Lore - Lore 316: A Spoonful of Sugar

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

Sometimes the most frightening stories involve things we consider safe retreats or mindless pleasures. If that sounds tasty, today's exploration will hit the spot. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by GennaRose Nethercott, research by Cassandra de Alba, and music by Chad Lawson. ————————— BUY 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 ————————— Sponsors: BetterHelp: Lore is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/LORE, and get on your way to being your best self. Mint Mobile: For a limited time, wireless plans from Mint Mobile are $15 a month when you purchase a 3-month plan with UNLIMITED talk, text and data at MintMobile.com/lore. Squarespace: Head to Squarespace.com/lore to save 50% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code LORE. SimpliSafe: Secure your home with 24/7 professional monitoring. Sign up today at SimpliSafe.com/Lore to get 60% off a new SimpliSafe system. ————————— 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.

It's certainly unique. There might be plenty of glowing bioluminescent creatures in the ocean, but you won't find this one on any scientific record. It's called the Amabia, a spirit from Japanese folklore, and not only does it glow bright enough to see from the shore, but it's also a mermaid, sporting a mix of human and fishy features, as well as a beak and three legs for good measure. Now, according to the stories, back in April of 8,000,

1846, and Amabia marched right up out of the water, tapped a government official on the shoulder, and warned him of a coming plague. Not as a threat, mind you, just a heads up, so the people could be prepared. From then on, the Amabilia was celebrated as a protector from disease, which is why when a particular world event occurred in the spring of 2020, this little guy made a major comeback, and it was all thanks to one shop, a candy shop. You see, in the early days of COVID, the president of a Tokyo sweet shop noticed the Amabia Tales had started making the rounds online. And so he had an idea. He popped on to the health ministry's website, found a drawing of the mer creature, and copied

the image right onto a piece of candy. Although the candy is not medicine, the creator said, I hope people will keep it with them as a charm for good luck. And that's exactly what happened. Within weeks, he had sold over 10,000 bags of the infectious confections. In fact, many were specifically purchased as gifts for people hospitalized with COVID. When times get tough, humans have always found creative solutions for keeping our spirits afloat. Whether it's by reviving old tales or inventing new treats, we somehow manage to sugarcoat even

the most frightening dangers around us. And sometimes, that sugarcoating. just happens to be real. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is lore. Most of us enjoy a sweet treat every now and then, from peanut butter cups to jelly beans, and according to folklore, we aren't alone. In fact, there are monsters with a bit of a sweet tooth

who seem to show up all over the world. Take, for example, the kuchisake Ona, another example from Japan. At first, she may look like an ordinary wolf, woman, that is until you see the massive bleeding gash in the place of her mouth. She tends to stop travelers to ask the question, Am I pretty? And let's just say you better not give the wrong answer.

But don't worry, there's a surefire way to escape. Simply distract the vengeful spirit with the hastily flung fistful of her favorite hard candy. She'll be too busy slurping it up to notice that you are running away for your life. Have plans to go swimming in Estonia? well, you might want to toss a bit of cake into the water first. This ensures that the knack, a people-eating water spirit, is nice and full before you take a dip. Meanwhile, in Slavic mythology,

the household spirit known as the Domovoi is often appeased with candy, cookies, or simply a saucer of sugar. These snacks keep the spirit from harming you and even incentivizes it to stick around as your home's protector. Ancient Greeks offer the goddess Hecatee cakes decorated with torches every new moon. Basically the same vibe as a modern birthday cake.

Except these Hecatee suppers came with an unfortunate side of puppy sacrifice. Sorry. And speaking of birthday cakes, celebrating significant life events with sweets is another worldwide habit. In 19th century Sweden, special candies were handed out at milestone moments like weddings, baptisms, and even funerals. Yes, funeral candy.

