Last of 2025 - A Witch's Ride

Well, it's been twelve months. 

Boy howdy.

Anyhow, I'm going to take the weekends up to the New Year off, so be aware: no post next weekend. Service resumes in 2026.

I'm giving serious consideration to going to the Chaosium event in May 2026, in the UK, so if anyone wants to be the tipping point and persuade me to attend now's the time to say.

A brief story snippet based on an item found in Funk & Wagnall's Folklore: the Gandreið, aka witch's ride, which in some versions of the tradition took place at the Epiphany. Briefly, this is a feast of the dead which, if the dead attend in great numbers, signifies good fortune in the year to come. 

It can be customary to remove Christmas decorations at the Ephiphany; at the Museum of the Home in London it was customary to have a public event for exactly this purpose, though I don't know if they still do it. I liked to attend, when I was living in London. The cards, wreaths and other decorations, which would be this point be looking a little ragged, are taken out and burnt. The ceremony is accompanied by singing and festive drinking. At the Museum, of course, they didn't burn the actual decorations - those are historic - but there was a mimicry that did the same thing round an open outdoor fire.

This Bookhounds short assumes that the shop had Christmas decorations on display and are now getting rid of them, at the Epiphany. Whether or not they have a full ceremonial fire or just sweep everything in the bin on Twelfth Night is up to the players.

The Gandreið

It's an especially cold and breezy Twelfth Night this year. All the news is full of it, and people joke about another Frost Fair. A little nervously, perhaps, but they still joke. The last time the Thames froze over was over a hundred years ago, but this year seems destined to be a record-breaker so who knows? Perhaps this will be the year the Thames freezes. 

Most of the shop's regulars are out of London. The well-heeled ones are enjoying comfortable Christmases in the country, or abroad. The less fortunate are huddled at home, not wanting to risk frostbite even for a first edition. Most, bar a few die-hards, and Eliza Gatewell, who either doesn't feel the cold or doesn't let it bother her. 

Eliza is convinced there's a copy of an 1835 first edition (German, naturally) of Jacob Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie out there, and she wants it. Wants it so badly she can taste it. This is the book that, among other things, first described the witches' ride - the Gandreið. Eliza has a bit of a reputation for witchery herself; perhaps deserved, perhaps not. Perhaps that's why she wants it.

The Hounds have heard rumors of a private collection about to go up for sale which may have the elusive volume. A Bright Young Thing in need of readies to fund her Christmas drinking is dying to liquidate her late uncle's stash. The collection is in Belgravia, Westminster, as is the Bright Young Thing - temporarily, anyway, until she can clear the place and relocate somewhere a little less stuffy. The Bright Young Thing might be approachable; her Cleaner is supposed to be bribable, if the Hounds prefer a different approach. 

The question is, does the collection include Grimm's work and, if it does, can it be had for a bargain?

Option One: Bright Lights The Bright Young Thing, Melody, has her own witchery ambitions. She doesn't mind selling Grimm's work but she wants to know who she's selling to, and Eliza is keen that her name not be associated with the purchase. Melody has her own means of finding out secrets and if the Hounds aren't careful she'll find out who the buyer is. That could go poorly for Eliza; Melody and her Nightgaunt allies could come calling on Epiphany. Melody doesn't mind a good deal, but she shan't tolerate a witch rival.

Option Two: Twelfth Night. The Bright Young Thing is clueless as to the book's true value. Eliza could pick the thing up for a mere nothing. However, the cleaner, Mrs. Karswell, worked all her life for that miserly uncle and all she got out of it was a small legacy. Mrs. Karswell was hoping to liquidate the uncle's collection herself, or at least the best bits of it. After all, the Bright Young Thing's clueless as to the true value of the collection, or even what's in it. This would be the easiest fraud ever, were it not for the Hounds and their client. Now Mrs. Karswell and her Rough Lad friends need to tread carefully and snatch the thing before the sale, or that pretty little Christmas bonus she was counting on will vanish like a witch's promise.

