The Body Snatcher

End of The Banshee Read by Craig Campbell in Appleton, Wisconsin, in 2009

The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson Every night in the year, four of us sat in the small parlor of the George at Debenham.

the undertaker and the landlord, and Fettys and myself.

Sometimes there would be more, but blow high, blow low, come rain or snow or frost, we four would each be planted in his own particular armchair.

It was part of his trade to despise and desecrate the scrolls and trumpets of old tombs, the paths worn by the feet of worshippers and mourners, and the offerings and inscriptions of bereaved affection.

To rustic neighborhoods where love is more commonly tenacious and where some bonds of blood and fellowship unite, the entire society ever perished.

The body snatcher, far from being repelled by natural respect, was attracted by the ease and safety of the task.

To bodies that had been laid in earth, in joyful expectation of a far different awakening, there came that hasty, lamplit, terror-haunted resurrection of the spade and mattock.

This is a special episode dedicated to my daughter, Liberty, who is currently studying to become a medical doctor.

Let's take a visit to an old cemetery with the body snatchers.

A horror story by Robert Louis Stevenson printed in 1884 from characters based on Burke and Hare who were employed by surgeon Robert Knox in the 1820s as grave diggers.

Cadavers needed for dissections and anatomical research in the Edinburgh Medical Schools were supplied.

Stay tuned.

Now, let's listen to my favorite radio adaptations on the case.

If a body needs a body, just call Burke and Hare by Crime Classics from 1953, The Body Snatchers from Suspense in 1942, and a scary production from Nightfall in 1980.

We will conclude with a version from CBS Radio Mystery Theater, broadcast in 1974.

That sounds like the intro to a weird tale to me.

And I have to admit, I didn't think of Invasion of the Body Snatchers as a weird tale, but by golly, it's as weird as I'll get out.

And we're going to talk about the original novel by Jack Finney here on Strange Studies to Strange Stories.

I'm Chris Lackey.

And I'm Chad Pfeiffer.

We are going to call it Invasion of the Body Snatchers because that is the title under which it is often printed.

But the actual name of this book is The Body Snatchers.

It was originally serialized under that title in Collier's Magazine in November and December of 1954 and then published in a more extended book form under that title, The Body Snatchers, in 1955.