Lore - Legends 87: Cursive

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

Everyone loves a good ghost story, but literature and spirits have a relationship that is older than some might think. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing and research by GennaRose Nethercott and Alex Robinson. ————————— ORDER EXHUMED TODAY: aaronmahnke.com/exhumed ————————— Lore Resources:  Get Ad-Free Lore: lorepodcast.com/support Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  Official Lore Merchandise: lorepodcast.com/shop ————————— To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to ads @ lorepodcast.com with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. To advertise on this podcast please email: [e-mail]. Or go to: https://advertising.libsyn.com/lore ————————— ©2026 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

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 Mankey. And this is lore legends. 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. Noski, laborare, mori, noski. 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, while 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 flare, you aren't alone. The Ghost Club wasn't taken seriously. You 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 Stainton 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 Crooks, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Nandor Fodor 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 Yates and Siegfried Sassoon.

And hey, if the club's findings leaked into the writer's 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, the 20th century, the ghost club slowly became less of a dinner club and more lab-based,

which suffice to say it 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, dousing, 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. 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 fate of O'Henry. William Sidney Porter, also known by his pen name O'Henry, was one of the most celebrated short story authors in American history. Some of his most famous works include The Gift of the Magi and the Ransom of Red Chief, but there are hundreds upon hundreds more. In the last eight years of his life alone, he wrote nearly 400 short stories. There is an annual prize for short stories called the O'Henry Award. Multiple schools and streets have been named after both his real name and his pseudonym.

He was once featured on a United States postage stamp. President Obama even quoted the author during a 2011 speech in which he pardoned two turkeys. Basically, this guy was good at what he did. He had found his calling and he knew it. But worldly success doesn't always translate into an easy life. He lost his first son, he was arrested for embezzlement, His first wife died of tuberculosis, and his second wife left him. As a result, he drank heavily

and often, which only made him more miserable. Eventually, his body just gave out on him. Porter died on June 5th of 1910 due to complications with his liver and an enlarged heart. He essentially drank himself into his grave. But apparently death had come knocking a bit too early for Porter. If our story today is to be believed, he still had a lot of work left to do. Eight years later, in 1918, a new book hit the shelves, My Tustle with the Devil and Other Stories, by O'Henry's Ghost. The real author had been a man named Albert Houghton Pratt, but he insisted that the words came from the short storymaster himself, O'Henry.

In fact, he didn't even put his own name in the byline. The cover of the book quite literally reads, By O'Henry's Ghost. According to Albert Pratt, he received the entirety of this short story. short-story collection through a Ouija board, despite the fact that this must have been a Herculian undertaking, considering that he had to write the book, not word by word, but letter by letter, he did not see fit to tell his reader how long the process took. Personally, my money is on the full eight years between Porter's death and the book's publication.

And for any naysayers who might be skeptical of the validity of Albert Pratt's claim that O'Henry had written this book, he included a message for you. To meet the onslaught of you, Mr. Scoffer and Mr. Skeptic, who will say, Impossible. They are not a bit like O'Henry's stories. They lack his virility. I say at once, of course, they are different. Where, before his stories were written in the bold, black, and red of human passions which

belong to materiality, now they must, of necessity, be pastel in hue, and delicate gossamer things, for O'Henry's ghost is using finer material to mold his creations. And this could mean one of two things. Either the entire thing is true, and O'Henry's writing style changed because death keeps him feeling a bit gray around the gills, or perhaps Albert Pratt found a good cover for his own lackluster writing. It would seem that O'Henry's fans thought the latter was more likely. This book wasn't popular, and its longevity doesn't even compare to any of the alleged

author's original works that he wrote in life. This might have something to do with the fact that its contents are rather disappointing. And I'm not even talking about the writing prowess of its author here. The thing is, despite being written by a ghost, the short stories in this anthology have nothing to do with the afterlife. It's just a normal collection of normal stories. Basically, the literary equivalent of, this could have been an email. Most people seem to agree that as far as spirit writings go, this one is not the best

example of it. And personally, I'm glad. William Sidney Porter suffered too much in life to spend the next one. hanging around a Ouija board. I'd like to think that wherever he is, he's happy, and whether or not that involves writing, is completely up to him. We live in a world full of ghosts,

