#dr price's horror compendium

[fiction-pod-recs]

For this weeks fiction podcast rec thursday:

Dr. Price’s Horror Compendium

[ID./ The cover art of dr. price's horror compendium. On a black background there is a stylized orange/red rectangle outline. On top of that is text that reads, "Dr Price's Horror Compendium." The first two words are in the same color as the rectangle and the second 2 are a lighter, more orange color ./End ID]

Summary as given, “My name is Dr Price and this is my Compendium of Horror. A place to collect all the stories I have gathered over the years that are guaranteed to send a shiver down your spine!

I can’t guarantee that they are all 100% true, but I have been able to verify at least a portion of each one. It is up to you whether you choose to believe them or not…”

Dr Price’s Horror Compendium is ongoing with 17 episodes out now, but there hasn’t been an update since February (2023). The episode lengths average around 10 - 15 minutes each. There aren't quite transcripts, but there are written versions of the stories on their website! There also aren’t content warnings available.

Considering part of this is meant to be true stories, its place on this blog is debatable, but I do really love this podcast, so I’d like to talk about it!

I honestly don’t know why it draws me to it so much, but I really love it. It’s like the kind of horror that rarely is really scary but is the perfect amount of spooky vibes. The people reading the stories also do an amazing job narrating! This is probably the spot to mention it is an anthology series, I believe only 1 story connects to another. 

My favorite episodes were “The Tattoo” and “Dear Diary, They’re all Dead,” so I’d recommend you check those out!

Their website is: https://www.drpriceshorrorcompendium.com/

Alrighty then, I think that concludes this installment of FPRT! My deepest apologies for not getting this out sooner, Thanksgiving completely burned me out and school then hit me with a truck, so it's been a lot. Thank you for sticking with me and waiting for this! Next rec should hopefully be out next Thursday on time. Have a good rest of your day/night!

Edit: This was meant to go out on Thursday, but I saved it as a draft instead of posting it, very sorry about that.

[jbird-the-manwich]

Hey I was wondering if you had any resources to share related to familiars and magical books. I remember reading somewhere about witches' familiars being trapped in books, not the book's spirit per se but rather a different spirit living in the book or working from the book, something like that? Any and all recommended reading is appreciated

Ohh that's a tricky one. Sorry for the extreme delay. I kinda forgot tumblr existed for like a year or so and your ask was buried under some much less friendly anon messages and I uhhh procrastinate pretty hard with the ask box in that state due to The Horrors.

anyway:

As far as a spirit that lives in a book, traditional american witchlore holds that a familiar spirit may take up residence in almost anything, a book included, that the calling witch desires. It could be you found a reference to this.

In the black book tradition of icelandic countries, specifically, magical books are believed to possess a kind of discrete power of their own, (this is echoed somewhat in american witch lore, but with fewer stipulations) that the magician avails themselves of by hand-copying the entire book to make up their own copy.

in that tradition It's said such books are to be hand copied verbatim, lest the spells lose their effectiveness for the magician who copies one incorrectly, or makes corrections not specified within the text.

There are many of these books now within the public domain, and some contain spells ranging the gamut from making people fart in church to killing ones enemy to making gold. Absolutely one of my favorite currents to read from because of the sheer variety and scope of methods they mention, though, consistent with this tradition is a tendency for spells to contain very specific and often complex instructions, some of which would be quite difficult to replicate faithfully. That said, one text dealing with this tradition of texts that I found just the other night, The Black Books of Elverum by Mary Rustad, is located here: https://archive.org/details/the-black-books-of-elverum

^^that one has a pdf available as well as plaintext, and the plaintext conversion is really quite good, comparatively, and would require very little preprocessing to parse digitally, if you're of that bent.

As I said, many of these books have been translated and are now within the public domain, but if you're after a compendium of works I very much enjoy the Svartkonstbocker, which is a compendium of swedish black book materials by Dr Thomas K. Johnson. I possess a physical copy and don't believe this particular text is within the public domain, but if you're in the market for hard texts, I've found it worth the price of admission.

To switch gears and discuss texts more aligned to my own leanings, a book I often eat in one sitting every couple years when the power goes out that details calling familiar spirits Is Folk Witchcraft by Roger J. Horne. I recommend it fairly frequently, It's a pleasant read, the font could be larger, but it's far from the worst beginner text on spirit work I've ever read.

It contains numerous primers and several spells and orations dealing with the attraction of a familiar spirit. This could be a decent place to look.

If you're looking for something in the grimoire tradition, there's the grimorium verum, which insists that a pact with a spheres ruling spirit must be performed to make the related spells within their spheres function. A pdf edition is available here:

https://nekropolis.dk/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GrimoriumVerum.pdf

Not my wheelhouse, nor my religion, but it does contain instructions for the creation of numerous tools and a fair few pages of interesting workings, though it is more or less a text concerned primarily with daemons and the pacting therewith.

