Imagine a shadowy Gothic library, hidden snugly in an ancient medieval university. Towering bookshelves strain upward towards the fan-vaulted ceiling. Minuscule dust motes pepper the air. Slim fingers of grey light extend through unwashed windows. Wooden balustrades on the edge of each floor protect preoccupied scholars from tumbling to their deaths.
Stroll down the aisles. Run your fingertips across the spines of the books. Feel the cracks in the timeworn leather bindings. Pull one out. Its cover is decorated with odd and unfamiliar symbols. Others, with titles such as the Codex Gigas or the Grand Grimoire (dubbed The Black Bible) contain knowledge once considered so dangerous that just possessing them, never mind reading them, would bring charges of heresy and, if convicted, sentences of death which were neither quick nor merciful.
At the end of the aisle stands a glass case containing medieval manuscripts such as psalters and books of hours, their covers richly jeweled or covered with heraldic symbols. Some of these are the only copies still extant. Their pages, called “parchment”, are made from specially-prepared goat or sheepskins. Large ones often required over five hundred skins to make. Only the Church and the very wealthy could afford to own one.
Finally, breathe deeply. Fill your lungs with that intoxicating scent that all bibliophiles know instantly. That’s Bibliosmia (pronounced “Bib-lee-O-see-ma”), a fragrance specific to old books, and described as a vanilla-tinged perfume laced with touches of almond or worn leather. Readers know there is no scent like it in the world.
My fascination with the Gothic, the mysterious and the unusual began when I discovered the old cemetery behind my childhood home when I was nine or ten.
It was situated on a small wooded lot carpeted with pine needles. To reach it, you had to walk through our orchard and push your way through a tangle of honeysuckle vines, kudzu and young dogwood trees thrusting their slender limbs into the sunlight. Upon penetrating the veil (so to speak), I saw that centuries of shifting soil had caused the headstones, most dating back to the 1600s and 1700s, to lean drunkenly to one side or the other. Some had yielded to the law of gravity altogether and lay face-down on the earth. Many of the once clear inscriptions had been scoured away by time and the elements, or hidden under layers of moist, green moss.
After exploring a bit, I discovered a concave depression in the ground covered with dead leaves and twigs and surrounded by cracked and broken bricks.
A sunken grave!
What a delight to an only child like me with an active imagination! Of course, I wanted to probe further into its hidden recesses, but (reluctantly) I refrained from doing so. My curiosity was stopped by the possibility that one wrong step would send me sliding helplessly down into some hellish landscape from which I would never be rescued. (See? Imagination!) But one day, I did clear the leaves and neaten the bricks and had to be satisfied with that.
It became one of my favorite places to play and dream, and that’s how it all got started.
Fast forward a bit. Between 2023 and 2025, I lost three legal assistant jobs. After thirty years of working in law, I had come to hate it but, after all that time, what else was I good for? This question prompted much soul-searching, and I started thinking about my days as a freelance writer. I started in 1990 just for fun, building a respectable portfolio long the way and even getting my own magazine column! But by 2015, my enthusiasm had waned so I stopped.
Now I realized that, freed from a profession I loathed, the Universe was giving me an opportunity to become what I had always wanted to be: a working writer. Thus, this blog.
To bring this full circle, Quill & Crypt will be my own eclectic and wonderful library – a playground where I can explore all the shadowy, secret and/or forgotten subjects to which I have always been drawn.
For example, have you ever wondered:
Which form of bubonic plague kills the quickest and why?
Why is the blade of a guillotine wedge-shaped rather than straight-edged?
Where did our most-beloved fairy tales, like Cinderella, actually come from?
AND … for the upcoming Christmas season – do you know the legend of the Yule Cat? (You will,)
There will be lighter (and funnier) topics as well. Profiles of my favorite artists like Paula Rego and Hieronymus Bosch. My favorite Gothic novels. World folklore. Weird (and otherwise) history (Medieval marginalia in particular – fighting SNAILS! homicidal BUNNIES!). Book reviews. Oddities. The occasional rant.
Alright, one more. Do you know what happened to Oliver Cromwell’s head? (Short answer: It did a lot of traveling.)
I’ll post pictures of weird, beautiful or moving things without commentary from Yours Truly (but which will be captioned). On those, I want your thoughts and reactions. Like this one (to be covered in a future post. Feel free to comment!)
I plan to post once a week to give me time to research my subject properly. There will also be pages for the blog on social media (Facebook, BlueSky and Instagram) to which you can subscribe and which will contain things not written about in the posts.
If I ever get something wrong – please point it out (politely). I will fact-check everything but nobody gets it right all the time.
It’s going to be a very interesting journey and I invite you to come along on my personal voyage of intellectual discovery.
(See? Funny!)
First, a few ground rules.
None of this, please:
Also, none of this (but there will be plenty of cats):
And absolutely, POSITIVELY NONE OF THIS (unless it’s history-related):
Be respectful. Play nice – or your comment gets hurled into oblivion. (Yes, they’ll be checked for spam and rudeness.)
Let’s go!
What do YOU think?