Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind listener mail.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and hey, welcome back, Rob
Speaker 3: and I. We were out for a week, but now
Speaker 3: we've returned to resume the Halloween season on the show.
Speaker 3: If you're new to Stuff to Blow your Mind, you're
Speaker 3: not familiar with what we do. Every year, we spend
Speaker 3: all of October covering spooky topics on Stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: Your Mind, And accordingly, most of our listener mail today
Speaker 3: maybe all of it will be in response to Halloween
Speaker 3: topics we've already done on the show. And man, our
Speaker 3: loyal mail bot Carney, really seems to be in the
Speaker 3: Halloween spirit. I received word from our it tech here
Speaker 3: that Carney was recently upgraded with a new chip from
Speaker 3: the Stone Hinge Magic Stone, and now he is aggressively
Speaker 3: asking us to try on these masks. He's got a
Speaker 3: pumpkin mask for me, Rob. Is this a witch masket?
Speaker 2: I think it is.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure what this is about, but he wants
Speaker 3: us to put them on on Halloween Night.
Speaker 2: All right, I can't do I can't imagine any issue
Speaker 2: with that. Let's do it probably around midnight, I'm thinking, Oh, and.
Speaker 3: There's supposed to be a special commercial on TV, so
Speaker 3: we'll see what happens. But we got nine more days
Speaker 3: before then, so there's plenty more Halloween stuff to do
Speaker 3: before the big day. Rob By the way, so you
Speaker 3: were out of town while you were out, anything you
Speaker 3: want to share about your trip? Where'd you go?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, I mean that's the thing about October. It's
Speaker 2: also always a there's always a fall break week in there.
Speaker 2: So the fam and I we went out to California,
Speaker 2: visited Somemoi's California family out there, and while we were there,
Speaker 2: we went to let's see, Kings Canyon National Park, Assemity
Speaker 2: National Park, the Lake Tahoe regions. So yeah, California listeners,
Speaker 2: you have some excellent natural environments out there, though, though
Speaker 2: I do have to mention the Kings Canyon due to
Speaker 2: some forest fire in the region, the Happy Fire, I
Speaker 2: believe is what it's dubbed. We had a very mordoor
Speaker 2: ask environment there. It was still still beautiful country, but
Speaker 2: there was definitely a smoky, ashy haze that did make
Speaker 2: for some excellent photographs. We had a photo of like
Speaker 2: me and my son and it looks like a band photo.
Speaker 2: It looked pretty cool.
Speaker 3: The fires of industry burning around door thonk make the urchai.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, not so good for the lungs, but good
Speaker 2: for the optics.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, rob if you don't mind, I'm going
Speaker 3: to kick things off with this first message in response
Speaker 3: to our series of episodes on Trains of Terror.
Speaker 2: Yes, let's jump into it.
Speaker 3: So during the episodes, we asked listeners to send in
Speaker 3: their local ghost train lore if you had any, and
Speaker 3: this first message really sent me down some interesting trails.
Speaker 3: So this is from and here's a good reminder, folks,
Speaker 3: if you write into the show, we will usually just
Speaker 3: identify you by your first name, but you can use
Speaker 3: a pseudonym too if you want. This message is from
Speaker 3: really cool wizard. All right, really cool wizard, says Robert
Speaker 3: and Joe. All familiar cordialities in regards to the frequency
Speaker 3: I listened to your broadcast and the rarity in which
Speaker 3: I write in. But this week this was a temptation
Speaker 3: because one of my local haunts has a ghost train
Speaker 3: story of sorts. Down in San Antonio, Texas. There is
Speaker 3: an urban legend that there was a car filled with
Speaker 3: orphans that became trapped on a train track at midnight
Speaker 3: and was decimated by a passing train sometime during the
Speaker 3: Great Depression. This all happened allegedly in a location which
Speaker 3: is now an abandoned industrial district. This is ideal, as
Speaker 3: in the dead of night, the darkness is ever present
Speaker 3: and the wilderness has crept into the desolate reminiscence of
Speaker 3: a bygone era. The practice is to cover the back
Speaker 3: of your car in baby powder and park on the tracks.
Speaker 3: Parentheses not a good idea. The ghost children will push
Speaker 3: your vehicle off of the tracks, and when you check
Speaker 3: the back of your vehicle, you will witness their fingerprints
Speaker 3: pressed into the powder. This is a brilliant haunt. It
Speaker 3: has this A plus B equal C characteristic to it.
Speaker 3: This isn't a bloody marry or a beetlejuice scenario where
Speaker 3: you can conduct the action and prove it to be
Speaker 3: a falsity meant to scare you. With this urban legend,
Speaker 3: if you follow the steps, everything will actually happen. Now,
Speaker 3: I suspect as many do that your car rolls because
Speaker 3: tracks are beveled to deter rain and other weather as
Speaker 3: mentioned in your show, guys, and the fingerprints you are
Speaker 3: witnessing are likely your own. Still, I appreciate that someone
Speaker 3: thought up the scare. It's worth mentioning that the census
Speaker 3: has the population of San Antonio well over two million,
Speaker 3: and I've never met anyone who hasn't at a minimum,
Speaker 3: visited the ghost tracks. Love the show. Really cool, Wizard,
Speaker 3: Well Wizard, thank you for your email. I thought this
Speaker 3: story was really interesting, so I decided to dig a
Speaker 3: little bit deeper. And yes, not only did I find
Speaker 3: plenty of versions of the story bouncing around all over
Speaker 3: the web, I also found extensive evidence of Texas locals
Speaker 3: who seemed not only aware of, but rather attached to
Speaker 3: the story and the phenomenon you described with like the
Speaker 3: rolling car and the fingerprints. So one of the sources
Speaker 3: I came across was a local news article from ksat
Speaker 3: San Antonio from October nineteenth, twenty eighteen, reporting on work
Speaker 3: that Union Pacific had slated for the intersection that month.
Speaker 3: This is the intersection where the haunting is said to occur,
Speaker 3: and the work scheduled would allegedly put an end to
Speaker 3: the ghost track phenomenon. So how exactly would that work?
