A vampire hunting kit is a collection of objects, typically housed in wooden box, that would have been used to defend against or kill vampires. They contain many of the defense methods from folklore: holy water, a crucifix, a rosary, wooden stakes, garlic, etc. Vampire kits are frequently said to come from 18th or 19th century Europe and are described as antique collectors items. They’re impressive works of art but as vampire hunting kits they are all fake – all of them.
Fun but fake
There is no evidence these kits existed earlier than the second half of the 20th century. While objects in the kits may be centuries old (an old prayer book, an old crucifix, maybe the box itself), the kits as a whole are recently assembled creations.
The proliferation of vampire movies during the 20th century has certainly led to the creation of these kits. Jonathan Ferguson is the most commonly cited source for research into these kits. Ferguson points to Hammer Films vampire movies (such as 1973’s The Satanic Rites of Dracula) and especially the 1985 movie Fright Night as influences on vampire hunting kit creation.
Vampire movies have influenced the creation of vampire hunting kits.
Antique-ish
These kits are innocent fun until someone thinks they are buying an actual antique vampire hunting kit. Auction houses and retailers tend to be very cautious on how they described these kit, walking a fine line between trying to sell a kit but also not stating the kits are authentic.
Vampire hunting kits frequently contain legitimately old objects, but the kits as a whole were assembled in the later part of the 20th century.
The Mercer Museum in Pennsylvania had a kit donated to them in the 1980s. Among other things it contains silver bullets (which turns out are actually pewter), a concept more associated with werewolves than vampires. The inclusion of silver bullets (and a gun for that matter) in a vampire hunting kit seems odd but makes sense when you realize silver bullets appear in the vampire movie Satanic Rites of Dracula. It’s a detail that points to the recent creation of the kit, debunking any idea that it’s a centuries old antique.
The Vampa Museum, also in Pennsylvania, has a large collection of vampire hunting kits. Their “The Art of the Kill” exhibit features dozens of kits with hundreds of vampire killing items. The museum carefully talks about belief, tradition, and art but avoids explicitly claiming these are real kits created by people thinking they were fighting against vampires.
Just a small part of the Vampa Museum’s collection.You can buy a kit or have fun making your own. Find an old box, sharpen a chair leg, add some garlic, get creative.
Low Steaks/Stakes
Ultimately the lack of authenticity shouldn’t detract from the fun. If you go into buying a kit with the knowledge that you aren’t buying a real vampire hunting kit then have fun. Maybe instead of paying for a kit you build your own. You can have fun creating a kit while potentially protecting yourself from the powers of darkness.
Jonathan Ferguson discusses vampire hunting kits and authenticity.
Like regular golf, miniature golf began in Scotland.
Mini golf, like regular modern golf, was created in Scotland. The Old Course at St Andrews was in use as a golf course as early as the 15th century and is considered the oldest course in the world. It’s also where miniature golf began.
In the Victorian era golf was becoming increasingly popular but women weren’t allowed to play – swinging a club above one’s head was thought to be unladylike. The caddies of St Andrews had a small putting area where they would play in their free time. Women began to play there as well, which led to tension between the caddies and the women and so a separate space was created for women to play.
The St Andrews Ladies’ Putting Green, aka “the Himalayas” was created in 1867.
The Ladies’ Putting Green, a miniature links course with hills and hazards, was created in 1867 at St Andrews. Nicknamed “the Himalayas” it became the first miniature golf course in the world (which is still open today for all genders to play on).
“Thistle Dhu” on the estate of James Barber was closer to what we think of as mini golf.
Thistle Dhu
The Himalayas at St Andrews is like a regular golf course: one large green space with taller grass separating each hole. The first course with distinct boundaries between isolated holes, more like how we see mini golf today, was James Barber’s home course “Thistle Dhu” in Pinehurst, NC. Built in 1919 his course had 18 holes, each could supposedly be made in one shot, with simple obstacles, brick lined putting greens, and was played on drained sand instead of grass.
Despite Thistle Dhu being a private course word got out as newspapers reported on it and guests of Barber’s would tell others. Today the Pinehurst Resort has a putting course called Thistle Dhu, named in honor of Barber’s course (but it’s not the same course).
