Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the
Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.
Speaker 2: In March of nineteen seventy seven, Penthouse Magazine published a
Speaker 2: short story by Stephen King called Children of the Corn,
Speaker 2: alongside a pro Nixon watergate piece and photos of Polish
Speaker 2: model Jolanta von Zamuda. It was a nasty and highly
Speaker 2: effective little short story about a troubled couple on a
Speaker 2: road trip across America's heartland, right into the corn choked
Speaker 2: expanses of Nebraska and the clutches of a strange youth
Speaker 2: cult that venerated a being known only as He who
Speaker 2: Walks behind the Rose, represented in crude local folk art
Speaker 2: as a kind of page in Green Haired Christ. King
Speaker 2: writes of it as quote a strange green god, a
Speaker 2: god of corn, grown old and strange and hungry, and
Speaker 2: later on he describes it as a large shadow with
Speaker 2: great red eyes, moving behind roe upon row of perfect corn.
Speaker 2: The being in question here may have connections to the
Speaker 2: titular entity from it, as well as other beings in
Speaker 2: the Stephen King universe and in the two thousand and
Speaker 2: six Malius Mastrorum monster book from the RPG Call of Cthulhu.
Speaker 2: He who walks behind the Rose is identified as an
Speaker 2: avatar of the god shub Nigoruth and described as a
Speaker 2: kind of twisted fertility and vegetation deity. Children of the
Speaker 2: Corn is a tale full of monocrop anxiety and religious horror,
Speaker 2: and while the deity worshiped by the murderous children in
Speaker 2: the story is purely fictitious, it does tie into several
Speaker 2: different legacies of corn crops and associated deities. For starters,
Speaker 2: we should remind ourselves that corn mayze was long a
Speaker 2: sacred crop of indigenous Americans, and multiple meso American maze
Speaker 2: gods loom large, including the Aztec god Zinteatu and the
Speaker 2: goddess Chico mi Kuar. The rights concerning these deities, like
Speaker 2: the rights concerning harvest deities around the world, could certainly
Speaker 2: involve bloodshed and sacrifice, but I think a better match
Speaker 2: for what we're dealing with in Stephen King's short story
Speaker 2: here can be found in European folklore. I turned to
Speaker 2: Brad Steiger's were Wolf book from nineteen ninety nine and
Speaker 2: was instantly captivated by an entry for the corn Wolf. Yes,
Speaker 2: that's spelled with a K like the New Metal Band,
Speaker 2: and the corn in question is not Mays but wheat.
Speaker 2: As we've discussed on stuff to blow your mind before.
Speaker 2: Mays only entered into European usage after first contact with
Speaker 2: the indigenous people of the Americas, and the new to
Speaker 2: Europeans crop came to be known as corn in some
Speaker 2: English speaking countries, but the word corn predated this contact
Speaker 2: and referred to different grains and cereal grasses. German folklore
Speaker 2: in particular features various accounts of feldgeister or field spirits,
Speaker 2: also known as corn de Momnen. There's also the Hofferman
Speaker 2: or oat man, as well as the Ragenwulf and indeed
Speaker 2: the corn Kinder. There are many such corn spirits, typically
Speaker 2: malicious in nature and prone to disappearing people, especially children.
Speaker 2: According to Steiger, one such spirit is the corn wolf,
Speaker 2: a supernatural lupine predator said to haunt the fields and
Speaker 2: prey on the weak or unaware. The tale it would
Speaker 2: seem served as a kind of boogeyman to alert children
Speaker 2: to the risks of actual wolves. Amid the crops drawn
Speaker 2: in by hares and small game, and the unbalanced eCos
Speaker 2: of a farm, as well as referring to human outlaws
Speaker 2: and miscreants potentially hiding from capture amid the cover of
Speaker 2: pre harvest fields, a place where you could hide and
Speaker 2: potentially sustain yourself on the ripening crops. Steiger goes on
Speaker 2: to mention various rural European rights in which the corpse
Speaker 2: of the corn wolf or related entities is symbolically burned
Speaker 2: each year. Now I should mention that steiggerb cites a
Speaker 2: particular book for this entry, Robert Eisler's Man into Wolf,
Speaker 2: An Anthropological Interpretation of Sadism, Masochism, and Lacanthropy from nineteen
Speaker 2: forty eight. It's a rather interesting volume. It's not purely
Speaker 2: history or folklore, but rather a union anthropological work arguing
Speaker 2: that the union archetype of the werewolf connects with a
Speaker 2: primal evolutionary split that saw humans develop into opposing groups
Speaker 2: of peaceful and violent individuals. Ultimately proposing his own version
Speaker 2: of to borrow, a term used by Terence McKenna, archaic
Speaker 2: revival a return to primordial ways of human behavior in
Speaker 2: an attempt to prevent our own continual self destruction. Indeed,
Speaker 2: Eisler does discuss the corn wolf, rye wolf, bean wolf,
Speaker 2: and pee wolf and related entities as imaginative creatures, archetypes
Speaker 2: of quote, the disguised outlaw and wear wolf, hiding and
Speaker 2: feeding in the ripe cornfield, dream analysis, and jungion theory. Aside,
Speaker 2: the traditions presented here are fascinating and do match up
Speaker 2: with what I've read elsewhere, such as M. James Fraser's
Speaker 2: section of the Golden Bough on the corn spirit as
Speaker 2: a wolf or dog, as well as more contemporary writings
Speaker 2: in folklore and belief. You might also remember our past
Speaker 2: stuff to blow your mind episodes on beans, in which
Speaker 2: we discuss the very old traditions of supernatural danger associated
Speaker 2: both with legomes as something you might eat and also
Speaker 2: as haunted fields of legomes where you might dare to venture.
Speaker 2: And all of this brings us back once more to
Speaker 2: Stephen King in Children of the Corn. He does a
Speaker 2: fantastic job of conveying the uncanny nature of the monocrop field.
Speaker 2: It sits both with the main character, Burt and the reader,
Speaker 2: as a sinister perversion of the natural order within the
Speaker 2: depths of the corn dangerously close to the presence of
Speaker 2: he who walks behind the rose. Burt encounters corns so perfect,
Speaker 2: so flawless, that neither weed nor insect encroaches upon it.
Speaker 2: As such, the green harvest god of the story stands
Speaker 2: as a fitting deity for modern industrialized agriculture, brutal, unflinching,
Speaker 2: and alien to natural balance. Tune in for additional episodes
Speaker 2: of The Monster Fact each week. As always, you can
Speaker 2: email us at contact it's stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 2: dot com.
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