Speaker 3: How would upgrading the rail line banish the ghosts? Well,
Speaker 3: the plan for the project included laying two miles of
Speaker 3: new siding track to accommodate increased rail traffic passing through
Speaker 3: San Antonio, and this would be a new line running
Speaker 3: parallel to the existing one, and adding the second set
Speaker 3: of tracks changes the slope of the intersection. And this
Speaker 3: is what will, according to this article, put a stop
Speaker 3: to cars seeming to be pushed by invisible hands. Now,
Speaker 3: in the email, a really cool wizard suspects that the
Speaker 3: cars roll because the tracks are beveled or raised for
Speaker 3: drainage purposes, and this does appear to be the likely explanation,
Speaker 3: or at least close to the likely explanation. In this
Speaker 3: news article, it's explained that for some reason, the segment
Speaker 3: of road intersecting the tracks appears to be, or did
Speaker 3: appear to be before the upgrade slightly uphill in one direction,
Speaker 3: but it's actually in reality slightly downhill in that direction.
Speaker 3: And I'm going to come back to this issue in
Speaker 3: just a minute. But anyway, because of that, adding the
Speaker 3: second set of tracks would eliminate the illusory slow As
Speaker 3: for the fingerprints. I thought this was kind of interesting.
Speaker 3: Our correspondent here seems to be on the right track. Again.
Speaker 3: If you sprinkle baby powder on your car in any circumstance,
Speaker 3: there's a good chance that if you look closely, you
Speaker 3: will see fingerprints. Even if you were very careful not
Speaker 3: to touch your car after you did it, the fingerprints
Speaker 3: that you see were already there, left by you or
Speaker 3: whoever else has been touching your car lately. By adding
Speaker 3: the baby powder, you are essentially dusting for prints. Now
Speaker 3: in this article, A spokesman for Union Pacific told the
Speaker 3: news station that the project was not designed to get
Speaker 3: rid of the ghost track phenomenon, but this was kind
Speaker 3: of an added benefit because, from his perspective, the urban
Speaker 3: legend encouraged people to engage in unsafe behaviors at a
Speaker 3: railroad crossing. Hard to argue with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, you don't want to go messing around some
Speaker 2: train tracks. Some trains don't like it, and they don't
Speaker 2: mind showing you.
Speaker 3: But so there was a TV segment covering this story
Speaker 3: as well, and their location reporter was asking people about it.
Speaker 3: You know, do you know about the ghost tracks? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 3: have you tried it? And so forth. But when people
Speaker 3: they talked to found out about the changes coming, they
Speaker 3: seem to be quite upset about the idea that this
Speaker 3: tradition would be made obsolete. One person, talking about the
Speaker 3: idea that, like the car wouldn't roll off the tracks anymore, said,
Speaker 3: isn't that illegal to make the changes? I mean, I
Speaker 3: guess it's kind of perceived as like a crime against
Speaker 3: culture to make an urban legend no longer work. But
Speaker 3: I did want to come back to the idea of
Speaker 3: illusory slopes because I was looking into this, and I
Speaker 3: think this is actually a fairly interesting phenomenon. It's the
Speaker 3: principle behind probably dozens of minor tourist tractions in the
Speaker 3: United States alone, and there are ones in other continents
Speaker 3: and countries as well, But in the US they're very
Speaker 3: often called mystery hill or gravity hills, or just mystery spots.
Speaker 3: There's one that I've been to before that was near Boone,
Speaker 3: North Carolina. I think it was actually in Blowing Rock
Speaker 3: that is called mystery hill. And there are places with
Speaker 3: what appears to be anomalous gravitational phenomena, so you know,
Speaker 3: you put a ball on the ground and it looks
Speaker 3: like it is rolling uphill, or you have people stand
Speaker 3: at what feels like straight up, but it looks like
Speaker 3: a forty five degree angle. Why aren't they falling over? Right?
Speaker 3: Have you ever been one of these tourist attractions.
Speaker 2: Rob, I mean I might have, but I never really
Speaker 2: checked gravity while I'm on vacation. Is there are these
Speaker 2: the places where they brew the high gravity IPAs. I
Speaker 2: also don't know much about beer.
Speaker 3: Ah, well, you know that would be a if somebody
Speaker 3: hasn't done that tie in, that's a crime. Right, You've
Speaker 3: got to have a high gravity brewery at the gravity
Speaker 3: hill because Yeah, these attractions often propose some weird, fake
Speaker 3: scientific explanation why it happens. They say, there's there's an
Speaker 3: electromagnetic disturbance, you know, a gravitational anomaly in the Earth's crust,
Speaker 3: or like a great mass of magnetic material in the hill,
Speaker 3: something like that. I think I came across one. I
Speaker 3: think that said there's like a buried black hole or something.
Speaker 3: These explanations tend to be for fun. Sometimes they straight
Speaker 3: up blame it on ghosts or another supernatural cause. The
Speaker 3: real reason in every case that I could find sources
Speaker 3: on is at the same time, fairly mundane and kind
Speaker 3: of interesting in analyzing how our perception of up and
Speaker 3: down works. So the mundane explanation is that these mystery
Speaker 3: spots are visual illusions. There's nothing unusual at all happening
Speaker 3: with respect to gravity. There are little anomalous differences in
Speaker 3: gravity at different spots on the surface of the Earth,
Speaker 3: but the differences are so small they would not cause
Speaker 3: a ball to roll uphill that that's not that's not
Speaker 3: going to be the case with any of these places. Instead,
Speaker 3: there is something about the location which causes an uphill
Speaker 3: slope to look like a downhill slope, or causes an
Speaker 3: inclined slope to look flat. So, for example, you can
Speaker 3: have a place where the slope of a hill is
Speaker 3: surrounded by maybe trees and buildings, and you expect trees
Speaker 3: and buildings to always be sticking straight up, perfectly perpendicular
Speaker 3: from the ground. But if you're in a place where
Speaker 3: the trees are leaning slightly, maybe the trees are leaning
Speaker 3: slightly downhill, and the buildings are leaning slightly downhill, and
Speaker 3: your view of the horizon is obstructed by all of
Speaker 3: this stuff around you, the slope of the hill could
Speaker 3: actually look like it is descending to the south. But
Speaker 3: then you place a ball on the ground and it
Speaker 3: will roll apparently uphill to the north. The ball isn't
Speaker 3: actually rolling up hill. It's just that the visual cues
Speaker 3: in your environment are tricking your brain about which way
Speaker 3: is downhill. And there was actually a study about this
Speaker 3: I came across that was published in the journal Psychological
Speaker 3: Science in the year two thousand and three by Paula Bresson,
Speaker 3: Luigi Garla Shelly, and Monica Bericano called anti gravity hills
Speaker 3: are visual illusions? Always love a research paper title that
Speaker 3: is like a full sentence and states the core finding. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The researchers who looked into this were affiliated with the
Speaker 3: University of Padua and the University of Pavia, both in Italy,
Speaker 3: and in this study, the authors recreated the conditions of
Speaker 3: various anti gravity attractions using laboratory settings with like planks
Speaker 3: of wood and stuff to create slopes and then the
Speaker 3: appearance of different kinds of surroundings, and they write, quote,
Speaker 3: we conclude that anti gravity hill effects follow from a
Speaker 3: misperception of the eye level relative to gravity, caused by
Speaker 3: the presence of either contextual inclines or a false horizon line.