Tom Thumb Golf was the first public mini golf course, which quickly spread around America.
Tom Thumb
The first mini golf course that we would absolutely recognize as mini golf was Tom Thumb Golf. Created by Garnet Carter in 1926 on the top of Lookout Mountain in Georgia, the course was created as Carter was developing 700 acres. During the construction of a full golf course he created the Tom Thumb course supposedly to entertain children of his Fairyland Inn hotel guests and/or to give regular golfers something to do until the full course was ready.
Carter’s Tom Thumb course was significant because, unlike previous miniature courses, it was open to the public (not a part of someone’s home or a private club) and it was over-the-top whimsical. It extended his Fairyland Inn hotel theme with character statues, hollow logs, obstacles, etc. The course also used fake grass made from recycled cottonseed hulls processed with green paint.
Windmills, ramps, tunnels
The early 20th century was a boom time for mini golf. Tom Thumb Golf was patented in 1928 and franchised across America. By 1930 the Fairyland Manufacturing Corporation had franchised 3,000 Tom Thumb courses. Between Carter and his competitors an estimated 25,000 mini golf courses were created. Mini golf could be found on roadsides and rooftops, indoors and outdoors – anywhere that could support 18 holes of novelty golf.
Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks at the opening of her mini golf course the Wilshire Links, in 1930.
Like most fads mini golf boomed and faded. By the 1930s the popularity of mini golf began to diminish as people moved on to other fads. Civic legislative restrictions also limited the game’s presence. But mini golf never fully went away. It stayed alive because it was an inexpensive family friendly activity that everyone (including women, children, people of color) could participate in (unlike regular golf).
Mini golf over the years has changed and grown but the broad appeal has remained unchanged.
Mini Golf today
Today mini golf continues to entertain around the world. There are over 38,000 registered members of the World Minigolf Sport Federation, playing competitively on courses around the world.
The pop culture movement of leisure, escapism, and fantasy that’s light on authenticity.
The word “Tiki” comes from the Maori name for the first man of creation. Tiki also became the name of human-like figures carved in wood or stone in the Polynesian Triangle, from New Zealand to Hawaii to Easter Island.
By the mid 20th century the Tiki name got borrowed, like so many other cultural ideas, and blended together in America to create Tiki culture.
The peoples of the Polynesian Triangle have similar but different cultures. Tiki culture has borrowed from them all.
Set sail for fantasy
Tiki is escapism. It’s a South Seas fantasy of jungles, volcanos, rum drinks, palm trees, bamboo, headhunter skulls, the limbo, little umbrellas, leis, sand, surf, ukuleles, Hawaiian shirts, pineapples, parrots, blowfish, coconuts, Moai, and more. Tiki does not look to be authentic to any particular culture but creates something new borrowing from around the world.
To create this fantasy Tiki got its start, appropriately, in Hollywood. The founding father of Tiki was illegal rum bootlegger (and later WWII veteran) Ernest Raymond Gantt, aka “Donn Beach” aka “Don the Beachcomber”. In 1933 at the end of Prohibition, Beach created the world’s first Tiki bar “Don’s Beachcomber”. The bar’s decor of bamboo, rattan furniture, tiki torches, palm leaves, glass floats, Polynesian art, etc. set the template for all Tiki bars to follow.
Donn Beach, the founding father of Tiki. Beach created the template all other Tiki bars have followed.
Over time competing Tiki bars around Los Angeles would hire local Hollywood art directors to help design increasingly more fantastic interiors – like stepping onto a movie set, a Tiki bar would whisk you away from reality. Also, working the other direction, Beach was sometimes hired by film studios to advise on movies set in the South Pacific.
Beyond the visual Beach’s other major contribution to Tiki was the drinks.
The Zombie, Three Dots & A Dash, Dr. Funk, Cobra’s Fang …
Don’s Beachcomber invented a fun illustrated menu of mixed drinks with exciting names such as the Zombie, Three Dots & A Dash, Navy Grog, and others which have become Tiki bar staples. The Mai Tai, another legendary Tiki drink, is generally credited to Trader Vic’s of Oakland, CA. A competitor of Don’s Beachcomber, Trader Vic’s was opened in 1934 by Victor Bergeron and has become an international chain of Tiki restaurants (which also inspired the theme & name of the grocery store Trader Joe’s).
