Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: So over the years here on Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 2: we've done Halloween and Halloween adjacent episodes that pick from
Speaker 2: us sorted tales of one sort or another, you know,
Speaker 2: horrific tale, scary tales, creepy tales, and then use them
Speaker 2: as sort of a springboard to look at a particular
Speaker 2: scientific topic or just look at that story through a
Speaker 2: scientific or cultural lens. At one point we did a
Speaker 2: series of episodes based on different creepypastas. Then Joe and
Speaker 2: I turned to TV horror anthology episodes for a number
Speaker 2: of years, and this year we're starting what I'm hoping
Speaker 2: we'll be a new tradition, one that sticks to shorter
Speaker 2: horror works, but also gets back into the written word,
Speaker 2: which I know many of our listeners missed from the
Speaker 2: days when we did summer reading episodes, so kind of
Speaker 2: meeting me halfway on that as well. Written horror fiction
Speaker 2: often does come up on the show anyway, so it
Speaker 2: seems like a solid direction to go in. Though this
Speaker 2: may be in part because this is our first time
Speaker 2: out of the gate with this particular series. It was
Speaker 2: kind of a mad dash to put this episode together,
Speaker 2: and it's going to be a mad dash as well
Speaker 2: for JJ to get it edited and out there, but
Speaker 2: hopefully it'll be worth it. I don't know about you, Joe,
Speaker 2: but I had a number of trials and tribulations finding
Speaker 2: my selection. I had like a list of stories I
Speaker 2: was considering, and then I ended up not really using
Speaker 2: any of those, and I had one that I thought
Speaker 2: was perfect, and then it really took a turn halfway
Speaker 2: through the story and went in a direction that I
Speaker 2: wasn't crazy about, and only then I had to start
Speaker 2: from ground from just ground zero on the whole thing.
Speaker 2: But I do think I finally picked out a story
Speaker 2: that is going to be fun to chat about here.
Speaker 3: You know, frankly this I always enjoyed doing our anthology
Speaker 3: of horror episodes, but I had the same issue with
Speaker 3: those when we were doing like TV or movie anthology
Speaker 3: things where I would just spend forever in the pre
Speaker 3: research phase where I'd just be like trying to find
Speaker 3: an appropriate one that had some kind of hook of
Speaker 3: something to talk about that we hadn't already covered extensively before,
Speaker 3: And I gotta admit I'm having the same issue here.
Speaker 3: I spent probably more time trying to find a story
Speaker 3: to talk about than I did actually getting ready for
Speaker 3: the episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we'll go ahead and put the call out
Speaker 2: to listeners. Help us make up our minds in advance
Speaker 2: next year Salloween. If you can think of a really
Speaker 2: great horror, halloweeny, creepy short story that would benefit from
Speaker 2: this treatment, go ahead and write in and let us
Speaker 2: know again months in advance, and that'll help us be
Speaker 2: ready for next year. All right, Well, let's go go
Speaker 2: ahead and jump in here. I'm going to start with
Speaker 2: my selection here. I ended up going with a story
Speaker 2: titled The Maker of Gargoyles by Clark Ashton Smith, who
Speaker 2: lived eighteen ninety three through nineteen sixty one. Clark Ashton
Speaker 2: Smith remains probably my favorite writer of weird fiction from
Speaker 2: the pulp era, mainly for his exceedingly rich and textured
Speaker 2: dark fantasy tales, often stories in which doomed wizards delve
Speaker 2: deep into forbidden knowledge and brings some sort of disastrous
Speaker 2: curse down upon their own heads. Sometimes there's a little
Speaker 2: twist of gallows humor to the whole affair. Along these lines,
Speaker 2: I highly recommend the Tales The Double Shadow, The Seven Geeses,
Speaker 2: and The Empire of the Necromancers. Those are three of
Speaker 2: the finest dark fantasy short stories you could possibly hope
Speaker 2: to read. In my opinion.