Speaker 3: So if subjects. If people could see a true horizon,
Speaker 3: they were much less likely to fall for the illusion.
Speaker 3: If the true horizon were obscured, though, then it was
Speaker 3: more likely. They also say quote when proceeded, followed or
Speaker 3: flanked by a steep downhill slope, a slight downhill stretch
Speaker 3: is perceived as uphill. So you can have a slight
Speaker 3: downhill incline that looks like it's going uphill if it's
Speaker 3: surrounded by steeper downhill grades. And another interesting psychological quirk
Speaker 3: is that they apparently discovered that our with our perception,
Speaker 3: it's easier to create the illusion in one direction than
Speaker 3: it is in the other. Specifically, it's easier to trick
Speaker 3: the brain into falsely seeing a surface as tilted uphill
Speaker 3: than it is to trick the brain into falsely seeing
Speaker 3: a surface as downhill. Maybe we're just primed to notice
Speaker 3: uphill because I don't know looking at an uphill slope
Speaker 3: ahead of you. You're trying to do the calculations to
Speaker 3: be like, Okay, this is going to be more work
Speaker 3: to walk up or something. But also there was a
Speaker 3: quote from the researchers that made me laugh. This was
Speaker 3: quoted in a science reporting piece on it where they
Speaker 3: say quote. After each observer's task was concluded, we placed
Speaker 3: a small roll of tape on the misperceived slope, and
Speaker 3: the tape appeared to move against the law of gravity,
Speaker 3: producing surprise and on occasion, reverential fear. So I was
Speaker 3: looking at some images of this San Antonio rail crossing
Speaker 3: where the ghosts allegedly pushed the car off, and I
Speaker 3: couldn't tell exactly what it is about this location that
Speaker 3: would cause people to misperceive the downhill slope, or to
Speaker 3: think that it was flat, or to think it was
Speaker 3: uphill when it was actually downhill. There are trees and
Speaker 3: telephone poles around that may have something to do with it.
Speaker 3: It might also just have something to do with the
Speaker 3: crossing's relationship to the surrounding roads. It could be masking
Speaker 3: a kind of raised or beveled area like a really
Speaker 3: cool wizard was talking about. But I also am still
Speaker 3: thinking about how I don't know. It's just interesting that
Speaker 3: in that reporting people were feeling up set that a
Speaker 3: physical alteration of transportation infrastructure would destroy a visual illusion
Speaker 3: that causes people to believe in ghosts touching their car.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's like you have some sort of
Speaker 2: little curio like this. There's a lot of you know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of culture built up around it. So
Speaker 2: I guess it's understandable if you feel like it is
Speaker 2: threatened in the same way you feel threatened when aling
Speaker 2: like local businesses that are institutions might go away, you know,
Speaker 2: or just curious landmarks will go away. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: just part of it's part of the landscape, and you
Speaker 2: want it to remain a part of your life.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they can't close the old ghost pushing store.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but if they turn it into a microbrewery for
Speaker 2: high gravity ipa, I guess it's all right.
Speaker 3: Brewers out there, take this idea and run with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and roll right in and tell me. Why is
Speaker 2: it called a high gravity beer? I have no idea.
Speaker 3: I think that just means higher alcohol, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: That it's that's kind of an elaborate way of stating it.
Speaker 2: Just say it's like boozier, right, higher alcohol level.
Speaker 3: Stronger beer. I don't know. Maybe gravity has something to
Speaker 3: do with I wonder if there's some kind of something
Speaker 3: about the brewing process that involves gravity that results in
Speaker 3: a stronger, more alcoholic brewer. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm just not I'm just not hip to the terminology.
Speaker 2: All right, this next one, I see you have this
Speaker 2: one labeled as another great horror story, so I'm gonna
Speaker 2: i'm sight unseen. I haven't read this one yet. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna try and give it a nice creepy read. Here
Speaker 2: we go. Good morning, Robert and Joe. I just started
Speaker 2: listening to your second episode on ghost Trains and it
Speaker 2: reminded me of a spooky experience my wife and I
Speaker 2: had a couple of years ago. One night, at around
Speaker 2: two am, my wife and I woke up to a thundering,
Speaker 2: monotone sound that felt like it was coming from all
Speaker 2: around our apartment. The sound was relentless and jarring. My
Speaker 2: brains still hazy, immediately thought aliens are officially real and
Speaker 2: we are about to be abducted. My wife did not
Speaker 2: want me to peek through our curtains to see what
Speaker 2: it was, and our dog was shook. The sound kept going,
Speaker 2: and as time passed it started to distort and warble,
Speaker 2: which did not ease my mind. Like any human being
Speaker 2: questioning their sanity, we went to social media, hoping that
Speaker 2: other people in the area might be experiencing this sound.
Speaker 2: Multiple people seemed to have the same question about this sound,
Speaker 2: but did not have answers. This roaring sound went on
Speaker 2: for what felt like hours until our brains finally were
Speaker 2: able to drown it out and sleep. The next day,
Speaker 2: we learned it was not aliens, but instead a conductor
Speaker 2: operating a train. Apparently he decided to end his ship
Speaker 2: when his replacement was late and left with the train
Speaker 2: horn on full blast. No one turned off the horn
Speaker 2: until later that morning. I hope you enjoyed this anecdotal
Speaker 2: account that ended up related to trains. It was one
Speaker 2: of the eeriest experiences of my life, and I could
Speaker 2: really see a good scary story involving trains leaning into that.
Speaker 2: Thanks for reading. I love the podcast and I hope
Speaker 2: you guys keep it up for years to come. Best Jake, Well.
Speaker 3: Thank you Jake that that email for me. It started
Speaker 3: very spooky and it ended very funny. So that if
Speaker 3: I understand right, you're saying that the conductor just literally
Speaker 3: left the horn on full blast and it did.