Beach referred to his mixed drink creations as his “Rhum Rhapsodies”. They were based on the basic recipe concept of the Planter’s Punch which combines sour, sweet, strong alcohol, and water. Some restaurateurs would code their cocktail recipes to prevent competitors from stealing their best ideas. That said most Tiki cocktails are Cuban & Jamaican inspired, they use rum as their alcohol of choice, and their recipes eventually got out. Specialized ceramic Tiki mugs, carved like Tiki sculptures, helped set restaurants apart from one another while also becoming sought-after collectibles.
Tiki boomed in popularity in mid-century pop culture.
Bali Ha’i and Kon-Tiki
Despite starting in the 1930s Tiki really took off in the 1940s as WWII veterans came back from the Pacific. Tiki allowed them to idealize the good parts of their time in the Pacific and forget the bad. James Michener’s 1947 Tales of the South Pacific, and later the Broadway musical, were hugely influential in popularizing a romanticized idea of the Pacific islands. Thor Heyerdahl’s raft adventure sailing across the Pacific Ocean in 1947 (… in support of his racist ideas about Polynesians), and the subsequent bestseller novel The Kon-Tiki Expedition, gave a sense of adventure to Tiki culture.
Tiki’s popularity grew rapidly around the world. With Hawaiian statehood in 1959, and widely available commercial aviation, more tourists got to experience tropical destinations. Munich’s Oktoberfest in 1959 had a Hawaiian Village area. Trader Vic’s franchised by partnering with Hilton Hotels, operating as many as 25 locations at once. Restaurateur Stephen Crane created the Tiki chain Kon-Tiki in partnership with Sheraton Hotels.
Tiki also appeared in entertainment. Elvis had three Hawaii-based movies (and later he had the “Jungle Room” in his Graceland home). Disney created Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room attraction in 1963 and later Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort (the resort where John Lennon signed the paperwork officially ending The Beatles). Television gave us McHale’s Navy, Gilligan’s Island, Hawaii Five-0. Tiki and all things tropical were found across pop culture.
Tiki’s rum drinks, the visual spectacle, and the sense of exotic adventure created an environment of looser social mores allowing repressed Westerners an outlet to cut loose.
Tiki’s second act has brought Tiki back into pop culture.
The tide goes out, and comes back
The tide changed for Tiki in the late 1960s / early 1970s. Young baby boomers saw Tiki as increasingly uncool and associated it with their parents’ generation. The grass huts and jungle themes were becoming reminiscent of the Vietnam War. The kitsch ornamentation, the spectacle, the recreational leisure wear – Tiki became embarrassing and began to die off.
The 1990s saw the tide come back for Tiki. The children of the baby boomers began to embrace what their parents had rejected. Hipsters gravitated towards Tiki culture. Early websites and message boards helped nascent Tiki fans learn more and make friends. New Tiki bars began to open as well as renewed interest in the originals who had managed to stay afloat.
Authenticity
With Tiki culture’s second act came a critical reevaluation of Tiki overall. Tiki is not an authentic depiction of any particular culture. Its an appropriation of Polynesian imagery, Caribbean inspired drinks, dressed-up Cantonese food, Congolese masks, a mythologizing of “noble savages” and the exoticism of Pacific Islander peoples. Tiki is a problematic blending of completely disparate cultures where the only unifying element is seemingly the “exotic” colonialist view Westerners had of them all.
Like the Irish pub-in-a-box Tiki bars focus on creating a fun environment not an authentic one. It’s an illusion, a fantasy, a melange of ideas that offer a break from your office cubicle and ordinary life. Perhaps it’s best if one goes in with eyes wide open knowing they aren’t about to see anything authentic to Polynesian culture.
That said some new Tiki bars are considering the history of Tiki as they design new experiences. Subgenres of Tiki exist such as “nautical” or “straw bars” that have some of the feeling of Tiki bars but without some of the appropriated Polynesian imagery.
Added info: The Tiki Room at Disneyland was the park’s first air conditioned attraction. This was for the comfort of the guests but also because the system that ran all of the animatronics ran so hot the attraction had to be cooled down.
