WEBVTT - Six Ghost Stories 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.880 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.880 --> 0:00:14.239 Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.280 --> 0:00:17.799 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Saga. Hey, Robert, 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:22.280 do you believe in ghosts? I believe in ghosts stories. 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:26.040 I've I've never had a supernatural experience. I have not 0:00:26.160 --> 0:00:28.640 seen a ghost. I've I've spoken to many people who 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:31.120 claim to have seen him, or they seem something they 0:00:31.560 --> 0:00:36.000 can't fully explain and turn to the ghost narrative. But yeah, 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:38.040 for my own part, I don't believe in ghosts, but 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:40.400 I believe in the power of ghost stories. Yeah, that's 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:42.839 I think that's a good position to take on this. 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:46.960 I don't know that I necessarily believe in ghosts. I 0:00:47.000 --> 0:00:50.840 don't not believe in ghosts, if that makes sense, But 0:00:51.159 --> 0:00:54.200 I'm open to the idea. And I do know too 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:56.400 people though, who are sort of into the whole amateur 0:00:56.440 --> 0:00:58.920 ghost hunting thing and will like occasionally go to like 0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:01.760 abandoned houses in middle of nowhere with what do you 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:03.760 call him, like E M F meters and stuff like 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:08.039 that and try to do like spirit photography. But uh, 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:10.440 it's never really struck me as something that that was 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:13.400 particularly interesting. One time I was with this guy who 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:15.600 this is one of the people who's into this, and 0:01:15.640 --> 0:01:18.800 we're driving by the cemetery where like half of my 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:21.839 family is buried, and he was telling me about how 0:01:21.880 --> 0:01:24.520 he had been like hanging out in that cemetery doing 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:26.480 ghost hunting in the middle of the night. It just 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:29.000 strikes me as a bit too radio shack from my 0:01:29.000 --> 0:01:32.360 own like hanging out in the cemetery going to try 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:34.560 and see a ghost. I'm all in favor of that visit, 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:37.040 going on ghost tours, that sort of thing. I love it, 0:01:37.080 --> 0:01:40.679 But in terms of like building some device and then 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:44.520 using it or perhaps misusing it to try and find 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:48.520 evidence of supernatural activity unless it's an actual proton pack, 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:50.360 I'm just not really on board. That would be great 0:01:50.400 --> 0:01:52.200 if we could get an actual proton pack out of it. 0:01:52.200 --> 0:01:54.000 I think a lot more people would be involved. But 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:56.840 you gotta go on licensed with it. That's true. Yeah, 0:01:57.160 --> 0:02:00.880 But this particular episode, just so that you are all aware, 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:03.600 is not going to be one where we look at 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:07.760 ghost hunting and say, oh, well, this is all pseudoscience, right, Like, 0:02:07.800 --> 0:02:09.639 we're not going to do that breakdown. I'm sure you've 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:13.280 probably heard or seen that many times before. Uh, this 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:17.880 is we're more interested in ghost stories in this episode, 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:20.120 and we're gonna look at ghost stories from around the 0:02:20.160 --> 0:02:24.120 world and how they reflect the human condition. Uh So, Yeah, 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:27.960 there's lots of studies about e v P or infrasound 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:31.440 and how the ghost hunters have flawed methodologies and all 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:34.000 that stuff, Right, but that's not really what we're gonna 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:36.920 do in this particular episode. Yeah, we we decided to 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:41.160 look to each continent, and we realized that that's that's 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:43.560 a very broad system, and we're going to leave out 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:46.320 a lot of wonderful ghost stories and ghost traditions and 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:49.440 spirit belief systems. But we decided to just hit each 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:55.480 continent that has human habitation and pick out one particular 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:59.240 ghost story or ghost belief system that has some sort 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:05.799 of anthropological, psychological, or scientific basis for