Haunted Bones: Screaming Skulls

Dark Histories

Ben Cutmore

History

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2021

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Haunted human remains are a trope popular in modern horror, from the twisted ivory puppet in the House on Haunted Hill to the skeletal corpses, floating in the swimming pool of Poltergeist, human bones have long held a place of fear, worship and power throughout history and cultures, eventually manifesting within the horror genre of the 20th Century. At the time of the English Civil War, the whisperings of an emergent folk tradition seeded its place in the popular imagination, when stories of skulls with seemingly supernatural powers began to seep from the large, rural manor houses throughout Britain. Screaming Skulls, as they became known, were kept in farm houses, rectories and family estates both for protection and through fear of what might happen if they were mistreated, a situation which sent stories spinning through the local vicinity. ---------- SOURCES Hutchinson, John (1809) Hutchinson’s Tour Through The High Peak of Derbyshire. J. Wilson, Macclesfield, UK. Laycock, Samuel (1863) An Address to Dickie. The Ashton Weekly Reporter and Stalybridge and Dukinfield Chronicle, Saturday 18 July, 1863, p.4. Ingram, John H. (1897) The Haunted Homes and Family Traditions of Great Britain. Gibbing & Co. LTD, London, UK. Collinson, John. (1791) HIstory and Antiquities of the County of Somerset, Vol II. R. Crutwell, Bath, UK Udal, John S. (1910) Concerning the legend of the skull of Bettiscombe manor. Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society Volume 31, 1910. UK Chilton Cantelo and Ashington Parish Website. 2021. Home - Chilton Cantelo and Ashington Parish Website. [online] Available at: [Accessed 2 February 2021]. Clarke, David (1999) The head cult: tradition and folklore surrounding the symbol of the severed human head in the British Isles. University of Sheffield, UK. Underwood, Peter (1988) Ghosts of Dorset. Bossiney Books, UK Bord, Janet (2009) Screaming Skulls: Haunting Headbones or Ghostly Guardians? Paranormal Magazine, Issue 37, July 2009. ---------- For extended show notes, including maps, links and scripts, head over to darkhistories.com Support the show by using our link when you sign up to Audible: http://audibletrial.com/darkhistories or visit our Patreon for bonus episodes and Early Access: https://www.patreon.com/darkhistories Connect with us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/darkhistoriespodcast Or find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/darkhistories & Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dark_histories/ Or you can contact us directly via email at [email protected] or via voicemail on: (415) 286-5072 or join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/cmGcBFf The Dark Histories Butterfly was drawn by Courtney, who you can find on Instagram @bewildereye Music was recorded by me © Ben Cutmore 2017 Other Outro music was Paul Whiteman & his orchestra with Mildred Bailey - All of me (1931). It's out of copyright now, but if you're interested, that was that.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Haunted's human remains are a trope popular in modern horror, from the twisted ivory puppet
0:10.3	in the house on Haunted Hill to the skeletal corpses floating in the swimming pool of Polo
0:15.4	Christ.
0:16.9	Human bones have long held a place of fear, worship and power throughout history and cultures,
0:22.6	eventually manifesting within the horror genre of the 20th century.
0:27.2	At the time of the English Civil War, the whisperings of an emergent folk tradition
0:31.5	ceded its place in the popular imagination when stories of skulls with seemingly supernatural
0:37.1	powers began to seek from the large rural manor houses throughout Britain.
0:42.4	Screaming skulls, as they became known, were kept in farmhouses, rectories and family
0:47.6	estates, both for protection and through fear of what might happen if they were mistreated.
0:53.0	A situation which sent stories spinning through the local vicinity.
0:58.1	This is Dark History, where the facts are worse than fiction.
1:05.4	Hello and welcome to season 5 of episode 3 of Dark History, and this week we got a fascinating
1:10.8	old folk tale episode which I thoroughly enjoyed researching really, and it's about a
1:16.8	folk tradition that I'd not had too much about actually, I didn't know too much about
1:21.4	it.
1:22.4	To go in and I was quite raw, one thing that I think sort of really shone through for
1:27.4	me with this episode was I contacted a fair few people who are known to have these skulls
1:33.4	and just found a really nice bunch of people basically that they were really willing to,
1:40.2	you know, you expect people to be sick of talking about this stuff by now or be sick of
1:45.6	being contacted, but yes, I really just want to say thanks to everyone if you listen
1:51.2	to this that I contacted and that we're really helpful in putting this episode together.
	...

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