A documentary on the history of Tiki culture.
Another documentary, in two parts, about the history of Tiki.
The fedora hat was created sometime in the late 19th century. Its name comes from the title of the 1882 play Fédora, which starred Sarah Bernhardt. Interestingly, because of Bernhardt the hat was originally popular with women, only later becoming a staple of men’s fashion.
By the early 20th century, a time when basically all adults wore hats, the fedora was thee hat for men. Its popularity lasted up until the middle of the century when it faded out (for example President Kennedy famously broke with tradition and tended to not wear hats, unlike his predecessors). But with so many men were wearing so many fedoras, many of these hats took on second lives as hand-me-downs.
Bruised and battered fedoras found a second life as whoopee caps.
Jughead
As fathers gave their sons their beat up old fedoras, kids would modify them as an expression of their personalities. Old fedoras would be turned inside-out, the brim would be upturned and cut to create interesting patterns. Kids would further customize these creations with pins and other trinkets. These fun repurposed fedoras came to be known as whoopee caps.
By 1929, with the increasing popularity of whoopee caps, the Six Jumping Jacks released the song The Whoopee Hat Brigade. By the 1930s manufactured versions became available for sale – for those who didn’t want to go the DIY route. Whoopee caps spread to pop culture with two of the most famous whoopee cap wearers being Goober Pyle from The Andy Griffith Show, and Jughead Jones from Archie comics. Over time Jughead’s hat became so stylized it became more of a crown than a whoopee cap. Thanks to the 2017 Archie TV show Riverdale the Jughead whoopee cap has evolved again taking on more of a knit beanie style.
Added info: the name Fedora is the feminine version of the Russian name Fedor, which is the equivalent of the Greek Theodore, which means “gift of the gods”.
We think of Victorian houses as haunted and creepy because of changing cultural values as well as evolving design trends.
Following the American Civil War affluent families (especially in the North) built new homes in the style of the time. The style in the second half of the 19th century was Victorian architecture complete with deep porches, mansard roofs, ornate decorative trim, turrets, heavy drapes, wallpaper, etc. Victorian architecture tended to give each room a specific purpose with an overall closed floorpan.
By the early 20th century however this style was out of fashion. Design was turning towards Modernism and architecture was no different. Architects everywhere were embracing the simpler, cleaner, more open design approach of Modernism – Frank Lloyd Wright was becoming celebrated for his use of the modernist “Prairie style”. Design was moving into the future with forward-thinking ideas of progress (technological, industrial, social, etc.). In this environment Victorian homes looked increasingly behind the times both culturally and stylistically. Architects were outright rejecting what Victorian design looked-like and symbolized. Big Victorian houses, once seen as signs of prosperity were now seen as symbols of corruption – the rich getting richer, the wealth gap, and the prosperity that was unobtainable by the common person.
Out with the old, in with the new
As time marched on many older houses were torn down and replaced with new homes in the latest styles. Those who kept their Victorian homes did so because they either truly liked them or because they no longer had the money to do anything else. It’s this second group of people who let their homes go (sometimes abandoning them altogether), who were no longer able to handle the upkeep.
On the outside the elaborate wood trim would fade or chip exposing the wood to rot & crumble. On the inside the ornate trim would accumulate dust & spider webs. As the houses aged they would settle creating creaking floorboards and doors that might not stay shut, opening by themselves. If gas pipes broke and leaked they could release carbon monoxide, leading people to see visions and feel a sense of unexplained fear. All-in-all the world was moving on but these old, overgrown, decrepit, dusty, creaking Victorian homes sat in decay, stirring up emotions of failure, fear, & unease. Then pop culture put the final nail in the coffin.
From The Addams Family to Stranger Things, Victorian houses have become the go-to architectural style of spooky haunted houses.
In 1938 The Addams Family made their first appearance as a comic in The New Yorker. The creepy, kookie, macabre Addams family lived in an old haunted Victorian mansion (which has been revisited most recently in the 2022 spin-off Wednesday). In 1960 Alfred Hitchcock gave us Psycho in which Norman Bates lives with his mother (sort of) in a spooky Victorian house up on a hill. In 1964 we got The Munsters who, like the Addams Family, were a funny family of creepy misfits living in a Victorian mansion.
