EPiSODE 66.

"She is all merciless night animal... yet with a wisdom that goes back to Egypt and beyond - and which is invaluable to me. For she is my spy on buildings, you see, my intelligencer on metropolitan megastructures. She knows their secrets and their secret weaknesses, their ponderous rhythms and dark songs. And she herself is secret as their shadows. She is my Queen of Night, Our Lady of Darkness."

In two books written nearly 25 years apart, "weird fiction" guru Fritz Leiber examined how ancient witchcraft and black magic continue to prey malignantly on unsuspecting contemporary characters deeply entrenched in the rational. Whether it's faculty wives hexing a sociology professor in Conjure Wife or the paramental entities tormenting a writer in San Francisco in Our Lady Darkness, Leiber sees modern life as a conduit for a "new science" of the supernatural, which we dig into with this horror-themed October episode!

Our guest is Rebecca Baumann, head of public services at Lilly Library, curator of the 2018 exhibition Frankenstein 200: The Birth, Life and Resurrection of Mary Shelley's Monster and avid collector of genre fiction. Baumann shares her take on these essential "weird" tales as well as details of Leiber's life that offer rare insight into his perspective on femininity. (Also on how to pronounce his name, which host John Cribbs gets wrong through most of the episode.)

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