Speaker 2: Not stop all night. Yeah. I mean, I'm used to
Speaker 2: a lot of racket from the trains, because again I
Speaker 2: live right next to them, but this would definitely disturb
Speaker 2: my sleep if it was something, you know, out of
Speaker 2: the ordinary and consistent like this. True ghost trains, I
Speaker 2: guess are usually they're more fleeting, like they're they're through.
Speaker 2: It's not what is that sound that won't stop? It
Speaker 2: is what was that sound that I heard briefly in
Speaker 2: the night.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's also funny how something like of that sort,
Speaker 3: like a like a loud scary sound, can only be
Speaker 3: scary for a certain limited amount of time before it's
Speaker 3: not scary anymore and just becomes annoying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially if it becomes obvious that it has no
Speaker 2: real meaning or import you know, it is not a
Speaker 2: warning siren. It is not trying to tell you something
Speaker 2: about what the train is doing. It is just malfunctioning. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a good point. It can't be a warning if
Speaker 2: it's just like, you know, like somebody leaning.
Speaker 3: On the horn all night. All right, I'm gonna do this.
Speaker 3: Next message from Dennis, Dennis says it's still on the
Speaker 3: subject of horror trains. Hello, Rob, Joe and JJ. Your
Speaker 3: recent pair of episodes on ghost trains reminded me of
Speaker 3: a local celebrity of sorts. It's Lower Bay Station in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Speaker 3: Lower Bay was part of an experiment in subway routing
Speaker 3: that the TTC, the Toronto Transit Commission, the agency that
Speaker 3: administers public transit in the city, ran and subsequently abandoned.
Speaker 3: It's an almost complete subway station underneath the existing Bay
Speaker 3: Street station, right in the middle of downtown Toronto. It
Speaker 3: was used for a few months in nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 3: but proved confusing and was abandoned in short order. It's
Speaker 3: not accessible by the public, and trains bypass it as
Speaker 3: part of their normal route, so most people aren't even
Speaker 3: aware it's there. It's basically a duplicate of the existing
Speaker 3: Bay Street station, just unused by commuters. Oh wow, Oh,
Speaker 3: this is a great tie into our variation we talked
Speaker 3: about in these episodes, where it's not the train that's
Speaker 3: spectral but the station. There's like a sort of otherworldly
Speaker 3: stop that maybe exist or doesn't exist in physical space.
Speaker 3: Let's see. And then Dennis links to a blog that
Speaker 3: has photos of the station. Robi also included in our
Speaker 3: outline a photo I found of the station platform that
Speaker 3: is gorgeous. Oh my, like the it's got these blue
Speaker 3: and yellow colored tile patterns. On the floor. That looks
Speaker 3: so cool. It looks you know, I just want all
Speaker 3: the John Carpenter movies shot in this station, and let's see.
Speaker 3: Dennis goes on to say, what's interesting is that, unlike
Speaker 3: a traditional abandoned station, Lower Bay is still maintained. It's
Speaker 3: designed in the same style and has been regularly updated
Speaker 3: to test everything from floor cleaning and repair techniques to
Speaker 3: safety technologies to train car driver training. And as such,
Speaker 3: it's lit, kept up and maintained, but otherwise completely empty
Speaker 3: most of the time. This just gets better and better,
Speaker 3: Dennis says. What's even more interesting is that it's probably famous,
Speaker 3: albeit unknowingly two stuff to blow your mind listeners as
Speaker 3: the go to location for many, many, many weird house
Speaker 3: grade films and TV series. Toronto stands in for New
Speaker 3: York with some regularity, but Lower Bay punches above its
Speaker 3: weight even by that standard. Here's a list of films
Speaker 3: that Lower Bay features in, in no particular order. Feel
Speaker 3: free to chop this list for brevity. Okay, it's in
Speaker 3: Johnny naemonic from nineteen ninety five, it's in Mimic from
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety seven. That one, yeah, yeah, does that take
Speaker 3: place in a museum or my thinking of Relic.
Speaker 2: You're thinking of Relic. Mimic is the Del Toro picture
Speaker 2: that is based on an excellent short story about giant
Speaker 2: insects that have begun mimicking human beings. And there were
Speaker 2: some real problems with production to who the producers were
Speaker 2: on that picture, if I remember correctly, but he came
Speaker 2: out did a director's cut. I believe it's one of
Speaker 2: the few cases where the director's cut is shorter than
Speaker 2: the original theatrical release. But great cast, cool monsters. I mean,
Speaker 2: you expect as much from theon mental tour.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, maybe we'll have to come check that out
Speaker 3: for weird house. Yeah, I was confusing it with Relic,
Speaker 3: the one that takes place in like the Field Museum,
Speaker 3: maybe in some museum anyway. But also Dennis says that, yes,
Speaker 3: Mimick is, according to him, about human sized, genetically engineered,
Speaker 3: hyper intelligent cockroaches.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 3: Also, oh, how could we not lead with this? It
Speaker 3: is an overdrawn at the Memory Bank starring Raul Julia
Speaker 3: featured in a famous Mystery Science Theater three thousand episode.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, do you remember what part of the movie
Speaker 3: this would be?
Speaker 2: Rob ooh there are a few different locations. There's some
Speaker 2: great Toronto locations. I think in that picture it was
Speaker 2: a Canadian production of Memory Serves, and I think it
Speaker 2: would this one would probably be more of a shoe
Speaker 2: in for us if there was a great to watch it.
Speaker 2: If Memory Serves, this one has not been really released
Speaker 2: in any acceptable format. I think you have to buy
Speaker 2: a Last time I checked, you had to buy a
Speaker 2: VHS tape to get it. Maybe maybe there's been some
Speaker 2: sort of release since then. But there's some great mall
Speaker 2: shots in that picture for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, distributors, if you're listening, get overdrawn at the Memory
Speaker 3: Bank on disc. Get it for us. I want a
Speaker 3: pristine Blu Ray. I want to see Fingle in all
Speaker 3: his glory.
Speaker 2: I mean, it has a lot of great ideas in it.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's it's wonderful to riff on, but it
Speaker 2: has a great cast and it has has some interesting
Speaker 2: concepts based on what a John Varley novel of Memory Serves.
Speaker 3: Okay, the list does not stop there. Dennis goes on
Speaker 3: to say that it's in dark Man from nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: The great one.
Speaker 3: Oh who is that? Who directed that? Sam Raimi? Right?