in our folklore, our films, our literature, and sometimes even the dark hallways of our homes. But arguably, some of the most famous ghosts live in one single story, a Christmas carol by Charles Dickens. Who could forget the three phantoms that visit the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge to teach him of the past, the present,

and his own doomed future. But the thing is, there was another famous Dickensian ghost story that seems to have been forgotten, the ghost of Mr. Charles Dickens himself. In 1869, Charles Dickens was 57 years old and a world-renowned author. From great expectations to a tale of two cities and more,

he was no stranger to the written word. But that year, Dickens decided to branch out into a new game. Perhaps inspired by his friend Wilkie Collins, a prominent mystery writer, Dickens took a stab at writing a murder mystery of his own. It was called The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The story was released in installments, beginning in April of 1870. Each month, readers sprinted to get their hands on the small illustrated booklets, revealing the story's next chapter. After all, Edwin Drood had gone missing from the town of Cloisterham, and they just had to find out where he had gone, right? Was he alive? Was he dead? And what did Uncle Jasper and Rosa Bud

have to do with it all? The questions lined up, and so did the readers. But these questions would never be answered. Why? Because on June 8th of 1870, Charles Dickens set down his pen after a long day of working on Edwin Drood, stood up from his desk, and had a stroke. He died the following day. Once the dust had settled and the mourners departed, One thing remained, a fervent, driving curiosity. After all, Dickens had left no notes, no plan, no secret paragraphs to reveal Edwin Drude's fate. Numerous other writers attempted to finish the story themselves, but none were quite right,

because none of them were Dickens, and only Dickens could finish his own book, which, if you believe in ghosts, is exactly what he did. Thomas Power James, or TP, as he was called, was born in 1837 in Lynn, Massachusetts. all the way across the pond from Charles Dickens. After leaving home, he made his living as an itinerant printer, traveling from newspaper to newspaper across New England, where he would help with typesetting and working the printing press. A slight, remarkably well-possessed man, he landed in Brattleboro, Vermont in the early 1870s, and decided to put his rambling ways on hold for a while. He had taken a young wife, you see, and I imagine that she wasn't too keen on being

drag from town to town. So the young couple rented a house and began transforming it into a home. Naturally, the challenge with renting is that you have to deal with landlords. And the James' landlord, while she was a rather curious person. She had a hobby. Conducting Seances. Curious, T.P. James decided to attend one and soon discovered that he possessed a knack for talking to the dead. His favorite method? Automatic writing, where spirits would take over his body, control his arm and convey messages on paper. And by now, I bet you can see where this story is going. It was Christmas Eve of 1872. In his new home on Elliott Street, T.P. James sat down at his desk. He lifted his pen, and then, on the very same night that Ebenezer Scrooge met the ghosts of

Christmas past, present, and future, James channeled a very surprising spirit of his own. That's right, Charles Dickens. And the author had a mission. With T.P. James' help, he was dead set, no pun intended, I swear, on finishing Edwin Drood. Over the following months, James became obsessed with the project. He quit working as a printer to focus solely on the novel. He would sit three seances every week,

writing up to 20 pages in each burst, and throughout he insisted that it wasn't him writing. He was only taking down what Dickens was dictating. News traveled fast. and soon papers all over the country had picked up the story of the strange collaboration. A reporter from the Springfield Daily Union went to Brattleboro intent on exposing James as a fraud, but by the time he left, he had changed his mind. The handwriting is not his own, the reporter wrote, and shows some of the peculiarities of Dickens' hand.

By 1873, the book was complete, and an instant hit. Not only was it successful, but it was actually good. even the skeptics couldn't help but admit that the writing style was strikingly similar to that of Charles Dickens himself. Arthur Conan Doyle examined it and noted that the use of English slang and diction was remarkably accurate given that it had come from an American's writing desk. He did go on to say that the plot wasn't up to Dickens' normal standard. But remember, mysteries weren't Dickens' normal genre. Maybe he was still getting his sea legs, so to speak. In fact, when Dickens had died, some wondered whether it was the same.

stress over trying to untangle all the plot points he'd created that had actually caused his stroke, which is, as someone working on a middle-grade mystery novel myself right now, the most relatable thing I have ever heard all week. Another thing, though, James was uneducated, having skipped school to dive right into the print trade. One newspaper claimed that he even learned to read and write simply by studying the letters in the printing tray. At the time, this was major proof in the ghost's favor. After all, how could an uneducated man, and write with the same skill as a famed English author. Of course, it's a classist argument,

like the one used to claim that Shakespeare couldn't have written his own plays. But oddly enough, that classism helped James' aim to prove his authenticity. In the words of the Vermont Phoenix, one of the newspapers where he worked, James has neither the brains nor the ability for such an undertaking. We are willing to believe that he is in the employ of someone who is his superior, or that he is really and truly what he claims to be. A medium. The Phoenix wasn't the only one of James' former employers to weigh in.

