Weekend Compendium: 13 January 2016 Valentine Edition Featuring an 18th century “Missed Connection” ad, 19th century hints for photographic sitters. The Angel of Lourdes, monkey ghosts, Valentines for Undertakers and Spiritualist Mediums.
Ernest Case was visited by angels, went into deep trances in which he could find missing items, and foretold his own death on the 27th of an unknown month and year. What happened to this Toledo Wonder?
The holidays (or perhaps more accurately, holiday films) are a time for heartwarming depictions of helpful angels: Clarence, the Angel Second Class of It’s a Wonderful Life and Cary Grant’s debonair Dudley of The Bishop’s Wife spring to mind. Here are stories of three angelic visitations, two of dubious helpfulness.
In honor of the 150th birthday anniversary for Welsh horror and fantasy author Arthur Machen, we look at a 1915 article discussing the evidence for the Angels of Mons visions. Machen’s story, “The Bowmen,” may have inadvertently helped to create this legend of the Great War. Despite Machen’s protests that the story was fictional, the stories of angels on the battlefield took on a life of their own and became hoplessly tangled in false memories, hoaxes, and a twisted kind of ostension.