Speaker 3: Is that last one, the one where the two Necromancers
Speaker 3: are like wandering around in this terrible landscape sort of
Speaker 3: arguing with each other.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, and eventually they're like, well, we're going to
Speaker 2: go to this ancient tomb city and we're going to
Speaker 2: raise every one from the dead and make them serve
Speaker 2: us eternally. And you know, they're absolutely horrible, comedically evil characters,
Speaker 2: and of course eventually the undead creatures that they summon
Speaker 2: rise up against them and tear them to pieces. Of course,
Speaker 2: now I have to stress I've never been a Clark
Speaker 2: Ashton Smith completist, though you know, he wrote a number
Speaker 2: of tales set in a very contemporary twentieth century weird
Speaker 2: tales setting. Even though one of them, Return of the Magician,
Speaker 2: is often considered one of his best works and was
Speaker 2: actually adapted into a Night Gallery episode feature featuring Vincent Price,
Speaker 2: but I've never read it. I tend to steer more
Speaker 2: towards his dark fantasy. There's a great deal of his
Speaker 2: work along these lines that I've never read, so his
Speaker 2: work is largely centered in a few different settings, mostly
Speaker 2: within the fantastic realms of Hyperborea, Poseidonus, Avarn, and Zophoqua.
Speaker 2: Today's tale takes us to Avaron. This is a fictional
Speaker 2: French province, and it depends on the story. The stories
Speaker 2: may be said anywhere between the years four seventy five
Speaker 2: CE and seventeen eighty nine see depending on the story
Speaker 2: in question. I haven't read all of these, but I
Speaker 2: do remember the Beast of Averron being quite good.
Speaker 3: He generally, in the story you're about to talk about,
Speaker 3: lays out kind of a landscape that hints at other
Speaker 3: tales yet to be told elsewhere, Like he just mentions
Speaker 3: this dark, haunted wood full of lou Garoo and other
Speaker 3: kind of inhabitants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ye, alluding to you know, we've had problems with
Speaker 2: succubi and incubie in the past and that sort of thing,
Speaker 2: you know. And I haven't read all the tales from
Speaker 2: the Avarn cycle either, so he may be referring to
Speaker 2: specific stories or possible stories, like you said. So, this
Speaker 2: particular short story, The Maker of Gargoyles, was published in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty two and it's set in the year eleven
Speaker 2: thirty eight. If you want to read it for yourself,
Speaker 2: you can find it on the Clark Ashton Smith website
Speaker 2: Eldrick Dark dot com, and it is also featured in
Speaker 2: the collection The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith. A
Speaker 2: Ventage from Atlantis the Collected Fantasies, Volume three. Its long title,
Speaker 2: but worth it. This is one of those authors whose
Speaker 2: work is in the public domain, as I understand it,
Speaker 2: So there are a lot of less than satisfying publications
Speaker 2: of his workout there if you're looking for an actual,
Speaker 2: high quality digital or a physical collection, so I recommend this.
Speaker 2: I also recommend there's a Penguin edition that also features
Speaker 2: some of his stories. But if you're looking to do
Speaker 2: it on the cheap, yeah, it's all apparently in the
Speaker 2: public domain, and you can find it all at that
Speaker 2: website I just referenced. All right, So in the story,
Speaker 2: Clark Ashton Smith establishes Avaron is a medieval city on
Speaker 2: the edge of dangerous and evil wilds. A province quote
Speaker 2: a world where the devil and his works were always
Speaker 2: more or less rampant. Here the walled city of Villonne
Speaker 2: has suffered more than its share of demonic cars. But
Speaker 2: everyone's pretty confident that this newly constructed cathedral is going
Speaker 2: to really shore things up. It's going to bring greater
Speaker 2: protection against the darkness. Everything's going to be all right.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately, this is a Gothic world where supernatural evil
Speaker 2: is absolutely real, but who can say for sure about
Speaker 2: supernatural good. It's kind of a gambol on the latter.
Speaker 2: So it's definitely a demon haunted world.
Speaker 3: And I like how in this story, the one main
Speaker 3: representative of the church that we get seems primarily concerned
Speaker 3: with the exquisite sophistication of the representations of evil on
Speaker 3: the cathedral.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and pretty much the only thing that the church
Speaker 2: is able to do to stand against the evil is
Speaker 2: they send to Rome for some high grade holy water. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it never shows up, it never actually features into
Speaker 2: the story, but that's all they can really do. So
Speaker 2: the cathedral here, as they describe it, pretty standard fair
Speaker 2: Gothic medieval cathedral and so forth, except two of its
Speaker 2: many gargoyles are creations of Villone's own artisan Blasse Reynard.