The Nashua Telegraph, out of New Hampshire, published an article questioning his trustworthiness, recounting his unreliability when he worked there as a printer. Originally, they said he was an above-average worker and fully capable, but he soon became unpredictable. He would up and leave town at a moment's notice, leaving his employers in the lurch, a true fly-by-night wanderer going where the wind would take him.

In the years of the followed, James attempted to write and publish other new pieces by Dickens, but none received the attention that Edwin Drood had. James was a traveler and no stranger to new lands. The question is, had his latest adventures truly taking him to the land of the dead, or did he inhabit another realm, that of the con artist? Well, the key to that mystery may just lie in James' connections in the newspaper business, and one particular set of articles that inspired all of the others that followed. I'll leave you with the words of Rolf Parker Houghton,

a folklorist who lives in the very town where this story took place, Brattleboro, Vermont. He wrote, There is a danger in taking the story of how James came to write the end of the mystery of Edwin Drood without a large spoonful of salt. The story of the landlady, the seance, the barely literate printer, all of it comes from reports in the Springfield Union. The articles were written by an anonymous special correspondent.

There is good reason to suspect. that T.P. James wrote the article himself. Either way, one thing's for certain. T.P. James gives a whole new meaning to the word. Ghostwriter. I know it sounds cliche, but some books are just too difficult to put down. I have fond memories of staying up well past midnight in high school because of the tempting lure of that phrase, one more page. And now, my kids do it. How could anyone sleep when there's so much story to devour. Back in the day, though, when stories were published in serialized pieces, readers didn't have the pleasure of binging an entire book late into the night. Whenever their favorite author released a new part of a story, it was a very welcome, but very brief, joy.

The closest we might have to comparing it today would be those long periods of waiting between episodes of Stranger Things or The Pit. Thankfully, those old readers were used to it, and they knew their favorite author would eventually give them another. piece of the story. Unless, of course, that author died. In the end, though, whether or not Charles Dickens actually spoke through T.P. James isn't really all that important. What mattered was that a lot of people read what James wrote. They were so desperate to know what happened next that they pushed aside their doubts, even if the author's existence on the mortal plane was dubious. After all, that's the power of a good story. Ghosts don't have to be involved. Ghosts don't have to be involved.

for readers to act like they're possessed. I hope you enjoyed today's supernatural book review of sorts, but not every ghost can be a writer, whether from a lack of interest or a lack of talent. Some never took up the pen in life, and they're even less inclined to do so after death. And yet, everyone has a story to tell, which is why, as our final legend explains,

sometimes someone else did the writing for them. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. How far would you go for love? It's a big question, and one that we as a human species have been asking ourselves for a long time. If you go off of great love stories

like Romeo and Juliet or Tristan and his old, the answer seems clear. Love, true, passionate love, is worth dying for. But it's one thing to say you would die for love. It's another thing entirely, to follow through with it. Still, some people have,

and out of every death you might have heard here or elsewhere. This one just may be the most heartbreaking. We set our scene not in Fair Verona, but just a short drive away in the northern Italian city of Ravanna. For most of its existence, Ravina, like most of Italy, was very Catholic, and not just culturally, but politically, too. In fact, by the 13th century, the papal states were fighting for political control of the city,

which was a bit difficult, seeing as new families came in all the time to take it from the church every few decades. It was during this upheaval that Francesca de Polenta was born. Now, we don't exactly know when she was born. We just know that she was a nobleman's daughter. And like most women of noble birth, she was used as a political pun. In 1275, the De Palenta family took Ravenna from the papal states. And suddenly, Francesca's dad was the head honcho for the entire city.