Option Three: The Gandreið. The dead uncle isn't as dead as he's supposed to be. In fact, the old fellow, a longtime amateur practitioner of witchcraft, became a Ghoul, aided and abetted in the deception by his devoted servant Mrs. Karswell. The uncle, Stephen Norwich, expected to be able to carry on as before, only with a little more subterfuge, after his ghoulish transformation. He wasn't expecting to be declared dead by a rapacious niece, nor was he expecting his collection to be sold off to pay for the niece's Christmas hullaballoo. Now he wants his books back, and he doesn't much care how he does it. He'll need new digs, too; his Belgravia apartments are off limits. Perhaps he can kill two birds with one stone and occupy the Hounds' shop? New management, that's the ticket. After all, reasons Norwich, even if my bank account's been pilfered by relatives and my apartment's being lived in by a regrettably high-profile Bright Young Thing who can't be murdered quietly, I still have Magick on my side, as well as a ghoul's appetite. What Hound could resist a little light extortion? Especially at Christmas?

That's it for this year! Enjoy!   

The Man Who Collected Berkeley (Bookhounds)

At that time, there is said to have lived in the village, which is called Berkeley, a certain woman of evil life, a glutton and a wanton, pursuing her wickedness and practicing the black arts even in her old age, persisting in her whoredoms until the hour of her death. On a day as she sat at meat, her pet crow began to chatter something or the other, whereupon the knife fell from her hand, and her face grew ghastly white … 

From The Geography of Witchcraft, by Montague Summers.

As you might guess, it ends badly for the Berkeley witch. She confesses all her crimes, and begs that, when she dies, she be laid to rest in such a way that the Devil cannot claim her. She bids her friends to sew the corpse up in the hide of a stag, and place her in a stone coffin, binding it with heavy bands of iron. Fifty psalms are to be said each night, and fifty masses each morning. So long as this is done for three nights, from that point forward she is safe.

The first night, throughout the chanting, demons wail and scream outside the church. On the second night, the fiends burst open the church door, but are kept at bay by prayer. One the final night a powerful tempest shakes the building to its foundations, and the Devil himself bids the witch to arise and come with him. She pleads, from the coffin, that she cannot; those iron bands hold firm. The Devil responds by breaking the bands as though they were paper, ripping open the stone coffin, tearing up the hide and demanding again that she rise. Stark naked and terrified, she does. The Devil leads her outside, where a coal black horse awaits, and the two of them ride off to Hell, her shrieks of fear the last thing the holy folk at prayer hear.

This is a very old tale, and appears in many places. William of Malmesbury cites it in his Gesta Regnum (1125), and it appears in the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493) and the 13th century Flores Historiarum. However it is best known thanks to the poet laureate Robert Southey, who uses the story as the basis for his ballad The Witch of Berkeley (1799).

Southey, poet laureate for thirty years until his death in 1843 at the age of 68, is one of the lesser known poets laureate, in part because he had to compete with the likes of Byron, Shelley, Coleridge and Wordsworth. It didn't help that he was the second choice for the job; Walter Scott turned it down. You know his work even if you don't think you do: he wrote Goldilocks and the Three Bears. He began as a radical, supporting the French Revolution, and age mellowed him, till he was embraced by the Tory establishment. He very briefly stood as MP for the pocket borough of Downton, as one of his political friends advanced him to the position, but he begged off, pleading he didn't have the money or the ambition to be a politician. He was very much against what he called the Satanic School of poetry, the sort championed by Byron and Shelley.

Possibly the most scathing assessment of him is this: "He wooed Liberty as a youthful lover, but it was perhaps more as a mistress than a bride; and he has since wedded an elderly and not very reputable lady, called Legitimacy."

The Ballad appears first in Tales of Wonder, a collection compiled by Matthew 'Monk; Lewis, most famous for his own work of gothic horror, The Monk. It's been republished many times since then, in many different formats.

Which brings me to:

The Seeker

Patrick Quinlan is an enthusiastic collector and amateur historian, obsessed with the works of Robert Southey, and The Ballad in particular. He thinks it is the great unsung masterpiece of the 19th century, easily better than any of the trash put out by Byron or Shelley. The Bookhounds know him as an easy mark for anything to do with The Ballad, whether it's a new Czech translation or a reproduction of the woodcuts from the original. Quinlan doesn't have a lot of money to spend - he's an unpublished poet, and a crime novelist under the pen name Edgar Dawson. Still, if presented with something tempting, he'll scrape together the cash somehow.

