From the Vault: The Holy Undead, Part 2

My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back at you with the second part of our series about the Holy Undead. So in the last episode we talked about various tales of what you what you might call the pious or the holy undead. These would be ghosts, revenants, zombies that don't seem to be purely demonic entities of the night, but instead they take part in activities that are considered by the people telling the

tales to be wholesome and and and good. In particular, these these are undead that love going to church, and yet at the same time, they're not usually entirely benign. They retain this aura of menace. Sometimes they offer ill omens to people or sometimes they even uh they go hands on and get a little violent. So Rob, in the last episode, you told a wonderful story that was based on an old Swedish folk tale called the Hooded Congregation.

And this is a tale in which a woman is awoken in the dark of night on Christmas I think, or is it Christmas Eve? I believe it's Christmas Eve slash early Christmas morning. Yeah. Yeah, and so so their church bells and she hears them out in the dark. And then so of course the church bells are ringing. That means you need to go to church. So she goes to church, but she finds it full of hooded figures who were eventually revealed to be the undead, including

her own dearly departed sister. And when when she discovers this, the attack and she narrowly escapes. Yeah. It's a it's a fun story and it uh it really it relates to this um, this trend that we see in um in in Nordic traditions of these revenants, these these physical undead um, these these corporeal undead that you can they can touch you, they can grab you, that you can

wrestle and do battle with the if need be. And uh yeah, in many cases they are, they're they're quite malevolent, but in other cases they are, they're almost benign, just attending church, going about their their business doing church stuff, um as the not quite rested dead or want to

do right. And so we also ended up talking about a bunch of medieval ghost stories of of the pious undead that are translated and analized in a wonderful historical paper that we're going to continue talking about in this episode and again. So the reference on this paper is that it's called Revenants, Resurrection and Burnt Sacrifice by a historian named Nancy Mandeville Cacciola, who is a medieval historian

at University of California, San Diego. And this was published in fourteen in a journal called Predator Nature Critical and Historical Studies on the Predator Natural. And this paper focuses on stories told by a tenth to eleventh century German

bishop named tete marvon Merseburg. And so around the year ten thirteen to ten eighteen or so, uh teit Mar was writing an eight volume historical text called the Chronic con which was supposed to be about the glories of the Ottonian dynasty, and this was a series of Saxon Christian kings that he served under who were involved in conquering and christianizing lands that previously belonged to various Slavic pagan people's uh so, so this was a sort of

coll Anneal frontier zone. And within recent memory, the former inhabitants of one town within this zone had been massacred during a revolt of the locals. And so in the middle of this history, Tetmar goes into a digression about a story of the undead from this fortified town where there had been a massacre. This town is called vols Laban, and the story goes that there is a priest who arrives at church to sing Matten's matins as spelled m A t I n s. That means like an early

morning prayer. The medieval Catholics had a lot of interesting names for like the different prayers you would say at the different times of day. I don't remember them all, but there's like mattins, there's lauds. I remember. These are used as sort of like a time delineation. Chapter headings in In the Name of the Rose, if I recall correctly. Um. But so he's there for Mattins so the morning prayer and uh. And when he shows up at the church, he goes to the cemetery and he sees a multitude

of dead people there. These are revenants, and they are worse apping they're making offerings to a revenant priest, and so the living priest who has just arrived, he makes the sign of the Cross, and then he walks through the crowd of the undead until he sees a woman he knows one who had died just recently, and she asks him, Hey, what are you doing here. He says, I'm here to sing Matin's and she's like, well, you don't need to do that, because we already did it.

And then she's like, by the way, you're going to die soon, and then he did. That's what tite Mar tells us. But then he also explains that the point of him relaying the story is to prove the truth of the Catholic doctrine of the resurrection of the dead in Christ, which he says that the formerly pagan Slavs do not understand very well. He thinks they need correcting

on this subject. Though I also wonder sort of if this persuasive framing, like I'm trying to prove the truth of the resurrection, if this persuasive, apologetic framing is really the reason he tells these stories, because aparently after telling this first one, he digresses from his from his history to just tell a bunch of other ghost stories, including an awesomely grizzly tale that we're going to get to

in just a bit. Yeah, you're right. It does make you wonder is this about about using the ghost stories to uh, to support Christianity, or is it about finding an excuse to keep these ghost stories around just because they're really cool. Yeah, maybe he just wanted to tell them because he thought they were really fun, And then he's like, oh, I need a good reason to say I'm doing this. Well, actually they prove that that Christianity

is true. Yeah, and I should. I don't want to say just fun, because I mean, certainly ghost stories can be fun, but also ghost stories can be culturally important, and they are you know that they are part of one's cultural background, So there's there's an added incentive to to keep them around if it all possible, because they are they are a part of your history. Yeah, and I think this is very much part of something that

that Cachiola is going to argue in this paper. But picking back up with that paper of hers, I want to go into some of the historical, cultural, in religious context that she explains to help us better understand what these stories might have meant in their in their time and place. So one thing she says is that during

this period, religion and politics were deeply linked. German rule was self consciously formulated as Christian rule, and the Ottonian dynasty mythologize themselves consciously as the so called Last World Emperors. So they were thinking of themselves as as great kings who would by conquest, expand Christianity to the ends of the earth and thus bring about the second Coming of Christ. Oh. Wow, the Last World Emperors. I love that it sounds sounds

positively evil. Yeah, And it's the funny thing. So this is something that people might not realize like they think. Oh, people in the twentieth century are always saying that the world the end is coming soon. You know that this religious apocalypticism. It says, I've I've received a revelation from God and I know finally the end is happening now.

