Lore - Lore 297: Bloody

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

Much of folklore is fun in a creepy sort of way, something that we often revel in here on Lore. But there are darker, more insidious corners of folklore that have used the power of storytelling for very dangerous reasons, and they lie closer to the surface that you'll believe. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by GennaRose Nethercott, research by Cassandra de Alba, and music by Chad Lawson. ————————— 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 ————————— Sponsors: Chime: Chime is banking done right. Open an account in 2 minutes at chime.com/lore. Acorns: Acorns helps you automatically save & invest for your future. Head to Acorns.com/LORE to sign up for Acorns to start saving and investing for your future today! Gusto: Online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. Try Gusto today at Gusto.com/LORE, and get 3 months free when you run your first payroll. Cook Unity: Try the freshest, best-tasting meal delivery made by your favorite celebrity chefs. Go to CookUnity.com/LORE or enter code LORE before checkout to get 50% off your first order. ————————— 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.

Just a note before we begin. Some of the stories we tell on lore are fun and spooky. Others are important cultural deep dives into the folklore that shapes our world, and not always for the better. Today's tales fall into the latter category. This episode contains some pretty disturbing depictions of violence and anti-Semitism. So take care of yourselves, and if you need to skip it, no hard feelings. We'll see you next week.

And now, on with the show. The child had vanished in the night. One moment, little two-year-old Whitney was fast asleep, and the next, gone. As a parent, I can only imagine the horror her mother must have felt when she found her daughter's bed empty, especially because Whitney wasn't just any child, not if the local folklore was to be believed. Some said that the little girl was a ghost, others that she could not die, and others still believed that her tiny body contained unfathomable powers of healing and magic,

which is why, when the two-year-old disappeared, her mother knew immediately that this was no ordinary kidnapping. Two weeks later, the horrible suspicion was confirmed. The girl's skull, teeth, and clothes were discovered in a nearby village. Whitney had been murdered, and her body sold to witches. It may sound like a Grimm's fairy tale, but tragically it's not. It's not. It's And it isn't ancient history either. Far from it, Whitney Cholumpha was killed in April of 2016, and she wasn't the only one. All across Eastern Africa, similar fates had been befallen other children who looked like Whitney, that is, children born, with albinism.

According to the BBC, more than 70 people with the rare genetic condition of albinism had been murdered in East Africa since the year 2000, not to mention hundreds of additional attacks. all due to the superstition that their pale-skinned body parts can be used in spellcasting. It can be more than tempting to think of folklore as romantic, whimsical even. But the truth is, magical belief in superstition have long been weaponized against the most vulnerable members of society. Stories have been used to ostracize, to villainize, and even sometimes to kill. I'm Aaron Mankey.

this is lore. It begins as a single whisper. Next, a rumor passed between townsfolk. Repeated enough, that rumor starts to sound an awful lot like fact, which, before you know it, becomes a deeply held belief adopted by an entire community. And beliefs, you see, are powerful, because beliefs precipitate actions. Folkloreist Alan Dundas called it evil folklore. That is, folklore that exists solely to reinforce racist, sexist, abelist, or anti-Semitic stereotypes. And of all the dangerous folklore out there, Dundas named one particular legend as, and I quote, at or at least very near the top of the list, the folklore of Blood Libel. And look, folks, this is an ugly one.

At its most basic, Blood Libel is the belief that Jewish people murder Christian children in order to drink their blood during dark rituals. And let me be super duper clear here. This is not a thing. It has never, ever happened. In fact, the entire concept of blood libel completely ignores key tenets of the Jewish faith. Like, for example, the fact that Jewish dietary laws

explicitly prohibit the consumption of blood, not to mention that blood sacrifices in general are absolutely forbidden by the Torah. But the Christians who started spreading this hideous rumor way back in the 12th century clearly didn't care what Jews were actually doing. What they cared about was inventing an excuse to eradicate a rival faith, once and for all.

And it's hard to think of a better excuse to get rid of someone than, hey, those guys are drinking the blood of our kids. And the old blood libel stories named all sorts of reasons for this practice, by the way. In some stories, Jewish people were said to use the blood as an ingredient in baking Passover matzah, in others to make wine for the Passover Seder. And in others still, Christian blood would heal circumcision cuts or aid in fertility rituals. And sometimes Jewish people were even accused of stealing children to perform gruesome reenactments of Jesus' crucifixion. But one of the most bizarre and fascinating explanations for blood libel was that Jewish men needed the blood to replace that which they lost during their monthly menstrual cycles.

