Loreplay

In 1928, on the night before Thanksgiving, a sixty-year-old Pennsylvania folk healer named Nelson Rehmeyer was beaten to death in his farmhouse by three men who believed he had cursed them. The house they tried to burn wouldn't burn. The clock above the stove stopped at 12:01. And the trial that followed became one of the most surreal legal spectacles in American history — partly because the judge edited the word "witch" out of the murder confession before the jury ever heard it. This week: Hex Hollow, Pennsylvania Powwow, the grimoire you can still buy on Amazon (four and a half stars), and the question of what happens when a community's entire system for understanding suffering points to a person. Dark, accurate, and genuinely strange.

Key Sources

Arthur Lewis, Hex (1969) — foundational narrative account. Still widely cited.

David W. Kriebel, Powwowing Among the Pennsylvania Dutch (Penn State University Press, 2007) — definitive academic treatment of Braucherei. Source for cure specifics (wound chant, hog bladder remedy, dollar bill vision test).

Johann Georg Hohman, Pow-Wows; or, Long Lost Friend (1820, multiple editions) — free on Internet Archive; annotated academic edition from Penn State University Press; also Amazon.

Shane Free, dir., Hex Hollow: Witchcraft and Murder in Pennsylvania (2015) — free to stream; features descendants of all parties and modern Powwow practitioners. Highly recommended companion viewing.

CrimeReads (2021), "A Tale of Witchcraft and Murder in Jazz Age America" — best single account of the trial proceedings and courtroom dynamics.

Wikipedia, Rehmeyer's Hollow — for baseline fact-check. Note: some popular sources contain errors on dates and childhood healer details; trial transcripts are the more reliable source.

Hey hey, my fellow Lore Lovers… welcome to Loreplay. 🖤

This is the podcast where history gets messy, folklore gets questionable, and I willingly spiral so you don’t have to. I’m your host, Dayna Pereira—your resident investigator of all things creepy, cursed, and deeply side-eye worthy.

Each week, we dig into the stories that make you go “wait… what the hell actually happened?”—from haunted places and urban legends to true crime and historical chaos. We separate fact from fiction… and then stare directly into the uncomfortable space in between.

📲 Come hang out with me outside the void:
Instagram and TikTok: @loreplaypod
Website: https://loreplaypod.com

Prefer to Watch 👀
Find us on YouTube here:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP49XVyr_raHi3VVxXr91_w

👀 GOT A STORY? (I know you do…)
If you’ve experienced something weird, spooky, glitchy, or straight-up unexplainable—send it in. Your story might be featured in a future episode.

📩 Submit here: loreplaypod@gmail.com

⚠️ Listener Discretion:
We talk about dark stuff here—death, violence, and the occasional deeply cursed human behavior. If that’s not your vibe, totally fair… but if it is? Welcome home. 🖤

💀 If you liked this episode:
Follow, rate, review, share it with a friend who also loves questionable life choices and spooky stories. It helps the show grow—and keeps me emotionally stable (barely).

And remember…
Just because it’s folklore… doesn’t mean it’s (all) fiction. 😏

Public executions were already brutal… but then came Jack Ketch—the executioner who somehow made death worse. Known across 17th-century England for his shockingly bad aim, Ketch didn’t just take lives—he botched them, turning executions into slow, horrifying spectacles that crowds couldn’t look away from. From nobles begging for mercy to audiences watching in disbelief, this is the story of the man who became infamous not for killing… but for how badly he did it. Because nothing says “career failure” like needing multiple swings of an axe.

Hey hey, my fellow weirdos… welcome to Loreplay. 🖤

This is the podcast where history gets messy, folklore gets questionable, and I willingly spiral so you don’t have to. I’m your host, Dayna Pereira—your resident investigator of all things creepy, cursed, and deeply side-eye worthy.

Each week, we dig into the stories that make you go “wait… what the hell actually happened?”—from haunted places and urban legends to true crime and historical chaos. We separate fact from fiction… and then stare directly into the uncomfortable space in between.