People in the tenth and eleventh century thought this way to people all the time throughout every century of of Christian history of thought that they were living in the end times. This is just a perennial phenomenon. But because of the linking of religion and politics here, the military expansion of the Ottonians was also an expansion of the Catholic Church. So when they would go and establish fortified military outposts along the frontier, they were also establishing new bishoprics,

they were establishing new footholds for the Church. And so in the paper, Caciola makes the argument that though the Slavic rebellions against the German conquest and German power were were obviously they would have had many complex reasons for doing this. She does make the case that it really looks like one of those reasons was religious resistance, resistance to the Christianizing impulse of the Germans and protecting their

traditional ancestral beliefs. Uh So, she writes, as one example of this quote, centers of German power, which were of course also Christian religion centers, were targets for attack among these Slavic revolts. Uh continuing this included the Cathedral of have Alburg and the and the Bishopric of Brandenburg, where the remains of the last bishop parentheses tit martells Us he had been assassinated by his own flock, were dragged

from his tomb and despoiled. The nunneries of Kalba and hillers Laban were also not spared, showing that institutions with predominantly religious rather than political associations were targeted as well. So this is some evidence that the Slavic rebellions against the Ottonians they were not just trying to protect their political autonomy, but they were also resisting the the the conversion impulse. They were saying, no, we like our religious beliefs,

we'd like to keep them. Please. Now. Another thing that's worth clarifying is that talking about pagan Slavs of the region is a shorthand, because of course this is not one monolithic culture with one monolithic religion, but rather a collection of different tribes with their own distinct cultures and beliefs.

Uh Though, it does seem that a general motivating factor for the tribal rebellions against the Saxon Ottonians was defense of these pagan religious beliefs against the Christianization mission, and of course paganism itself is not a religion, not one unified religion at this time. In this context, it simply means any of the non Abrahamic religions, so this would not usually be any kind of polytheism. And unfortunately there's a lot we don't know about these pagan religious beliefs.

There was clearly plenty of diversity between them, though like many religions, they broadly seem to have included some elements of ancestor worship, as well as some common shared views about what constituted a good versus a bad death, and

some similar beliefs about the afterlife. Now, another interesting thing about the political and religious history that here is that it's worth understanding that in this place and time, conversion religious conversion would almost necessarily be a somewhat flimsy concept. People in lands conquered by by Christians in the Middle Ages would often get baptized as Christians and then simply continue to practice their original pagan beliefs, either exclusively or

alongside Christian worship. And one way I think to help understand this is that not all religions have exactly the same contours sort of that they don't all make stake the same ground, right, Like the role of Christianity versus the local paganisms was not a one to one comparison in a number of ways. For example, the Catholic Church had organized dogmas and a concept of religious universality and exclusivity.

So this is a religion that conceptualizes itself as the one religion that is true and it should be the religion of the entire world. Uh. Sometimes people who grow up in Christian society's assume that all religions are like this, with this belief in universality and exclusivity. But that's not at all true. Like most religions in history appear to have been much looser, more defined by ritual rather than belief,

and without necessary ideas of universality or exclusivity. You know, we were talking about this just yesterday in the context of the Indiana Jones movies, the Indiana Jones franchise. Excepts all religions and even and even like like fringe beliefs and ancient aliens and what have you. Oh, yeah, that's funny.

That's one thing I kind of appreciate about it. It's got a sort of totalizing mythology and maybe one that seems sort of geographically linked to so that it's like where maybe when you go into a geographical area that has predominantly one religion, that that religion mainly applies within that geography. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so in this region Hebrew got is real and this region Shiva is real? Um

or was it Shiva Cali? It's and so long since I've seen um the Second Indiana, I think both the second one that the movie has got a lot of problems. But yeah, Collie is sort of the bad guy and it Eshivahs the good god. And okay, it's more complicated than that. The folks, if so, don't don't use the Second Indiana Jones movie is your your guide into the

world of Hinduism. Um but u. But still, I think it's an interesting point about the idea yet that in the Indiana Jones world, like all these faiths are real and they don't seem to exclude one another unless you say, well that the Egyptian gods, the Egyptian pantheon is kind of excluded from the uh. All the happenings that go on in um Indiana Jones and the you know, the raiders of the Lost art. Well, do we know that? For sure? We never see a contest of the gods.