And yes, you heard me correctly. In an attempt to not only demonize but also emasculate Jewish men, some anti-Semitic lore claimed that male Jews actually menstruated. But not in the ordinary way, of course. Apparently, as a punishment for murdering Jesus, God cursed the Jewish people with hemorrhoids. You see, Christians believe that not only were hemorrhoids a Jewish disease, but that male Jews experienced a monthly hemorrhoidal flux equivalent to male menstruation, all of which resulted in needing to replace the lost blood with new blood, specifically innocent Christian child blood.

Now, it's worth noting that these lies weren't confined to the realms of oral tradition alone. They were also distributed through artwork, poetry, and fiction. Heck, some of these publications were even funded by church officials. Why? Well, the blood of a martyr could be turned into a relic, the kind of relic that tourists would pay handsomely to see on display in your church. and if you claim to have not just any old relic, but that of a murdered Christian child

whose blood was used in an evil Jewish ritual, now that was a showstopper. In other words, blood libel was good for business. By the way, have you ever heard of Jeffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales? I thought so. Well, the Canterbury Tales happened to contain a messed-up little blood-libal fable of its own. It's called the Pryorus' tale,

in which a boy is murdered for the crime of humming a Christian hymn in a Jewish neighborhood. Jews there slit his throat and throw him in a privy, but by some miracle his corpse continues to sing until his body is found. And for an ending to match the tone of the story, all the Jews are then torn apart by wild horses. Meanwhile, in another folk tale recorded over 400 years later, a group of Jews try to convince a farmer to sell them his child for sacrifice, which turns out he's totally down for. Not exactly father of the year material. Mind you, all of this is done without the child's mother knowing, but out in the fields, she is

suddenly overcome with a feeling of dread. Holding out her hand, three drops of blood fall into her palm, and knowing it to be an ill omen, she runs to the woods only to find that her son has indeed been, and I quote, martyred to death in the most unspeakable manner, upon a rock known as the Jew's Stone. Oh, and by the way, the story of the Jews' stone, it comes to us from some pretty well-known storytellers. In fact, you may know them. Their names are Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. And they didn't stop there.

The Grim Brothers also set to paper a folktale called, wait for it, the girl who was killed by Jews. Yeah, not exactly subtle, right? And I hope we can all agree that these truly are awful stories, and it would be bad enough if blood libel had remained just that, stories. But, unfortunately, this evil folklore has led to plenty of, violence that was all too real. Little Hugh was only eight years old when his body was found in a well in the Jewish part of

town. The date was the summer of 1255, the place Lincoln, England, and the explanation for Hugh's death, oh, go ahead and take a wild guess. Yes, as soon as the drowned Christian child was discovered, rumors began to rampage through town. It was said that Jews from all over England had descended upon Lincoln for the express purpose of murdering this Christian child, that they had kidnapped poor Hugh from his mother's home, only to imprison him in a secret room for weeks before killing him, that his blood was used for dark and terrible magics. As the nightmarish gossip reached a fever pitch,

Hugh's grieving mother petitioned King Henry III for justice, and the king happily obliged, which is when the bad got so much worse. You see, the child had been found near the house of a Jewish man named Copen, and so Copen was the one arrested for the boy's murder. Imprisoned and questioned, none too delicately, I imagine, the terrified man was promised that if he named names, he would be set free, which is exactly what he did.

Over the following days, Copen described vivid, horrifying scenes of the ways his fellow Jewish people had tortured the boy. Copen claimed that they had performed a beat-by-beat recreation of the Passion of the Christ, complete with whipping, spitting, crucifixion, and a crown of thorns. And that was that. The authorities had what they needed. Over 90 Jewish people were rounded up and arrested. Immediately 19 of them were hanged, Copen included, by the way, so much for that promised immunity.

And the rest would have died, too, had not the king's brother, Richard of Cornwall, stepped in and pardoned them just in time. Now, you might be thinking that with all of the scapes thoroughly goaded, the tall tales would have died down. But they didn't. Soon, new stories rose up around young Hugh. In one tale, the Jews tried to bury the boy's body, but it was so holy and pious it kept rising magically from the grave, hence them eventually dumping him into a well.

