Jeb Card joins us to discuss the supposed witchcraft connections to the murder of Charles Walton on Valentines Day, 1945. Important players include (returning podcast fave) Margaret Murray, Egyptologist and writer of 'The Witch Cult In Western Europe' and Robert Fabian, Detective Superintendent of the London Met and early true crime tv celebrity. Both took the murder as a clue that something sinister, long-lived, and magical was brewing in the rural English countryside. And of course we can't get to them without covering Flinders Petrie, James Frazer, The Golden Bough, Dennis Wheatley, and Victorian ideas about witchcraft, archaeology, and the supernatural. There's also pagan survivals, magical peer-review murder, and a sidetrack about Night Of The Demon!

*NOTE: for extra details on the connections between the novel Ritual by David Pinner and the Wicker Man, wait till the end comments

LINKS

Buy Me A Coffee or I'll curse you with a bit of runic parchment. You have three days!

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wideatlantic

Spooky Archaeology, Dr Jeb Card

Jeb Card on Twitter

Murder by Witchcraft, Donald McCormick

Under The Shadow of Meon Hill, Paul Newman

The Case that Foiled Fabian, Simon Read

A Colder War, Charles Stross

The Witch, Ronald Hutton

Triumph Of The Moon, Ronald Hutton

Witchcraft Murders, Library Of The Occult

Britain’s Wicca Man documentary