They're like the Pharaoh's magicians. Never true, we don't get to see what they can do, that's right. And maybe they're just watching on you know, they're they're they're sleeping, who knows. I know, for one, I'm pretty certain that there's there's bound to be some sort of Indiana Jones related media from comics or TV series or something that actually involves Egyptian gods. So if it's out there, someone

tell me about it. Well, I think one consequence of the different types of groundstaking games that are that are being played by the different religions at this time means that, for example, so the Christians might insist that you believe in no gods except the Christian Trinity, but many of the European polytheists at this time could simply incorporate new gods. So it's possible that they might well view a conversion

to Christianity rather as a kind of incorporation exercise. So like we have our gods, we have our rituals, and now here's this other thing sort of added on top of that. And here's also Jesus and the Catholic Church. So it's kind of like this. It's almost like a chemical situation where the pre existing religion uh is more inclined to bond with with additives, even though those additives are you know, tend to be a tend to have uh, you know, exclusive ideas in them. Uh. You know, it

doesn't it doesn't matter. When push comes to shove, the polytheistic religion is going going to absorb the monotheistic uh, even if to some outsiders it it appears uh in

some cases that you've set aside the old ways, right. Yeah, so so, Cacchiolo writes that given these religious starting points, what you would probably expect to see at this place in time is not a just sort of exchange of the old gods for the new, but rather a sort of what she calls an untidy syncretic admixture, you know, syncretism against the mixing of religious beliefs, a sort of mixing and blending and hybridization process that would arrive at

these new combinatorial beliefs. Um. And she gives us one interesting example of this. Uh. She talks about a text known as the Merseburg Charms uh quote short rhythmic invocations of the valkyries full Wodan and Freya, composed an archaic German but carefully transcribed onto a leaf of an otherwise entirely Christian manuscript found in the library of the Cathedral of Merseburg. And then she has a great comment it is pleasing to think that Titmar himself might have encountered it.

And and then of course we're going to drive home something we've mentioned before in the show is that, of course humans are capable of having multiple and conflicting um beliefs and ideas, particularly as it pertains to the you know, the origins of the world and the inner workings of

the supernatural realm. So um. You know, we see that even today, and many people who think that they are, you know, a pure subscriber to one particular brand of faith, if if they're to self analyze, they might find that they actually have some ideas from other other faiths and sort of non faith origin sort of mixed up in their supernatural understanding of the world or the same One person actually quite easily switches gears but tween different belief

systems depending on the context. Yeah, I mean to come back to this example. Perhaps perhaps you are you know, a Christian when you were at the Christian church or walking among the Christian gravestones, but then when you're in the woods or when you were you know, walking the shore. Uh, then perhaps it's the the older gods that called to you, and so this other way of looking at the world, or you could look at it as a night and day thing that might yeah, yeah, thank thank you, thank you.

So I think we should get back to teit Mar's ghost stories. Uh. And so the first place I guess would be to comment a little more on that first story, the one about the priest who arrives to sing Matten's and and finds the congregation the multitude of dead there and they're making offerings to a dead priest and then they and then one of them is someone he knows tells him, I think you're gonna die soon, and then

he does. So I wanted to go through a few observations about the story that they catch you ala notes that are probably worth logging for when we look at the other ones. Uh. First, it's worth noting that instead of going to another plane of existence in this story, the returned dead or the revenants they hang out here on earth, so they're not going off to heaven. This is where they live. They're here on earth and this is where they do their business. Second, they are bodily reanimations,

not in substantial specters. This has come up several times already, but this is apparently common, especially throughout the pagan mythology of Northern Europe, that uh, you know, it's not just like a gas like ghost that forms an image that you could walk right through. These are undead with mass and heft they can grab you. Yeah, they are the literal dead. They are you know, decaying bodies and skeletons

going about their business. Another thing, so these dead are said to be in the version of the story, we get faithful Christians who worship the Christian God even after death, which is an interesting thing because I think another common modern assumption that would be that like a religion is something that people maybe need during life. You know, it's it's in order specifically to prepare you for the afterlife, So there would be no need in the afterlife for

people to continue doing religious practices. But here that that assumption is clearly not on display. The dead also need to go to church and of course, in thinking about this, our mind can easily go to Christian doctrines of of the of the dead returning to life be at the resurrection of Christ um after death or um the idea that once we die, our bodies just kind of hang around for a while until the physical resurrection occurs at

the end of time UM. Which you can imagine how how that idea would um would come to life if you had these pre existing concepts of revenant spirits, like it's my body just in the ground awaiting um Christ's return. Well, what else is it doing? Is it going to church? There's it just lazy bones. This is something we mentioned, uh we mentioned last time. So the Catholic teaching at the time emphasized the inertness of the dead body until

the general resurrection at the second coming of Christ. So they they would emphasize, no, until Jesus comes back, your body just stays there. It doesn't do anything. And so this is clearly in contradiction with that. And yet this is also something we talked about in the previous episode. There appears to have been a pretty wide uh tolerance for various beliefs about the undead, even if they weren't if there were beliefs about the undead that we're not

strictly in line with Catholic teaching. For some reason, this is an area of belief that the Church did not seem to police very strongly. And we're broadly tolerant of people sort of coloring outside the lines on beliefs about the dead. But to come back to Titmar's first ghost story here, there there are some weird elements that are illuminating on top of the more straightforward elements we just mentioned. First of all, so again we we noticed that these