And let me tell you, the wrappings on these bonbons weren't pulling any punches. One example preserved in Stockholm's Nordiska Museum depicts a skull, crossbones, and an hourglass, edged with a pattern of what appeared to be screaming faces. Another shows a skull resting on a book in front of a broken column, captioned with the cheeky phrase, Think of death, the hour strikes. Heck, even some came with jaunty little poems, such as the dark, quiet abyss,

all our days will end like this. Alas, when funeral confectionery became mass-produced in the 1800s, the skull-forward imagery was replaced with religious iconography before falling out of fashion altogether by the mid-20th century. But don't worry, there are still plenty

of macabre treats elsewhere. Quick question for you. Have you ever eaten bones? If you happen to live in Malta, you might have. bone-shaped sugar cookies, that is. There, November is considered the month of the dead and to celebrate revelers chow down on a treat that translates to

dead men's bones, or sometimes November bones. Bite into one, and you'll hit the marrow, an almond dough flavored with cardamomom and cloves. Even Spain has its own bone-inspired snack. Served for All Saints Day and All Souls Day, Waisos de Santo, or Saints' bones, are marzipan tubes with a candied egg yolk marrow inside. Unless we forget the most famous popular skeletal treats of all,

the sugar skulls serve for Dia de los Murtos, or the Day of the Dead, which is celebrated on November 1st and 2nd throughout Mexico, as well as other Latin American countries and in the United States. It blends Aztec traditions with the Catholicism brought by conquistadors and is intended not to mourn but to honor deceased loved ones, inviting their souls for a visit. Famously, colorful sugar skulls are one of the holiday's most iconic symbols. They're for eating, yes, but also displayed on altars and in graveyards.

You may even be given a sugar skull with your name written on its forehead. A promise that your spot in the afterlife is reserved in advance. The tradition is thought to have come from an Aztec custom in which real skulls were gifted to the god of the underworld, ensuring a safe voyage into death. Oh, and I want to mention one final fearsome candy tradition. On this death-themed holiday, children donned monstrous costumes

and march to strangers' homes, where they threaten the occupant with mischief if they aren't given candy. Yes, America's very own Halloween, trick or treating. When it comes to folklore, death is more delicious than you might expect. And according to our next story, there's one kind of candy that embodies this more than any other. A little delicacy that we like to call chocolate.

It came from the gods. At least that's what the Aztecs believed. Made from the fruits of the South and Central American cacao tree, humans have been consuming chocolate for thousands upon thousands of years. And far before it was mixed with sugar, chocolate was mixed with something far stronger. A belief in magic. You see, both the Aztecs and the Mayans viewed cacao as having divine properties. In addition to being a gift from the gods,

cacao was also given as an offering to them, and we're not talking about your grandma's box of Russell Stover here. No, Aztec priests would anoint to this offering by piercing their earlobes and smearing cacao beans with their own blood. Not only that, but among the Aztecs, those singled out for human sacrifice were given plenty of chocolate to drink in the weeks leading up to their deaths. Chocolate that happened to be mixed with blood of previous victims.

Apparently, according to Aztec and Mayans alike, chocolate and human blood shared a strong symbolic link. The stuff was also immensely valuable, so much so that the beans were actually used as currency. And when the Spaniards walked into town, you might be thinking that they saw all of this and they politely passed. But no, the conquistadors took one look at this magical bloodlaced chocolate and said, Hey, I want some of that. Now, might I remind you, chocolate had yet to be mixed.

with sugar. Primarily, it was served as a thick, frothy drink, and while sometimes mixed with honey or chili pepper, it was usually bitter in a way that Europeans were not accustomed to. And so when the conquistadors brought chocolate back to Europe in the 1500s, let's just say the Yelp reviews were pretty scathing. In the words of one Jesuit priest named Jose de Acosta, chocolate is, and I quote, disgusting unless you are used to it because it has a bubbling, frothy surface that looks like feces. Meanwhile, an Italian name Giralamo Benzoni wrote, It seemed more a drink for pigs than a drink for humanity. Soon, though, some genius added sweetener to the stuff, and cacao swept the continent. By the 1600s, chocolate was popular