Speaker 3: M Yep, apparently it's in time Shifters. I think I've
Speaker 3: seen this one, but I don't recall it. This is
Speaker 3: from nineteen ninety nine. Dennis calls this a Casper Van
Speaker 3: Deen classic, except the original email speed spelled his name
Speaker 3: Casper van Diem. I guess brother of Karpe. It's in
Speaker 3: The Recruit from two thousand and three. I don't know
Speaker 3: that movie, the Sound from twenty seventeen, Extreme Measures from
Speaker 3: ninety six, Bait from two thousand, Bless the Child from
Speaker 3: two thousand, Bulletproof, Monk from two thousand and three. I
Speaker 3: know less of these later movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know these either, but yeah, certainly there's
Speaker 2: plenty of other cases too, where it's Toronto standing in
Speaker 2: for New York.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Dennis's message continues, I've never actually seen the inside
Speaker 3: of the station, except briefly through an open door to
Speaker 3: the lower level, which piqued my interest at the time
Speaker 3: because I didn't understand what I was looking at. I
Speaker 3: have friends in the local film industry who've been in it,
Speaker 3: and it is quite interesting to see, especially when it's
Speaker 3: cosplaying New York or Chicago. Thought you might find this
Speaker 3: one interesting and thank you doubly for the years of
Speaker 3: great content you've seen my way. Dennis. Well, thank you, Dennis.
Speaker 3: Great message. I knew nothing about this. I'm gonna have
Speaker 3: to check out that blog post and see what I've seen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you pulled up some of these images from this
Speaker 2: phantom train station and they're they're very, very evocative. I
Speaker 2: love these. I've never been to Toronto. I need to
Speaker 2: rectify that at some point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've only ever had a layover at the airport there.
Speaker 3: I've never visited the city, and I know it's supposed
Speaker 3: to be a great city in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3: So I would love to see this station if I could.
Speaker 3: An abandoned subway station that is still kept up is
Speaker 3: like that. That is such a delicious idea to me.
Speaker 2: All right. This next one comes to us from Jim
Speaker 2: in New Jersey. Jim Riot's Robert, Joe and JJ. You
Speaker 2: only briefly mentioned the linear nature of trains. There's only
Speaker 2: one major path through them. This aspect has been used
Speaker 2: effectively in many train plots in movies and television. As
Speaker 2: for horror movies with trains, I'll submit train to Poissan
Speaker 2: In this South Korean movie from twenty sixteen, a divorced
Speaker 2: father is taking his daughter from Soul to Bassan so
Speaker 2: she can spend her birthday with her mother. The zombie
Speaker 2: apocalypse occurs at the start of their journey, and an
Speaker 2: infected person boards the train and quickly infects others. Most
Speaker 2: of the movie involves the uninfected passengers avoiding being bitten
Speaker 2: by the infected passengers, and due to the linear nature
Speaker 2: of the train, there's at least one scene where the
Speaker 2: uninfected have to battle through a car of the infected.
Speaker 2: Jim in New Jersey, Oh, thanks, Jim.
Speaker 3: This movie has been on my list for years. It's
Speaker 3: one of those I've got a bunch of movies like
Speaker 3: this that I've been meaning to watch for a long time.
Speaker 3: I've always heard it's great, and I've never seen it yet.
Speaker 3: Maybe this October is the time I'll finally watch it.
Speaker 3: But yes, Jim, I think you're right about like the
Speaker 3: linear nature of trains having some kind of thematic resonance
Speaker 3: in these stories. It's definitely there in Snow Piercer the way,
Speaker 3: like you know, the making your way through through the
Speaker 3: train one car at a time, and each train is
Speaker 3: kind of each car is its own miniature world. And
Speaker 3: having to fight through them one at a time to
Speaker 3: get to the front.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this is definitely a post snow Piercer film.
Speaker 2: I can't help but notice. But you know, it's again,
Speaker 2: it's a great concept, like the train creates a linear
Speaker 2: world for us, and in more than one way. You know,
Speaker 2: linear space is one car after after another, and then
Speaker 2: you're headed from point A to point B. It just
Speaker 2: I don't know, it just works so well with linear storytelling, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. And when the story involves a kind of
Speaker 3: adventure or journey or track of moving through the cars
Speaker 3: gives you a very natural kind of structure. There's only
Speaker 3: one way to go, and that can sometimes be fun
Speaker 3: for stories, you know, having having the physical environment in
Speaker 3: which the story takes place shape the direction of the
Speaker 3: narrative can be It can be a fun riding exercise.
Speaker 2: M all right, speaking of linear progress, what is the
Speaker 2: next listener mail in our chain of listener mails?
Speaker 3: All right? This next message comes from Anna, And at
Speaker 3: the beginning of this message, Anna brings up something we
Speaker 3: were talking about in the Trains episode where where a
Speaker 3: ghost train is a kind of interesting thing because it
Speaker 3: can be like a ghost in that it can be
Speaker 3: a spectral entity itself that you know, kind of appears
Speaker 3: and then vanishes, just like an individual embodied human ghost.
Speaker 3: But then it can also be like a haunted location,
Speaker 3: like a haunted house, because a train is something you
Speaker 3: can go inside. There's an interior environment, so technically a
Speaker 3: train could be haunted. And we talked about the sort
Speaker 3: of the differences there. It seems to be more often
Speaker 3: that ghost train stories are more like the train is
Speaker 3: the ghost, rather than it's like a haunted house. But
Speaker 3: it could in principle be the latter. Let's see. Anna
Speaker 3: goes on to say, hello, Robert and Joe, I really
Speaker 3: enjoyed your episodes on Trains of Terror. You were talking
Speaker 3: about haunted trains versus haunted ships. I think ships are
Speaker 3: different because people actually lived on ships, so that would
Speaker 3: make them more like a haunted house. And I think
Speaker 3: that's a good point. Yeah, that you can have the
Speaker 3: idea of a haunted ship makes more sense because more
Speaker 3: of life was taking place there, whereas treating a train
Speaker 3: like a haunted house feels a little bit less intuitive
Speaker 3: because people don't spend as much of their life on
Speaker 3: the train, you know, they just kind of get on
Speaker 3: and get off. But somebody might live on a ship
Speaker 3: for months or something, or.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know. There's nothing that happens on a
Speaker 2: ship that doesn't happen on a train. Name one thing,
Speaker 2: it's happened on a train, gotten a fish. Yes, it's
Speaker 2: happened on a train. I guarantee you.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, fair enough, let's see. And his message goes
Speaker 3: on to say, also, I think one thing you did
Speaker 3: not cover is that when you're on a train, you
Speaker 3: can get a glimpse into the lives of other people.
