Halloween Spooky Spectacular

For the month of October, SCRC is sharing some of the spookier materials in our collections, covering topics such as witchcraft, demonology, monsters, and spirits. Please join the Special Collections Research Center in exploring some of our most supernaturally-inclined and spook-tacular collections on Thursday, October 20th, at 3pm, in a live unboxing event, “Halloween Spooky Spectacular.”

In the Research and Study Collection of Comic Books, there are several interesting comic books of the spooky and horror variety, including several volumes of Tales from the Crypt. Tales from the Crypt was a bimonthly horror comic series produced by Entertaining Comics (EC) from 1950 to 1955. The stories for these comics were inspired by existing works from Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, and Carl Dreyer, among others. “The Man Who was Death,” featured below, is the second story in The Crypt of Terror and features Edgar Bowman on his quest to become a public executioner. 

One of the rare books in our collections, La demonomanie des sorciers (1598) by Jean Bodin, is a well-known text in the history of witchcraft persecutions from the early modern period. The book is based on Bodin's experiences as a judge, and it was one of the first works to provide a legal definition of witchcraft as a guide to other members of the French judicial system. Other rare books at SCRC, including Daimonologia and Demonology and Witchcraft, explore the “possibility and reality of magick, sorcery and witchcraft” throughout early European history. 

Other occult texts can be found in the Bernard Unti Book and Ephemera Collection on Animal Studies (a new collection soon available for research), including the Nine Circles of the Hell of the Innocent compiled by G.M. Rhodes and Dreams and Dream Stories by Anna Kingsford. Nine Circles is a rather graphic compilation of descriptions of cruel practices towards animals in the 19th century. The text makes a comparison between the nine circles of Hell, as described in Dante's Inferno, to the inhumane treatment of animals at the time. Dreams and Dream Stories is a compilation of dream stories written by Anna Kingsford, who could recall the content of her dreams in remarkable detail. Dreams and Dream Stories contains several nightmarish tales from Kingsford's dreams, including "The Haunted Inn," and "The City of Blood."

On Thursday, October 20th, at 3pm, please join SCRC in an unboxing event, “Halloween Spooky Spectacular.” In the livestream, SCRC staff will unbox some of our spookiest materials, including items discussed in this blog post. These SCRC “unboxings” are live streamed on the Libraries’ new YouTube channel, and they are free and open to the public. You can view past SCRC livestream unboxing here. 

If you are interested in viewing collection materials, you can access them by scheduling an appointment with the Special Collections Research Center. The Special Collections Research Center is open by appointment only. Appointments are available Monday–Friday, 9am–6pm and Saturday, 1pm–5pm. Requests for a Saturday appointment must be received no later than Tuesday of the same week. If you have any questions or are interested in viewing Special Collections materials, please contact us at library_specialcollections@ncsu.edu or submit a request online.