Legends 87: Cursive

Lore

This episode of Lore Legends explores the supernatural connections between literature and the afterlife, focusing on famous authors who claimed to communicate with

Key takeaways

• Authors throughout history have claimed to receive inspiration or even collaborate with spirits after death.

Main topics

• Victor Hugo's alleged conversations with Death
• The history and evolution of the Ghost Club in London

Notable quotes

"Victor might have been the first author to speak directly with death, but he wasn't the first to chat with the dead."

Conclusion

The episode illustrates how literature and the supernatural have long been intertwined, with

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:08) He might just have been the strangest man in France. Most of his friends were first exposed to his quirks at dinner parties, where his steel stomach was the star. Victor was known to eat unpeeled oranges, raw egg yolks, and, to everyone's confusion, lobsters with a shell still on. During the 1870 siege of Paris, he even resorted to chowing down on animals from the Paris Zoo. He wrote in his private journal that within the span of just a few days, he had sampled stag, antelope, and bear. But of course, Victor's oddities didn't stop there. He also indulged in another hobby, seances. They started as a way for him to speak with his deceased daughter, but even after that proved successful, he stuck around. Victor chatted with the likes of Galileo and Shakespeare, but his crowning glory would always be his conversation with death. Apparently, the Grim Reaper himself called on Victor. They chatted for a while, and Death even gave him a few tips on how to navigate the publishing industry, explaining that Victor should arrange for his books to be published on a staggered schedule so that he would always be in the public consciousness. Which is how Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, got the idea to delay the publication of 21 of his books. The last one? was released in 1951, 66 years after he died. If you believe the stories, Victor might have been the first author to speak directly with death, but he wasn't the first to chat with the dead. It turns out plenty of writers over the years have had run-ins with the afterlife. And because of that, whole corners of literature have taken on a supernatural flavor. One might even say it's haunted. I'm Aaron Manke. And this is Lore Legends. Speaker 1 (2:12) Outside, the wind howls with January cold. But inside Pagani's restaurant, it's crowded and bustling. A singer croons on a low stage. Glasses clink as laughter trickles through the room. Many of these faces you recognize. Celebrities and entertainers and famed authors. Some at your very table. This is, after all, one of the finest restaurants in Victorian London. But you aren't here to hobnob. No, you're here on more somber business. One of your friends raises a glass and utters your group's motto in the proper Latin. Nosci, laborare, mori, nosci. Be born, work, die, be born. And with that, the latest meeting of the Ghost Club commences. In 1855, a group of Trinity College students in Cambridge began whispering about ghosts. Not that they'd seen one, mind you. No, these were academics, fueled by curiosity in the paranormal and the psychical. And this curiosity, well, it was like a seed planted in the minds of the boldest and brightest of English society. It sprouted and grew, until finally in 1862, an official club formed. And they called themselves the Ghost Club. Now, if that sounds to you like a ragtag team of 1980s middle school kids on bikes with Scooby-Doo knockoff flair, you aren't alone. The Ghost Club wasn't taken seriously then, either. It received some healthy ridicule in the newspapers of the time. But that didn't stop the club from pursuing knowledge, nor did it keep well-known and respected members from joining. The roster included notable Cambridge clergymen and academics alike. You might even be familiar with one of the ghost club's most prominent members, not just a ghost lover, but a writer of ghost stories, a famous Englishman by the name of Charles Dickens. The club would meet for discussions, yes, but they would also investigate. Sometimes they would attend touring seance acts and try to determine their legitimacy. You see, the Ghost Club approached the supernatural with healthy agnosticism, seeking to find the facts and science behind psychical phenomena, whether that be the proving or debunking the existence of ghosts. So they would show up at these seances and try to suss out what was really going on. Everything was chugging along smoothly, but then in 1870, Charles Dickens died, and the club sort of... fell apart. It would be 12 years before the Ghost Club was resurrected, and even then, only in name. On All Saints Day of 1882, a shiny new Ghost Club held its very first meeting. This incarnation, or should I say reincarnation, was founded by A. A. Watts, as well as Reverend Stanton Moses, who was a famous medium at the time. Now, this new group wasn't technically affiliated with the former in any way. It contained all new members, for one. And more so, the club's mission was, well, let's just say a little more out there than Dickens might have approved of. While the original Ghost Club was comprised of skeptics and academics, this new iteration was full of true believers, folks who were convinced that ghosts were in fact real, and eager to prove it. And not only was the new Ghost Club of a more spiritualist bent, but it was also, well, bougier. The club would meet at establishments like Pagani's Restaurant and other hubs for London's wealthy and famous. It smacked of elitism and felt a bit like a gentleman's club, with exclusive membership, open only to men. Who were the members, you might ask? Well, they included psychical researchers like Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Nandor Fodor. But there were also a slew of famous authors, such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ghost story writer Algernon Blackwood, Dennis Wheatley, and poets William Butler Yeats and Siegfried Sassoon. And hey, if the club's findings leaked into the writers' spooky works, all the better. Meetings, though, were top secret, and started with a roll call. One by one, the members' names were called, both living members, mind you, and the dead ones, who were thought to be in loyal, if not corporeal, attendance. Then, discussion began. Debate about the latest paranormal sightings and discoveries. One member claimed to have psychically learned a new method for treating cancer. They talked about Egyptian magic and second sight. Ghost business, it seems, was booming. However, by the 20th century, the ghost club slowly became less of a dinner club and more lab-based, which, suffice to say, was a lot less fun. So by 1936, after 485 meetings, attendance had flagged. and they decided to shut it down. Now, I know what you're thinking. How do we know any of this history if the meetings were supposedly so secret? Well, when the club finally disbanded, there was debate among the members over what to do with the meeting minutes. Some wanted the minutes destroyed, but eventually preservation won out, and the records were deposited in the British Museum. And yet, you can't keep a good ghost hunter down, can you? A mere 18 months after ending, the organization restarted Again. And it continues to this day. I'm happy to say that the club is much more inclusive now, too. No longer invite-only and open to all genders, their studies have expanded beyond ghosts into areas like UFOs, dowsing, cryptozoology, and more. And they've returned the club's original mission, investigation. In fact, if you visit their website, ghostclub.org, you can read through reports on nearly 70 paranormal investigations just between 1999 and 2015. Like the old days, the Ghost Club meets monthly at a London pub. With a history like this, I can't help but feel like the club took some inspiration from its own object of study. After all, it sure seems to have a way of coming back from the dead. Speaker 1 (8:09) It is a rare gift to love your job so much that you would want to keep doing it even after you're dead. But such is the dubious happy