‘albanian conspiracy’)
[Transcript excerpt from The Quibbler Wandcast, 3 June 2019 episode, ‘The Albanian Conspiracy w/ historian Lee Jordan‘.]
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QUIBBLER: Tell us about the Albanian Conspiracy.
JORDAN: Sure. Well, unfortunately, it being a conspiracy and it being Albanian, we really know very little about it. We know that it happened in Albania, and we know that Ministry intelligence is involved – but we don’t have its codename, who it was classified under, what have you. So all of this, it’s speculative. Now that’s good speculation, I mean, we’ve got evidence, we’ve got logic, Occam’s Razor, you know. But we don’t have the body of evidence per se, in the way that we do on, say, 31.10 or Cassius.
QUIBBLER: And that’s deliberate, right? The DoM files were destroyed?
JORDAN: Oh yeah, absolutely. You can bet your arse that the Albania shelf got ripped clear off the wall on, what’s it, 6.6, whatever, the [1996 Department of Mysteries] break-in.
QUIBBLER: What do you suspect those memory files contained?
JORDAN: I suspect – I mean, who knows how closely they recorded this, I bloody well wouldn’t have if I was a spook – s’like putting an ‘I did it’ note on top a bloody corpse, innit? But then I guess that’s the MO of these Ministry types, especially blokes as record-obsessed as the DoM. All that’s to say – who knows if those files ever existed, who knows if they needed Neville Longbottom or whoever to destroy them that night. But what’s lost however it got that way is the clear story of how the DoM bolstered a community of dark wizards and muggle occult-enthusiasts in Northwest Albania to – well, we’ll get to the whats and the whys I suppose when we get to them, like.
QUIBBLER: Fair enough. So I suspect we should get started with the, er, origins of the Conspiracy.
JORDAN: Sure. Well, first actually I think we need to get into the history of the region we’re talking, the Accursed Mountains, and particularly the town of Theth. So Theth is a town in Albania, in the Shkodër region, the foothills of the Albanian Alps, the so-called Accursed Mountains. It’s a beautiful little town, highly recommend a visit. So Theth – that’s the name of the town – it used to be at least an integrated town, a bit like Godric’s Hollow is to England, mixed wizards and muggles, the sort of place that even muggles know is a bit, off, whacky, ‘magical’ they might even call it. There’s only about 100 people there and everyone can date back some 500 years or so, but there’s one family, the Shtrigës, that have been there forever – at least a 1,000 years. Now Albania doesn’t have a wizarding Ministry the same as Britain, so these things go unregistered, but anyone who reads or encounters anything of the Shtrigës knows that this is a family of wizards. And these Shtrigës, they own a patch of wood out on the side of town, a dense, old-growth forest, going up to the mountains, a place where when I visited Theth everyone says even if you wanted to go in, you couldn’t.
QUIBBLER: And why is that?
JORDAN: Well if you press them, they say the undergrowth is too thick and the property keepers will shoot you with a bow and arrow or whatsit. But I think rather what’s keeping them out is enchantments, ancient ones that have been set up by various Shtrigës for centuries.
QUIBBLER: What do you suppose they’re protecting?
JORDAN: Oh, I don’t think that’s such an intriguing premise, historically speaking anyway. If we’re thinking medieval, dark ages, old times you know – if that’s the time we’re talking about, we’re in a mindset of protected groves, sources of ancient magic, arcane circles. All real magic mind you, but of a very different style, aesthetic, custom, you know, then what we’re used to today. But the thing that’s important, that’s relevant to us now, is that in an isolated old village like Theth, those family holdings stick around for centuries, through communism, up until today. And that’s what Ded Shtrigë’s ‘protecting’: his property, and he’s using his family gifts – that is, magic, to keep muggle berks off it. And naturally that makes everyone who doesn’t know better to think it’s creepy, haunted, that the Shtrigës are devil-worshippers, child-eaters – all sorts of nasty rumours, nothing foreign to anyone who knows a bit about the history of muggles and us.
QUIBBLER: So you just mentioned him, but maybe it’s time to turn to one of the central figures in our story and cue the listener’s in on this Ded Shtrigë character.
JORDAN: Right, right. So Ded Shtrigë – there’s quite a few people of that name throughout history, but Ded Shtrigë the most recent, Ded the 67th or so, he’s a queer sort of bloke. Ded Shtrigë, now I just want to say, that’s a badass name, innit? I’d name my son Ded if he weren’t, you know, an effing – well, this Shtrigë seems to be – and my personal research certainly confirms it – the last wizard left in this little corner of Albania. No formal training of course, never registered by a Ministry, never made it to Durmstrang, just a home-schooled, local warlock – but Shtrigë’s family got wiped out sometime under communism and he’s the last left of the family, protecting this ancient hereditary grove, chitchatting with the local snakes. Oh yeah, I didn’t say that – did you know it? The Shtrigës were all parselmouths.
QUIBBLER: Fascinating. And I suppose that gives them all the more appeal, doesn’t it, to –
JORDAN: Now now, we’ll get to that. Well so anyway, this town – this was universal to everyone I spoke to there – they say this grove is evil, but that evil, the rumours of that only date back to around 1950. Haunted before that, weird before that, but there’s a new level, what muggles call Satanic, that cropped up right around the midway point of the 20th century. Now the more rational folks in town, they say this amounts to something nuclear, some Chernobyl-type accident, something like that. And then – and this was emphasized to a man, everyone I spoke to – this evil got worse starting one Halloween sometime 40 years ago.