Arabesque: Quinlan thinks he and Southey are kindred spirits, brothers separated by time, and wants somehow to open a connection with his literary hero. He dresses like Southey, behaves like Southey, would eat the same foods and live in the same house, if he could. That's why he champions the forgotten laureate; a slight against Southey is a slight against Quinlan.

Technicolor: Quinlan believes in witchcraft and wants to emulate, not Southey, but the Witch. After all, she had a good life right up to the end. Quinlan hasn't a prayer of getting anywhere near the Nuremberg Chronicle, but he keeps studying and searching, hoping to find a clue to the real Satanic heart of the story.

Sordid: Quinlan, at heart, is a cruel, petty man, who sees himself as an avenger. The Devil in the story, to him, is righteous punishment visited on a deserving old hag. He'd never put any of his plans into action, but he often amuses himself with the thought that, one day, like the Devil, he'll astound the world with his swift acts of vengeance.

The Bookhounds know Quinlan as a bit of a pest, but a reliable spender. All that changes one day, when he starts going around with a crow on his shoulder. Eccentric, certainly, but the bird seems to have inspired him with new confidence - and he has more money than he ever did before. Perhaps his alter ego Edgar Dawson's made a few sales - but can that really explain the kind of money he's been throwing around?

What's more, his latest obsession is a rumor that there's an original Monk Lewis out there with an erratum, an extra woodcut in the Ballad. It's mentioned in the more obscure bibliographies, but nobody's seen it for many years. Quinlan is convinced it exists and is held in a private collection, possibly in the town of Downton, which Quinlan is convinced Southey visited after his short-lived and unexpected election victory.

The Bookhounds may be tempted to brush all this off as a collector's fantasy, but Quinlan has an uncompromising look in his eye, and his money is good. Moreover that black crow on his shoulder is positively uncanny, and seems to have human intelligence - think Rat Thing, in avian form. Where did it come from? Why does Quinlan treat it like a king? What will it do, if it doesn't get its way?

[Note: the town of Downton is in Wiltshire, and Downton Abbey is in Yorkshire. Still … that book's got to be held somewhere, and Downton Abbey does have a rather splendid library …]

Enjoy!

The Exorcist (NBA, Dracula Dossier)

Exorcism is on the rise, according to this Guardian piece. The Vatican set up a new training scheme for would-be Von Sydows, claiming that reported instances of possession have grown exponentially in recent years. Evangelical churches have always been fond of exorcism, and there are independent exorcists that will bell, book & candle you for less than the price of a second-hand car. Or so the Economist claims.

Of course, there are no reliable statistics for any of this. The people reporting a rise in demand for exorcism are the same people who want to hold more exorcisms. The evidence is anecdotal, but that's never stopped anyone from jumping to a conclusion before.

Christianity has traditionally had a very uneasy relationship with the Devil, but not for the reason you might think. It's a power problem. If the Devil is capable of performing miracles, then what price God? In order to keep God at the top of the hierarchy, the Devil cannot perform miracles. His imps and minions can only perform natural acts, because if they could actually pull off supernatural stunts then the fine line between God and his opposite number gets blurrier than philosophers like. Instead they manipulate Man to achieve what seems to be miracles, but are not.

For the Dog of Hell is bound, writes one philosopher, neither can he operate on Forms, the Bodies of these, or their properties, unless he take to him the mind of Man as a co-operatives with him, under whose convents he bond-slaves by deceit, and binds them in a Covenant ... For he persuades those who have renounced Divine Grace, of whatsoever he will. and promiseth that he will perform Mischievous or wicked Acts, by strength or faculties which he feigneth to be natural or proper unto himself. For he snatcheth his Imps into the detestable adoration of a He-Goat, as if the government of all things stood in His power, and that he alone could confer the gift of the working of miracles.

The larger problem - and again, this was true in the medieval period as now - is that once you let the Devil in the door, there's no keeping him out. He's the original Special Pleading. There's no justifying him, but once you admit that he could be lurking in the shadows causing mayhem then there's no way to tell the difference between reality and the Devil's fantasy.