Speaker 3: Maybe you witness something terrible, like a murder, but there
Speaker 3: is nothing you can really do about it. This would
Speaker 3: partly fit into the unchangeable fate aspect of trains, But
Speaker 3: I do think there's something slightly spooky about just getting
Speaker 3: a glimpse into other people's lives. Well respectfully, and I
Speaker 3: think we did get into this a little bit. This
Speaker 3: is sort of what we were talking about with the
Speaker 3: idea of the train stories having these themes of alienation,
Speaker 3: like with the Sherlock Holmes monologue where he's looking out
Speaker 3: the train the train window and imagining all of the
Speaker 3: horrors and the sordid details and the miseries in the
Speaker 3: places he sees as he goes by. I think this
Speaker 3: is actually a common thing in a lot of train stories. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this feeling of like that you can see other people,
Speaker 3: but you're only passing by, and there's no way to
Speaker 3: get out and interact. So there's this built in disconnect
Speaker 3: from the rest of humanity which you witness out the windows. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: bridging this email a little bit, and I also includes
Speaker 3: a very nice poem on the theme of getting a
Speaker 3: glimpse into other people's lives through the windows of a train,
Speaker 3: which is very nice indeed. But then she goes on
Speaker 3: to say the next thing I wanted to mention is
Speaker 3: the musical Starlight Express. It's a musical about a train
Speaker 3: that only exists in the imagination. It's very cheesy and
Speaker 3: a lot of fun. When I was growing up, the
Speaker 3: Starlight Express soundtrack was in high rotation in our house. Lastly,
Speaker 3: I don't have an example of a ghost train, but
Speaker 3: there it was an incident in our family that we
Speaker 3: call the phantom ute. For context, a ute is similar
Speaker 3: to a pickup truck. It is short for utility vehicle.
Speaker 3: I think this is Australian slaying. I'm pretty sure about that. Okay,
Speaker 3: and it says we were traveling down an unpaved country
Speaker 3: road at night, so it was really dark. We were
Speaker 3: the only ones on the road. We approached a crossroad
Speaker 3: and a white ute just try through the crossroad. Because
Speaker 3: of the dark. It seemed to come from nowhere and
Speaker 3: then disappear, so it was kind of haunting. Anyway, I
Speaker 3: hope you've enjoyed my stories. Keep up the good work.
Speaker 3: In a Yeah, if you've ever had the experience of
Speaker 3: coming across a moving car in the night, well you've
Speaker 3: got your headlights headlights on, but the other car does
Speaker 3: not have its headlights on. I find that. Ah, that
Speaker 3: is a very surprising and memorable experience.
Speaker 2: You know, this mention of Starlight Express. This is a
Speaker 2: musical that I've only ever been familiar with the name of,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of surprising because it's Andrew Lloyd Webber,
Speaker 2: of course, a huge name in musicals, and growing up
Speaker 2: I was a big fan like The Phantom of the
Speaker 2: Opera and all, you know, horror musical with some really
Speaker 2: catchy numbers. But I know virtually nothing about Starlight Express.
Speaker 2: So I pulled it up your Palmer chatting, and I
Speaker 2: was instantly instantly recognized one of the names and interet Yes,
Speaker 2: sure enough. The original West End cast from nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: four featured in the lead as Rusty ray Shell. Ray
Speaker 2: Shell played the character Shake in the Apple that we
Speaker 2: talked about in Weird House Cinema. So this was the
Speaker 2: character that it's kind of like the Devil's Number two.
Speaker 2: He's I think he's supposed to be very serpentine and
Speaker 2: at one point is in a speedo. But his very
Speaker 2: flamboyant performance. Great, great performance in the Apple.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, yeah, okay, So I didn't remember who you
Speaker 3: were talking about at first, but now I've got him
Speaker 3: pulled up. He was great in the Apple. I loved him.
Speaker 3: I want to see all the movies he's in now.
Speaker 3: And so he's in the he's in the movie version
Speaker 3: of Starlight Express.
Speaker 2: Well, right, there's a movie version, I think.
Speaker 3: So unless I'm wrong, Oh maybe I'm wrong, Maybe I
Speaker 3: am wrong. Sorry for smashing your dreams. No, you're right,
Speaker 3: it's just a musical. It's not a movie as far
Speaker 3: as I can tell.
Speaker 2: I was like, whey, is it not a movie? It
Speaker 2: seems like Andrew Lai Webber, you'd make a movie yet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Well, I would love to see this. I
Speaker 3: wish there were a movie. I'm sure I could go
Speaker 3: listen to the soundtrack, but yeah, but i'll do.
Speaker 2: I was glancing at the soundtrack and I'm like, I
Speaker 2: don't recognize any of these songs either. So this one
Speaker 2: was just completely off my radar. But again, I certainly
Speaker 2: loved some of vanrew lke Webber's work in the past.
Speaker 3: There are, wait, there are characters that I'm not understanding this.
Speaker 3: It seems like characters are trains. They're not people on
Speaker 3: a train. But there's like a character who is who
Speaker 3: is the Trans Siberian Express engine and a character who
Speaker 3: is I don't know, some other engine.
Speaker 2: Maybe this is too high concept. That's why they never
Speaker 2: made end into a movie.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, after this, I'm gonna go listen to
Speaker 3: some of the soundtrack.
Speaker 2: All right. This next one comes to us from Ian
Speaker 2: Ian says, gentlemen, great podcasts, you guys are the best,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. A short time after listening to
Speaker 2: Trains of Teror episode one, I was working at my
Speaker 2: desk while listening to ambient music, and I realized that
Speaker 2: the dark ambient album I was listening to on Spotify
Speaker 2: featured some top notch train of terror art. Look up
Speaker 2: the album Echoes by artist Eternal Dystopia to see a
Speaker 2: grim photorealistic depiction of a blackened locomotive of the damned
Speaker 2: with a single glowing red light cutting through the foggy hellscape.
Speaker 2: To me, this seemed a perfect example of the first
Speaker 2: type of train, one that isn't inherently malevolent itself, but
Speaker 2: that is certainly staffed by a crew of the dead
Speaker 2: looking for victims to ferry through the seven layers of hell.