Another claim that when he'd first been lifted from that well, a blind woman had rubbed water from his damp body onto her eyes, only for her sight to be miraculously restored, which sure does beg the question why anyone would rub corpse water on their eyeballs, but who am I to judge? Songs and ballads were written about Little Hugh, and his story gained widespread popularity far beyond Lincoln. A monument to the boy was erected in Lincoln Cathedral,

and although not formally canonized, it wasn't long before he earned a rather lofty name. He became known as Little St. Hugh. And I hope that you can see how the whole ordeal sounds not unlike the many witch trials that we already know so well. Some townsperson is harmed, a marginalized person is blamed, they're tortured into false confession

of gruesome supernatural crimes, implicating others as well, and finally the accused are all executed before order is restored. And just like a witch trial, the story of Hugh of Lincoln is so very much more than meets the eye. So let's pull back the curtains of history, shall we?

We'll start at the beginning. And yes, it's a beginning that does start with a tragedy, the death of a child. Hugh was indeed found drowned, but not in a well. No, he was in a cesspool. It was the Jewish community who found him, in fact, and immediately they saw danger on the horizon. The drowning seemed to have been by accident, but they knew that wouldn't matter in a Christian court, that despite any evidence to the contrary, the blame would land on them. And so, panicking, they attempted to hide the boy's body in a well. Oh, and that rumor about all the Jews in England having descended upon Lincoln

for a blood sacrifice? Well, there was a Jewish gathering in Lincoln that summer. It was a wedding. A prominent rabbi's daughter had just gotten married, and guests had come in from all over. It seems the gossip mill just left that little detail out. And you know what happened next, right? The accusations, the executions, the merciful pardon Richard of Cornwall bestowed upon the remaining prisoners. Except, well, there's more to that, too, it turns out, because if there's one thing about this history, it's that everyone had a secret motive. The king, you see, had sold his brother the rights to collect Jewish people's taxes. Dead Jews meant no cash flow for Richard.

So that grand act of mercy, yeah, he simply wanted to continue squeezing Jewish citizens for cash. Meanwhile, another law said that any executed Jews property would go straight to the king. So King Henry III had a motive right off the bat to perpetuate blood-liable narratives as much as possible so that he could gain his own bag of gold. Even the stories of healing the blind and rising from the grave were driven by ulterior motives. Because, you see, these stories were spread by none other than the Lincoln Cathedral itself. A cathedral that, may I remind you, had recently erected a rather flashy monument to The Little Saint, which would, if visited by enough tourists, bring in a pretty penny.

With these added details, it paints a very different story, doesn't it? Not a tale of good versus evil or even of superstition versus logic. No, this is an example of wealthy, powerful men, very deliberately wielding folk belief like a terrible sword, and not caring whom it beheads as long as they come out richer for it. History, as they say, repeats itself. And this case is no different. In 1475, a similar incident occurred when a two-year-old named Simon of Trent

went missing in northern Italy. But unlike Lincoln, in this case, every single one of the 22 Jewish people who lived in the town were arrested and tortured. All of the men were burned at the stake or beheaded, and the women and children were forced to convert to Christianity. And meanwhile, Simon was, of course, celebrated as a martyr and a saint. It was said that his body was incorruptible, but I highly doubt that, because apparently when the papal envoy paid him a visit, the decomposing relic was so gross, the guy almost threw up. And then there was the case in Toledo, Spain, when, during the Inquisition,

local Jews were once again tortured after being accused of crucifying a Christian child. Except there was one tiny problem. No child's body had actually been found. In fact, no Christian child had even gone missing. But that didn't save the innocent Jews from being burned at the stake. This murdered child, who did not exist, by the way, came to be known as the Holy Child of LaGuardia. And believe it or not, to this day, the Gardia residents celebrate an annual festival in which paraders carry an effigy of the child to the church. And that story is not alone in its staying power. In fact, all three of these blood libel incidents continue to affect the present day. For example, modern neo-Nazis still worship Little Hugh.

And Simon of Trent, well, he had an entire cult crop up around him, which was going strong well into the early 1900s. Yes, tales about a secret cabal of pale, blood-drinking shadowy monsters, sure didn't die out in the Middle Ages. But before you ask, no, it's not a coincidence that this description is starting to sound a whole lot like vampires. The wealthy stranger had arrived in Britain from Eastern Europe. His eyes were dark and piercing. If his hooked nose and bushy hair didn't mark him clearly as a foreigner, his thick accent certainly did. And the contrast between his long, dark cloak and sickly pale skin, made him appear almost corpse-like.

Despite having moved to a different country, he seemed to have no desire to adopt the local custom, remaining loyal instead only to his own kind. That is, at least, when he wasn't mixing his blood with the native inhabitants, creating a hybrid race of his own. As if that weren't worrying enough, it was said that the man was repulsed by Christian symbols.