Speaker 2: This is the titular maker of gargoyles. He's kind of
Speaker 2: a coffin Joe character, you know. He's he's hated and
Speaker 2: feared by the townspeople. He has a lot of like
Speaker 2: obvious inner turmoil. Most people tend to just sort of
Speaker 2: put up with him and ignore him the same way
Speaker 2: that they put up with and ignore all of the
Speaker 2: supernatural evil that is writhing in the world around them.
Speaker 2: All Right, I'm going to read the description that Clark
Speaker 2: Ashton Smith gives us of these gargoyles.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: The two gargoyles were perched on opposite corners of a
Speaker 2: high tower of the cathedral. One was a snarling, murderous,
Speaker 2: cat headed monster with retracted lips revealing formidable things, and
Speaker 2: eyes that glared intolerable hatred from beneath eye brows. This
Speaker 2: creature had the claws and wings of a griffin, and
Speaker 2: seemed as if it were poised in readiness to swoop
Speaker 2: down on the city of Villonne like a harpie on
Speaker 2: its prey. Its companion was a horned sadder with the
Speaker 2: vans of some great bats, such as might roam the
Speaker 2: nether caverns, with sharp clenching talons and a look of
Speaker 2: satanically brooding lust, as if it were gloating above the
Speaker 2: helpless object of its unclean desire. Both figures were complete
Speaker 2: even to the hind quarters, and were not mere conventional
Speaker 2: adjuncts of the roof. One would have expected them to
Speaker 2: start at any moment from the stone in which they
Speaker 2: were mortised. So some terrifying looking gargoyles here, Yes, like
Speaker 2: very detailed, like fine works of art, but really hard
Speaker 2: to take in. We learned that, quite unknown to Renard himself,
Speaker 2: he has just poured all of his hatred for his
Speaker 2: hometown into one gargoyle, and all of his lust for
Speaker 2: the tavern owner's daughter, Nicolette in the other one. Naturally,
Speaker 2: you know it's gonna happen. Hord soon descends on the
Speaker 2: city once more as a swooping demonic monster begins to
Speaker 2: slay people in the night. The body count intensifies. Everyone's afraid,
Speaker 2: but the best anyone can do is against sin for
Speaker 2: that special holy water. Meanwhile, another demonic form, the lusty one,
Speaker 2: is creeping on women all around the city, but leaving
Speaker 2: them untouched and unattacked as if it's not seeking any woman,
Speaker 2: but one woman in particular. All of this comes to
Speaker 2: a head at the tavern one night, deep in his
Speaker 2: cups and himself traumatized by the horror in the streets.
Speaker 2: Like it's important to note that he's not like, oh,
Speaker 2: the agents of my hatred and lust are running rampant,
Speaker 2: Like he doesn't really put one and two together here,
Speaker 2: But he's drinking in the pub, he's watching a rival
Speaker 2: court fair Nicolette, and eventually he just loses it. He
Speaker 2: causes this big embarrassing scene, and that's when the window
Speaker 2: implode with the arrival of the two animate gargoyles. The
Speaker 2: first of the two begins massacring everyone in sight, spilling blood,
Speaker 2: ripping open throats, and the second one grabs Nicolette, and
Speaker 2: a heavy stone wing of one of the two gargoyles
Speaker 2: catches Reynard in the head and knocks him unconscious. The
Speaker 2: next morning, he awakens in this blood drenched tavern, surrounded
Speaker 2: by dead men and the lacerated but still living body
Speaker 2: of Nicolette. Horrified and suddenly understanding more of the connection
Speaker 2: he has to these monsters, he forces his way through
Speaker 2: the angry crowd. He collects his hammer from his workshop,
Speaker 2: he heads up to the cathedral roof. He finds his
Speaker 2: creations there, and he notices their mouths and their claws
Speaker 2: are bloodied, and so he begins to strike at them
Speaker 2: with the hammer. But then the gargoyle that he strikes,
Speaker 2: the wrathful one, knocks him to the edge of the
Speaker 2: of the roof, and then like sinks one of its
Speaker 2: towels into his shoulder, and I believe takes to the
Speaker 2: air with him, and he's striking at the talent foot
Speaker 2: that holds him. Eventually shatters that foot, but he falls
Speaker 2: to his death in the street. And then we end
Speaker 2: with the archbishop finding his corpse and noting the talent
Speaker 2: limb now relaxed quote as if like the paw of
Speaker 2: a living limb, it had reached for something or had
Speaker 2: dragged a heavy burden with its fearine talents.