If you think the reference you found may have been pointing to the grimoire tradition, or if the solomonic tradition is your get, Secrets of Solomon by Joseph Peterson is an interesting read, quite dense for its page count and deals primarily with translation of "the little key of solomon concerning the secrets"; It again is concerned primarily with the ritual conjuring of spirits and the working of solomonic magic, and contains instructions, seals, and conjurations for everything from planetary intelligences to cthonic spirits. I don't believe this particular text is within the public domain, but earlier translations of both the lesser and greater keys of solomon are very easy to find online, should you feel either of these are likely to be the book you had reference to.

Honorable mention for a text that is also not public domain yet, but is dense for its page count and contains several discrete tables concerning different classes of spirits and their attending seals and conjuration information would be The Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft by Kathryn Paulsen, if only for the extremely 2edgy4u darkness dementia raven way Satanic Panic aesthetic and also the excellent bibliography. My memory is shit, but I believe I must have recommended this one before, and if I haven't shame for me, if only for the sheer amount of information on materia magica it contains.

it also contains references from a number of texts, themselves now within the public domain, including Reginald Scotts The Discoverie Of Witchcraft, to the keys of solomon, to The Book of Secrets of Albertus Magnus. All of which are pretty fun reads.

I kinda doubt I've answered your question as you'd hoped, as I'm honestly drawing a blank for your precise ask, but any one of these texts is a good and fun place to start if you've still not found what you were looking for, book ghost wise.

[universitybookstore]

Bargain Book Recommendations

During these difficult times, University Book Store hope you are staying safe and well. We’re here to bring you recommendations for fresh reads, if your To-Read Pile is getting uncomfortably low. We’ve recently added more than 400+ bargain-priced titles (cause $$$ is tight for us all right now), and our booksellers will be posting some of their recommendations over the coming weeks. Today’s picks come from our Bargain Book Buyer, Dan Doody.  

Written on the Body | Jeanette Winterson—In this brilliant novel, Winterson chronicles the life & loves of a unnamed, genderless narrator and in the process detaches the romantic experience from physical gender, showing us the universal truths of love. 

Watership Down | Richard Adams—This is one of my absolute favorite books that keeps growing in my estimation as the years go by. Of course, it follows a band of rabbits who travel forth from their native warren in search of a mysterious promised land and a more perfect society.

Paperbacks from Hell | Grady Hendrix—Hendrix and his co-author Will Errickson chronicle the golden age of horror publishing (the 70s & 80s) with plenty of evil children, diabolic cults, bedeviled children, sexy vampires, and oh-so-many skeletons.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark | Alvin Schwartz—Speaking of horror literature, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a true classic of the genre and so often the first exposure to the genre for many young readers. Grab your trusty flash light and favorite blanket….

Anno Dracula | Kim Newman—What if Dracula, Lord of the Undead, had defeated Van Helsing, Harker, Dr. Seward, et. al? This is the tantalizing question Kim Newman explores here. Following his victory over his enemies, Dracula now rules England having wed Queen Victoria to become her Prince Consort, meanwhile vampirism has spread through all levels of English society, particularly amongst the aristocracy. But all is not well in this increasingly Undead Albion—a murderer, dubbed Jack the Ripper, stalks London’s Whitechapel district….

The Books of Earthsea | Ursula K. Le Guin—Le Guin’s epic saga collected in one volume with beautiful illustrations by Charles Vess. This is a must have volume for any lover of the Fantasy genre. 

The Shining Girls | Lauren Beukes—an intricately plotted tale about a time-traveling serial killer who stalks his victims, bright young women who burn with potential, across six decades. Absolutely brilliant in its vision and execution.

Tailor, Tinker, Soldier, Spy | John Le Carré—This might be the best Cold War espionage thriller ever written, and it’s certainly my favorite. If you’ve only ever seen the BBC miniseries or the recent film adaptation, do yourself a favor and read the unforgettable original novel. 

The Gin Dictionary | David T. Smith—It’s summer time, and nothing is more refreshing on a hot afternoon than a cool, gin & tonic with a twist, maybe a slice of cucumber, too. Here we have a concise compendium to the many complex terms and techniques, equipment and varieties that go into the most perfect of alcoholic spirits.

Cork Dork | Bianca Bosker—Maybe wine is more your summer sip of choice. Amateur wine enthusiast Bianca Bosker charts her journey through the fascinating, labyrinthian world of vintners, wineries, and sommeliers.

The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824 | Harvey Sachs—This year marks the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. For many, he is the quintessential composer of classical music, and Sach’s enthralling book explores the ground-breaking symphony and the cultural and historical world that produced it.

Why You Love Music | John Powell—If you find yourself humming “Ode to Joy” after reading the above and want to know why, then pick up a copy of John Powell’s book and learn the answer. He explores both the innumerable physiological and psychological ways in which music affects us.