discussion. Right, and 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:08.000 why are we doing this, you may ask yourselves, This 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:10.520 seems like an unusual topic for stuff to blow your 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:14.280 mind a science podcast. Well, hey, it's October for us. 0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:17.000 Maybe listening to this in January, but it is now 0:03:17.080 --> 0:03:20.000 October for us in space and time. In every October, 0:03:20.360 --> 0:03:23.160 we do episodes that are related to Halloween, and this 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:25.519 is one of them. Yeah, and by no means that 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:28.920 this episode stand outside of a lot of the topics 0:03:28.919 --> 0:03:32.320 we cover, because, as we discuss in this episode, you're 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:35.880 gonna find links to episodes that we've covered dealing with 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:39.960 psychology and anthropology, belief systems, and just sort of the 0:03:40.000 --> 0:03:43.880 tension that emerges in a post colonial world. Yeah. In fact, 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:46.040 we have an entire episode that Robert and I did 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:49.880 about Chinese ghost weddings that immediately sprang to mind here. 0:03:50.760 --> 0:03:53.280 But people are probably wondering, well, what do you mean 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:56.720 by ghost story? That's a pretty broad, you know, thing 0:03:56.800 --> 0:04:00.720 to talk about. Specifically, we're talking about fiction that either 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:04.960 includes a ghost or the characters in the stories belief 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:08.640 in ghosts. Sometimes, you know, ghost stories are used to 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:12.560 just be scary, right, but we're particularly interested in stories 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:15.560 that have ghosts in them here, not just any old 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:18.120 scary story. Yeah. I feel like a ghost story really 0:04:18.160 --> 0:04:22.440 tells you something about the the storyteller or the storyteller's 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:26.880 culture as it relates to bereavement and death and loss 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:29.640 and what they think about the afterlife and just how 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:32.960 they deal with death on a day to day basis. Yeah. 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:34.680 I think I mentioned this in one of our other 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:37.640 October episodes that we've recorded this month. But to me, 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:42.840 horror stories in general are cautionary tales, and ultimately we 0:04:42.880 --> 0:04:45.680 started passing them down to one another over the generations, 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:47.920 whether it was around a campfire or in a book, 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:52.320 right in these tomes of literature, because they teach us 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:55.719 something about the world and about surviving in it. And 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:58.480 so that's what I think I'm interested in finding out 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:01.200 here about all these very cultures from around the world 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:04.120 and what they've passed on and are trying to teach 0:05:04.120 --> 0:05:06.880 one another. Yeah. Indeed, and now one more thought before 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:10.560 we actually began to get into the media the episode. 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:13.360 We recently had an episode Joe and I recently did 0:05:13.400 --> 0:05:16.760 one on the Bicameral Mind, and I know that if 0:05:17.000 --> 0:05:20.000 you recently listen to those episodes, you're gonna think to 0:05:20.120 --> 0:05:22.680 that time after time in this because we're gonna talking 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:27.000 about like dead voices speaking to the living in this episode. 0:05:27.040 --> 0:05:29.480 We're really not going to get into any bicameral Mind 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:34.080 theories regarding the subject matter, but certainly if connections occur 0:05:34.160 --> 0:05:36.800 to you right into us, let us know on social media, 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:40.360 because there's there's plenty of of of room to compare 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:43.880 the two. Right, So we're gonna start off with Europe. 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:47.039 Why are we starting with Europe? Well, that is I 0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:49.880 think the foundation for what most people listening to this 0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:53.359 show have for their idea of a ghost story, and 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:56.400 it seems like a good place to sort of cement ourselves. Especially. 