folklore – Madeleine Swann

Doesn’t the air smell of faded leaves and over excitement?! I for one can barely wait to start digging up bodies and spoon feeding them cake and chocolate. That’s what you do, right?

The evenings are drawing in and what better way to relax than with a few informative, yet suitably weird, documentaries?

The Addams Family

These first three really count as one. I’m not sure what TV channel broadcast them first or if they were DVD extras, but it’s a 2007 look at the TV series and original cartoons of the Addams Family.

The Aswang Phenomenon

If you’ve seen bizarre cult classic Mystics of Bali you may have heard of the witch who separates her head from her body and floats through the air…her lungs and spine dangling beneath. Well, apparently they have a similar creature in the Philippines, the Aswang, who oddly seems to take many other forms according to whoever tells the story.

Ripley Believe it or Not!

Ripley’s Museum of Oddities will always hold a special place in my heart as Bill and I visited for our second date (my choice of course).

This documentary charts Ripley’s beginnings from cartoonist to global weirdo phenomenon, celebrating those who always felt a bit different on the way.

Frankenstein and the Vampyre, a Dark and Stormy Night

Two legendary horror monsters were created during the same holiday in Geneva, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and the modern, aristocratic vampire by John Polidori. Also with them were poets Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont.

Their trip isn’t just famous for their creative output, however, there were also drugs, sexual confusion and scandal. Exciting!

If you’d like to see more documentaries on romantic gothic literature, including the Brontes and Edgar Allen Poe, toddle off to this link here.

Urban Legends

An atmospheric wander through urban legends that turned out to have some basis in fact, whether before or after the telling. Remember, Halloween wouldn’t be the same if we didn’t all think nice old ladies were trying to kill us with sweets (candy).

Sacred Weeds: Henbane the Witch’s Brew

This was one of the oddest documentaries I remember from the 90s. It seemed to me that during that period everything went very sun and moon and incense, and to be honest I still secretly love it. There were four episodes in the series; Blue Lily, Henbane, Salvia Divinorum and Fly Agaric, but Henbane deals with Gothic folklore and witch trials.

The premise is what makes it so strange, two people turn up to a castle in the middle of nowhere so scientists in suits can watch them trip out of their tiny minds. The scientists argue before the trial and after, not a single one agreeing or changing their mind in the least. To be honest, though, fair enough if you’ve done the research and others clearly haven’t.

Watch out for the man who seems to have wandered in from some fetish dream, declaring with little to no evidence that witches definitely rubbed ointment on their vaginas and held naked sabbats.

Today’s google doodle is Charles Perrault. Well done Charles, you’ve made it! Fairy tale fascination is nothing new, children watch the Disney versions over and over, but as I grew older I realised there was something else to them, something…untamed.

A Jim Henson television programme from the late 80s told me that yes, there was something to that theory. Based on folk tales from the past they were often more unpleasant than the Disney versions – don’t let yourself be led astray, or such and such will happen.

Jim Henson’s Storyteller, Sapsorrow, an early version of Cinderella where she has to marry her father

That’s the gist of many of them: dark predictions if you don’t heed your guardian’s warnings. Little Red Riding Hood was much more The Company of Wolves than a story about a little girl avoiding a scary animal. In truth she was on the brink of sexuality and told not to talk to strangers on the way to her grandma’s lest they be an evil seducer.

But that’s not all they are. The listener no doubt felt a thrill of fear and disgust and the teller would delight in their reaction. They’re projections of worst case scenarios told safely indoors, the Urban Legends of their time. I got the same excitement and revulsion when I first discovered the Snopes website and saw society’s basest worries right there on the screen. There’s no PC filters here, everybody fits a stereotype and everyone wants to secretly maim you or put gerbils up you (neither sounds good).

Just like the Prince’s mother from Charles Perrault’s Sleeping Beauty plans to eat his daughter, stories are whispered of meth taking baby-sitters mistaking children for meatloaf and putting them in ovens. A still earlier version of Sleeping Beauty has the Prince impregnating the Princess IN HER SLEEP, while other versions have the mother-in-law not only eating her son’s first daughter but secretly, apparently for a laugh, feeding her to the King. All of which sound a little like the tales passed between lips of scary foreigners and drug addicts.

So next time you listen to a biased and poorly researched story told to you by the bloke in the office who heard it from Fred just imagine: One day there might be a cartoon version where they get married at the end.