📲 Come hang out with me outside the void:
Instagram and TikTok: @loreplaypod
Website: https://loreplaypod.com

Prefer to Watch 👀
Find us on YouTube here:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP49XVyr_raHi3VVxXr91_w

👀 GOT A STORY? (I know you do…)
If you’ve experienced something weird, spooky, glitchy, or straight-up unexplainable—send it in. Your story might be featured in a future episode.

📩 Submit here: loreplaypod@gmail.com

⚠️ Listener Discretion:
We talk about dark stuff here—death, violence, and the occasional deeply cursed human behavior. If that’s not your vibe, totally fair… but if it is? Welcome home. 🖤

💀 If you liked this episode:
Follow, rate, review, share it with a friend who also loves questionable life choices and spooky stories. It helps the show grow—and keeps me emotionally stable (barely).

And remember…
Just because it’s folklore… doesn’t mean it’s (all) fiction. 😏

Primary Sources

• Evelyn, John. The Diary of John Evelyn. Entry for July 15, 1685. Evelyn was a direct eyewitness to the Monmouth execution and his account is considered one of the most reliable contemporary records.
• The Apologie of John Ketch (1683). Pamphlet published under Ketch's name following the execution of Lord Russell. Authorship disputed — some historians attribute it to Ketch himself; others note the provenance is uncertain. Cited with that caveat in-episode.
• Proceedings of the Old Bailey. January 14, 1676. First recorded court mention of Ketch by name.
• The Plotters Ballad, Being Jack Ketch's Incomparable Receipt for the Cure of Traytorous Recusants (1678). Satirical broadsheet pamphlet. Held at the British Library.

Secondary Sources

• Wales, Tim. "John Ketch." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004. The most authoritative modern biographical summary.
• Engel, Howard. Lord High Executioner: An Unashamed Look at Hangmen, Headsmen, and Their Kind. Key Porter Books, 1996. Covers Ketch in the context of execution history broadly.
• Wade, Stephen. Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths series. Cites and questions the provenance of the Apologie pamphlet.
• Stephenson, Neal. The Baroque Cycle (2003–2004). Historical fiction; useful for period color on the execution economy and aristocratic tipping customs, not cited as fact.
• Jullian, Philippe. Robert de Montesquiou (1965). Not directly relevant to Ketch but cited in the Moberly-Jourdain literature — flagged here only because it came up in research adjacently.

Online / Reference Sources Used in Research

• "Jack Ketch." Wikipedia. Consulted April 2026. Used for general chronology and cross-referencing broadsheet citations.
• "Jack Ketch." EBSCO Research Starters / Biography. Consulted April 2026.
• "1685: James Scott, Duke of Monmouth." Executed Today (executedtoday.com). Consulted April 2026. Particularly useful for scaffold dialogue sourcing and crowd response detail.
• Sherrat, Tim. "Jack Ketch." AllThatHistory (allthathistory.com). Consulted April 2026.
• "Fall of Monmouth: Sedgemoor, Capture & Botched Execution." History Defined (historydefined.net). Consulted April 2026.
• "An Execution Timeline: The Duke of Monmouth's Last Days." English Historical Fiction Authors (englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.com). Consulted April 2026. Useful for detailed scaffold dialogue reconstruction.
• "Execution of the Duke of Monmouth." Warwalks (warwalks.com). Consulted April 2026.
• "The Execution of Monmouth." Our Civilisation — sourcing Macaulay's History of England. Consulted April 2026.
• Historic Royal Palaces — Tower of London official records. Referenced for the five-blow count on the Monmouth execution.

In this absolutely chaotic slice of history, we dive into one of the strangest—and most painful—medical mysteries ever recorded: exploding teeth. Yes. Actual human teeth. Exploding. Inside people’s mouths. Set in the early-to-mid 1800s, this episode centers around several documented cases—most famously that of Reverend D.A. Spriggs—whose sudden, violent dental pain didn’t just throb… it detonated. Victims reported intense pressure, unbearable agony, and then—BANG—teeth cracking, shattering, or even bursting apart with an audible pop.