Moreover an exorcist, particularly an amateur, is likely to look at almost any problem as a spiritual one requiring immediate spiritual intervention. Not, say, a problem of  human fallibility, or a medical problem requiring medical assistance. The same is true of their petitioners. Very few people understand what exorcism is, but if it doesn't look like Netflix crossed with Hammer Horror and offer a convenient one-stop cure for their problem, they don't believe it.

Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins series about a female Deliverance cleric operating in Hertfordshire makes this point again and again: it is all too easy to become addicted to exorcism, to see it as a solution to problems it was never meant to handle. Merrily often has to discourage people from thinking of her job as an immediate cure, like calling out the plumber to deal with a leaky faucet.

However from a role-playing POV, and with one eye on Pelgrane's Night's Black Agents, an exorcist player character has appeal. Moreover Merrily Watkins has a hint as to which way it should go, as the series is set near Hereford, the home of the SAS. Often a character in one of her mysteries turns out to be a former SAS now retired, or turned priest. You can see the appeal for a serving soldier; first-hand combat experience often either turns a person atheist, or devout. Muscular Christianity offers the willing a chance to fight spiritual problems with physical action. What more could a former special operations vet wish for?

That said, designing a character template for this ought to take the civilian version into consideration, the occultist with a yen for theatrics and a PayPal account for donations. With that in mind, here's two options for an exorcist player character.

Exorcist (Former Soldier)

Investigative:  Intimidation 2, Military Science 1, Occult Studies 2, Outdoor Survival 1. Possible alternates: Urban Survival, Vampirology.

General: Athletics or Shooting 10, Hand-to-Hand 4, Preparedness 4. Possible alternates: Sense Trouble, Weapons.

Exorcist (Enthusiastic Amateur)

Investigative: Bullshit Detector 1, History 2, Occult Studies 2,  Research 1. Possible alternates: Vampirology, Diagnosis, Reassurance

General: Conceal 6, Shrink 6, Preparedness 6. Possible alternates: Filch (for those who like to take their theatrics one step too far).

Guilty! The Witchcraft Act (GUMSHOE Bookhounds, Dracula Dossier)

If you, as Keeper, want to throw a wrench in the players' ordered little lives in Bookhounds or a UK-based, pre-1950s Dracula Dossier mission, why not prosecute them under the Witchcraft Act of 1735?

The Act states that anyone claiming magical powers, or practicing witchcraft, could be imprisoned for a maximum of one year. It remained in force until the 1950s, when it was replaced by the Fraudulent Mediums Act, which in turn was replaced by Consumer Protection under the 2008 Regulations. The 1735 act is the successor to a string of similar acts, all of which had one purpose: to seek out and punish witches, necromancers, and other frauds.

If you look up the Witchcraft Act 1735 you'll notice that the only politician to voice an objection to it was James Erskine, Lord Grange, who is remembered for two things: first, abducting his wife, claiming she died, and holding her prisoner on the Isle of Skye; and second, his opposition to the Act. He opposed the Act because he believed in God, and he, along with John Wesley and others, was reluctant to condemn witchcraft, as it was felt that giving up witchcraft was on par with giving up the Bible. After all, witches were proof of the spirit world, which in turn meant the religious world. Without proof of life after death, where is God? Nebulous claims of Scots political considerations that weighed heavily on Erskine have been floated, but this makes it sound like all of Scotland was witch-ridden, where in practice all of Scotland was merely God-fearing and wanted no truck with an Act that seemed to deny God.

Lest you think this is something that existed but was never enforced, rather like all those Elizabethan statutes that allegedly claim able bodied men have to turn up for archery practice of a Sunday, prosecutions were fairly common up to and after the First World War. This was a time when, if you could bring back the dead for a chat with their grieving relatives, you could make a fortune. During the war the authorities became increasingly concerned that fortune tellers and mystics were having a deleterious effect on morale, particularly since some of them were throwing caution to the wind and making prognostications about the war effort. Telling people who would win the war, or particular battles, was the Government's job, not Miss Millie's, and the authorities took a very dim view of Miss Millie's continued interference.

