Supernatural Selection: ‘Malleus Maleficrapum’ Episode Guide

Given the work that I do when it comes time to write and produce an episode of Supernatural Selection, it felt fitting to include posts here about the episodes I run. It gives me a chance to write about researching and writing strange topics, how we approach material as sources for humor, and what my overall thoughts are about the show.

For those unfamiliar, or haven’t seen the landing page I added for the podcast here on the site, Supernatural Selection is a weekly podcast about occult, weird, and Fortean topics. The show was created by my comic friend Kevin Hayman, and I was the first guest. Eventually, I wrote a series of episodes and then became a co-host along with the other, frequent guest Mike “The Skeptic.”

Anyway, this week’s episode was “Malleus Maleficrapum.”

This Week: “Malleus Maleficrapum” – A Dive into the Malleus Maleficarum

You can either stream the episode directly on the website, or on YouTube in the embed below.

So, the format of the show has settled into a comfortable groove of rotating between scripts and topics written between Kevin and me. Generally, he writes an episode, we do two “Week in Weird” episodes, and then I write an episode. I am only now starting to write about this here on my site because, well, I really only repurposed the site a few months ago.

This gives Kevin and I about a month each to research and write our scripts. With that said… I am a pretty lazy writer in this regard and do not have the script written until around Monday the week we record. That gives Kevin and Mike about 48 hours to make their contributions, as we record on Thursday nights.

The episode is already written in my head, I just have to transcribe it into bullet points and organize my thoughts. I just leave the mechanics for the last minute. Kevin isn’t much better in that regard.

Researching the Malleus Maleficarum

As I mentioned in the episode, 2025 is my year of magic topics and I want to explore witchcraft more for episode material. This episode is essentially a sequel to the previous episode I wrote at the tail end of 2024 about Heinrich Kramer, the author (and bastard) behind the Malleus Maleficarum. In fact, if you want to read that script, here it is. We’ve been providing scripts with our big episodes for years now.

The Kramer episode was basically the character assassination of a strange, petty con man who ended up writing one of the most influential and deadliest books in European history. This week’s episode, “Malleus Maleficrapum” was me exploring the book. How it worked, what Kramer’s arguments were, and why it is, in my opinion, an evil work.

Here is my script for the episode.

As for the research, a great deal of it was done on the preceding episode, which synthesized a number of sources regarding the Catholic church, Kramer’s biography, and scholarship on demonology, witchcraft, and the Malleus Maleficarum itself. This time around, I worked with a single text: The Malleus Maleficarum itself – a 1928 translation by Montague Summers.

It is absurdly rare for me to not do a script where I am synthesizing over a dozen sources. But I wanted the text to be the star of the show, this time around.

Writing the Episode

The process of writing the episode was a little more challenging given I wasn’t synthesizing several sources. This episode lines up more with our Patreon bonus “Supernatural Sources” episodes we do. In those, Kevin and I tend to vent about the process of our research for an upcoming topic.

So, the episode boiled down to me reading the Malleus Maleficarum and pointing things out. My focus was the following things:

• Finding absurd passages or trains of thought to make fun of. This is a pretty comedic show after all.
• Pointing out the sinister nature of Kramer’s work and how it would cause incalculable damage in time.
• Emphasizing the misogynistic ridiculousness of Kramer’s views on witchcraft and heresy.
• Exploring and satirizing Kramer’s worldview that we had established in his biographical episode.
• Trying to make the illogical underpinnings of Kramer’s prose understandable.

Another thing that I wanted to do was introduce a fun bit of roleplaying to the proceedings. I’ve done such things before, such as in our Flying Dutchman episode, where I explained to Kevin and Mike that they had been Shanghai’d to serve on a merchant’s vessel.

This time around, I wanted to hurl accusations of witchcraft at Kevin, specifically, as a surprise.

The Trial of Kevin Hayman

Kevin is a wonderful person and one of the greatest friends I have ever had. It wasn’t hard to get people to throw him under the bus for the bit. I had reached out to a handful of listeners and friends and asked them to give me their accusations of witchcraft against him, which I had kept out of the script until we began recording that night. Everyone responded, which ended up making the sequence a little longer than I expected it to be, but it remained hilarious the whole way through. He had no idea it was coming.

Feelings on the Result

Overall, I am pretty pleased with the resulting episode about the Malleus Maleficarum. I was able to set up some funny conversations, conveyed the insanity of a deeply problematic man, and even had my soapbox moment at the end of the episode to advocate the dangers of frauds like Heinrich Kramer and the deadly damage their rhetoric can cause.

I find it interesting this was the first episode of 2025. It feels like a fortuitous bit of timing for the focus I have this year on the show. I already have my next episode planned and I start researching this week. Barring any delays, we’ll record it in the last week of February.

With that said, if you have any sources about the Loudon possessions in 1600s France, please drop them in the comments. I could use the material to look at in the next few weeks.

Anyway, that’s it. This is mostly an excuse to share some thoughts about the work I did for the show this past week, in addition to providing another chance to get some more listeners. If you want to know more about the show, or even advertise on it, please consider checking out our official website.