Monsters Myths and Manias

weirdcalderdale

Monsters, Myths and Manias explores strange and forgotten corners of history. Join Professor Weird (Paul Weatherhead) as he explores bizarre but true stories of mass hysteria, ghost panics, scary folklore and strange creatures...

  1. Apr 25

    Music to Go Mad By: Satie's Vexations

    In 1893 composer Erik Satie wrote Vexations, a dissonant, repetitive and unnerving piano piece that takes up to 24 hours to play. Demonic music that warps the minds of those who played it, a topless cellist, a bra made of televisions and a phial of amphetamine... This is the weird musical history of this piece and the disturbing and uncanny effect it had on its performers... More weird stuff on my website: https://paulweatherhead.com/weird-calderdale-strange-and-horrible-local-history/ Sources Gavin Bryars (1983) ‘Vexations and its performers’, Contact: Journal for Contemporary Music, 26, pp.12-20 (p.13) Robert Orledge (1988) ‘Understanding Satie’s ‘Vexations’’, Music & Letters, 79(3) pp. 386-395. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/855366 [Steven M Whiting (2010) ‘Serious Immobilities: Musings on Satie’s “Vexations”’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft,  67(4) pp. 310-317

    12 min

  2. 10/26/2025

    Yorkshire Zombies - The Medieval Dead

    Yorkshire in the 1300s was a strange and frightening place. The living dead crawled from their graves, wandered round the lanes and accosted the villagers, at least according to accounts written by an anonymous monk. But these zombies were very different from the gut munchers of modern popular culture, and it wasn’t your brain they were after. So why were the dead shuffling round Yorkshire six centuries ago? What did they want? And how could they be stopped? In this episode of Monsters, Myths and Manias Paul Weatherhead (aka Professor Weird) looks at some of the strange tales from Byland Abbey and teaches you how to survive a medieval zombie attack! Sources: S.R. Young, The Ghosts of Medieval Yorkshire (2023, Pwca Books and Pamphlets) The full text of the ghost stories can be read here: https://www.anselm-classics.com/byland/about.html

    9 min

  3. 10/19/2025

    Top 5 Cannibal Zombie Movies from the Golden Age of Gut Munching!

    In recent decades there have been some fine zombie films, but these mainstream offerings tend to suffer from one fatal flaw: respectability. The zombie films from the golden age (which I’ve taken as being from the late 60s to the early 90s) are different. They are gloriously disreputable, so much so that many were banned in Britain or were only available in editions butchered by the censors.  In this Halloween special, Professor Weird aka Paul Weatherhead guides you through his Top 5 cannibal zombie gut munchers from the golden age of the video nasty!  Further reading: Jamie Russell, Book of the Dead, (Godalming: FAB, 2005)  Jay Slater (ed), Eaten Alive: Italian Cannibal and Zombie Movies, (London: Plexus, 2002)

    12 min

  4. 10/12/2025

    Scared to Death!

    In this episode, bizarre and spooky urban legends about ghost hoaxes going wrong and scarring the hapless victim to death!

    9 min

  5. 10/05/2025

    What did the atheist philosopher see when he died and was brought back to life?

    Atheist philosopher A.J. Ayer choked to death on a piece of smoked salmon and had a bizarre vision of the afterlife before being revived... What did he see and did it change his mind?

    11 min

  6. 09/28/2025

    Ghost Streakers!

    Naked ghosts – people who wandered the streets at night starkers frightening any unlucky victim they happened to meet - were surprisingly frequent, especially in the early nineteenth century.  They were a combination of ghost hoaxer, streaker and flasher.  The sight of someone stalking a secluded location with his wan naked body eerily reflecting the gas lamps or moon light would have been a very disconcerting, threatening and scary experience. It has an element of the bizarre and surreal about it, so it’s easy to see why these figures would be seen as otherworldly – why they were referred to as ghosts. In this episode, Professor Weird presents a selection of true tales of ghostly streakers. Contains nudity.

    10 min

  7. 09/21/2025

    The Skoptsy: Russia's Weird Castration Cult

    Professor Weird explores the castration cult that swept Russia and Eastern Europe in the late seventeenth century. They were known as the Skoptsy, and the operation (which they called the Fiery Baptism) involved a red hot poker and no anesthetic... But we would never do anything like that in the modern day and age... would we?

    10 min

  8. 09/14/2025

    The Calverley Ghost: A Yorkshire Tragedy

    The West Yorkshire village of Calverley became the centre of public attention over Christmas 1904 after reports of a mysterious phantom were widely published. However, the Christmas ghost of Calverley has a long history, involving tales of schoolboys raising the dead, headless horses, exorcism and haunted preachers. The story begins, though, with a horrifying Jacobean murder spree that spawned a grim piece of gory theatre that William Shakespeare may have had a hand in… This episode is based on a chapter from my new book, Phantoms of Christmas Past: Phantoms of Christmas Past: Festive Ghost Hoaxes, Ghost Hunts and Ghost Panics: Amazon.co.uk: Paul Weatherhead: 9781803418407: Books

    15 min
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About

Monsters, Myths and Manias explores strange and forgotten corners of history. Join Professor Weird (Paul Weatherhead) as he explores bizarre but true stories of mass hysteria, ghost panics, scary folklore and strange creatures...

Information

  • Creator
    weirdcalderdale
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    21
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 All Rights Reserved
  • Show Website
    Monsters Myths and Manias