Al Ridenour

Al Ridenour is an author specializing in European folk-celebrations and their history. His most recent book on the topic, “A Season of Madness: Fools, Monsters, and Marvels of the Old-World Carnival” (2025) has been praised as “intellectually hefty,” and for its “clarity, eloquence, and wry humor.”

Since 2018, he has written and produced the podcast "Bone and Sickle," exploring dark folklore and history through historical texts dramatized via sound effects and music.

Ridenour is the author of the only English-language book on Krampus history and folklore, “The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas" (2016). He envisions "A Season of Madness" and "The Krampus" as part a four-book series on seasonal folk celebrations for publisher Feral House. Publication dates for Summer and Autumn volumes very much TBD.

He has lectured on The Krampus and related Winter traditions at the international Goethe-Institut, The San Diego Art Institute, New Americans Museum, Tucson Museum of Modern Art, The Bowers Museum, and in the UK at London's Last Tuesday Society and Whitby's Winter Ghosts.

In 2013, as co-founder of Krampus Los Angeles, Ridenour gathered a troupe of Krampus performers, crafted suits and went on to organize an ongoing series of parades and themed shows known as LA Krampusfest. In 2014, Ridenour’s group hosted the first Europeans visitors to appear stateside in traditional costumes, and in 2015 they hosted an entire 15-person troupe from the state of Salzburg. He has also directed productions of a traditonal 19th-century Austrian St. Nicholas-Krampus play from a script of his own translation, and has exhibited his handcrafted suits at the University of Southern California’s Doheny Museum.

As a journalist, he has contributed articles to Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Fortean Times, Maxim, Stuff, Saveur, and other periodicals as well as the websites Boing Boing, Laughing Squid, Atlas Obscura, Folklore Thursday, Morbid Anatomy, among others. In 2000, he wrote his first book, "Offbeat Food, Adventures in an Omnivorous World" (2000) an exhaustive survey of culinary oddities and culture, which Publishers Weekly described as a "a rollicking and at times mind-boggling crash course on exotic (read: weird) foods."

Ridenour also contributed chapters on underground cultural activities to "Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society" (Last Gasp, 2013). From 1991-1999, he served as “Grand Instigator” of the Los Angeles lodge of the Cacophony Society, a national network of art- provocateurs and urban explorers responsible for founding the Burning Man festival and serving as prototype for “Project Mayhem” in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. He was lead designer for a 2012 retrospective on the Cacophony Society at Grand Central Art Center, in Santa Ana, California, and contributed materials to the 2014 exhibition “Böse Clowns – Evil Clowns” at Dortmunder U – Zentrum für Kunst und Kreativität, in Dortmund, Germany. He is interviewed at length in the books "This Is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground" (2006), "Pranks 2" (2007), and "Halloween Nation. Behind the Scenes of America's Fright Night" (2011).

Ridenour studied animation at (The University of California Los Angeles) and German literature and philosophy, (Indiana University, Bloomington) graduating with honors as a Fulbright Travel Fellow to continue his studies in Germany at the Freie Universität Berlin.

He's traveled in 21 countries and now lives in Pasadena, California with artist and art-school director/teacher, Lauren. He speaks German (well) Italian (poorly) and attempts Latin translations with floundering enthusiasm