It got somewhat embarrassing for the plainclothes detectives and undercover agents sent to gather evidence when they discovered that soldiers, even officers, were also going to Miss Millie. Elizabeth Sixsmith, known professionally as 'Madame Betty' - and why she ignored God's gift of a surname I do not know, as Madame Sixsmith to my ears sounds much more impressive than Betty - claimed many soldiers among her clients. In 1918, when Detective Inspector Bedford burst in on medium Marie-Charles to deliver an arrest warrant, he found her in consultation with a Brigadier General.

This activity peaked during the War, when people were at their most vulnerable and desperate for any kind of news. It declined afterward, though the casualty lists ensured there would be a large number of people who wanted to talk to the dead in the 1920s. However as the decades wore on and people became less accustomed to going to fortunetellers and mystics, prosecutions became less common. There's a resurgence during the Second World War, but nothing on the scale of the mischief people were getting up to in the Great War, and once the conflict was over old habits began to die out. There were only a handful of prosecutions under the Fraudulent Mediums Act, and now the whole shebang is shoved in with dodgy tellies and fell-off-the-back-of-a-van stuff you find in the consumer protection regs.

What does this mean for your players?

To begin with, it's an excellent method of harassing them. Are they getting too big for their britches, and pursuing ghouls through Covent Garden without any thought for what might happen next? Time to pull them up and remind them that the outside world isn't something they can just ignore. Sooner or later blatant bullshittery comes back to bite you, and in this case it bites to the tune of one year in chokey. Or perhaps just bound over, if the Keeper's feeling generous. Don't forget that elements of this legislation are still in force in Israel and South Africa to this day, or that it was in force in Northern Ireland long after its repeal and replacement in England in the 1950s. Something for your agents to bear in mind, as they merrily skip across borders accumulating Heat.

Of course, if the government actually has some kind of supernatural or occult-interested research group - say, Edom - then a conviction under the Witchcraft Act could be synonymous with a quick trip to a secluded spot, there to be interrogated at leisure.

As an element of backstory, it can be very useful. Here's Miss Millie, dotty old dear, and here's her gang of hardened thugs. Where did she get hardened thugs? Oh, you can learn a great deal banged up in Holloway for a year. Plus you meet fascinating people like Norah Elam, suffragette and proto-fascist. This works for player characters as well as NPCs, bear in mind, so if you as player want to justify that point in Streetwise and some of your less savory contacts, this would be a good way to do it.

On top of all that, there's one other obvious direction to take: the prison scenario. This last is very much up to the Keeper, but consider: if you want a one-off in an unusual setting, and think a bit of hard time could be an interesting route to take the campaign, the Witchcraft Act will get you there in style. I recommend a good old-fashioned haunting, with the execution of Edith Thompson - and possibly also her unborn child - as a catalyst, but really, with a prison that's been there since the mid-nineteenth century, you could do anything.

Enjoy!
 

Believe In Magic (Night's Black Agents, Trail of Cthulhu, Esoterrorists)

You probably noticed an article that's been floating around these past few days about skeletons in Spain. For those who haven't: divers discovered a bag of human remains off the coast of Alicante, and when the police got involved several other dump sites were discovered. All contained skeletal remains, some contained personal items as well, and DNA tests showed that the weathered bones from the first bundle had been buried in soil for decades before being disinterred and dumped at sea.

Naturally this sparked lurid theories about Santeria, because when you find bones in peculiar places naturally your first thought is 'witchcraft!' Oddly if you Google search skeleton and Alicante one of the first hits is Skeleton International, Removals and Storage but this has got to be someone's idea of a joke.

Also found with the remains were letters and photographs, including official documents from the Tax Authority. All three bags were found close together on the sea bed, and contained bones from several different people.

If the website Think Spain is to be believed - and I'm not sure it is - also found, but not mentioned by other news sources, is "a type of wooden pole, split down the middle which signifies the end of the road in certain areas of witchcraft, and a closed basket containing laurel leaves and a hermetically sealed container filled with a yellow-colored liquid."

All of which sounds a little lurid, which makes me suspicious; my usual attitude is 'if it sounds too good to be true, somebody's lying their arse clean off.'

That said, in folklore laurel's well known particularly in the Mediterranean for its purgative and purification properties. Sacred to Apollo, laurel "was believed to endow prophets with visions, and is associated with poetry partly because, as evergreen, it symbolizes immortality, and largely because its intoxicating properties are associated with poetic inspiration." (Funk and Wagnalls Folklore, Mythology and Legend). It can be used as a love charm, and has been used in tales to induce forgetfulness.