Speaker 3: I like that it's implied to me, at least that
Speaker 3: the archbishop's response is when he finds this is like, oh,
Speaker 3: my gargoyles, they're ruined. Yes, It's like as if, you know,
Speaker 3: finding a murder scene where someone has been had their
Speaker 3: head smashed with a vase and the person's like my vase,
Speaker 3: what happened?
Speaker 2: Yes? Yeah, there are other points in the story too
Speaker 2: where you have more concern given for just the state
Speaker 2: of the art concerning these gargoyles as opposed to what
Speaker 2: their horribleness means, you know, either you know, physically or
Speaker 2: just the idea of them. This story doesn't deliver or
Speaker 2: I think, aspire to the dizzyingly dark magic vibes of
Speaker 2: other Clark Ashton Smith's stories. I think it's a pretty
Speaker 2: solid little horror tale in its own way. It delivers
Speaker 2: both a sinister physical monster as well as a tale
Speaker 2: of twisted inner torment, you know, so you know, those
Speaker 2: are great things to have in a horror tale. And
Speaker 2: I think we can all imagine some version of the
Speaker 2: story which the gargoyles are his intentional creations and like
Speaker 2: conscious minions of his wrath and lust. But instead he
Speaker 2: only really glimpses his connection to them at the very end,
Speaker 2: finally realizing that he has poured all of his own
Speaker 2: darkness into these works and that he has to destroy them.
Speaker 2: And I think there's a lot to potentially dig into
Speaker 2: their regarding a horror writer and his work. And it's
Speaker 2: worth noting that Clark Ashton Smith himself largely abandoned writing
Speaker 2: in favor of painting and sculpture in the second half
Speaker 2: of his life, So you know, I think it's fair
Speaker 2: to assume a lot of those ideas were on his
Speaker 2: mind when he wrote this tale, and I think this
Speaker 2: one would. I don't think this has ever been adapted,
Speaker 2: but I think it would make a pretty great horror
Speaker 2: anthology adaption, because who doesn't love a great animate gargoyle story? Right?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: Yeah, They're a staple monster in Dungeons and Dragons. They're
Speaker 2: the subject of a fan favorite nineteen nineties Disney animated series.
Speaker 2: Did you ever watch that, Joe Gargoyles?
Speaker 3: I was only a very little bit. I never like
Speaker 3: followed the story, but I've actually heard good things about
Speaker 3: it from people as an adult, Like, some people think
Speaker 3: it was a really good cartoon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I've heard. I think I may have
Speaker 2: watched one or two episodes as a kid. I've looking
Speaker 2: back on it. I see it had a tremendous vocal cast,
Speaker 2: including Keith David in the lead. But I brought it up.
Speaker 2: I showed an episode to my son. I was like, Hey,
Speaker 2: maybe this can be the new series we're watching together,
Speaker 2: and he was like, no, thank you. So oh okay,
Speaker 2: so I'm not going to watch it on my own.
Speaker 2: So it's not for me, but a lot of people
Speaker 2: love it, you know.
Speaker 3: Thinking about movies with animated gargoyles and the stone comes
Speaker 3: to life, there's a great movie scene that's actually the
Speaker 3: opposite process, and it's in Grimlins two, which we covered
Speaker 3: on Weird House Cinema. I remember when the there's the
Speaker 3: joke where the Grimlin escapes the building, falls in wet
Speaker 3: cement on the sidewalk and then flies up to the
Speaker 3: top of a building, perches, and then freezes in the
Speaker 3: cement to become a gargoyle.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you brought that up. That had slipped
Speaker 2: my mind. But that is one of the many wonderful
Speaker 2: scenes in Grimlins two. Let's see. On the b movie front, there's,
Speaker 2: of course the nineteen seventy two TV movie Gargoyles that
Speaker 2: various listeners have suggested for Weird House Cinema, and it
Speaker 2: remains on our short list.