dead are pious from a Christian point of view. They're going to church, they're worshiping God, and yet at the same time they project what Catchiola calls a strong aura of menace that seems to be about right. These are not like happy, nice ghosts who are like hey, sweet, you know, they're scary and the priest is terrified of them. He has to do the sign of the Cross before he can go in, go in among the crowd. And then here's another interesting thing. I didn't notice this, but

she points this out in the analysis. Not only is the priest given a true omen of his own impending death, that part's creepy enough, but more so his office has been usurped. They are performing the morning Mass that he came there to do. They are doing the priest's job for him. So there's an interesting implied interplay of ideas here when when you look at what could have been the inputs. Number one, you'd have Okay, they're appearing in

this Catholic church. And again, the Catholic doctrine emphasized the inertness of the dead body, So this is not really totally within the you know, the central teachings of the church. And yet obviously here's here's titmur a Catholic bishop recording this event um and yet it includes these elements that would seem to come from European paganism that had these sort of common sense ideas about what would lead somebody to get up out of their grave and walk around.

And generally this would be associated with what would be considered a bad death, people who say died of like a painful or violent death, or died young, or died with unfinished business. That these are generally the kinds of people who were believed to have energy still left in them because they had something unresolved or they died too young, and they would be the ones who would be likely to get up out of their graves. Right. Another area

being the revenants of individuals who had not been buried properly. Uh. And during the Christian period this becomes had a case of had not been given a proper Christian burial. Right. So you're you're combining these weird connotations of you know, beliefs that would traditionally say these are the kind of dead you should be worried about, the ones that get up and walk around that you know there's something wrong with them. These are the bad dead, the dangerous dead.

And yet here in this story while they're going to church and that's nice. Um and so teep margin he gives this, uh, this persuasive framing where he says, this story proves the Christian doctrine of the ultimate resurrection of the dead at the end of time. Though I to come back to when I brought up earlier, I wonder if he's got other things in mind. I was actually kind of wondering about stories like this, if this is

kind of the same logic. There's a lot of say twentieth century exploitation movies where they say, here's a movie with like lurid content that is playing to you know, people's perverse interests and seeing you know, violence or sexuality or something, but couched as somehow educational or topical about important subject matter. You know what I mean. Yeah, like like an like an early anti drug film that is ultimately kind of a celebration at access around supposed drug doings. Yeah,

like refor madness or something. They're like, We're gonna get your heart racing with some with some kind of kind of scandalous content. But really this is all framed in showing you how how dangerous and bad marijuana is. But then again, I think about how I guess, to be fair to teach more this story could be presented with

both purposes at once. One in one one hand, is just kind of a very fascinating, entertaining ghost story, and then on the other hand, it does, at least from his point of view, have this persuasive power in showing evidence of the possibility of the general resurrection. I think people often underestimate the importance of entertainment within religious education and preaching. I mean, what kind preachers are the most effective?

I personally would argue, it's very often those who are the most entertaining to listen to that that really keep your attention. How do you keep people's attention, You entertain them, and having good ghost stories is one way to achieve that. Yeah, I mean, when I think of of preachers that I've connected with the most, they mean, they're they're always stories to tell, right, I mean, they are always these Bible

stories and scriptures to read. And in some cases those scriptures are inherently interesting, and you know, maybe it doesn't take much for a preacher to to make something interesting out of it, to make a meal out of this particular scripture. Other times the scripture can be especially if you're following a calendar, uh, you know, and you're just this is the one you have to preach on today. Some of those can be real dogs, or real are real mountains to climb to try and make it relevant

um or interesting to an audience. But but a really good preacher can do that. They can they can find a way, like maybe you're not just focusing on the story in the scripture, but you're you're telling a story, uh, from your life and applying it to you know, the truth of supposed truths in the scripture, that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, there's storytelling. Is is inherent to the whole whole process

when it's not there. You notice regarding this this persuasive presentation or whatever I think I've called it apologetic, persuasive, rhetorical whatever, that he's saying that he's telling the story to convince people of the resurrection. Catchiola argues that this actually is uh something that's plausibly important in the context because people like Titmar and uh and and Catholics at the time, one of the things they mainly wanted to

promote to the laity was the truth of life after death. Uh. That there was apparently doubt that the afterlife existed, and that this doubt was incredibly threatening to the church. That was perceived as one of the main things to to fight off and be wary of. It were any doubts about the possibility of the afterlife or of resurrection. And so even if this story is kind of weird, like it doesn't really fit exactly with Catholic Catholic doctrines about

the afterlife or about the resurrection, it's close enough. At least there is resurrection. There is some kind of afterlife, and because there's this strong impulse to just say, well, whatever it is, you just gotta make make sure people understand that it is possible to achieve immortality. There is life after physical death of the body, and that's good enough. Yeah, It's kind of like this is the point where the salesman at the car dealership has convinced you that, yes,

in theory, you would like a new car. You believe in the value of getting a new car. Now it's about convincing you that we need to get you in this car today, right, thank thank, Okay, So it's time I think to get to a couple of Tee Mar's other stories, which which are a lot of fun. So for there's also a thing where, briefly, he apparently said just he recounts a few personal experiences. I think at one point he says he heard grunts coming out of

