The Resurrectionist novella’s seed is a creepy anecdote my father liked to tell me when I was a child. For a short time after leaving the army, he was a prison guard at the Southern Illinois Penitentiary in Chester, Illinois, USA. In those days, right before a work detail buried a dead prisoner’s coffin, the guard in charge had to check the box to make sure the correct person was indeed inside and indeed dead. As a seven-year-old, I found this a cool and (obviously) memorable story. As an adult, it seems like a truly misguided escape plan. Which inspired other thoughts about coffins, many of which are on display in The Resurrectionist.

Missouri State Penitentiary

I found my very own Missouri state penitentiary was the perfect setting for my buried-prisoner horror story. Closed in 2004, it operated for 168 years, the oldest continuously operating penitentiary west of the Mississippi. There are several good books about the penitentiary, and the prison is open as a historical site for tours.

• Shanks to Shakers: Reflections Of The Missouri State Penitentiary by Mark S. Schreiber
• Somewhere In Time: 170 Years of Missouri Correction, 1825-1976 by Mark S. Schreiber and Laura Moeller
• Missouri State Penitentiary Tours

Anarchist Women

On that tour, I was excited to learn that several high-profile women spent time at the Missouri State Penitentiary in the early twentieth century. They were deemed radical anarchists by the federal government for their opposition to World War I.

• Living My Life by Emma Goldman
• A Fragment Of The Prison Experiences of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman by Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman
• In Prison by Kate Richards O’Hare
• Gabriella Antolini, aka, Dynamite Girl

I found additional information about the opinions and lives of early twentieth-century anarchists from a number of sources, including:

• Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background by Paul Avrich

Revenant Ballads

At several points in the story Sean sings a revenant ballad, which turned into quite a rabbit-hole of research. While I wanted to use a version of The Lover’s Ghost recorded by A.L. Lloyd (Childe # 248, Roud # 179, variant of The Grey Cock), ultimately (and sadly) I ended up writing my own poem. But check out the recording of The Lover’s Ghost by the Fay Hield Trio here. Other supernatural resources are:

• “Tale Roles And Revenants: A Morphology of Ghosts,” by David Buchan And Edward Ives in Western Folklore
• “The Singing Never Stopped: The Transformation of Scottish And American Supernatural Ballads,” Weber State University Conference, 2012

Mountain Magic

The specifics of Jessop’s mountain magic and manic religiosity are fictional but meant to be plausible opinions of this tragically disturbed man.  Some resources included:

• “Not Doctrine But Experience: Pentecostal Preaching In the 1920s” by M. Hutchinson, University of Sydney conference paper.
• The Candle And The Crossroad: A Book Of Appalachian Conjure And Southern Root Work by Orion Foxwood
• Old Style Conjure: Hoodoo, Rootwork and Folk Magic by Starr Casas
• Hoodoo Herb And Root Magic: A Materia Magica of African-American Conjure by catherine yronwod
• Lucky Mojo Website Forum