Speaker 3: I believe it's one of those that we've never seen,
Speaker 3: but we keep like five different movies have pinged back
Speaker 3: to it for some reason. I don't know. What are
Speaker 3: those like Nexus movies that are like kind of weird
Speaker 3: and get our attention, but we never watched them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I think I've seen part of
Speaker 2: it maybe on A and E back in the day,
Speaker 2: like on a Sunday afternoon, but yeah, I haven't watched
Speaker 2: it in a full maybe one day, yeah, one day.
Speaker 2: I'll also point out that the best sequence in nineteen
Speaker 2: nineties Tales from the Dark Side. The movie retails the
Speaker 2: classic Japanese ghost story a Yuki ownA the snow Woman,
Speaker 2: but with a with an urban setting and a killer gargoyle.
Speaker 2: That's the one that stars James Ramar and Raydon Chong. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and more recently, there is a twenty fourteen film titled
Speaker 2: I Frankenstein in which Frankenstein's monster battles gargoyles like CGI gargoyles.
Speaker 2: And I have not seen that, but there's a part
Speaker 2: of me that really wants to watch that. On an
Speaker 2: airplane one day.
Speaker 3: You included a screenshot from it. It looks dreadful, just terrible.
Speaker 2: It's got some good people involved. I don't know, maybe
Speaker 2: it's good. I don't know. It looks like great airplane viewing, though.
Speaker 3: I'm just commenting on the CGI Garboy. No, I know
Speaker 3: nothing about the movie.
Speaker 2: Now. Curiously, this is one of the things that really
Speaker 2: led me to select this story by Clark Ashton Smith
Speaker 2: is that it apparently plays an important role in the
Speaker 2: establishment of the animate gargoyle trope. Though I should note
Speaker 2: that naturally, as we've discussed in the show before, myths
Speaker 2: of sculptures coming to life, these go back to ancient times,
Speaker 2: and we might well look two obvious influences from not
Speaker 2: only Pygmalion, but also the Golom of Prague and so forth. Still,
Speaker 2: according to the Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters
Speaker 2: by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, there are two key works, both
Speaker 2: from nineteen thirty two, that seem to influence gargoyle fiction
Speaker 2: to come. One is this story by Clark Ashton Smith,
Speaker 2: and the other is a Lewis Spence tale titled The
Speaker 2: Horn of Vapula or Vapula I'm not sure which, in
Speaker 2: which a gargoyle is not an evil construct but a
Speaker 2: vessel that a demon is bound to by a corrupt bishop.
Speaker 2: He also cites the nineteen seventy two Gargoyles TV movie
Speaker 2: as the first work to establish a gargoyle as a species.
Speaker 3: Huh. As a species, you mean, like not just a
Speaker 3: sculpture that comes to life, but as a type of
Speaker 3: living being on its own.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, these are creatures, and we may have stone
Speaker 2: versions of them that sort of thing, as opposed to
Speaker 2: these are creatures that these are sculptures that we made
Speaker 2: and then they in the case of these two nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty two stories, they either come alive because of the
Speaker 2: dark magic we've put into them one way or another
Speaker 2: from ourselves, or you know, we've summoned some demon out
Speaker 2: of the abyss and placed it in the stone form.
Speaker 3: Right, So the idea of a gargoyle not as a
Speaker 3: generic term for certain types of sculptures or architectural features,
Speaker 3: but as like an orc with wings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, essentially. Now, when it comes to the reality
Speaker 2: of the gargoyle, we could probably do a whole invention
Speaker 2: episode on these. There are a lot of ins and
Speaker 2: outs here, with different time periods and different architectural styles,
Speaker 2: and then resurgences of those styles and re explorations of
Speaker 2: those styles. But the basic are that a gargoyle is
Speaker 2: an architectural flourish, is a decorative water spout to drain
Speaker 2: water away from the building, and the origins of the
Speaker 2: word itself are often linked to the Old French word gargoui,
Speaker 2: as well as the Greek gargarazine. If these words remind
Speaker 2: you of the word gargyle, then right on, because that's
Speaker 2: essentially what we're talking about here, a word used to
Speaker 2: describe the clearing or washing of the throat. Again, these
Speaker 2: were animal and or humanoid creatures depicted in stonework with
Speaker 2: rain water draining out of their spout mouths. The basic
Speaker 2: concept here apparently dates back to the ancient world, with
Speaker 2: examples found even in ancient Egypt in ancient Greek architecture
Speaker 2: as well, often taking the form of a lion. And
Speaker 2: it's kind of a no brainer, right, We can't help
Speaker 2: but anthropomorphize the world around us, so a drainage spout
Speaker 2: essentially becomes a barfing mouth. You know, many of us
Speaker 2: did the same thing during the height of the pandem
Speaker 2: with their Halloween candy shoots, like can I get candy
Speaker 2: to a child fifteen feet away from me? And should
Speaker 2: I make it a vomiting monster mouth? Of course I
Speaker 2: should make it a vomiting monster mouth.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, you should.