a graveyard. I thought that was good. But then there's a second tale he tells us. So the second tale is much shorter, and then there's a tremendous third one. The second one takes place in the yard of Magdeburgh's Merchants Church, and it's spooky, but not as wild as the first or third, So I'll just read directly Caciola's

translation of the story. During my time in Magdeburg, the guards of the Merchants Church, while keeping watch at night, experienced by sight and by hearing phenomena similar to what I have described. So they brought some of the foremost citizens. Having set themselves at a far distance from the cadaver cemetery, they watched as lights were placed in the canned labras, and then they faintly heard two parts singing the invitatory

and completing all the morning lauds in proper order. However, afterward, when they approached, they discovered nothing. This one's interesting because this sounds more like the kind of ghost stories you hear people talk about today. It's like something seen very faintly at a distance and heard in an uncertain way. Yeah, just as that's an example of someone saying, hey, sometimes we see strange lights, or I've heard that that sometimes they see strange lights in the in the graveyard, and

and that's that's enough. Like that, just the idea of that occurring and the idea that there are accounts of that are are enough to tickle the imagination. Okay, but time for the third tale. This is the real barn Burner. Okay, let's do it. So this one is a story that Tetmer says he heard from his niece Bridget about something that happened in You Tracked. So I love that we're

getting niece stories now. Again from the translation in in the catchy Alla's paper quote the next day, I told my niece Bridget about the episode in Magdeburgh, and I received this reply from her. During the eighty years or more, when the great man Baldric held the Holy See of You Trecked, he renovated a church that had fallen into ruin from old age in a place called Devonter. He consecrated it and commended it to the care of one

of his priests. One day, when the priest was going to the church very early in the morning, he saw dead people in the church in cemetery making offerings, and he heard them singing. The priest informed the bishop immediately. He was ordered by the latter to sleep in the church. But the next night he was thrown out by the dead, along with the bed he lay on. First of all, man, this bishop is a tyrant. Is oh, there's dead people in the church. Well, you gotta sleep in there now.

But then they just they just threw him out, which is kind of nice, you know, They just they just threw they evicted him from the church. This is the eviction of the living dead here, that's nice. Yeah, they get the heck out of here. They just threw him out and the bed he lay on, but then it

goes on. Terrified on account of what had happened, the priest again complained to his superior about these things, but the latter ordered that he should cross him himself with saints relics and be sprinkled with holy water, but on no account cease guarding the church. The priest followed the bishop's command tried to sleep in the church again, but he was struck with terror, and so lay wide awake and watchful, and behold, at the accustomed hour the dead arrived.

They picked him up, they placed him upon the altar, and they incinerated his body with fire down to a fine ash. When the bishop heard about this, he ordered a three day fast to be held for the sucker of the dead man's soul. I could say much more, my son, about all these things, if my illness did not prevent me as day is to the living, so night is conceded to the dead. And there's that line we talked about last time. Actually, I guess this means I may have falsely attributed that to to tit Mar

when he was actually quoting bridget Well. This this is a great story, um. And and they're they're apparently variations of this as well. That uh Canellia Christiansen blog post from the Legends of the North dot com um. She shares one variation from Lapland, which involves a priest who dares to venture into the church during the midnight mass of the dead. And he even gets up in front

and begins preaching a sermon to the dead. And I believe he's also protected you know by various uh you know, holy waters and and and and signs and so forth. But the dead don't care, and they care him apart, leaving only his intestines quote carefully swirled about the pillars. WHOA, yeah, so that's that's pretty uh. I mean that that's that's

above and beyond. I mean, I like the idea of them also just burning him on the altar, but just tearing him apart and decorating the place with his intestines like their their garlands. Uh that's also pretty nice. Well, one's more wicker Man and one's more splatter punk. Yeah. Now, one thing worth noticing about this tale, which is fun, is, as far as I can tell, this third tale has no living witnesses. So how does anybody know this happened? Well?

I guess they just found the ashes, right, Like what happened? He had burned up forred the rest. Yeah that's true. Okay, I guess the only part they would really have to supply would be the order of events the night he gets burned. Yeah. I mean, it's possible that the living dead were framed, but otherwise we know the living dead hang out in here at night. They kicked him out last time, and this time we found him burnt to

a crisp probably the living dead again. Well. You know, another thing that's interesting here we're worth noticing is that the reanimated dead bodies they take the priests, they don't just kill him. They burn him to a fine ash, meaning that he cannot be reanimated in bodily form like they can. Interesting, and perhaps something similar is achieved by just tearing him to pieces and stringing him up all

over the place. But there's a there's a whole subsection of Cachiola's paper where she makes a very interesting connection with this story, and it is this many of the the European paganisms, and this probably would have and true of some of the Slavic paganism that predated the Christianizing mission of the Saxons here in this region. Uh. A lot of these religions involve burnt offerings and sometimes probably

burnt offerings of human beings. And so it's conceivable, at least in in Catchiola's presentation, that this story about taking the priest. Now, notice they don't just kill him, They put him on the altar and burn him, suggesting that this is a a deliberate form of worship, that the burning itself is worshiped to them uh. And so this is a sacrifice to the gods or to the ancestors.

