Baba Yaga: The Scary Story Behind the Fairy Tale

Journey into the haunting realm of Baba Yaga, one of Slavic folklore's most notorious figures. 

This episode dives deep into tales that transcend mere horror. Touched by personal connections and narrated by the iconic Vincent Price, listeners will uncover the dual nature of fear and courage embodied by Baba Yaga. Through the lens of a captivating radio drama adaptation, we explore a young girl's experiences against the backdrop of a mean stepmother and the ominous possibilities of meeting Baba Yaga herself. 

Chapters

• 0:04 Introduction to Melancholy Mentor
• 37:55 The Story of Baba Yaga and Its Dark Corners
• 8:02:37 Unpacking the "Coven of Witches Tales"

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to Melancholy Mentor, where classic literature meets the vibrant world of radio plays. I'm Fran and I'm joined by Evan from Mystery Mythos. Together, we're your guides on this creative journey. During each episode, we'll dive into stories featured on the Melancholy Mentor channel, allowing fresh ideas to flourish, inspiring you to dream big and unlock your creative potential. Get comfy, open your mind and embrace curiosity. Let's get started. Hello, I'm Fran and I'm Evan, and today we are exploring Baba Yaga.

Speaker 2: 0:46

Yes, Baba Yaga.

Speaker 1: 0:48

So Baba Yaga is a supernatural figure from Slavic folklore.

Speaker 2: 0:56

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 0:56

I nearly added a few extra S's onto that. Then Baba Yaga, supernatural figure from Slavic folklore, and this is highlighting a radio drama that we've got on the channel, melancholy Mentor of Baba Yaga. The Baba Yaga story is actually that she's an ogress who is said to steal, cook and eat victims, mainly children. So it's like a folklore story. The radio drama that we've got actually focuses on a different angle of the Baba Yaga story. So it's about a young girl whose mother dies and the father remarries somebody mean, so she ends up with a mean stepmother and the mean stepmother, while her father's away, sends her out to get some thread from the stepmother's sister. And this this is the story. It's mainly focused on the young girl and she's scared. The young girl's scared Because the way to get to the stepmother's sister seems awfully similar to how to reach Baba Yaga's house. So what's actually going on there?

Speaker 1: 2:28

I wonder, I wonder as well, I wonder as well. So this episode is narrated by Vincent Price. It is Amazing voice actor and amazing actor in general. So Vincent Price was born in 1911 and he perished in 1993 and he was actually 82 years old and he was born in los angeles, california. Got the most, just, one of the most amazing voices yeah yeah, so he's actually um voiced animated films, radio dramas and documentaries and famously the michael jackson song thriller.

Speaker 1: 3:10

Yeah yeah, that's part of that was um vincent price's voice as darkness falls across the land. That was vincent price. He's got two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for the motion pictures and one for television.

Speaker 2: 3:30

Wow, that's something, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, amazing.

Speaker 1: 3:33

Yeah, I didn't even realise that you had two stars. I was looking up the Hollywood stars thing and it said that he's got two. So yeah, I was quite surprised.

Speaker 2: 3:43

Well-deserved, but I didn't know either. Well-deserved, though Absolutely well-deserved. It's amazing.

Speaker 1: 3:52

So Baba Yaga is said to be the most famous Slavic folklore story. Yeah, the most famous slavic folklore story. Yeah, so by slavic, because it's a massive area, yeah, massive area. So it's a vast area of europe and um northern asia and it includes um belarus, russia, ukraine, czech republic, poland, slovenia and cro, croatia and loads of other countries. Like it's a really big area. I think this story, the radio drama adaptation that we've got, is set in Russia.

Speaker 2: 4:31

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:33

And a little note about Belarus. Years ago, I used to be a host family for children affected by the Chernobyl disaster. That happened in Ukraine, and they came from the main city, one of the main cities or towns, called Mogilev, and it was like vastly affected by the fallout from Chernobyl. So for 10 years I used to have a russian-speaking child and stay at my house for a month. So that was, I know that was an exciting adventure, and one of the children that I used to look after is actually now, um, an adult who still sends me messages and Christmas cards every year.

Speaker 2: 5:19

Oh, wow.

Speaker 1: 5:21

Yeah, really lovely. That's nice. That's my only connection with the Slavic region. I've never actually visited any of those countries.

Speaker 2: 5:33

No, it'd be interesting to though.

Speaker 1: 5:36

But a lot of it's steeped in history and just amazing architecture as well, and the stories, yeah, so I'd be very interested in the stories that go along with the history of these towns and slavic regions. Yeah, very interesting. Um right, so do we have anything on the actual recording that we've got?

Speaker 2: 5:58

yeah, um, so it was actually um published in 1973 as, uh, it was actually put on lp, so it was made into like a double lp um called on a coven of witches tales so by lp would mean vinyl record vinyl record and also then it was put on cassette, so it's kind of like it got recorded onto both and it consisted of seven stories all in all, obviously all relating back to witches, and they were all narrated by Vincent Price and the actual publisher was something called Cardamon Records and it looks like they did completely put completely spoken word onto record. That looks like what they were doing at the time. This is the longest story on there, at 15 minutes long. They all vary, one of them's only like five minutes, so you know they all vary, but the longest is this one at 15. What else have I got? We've had 116 views on this one, so that's not bad.

Speaker 1: 7:20

Yeah, it's not one of our highest, but we're a small channel. We're a small channel that's organically growing, so very grateful for that yeah, and the video.

Speaker 2: 7:27

Sorry, the video that goes with it is um paul harbour, so we've got paul harbour.

Speaker 1: 7:33

That's the video I was just going to say. I think people should listen um, purely for the voice of vincent price yeah, yeah, you could just listen along, watch it. Um whatever, I don't think it's the only story we've got not watch if it's for the voice of vincent, sorry, it's not the only one.

Speaker 2: 7:52

We've got um. We've got some of the other ones on the channel as well, but come under um, come off the lp.

Speaker 1: 7:58

So what's the coven of witches tales? Yeah, the coven of witches tales and, as you've said, the video that I filmed for this is actually um towards pool harbour. Yeah, so it's an area just slightly going towards somewhere called the beta um in dorset and it's the camera's pointed at Pool Harbour and just in the distance slightly yeah, yeah nice boats.

Speaker 1: 8:25

It was filmed in the evening, so it's got quite a nice little look to it yeah, yeah, lovely so yeah, that's all I've got yeah, okay, so the episode that we've got is so that's 15 minutes yeah yeah, on the channel.

Speaker 1: 8:44

Okay, so that's Baba Yaga, narrated by Vincent Price on the Melancholy Mental channel. So go and give it a listen and, as usual, please drop any comments that you have. Um, if you've got any more information about what we've highlighted or about the radio drama that we actually have, then please do let us know, because we'd love any other information. As always, we don't often have a lot to go on with these radio dramas, and we've got another channel as well, which is Mystery Mythos, and that's mainly sci-fi. So go and give them a listen, definitely, or watch yeah, we do provide video with them as well, and, unfortunately, the video that we've got to say unfortunately, because it is a lovely video of paul harbour it's not actually a video of you can't see vincent price himself, which would have been epic, but there's no, um, actual video recording of him. It was just his voice, yeah, so, which is why we've put our own video to it. Okay, thank you, bye, soon bye.