Posts tagged
‘The Woman in Black’

Cholera Curiosities

Cholera Curiosities Fortean curiosities of cholera including blue fog, sulfurous stenches, vanishing birds. and Women in Black.

The Woman in Black – Victorian Mourning as Criminal Disguise

The Woman in Black – Victorian Mourning as Criminal Disguise A look at the rogues’ gallery of crimes committed in the United States from about 1860 to 1929 under the cover of crape by The Women in Black.

Creature Feature: The Woman in Black of New Orleans

Creature Feature: The Woman in Black of New Orleans. A macabre entity that terrorized the citizens of New Orleans, believed to be an omen of death.

The Thornley Crape Threat

I have previously shared some instances of “coffin threats” in this forum, as well as writing about the lost art of “crape threats” in The Victorian Book of the Dead. Today we look at what was the early-20th-century version of a gangster sending a funeral wreath to a rival.

Encore: Mistresses of the Dark: The Women in Black

The final chapter in my book The Ghost Wore Black: Ghastly Tales from the Past tells of a little-known 19th-century panic over those mistresses of the dark, The Women in Black. They were the female equivalent of Spring-heeled Jack, without the flames and (sometimes) the leaping, and they terrified communities across the United States from roughly 1865 to 1915.