That there might have been some blurring of the lines there in in these pagan beliefs, and this I think further suggests that the story we're getting here is some kind of hybrid detailed. This is a tale that may originally involve some kind of more Slavic pagan beliefs that involve burnt offerings and human sacrifices, and that it has been given a sort of Christian reframing to tame it. Now, that's hard to know for sure, but um, it does

raise interesting questions. You might assume, Okay, now, if there were sort of these underlying pagan elements in this story that then has gotten this Christian window dressing, why would that be? I mean, is it just possibly that ghost stories are difficult to drive out of the culture. Something about them is too captivating and you can you just find that you can't really pry them out of people's minds.

So instead of trying to do that, what you might do is try to reframe it to to make it somewhat Christian, give it a generally Christian texture, even if that leads to some sort of weird, contradictory or ambiguous elements, like the fact that the dead are pious and murderous

at the same time. And then at least when you do it that way, it makes it easier to give it this, uh, this persuasive framing that Titmar does, and say, see the story that you believe, you know, the scary tale that that you believe about the dead rising and burning somebody at night. Well, that just proves Christian doctrines anyway,

at least sort of. And from here there's a whole section in this article where Catchiola gets into talking about stories from the period of elements of these stories and other stories that are somewhat related that suggests that the dead, like the dead that we see, are not just sort of like only existing in the moments that they haunt us, and they're also not singly focused, mindless zombies, but there is instead a sort of rich afterlife for the revenants

that they appear to have a whole functioning society of their own. Uh. Like one weird detail, and there's a lot of stuff like this in these stories. One weird detail you might not notice at first is that back in the first story that te Martel's, the dead are said to be giving offerings to the priest. This suggests that the dead have possessions, that the dead have an economy, and this is consistent with other pagan influenced to me full tales of the societies of the dead who are

said to lead full lives. Uh. There's one story that she cites that is in something called the Chronicle of Henry of Erfurt, where a dead man in the middle of the stories is speaking to a living man and or speaking to a living person, and he says, we eat, we drink, we take wives, we have children, We arrange the weddings of our daughters and the marriages of our sons. We sow when we reap, and various other things, just

as you do. But then we get the detail. Except they don't do it down in town where everybody else does it, and they don't do it on the farms with all the living. They do it inside the mountain of Sirenburg instead of down among the living um And and there's even more so there's weird stuff about how the dead are saying that they are, that they procreate right, that they have children, and they have their children, have weddings and stuff. And it's also said that they have

wars with other neighboring communities of dead people. So there's like a separate world of geopolitics entirely among the dead. Yeah, Like up there in the mountains, there's a mountain in which the the good revenants reside, and there's one where the warlike revenants reside, and and inside you have these whole societies that yeah, where where there's reproduction, even undead babies being born and growing up to live full lives underneath the mountain. Um this, this was fascinating to me.

I wish I could have found out more about it. I was, I was looking it up a little bit. And this is um u that this uh, this is actually this is modern day Zerenberg in the German district

of Cassal. So it's uh, if you live in this area, you go up to the mountains and make inquiries for us and see if you can find these dead societies, because this is usually something I mean, we don't even really encounter this much in our our our fantas, our modern fantasy world building, where you know, there are plenty of people plowing away in the realms of the undead, and uh, you know a lot of times, yeah, we don't,

we don't give much. We don't, we don't subscribe much in the way of culture to to our our fictionalized undead, certainly not to the zombies. But but then you see this sometimes with vampires, where they'll be we'll we'll we'll get all in, you know, on like vampire societies and vampire kings and cultures and lords and so forth. But even then you don't see a lot of like vampire

nurseries and vampire babies going on. You know. Yeah, I find it's almost all of the visions of of life after death that I can think of present life after death as in some way of a kind of reduced richness. Like you might think that the closest thing you can think of too, the dead having rich lives like this would be I don't know, in in Christian beliefs about like going to heaven or something. But even then life has a kind of its life is said to be

blissful and good and you enjoy God. But there's not all there's not like, uh much drama there. There's not like a lot of like you know, politics and people falling in love and having children and all that. It has a reduced level of complexity when compared to to

life here on earth. And that seems like it's always true, Like if you go back to old stories, you know, pre Christian ideas of the afterlife, like in uh uh, in the Odyssey, when when Odysseus goes and he hears about what's what is life like in in the afterlife? It sounds like it's it's crappy. You know, everybody's just like, well, there's nothing much to do. Uh, Like it is that reduced level of richness. It sounds gloomy and kind of like your brain isn't really there. It's kind of kind

of a fog of eternity. I think, unless I'm mistaken, it's described that way in the epic of Gilgamesh that once a man is dead, it says he he just sort of like lies down among the dust and he eats dirt or something. Yeah, so you're either doing that or it's like hell is a place where you are just always screaming or having as a place where you're just always beaming and smiling. Yeah, not not not often a lot of added complexity. I mean, I guess there

are versions where hey, you're in heaven. Would you like to come back as a as an angel and uh talk people off of bridges? Well you can do that, or I guess there are also some variations where it's like, hey, you're in hell, um, but we have a we have a whole system here and you can level up if you if you work hard. Yeah, um, the only or something Um I was actually thinking about um Alan Moore's

run on Swamp thing. There's this whole plot where the evil dr Anton Arcane has his soul has gone to hell, but he's just so evil that he works his way up through the ranks and eventually gets a place of power again. He's a real go getter. Yeah, he is.

