, Juliana de Roussel, 1669 http://www.europeana.eu/portal/record/92075/673C25DAAC67C2CE3CE47E44E4688514E0833D7B.html?start=31&query=book&startPage=25&qf=miniature&qt=false&rows=24
Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.