Speaker 3: This is a very threatening looking train. It also looks
Speaker 3: like I don't see any differentiation in this artwork from
Speaker 3: the engine part of the train and the cars that follow.
Speaker 3: It just looks like infinite engine going back.
Speaker 2: You know, I should mention here that there is in
Speaker 2: the Dungeons and Dragons world of raven Loft full of
Speaker 2: domains of dread. One of the domains of dread is
Speaker 2: the Morning Rail Sirie thirteen thirteen, where the domain itself
Speaker 2: is a train. I don't know that there's been a
Speaker 2: lot created officially around it. I mean, certainly fans and
Speaker 2: creators in the Dungeons and Dragons world have worked on it,
Speaker 2: but that one was one that caught my attention a
Speaker 2: while back, and actually Dungeon mastered some at least a
Speaker 2: few encounters on this train. As I sort of envisioned
Speaker 2: it coming together.
Speaker 3: I don't know anything about raven Loft is, so that's
Speaker 3: like a different time or space setting where you'd have
Speaker 3: some technology.
Speaker 2: Well. No, the way it's come together, and these things
Speaker 2: evolve over time, is that you have these dark domains
Speaker 2: where these dark powers, unknowable entities, maybe gods, maybe something
Speaker 2: beyond God's who knows, pluck particularly evil beings out of
Speaker 2: other realms and kind of trap them in a pocket universe.
Speaker 2: And in that pocket universe they have absolute power usually
Speaker 2: but are also absolute prisoners of that realm. And so
Speaker 2: you know, inevitably you have players like popping in and
Speaker 2: out of these realms and encountering characters like Strad the
Speaker 2: Great Vampire of Dungeons and Dragons, and you know there'll
Speaker 2: be one they've gotten to the point where they have them,
Speaker 2: like one that is based on say Chinese mythology. There's
Speaker 2: another of course that has mummies in it and so forth.
Speaker 2: It's a really rich realm of dungeons and dragons in
Speaker 2: my opinion, but it too does have a cursed ghost train. Okay,
Speaker 2: anyway back to the email here. This caused me to
Speaker 2: look through my library and I quickly found a brilliant
Speaker 2: example of the second type of terror train, one that
Speaker 2: most certainly is alive and malevolent. Check out the album
Speaker 2: cover of Orgasmatron by motor Ahead. The cover features a locomotive,
Speaker 2: the front of which has transmorgrified into the band's iconic
Speaker 2: war pig mascot snaggletooth, belching smoke and fire while galloping
Speaker 2: across the darkened countryside like one of Lemmy's Juggernaut baselines.
Speaker 2: This train definitely means you harm and will a fifth
Speaker 2: of Jack Daniels while doing it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's the mascot has got the toothy mouth open,
Speaker 3: and I'm just thinking you're gonna get a lot of
Speaker 3: bugs in there, dude.
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe it has to consume bugs, you know, cows.
Speaker 3: The cowcatcher just sort of feeds everything up into the mouth.
Speaker 2: This one is new to me. I don't know this
Speaker 2: particular Motorhead album.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know it either.
Speaker 2: Looks like the main track off of this is Death Forever,
Speaker 2: which is again not one I know. Anyway, the email continues.
Speaker 2: It didn't take long on Google to realize that there
Speaker 2: is quite the rabbit hole of album cover train art
Speaker 2: to fall down, including other solid examples of the darker
Speaker 2: subject matter such as hell Bound Train by Savoy Brown,
Speaker 2: The Coffin Train by Diamond Head, One Way Ticket to
Speaker 2: Hell and Back by the Darkness, and Swerve Driver's Last
Speaker 2: Train to Satansville. There are also many examples of the
Speaker 2: train image being used as a critique of modernity or
Speaker 2: as a shining example of the promise of that same modernity.
Speaker 2: Fair warning, there is also a stunning amount of cheesy
Speaker 2: track featuring trains. No offense Rod Stewart, but please knock
Speaker 2: it off. Take care, gents, and keep up the good work.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't get the Rod Stewart reference. What's the
Speaker 3: Rod Stuart train?
Speaker 2: You have to look of Rod Stewart train?
Speaker 3: Now, apparently Rod Stewart is a model train enthusiast, like
Speaker 3: he builds model trains. What's wrong with that?
Speaker 2: That's great, that's great love model trains. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 2: he had the track Downtown Train, So maybe it's that album.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I don't know anything about that, but I
Speaker 3: can't vouch for the song, but I support anyone's model
Speaker 3: train hobby. Go for it. Make those little cities, build
Speaker 3: those tracks.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, I bet there's some spooky ones out there too.
Speaker 2: You generally see Christmas e ones, but there's gotta be
Speaker 2: some spooky model trains as well.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's a nice idea. You know what, I'd
Speaker 3: even venture that. I'm certain we have at least one listener.
Speaker 3: You know who you are listening. You have a model
Speaker 3: train set that is spooky in nature. Send us a picture,
Speaker 3: Send us your little spooky vista.
Speaker 2: All right, what's next? Have we gotten to the caboose yet?
Speaker 2: Or do we saw have a few train cars to
Speaker 2: go here?
Speaker 3: Joe, Oh, we got a few more. You know what,
Speaker 3: I think today is going to turn out to be
Speaker 3: all horror trains, because we're still not at the end
Speaker 3: of even these. This one is from Ryan. Ryan says Hello,
Speaker 3: Robin Joe. After the Train of Terror episodes, I had
Speaker 3: to contribute my favorite fictional example the nineteen ninety four
Speaker 3: Super Nintendo RPG Final Fantasy VIX, released as Final Fantasy
Speaker 3: three outside of Japan. It features a sequence where some
Speaker 3: of the characters unknowingly bored a ghost Train also translated
Speaker 3: phantom train that ferries departed souls to their eternal rest.
Speaker 3: The characters make their way from the caboose to the engine,
Speaker 3: fighting ghosts and other undead enemies. You can also recruit
Speaker 3: some ghosts to temporarily join your party. They are not
Speaker 3: very strong, but they can possess enemies, which kills both
Speaker 3: the enemy and the ghost. Midway through, you can eat
Speaker 3: in the dining car. One character has misgivings about the
Speaker 3: safety of the food, but it does heal the whole party.
Speaker 3: Once you reach the engine, you fight a battle against
Speaker 3: the train itself, all while your characters are shown running
Speaker 3: away in front of it. Somehow, keeping pays WHOA that's intense.