0:05:56.680 --> 0:05:58.599 This is not going to be like a literary podcast 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:00.920 where we're going to walk through the sort of literary 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:03.800 history of ghost stories, but we'll give you like a 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:07.719 very very concise summary before each of these. I should 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:11.599 also say that the sort of the the European ghost 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:16.320 stinku manages to work its way into a lot of 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:18.840 these other ghost traditions that we're going to discuss. Yes, 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:21.040 it does, for sure, we we we will find it 0:06:21.320 --> 0:06:24.440 on almost every continent, and we had to when we 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:27.719 were choosing what stories we were going to share with you, 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:30.240 we had to be very mindful of the sort of 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:35.400 European colonial aspect of ghost stories. So ghosts and hauntings 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:37.960 they actually appear in European literature as early as the 0:06:37.960 --> 0:06:42.000 ancient Greeks. Now obviously this extends into Shakespeare with literature 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:45.160 and drama. We all know the ghost of Hamlet's father 0:06:45.360 --> 0:06:48.280 that shows up in Hamlet for instance. Now here's an 0:06:48.279 --> 0:06:51.880 interesting thing that I learned with relation to the Shakespeare stuff, though, 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:55.080 this is where we get the sheeted ghost from. So 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:57.400 the whole idea of somebody just wearing a sheet with 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:00.480 holes punched into it to like represent a ghost doesn't 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:03.800 directly come from Shakespeare, but it comes from dramatic presentations 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:06.359 of ghosts on the stage. The reason why was they 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:09.520 were originally depicted in armor. So these big suits of 0:07:09.640 --> 0:07:13.160 armor would be like rigged up on police systems and 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:15.800 and like lowered onto the stage, and that was supposed 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:19.920 to invoke a ghost. But as you may imagine, armors 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:22.600 pretty heavy and that was difficult to pull off every night. 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:25.440 So they turned to what they referred to as spirit 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:29.560 drapery h and that was essentially putting the sheet over 0:07:29.720 --> 0:07:34.080 somebody's head and they would go oh uh. Ghost stories 0:07:34.120 --> 0:07:40.120 though then extended into Gothic literature, and the difference seems 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:42.880 to be whether or not the ghost stories themselves had 0:07:42.880 --> 0:07:45.560 a contemporary setting. And this this seems to be fairly 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:49.240 important in the European sense of ghost stories. Now, the 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:52.640 golden age in literature of ghost stories really seems to 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:57.280 kick off in the eighteen hundreds. You've got po Sheridan Lafaneu, 0:07:57.320 --> 0:07:59.840 who we've talked about on the show before, wrote Green Tea. 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:03.320 We have a whole episode on his concept of whether 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:05.880 or not green tea would make you see hallucinations or 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:09.640 ghosts uh, and lots of others, which leads us to 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:13.200 m R James, who I really want to talk about 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:16.280 here for a second because he's he's really considered the 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:19.720 master of the ghost story. And James lived from eighteen 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:23.680 sixty two to nineteen thirty six. He was a college provost. 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:26.720 He did not tell ghost stories for a living. In fact, 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:30.080 he studied medieval history in the Bible. But he is 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:33.000 now known best today as a teller of ghost stories 0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:35.800 because what he would do is every Christmas Eve he 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:37.960 would compose a new ghost story and he would have 0:08:38.000 --> 0:08:41.040 people come over, whether they were students or acquaintances, and 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:43.160 he would present them with a ghost story. And so 0:08:43.240 --> 0:08:45.920 this is where we get his ghost stories of the 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:48.360 Antiquary from. And if you haven't read these, I really 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:50.679 recommend it. I think they hold up. It is my 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:53.680 new holiday tradition to read an m. R. James story 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:56.120 every Christmas. Oh yeah, this is this is one of 0:08:56.160 --> 0:08:59.760 the big names and for sure. Yeah. So James wrote 