QUIBBLER: Do they say why? Or what exactly was ‘evil’ about it?
JORDAN: Hard to get it out of them. Superstitious lot they are. But it’s clear that some dark presence was there, something that makes no sense to muggles but to us is all too easy to understand. And everyone in this town of Theth is all collywobbles about this grove except this oddball Shtrigë, who keeps going in there like his family’s always done, and comes out – they say even stranger than before.
QUIBBLER: And this strangeness – it develops into something, right?
JORDAN: Yes, it does. So pretty soon the people of Theth start noticing outsiders visiting, at first from nearby villages, then from other parts of the Balkans, and then people from farther, foreigners of all types. And what they seem to be doing is hanging out around the Shtrigë house, and then going inside, camping, in the forest. Not big groups, mind you, just fives, tens, nothing too noticeable – ‘cept in a town of 100 pretty much anything’s noticeable, right? And these funny types, they’re wearing robes, black hoods, carrying funny things, doing all sorts of – ‘Satanizma’, they call it.
QUIBBLER: And are these wizards?
JORDAN: That’s the funny thing, it’s what you’d expect, right? People in robes doing things muggles don’t understand? But no, it seems, from everything I can uncover, that no, these were muggles. Muggles who are into ‘magic’ but have got no idea, you know? Occultists, they call ’em. ‘Wiccans’. And you know, this makes sense, because Shtrigë’s shaping up to be a leader here. And if it was wizards he was calling in, a guy like Shtrigë would have no chance, because he’s got no education. He can talk to snakes, great, but I doubt he could do much more than levitate a stool. Now that’s very impressive, scary even, to muggles, but if you pulled in someone with a Durmstrang or a Hogwarts or even a bloody Koldovstoretz education and you’d be a laughingstock. So over the course of the early 1980s you’ve got this near-squib parselmouth rallying a bunch of phony-magician muggles from Eastern Europe out to the Accursed Mountains, forming what you might call a cult around an ancient magical grove that’s got at its centre an ancient tree inhabited by – by something. And it’s in this time period that this group, this cult, starts calling themselves Kalorësit e Kulshedrës, or KEK, the Knights of Kulshedra. And that’s – Kulshedra is a bit of an apocalypse in Albanian folklore, a dragon-storm-demon-type destroyer that comes up every once in awhile and wipes everything out. If these KEK blokes reckoned they were actually bringing that about, if they thought this grove actually held the origin of this Kulshedra, or if they just thought it a badass name, who’s to say? But that’s what they call themselves, and they start to become caretakers of this spooky grove under the leadership of Ded Shtrigë, and they start to become quite fanatical about it, amassing muggle weapons, shaving heads, the whole militant aesthetic plus a nice dose of muggle devil-worship.
QUIBBLER: Was there, to your knowledge, any rumours about what exactly they were doing? I’ve heard the word ‘kukudh’.
JORDAN: Ah yes, the kukudh. Yeah, that comes up in the discourse quite a bit, both from locals and er, other sources that we might get to. The kukudh – well, what it is, it’s not quite clear. It’s a local word, more Albanian folklore – well, your founder might think it’s some real beast of some sort, but my understanding at least is that it’s just the Albanian word for demon. The story in town is that this demon, this kukudh, it somehow occupied this grove in Theth. Occupied one specific tree, to be exact. There’s one specific tree in this grove that this kukudh supposedly occupies. That seems to have been their focus, at least nominally speaking. Now astute listeners of your program might make some connexions with a certain 10th-century English witch –
QUIBBLER: Aha, are we going to get into that?
JORDAN: We needn’t, we need’t – not now anyway. I don’t want to drag you into conspiracy theories.
QUIBBLER: Oh, please, never. That’s not what this show is about.
JORDAN: Of course, of course. [Laughs.] But no, whatever this kukudh was – and we’ll just leave it at that for now, that it’s some sort of legendary demon occupying a bloody old tree in this shitty grove – well, these KEK nutters are all in on reviving this kukudh to life, in order I guess to bring about the coming Albanian apocalypse, the Kulshedra. Allegedly, this is what Shtrigë and his KEK boys were all about.
QUIBBLER: And this is all documented?
JORDAN: Not well in English, no. This is all buried in the countryside in Albania, and we’ve got 20, 30 years – shite, nearly 40, innit? – all buried in illiteracy and secrecy and regional dialect – but yes, in my book I’ve got notes and transcriptions from the interviews I conducted, even a photo or two. The KEK is a real thing, you won’t see it in any DMLE records but you can bet your arse it was at one point in the DoM record hall, and you can absolutely find it in the historical, oral record out their in Shkodër County – it was there in Theth, right next to where Helena Ravenclaw was back in 998, right next to where Riddle was back in 1951, right next to where Quirinus Quirrell ended up in 1991, where Wormtail Pettigrew went in 1994, where Bertha Jorkins disappeared in that same year, where Riddle was ‘rumoured’ to be by the DoM and the Auror Office that entire time. Yes, the KEK is a real thing, and that’s the origin of what they call the Albanian Conspiracy.
QUIBBLER: And a near-squib, leading a small army of non-magical –
JORDAN: An illiterate blood-traitor leading a club of muggle Slavic nutters was key to it all, yup. Hell of a world we live in, innit?
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