But while the battle had been won, the war was far from over. Ravana had plenty of enemies outside its borders, and they were becoming more and more of a threat every day. So, naturally, one of the first things the De Palentas did was make peace with their neighbors. And the best way to do that in the 13th century, of course, was marriage. To form an alliance between two of the most powerful families in the region, Francesca De Polenta was married off to Giovanni Melatesta, who was the oldest son of the family that ruled the city of Rimini. Rimini was just a short journey away from Ravenna, but had all the first of the family. the same problems. Power never seemed to stay in one family's hands for long. Well, once she married

Giovanni, Francesca de Palenta became Francesca de Rimini, and it was by that name that the world would remember her. Like most politically motivated unions, Francesca's marriage was not a happy one. In the few accounts that we have, Giovanni is depicted as a rather ugly, cruel man, but Francesca had no way out. Shackled to a husband she did not love, miles away from her family back in Ravenna, her story was sadly all too similar to that of thousands of other young women throughout history. But Francesca found a light in the darkness that many other women did not. She found love with her husband's brother. Paolo Malatesta was the third son of the Malatesta family.

Where Giovanni was ugly inside and out, Paolo was beautiful. He was actually known by a nickname which literally translated into The Beautiful. And just like Francesca, Paolo was also in an unhappy marriage, but his life became significantly better once he met Francesca. Well, for a while, anyway. We don't know many trustworthy details about their affair. One account says that Francesca formed an attachment to Paolo because at first she had assumed she would be marrying him rather than his brother.

And the most famous version of their story claims that they shared their first kiss while reading the story of Guinevere and Lancelot. But there's no way to verify whether any of this is true or not. As far as we know, neither Francesca nor Pauliard, left behind any written record about their love for one another. It would have been too dangerous, after all. Francesca was not her own woman. According to the societal norms of the time,

she was the property of a war-mongering nobleman. She and her lover had to be careful. But they weren't careful enough. Sometime between 1283 and 1286, Giovanni Malatesta came home to find Francesca in bed with his brother, flying into a rage. He killed them both. And that was that.

Francesca and Paolo died together, never having the chance to live a long and happy life. Giovanni seems to have never been punished for it either. In fact, he went on to become the Lord of Pissarro, dying 20 years after he had murdered his wife and brother. And honestly, back then, no one would defend an adulterous wife. In the eyes of many, Francesca got what she deserved. Her story was buried, and she would have been completely forgotten forever, if not for the sky that you've probably never heard of. Dante Alighieri, the author. of the Divine Comedy. Dante's Divine Comedy is still, to this day,

one of the most influential pieces of religious literature ever written. The most famous section is the first entitled Inferno, in which he takes his readers on a journey with him through the nine circles of hell. And in the second circle where souls have been imprisoned for their lust, Dante introduces Francesca and Paolo. Their spirits tell the story of how they fell in love and were killed. More than likely, it was dramatized for the sake of the book, But as far as any historians know, this was the first written record of their affair and their death. The only reason that Dante knew their story at all was because, several years after being exiled

from Florence, he stayed with a man named Guido Novalo, who was Francesca's nephew. Most historians believe that if Dante didn't know Francesca personally, then he learned her tragic fate from Guido. But by writing Francesca's story down for all the world to see, he immortalized her name. and even though she was a character damned to hell for her lust, her plight was sympathetic. As more people read her story and saw their own hearts reflected in hers, the more she was seen as a pitiable woman whose only crime was falling in love.

And it just goes to show that even among the powerless, it was still possible to leave a lasting mark on history. You just had to be willing to pay the price. This episode of Lord Legends was produced by me, Aaron Manke, with writing and research by Jenna Rose Nethercats and Alex Robinson. If you haven't already, please check out my brand-new history book, Exhumed. It explores the roots of the New England vampire panic and the story of Mercy Brown, the subject of the very first episode of lore over 11 years ago.

It's a wild journey through folklore, medicine, and pseudoscience with a bunch of creepy stories along the way. Head over to Aaron Mankey.com slash Exhumed to grab your copy today. If you don't like hearing ads on lore, there's a paid version on Alpsons. Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free. Paid subscribers there also get weekly mini bonus episodes called Lorbites, and Patreon members get discounts on lore merch and access to my inbox. Learn more over at lorepodcast.com slash support. And finally, you can follow this show on YouTube, threads, Blue Sky, and Instagram.

Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening. Thank you.