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:03.719 an article for a magazine called The Bookman in December 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:09.360 nine and this was his official five point designation of 0:09:09.400 --> 0:09:12.880 what you needed to have in your European slash English 0:09:12.920 --> 0:09:15.080 ghost story. Okay, so these are the five things we're 0:09:15.080 --> 0:09:18.040 looking for here to be a true ghost story. The 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:22.960 supernatural quality of the ghost can't be explained away with rationality. Okay, 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:25.880 so you can't. You can't have like a science or 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:29.640 pseudoscience kind of explanation. The second is that the ghost 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:32.240 story itself should inspire the reader with what he calls 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:36.240 pleasing terror. So he essentially means like that's sort of 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:38.120 like adrenaline high that you get when you go to 0:09:38.120 --> 0:09:41.679 see a horror movie, right, like the the excitement of 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:45.240 the fight or flight response of being presented with a 0:09:45.240 --> 0:09:49.440 horror story. The third is a ghost story should not 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:52.559 have gratuitous violence or sex in it, which I thought 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:56.200 was interesting, especially where most of our ghost stories go nowadays. 0:09:56.280 --> 0:09:57.840 Now I have to say that one of my favorite 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:01.280 haunted house books that Richard Matheson's Hell Houses already already 0:10:01.280 --> 0:10:04.280 it's broken too of these rules. Yeah, it's interesting, and 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:07.240 I think that there's an argument to be made that 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:09.600 might have been appropriate for James time, but you can 0:10:09.640 --> 0:10:13.199 still make it work nowadays. Ghost stories this is the 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:16.720 last one should have a contemporary setting where the reader 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:20.640 can identify with the protagonist. So basically it needs to 0:10:20.640 --> 0:10:23.000 be it can't be like a period piece, that is 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:26.720 what he's saying, because you won't necessarily identify with the 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:30.720 protagonist as quickly and put yourself in their position. So again, 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:33.440 I think you can probably manipulate that I've seen lots 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:36.920 of good ghost stories were still we're still watching a 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:39.280 lot and reading a lot of these these older ghost stories, 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:41.720 and we don't have any trouble exactly like Mr James 0:10:41.720 --> 0:10:44.520 ghost stories. Yeah. Um, but let's step back and take 0:10:44.520 --> 0:10:46.800 a look at James style and of himself. Okay, So 0:10:46.920 --> 0:10:50.120 James wrote ghost stories that were usually set in a 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:54.320 small European town. His protagonist was almost always what would 0:10:54.360 --> 0:10:57.040 be like some kind of gentleman's scholar, uh, and they 0:10:57.040 --> 0:10:59.800 would discover some antique object and that would kick off 0:10:59.840 --> 0:11:03.240 the lot to the ghost showing up. Uh. He also 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:06.560 thought it was really important to build atmosphere and have 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:10.240 like an accelerating pace or intensity to these stories. Dread 0:11:10.440 --> 0:11:13.480 so this leads to his whole pleasing terror idea. The 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:16.880 characters in his stories were usually ordinary people, and the 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:19.240 reason why is he wanted us again to be able 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:23.040 to relate to who they are, especially when they're pulled 0:11:23.120 --> 0:11:26.920 out of their calm environment by something that's ominous or malevolent. Right, 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:28.720 so again just being able to put yourself in the 0:11:28.720 --> 0:11:33.360 shoes of the of the main characters. Now, after Mr James, 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:36.840 in the early twentieth century, English ghost stories began to 0:11:36.880 --> 0:11:40.600 incorporate psychological aspects into them. So when you hear people 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:43.240 talk about psychological horror, this is when this kind of 0:11:43.320 --> 0:11:45.560 kicked off. And I'm thinking here of some of our 0:11:45.559 --> 0:11:49.800 favorites like Algernon Blackwood and William Hope Hodgson, both wonderful. 0:11:49.800 --> 0:11:54.000 Hodgson wrote The night Lands. Yeah, yeah, Now today the 0:11:54.040 --> 0:11:56.640 modern ghost tale, or what is sometimes referred to just 0:11:56.679 --> 0:11:59.600 as weird fiction. The writer I think that is most 0:11:59.840 --> 0:12:04.440 soociated with European ghost stories is probably Ramsey campbell Um. 0:12:04.480 --> 0:12:06.480 So if you're not familiar with him, check out his work. 