Today, regardless of whether they are well-kept or not, it’s hard not to not see Victorian houses as being slightly creepy thanks to shifting design trends and pop culture monsters.
The southern Welsh custom that looks creepy but is actually a fun roving party.
The Mari Lwyd (roughly pronounced “mary lewid”) is a late winter custom in southern Wales where groups of men go door-to-door singing irreverent songs for drinks & food (a ritual known as “pwnco”). It’s in the folk tradition of mumming / caroling / wassailing but it’s also a proto-rap battle. The group will sing to gain entrance to a home, and the homeowner will sing a response giving a reason to deny them entry. This exchange goes back and forth until one side wins, either sending the group away to the next house or allowing them inside where they’re given refreshments.
It’s typically performed around Christmas / New Year’s and the homeowners usually allow the Mari to enter their home as it’s thought to bring good luck for the coming year. The group eventually exits, heading back out into the night, to perform again at the next house.
The Pale Horse
What sets this tradition apart from other mumming / wassailing customs is the titular Mari Lwyd which is a ghostly hobby horse made up of a man hiding under a sheet holding up a horse skull. The skull is adorned with lights or baubles in the eye sockets, streamers hanging down, and the jaw is wired so she can snap at people. If she gains entry to your house she will cause mischief, chasing members of the house or feigning an attempt at stealing things, but in good fun.
The Mari Lwyd, while mischievous, isn’t as menacing as she seems.
The etymology of “Mari Lwyd” is debated but it likely means “gray mare” (as “llwyd” is gray in Welsh). The custom has regional differences but the basics are the same (a horse skull, a roving singing party, etc). Far from being an ancient pagan rite, the Mari Lwyd is first mentioned around the start of the 19th century with the “boom years” being between 1850-1920. It was a way for poorer people to earn extra money & food in the cold of winter. They requested donations by offering audiences a healthy dose of fun entertainment … all under the grim menacing stare of a horse skull.
The tradition declined as the number of Welsh speakers declined (the songs & replies are in Welsh). The influence of the Methodist church, who disapproved of the sinful drinking and boisterous activity, also hurt the tradition. While the Mari Lwyd tradition isn’t as popular as it once was it’s having a resurgence and still carries on.
A short video on how the Mari Lwyd tradition is still alive and being passed on to the next generation.
The thing that drives the plot but doesn’t really matter.
In storytelling, a MacGuffin is something that drives the plot but exactly what the thing is doesn’t really matter. It’s a catalyst that gives the characters something to pursue, something to destroy, something to protect, all while revealing their morality, their motivations, etc. A MacGuffin helps to generate action and suspense but ultimately doesn’t directly affect the plot. It has theoretical value to the characters but has no real value to the story. The moment a MacGuffin significantly changes the plot it ceases to be a MacGuffin.
The term was created by screenwriter Angus MacPhail, who collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock (who in turn made the concept famous by using it in several of his films). While the term is new the idea of the MacGuffin is as old as storytelling itself. For example Helen of Troy prompting the siege of Troy in The Iliad, Sleeping Beauty and other classic damsels in distress in need of saving, the Holy Grail motivating the The Knights of the Round Table, etc. are all MacGuffins driving the story but having little impact on the plot.
One of the best examples of a MacGuffin is the statue in Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon. The search for the Maltese Falcon statue drives the plot but the fact that it’s a statue of a bird is irrelevant – it just needed to be something of value/importance to the characters. Whether it was a statue, a painting, secret plans, etc. it just had to be something to motivate the characters.
From the Maltese Falcon statue to the Dude’s rug, MacGuffins help drive the story.
Let’s chase some MacGuffins
There are many examples of MacGuffins, as well as classifications of MacGuffins, but the following are a few examples found in popular media:
it’s the secret military plans in Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps
the stolen $40,000 in Psycho
the microfilm in North by Northwest
it’s basically everything Indiana Jones chases after such as the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark
the sacred Sankara Stones in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
it’s the glowing suitcase in Kiss Me Deadly, which in turn inspired …
the glowing briefcase in Pulp Fiction
George Lucas said that R2-D2 with the Death Star plans in Star Wars is a MacGuffin
it’s the Dude’s rug in The Big Lebowski
the Horcruxes in Harry Potter
“Rosebud” in Citizen Kane
Video games have lots of examples such as Pauline in Donkey Kong and Zelda in the Legend of Zelda
Grogu (aka Baby Yoda) in the first season of The Mandalorian
Matt Damon in Saving Private Ryan
etc.
Not a MacGuffin
The ring in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is frequently thought of as a MacGuffin, but this is incorrect. While the ring could be exchanged for some other object the fact that it has a direct effect on the characters who encounter it, that Bilbo and Frodo both use it numerous times for its magical power of invisibility, and in doing both of these directly changes the plot throughout the story, means it isn’t a MacGuffin.
Added info: lest you think their bar was Scottish themed, the concept of the MacGuffin is so pervasive in film that AMC Theatres named their chain of theater bars MacGuffins Bar.
Alfred Hitchcock explains what a MacGuffin is on The Dick Cavett Show.
Stemming from ancient pagan traditions, it used to be customary to tell ghost stories at Christmas.
In the northern hemisphere Christmas comes at the darkest time of the year. Years before people gathered together for Christmas they would gather together around fires (such as the Yule log) for various pagan winter holidays on the longest nights of the year. In the cold dark they would tell stories. Similar to Halloween, it was thought that in these long nights the veil between this world and the next was thin allowing spirits to pass back and forth. As such many people told ghost stories of revenants back from the dead, spirits, and other supernatural creatures.
As people adopted Christianity, winter ghost stories went from being a pagan tradition to a Christmas tradition. By the 17th century the Lord and Protector of England Oliver Cromwell tried to eliminate Christmas ghost stories because of their pagan origins. Cromwell also outlawed a host of other Christmas traditions including caroling and feasts (and that’s not even the worst of Cromwell’s legacy). These traditions eventually came back post-Cromwell but by then some were seen as old-fashioned.
Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol became the most famous Christmas ghost story of all time.
A Christmas Carol
Christmas ghost stories achieved a new kind of popularity in the 19th century Victorian Era through the Industrial Revolution. As the oral tradition moved to print, old traditional stories as well as new Christmas stories saw a surge in popularity through magazines, novellas, and book collections. Charles Dickens’s 1843 A Christmas Carol took the tradition to a new level.
A Christmas Carol is a ghost story. It’s easier to see it as a ghost story if you remove the Christmas trappings by placing it in another time of year. Unlike the traditional Christmas ghost stories Dickens reinvented the genre by including moral lessons of forgiveness, good deeds, generosity, etc. His ghosts served as a catalyst towards redemption which was very different than the ghosts of other stories which were primarily used for a good scare. Soon the redemptive, somewhat saccharine, aspects of A Christmas Carol were adopted by other authors and the scary ghost portions of Christmas stories slowly fell by the wayside.
Today we rarely associate scary ghost stories with Christmas. Similar to how Santa Claus and Krampus are a seasonal version of good cop/bad cop, we’ve mostly relegated our scary stories to Halloween while telling our hopeful happy stories at Christmas. Still, if you were to put aside the modern concept of Christmas, this dark cold time of year is the perfect time to gather around the fire and tell scary stories in the darkness.
The most famous magical book of occult knowledge that sounds real, but isn’t.
Possibly the most famous book that doesn’t exist, the Necronomicon is a fictional book of dark magic invented by weird fiction / horror author H.P. Lovecraft. First mentioned in 1924’s The Hound, the Necronomicon is part of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, a dark collection of cosmic horror, ghouls, inter dimensional monsters, and unspeakable evil all set in an uncaring indifferent universe. The best interpretation of the name “necronomicon” is “book considering (or classifying) the dead”. Supposedly written in 738 CE by Abdul Alhazred (who was later eaten alive by an invisible monster in broad daylight), the Necronomicon is a dark book of forbidden knowledge and most Lovecraft characters who read it come to horrible ends.