all throughout Europe. The Aztec's sacrificed substance had found a new home, and with it, a whole new slew of superstitions. According to Europeans, chocolate wasn't just a fancy drink, though. He was a medicine. Yeah, feel free to quote me the next time you visit your doctor or dentist. But not only that, the beverage had other powers as well. Powers of a more amorous nature. He was seen as a potent aphrodisiac. Legendary lover Casanova was known to drink chocolate every single day to boost his romantic energy. Meanwhile, the Marquis de Sade served it at his infamous sex parties, plus had it brought to him in prison for the same reason. And, hey, to be fair, the idea of chocolate as a love drug wasn't so off the mark.

Later scientific studies reveal that it contains phenylethylene, a chemical which prompts the brain to release dopamine and endorphins, just like it does when we're in love. Although, to be fair, you need to drink a pretty insane amount of chocolate for it to have any real effect. Now, you'll notice that I keep talking about drinking chocolate rather than eating it, and that's because modern solid chocolate wasn't common until the 1800s, when a dead. Dutch man figured out how to make a powdered form of the ingredient. Flash forward to one fateful day in 1868, British chocolatier, Richard Cadbury,

introduced the very first heart-shaped box of Valentine's Day chocolate, and then it was official. Chocolate would be tied to love forevermore. But in the words of William Shakespeare, love is merely a madness, and history would agree. Love isn't always, well, sweet. People commit heinous acts in the name of love, acts of violence, wielding guns and knives and poisons. Or, in the case of one lovesick murderous, an even more insidious weapon, a deadly box of chocolates. It was June of 1871 when little Sidney Barker and his family took a vacation to the popular seaside English town of Brighton, and I would imagine that he was pretty excited. There would be beach games and swimming,

and Sidney's uncle had even brought him some fancy chocolates from Maynard's, the best candy shop in town. Yes, Sydney was certain that this would be the best vacation ever, and, well, in a way, he was right. Rather, it would be his only vacation, because by nightfall, poor four-year-old Sidney Barker was dead. Those chocolates, it turned out, had been laced with strychnine. Word of the tragedy rocketed through Brighton, and soon other dreadful tales began to emerge. A 13-year-old newsboy hospitalized after a mysterious veiled woman gifted him chocolates. A stationer's son sickened after eating from a bag of Maynard's chocolate creams left on the shop's counter by a mysterious woman.

A young girl vomiting for days after being given chocolate creams by, that's right, a strange, anonymous lady. Like the monster from a fairy tale, this eerie woman seemed to appear wherever the poison chocolate did. So the question was, could she have been tied to Sydney's death as well? But to answer that question, let's rewind. Christina Edmonds was born in 1828, and from the start, her life was like a Gothic horror. Her father, William, was dragged away in a straitjacket, committed to an asylum for, and I quote, general paralysis of the insane, or, as we'd call it now, late-stage syphilis.

Christiana's brother, too, would die in an asylum, and her sister diagnosed her. with hysteria, perished during a sudden collapse. As her mother would later put it, the family was, and I quote, saturated with lunacy. And Christiana? Well, let's just say the apple didn't fall far from the tree. Desperate for a fresh start after all that tragedy, she moved to Brighton when she was about 40 years old, and that was where her attention fell on a particularly attractive piece of eye candy, her new neighbor, Dr. Charles Beard. And sure, Dr. Beard was married with children, but what harm was a little crush, right? And heck, why not send him a letter or two just for fun?

No one could begrudge her a letter? Yeah, I think that you can see where this is going. Before long, Christiana's crush had exploded into a full-blown obsession. Slowly, she befriended his family. Then one evening in September of 1870, Christiana paid a little visit to the Beard household. Not to visit Charles, mind you. No, she was there to see his wife. Emily, and she had a present for her, a box of Maynard's chocolate creams. And as they made small

talk, she reached over and shoved one right into Emily's mouth. That night, Emily fell horribly ill, but she pulled through, which was too bad for Christiana, because now her true love, the dreamy Dr. Beard, was very, very mad at her for pretty obviously trying to poison his wife. Christina was distraught. She had to figure out a way to convince Dr. Beard that it wasn't her fault, but simply an awful mistake. And so she came up with a scheme, a scheme that unfortunately involved quite a lot more poison. Her logic was this. If she could somehow poison all of the Maynard's chocolates, it would seem like the shop itself was responsible and not Christiana. She would be absolved and Dr. Beard would fall madly in love with her, allowing them to live happily ever after.

Failsafe, right? Well, in March of 1871, she put her plan in motion. First, she handed out poisoned chocolates to children directly, hence those tales of the woman in the veil. Then she started paying errand boys to fetch her chocolate creams. She would claim that they brought the wrong thing and then half them return the chocolates after stealthily lacing them with strychnine, of course. Maynards would stock them back on the shelves, none the wiser. Which resulted in people being poisoned directly from the confectioner shop itself. And that's how on that fateful day in June, the Barker family ended up purchasing a death sentence for their four-year-old child. Now, the police were starting to put two and two together. The more they investigated the

chocolate situation, the more the mysterious woman showed up, a woman that very much matched the description of a very weird local lady, a lady named Christiana Edmonds. And you might think of the suspicion would have stopped her. But no, she doubled down. After all, Dr. Beard still wouldn't talk to her. Targeting houses. all over Brighton, she started shipping chocolates in the mail, with a tasty bit of arsenic inside as a treat. Some packages went to strangers, one to Emily Beard, another she addressed to her own house, hoping that poisoning herself might throw the police off the scent. Plus, hey, if she was sick enough, maybe Dr. Beard would come and care for her. Spoiler, he did not. No, he was busy with

another task, reporting Christiana Edmonds to the authorities. I think we can all remember that one scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. You know, where Gene Wilder steers a boat full of children and their guardians into a tunnel of absolute psychic terror. At first, everyone expects a moment of magic, of whimsy. But instead, the walls close in. Lights flashed with images of eyeballs, insects, writhing creatures. That glorious world of chocolate fountains and icing-covered mushrooms is all gone. instead pure, unfiltered panic.

And this is a little of how I imagine Brighton must have felt in the summer of 1871. And Christiana Edmonds was their real-life Willie Wonka. Not the charming version, but the murderous one. In court, the evidence against her was overwhelming. Eyewitnesses had seen her drop-off bags of chocolates later proven to be poisonous. The errand boys that she hired recognized her. She was found to have purchased large quantities of poison. from local pharmacies, and her handwriting even matched the address labels on the poison packages.

She showed no emotion during her trial. Well, almost no emotion. When Dr. Beard took the stand, she began violently to blush. In the words of one expert examiner, Christina resided, and I quote, on the borderland between crime and insanity. She was committed to the Broadmoor criminal lunatic asylum where she died in 1907 at the age of 79. I guess you could say that she got her just desserts. Oh, and you know who else went on to die in an asylum? None other than Dr. Charles Beard. Apparently he started suffering for mental illness right around the time when Christiana began poisoning chocolates. Coincidence? Maybe or maybe not. It's an idea that we've talked about again and again on this show, how horror becomes all the more potent when it's

paired with something innocent, haunted dolls, evil orphans, and yes, even killer candy. It's that subversion of expectation that frightens us most when a thing that's supposed to be safe or even pleasant turns out to be deadly. In the end, maybe Forrest Gump really did say it best. Life is like a box of chocolates, because you never truly know what you're going to get. I hope you've enjoyed taste testing your way through today's batch of horrors. Remember, sometimes that spoonful of sugar is hiding something far more bitter than medicine. And as the icing on top, I have one final story for you to prove it. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. It's one of the scariest parts of Halloween

night. No, not ghouls and goblins, not haunted houses. I'm talking about candy tampering. You know, that urban legend about stuffing sweets with poison and razor blades to hand out to innocent trick-or-treaters. Now, I say urban legend, because that's exactly what it was. This was never a real threat, just the latest flavor of Stranger Danger Satanic Panic with an extra spoonful of sugar. But then again, 150 years ago,