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:09.120 He doesn't exclusively write ghost stories. In fact, he started 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:13.200 off as a kind of Lovecraft homage guy. But but 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:16.240 he seems to have like taken up that mantle. So, 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:19.200 now that we've got that out of the way, what's 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:23.640 my pick for a great European ghost story that that 0:12:23.760 --> 0:12:27.719 shows us something about ourselves. I'm gonna choose Daphne de 0:12:27.840 --> 0:12:31.559 Mauriers Don't Look Now. And you may be familiar with 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:34.120 this because there was a movie that was made out 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:37.440 of it that stars Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie and 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:40.960 was directed by Nicholas Rogue. It's wonderful film as well. 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:43.640 I'm gonna be talking about both throughout this, but I 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:46.040 really feel like it's a It's a great example of 0:12:46.080 --> 0:12:50.640 both the European ghost story and the psychological trend that 0:12:50.679 --> 0:12:54.240 we started to see in the twentieth century. So you 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:57.040 may have not heard of Damria. She actually wrote in 0:12:57.080 --> 0:13:00.600 a lot of different styles. She wasn't strictly a horror writer, say, 0:13:00.600 --> 0:13:04.000 but her novels and short stories were adapted into horror 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:07.160 movies like Don't Look Now, and then Alfred Hitchcock's films 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:10.040 Rebecca and The Birds were both based cat Maria. I 0:13:10.080 --> 0:13:11.880 was not I was not aware that The Birds was 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:14.680 based on a written work. Yeah, yeah, me either until 0:13:14.720 --> 0:13:17.000 I sat down to do this research. So real quick 0:13:17.000 --> 0:13:18.800 I'm gonna give you the summary of Don't Look Now. 0:13:19.040 --> 0:13:21.600 Spoilers for Don't Look Now. It's about a husband and 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:24.440 wife who are visiting Venice after they have had a 0:13:24.520 --> 0:13:27.920 young daughter who died. In the book, I believe she 0:13:28.000 --> 0:13:31.240 died of meningitis. In the film, she is drowned in 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:34.600 a pond in their backyard. They go to Venice so 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:37.079 they can kind of shake this off, and they encounter 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:40.679 two twins, one of whom claims to be a seer, 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:43.160 and the seer tells them, oh, I can see your 0:13:43.240 --> 0:13:45.680 daughter's ghost. She's right there with you. This is a 0:13:45.720 --> 0:13:48.840 comforting thing. You should be happy now. The husband, John 0:13:49.000 --> 0:13:52.400 begins seeing a hooded little girl and he starts following 0:13:52.440 --> 0:13:55.439 her around Venice. There's some kind of sense that maybe 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:58.160 the sears around and maybe I'm somehow sensing the ghost 0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:00.920 of my dead daughter. I'm going to go follow her. Later, 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:05.280 he sees his wife with these two twins, sisters, and 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:08.400 they're on their way back to their hotel in Venice 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:11.520 on a boat, and he thinks, well, wait a minute, 0:14:11.520 --> 0:14:13.840 what's she doing. I saw her just leave for the 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:16.840 airport to go to England. Why are they coming back? 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:18.880 And he's like yelling at them, and they don't they 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:21.160 don't recognize him, they don't seem to hear him, and 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:24.040 he's kind of freaking out, like reality seems to be 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:29.960 falling apart for him. Uh. And one of the twins says, well, actually, 0:14:30.160 --> 0:14:33.600 what you saw was a vision of the future. Now, 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:36.520 at the end of the story, he has killed there's 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:39.200 a this is kind of a random thing that there's 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:41.880 a serial killer running around the streets of Venice who 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:45.120 kills him. Uh. And in the I think it's in 0:14:45.200 --> 0:14:48.120 both the short story and well definitely in the film 0:14:48.160 --> 0:14:52.840 it is a murderous old dwarf woman. Uh. And she 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:58.480 murders him, and as he's dying, he realizes, oh, I 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:02.480 was actually seeing the future. My wife was coming back 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:06.800 in that future orientation to bury me. This was she 0:15:06.880 --> 0:15:09.640 was coming back for my funeral because I've been murdered 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:12.240 here and so like, he sort of falls into this 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:14.760 situation where he's like, wait, am I a ghost or 0:15:14.800 --> 0:15:17.680 have I been a ghost this whole time? Or am 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:21.560 I experiencing some kind of extrasensory perception type thing. Well, 0:15:21.600 --> 0:15:23.400 I was not. I have not seen it or read it. 