Hello Seekers!

It's a new month, so a new mini-season of topics!

Since it's December and the holidays are right around the corner, I'\m going to stick with "weird holiday histories and traditions."

First on our list comes straight out of the Alpine regions of Northern Europe - Krampus and Grýla.

In the mountains of Austria and the lava fields of Iceland, the gifts the winter spirits came with were horns, claws and a very clear message: behave....or else!

Hello Seekers!

Today we are pulling the curtain back on one of the holiday's most traditional and beloved drinks, Eggnog and its filthu cousin, the Tom & Jerry.

Rife with bacteria, potentially poisoned by disgruntled family members and the cause of one of the largest (and most hilarious) riots in U.S. military history, I present to you, the final installment of our mini-series, Nightcap Noire: The Hidden Crimes Behind Holiday Cocktails.

Be careful this holiday season (especially when it comes to imbibing) and thanks for getting weird with me,

-Jess

Hello Seekers!

This week, in our podcast mini-series, Nightcap Noire - The Dark History Behind Your Favorite Cocktails, we are taking a gander at the infamous Ward 8. A drink that somehow managed to survive longer than the political system that created it.

Old-guard Bostonians liked to hole themselves up in Locke-Ober; a formal, male-only dine and drinks establishment that has a reputation for haughty exclusivity. The fact that a drink created and named after Martin Lomasney's blue-collar ward made it onto the Locke-Ober menu caused some folks suspect that something suss was happening down at the ballot boxes.

Lomasney's Ward 8 district operated on favors: If he helped you, you voted for him.

Thus, an amazing cocktail that has stood the test of time and proven it has a right to be served at any bar it wants was born.

Good evening Seekers,

I thought I'd try out a new series theme for the rest of November (and maybe a little into Dec. if it feels right) and that is: Nightcap Noire - A series that explores famous cocktails based on gruesome true crimes and the histories behind them.

Los Angeles, 1947.

A body in a vacant lot. A dark legend in the making. Elizabeth Short, soon to be known as The Black Dahlia, wanted to be seen...

And Hollywood promised her that would happen.

This episode of the Occulture Shock Podcast follows the investigation from the Biltmore Hotel's involvement and homage cocktail: The Black Dahlia, to the surgeon's table, police files, cover-ups, and the city that, even after all of these years, can't leave it alone.

Thanks for getting weird with us!

-J

Seekers!

Here's a true crime story that I've been sitting on for a while: The Mysterious death of Josslyn Hay, the 22nd Earl of Erroll and the scandalous lifestyles of the "Happy Valley Set," a group of British elites in Kenya during the early 20th century.

In 1941, a car was found idiling on a desolate road just outside of Nairobi.

Inside? A British aristocrat with a bullet in his brain.

This week's episode dives into one of the most notorious true stories to come out of the 1940s: the murder of Lord Erroll (Josslyn Hay), his not-so-secret love affair with Diana Delves Broughton (the wife of "Jock" Broughton), Jock's sham of a court case and the inevitable unraveling of the so-called Happy Valley Set - a group of white British colonials whose idea of paradoise was cocaine, cocktails and each other's spouses.

We trace how this band of British (and some American) aristocratic misfits fled post-war England for the Kenyan highlands, turned stolen land into personal playgrounds and built an illusion of civility that rotted from the inside out.

By the end, we're left with a question that still lingers over the entire enterprise: When there are no consequences no matter what you do, is it any surprise that all you have left to destroy is yourself?

Hello Seekers!

Well, I'm still rockin' that Shirley Jackson podcast angle this week!

After last week's podcast, I ended up falling into quite a deep Shirley Jackson internet history hole and discovered that Mrs. Jackson is connected (however tenuously) to an infamous and unsolved murder case of one of the most important American heiresses within the U.S.'s Gilded Age "royalty."

Jane Stanford was the wife of prominent robber baron/ railroad tycoon and founder of Stanford University, Leland Stanford. She was also the victim of a notorious case of murder by poison!

This week's podcast is a twisted game of "six degrees of Kevin Bacon," but with Shirley Jackson swapping places with the ol' Footlooser, her famous great-great-grandfather inspiring The Haunting of Hill House and Mrs. Jane Stanford of San Francisco's horrific and untimely demise.

Thanks for getting weird with me!

Hello Seekers!

This week, we take a look at the author who inspired modern day horror writers such as Stephen King and Guillermo Del Toro by turning her ordinary suburban American life into quiet horror.

Shirley Jackson lived in a house full of noise - four children, a controlling and flandering husband and a typerwrite on a kitchen table within the middle of it all.

From that chaos she wrote fantastic short stories and novels revolving around the seemingly calm surface of the suburbs and the evil truth bubbling just underneath, such as is, The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

This episode unpacks her marriage, her fascination with magic and the occult and how the control she tried to manifest within her writing became her personal spell for survival.

I hope you enjoy today's episode and I also hope you go and read some of her works - they're EXCELLENT psychological horror and thanks for getting weird with us!

Hello Seekers!

Last week we went into the connections between the top 3 Romantic writers of their era: Mary (Godwin) Shelley, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron.

But that just SCRATCHES at the surface of these lunatics (and their friends).

This week's episode goes more "behind-the-scenes" of what famously went down at that villa in Switzerland (hint: It wasn't all writing. There was also a fair bit of sex, drugs and rock n' roll), as well as, everyone's messy personal lives and Percy's creepy and slightly paranormal death at a very young age.

I hope you enjoy today's more personal episode regarding the illustrious 3 and thanks for getting weird with us!

**Thumbnail image: "The Funeral of Shelley (1889) by Louis Édouard Fournier**