Lore 309: Party Favors

Summary of Lore 309: Party Favors

by Aaron Mahnke

32m•June 29, 2026
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Overview of Lore 309: Party Favors

In this episode of Lore, Aaron Mahnke explores a series of historical parties and social gatherings that became infamous because of what they revealed about grief, power, vanity, and spectacle. From a forest castle in New Hampshire to revolutionary France, imperial Russia, and a surrealist masquerade outside Paris, the episode shows how celebrations can become eerie, tragic, or morally unsettling when joy collides with death.

Key Stories and Historical Events

Madame Chérie and the Forest Castle

  • Antoinette, later known as Madame Chérie, reinvented herself after discovering her husband was actually a fugitive living under a false identity.
  • The couple moved from Paris to New York, where she built a new glamorous persona and rose into Broadway and high-society circles.
  • After her husband’s death, she withdrew to New Hampshire and built an extravagant castle in the woods.
  • There she hosted lavish, alcohol-fueled parties during Prohibition, becoming a local legend.
  • Her ruined castle and the surrounding woods are now associated with ghostly rumors and lingering party sounds.

The French Revolution’s “Victims’ Balls”

  • During and after the Reign of Terror, France experienced massive political violence under the Committee of Public Safety.
  • Once the terror ended, some aristocrats and survivors responded with macabre social events called bals des victimes (“victims’ balls”).
  • Attendees were reportedly required to have lost someone to the guillotine or escaped it themselves.
  • The fashion of the moment reflected the trauma:
    • short haircuts imitating beheaded victims,
    • red ribbons worn around the neck,
    • clothing that symbolized execution and mourning.
  • These trends influenced later ghost stories and gothic fiction, including works that inspired The Green Ribbon.

Betty Hun’s Ghost-Hunting Party

  • In Delaware, Betty Hun hosted annual September ghost-hunting gatherings at her family’s summer home, Wildcat Manor.
  • The party was based on local lore about two women who supposedly drowned nearby and were said to appear as ghosts on September 26.
  • Guests dressed in white and gathered at midnight to try to witness the apparitions.
  • The property had a much deeper history: it was a stop on the Underground Railroad.
  • A Hun ancestor, John Hun, was a committed Quaker abolitionist who helped smuggle enslaved people to safety and may have aided Harriet Tubman.
  • The episode suggests the ghost story may have been layered on top of a real, darker, and less documented past.

The Kodinka Field Coronation Disaster

  • For the coronation of Nicholas II in 1896, Russia planned a huge public celebration in Moscow.
  • The main attraction for many people was the party favor bundle: food, sweets, and an ornate commemorative cup.
  • A rumor spread that the cup contained a gold coin, drawing even larger crowds.
  • At Kodinka Field, an already hazardous military training ground, the crowd surged early and a deadly stampede began.
  • Poor planning, lack of medical support, and dangerous terrain made the disaster far worse.
  • The official death toll was 1,389, though estimates may have reached 3,000.
  • The commemorative cup became known as the Kodinka Cup of Sorrows.
  • Nicholas II’s failure to respond compassionately after the tragedy further damaged trust in the monarchy and foreshadowed the Romanovs’ eventual downfall.

The Surrealist Ball of 1972

  • The episode closes with the Surrealist Ball, hosted by Marie-Hélène de Rothschild at Château de Ferrières near Paris.
  • Guests included major figures from film, fashion, and art, such as Brigitte Bardot, Grace Kelly, Yves Saint Laurent, and Audrey Hepburn.
  • The dress code demanded “black tie, long dresses, and surrealist heads.”
  • The event was staged like a dreamlike labyrinth:
    • cat butlers,
    • lace-and-ribbon cobwebs,
    • strange costumes and headpieces,
    • bizarre table settings and dish names,
    • and a sugar mannequin dessert.
  • Salvador Dalí famously attended without a costume, saying, “My face is my mask.”

Main Themes and Takeaways

Parties as Performance

  • These stories show that parties are often more than entertainment: they are performances of status, grief, resistance, or denial.
  • A party can be a way to reclaim joy, but it can also become a display of callousness or power.

Celebration and Tragedy Are Closely Linked

  • The episode repeatedly highlights how celebrations can become contaminated by death:
    • the guillotine’s legacy in fashion,
    • ghost parties built on possible tragedy,
    • coronation festivities that ended in a massacre.
  • The line between honoring the dead and exploiting them is often thin.

The Afterlife of Public Events

  • Even when the parties end, the stories remain:
    • ruins still stand,
    • legends persist,
    • objects like coronation cups survive as relics,
    • and historical trauma lingers in memory and folklore.

Notable Closing Insight

  • Mahnke’s central idea is that parties can be acts of resistance and joy, but they can also become acts of blindness or betrayal.
  • The episode suggests that when a society celebrates while ignoring suffering, the celebration itself becomes unsettling.

Final Impression

Party Favors is a collection of eerie, historically grounded stories about celebrations that went wrong or felt wrong. It blends folklore, social history, and gothic imagery to show how a party can leave behind more than memories—it can leave legends, ruins, trauma, and even ghosts.