In fact, he couldn't bear to be near crosses or holy water and refused to touch consecrated objects like communion wafers. Unlike any respectable man, the rituals of his faith began not at sunrise, but when the sun set. And the most damning of all,

well, that would be his diet, because the man you see ate none other than Christian blood. That's a pretty specific description, right? But here's the thing. If you happen to live in the late 1890s, this would perfectly describe one of two characters, anti-Semitic depictions of the Jewish immigrants

flooding into Britain at the time, and Brom Stoker's legendary vampire, Dracula. And look, Dracula was far from the first blood-sucking monster to plague the world of folklore. But he was the very first of a specific kind of vampire, a category that most Western vampires are still derived from today. That is, a sensual, dark-haired, sharp-featured Eastern European man with an aversion to Christianity.

He's ubiquitous. Heck, even the vampire iPhone emoji features a pan-housed. pale, dark-haired man, just like in Stoker's book. When we hear vampire, we think Dracula. But did you ever wonder why exactly Dracula became the most feared and famed monster in Western culture? Well, it turns out there is a very specific historical reason. And this, I have to say, is why I love my job.

Because you can tug one seemingly innocent thread, like a spooky, universal movie monster, and before you know it, the entire tapestry of history unravels. because the birth of Dracula actually began with the death of a Russian Tsar. His name was Tsar Alexander II, and in 1881 he was assassinated by a revolutionary group called the People's Will, a group which just so happened to have a number of prominent Jewish members. In response, anti-Jewish legislation spiked.

Pogroms or massacres of Jewish towns spread like wildfire. And as a result, thousands of Jewish families fled Russia and its territory. in search of safety, with a lot of them relocating to Britain. And I mean a lot. Between 1881 and 1900 alone, the population of foreign Jews in England had grown by a whopping 600%. And let's just say, most of England wasn't too stoked about this mass influx of refugees flooding the nation.

As immigrants are so often maligned, they were viewed as parasites, feeding off England's wealth and corrupting its culture. Parasites who, mind you, began their religion. rituals at sundown, head-piercing eyes and hooked noses, shirked Christianity, and, lest we forget, were said to drink human blood. So what happens when smack dab in the middle of all of that? A book hits the stands about a terrifying demon who fits this exact description. Why, it becomes a massive bestseller, of course. Now, let's be fair to Old Brom here. It's not clear whether he intended Dracula to be an anti-Semitic allegory or not. It's unproven, although given the

that he did work at London's Lyceum Theater through all 250 performances of A Merchant in Venice featuring the Jewish caricature Shylock, it's not like the guy was unaware of Jewish stereotypes. But one thing is absolutely certain. Whether intentional or not, Dracula's strong Jewish coding was directly responsible for its popularity. People read the monster as Jewish, and it flew off the shelves. The story gave English Christians a place to pour all their hatred, their fear, their bigotry and frustration. And more than anything, it gave them exactly what they wanted most, that thing they'd been trying for centuries to create.

It let them turn a Jew into a monster. Ever since their first appearance in the mid-12th century, blood-liable accusations have been weaponized by anti-Semitic regimes worldwide. These stories led to the pogroms of the late 18th and early 20th centuries. They were popular in Nazi-Jews. Germany. And even today, anti-Semitic groups continue to regurgitate these same thousand-year-old conspiracy theories to rationalize their beliefs. And I'll be honest, as historically fascinating as these stories are, sometimes I wish the ghouls and ghosts of folklore could

simply be, well, ghouls and ghosts, just fun, spooky stories. But the truth is, there are always social, political, and cultural reasons for why these sorts of tales persist in the first place. and if you think there aren't, well, it just means that you aren't digging deep enough. But let's go back to Dracula for a second, because there's one more potential influence that Bram Stoker may have drawn from that I think you'll want to hear about. And yes, we know that he was likely inspired by Vlad the Impaler, and if you recall our very first ever episode of this podcast, Mercy Brown, a young woman who died from tuberculosis in Rhode Island in the 1890s.

But you see, some scholars believe that Stoker partially based his vampire on another real-life murderer who was operating in England during Stoker's career. This killer had horribly slaughtered multiple women, many within a predominantly Jewish part of London. The crimes were so anatomically precise, some authorities thought it must be none other than a trained kosher butcher who committed them. Add to that, the general anti-Jewish sentiments at the time, and it's no surprise that many believe this mystery murderer to be a foreign Jew. When the newspaper has published caricatures of the killer, the drawings often featured those same stereotypical Jewish features that Stoker would later assign to his monster.

