As a part of its yearly Halloween tradition, the Oneida County Library is once again planning for its Halloween night event.  For the past several years, the library has hosted the talents of folklorist and librarian Elizabeth Kent and noted Cache valley author John Olsen, who have brought the creepy to town with stories from fact and fiction, as well as their own personal experiences.  Halloween night will be October 23.

Elizabeth Kent is trained in Folklore, and studied at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, where she earned her Masters degree in Folklore and Ethnology.  She also has a Masters in Library Science from the University of Kentucky, and is a practiced researcher.  In past events, Kent has presented talks on Welsh folk traditions, supernatural stories related to Malad, and the history of Halloween itself.  This year, she plans to take on a story that is based in reality, but has become heavily mythologized—the story of Jack the Ripper.  Often viewed as the first “modern serial killer,” the unknown perpetrator of at least five murders in high Victorian London’s Whitechapel district has become a much larger than life figure in the intervening century and a half since the events that made history.  

The Ripper murders were a culmination of the fascination with crime in late nineteenth century England that coincided with the peak of newspaper, magazine, and other written content.  The time period overlaps with the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle, for instance, as well as the beginning of modern forensic science, and the concept of scientific policing.  In many ways, it was the combination of the two forces that shaped what we think of as the “true crime” space today, and “Ripperology” is a worldwide phenomenon.  Although the murders themselves were very real, Jack the Ripper has become the subject of fictional tellings spanning from the extremely low-budget (Lucio Fulci’s “New York Ripper” for instance) to the awarding (the Hughes Brothers’ “From Hell” and Alan Moore’s graphic novel it was based on ), as well as countless novels, TV episodes, comic books, and even Scooby-Doo outings.  

John Olsen, for his part, has treated Malad to stories collected from the Cache Valley and surrounding areas, including southern Idaho.  As a writer, his best selling “Stranger Bridgerland” books have covered a lot of bases as far as the unknown and unexplained go.  He has spoken to spellbound audiences in the past about his own experiences in the haunted house he grew up in, as well as some of the experiences he has not been able to explain in his adult life.  More than anything, Olsen focuses on presenting stories told to him by the many people he encounters who “swear you won’t believe what I’m going to tell you…”

Some of those stories deal with topics such as bigfoot, ghosts, puckwudgies, shadow people, black eyed children, skinwalkers, and more.  

While the presentations will not be graphic or overly grisly, the event is planned with teens to adults in mind, rather than small children.  

Refreshments, and a chance to mingle and chat with the speakers will be available to those in
attendance.