Speaker 2: Now, the term gargoyle itself really comes about during the
Speaker 2: thirteenth century, still referring to water spout flourishes, while the
Speaker 2: various other non functional creatures I made out of stones,
Speaker 2: various little goblinoid creatures and you know, and whatnot. On
Speaker 2: the outside or even the interiors of churches, these are
Speaker 2: generally described as grotesques or grow teskeeries, generally apotropaic statues
Speaker 2: to ward off evil, you know, getting down to the
Speaker 2: basic Corgonian impulse that we see throughout human history, like
Speaker 2: let me make a monster face to drive away the
Speaker 2: evil vibes. The Catholic Church also sought to use these
Speaker 2: statues at times as illustrative aids to reach illiterate masses.
Speaker 2: But a lot of what we think think about regarding
Speaker 2: gargoyles today are really more properly these grotesques and grothesqueries
Speaker 2: as opposed to something that is actually spitting water away
Speaker 2: from the church. You know, we tend to think more
Speaker 2: of just sort of like corner of the building, monsters
Speaker 2: leering out overlooking the empty space between the church and
Speaker 2: the next building. And you know, and then we also
Speaker 2: again we have these different periods of like Gothic Revival
Speaker 2: and even Art Deco. The Art Deco period ends up
Speaker 2: utilizing gargoyles of one form or another, depending how stringently
Speaker 2: you want to use that term. Like I've seen the
Speaker 2: the iconic like bird heads on the Chrysler building described
Speaker 2: as gargoyles for example.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting.
Speaker 2: Now, we love gargoyles in part because they seem counterintuitive.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a church, one of their monsters all
Speaker 2: over it, but it's also just part of it. It's
Speaker 2: like if you see a fancy cathedral, you're like, show
Speaker 2: me the gargoyles.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There's a famous quote a criticism that is attributed
Speaker 2: to a twelfth century individual. This is Saint Bernard of Clervaux,
Speaker 2: who was apparently speaking of interior sculptures in the church
Speaker 2: as opposed to stuff on the outside, but it sometimes
Speaker 2: applied to gargoyles. And I'm not gonna read the quote,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to paraphrase him, but he was basically saying, hey,
Speaker 2: maybe we shouldn't have any of these at all, but
Speaker 2: at the very least, maybe we shouldn't be paying for them.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think Clark Ashton Smith's story kind
Speaker 2: of like toys with this sentiment a little bit like,
Speaker 2: how do how does the church feel about evil monster
Speaker 2: sculptures on or in the church? Right?
Speaker 3: Well, I made reference to the character I think is
Speaker 3: the Archbishop Ambrosius, who's like into them, he thinks they're great.
Speaker 3: But it's I think it stated that there are other
Speaker 3: figures in the church who are like, I don't know
Speaker 3: about these things. Seems like an extravagance.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, a quick note on monster lore. I looked
Speaker 2: up gargoyles and Carol Rose's encyclopedia, as I often do.
Speaker 2: From my monsters. She references a Northeastern French legend in
Speaker 2: folkloric story regarding a kind of dragon known as the gargoyl.
Speaker 2: She describes it as a kind of river dragon that
Speaker 2: would target fishermen. And there's apparently a legend that a
Speaker 2: seventh century saint by the name of Saint Romain finally
Speaker 2: baited the creature with two condemned criminals, transfixed it with
Speaker 2: the cross, and then marched the monster into town, where
Speaker 2: it was executed. Thus, the taming of the water beast
Speaker 2: leads to a tradition of tame beasts that redirect water
Speaker 2: away from our churches.
Speaker 3: Okay, it feels like kind of a loose fit, but
Speaker 3: I can see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So again, there's much more we could say about
Speaker 2: the history of gargoyles, perhaps deserving a full inventioned episode.
