THE BIRD OF ILL OMEN Catherine Crowe: 2025 Halloween Special

What'sHerName

Dr. Katie Nelson and Olivia Meikle

Society & Culture, Documentary, History

4.8 • 538 Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Catherine Crowe was a wildly acclaimed Victorian novelist, playwright, social critic and …ghost hunter? Her novels were as popular as Charles Dickens,’ and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Martineau, and George Eliot were her ardent fans. And her pioneering catalog of ghosts and the supernatural, The Night Side of Nature, was one of the first and most influential works to be adopted by the up-and-coming Spiritualist movement. So how did this incredibly talented, incredibly famous woman disappear from our collective memory? The answer involves a few misbehaving spirits, a little bit of nudity, and a whole lot of mean-spirited gossip by one very famous frenemy. For this year’s Halloween Special, Professor Ruth Heholt helps Olivia resurrect the wildly famous, wildly fascinating, wildly under-appreciated Catherine Crowe. Selections from Catherine Crowe’s works read for us by Matthew Meikle and Emma Porter. Music featured in this episode provided by Amanda Setlik Wilson, Kevin MacLeod, Doug Maxwell, Myuu, Brian Bolger, Jesse Gallagher, and the Weber State University Choirs and Orchestra. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This season of What's Her Name is sponsored by the Women's History Initiative at the Utah Historical Society.
0:05.3	Utah Women's History is so much more than you think.
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0:43.9	more episodes happen.
0:51.7	Happy Halloween, Katie. Ooh, happy Halloween.
0:57.3	You, I think, are familiar with my deep and abiding love for Victorian ghost stories.
1:03.5	Mm.
1:04.8	Yes.
1:05.6	All the best ghosts are Victorian ghosts.
1:07.8	They are.
1:09.3	But today I want to introduce you to what I will confidently call one of the greatest, most innovative, most influential, spooky lit authors of the entire Victorian era.
1:25.2	Whoa.
1:26.4	And nobody's ever heard of her.
1:29.5	That's a bold claim.
1:32.2	And I make it correctly, as you shall see.
	...

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