We follow the timeline of these bizarre incidents, focusing on personal accounts that read more like horror fiction than medical documentation. People described flashes of light, gunshot-like sounds, and immediate relief after the explosion—as if their mouth just rage-quit.

So what the hell was happening?

We break down the leading theories:

•  Early dental fillings made from unstable metals (hello, 1800s chaos chemistry) 
•  Hydrogen gas buildup inside decaying teeth (yes, your mouth potentially becoming a tiny bomb) 
•  Galvanic reactions—basically a battery forming in your mouth because of mixed metals 

…and why none of these explanations fully hold up under scrutiny.

Because here’s the thing: even modern dentistry can’t fully explain how a tooth could generate enough internal pressure to literally explode.

So was this a weird cluster of misdiagnosed dental abscesses? A case of experimental dentistry gone wrong? Or something even stranger—something we just don’t understand anymore?

Either way, this episode will make you:

•  Fear toothaches on a whole new level 
•  Deeply appreciate modern dentistry 
•  And maybe… never ignore mouth pain again 

Because in the 1800s, a toothache wasn’t just annoying.

It might have been a ticking time bomb.

SOURCES

Primary Source

"Explosion of Teeth With Audible Report"

W.H. Atkinson. The Dental Cosmos, Vol. 2, January 1861. University of Michigan / Hathi Trust digital archive.

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/dencos/acf8385.0002.001/333:78

Note: The archive page is image-based and requires institutional access. The Atkinson quotes used in this episode are reproduced via the secondary sources below, both of which cite this original directly.

Secondary Sources

"The gruesome and mysterious case of exploding teeth"

BBC Future, 1 March 2016. Includes expert commentary from Hugh Devlin (Professor of Restorative Dentistry, University of Manchester) and Andrea Sella (Professor of Inorganic Chemistry, UCL).

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160301-the-gruesome-and-mysterious-case-of-exploding-teeth

Note: This URL was blocked from direct fetch during production. Content confirmed via the Amusing Planet piece below, which reproduces both expert quotes and cites BBC Future as source.

"From the archive: The mysterious case of 'exploding teeth'"

British Dental Journal, vol. 219, pp. 376–377. Published 23 October 2015.

https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2015.809

Reproduces BDJ correspondence originally published 1965–1966: Cyril Tomes (21 Sept 1965), B. Eady (5 Oct 1965), Basil G. Bibby / University of Pennsylvania (Dec 1965), Louis I. Grossman / University of Pennsylvania (Feb 1966). The Grossman letter quotes directly from J. Phelps Hibler's 1874 book. Directly fetched and verified.

"The Case of The Exploding Teeth"

Amusing Planet, 21 February 2023.

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2023/02/the-case-of-exploding-teeth.html

Reproduces the full Atkinson quote from The Dental Cosmos, summarizes the Hibler and BDJ cases, and includes the Devlin and Sella quotes from BBC Future. Directly fetched and verified. Used as the primary route to Atkinson's text.

Hey hey, my fellow lore lovers… welcome to Loreplay. 🖤

This is the podcast where history gets messy, folklore gets questionable, and I willingly spiral so you don’t have to. I’m your host, Dayna Pereira—your resident investigator of all things creepy, cursed, and deeply side-eye worthy.

Each week, we dig into the stories that make you go “wait… what the hell actually happened?”—from haunted places and urban legends to true crime and historical chaos. We separate fact from fiction… and then stare directly into the uncomfortable space in between.

📲 Come hang out with me outside the void:
Instagram and TikTok: @loreplaypod
Website: https://loreplaypod.com

Prefer to Watch 👀
Find us on YouTube here:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP49XVyr_raHi3VVxXr91_w

👀 GOT A STORY? (I know you do…)
If you’ve experienced something weird, spooky, glitchy, or straight-up unexplainable—send it in. Your story might be featured in a future episode.