Speaker 3: Even more absurdly, one of your characters can use a
Speaker 3: move called suplex, and if you use this on the train,
Speaker 3: he will in fact grab it, leap up off of
Speaker 3: the screen, and slam it down on its quote back.
Speaker 3: The train can also be defeated by giving it an
Speaker 3: item called a phoenix down. This item revived fallen characters,
Speaker 3: which defeats the train since the train is undead. After
Speaker 3: defeating the train, it allows the characters to disembark safely
Speaker 3: at the same time, other souls board the train, including
Speaker 3: the recently departed wife and son of one of your characters,
Speaker 3: allowing them a brief final farewell as the train pulls away.
Speaker 3: It's a touching ending to what is, in many ways
Speaker 3: a rather silly segment of the game, and all the
Speaker 3: more memorable for it. Thank you for the continued entertainment,
Speaker 3: especially during October every year. Ryan, Well, thank you. Ryan.
Speaker 3: You know, somehow I'm a big fan of some of
Speaker 3: the Super Nintendo era RPGs. Some of them really were great.
Speaker 3: I've gushed on the show before about how lovely I
Speaker 3: think Crono Trigger is. But somehow I've never played the
Speaker 3: I've never in full played the Super Nintendo Final Fantasy games.
Speaker 3: I know they're supposed to be wonderful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never played any of the Final Fantasies. I mean,
Speaker 2: over the years, I have friends and I've had friends
Speaker 2: in the past who are super endto the them, and
Speaker 2: at times I'll think maybe I should pick one up,
Speaker 2: but then I don't know which one. They keep remastering
Speaker 2: them and re releasing them, but I don't even know
Speaker 2: which which one would be ideal for me, So I'm
Speaker 2: open to suggestions. A short one, which my preference at
Speaker 2: this point in my life. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh man, Rob, have we talked about how we both
Speaker 3: like enjoy video games when we have time for them,
Speaker 3: but like increasingly just don't have space for open world games.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just I need. I need something that's really
Speaker 2: on the tracks, you know, I won't like it.
Speaker 3: Like a tight, good narrative with fun gameplay. That's what
Speaker 3: I get to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, short, short game, decent amount of exploration, but a
Speaker 2: definite end of beginning and an end.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 2: This next one comes to us from SHANEA. Shana writes
Speaker 2: it and says, hello, y'all ask for haunted trains in
Speaker 2: horror media, how do you feel about a train possessed
Speaker 2: by a demon? I think we feel pretty good about yeah,
Speaker 2: she continues. In the anime Demon Slayer Kemetsu no Yaiba,
Speaker 2: the movie Mug and Train twenty twenty are demons slaying
Speaker 2: heroes are dispatched to investigate people disappearing on a certain
Speaker 2: train in the countryside. They discover a demon has been
Speaker 2: using the train as it's hunting ground. During the battle,
Speaker 2: the demon is able to possess the train itself, turning
Speaker 2: it into a fleshy Eldrick abomination with tentacles. I have
Speaker 2: attached a few screenshots of the flesh train. I'm looking
Speaker 2: at one right now. Yes, fleshy and terrifying. It's like
Speaker 2: the train as intestinal track.
Speaker 3: Yes. And there's one shot here where the train so
Speaker 3: you've got all this like membrane or epithelium on the
Speaker 3: outside of the train and then running over top. It
Speaker 3: is like a buff guy with a pig's head. Yes, okay,
Speaker 3: I would want him slaying demons for me.
Speaker 2: And then there's more as You're rights Demons or Kamitsu
Speaker 2: Nouyaiba is a very popular anime manga that takes place
Speaker 2: during the Taisho Era between nineteen fifteen and nineteen twenty six.
Speaker 2: The Taisho era was a time of rapid change in
Speaker 2: Japan as Western culture and technology continue to spread into
Speaker 2: the country. The anime sometimes deals directly with this cultural change,
Speaker 2: and the point of a demon feeding on humans by
Speaker 2: taking possession of a train seems quite on point. As
Speaker 2: always loved the show Shame.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder how this interacts with the Japanese ghost
Speaker 3: train examples we talked about in the episode with the
Speaker 3: It was the Tanuki trains, right Yeah, the Tanuki, the
Speaker 3: wild Tanuki would morph into the shape of a train,
Speaker 3: but then if you stopped believing in it, then it
Speaker 3: would the train would stop appearing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of like natural, this conflict occurring between
Speaker 2: the natural world of the tanukis and the modern world
Speaker 2: of the train.
Speaker 3: All right, well, I think we're out of time for today.
Speaker 3: It's a shame. We've got a lot more great messages
Speaker 3: to get to. We'll have to save them for next time.
Speaker 3: But Carney the mailbot is really trying to move us along.
Speaker 3: He is insisting that we practice putting on our masks
Speaker 3: right now and we won't mess it up on the
Speaker 3: big night. So we're gonna have a little practice session
Speaker 3: with Carney here, and we will see you again soon.
Speaker 3: We will have more seasonal stuff for you on Thursday
Speaker 3: of this week, and then also on Friday with our
Speaker 3: Weird House Cinema episode.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, we have more Halloween episodes to come
Speaker 2: here before October thirty first. And oh and I'm also
Speaker 2: supposed to pass along that we have a new Halloween
Speaker 2: themed T shirt and our t shirt shop over at
Speaker 2: Tea Public. You can find a link to the store
Speaker 2: on the Good to Stuff to Blowrmind dot com and
Speaker 2: you can find over. You have to search for it.
Speaker 2: It's not very apparent, but there is somewhere in all
Speaker 2: of that link to our shop. I think our instagram
Speaker 2: STBUI and podcast, which you should follow if you're on Instagram.
Speaker 2: I believe our link tree also goes to this shop,
Speaker 2: so it's a little hidden, but we do have some
Speaker 2: merch there, various designs that have accumulated over the years,
Speaker 2: and they just added a new one that has like
Speaker 2: an orange and black version of the logo and you
Speaker 2: can try it on different short colors. You know, it's
Speaker 2: gonna work better with some than others, but we have
Speaker 2: some Halloween options in there if you were so inclined.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 2: Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 2: primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays and on Fridays. We set aside most
Speaker 2: serious concerns and just talk about a weird film on
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema, and yes, we did talk about a
Speaker 2: train movie. Earlier this month we talked about Horror Express,
Speaker 2: which was a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, huge. Thanks as always to our excellent
Speaker 3: audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like to get
Speaker 3: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 3: any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or
Speaker 3: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
Speaker 3: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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