Um as far as like the Undead Reproduction, the only fictional examples that come to mind, or first of all, the Crypt Keeper, where in which there is one episode of Tales for the Crypt where we're given his backstory and we find out that his mom is a mummy, So his mom is reanimated corpse, but his dad is a like two faced um circus mutant. Uh kind of a situation. So there's that, and um oh, speaking of mummies, maybe maybe Egyptian afterlife has a sort of has a

level of richness and complexity, Oh very much. So, yes, it certainly we can't forget that if you're looking at the Egyptian afterlife. The Egyptian afterlife is an idea where you are going into an entire world where you will need resources, you will need spells, you will have to navigate various obstacles and enemies. It's Yeah, the Egyptian after Afterlife is a strong example to bring up, for sure.

The other undead example that comes to mind, though, is that I believe it now in two different zombie films, director Zack Snyder has betrayed a um, a strong interest in zombie reproduction. He seems to really into the idea of of zombie newborns and so forth. So um, I don't know. Take that. Take that for as you will. I don't know. If he makes another zombie film, maybe he'll expand on that. We can only hope than all right, but you know enough about about the zombie movies. Let's

get back to Christmas stuff. Okay, That's that's what people want to hear about. And uh and indeed, I want to come back to the idea of Yule Tide revenants, Christmas zombies. I was reading the Ghosts of Christmas Past by Sarah Hoffman. This was published in by the Institute of European and Mediterranean Archaeology in the Chronica Journal. The paper centers on local customs and beliefs about the dead and the Catholic Church of St. Nicholas on and near

the island of hof Girary in Iceland. So this is off the western coast of Iceland, north of k Vik, but not not far off the coast. It can be reached by boat or over the frozen ice. So the church and cemetery here served as a major funerary and burial destination for a large portion of western Iceland from about twelve hundred to fifteen sixty three. Then the church wind cemetery were both closed during the Lutheran Reformation and

the island was abandoned. Now the author here notes that you know, when we talk about the Lutheran Reformation like this was this was a time of of of great change um and an often violent change. She notes that the last Catholic bishop in Iceland, John Arson, was executed by beheading in fifteen fifty during the height of the Lutheran Reformation. So after this took place, after this place was abandoned, uh stories about the island and about the

church and the graveyard there. They kind of dealt with the abandonment in different ways, both to reinforce the abandonment and to excuse it by turning the island into a kind of forsaken and dangerous place. And this comes to involve revenance of course, Hoffman naturally to discusses the corporeal nature of of these undead. Quote, these restless dead often emerge as a result of improper death or unfinished business,

frequently overlapping with Christmas or yield Tide. So remember we we've already gone through a few different examples, but even that example from the Gretist saka um that where you have the you know, the battle, the wrestling match against the undead beast with the moon in its eyes, that takes place at Christmas as well as well, and she points out that most of these tales take place during a festival of transition, uh you know in in this

example Christmas Cereal Tide, and are often set during a time period of transition, in this case transition to either transition to Christianity or transition from Catholicism to a Protestant faith and um in in the in cases of where it's like a Christian pagan uh situation we often see, the Christian heroes are the ones that are usually the individuals who are able to bring some sort of finality

to this disruption involving the untead. However, she does share a tale in which the new religion does not seem to be enough. Quote. In the story of the Deacon of of Mirca, a deacon of of Edge of florid Or fell in love with a woman named good Run who lived on the opposite shore of a fjord valley. One day near Christmas, the deacon attempted to cross the frozen river to meet his beloved, only to fall through

the ice to his death. His ghost returned to torment Guruin for two weeks, and while a priest was unable to help, a sorcerer quote skilled in witchcraft finally managed to exercise the ghost. This is interesting because I um, I remember from years ago when I visited Iceland a story about a story from somewhere I went about a guy who died trying to cross the river to see his beloved. But I wondered. But I don't think it was in a fjord valley. I think it was more inland.

So maybe they're just multiple stories like that. I think so, based on what the author here shares. There are a

few key things here. First of all, when we're talking, first of all, we're dealing with a part of the world in which, yes, the bodies of water will freeze and you can cross them on foot, but there's always the possibility that you will break through and then you're in the water, the chilling water, uh, and you may drown and then drowning, especially when you're dealing with death at sea, this is said to leave one in a state uh, stuck between worlds. Uh. So there are a

lot of tales involving drowned revenance. In fact, we already shared one in the first episode about the the guys going to the feast and showing up anyway even though their their boat um uh you know, wrecked and they drowned on the way. Um. So this you know, the idea that those who die in the water are especially prone to return, and we actually see this in one of the tales told to affirm the cursed and nature

of this particular church, this abandoned church. The account says that on Christmas Even fifteen sixty three, the priests and parishioners of the church were walking back to their farms over the frozen tidal flats. They were broken walking back to the mainland essentially from this island. And what happened while the ice broke halfway and everyone drowned. So in the entire church drowns in the water, and of course