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:26.400 I was not expecting the funeral Dwarf to play Man. 0:15:26.480 --> 0:15:28.360 You've got to see the movie. It's so good. I 0:15:28.400 --> 0:15:31.200 really recommend the short story too, it's quite good. Now 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:34.240 I turned to our old buddy St. Joshi, who is 0:15:34.680 --> 0:15:38.040 the go to expert on all things horror literature. He 0:15:38.080 --> 0:15:41.840 has this awesome book, Unutterable Horror, that I use anytime 0:15:42.080 --> 0:15:45.200 I'm looking for literary reference on the history of horror, 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:47.760 and St Josh he's right up on Daphne de Maurier 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:51.080 was about two pages long. He says Don't Look Now 0:15:51.240 --> 0:15:55.240 is his favorite of her stories. But then, in typical 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:58.960 Joshi fashion, where he's kind of curmudgeon lee about writers, 0:15:59.000 --> 0:16:05.120 he says her work is not to be entirely despised. Yeah, 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:09.040 that's really for him. Those are quite high marks. Yeah, um, 0:16:09.120 --> 0:16:11.800 so I recommend it. But obviously, like I said, de 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:13.840 Morier's work kind of goes all over the place. So 0:16:13.840 --> 0:16:16.360 if you're looking for horror stories, i'd recommend starting with 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:18.760 Don't Look Now. Okay, Well, how does it match up 0:16:18.760 --> 0:16:20.880 with him R. James Rules for ghost stories? Yeah, this 0:16:20.920 --> 0:16:23.120 is a good question. So let's take a look at 0:16:23.200 --> 0:16:27.200 him or james rules and put them up against the 0:16:27.280 --> 0:16:30.840 the Mourier story. Here so okay, Yes, the supernatural isn't 0:16:30.880 --> 0:16:33.920 explained away with rationality at any point in the story. 0:16:34.160 --> 0:16:37.080 In fact, the husband is constantly trying to say, there's 0:16:37.160 --> 0:16:40.720 no supernatural events going on. I'm a rational man, I 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:42.880 don't believe in these things. And then at the end 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:45.480 comes around as he's dying and I guess turning into 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:49.520 a ghost. The story itself, just like uh m R 0:16:49.640 --> 0:16:52.720 James prescribes, builds dread in a way that I would 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:57.120 describe as pleasing terror in his his words, the short 0:16:57.200 --> 0:16:59.680 story itself is not gratuitous, but I do have to 0:16:59.720 --> 0:17:02.920 mention and the film is infamous for the sex scene 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:07.879 between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. It is this famous, 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:11.399 infamous scene of the two of them having sex, and 0:17:11.520 --> 0:17:15.159 four years people thought it was real. People thought it 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:18.560 was like not simulated, that they had actually had sex 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:21.359 in a hotel room in Nicholas. Rogue just shot that, 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:24.760 and in fact, uh, that's not true at all. Rogue 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:27.119 kind of like played around the idea over the years 0:17:27.119 --> 0:17:29.480 of just keeping the press, you know, going with this 0:17:29.640 --> 0:17:32.879 urban myth. But I'll also say there's a good bit 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:34.720 of fake blood in this movie too. You see a 0:17:34.720 --> 0:17:38.680 lot of like, uh, nineteen seventies style fake blood, it's 0:17:38.720 --> 0:17:42.880 like really viscous, you know that's that style. Okay, So 0:17:42.920 --> 0:17:45.080 it's so it's This is an example though, where I 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:48.240 would say, like the sex and the violence still works 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:52.680 in a ghost story. Um, the supernatural isn't really explained 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:56.280 at any point. The setting at the time was contemporary Venice. 0:17:56.359 --> 0:17:58.080 They didn't have it in any kind of period. Now 0:17:58.080 --> 0:18:00.320 if you're watching it now, it's almost fifty years later. 