Speaker 2: But it's interesting to think about all of this, and
Speaker 2: in connection with the story, you know, when we channel
Speaker 2: the dark creative spirit into an act of creation, what
Speaker 2: is the result. Can a vessel intended to ward away
Speaker 2: darkness actually aggregate it? Do such creations take on a
Speaker 2: life of their own?
Speaker 3: Yeah, certainly. I mean, I think there's a lot to
Speaker 3: be said about the history of creating imagery that is
Speaker 3: supposed to be a depiction of evil and is supposed
Speaker 3: to be revolting or scary or something like that, but
Speaker 3: in fact it becomes an object of interest to people.
Speaker 3: People instead they're kind of like, oh, I like that,
Speaker 3: I want more of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Or in the Clark Ashton Smith story, you
Speaker 2: also get a sense of perhaps here is a horror
Speaker 2: writer suddenly realizing that he recognizes more of his own
Speaker 2: inner darkness in these external works of darkness than he
Speaker 2: perhaps intended on, you know, or at least it's a
Speaker 2: meditation on that possibility. So it's a yeah, it's I
Speaker 2: think it's a it's a juicy little story to bite into. Again,
Speaker 2: maybe not on the same level, certainly in my opinion,
Speaker 2: not on the same level as some of his more
Speaker 2: almost darkly psychedelic works, but still a solid little monster story.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 2: By the way, Jackie Craven, an author, has a great
Speaker 2: article about gargoyles for thought dot Co titled The Real
Speaker 2: Story of the Gargoyle. I recommend checking that out. She
Speaker 2: goes into a lot more detail, and I also I
Speaker 2: turned to that in researching this, in addition to Winstock, Websters,
Speaker 2: and rows.
Speaker 3: Well, is it time for my selection?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And I'm excited for this one because you picked
Speaker 2: a story by an author that I've long admired, but
Speaker 2: I have not read much of in recent years. So
Speaker 2: this was a nice return for me.
Speaker 3: Oh cool, Well, I'm excited to hear what you think
Speaker 3: about the story. So I wanted to pick not just
Speaker 3: a horror story, but because today is Halloween, I wanted
Speaker 3: to pick specifically a story that had a Halloween theme
Speaker 3: or Halloween as a setting. It took me a while
Speaker 3: to find one, find just the right one, but I
Speaker 3: eventually settled on a story by the author Stephen Graham Jones,
Speaker 3: who has come up on the show several times before.
Speaker 3: I think I talked about one of his horror fiction
Speaker 3: collections on a summer reading episode we did years ago,
Speaker 3: and Rob, I think you actually might have recommended one
Speaker 3: of his novels. Was it Mongrels? The werewolf novel from
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really great novel. I hadn't thought about
Speaker 2: this one recently, but it's a coming of age story
Speaker 2: with were wolves lovingly crafted, and I think we see
Speaker 2: a similar sentiment in this story. Maybe this just runs
Speaker 2: through all of his writing, but like, these aren't just
Speaker 2: tales of horror and or monsters. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: like the personal connection there, you know.
Speaker 3: Yes, the story we're going to talk about today, I
Speaker 3: think it is a great You can take it as
Speaker 3: just a great spooky tale of the weird, but you
Speaker 3: can also find a lot of feeling in it, Like
Speaker 3: I found it a strangely moving story.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So just brief rundown on Stephen Graham Jones. From my
Speaker 3: point of view, Jones is a prolific and really interesting
Speaker 3: writer who dives into a lot of different genres, but
Speaker 3: much of his work is horror and generally what you
Speaker 3: might call weird fiction. So with his fiction, I like
Speaker 3: the kind of the variety and range of authorial sensibilities
Speaker 3: that you can find all wrapped up in the same piece.
Speaker 3: Like a Stephen Graham Jones story can be sweet and
Speaker 3: thoughtful and even sentimental, but also brutal, grizzly and cruel.
