The Witching Hour Night Twenty-Nine: Lore

I don’t know about any of you but I find folklore and urban legends to be utterly fascinating. More than the stories themselves I am interested in the psychology behind the creation of those little tales. On top of that, the willingness of people to believe the most baseless rumors. A fairly mundane example from my own experience is The Blair Witch Project. It might seem silly to millenials now but back in 1999 there were people who were completely convinced that the movie contained genuine footage of what happened to those people in the video despite the fact that the actors were giving interviews. One of them even enjoys a fairly active career as an actor. One podcast adapted into an Amazon exclusive show examines the basis of many folklore tales. That series is known as Lore.

The podcast launched back in 2015 and is recorded by Aaron Mahnke. In every episode he discusses an actual historical event and its impact on common folklore. As you can imagine, Mahnke spends a lot of time to make certain only historically accurate information is presented during his show.

The Amazon series is based on actual episodes of the podcast. It’s an anthology show and Mahnke’s monologues from the podcast serve as a voiceover. The first episode of Lore is called They Made a Tonic and details the story of Mercy Brown. Several members of her family had perished from consumption including poor Mercy herself. Given the fact that consumption was not a well understood sickness back then, there was a lot of suspicion that the deaths were linked to an undead person. The townspeople actually exhumed some of the deceased members of the Brown family and were shocked when Mercy’s body did not show typical signs of decomposition and still had blood in her heart. I won’t give away the ending but this incident gave birth to a popular bit of folklore that is still running strong today.

Lore primarily uses live action scenes to depict the stories but some segments feature stylized artwork and animation. The screenshots above were taken from the first episode.

Lore is a fine show to watch when you need a break from horror movies. The stories are actually a bit creepier knowing they really did happen.

Where to watch: This series is an Amazon Prime exclusive.

[amazon_link asins=’B075ZCM3MB,B01N32NCPM,B00N28818A,B01GEW27DA,B01J94SWWU,B01J94T4R2,B01M6YJEAH,B013TMNKAW’ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’jasonmckendricks-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’a751b072-bc30-11e7-a60e-c7e56ccfa5b1′]

Share this article: