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A fascinating, beautifully illustrated guide to the monsters that are part of our collective psyche, featuring stories from the Lore podcast—now a streaming television series—including “They Made a Tonic,” “Passed Notes,” and “Unboxed,” as well as rare material.

They live in shadows—deep in the forest, late in the night, in the dark recesses of our minds. They’re spoken of in stories and superstitions, relics of an unenlightened age, old wives’ tales, passed down through generations. Yet no matter how wary and jaded we have become, as individuals or as a society, a part of us remains vulnerable to them: werewolves and wendigos, poltergeists and vampires, angry elves and vengeful spirits.

In this beautifully illustrated volume, the host of the hit podcast Lore serves as a guide on a fascinating journey through the history of these terrifying creatures, exploring not only the legends but what they tell us about ourselves. Aaron Mahnke invites us to the desolate Pine Barrens of New Jersey, where the notorious winged, red-eyed Jersey Devil dwells. He delves into harrowing accounts of cannibalism—some officially documented, others the stuff of speculation . . . perhaps. He visits the dimly lit rooms where séances take place, the European villages where gremlins make mischief, even Key West, Florida, home of a haunted doll named Robert.

In a world of “emotional vampires” and “zombie malls,” the monsters of folklore have become both a part of our language and a part of our collective psyche. Whether these beasts and bogeymen are real or just a reflection of our primal fears, we know, on some level, that not every mystery has been explained and that the unknown still holds the power to strike fear deep in our hearts and souls. As Aaron Mahnke reminds us, sometimes the truth is even scarier than the lore.

The World of Lore series includes:
MONSTROUS CREATURES • WICKED MORTALS • DREADFUL PLACES

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Editorial Reviews

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Praise for the Lore podcast

“Truth can often be much scarier than fiction—something [Aaron] Mahnke proves as he dives deep into the world of folklore and the darker side of history in a quest to root out the fragment of truth at the bottom of our fears.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Unlike so much horror that needs over-the-top viscera to scare you, this podcast leans on history—folklore, myth, the stuff people once thought was true—to tell its tales.”—The Atlantic

“Narrated by Mahnke in a style that evokes spooky campfire stories, Lore is a history lesson like no other.”—Esquire

About the Author

Aaron Mahnke is the writer, host, and producer of Lore, as well as the author of a number of supernatural thrillers. His deep love of the mysterious and frightening began with Unsolved Mysteries and The X-Files—and it’s a love that continues to this day. Basically, he’s a nerd for anything inexplicable or supernatural. Mahnke lives with his family in the historic North Shore area of Boston, the very heart of Lovecraft Country and the Salem witch trials.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

They Made a Tonic

Hollywood is obsessed.

Sure, we often think of obsessions like sex, violence, gigantic robots, and of course epic battles between good and evil. But another obsession of Hollywood is vampires.

You have to admit, though, that there’s a lot to love about vampires. Immortality, wealth, power, and superhuman abilities such as flight and strength. Yes, they come with trade-offs, such as incredibly bad sunburns, but every movie I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a lot, believe me) tends to show vampires that are fairly happy with their lot in life.

My exposure to the world of vampires happened in the late 1990s when I was in college. A friend recommended the Anne Rice novel Interview with the Vampire. I devoured that and many of the sequels. They’re fun reads, and they certainly set the tone for a decade or more of vampire-centered entertainment.

I won’t touch on the vampires of the Twilight series, mostly because I haven’t read any of the books. But I will say this: those books, however lambasted they have been by critics, have shown that popular culture’s love of all things vampire is as undying as the creatures themselves.

Vampires in History

When most people think of vampires, they envision something that is a purely European creature: a foreign accent, Victorian-era dress, and dark manor homes and castles. It’s a common visual language for most of the Western world, so I don’t blame movies and books for portraying that image. But it’s one small facet of a legend that has hundreds of expressions.

The single most prominent historical figure attached to the modern notion of vampirism is, of course, Vlad III of Wallachia, otherwise known as Vlad the Impaler. Vlad ruled the small Eastern European kingdom of Wallachia from 1456 to 1462.

He was known as Vlad the Impaler because he preferred to execute his enemies by impaling them on stakes. The Ottomans called him Lord Impaler after entering his kingdom and finding “forests” of impaled victims. Vlad was a violent guy, you see. Rather bloodthirsty, you might say.

He, like his father before him, belonged to something known as the Order of the Dragon, a group established to protect Christian Europe from the invading Ottoman Empire. Vlad’s father, Vlad II, was known as Vlad Dracul, or “Vlad the Dragon.” When Vlad III rose to power, he took the hereditary title and was known as Vlad Draculea, “son of the dragon.”

That name might sound very similar to the most famous vampire story in the world, and that’s because Bram Stoker, when creating his famous creature of the night, used Vlad III as his inspiration. Well, part of it, but we’ll get into that more later.

The roots of most vampire stories, however, can be traced back to superstitions founded in ancient cultures all across the world. Western Europe played host to countless stories of reanimated dead known as revenants. These were animated corpses that climbed out of the grave to torment the living. The word “revenant” comes from the Latin that means “to come back.”

Come back to do what? you might ask. Well, I’m glad you did. At first, it was just to terrorize the living, but as the centuries passed, the legend became more specific. Revenants were said to return from the grave to torment their living relatives and neighbors. What was key, though, was that revenants were specific people, not anonymous zombies like the ones from our modern horror genre. These things had a past and a purpose.

In Norse mythology we can find tales of creatures known as draugr, “again-walkers,” who would return from the grave and wreak havoc on the living. These creatures possessed superhuman strength, smelled of decay, and were pretty ugly in appearance. They could enter the dreams of the living, and they were said to leave a tangible object near the sleeping person so that, upon waking, their victims would know their dreams were more real than they feared.

Let’s go back earlier than the Middle Ages, though. The legends of some ancient cultures spoke of creatures that, while not immediately similar to the vampires we know today, nonetheless shared many core characteristics.

First, we have the Greek myth of Empusa, who was a daughter of Hecate. Empusa was said to lure young men at night and then feast on their blood before moving on to the main course—their flesh. Another Greek tale involves Lamia, a mistress of Zeus who becomes cursed by Zeus’s wife, Hera, and doomed to hunt children, devouring them.

Stories of undead creatures, or creatures that feed on the blood of the living, seem nearly as common as written language itself. On Madagascar, an island nation off the east coast of Africa, there are legends of a creature known as the ramanga, which was known to attack nobles, drinking their blood and eating their nail clippings.

Yeah, their nail clippings. Deal with it.

Vampires in Medical Science

Are vampires real? I’ll let you make the final decision on that, but what is clear is that most of these stories find their genesis in the human need to explain the unexplainable. For instance, early Europeans used the myth as a way of explaining why a corpse wasn’t decomposing at the normal, expected rate. You can see evidence of this in Bulgaria, where graves dating back more than eight hundred years have been opened, revealing iron rods through the chest of skeletons.

And in a time when it was not unheard of to bury someone who was thought to be dead, only to find out that they really weren’t, you can imagine that stories would quickly circulate that the dead were coming back to life. As a result, taphophobia, the fear of being buried alive, swept Europe and the United States. Of course, once medical science caught up, people got more practical by building alert systems into graves, just in case the person woke up and wanted out.

I realize that being buried alive sounds like a rare occurrence, but it happened frequently enough that many people were sufficiently paranoid about it to actually spend time looking for a solution. One of those people happened to be a medical doctor, a man named Adolf Gutsmuth. In 1822, and driven by the fear of being buried alive, he invented a “safety coffin” for his own interment. And he tested it out himself.

Tested it out? You bet. Dr. Gutsmuth allowed himself to be buried underground in his new “safety coffin” for several hours, during which he had meals delivered to him through a feeding tube. He enjoyed a wonderful meal of soup, sausages, and a local beer.

Sounds like a great date-night destination.

Dr. Timothy Smith of New Haven, Vermont, was another paranoid inventor. He created a grave that can be visited to this day if you happen to be passing by Evergreen Cemetery. It was a crypt buried in the usual manner, but it had a cement tube positioned over the face of the body. A glass plate was affixed to the top of the tube, at ground level.

Dr. Smith died a real, natural death, and was buried in his fancy “coffin with a view.” He never woke up, but early visitors to his grave reported that they had a clear view of his decomposing head until condensation obscured the glass.

Side note: Vampires no longer scare me. Waking up inside a small box buried six feet below the surface of the earth is what true fright looks like to me.

Another culprit in humanity’s use of the vampire label was porphyria, a rare blood disorder, but modern science has pretty much closed the case on that one, saying that it’s too far of a stretch to connect the two topics. Rabies, of all conditions, has also been used as an explanation for the rise of vampire mythology. Surprisingly, there are a lot of commonalities between victims of rabies and vampires, such as sensitivity to light and garlic, as well as altered sleep patterns.

The most recent medical condition with a strong connection to vampire mythology was actually tuberculosis. Those who suffer from TB had no vampire-like symptoms, though, and that makes this connection harder to explain. It’s also, incidentally, where one of my favorite New England legends comes into the picture.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Mercy Brown.

Lena Mercy Brown was a young woman who lived in the latter half of the nineteenth century in the rural town of Exeter, Rhode Island, and she was a major player in what is now known as the Great New England Vampire Panic.

Stories like hers can be found all across Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont, echoed in the lives of others in similar situations. And the results have surprising connections to both the modern idea of vampires and the ancient stories, as we will see.

The first person to die was Mercy’s mother, Mary Eliza. That was December 1882, and she fell victim to what was then known as “consumption,” so called because as the TB ravaged the body, the person would appear to waste away—consumed, if you will, by the illness. She, of course, was buried, because that’s what you do with a loved one who passes away.

The next year, though, Mercy’s sister Mary Olive died at the age of twenty. Same illness, same symptoms. I’m not sure when the people of Exeter, Rhode Island, started to wonder if the deaths were connected, but it might have been then, or it might have been a few years later when Mercy’s brother, Edwin, took ill.

Edwin, though, was smart. He packed up and moved across the country to Colorado Springs, which had a great reputation for the healing properties of its dry climate. When he returned from the West some years later, he was alive but not doing well. And in December 1891, he took a turn for the worse.

That was also the month that Mercy herself became ill. Her tuberculosis moved fast, though. They called it the “galloping” kind, and it moved through her body quickly. By January 1892 she was dead, and the people of Exeter were more worried than ever. You see, they suspected something supernatural.

Now, this was surprising, considering how close Exeter is to Newport. That’s the seaside city known for the “summer cottages” of the wealthy—folks like the Vanderbilts, the Astors, the Wideners, and the Wetmores. It was the pinnacle of educated society. Yet just a handful of miles away, one small town that should have known better was about to do something very, very creepy.

Edwin was still alive, you see. And someone got it in their mind that one of the women who died before him, either his mother or one of his sisters, was somehow draining him of his life from beyond the grave. They were so convinced of this, you see, that they wanted to dig them all up.

Yes. All of them.

Once they received the father’s permission to do this horrible thing, a group of men gathered in the cemetery on the morning of March 17 and began to dig up the bodies.

What they were looking for was any evidence of an unnatural state. Blood in the heart, blood around the mouth, or other similar signs. The first body, that of Mary Eliza, the mother, was satisfactorily decomposed, though, so they ruled her out. Of course she was, you might say; she had been dead and buried for a decade.

Mary Olive was also in a normal state of decomposition. Again, being dead ten years usually helps convince people you’re really dead. But when they examined Mercy’s body—a body that had not been buried because she died in the middle of winter, but instead had been stored in a stone building that was essentially a walk-in freezer—they discovered a remarkable state of preservation.

Shocking, I know.

So what did they do? Well, these superstitious townsfolk did what they learned from their ancestors: they cut out Mercy’s heart and liver (within which they found red, clotted blood), burned them on a nearby stone (which is still there, by the way, near her headstone in the cemetery), and then mixed the ashes with a tonic. That tonic was then given to Edwin to drink.

Yes, Edwin Brown drank his own sister’s liver and heart.

Did it work? Nope. Edwin died less than two months later. What it did do, however, was set up Mercy Brown to be the “first American vampire.” I suppose it’s not important to mention that she wasn’t really a vampire, because you are an intelligent person, but it doesn’t hurt to say it.

As unusual as an event like this must sound, you might be surprised to learn that it happened quite frequently. In 1817, nearly a century before Mercy Brown’s exhumation, a Dartmouth College student named Frederick Ransom died of TB. His father, so worried that the young man would leave the grave and attack the family, had him dug up. Ransom’s heart was cut out and burned on a blacksmith’s forge.

Even Henry David Thoreau heard tales of these types of events, mentioning one in his personal journal. He wrote on September 26, 1859:

The savage in man is never quite eradicated. I have just read of a family in Vermont who, several of its members having died of consumption, just burned the lungs, heart, and liver of the last deceased, in order to prevent any more from having it.

So, of course, word spread about what happened to Mercy Brown, as it usually did when a body was dug up and carved into pieces like that. Mercy’s case actually made it into a newspaper called the New York World, and it made quite an impression on the people who read it.

How do we know? Because a clipping of that article was found in the personal papers of a London stage manager after his death. You see, his theater company had been touring America in 1892. He evidently found the story inspiring, so much so that he sat down a few years later and wrote a book.

The man? Bram Stoker. The book? Oh, I’m sure you guessed that already. It was Dracula, published in 1897.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Del Rey (October 10, 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1524797960
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1524797966
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.22 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.43 x 1.12 x 9.54 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #223,300 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #199 in General Anthropology
- #483 in Folklore & Mythology Studies
- #544 in Unexplained Mysteries (Books)

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Aaron Mahnke

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Aaron Mahnke is the creator, producer, and host of the hit podcast Lore (Best of iTunes 2015 & 2016), Executive Producer of the Lore television show on Amazon (from the producers of The Walking Dead), and author of The World of Lore book series (Penguin Random House / Del Rey).

Aaron has a deep love of the mysterious and frightening that began with Unsolved Mysteries and The X-Files — a love that continues to this day. Basically, he's a nerd for anything unexplainable or supernatural.

Born and raised in Illinois, Aaron now lives with his wife and children on the historic North Shore of Boston, where he writes and records full-time.

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Kelly Gunderman

Chilling, Fun, and Full of Incredible Information

Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2017

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This review originally appeared on herestohappyendings.com.

**Actual Rating: 4.5/5 Stars**

It seems as though podcasts are popping up all over as of late - and since I haven't typically been one to jump on the podcast bandwagon, it's nice to see that many of the creators of those podcasts are bringing their work to life in book form, too. This is the case for The World of Lore: Monstrous Creatures. This book, which is based on the popular podcast Lore, offers stories that have been covered on the podcast, only in a book format for those who enjoy reading, or may not have even heard about the podcast. The stories found in this book are a great companion to those who also enjoy the podcast, and might like to pick up where they left off by reading the book if they don't have the ability to listen. Either way, this fantastic book is full of horror, history, and plenty of promise to make you want to keep the lights on when you go to bed.

As one of those people who haven't really gotten into podcasts, I was pretty excited to see this book on shelves. Although I hadn't heard of Lore before seeing the advertisement for the Amazon Prime streaming special, when I did, I looked up information about it, and didn't hesitate to pick up a copy of this book. Not only is the book full of information that any horror fan will swoon over, but the cover is a beautiful deep red, with a gorgeous interior, with several illustrations on the inside of the book that add just that extra amount of creepiness to the book.

Growing up, I have always been fascinated with all things even remotely creepy. I mean, I loved horror movies and grew up watching as many as I could, reading horror novels and just plain being interested in everything that dealt with monsters: vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghosts - anything paranormal was something I knew I would love. Hence, this book? Probably one of the best that I have read on the topic of paranormal creatures.

Aaron Mahnke has created a work that touches on quite a few of history's most beloved and popular monsters. In The World of Lore: Monstrous Creatures, he breaks the books up into several sections, each with a few chapters, that introduce us to said creatures, including the folklore behind them, where they originated, and several stories that are well researched and full of valuable information that any paranormal lover will devour happily.

"When the unexplainable becomes the believable, that's when things become truly horrifying."

The World of Lore: Monstrous Creatures is broken up into five different sections. These sections are the following: The Dead Returned, A Little Problem, Back to Nature, Our Other Halves, and Beyond the Veil. Each of these sections has several stories, with the last, Beyond the Veil, having the most. Each section deals with a different type of "monster." For example, the section titled The Dead Returned talks about vampires and zombies, and gives us some insight into where the legend of vampires originated from, how they shaped history, and also gives us a few different true stories about where they have popped up throughout the years.

The second section, A Little Problem, discusses human like creatures that have popped up throughout time as menacing beings. While there are many names that these creatures go by, and their origins are widely spread around the world, the most common name these creatures are known as? Elves. In this section we learn a little bit about where they come from, stories about people who claim to have seen these creatures and have had interactions with them, and of course, a highly detailed discussion about their roots, various names they have come to see within different cultures, and the types of things that they are known for.

The section titled Back to Nature was probably one of my favorites in the book, as it dealt with famous creatures such as, you guessed it - werewolves. As well as werewolves, the book also touches on other creatures that fit in the nature theme, as well as cannibalism (as I stated previously, this book isn't exactly for the faint of heart!). While I can't say I've ever known much about werewolves beyond how Hollywood has painted these creatures to seem, it was incredibly interesting to learn about the true history of them, as well as read about some true encounters with the creatures that have been recorded throughout history.

Our Other Halves is a section that touches on legends such as The Jersey Devil and Spring-Heeled Jack. Possessed dolls are also an interesting touch here, and some of these stories are truly bone chilling, all the while being incredibly interesting. I haven't heard of a lot of these legends, but some of them, such as the tale of the rag doll Annabelle.

Finally, Beyond the Veil deals with possessions, ghost stories, and tales of those seeking vengeance from beyond the grave. Each of the stories in this section deals with ghosts and the effect that they have had on people throughout the ages. I found this section to be another one of the most interesting in the book, as I have always loved a simply frightening ghost story. If that's your thing, you'll find plenty in this section.

"We see what we want to, whether we're a skeptic or a believer. We wear our own pair of colored lenses, and they tint the world we see. Sometimes that causes us to dismiss things we should give more attention to. Other times it convinces us that the unexplainable is undeniable."

It is obvious to the reader that the author worked very hard to put this material together, as it is well researched (with a lengthy bibliography in the back of the book, which is put together for each and every story, and is a fantastic addition for those who wish to further their study on some of the topics and cases presented within the book) and the author also has plenty of personal experience with some of the places noted. In several spots, the author mentions that he has visited some of the areas being discussed, and he talks about what he saw while there. This is a nice touch, and it really brings the book to life.

I thought that there was plenty of information included for each of the stories within the book, including dates, names, and interesting facts that I didn't know. Most of the stories are roughly ten or so pages long, although some of them are quite short at only three or four. Some of them, particularly those toward the end of the book, are quite shorter. Some of these I felt could have been discussed a little more at length, but they were still interesting and I was completely drawn in nonetheless.

The World of Lore: Monstrous Creatures was one of those books that I couldn't stop reading. I started it late one night and finished it early the next morning, constantly turning pages and loving each and every part of this book. There is so much information in there, and some of it I had never even heard of. If you like a good thrill or would like to take a walk on the paranormal side of things, this book is definitely not to be missed.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Carl

From audio to print with panache

Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2017

Verified Purchase

Monsters are the best, so this is a perfect start to the Lore books.

First of all, it's a beautiful package. If you're a fan of Lore podcast, and a book nerd like me, then you'll love this thing. It's gorgeous inside and out. Second, whether or not you're familiar with all the monsters presented in the book, there's likely to be something new to consider. I've heard a lot about vampires and werewolves (who hasn't, recently, right?), but I still learned a lot from Lore. Every episode (and thus every story in the book) gave me something new to consider about where monsters hide in our imaginations and why they come out to play. True stories that feed the legends of vampires, pukwudgies, gremlins, werewolves, elves, brownies--there's a lot going on here!

The episodes translate well to the page. They're almost as fun to read as they are to listen too, and of course this also brings the stories out of iTunes and onto my shelf, which I appreciate. I'm also a fan of research, so I love having all the sources for each episode, and the chance to go and check out the research behind each of these stories.

Overall, a great book, and I'm excited to pick up the next two when they release next year. Bring on Wicked Mortals!

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

LC

Book still gets 5 stars but a couple pages fell out

Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2017

Verified Purchase

I LOVE this book. Its extremely interesting! Many interesting stories! I have never listened to the podcast. I watched the episode of Lore about vampires on Amazon prime so When i ran into this book at Barnes and noble I had to buy it immediately (but I bought it off amazon to save a few bucks) .

Once I got my boook arrived i opened it a few of the first pages almost immediately just fell out!!! Then after already losing some pages my book decided to go swimming in the bath (my bad) and that's when pages 1-13 that were already really loose also fell out. Other than that I must say the book was pretty waterproof and the rest of the book is pretty sturdy. There are no other loose pages. i am still very happy I bought this book! Can't wait for the second Lore book.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

D

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2018

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Really easy read. Short stories are perfect if you are to busy to read a novel

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RyanandJena

Podcast turned book series, a literary success

Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2017

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As a fan and long-time follower of Lore Podcast, I am absolutely THRILLED with this book. The author & producer (....dare I say King of Folklore) has now taken on publishing his podcast stories (plus some) through a book series dubbed The World of Lore. Seeming to organize them per theme/per book, the first group of the collection, told here in Monstrous Creatures, allows you to crawl into each historic exploration that Aaron Mahnke takes his followers on. Reading his words rather than hearing them, immerses you non-stop in a literary way that is simply not possible when listening to the podcasts alone.
Every. Single. Little. Detail. From the typeface to the illustrations, is meticulously executed, flawlessly. So much so, the presentation of this book alone invokes its own sense of historical folklore culture that true fans of the Lore Podcast can be proud of. While it's always nerve wracking when something you start to enjoy and grow to love becomes so successful it branches out - this is without question, very well executed. I simply cannot wait till May when the next in the series is released! Be excited, be VERY excited!

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L Hart

Creepy, chilling, thrilling and wonderfully entertaining!

Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2017

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I’ve always had a love for folklore and things that go bump in the night. I started to listen to the podcast prior to reading the books and was immediately hooked. Then Aaron Mahnke started toying with us with more books and a possible tv series. The book is published and now I can’t put it down. The Lore show on Amazon is also a must try. If you love the stories, seeing the stories materialize and take shape is very rewarding. This has been by far one of the best collections of mysterious folklore I have ever read. The stories are so well researched and the facts are sometimes more interesting than the story itself. If you love the creepy truth of lore of yesteryear this is the book you want to read at night before bed to creep you out!

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Top reviews from other countries

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I am van helsing

Livraison avant son temps

Reviewed in Canada on January 11, 2024

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Très content de la rapidité de la livraison vu les circonstances le colis est arriver intact

Merci encore

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Barone

L’importanza della LORE

Reviewed in Italy on June 5, 2022

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The media could not be loaded.

Un volume illustrato con tanti racconti brevi. In lingua originale. Prodotto cross mediale che si intreccia con l’omonimo podcast e lo show su prime video.

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Roberto Miño

A great book.

Reviewed in Mexico on March 16, 2020

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A magnificent book for all those who love stories that go beyond the normal. Each of the stories and stories in the book will catch you.

nac

Miy buen libro

Reviewed in Spain on May 10, 2020

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Muy bueno

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Monark Panchal

Decent enough but...

Reviewed in India on September 10, 2019

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Received the product today. But the book cover didn't seem to be in it's "best" and "new" condition. As it can be seen in the images a part of the cover has a deep mark on it, which fairly tampers with the beauty of the cover.

The pages of the books seem to be in a top notch quality.

Read 2 chapters till now and I am already hooked. Definitely a recommended read.
Go for it.

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