📩 Submit here: loreplaypod@gmail.com

⚠️ Listener Discretion:
We talk about dark stuff here—death, violence, and the occasional deeply cursed human behavior. If that’s not your vibe, totally fair… but if it is? Welcome home. 🖤

💀 If you liked this episode:
Follow, rate, review, share it with a friend who also loves questionable life choices and spooky stories. It helps the show grow—and keeps me emotionally stable (barely).

And remember…
Just because it’s folklore… doesn’t mean it’s (all) fiction. 😏

In 1837, something started terrorizing the outskirts of London. It had eyes like red balls of fire, metallic claws, and a deeply unsettling habit of vomiting blue flame directly into women's faces. It leapt over nine-foot walls. It slapped soldiers and laughed at bullets. It turned up in Devon as a four-legged bear-thing, starred in Victorian penny dreadfuls, got adopted as a bogeyman for misbehaving children, and then — after 67 years of sightings across England and into Scotland — simply vanished into the dark.

This week on Loreplay, we're covering Spring Heeled Jack: England's most chaotic urban legend and the Victorian era's most aggressively uncatchable public menace.

We'll dig into the documented 1838 attacks on Jane Alsop and Lucy Scales — two women whose detailed, police-recorded accounts are the closest thing this legend has to a paper trail. We'll meet the Lord Mayor of London, who had a very bad January trying to explain all of this to a crowded public session at Mansion House. We'll examine the mountain of press coverage that turned a probable aristocratic prank into a national panic. And we'll spend some quality time with Henry de la Poer Beresford, the 3rd Marquess of Waterford — known to his contemporaries as the Mad Marquis — who is either the most compelling suspect in Victorian folklore history, or just a very convenient scapegoat.

Nobody was ever convicted of being Spring Heeled Jack. This is going to bother us both.

SOURCES

Academic and book sources

Bell, Karl. The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack: Victorian Urban Folklore and Popular Cultures. Boydell Press, 2012. The definitive academic study. Bell's analysis of the class-based disparity in press coverage of the Alsop and Scales cases is essential.

Dash, Mike. "Spring-heeled Jack: To Victorian Bugaboo from Suburban Ghost." Fortean Studies, vol. 3, 1996. The most rigorous forensic accounting of which sightings are documented vs. fabricated. The necessary corrective to Haining.

Haining, Peter. The Legend and Bizarre Crimes of Spring-Heeled Jack. Frederick Muller Ltd, 1977. Influential but unreliable in places. Read alongside Dash.

Contemporary newspaper accounts

The Times (London), January 9–11, 1838. Coverage of the Mansion House public session, the Peckham letter, and the volume of correspondence from suburban London.

The Times (London), March 2, 1838. "The Late Outrage at Old Ford." The Jane Alsop attack and the Thomas Millbank trial.

The Morning Post, March 7, 1838. The Lucy Scales attack in Limehouse.

The Examiner, March 4, 1838. The Millbank case and magistrates' questioning.

The Times (London), April 14, 1838. Reprint of the Brighton Gazette report on the Rosehill, Sussex gardener incident.

Reference and secondary sources

Wikipedia contributors. "Spring-heeled Jack." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Accessed April 2026.

Wikipedia contributors. "Henry Beresford, 3rd Marquess of Waterford." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Accessed April 2026.

Upton, Chris. "Spring-Heeled Jack." BBC Legacies (archived). Black Country sightings and local context.

Mackley, Jon. "The Return of Spring-Heeled Jack: The Terror of London." jonmackley.com, 2020. Traces the legend's documentation history and flags Haining's fabrications in detail.

Castleton, David. "Spring-Heeled Jack — Did a Fire-Breathing Phantom Haunt Victorian London?" The Serpent's Pen, 2023.

Unresolved.me. "Spring-Heeled Jack." Detailed on the Turner Street incident and the embroidered coat of arms.