Lovecraft felt to produce terror a story had to be “… devised with the care and verisimilitude of an actual hoax.” As such the Necronomicon is very much treated as if it were a real book. Lovecraft enjoyed making his fictional world seem believable. For example, in a list of real books he would throw in a few real-sounding fake ones (such as the Necronomicon) – blurring the line between reality and fiction. Similarly he wrote that there were copies of the Necronomicon held by 5 world institutions: the British Museum, Harvard, Bibliothèque nationale de France, University of Buenos Aires, as well as Miskatonic University … which is a fictional school set in the equally fictional city of Arkham, Massachusetts. Again, including a fictional creation in a list of real places making something fake seem real.
H.P. Lovecraft’s Necronomicon can be found in a host of movies, books, comics, and more.
Crawling Chaos
Part of the appeal of the Necronomicon (beyond the spooky name) is that, like all good suspenseful horror, Lovecraft gives the reader just enough details to understand the idea of the Necronomicon but the exact contents (or even a good physical description of the book) are left open to your imagination. This vagueness also kept the door open for future expansion of ideas. Soon other authors began to include the Necronomicon in their work, and so it spread.
Today the Necronomicon has gone beyond the works of Lovecraft & his friends and has appeared in countless other projects. It’s in books, movies, cartoons, comics, video games, music, etc, each with their own take on exactly what the Necronomicon is, but it’s always a book of dark magic. It’s in the The Evil Dead series, it’s in an episode of The Real Ghostbusters, Mr. Burns mentions it at a meeting of republicans in The Simpsons, it’s the name of a German thrash metal band, it’s the name of H.R. Giger’s first collection of artwork, Michael Crichton and Stephen King have both referenced it, etc. The book of the dead lives on, spreading its tentacles across dark fiction. Cthulhu fhtagn.
Added info: The fictional Arkham Asylum in the DC Universe, where many of Batman’s foes are frequently locked away, was named after the fictional Lovecraft town of Arkham, Massachusetts.
Mr. Burns has Bob Dole read from the Necronomicon.
In a cleverly titled episode The Collect Call of Cathulhu, the Ghostbusters discuss that the Necronomicon will be on display at the New York City Public Library.
The whodunit murder mystery trope that the butler is the culprit goes back to one book, The Door.
The first known instance of the butler being guilty of a whodunit crime is the 1893 Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual, where Brunton the butler tries to locate & steal a hidden treasure (spoiler). The next known instance was 1921’s The Strange Case of Mr Challoner by Herbert Jenkins, but being published at the dawn of the Golden Age of Mysteries the work got lost in the shuffle and nobody really took notice (of the butler or the story). It wasn’t until 1930’s The Door by Mary Roberts Rinehart that the trope really took off.
Mary Rinehart was a very successful early 20th century writer, known particularly for her murder mysteries.
Mary Roberts Rinehart was the “American Agatha Christie”. She was a best selling author in the Golden Age of Mysteries who was enormously popular. When her sons launched a new publishing company she wanted to give them a successful novel to produce so she quickly wrote The Door and had the butler be the murderer. Also, as an example of a false memory / Mandela Effect, while the butler did it nobody every says “the butler did it” in the book.
It was around this time however that critic and writer S. S. Van Dine wrote the article Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories where one of his rules was that “A servant must not be chosen by the author as the culprit.” The success of The Door, combined with the turning literary tide against making a servant the villain, quickly made “the butler did it” both a popular plot device and a cliche joke. It began to pop up in other detective stories, it was satirized, and today it lives on as a trope of early 20th century whodunit stories.
Added info: Mary Rinehart was the victim of a real-life murder attempt. Her chef, Blas Reyes, was angered over not being promoted to the position of butler, which Rinehart filled with an external hire. On June 21, 1947 Reyes couldn’t take his frustration anymore. He walked into the library where Rinehart was, pulled out a gun, and from five feet away he fired … or tried to fire. The bullets were so old they didn’t fire. Rinehart ran for the kitchen door and what followed was a chase through the house with Reyes picking up kitchen knives as he ran after her. Eventually he was subdued by other staff members of the house and turned over to the police.
Also (far less dramatic), in regards to the duties of a butler, they vary greatly by household but a butler is typically the head of the dining room, wine cellar, and pantry. They are not usually an all-around assistant, but they can be depending on the employer.
