Photos of the Dead: Victorian Postmortem Photography and the Case of the Standing Corpse

10/22/17 • 46 min

Creepy, Occult & Spooky Series #1 of 4. We commemorate and document life through photographs, and have been doing so since the 19th century. But photography has also been used to document death. In this episode we are discussing Victorian postmortem photography. This has received a lot of interest on the internet lately as Victorian memento mori photographs have become rather popular on certain internet sites. And although many of the pictures on those sites are in fact postmortem photographs, many are not. They are either completely fake, or they are pictures of living people being passed off as postmortem photos. Find show notes, affiliate links and the transcript at digpodcast.org

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Previous Episode

The Lost Cause: Texas Independence, Slavery and Historical Memory

War, Conflict and Violence Series #4 of 4. Today’s discussion is about the creation of historical memory and how one war in particular, The Texas War of Independence, is remembered. But also how historical memory of that war is profoundly colored by the memory of the Civil War through what is known as the Lost Cause.

Find Show Notes, Further Reading, and a complete transcript of this episode at https://digpodcast.org/2017/10/08/lost-cause-texas-slavery/

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Next Episode

Halloween, Samhain, and Moral Panics in the 1980s

Creepy, Occult & Spooky Series #2 of 4. In 1978, John Carpenter created a horror film that would arguably change the genre, certainly led the way in slasher films, and all on a $325,000 budget, with a 21 day shoot and no big star names to speak of. The second film was released in 1981; the third in 1982; four and five were ‘88 and ‘89, respectively. The 1980s were particularly ripe for a horror storyline centered around Halloween - celebrated by a community of neo-pagans, and demonized by the New Christian Right for its pagan roots. In the US, this was a period of anxiety about Satanic cults, nerds playing Dungeons and Dragons in dank basements, and the dark stranger handing out razor-bladed candy to naive and unsuspecting trick or treaters. These anxieties were capitalized on by clever filmmakers, and the tone of the Halloween franchise shifted from the horror of the ordinary to the supernatural, the pagan, and even the importers of Halloween--the Irish!

Show Notes, Further Reading, and a full transcript are available at https://digpodcast.org/2017/10/29/halloween-ii-vi-samhain/

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