well, that was a very different story. In the early hours of Halloween Day on 1858, a doctor was called to the bedside of Elijah Wright. a nine-year-old boy in Bradford, England. Tragically, the doctor was too late. By the time he arrived to treat the child's convulsing and vomiting, Elijah was already dead. Across town, the scene repeated itself,

this time with a 14-year-old named Joseph Scott, and the symptoms were identical. The doctor was also far too late to save him. And throughout the day, the nightmare replayed again and again all across Bradford, child after child, death after death. As one contemporary newspaper wrote, and I quote, it seemed for a brief period as if some dreadful plague had smitten us.

But it wasn't a plague. No, as one grieving mother named Maria realized, the one thing her dead sons had in common was a shared bag of peppermints. Now, don't get me wrong, this wasn't a Christiana Edmunds situation. No veiled mystery figure had poisoned the children. No, in fact, everyone knew exactly who the black and white striped peppermint humbugs, as they were called, had come from. A popular candy seller named William Hardacre, or as he was better known, Humbug Billy. Naturally, the police rushed to Humbug Billy's house, but they didn't find a mad poisoner.

Instead, they discovered a very, very sick man. It turns out that Humbug Billy himself had sampled his wares the day before, and it had left him paralyzed. With horror, he told the police that the candies had been darker than usual when he had purchased them from his wholesale supplier. Heck, he'd even gotten a discount because of it. But poisoned? No, they couldn't have been poisoned, because if they were, his voice shook, Bradford was doomed. You see, the previous day at market, he hadn't only sold a few peppermint humbugs. No, he had sold over a thousand.

From there, Bradford erupted into full-blown crisis mode. The police ran through the streets warning everyone that they could be about to eat deadly humbugs. Town criers rang bells and printed placards were distributed throughout the city. And on top of all of that, the newspaper had begun to print lists of the dead, a list that by the time the smoke cleared was 20 names long, with another 200 gravely ill. This kind of thing happens in fairy tales all the time. Snow White's Poisoned Apple, Hansel and Gretel's Gingerbread Witch. but in real life, was some evil confectioner out to destroy the children of Bradford, England?

Well, it turns out the truth has a lot less to do with evil and a lot more to do with tax laws. You see, in Britain at the time, sugar was heavily taxed, and so candy makers commonly cut sugar with other substances to make it cheaper. Stuff like Plaster of Paris or powdered limestone easily purchased from any old pharmacy. Tasty, I know. And it wasn't just lightly sprinkled in either. Up to 35% of any given sugar batch was often made up of these substitutions, colloquially known as daft.

Now, I know what you're thinking. This sounds gross, but plaster of paris and limestone aren't deadly. And yeah, you'd be right. But you know what they say? Never attribute to malice, that which is adequately explained by stupidity. It turns out a new assistant had been on shift at the pharmacy that week in late October. an assistant who was very much still learning the ropes. Ropes like knowing the difference between two very similar-looking barrels of white powder.

One contained the daft that was to be sold to the candy makers, and the other was right next to it, a barrel that was filled to the brim with arsenic trioxide. This episode of lore was produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with writing by Jenner Rose Nethercott, research by Cassandra DeAlba, and music by Chad Lawson. I know I've said this a lot this year, my brand new history book, Exhumed, came out just a couple of months ago.

It's available in hardcover ebook and an audio version narrated by me. Exhumed explores the strange and twisted roots of the New England Vampire Panic and its star player, Mercy Brown. You can grab a copy today, just about anywhere you find books, including over at Aaron Mankey.com slash Exhumed. If you don't like hearing ads on lore, there is a paid version of the show that's available on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free. subscribers get weekly bonus episodes

called lore bites and Patreon members specifically get discounts on lore merch and access to my inbox you can learn more about supporting the show over at lorepodcast.com slash support and you can follow the 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