Waterford Treasures. "Spring Heeled Jack: Notorious Urban Legend or the Work of the 'Mad Marquess' of Waterford?" waterfordtreasures.com, 2020.

Brewer, E. Cobham. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1880 edition. First published naming of the Marquess of Waterford as the Spring Heeled Jack suspect.

Hey hey, my fellow weirdos… welcome to Loreplay. 🖤

This is the podcast where history gets messy, folklore gets questionable, and I willingly spiral so you don’t have to. I’m your host, Dayna Pereira—your resident investigator of all things creepy, cursed, and deeply side-eye worthy.

Each week, we dig into the stories that make you go “wait… what the hell actually happened?”—from haunted places and urban legends to true crime and historical chaos. We separate fact from fiction… and then stare directly into the uncomfortable space in between.

📲 Come hang out with me outside the void:
Instagram and TikTok: @loreplaypod
Website: https://loreplaypod.com

Prefer to Watch 👀
Find us on YouTube here:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP49XVyr_raHi3VVxXr91_w

👀 GOT A STORY? (I know you do…)
If you’ve experienced something weird, spooky, glitchy, or straight-up unexplainable—send it in. Your story might be featured in a future episode.

📩 Submit here: loreplaypod@gmail.com

⚠️ Listener Discretion:
We talk about dark stuff here—death, violence, and the occasional deeply cursed human behavior. If that’s not your vibe, totally fair… but if it is? Welcome home. 🖤

💀 If you liked this episode:
Follow, rate, review, share it with a friend who also loves questionable life choices and spooky stories. It helps the show grow—and keeps me emotionally stable (barely).

And remember…
Just because it’s folklore… doesn’t mean it’s (all) fiction. 😏

In the shadow of colonial Rio de Janeiro, beneath the historic Arco do Teles, lives the legend of Bárbara dos Prazeres—a woman remembered as beautiful, powerful… and possibly monstrous.

Said to have lived between the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Bárbara’s story blends documented history with chilling folklore. Some versions claim she murdered her husband and lover, escaped justice through wealth and influence, and later became the center of horrifying rumors involving missing children and blood rituals tied to youth and beauty.

But here’s the truth: very little of this is firmly documented.
What survives is a story shaped by:

•  colonial power structures 
•  gender expectations 
•  religious fear 
•  and a city built on both wealth and exploitation 

Today, the Arco do Teles remains a real historical site—by day, a bustling corridor; by night, a place many claim still carries echoes of the past.

So was Bárbara a killer… a scapegoat… or something much harder to define?

Let’s step under the arch and find out.

Sources: 

• Ribeiro, Fernando Barata. Crônicas da Polícia e da Vida do Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Departamento de Imprensa Nacional, 1958. (the foundational primary source — directly quoted in most modern accounts)
• Rezzutti, Paulo. Mulheres do Brasil: A história não contada. Rio de Janeiro: Leya, 2018.
• Flores, Fernanda. "A lenda de Bárbara dos Prazeres, a prostituta que aterrorizou o Rio de Janeiro." Saiba História, February 12, 2020. saibahistoria.blogspot.com
• "Arco do Teles." Rio Memórias (virtual museum). riomemorias.com.br
• "A lenda de Bárbara dos Prazeres, a temida 'Bruxa do Arco do Teles.'" Brazilian Times, November 11, 2025. braziliantimes.com
• Serqueira, Carlos. "A Bruxa do Arco do Teles." Mapas Antigos, Histórias Curiosas. Referenced via diariodorio.com
• "Roda dos Expostos da Santa Casa de Misericórdia do Rio de Janeiro." História Hoje. historiahoje.com
• "Arco do Teles." FreeWalker Tours Rio. freewalkertours.com
• "Uma história de terror no centro do Rio de Janeiro." Instituto de Longevidade. institutodelongevidade.org
• "Bárbara dos Prazeres: a bruxa que aterrorizou o Arco do Teles." Iconografia da História, February 1, 2021. iconografiadahistoria.com.br

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