by virtue of that, they are going to be lost souls. Now, the author adds here that the waters off the coast we were dangerous, and it was apparently common enough to discover human bodies washed upon the shore from shipwrecks and um. And many of these were even as an as an added note, they were they were said to have occurred on Christmas. So you'd be out on Christmas Day and then here are bodies washed up on the shore. And if you were to find these bodies, it's your personal responsibility, uh,

to help those bodies have a proper Christian areal. Otherwise you're going to be cursed and the Revenant will follow you until the end of your days. Which reminds me of that that account of the moonlight in the eyes of the undead creature that gretted the strong battles and how he's essentially, uh, you know, just shaken for the rest of his life because he saw it. But anyway, but the idea of this, the story of the lost

congregation drowned in the ice um it was. It was apparently compounded because after the church's abandonment the church decayed, but not only that the burial grounds eroded. And when burial grounds erode, what happens, well, the dead appeared to rise, the dead are revealed, and this ended up requiring several waves of reburial uh, you know, people having to to go out and make sure that these bodies were given

a proper burial again so that they might rest. But the tale, as the author, the point they're making is that you have stories like this that we're about sort of giving a reason why the place was a band and while it's an evil place, it's curse the dead are coming up through the ground. Um. But also it's kind of compounding this idea that like the people of the church were abandoned that there you know, it's it's a part of like making sense of of people lost

during a time of transition um. Not only a transition between you know, one land and another, you know, between one of the crossing of the bay here um or a crossing a frozen body of water, but also like lost in this transition between Catholicism and UH and protestant

is um. You know, this is making me think of one last way to maybe interpret the the the apparent contradiction and these stories of the church going on dead, these uh you know, these lost beings that are at the same time doing something that is apparently good and holy, but then also they are menacing, which is that And again this would connect to the you know, the kinds of lives lead under the Mountain of Sirenberg as well.

That that just conveys complexity like that. Um, you know, there's a kind of confusion, ambiguity and complexity real life as well. People. There are tons of people who subscribe to whatever religion you think is the right one, and and you would think it is good when they go and worship in that religion, and then they also probably will turn around in some cases and be menacing and

threatening and terrifying. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Um yeah yeah. The idea of the churchgoers turning around and attacking you, I mean that may that may well track with with some of your experiences with the with living congregations, So um, you know, it's I think ultimately, yeah, I think one of the things to take away from this is that these stories are you know, do have a complexity to them.

They're they're probably saying multiple things. They're kept around there, not only kept around, but you know, intentionally kept around because they fulfill various purposes in life, explaining things, um, making excuses for things um. And also like and also

just like keeping keeping occurrences alive too. Like you know, we we what is literally the idea of a haunting, you know, it's the idea that the dead won't completely rest and they keep saying something or they keep appearing and and and sometimes it seems that's a it's about you know, it's obviously more about the living, like we won't let those dead rest, and we have stories about them, uh, to help them stay alive. Yes, in the same way

that we probably wouldn't embrace revenant realism. But you can certainly imagine how if you do find a body washed up on the shore, it's a dead person and you see it and you do nothing about it, that may well follow you for the rest of your life in your brain. And uh yeah, and I think the same could probably be be said to be true about these tales.

You know, people are probably not getting up out of their graves to go to church at night, but it is reflecting some kind of lingering, unresolved anxieties within say these frontier lands and in in the process of Christianizing a continent where where where people have memories of the past and fears that they can't really face, and these come through in the form of narratives that have strange

contradictions within them. Yeah, all right, well, we're gonna go ahead and close out there, but we'd love to hear from everyone if you've you've heard other variations of these tales of churchgoing revenants right in, let us know, especially if you have if you live in or have connections to some of the parts of the world that we've

specifically discussed in these episodes. Also, I have to say I looked around, I was I was hoping I could find some examples from other cultures where you have either a corporeal or non corporeal entity, that is, you know, going to a church, where a temple and engaging in some sort of pious activity. And um, I'm I'm truly I missed something, But I wasn't able to find anything. I found plenty of examples of various spirits that were there to sort of maliciously punish those who were who

were engaging and impiety. You know that that that we're you know, disgracing a temple or a church that sort of thing, or mischief makers you know, um, demons or angels that make um you know, monks fart during the uh you know, during a mass or something. But uh, yeah, I wasn't find able to find anything that really stacks up with this idea of the of the pious undead. But if I'm missing something, and surely I am, then I would love to hear about them. So right in,

let us know. Yeah, I bet that exists in the media. Yeah, because I mean there's so I mean, obviously there are a lot of wonderful undead uh examples from around the world. I was running across plenty that we're interesting in their own right, you know, various things raised by sorcerers and wizards and and which is things, um, you know, various ghosts, your kai and so forth. But nothing that really matched up with what we were talking about here. But like I said, if I missed it, right in and let

us know. In the meantime, if you would like to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you'll find core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the Stuff Too Your Mind podcast feed Artifact episodes on Wednesday listener Mail on Mondays and on Friday we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time to set most serious concerns aside and just focus on a strange or unusual film. Hich Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth

Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. My f