Funk and Wagnalls has this to say about bones: "the use of bones in divination is world-wide. Astragalomancy, divining by means of small bones, has given rise to several series of games: board games like pachisi [sic], dice games, jacks, etc." So you can thank diviners for your favorite RPG.

It also says "The Chinese have elaborate ceremonies to keep the physical soul out of their houses and contentedly in the tomb or sealed up in it. If the animal soul [which resides in the bones] has sufficient vitality, it will animate the skeleton or skull and commit horrid and revolting crimes - cannibalism, rape, etc - in the countryside." Bear that in mind next time you watch Mr Vampire.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying it doesn't have to be Santeria to be witchcraft of some kind. Laurel's forgetfulness combined with the tax returns and photographs could indicate someone's trying a novel way of managing their income tax burden. Or this is some kind of love charm, but personally I'm rooting for tax fraud. Love charms are so 14th Century.

It's difficult to judge this kind of thing from several thousand miles away and through another language; I doubt that the English-speaking sources have the whole story. I have some sympathy for the Santeria worshipper who says that this kind of thing doesn't happen in his religion. It must be wearing to know that every time a non-believer sees something vaguely like an episode of Buffy the non-believer turns to your religion, points a finger and calls it crazy.

That said, it does seem like a ritual attempt. It's the tax returns that really pique my interest. If it were organized crime or a serial killer trying to move evidence from an insecure body dump site to a more secure one, you'd think the only thing found would be the bones. Maybe some clothes or shoes. Paper, though, after thirty or forty years in the ground with a corpse and then an indeterminate time unprotected in the ocean; all due respect to CSI but you wouldn't be able to tell if it was tax returns or a Disneyland brochure. Which argues that the paperwork was a more recent addition to the dump, and tax returns are too easily traced for this to be an attempt to hide evidence. Criminals are often stupid, but you'd have to be an award-winning idiot to do something like that.

I'll offer one other supposition: whoever did this has access to a boat, but isn't an experienced boater. Someone who knew what they were doing wouldn't have dumped the bones anywhere near a spot where they'd be easily found. Someone who regularly went out to sea would know where divers congregated. It's not as if they roam like migrants across the ocean waves; if you're a dive school and you know a safe spot for lessons, you keep going back to that safe spot. It's only sense. You've got enough unknown variables with the students without adding to your troubles by going somewhere you don't know well.

With all that in mind, let's try some gamification:

• Night's Black Agents: Some of the documents found with the bones can be traced to a low-level Conspiracy asset. The asset, a property developer, was riding high before the 2008 crash but suffered catastrophic losses when the market tanked. That's when the Conspiracy moved in; it needed a safe haven in this port town to cover its smuggling operation, and hid its money, equipment and special-build vampire havens among the property developers' asset list. The property developer has never liked this arrangement and has turned to witchcraft in hope of getting the bloodsuckers off its back. The witchcraft may or may not be genuine, but the fuss this discovery raises is about the blow the lid off the whole shebang.
• Trail of Cthulhu: Transposing the action to the 1930s, the bones were put to rest during the Rif War as an attempt to use witchcraft to guarantee the safety of the witch's relatives, sent to Morocco as conscripts. This attracted the attention of a Deep One colony off the coast, which interpreted this as a ritual sacrifice intended to placate the Deep Ones. Now the fish-men are leaning on the witch's family like a kind of Mythos protection racket: keep providing the sacrifices and we'll keep your relatives safe with our magic powers.
• Esoterrorists: The bones were put there by an Esoterrorist cell which is trying to provoke conflict between the authorities and worshippers of Santeria. The cell thinks that stirring up controversy with provocative headlines will make people fearful of witch-cults next door, which in turn will lead to a weakening of the Membrane. The bags of bones were just the start; the cell intends to stage a fake Santeria terror strike, perhaps some kind of ritual sacrifice gone wrong. The cell disguises itself as a reality TV show, and its camera crew always being in the right place at the right time is the first clue that something's up.

That's it for me. Enjoy!