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:02.639 Now here's what's interesting. When you look at it up 0:18:02.640 --> 0:18:05.960 against m R James Tropes. John is just like one 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:08.680 of his characters, he's a man of rationality in the film, 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:11.440 he's an architect and he's written a book about geometry, 0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:14.960 so he's very grounded in the whole idea of being 0:18:15.040 --> 0:18:20.399 a rational man. And uh, just making sure that you know, 0:18:20.520 --> 0:18:23.520 he is the patriarchal figure that's kind of trying to 0:18:23.560 --> 0:18:25.600 hold everything together. Now at this point, I feel like 0:18:25.640 --> 0:18:29.240 we we've established sort of the guidelines for a European 0:18:29.520 --> 0:18:32.600 horror story, and we've talked about the the the qualities 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:35.600 of this particular story. What what does all of this 0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:41.240 reveal about the human condition of Europeans. So I found 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:45.119 an article that was written by G. Whisker in and 0:18:45.160 --> 0:18:48.240 it's about de Maurier's horror writing, and it was published 0:18:48.240 --> 0:18:51.199 in the Journal of Gender Studies, and I think that 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:54.000 it does a really good job of explaining what she 0:18:54.160 --> 0:18:57.679 was trying to do without being overt about it. Essentially, 0:18:58.160 --> 0:19:02.359 Whisker argues that horror at its best intervenes in our 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:07.359 critical understanding of the political, social, sexual, and psychological world. 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:10.280 Now it allows us to explore fears and then we 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:11.959 can put them back away again, right, Like we can 0:19:12.000 --> 0:19:13.320 take them out of the box, and we can put 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:15.280 them back away. We don't have to live with them. 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:18.040 And this is especially true if you're following the M. R. 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:22.600 James doctrine of ghost stories, right, yeah, especially the the 0:19:22.760 --> 0:19:27.000 idea of like keeping it safe, I guess, right, Like, 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:29.520 like the way that he would write them kept them 0:19:29.560 --> 0:19:32.480 contained within the world of the ghost story, so when 0:19:32.480 --> 0:19:37.080 you were done with it didn't linger. Now, Okay. So 0:19:37.160 --> 0:19:40.879 Whisker has an interesting argument about de Mourier, and the 0:19:41.000 --> 0:19:44.760 argument goes that de Mourier was providing an entertaining way 0:19:44.800 --> 0:19:49.840 to interrogate gender representations, and that horror, being about power 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:52.480 relationships in society, was the perfect way for her to 0:19:52.520 --> 0:19:55.800 do that. So women in horror, and at least until then, 0:19:55.960 --> 0:20:00.119 had either been passive and vulnerable victims, or they are 0:20:00.160 --> 0:20:03.359 depicted as fem fatales that threatened the boundaries of of 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:07.080 the home and of relationships. Okay, now, one claim about 0:20:07.080 --> 0:20:09.359 horror is that the pleasure that we get it from it. 0:20:09.480 --> 0:20:14.399 So the pleasurable terror of Mr James is when the 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:18.400 narrative provides closure and that the horror itself is destroyed 0:20:18.480 --> 0:20:21.080 or contained again, so that the the idea that you 0:20:21.119 --> 0:20:23.440 know you dispelled the horror before you go back out 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:27.000 into the real world. This re establishes the familiar for us, 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:30.760 and when the horror is disrupted, our security of self 0:20:30.840 --> 0:20:35.280 in place can return. But female writers of horror are 0:20:35.400 --> 0:20:39.160 unlikely to want to represent their own gender as being 0:20:39.200 --> 0:20:43.760 either monstrous or somehow you know, naive, and they're not 0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:46.480 gonna want to celebrate a return to a male empowered 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:50.000 status quo. So du Moier herself she wrote her stories 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:53.480 between World War One and World War Two. That's arguably 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:56.720 an error of conservative gender roles in England. Now and 0:20:56.840 --> 0:20:59.760 Don't Look Now and other stories she seems to be 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:03.280 undermining the conservative vision of the role of the husband 0:21:03.280 --> 0:21:08.560 and the father, and the story deconstructs this. Now, Whisker argues, actually, 0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:12.639 if you've seen Rogues film, it is a feminist interpretation 0:21:12.760 --> 0:21:15.960 of Little Red riding Hood and the reason why here 0:21:16.800 --> 0:21:18.840 to give you an idea of the film. He uses 0:21:18.920 --> 0:21:22.520 red in really powerful ways, and specifically a red macintosh 0:21:22.600 --> 0:21:26.639 that both the daughter wears and then the dwarf wears 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:29.639 later on. So whenever you see the color red in 0:21:29.680 --> 0:21:32.719 the film, it kind of fills you with dread. So 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:36.879 the story is purposely destabilizing. It makes you constantly uneasy. 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:39.680 It mis directs you away from the actual horror that's 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:42.720 going to come at the end of the film. For example, 0:21:42.880 --> 0:21:45.679 when the story opens and we're very first introduced to 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:49.960 the old Lady twins, they're described jokingly by John as 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:55.159 male twins in drag who are definitely murderers. He's joking 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:58.520