Police targeted Jewish suspects more than others in their investigation, and with each new killing, more anti-Jewish riots brood. Some even believe this was all exactly what the killer wanted. What if, some theorized, the murderer deliberately staged his murders in a Jewish neighborhood, specifically to incite anti-Semitic violence. The truth is, we will never know. The killer was never caught, but that doesn't mean that he was forgotten.

Far from it, because, you see, this very same murderer and possible inspiration for Dracula was none other than Jack the Ripper. I hope you learned something today during our deep dive into one of folklore's darkest and most dangerous corners. Stories have power, and not always for good, but sometimes a little cleverness can take that evil and turn it right on its head.

With that in mind, I have a mischievous palate cleanser of a folktale for you that does just that. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. This episode was made possible by Acorns. So many people these days are focused on where their money is now, but Acorns is the financial wellness app that cares about where your money is going tomorrow. Acorns is the smart way to give your money a chance to grow, and Acorns is easy. You can sign up in minutes and start automatically invest,

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Go to cookunity.com slash lore or enter the code lore before checkout to get 50% off your first order. That's 50% off your first order by using code lore or going to cookunity.com slash lore. Clearly the folklore that other people tell about Jews is less pleasant. But when it comes to the stories Jewish people themselves tell, well, despite centuries of persecution, or perhaps because of it, Jewish folktales are often downright comedic. Jewish folk tales have a tendency to subvert power structures, make fools of authority, and even argue with God himself,

because, you see, Jewish storytellers know that at the end of the day, one of the most powerful ways to fight back against injustice is simply to laugh in its face. And this particular Jewish folk tale I have for you achieves exactly that. It takes place in the city of Seville in the days of the Spanish Inquisition. And the start of this tale, well, it should sound rather familiar to you by now. A Christian child goes missing, turns up dead. Jews are blamed for murdering the kid to use his blood in Passover Mata, You know, that basic classic.

Now, the people of Seville were hungry for justice, and so the local rabbi was put on trial. There, in a packed courtroom, the Grand Inquisitor lobbed accusation after accusation at the rabbi, but he managed to refute every libelous claim. Finally, the Inquisitor grew impatient, and, turning his eyes to the heavens, he made a proclamation.

God will decide whether the Jews are guilty, the Grand Inquisitor exclaimed. He called for a box to be brought to him. along with a quill and two slips of paper. On to one, he tells the witness, I shall write guilty, on the other, innocent. Both will be folded and placed in the box, he explained, and then lots would be drawn.

If God ordained that the innocent slip be drawn, well, then the rabbi would go free. But if God put forth the guilty slip, well, then the rabbi would be burned at the stake. Oh, and as if this demented raffle weren't grim enough, it would be the rabbi himself to reach into the box to determine his own fate. Well, said the Inquisitor, once the slips had been folded and the box shaken up,

go ahead, draw your lot. But here's the thing. The Inquisitor isn't exactly an honest man in this story. He hates the rabbi, and will do anything to make sure that he takes the fall. And so the Inquisitor had set pen to paper and wrote guilty on both of the two slips. The rabbi, though, was as smart as the Inquisitor was crooked. He predicted the Inquisitor's trick. And so, thinking fast, he plunged his hand into the box, pulled out a slip, and immediately

stuffed it into his mouth. And then, with a quick gulp, he swallowed it. The Grand Inquisitor was furious. What is the meaning of this? He yelled. How do you expect us to know which paper you drew now that you've swallowed it? And the rabbi smiled and replied calmly, why, it's simple. You only need to look at which slip of paper remains in the box. Go ahead. The remaining paper was opened. And of course, it said guilty. You see, said the clever old rabbi, if that one says guilty, the paper I chose must have said the opposite. According to your rules, that means my people and I are innocent. To his great horror, the inquisitor realized that he had been bested, and with that, he had no choice but to declare

that the Jews were innocent, and let the rabbi go free. This episode of lore was produced by me, Aaron Manke, with writing by Jenna Rose Nethercott, research by Cassandra de Alba. and music by Chad Lawson. Just a reminder, I have a brand new history book coming out on August 4th called Exhumed, which explores the roots of the New England vampire panic through the lens of centuries of folklore, medical advancements, pseudoscience, and philosophy. It's available for pre-order right now, and if you pre-order the hardcover, my publisher has a cool web page set up where you can submit your receipt and get a free,

gorgeous tote bag. Head over to Aaron Mankey.com slash Exhumed to lock in your copy today. The link is in the description. Don't like hearing ads on lore. Well, there's a paid version on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free. Subscribers also get weekly mini bonus episodes called LoreBites, and Patreon members get discounts on lore merch. Learn more over at lorepodcast.com slash support.

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