In 12th-century England, a dead man kept climbing into bed with his wife, and the whole street stayed up every night to watch for him. To understand why, we follow the strange medieval debt between the living and the dead: from Cluny’s prayers for souls, to walking corpses at Wharram Percy, to the 1517 indulgence campaign that literally put a price on salvation.

Content note: descriptions of corpses being exhumed and burned, plague, and death.

Chapters

00:00 The man who came home

01:46 Cluny and a day for the dead

04:35 When hell filed a complaint

06:21 Before purgatory had a name

07:55 William of Newburgh's walking dead

13:35 The bones at Wharram Percy

15:28 The bishop's letter

17:22 The 1517 price list

22:01 The rhyme and Luther's letter

25:09 They kept paying anyway

29:28 Why pay the dead?

Selected sources: William of Newburgh, History of English Affairs, Book 5 (trans. Stevenson); Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory; Mays et al., Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2017); the Instructio summaria and Tetzel's sermon (trans. Hillerbrand, The Reformation, 1964); Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun; John Aubrey, Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme.

Music: "The Box's Secret" via AISong.org, used under license.

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In 2004, builders in London dug up a sealed bottle from the 1600s filled with urine, bent nails, hair, fingernail clippings and a leather heart with a nail through it. Whoever made it never explained why.

For centuries, people across England hid bottles, worn-out shoes, dead cats and carved symbols in their homes to keep witches out. Heather digs into a 1681 witch-bottle recipe, a 1682 witchcraft trial where a grieving father tried the counter-spell himself, protective marks in a room prepared for King James I, the shoe historian who started tracking hidden shoes in the 1950s, and the mummified cats nobody can fully explain. Was this magic kept secret, or was it just so normal that nobody bothered to write it down?

Content note: discussion of a child's death and of animal remains.

0:00 The bottle in Greenwich1:30 The witch-bottle recipe9:11 The trial of Jane Kent13:27 A king's bedroom17:09 Hidden shoes21:47 Cats in the walls24:44 Hidden in plain sight26:17 Why didn't anyone write it down?

Music: "The Box's Secret" via AISong.org, used under license.

Follow Delusional Witch Juice wherever you listen.

Show notes sources

• Greenwich witch bottle: LiveScience/NBC News (2009) · https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna31107319 ; Archaeology Magazine · https://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/halloween/opening_witch_bottle/
• Joseph Glanvill, Saducismus Triumphatus (1681), full text · https://github.com/textcreationpartnership/A42824
• Trial of Jane Kent, Old Bailey Proceedings, 1 June 1682 · https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/record/t16820601a-11
• MOLA, witch bottles · https://www.mola.org.uk/discoveries/news/what-should-you-do-if-you-find-17th-century-witch-bottle
• National Trust, Witchmarks at Knole · https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/kent/knole/witchmarks-at-knole-and-the-gunpowder-plot ; Francis Young, "A note of caution" · https://drfrancisyoung.com/2014/11/06/the-knole-witch-marks-a-note-of-caution/
• Northampton Museums, Concealed Shoe Index · https://www.northamptonmuseums.com/info/3/collections/61/shoes-2/4 ; Ceri Houlbrook, "The Other Shoe" (2017) · https://www.research.herts.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/11997749/The_Other_Shoe_Proof.pdf
• John Schorn pilgrim badge, British Museum · https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1983-1203-2
• Brian Hoggard, "Dried Cats" · https://www.apotropaios.co.uk/dried-cats.html ; Pendle cottage cat · https://ancientbodies.wordpress.com/2011/12/11/witches-cats-and-buildings-not-a-simple-story/
• Creswell Crags witch marks, Historic England (2019) · https://historicengland.org.uk/whats-new/news/witches-marks-discovery-largest-in-britain/

In 1848, according to her mother, an 11-year-old girl in upstate New York clapped her hands at a knocking wall and said, "Mr. Splitfoot, do as I do." And the wall knocked back. Forty years later, her sister walked onto a New York stage and cracked her toe in front of around 2,000 people to show them how she said it was done.

In between, the Victorians built a log cabin full of instruments for ghosts, tied mediums up in cabinets, took a spirit's pulse, and turned talking to the dead into a board game you could buy. This week I'm digging into Victorian séances: the rules of the spirit circle, the mediums who got caught (and the ones who didn't), how Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace ended up on opposite sides of a medium's trial, and how the pendulum, the planchette and the Ouija board let people make the call themselves. Plus a modern experiment where the Ouija board seemed to know more than the people using it.

So when the Victorians called out to the dead, who actually answered?

Chapters(00:00) Mr. Splitfoot, do as I do(01:33) Why people wanted to call the dead(07:14) The spirit room(11:04) Proof in the dark(17:04) Maggie Fox's confession(20:30) The pendulum: who's moving it?(23:25) The planchette(25:04) The Ouija board(27:35) So who answered?