Speaker 3: It can kind of plow straight into very familiar horror
Speaker 3: tropes in a way that does not feel too you know,
Speaker 3: meta or screamy, you know, not overly self conscious, but
Speaker 3: it can also be like fresh and full of new
Speaker 3: ideas and bring a lot of intellectual curiosity, scary but
Speaker 3: also funny, et cetera. So I really like that variety
Speaker 3: you get within his writing. And I also really like
Speaker 3: that while some of his horror stories do have a
Speaker 3: very explicit monster or villain, like a you know, a
Speaker 3: cursed item or just a straight up vampire, in the
Speaker 3: same collection that this story is in, there is a
Speaker 3: pretty awesome messed up vampire story called Welcome to the
Speaker 3: Reptile House.
Speaker 2: Have you read that one, Rob, I haven't, but I
Speaker 2: picked up this collection of short stories for this episode,
Speaker 2: so that'll have to be the one I read next.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I don't want to spoil too much, but
Speaker 3: it involves a tattoo artist who practices a beginning tattoo
Speaker 3: artist who practices his craft on dead bodies at a
Speaker 3: morgue and then happens to in doing so, irritate a vampire.
Speaker 3: Oh but anyway, coming back to my point. So, while
Speaker 3: some of the stories have a more explicit or classical monster,
Speaker 3: you know, he writes were wolf tales and stuff, I
Speaker 3: also really like his stories that have ambiguous, strange, unexplained
Speaker 3: situations that just create this thematically loaded atmosphere of dread
Speaker 3: without a specific monster, or at least not one that
Speaker 3: we ever meet directly. I'm a big fan of that
Speaker 3: kind of story, you know. I like ambiguous horror, the
Speaker 3: kind that does not tell you the full solution to
Speaker 3: the puzzle, that gives you some tantalizing details but leave
Speaker 3: some of the mystery alive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, we don't really know what the rules are
Speaker 2: with this threat, we don't even know exactly what it is,
Speaker 2: but here it is pushing against the limits of our world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I like that. So Jones is currently a
Speaker 3: professor at UC Boulder, and I don't know when he
Speaker 3: last updated his faculty page on the university website. I
Speaker 3: know those can go untouched for eons, but as of
Speaker 3: when I last checked, the final sentence of that page reads. Jones'
Speaker 3: current projects are a paleoanthropological thriller set in Boulder, A Slasher,
Speaker 3: and another slasher, God Willing. I do know several of
Speaker 3: his recent novels have been described as slashers, and I
Speaker 3: haven't gotten to those yet, but I would like to Anyway,
Speaker 3: all that aside, the story that I wanted to talk
Speaker 3: about today is called thirteen, and it's the first piece
Speaker 3: in the twenty fourteen collection, After the People Lights Have
Speaker 3: Gone Off. I have a print copy of this book.
Speaker 3: I was looking around and it seems like maybe the
Speaker 3: physically it is out of print, I think because I
Speaker 3: was only finding used to buy, but maybe I wasn't
Speaker 3: looking in the right place. I don't know, but I
Speaker 3: think you can get a digital edition, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I bought it on Kindle for a dollar ninety nine,
Speaker 2: and that is a steal for an award winning collection
Speaker 2: from an author of this caliber. So yeah, no reason
Speaker 2: not to pick it up.
Speaker 3: So warning that I am going to go ahead and
Speaker 3: summarize this story. If you want to look it up,
Speaker 3: you know, get the collection for yourself and read it
Speaker 3: without any spoilers. Maybe you could go ahead and do that.
Speaker 3: And I also want to say that, of course, it's
Speaker 3: always the case that you cannot communicate the full effect
Speaker 3: of a piece of literature by summarizing it. But I
Speaker 3: after I tried to summarize it, I found, in particular
Speaker 3: with this story, it is hard to give a sense
Speaker 3: of the feeling and the way that it works as
Speaker 3: horror with a synopsis. So a lot of it just
Speaker 3: kind of depends on little phrasings and the way a
Speaker 3: kind of pyramid of details is built piece by p
Speaker 3: So you'll be missing some of the effect just through
Speaker 3: a synopsis. But I will do my best.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And that holds for everything I just
Speaker 2: did with Clark Ashton Smith's story as well. You know,
Speaker 2: you can summarize it, but you can't really create the
Speaker 2: sort of blow for blow build that is present in
Speaker 2: a good horror story.
Speaker 3: So the story thirteen begins, like a lot of Jones' fiction,
Speaker 3: with a kind of frisky sentence. It says, here's how
Speaker 3: you do it, if you're brave enough. You know a
Speaker 3: lot of his stories have a very a voice, kind
Speaker 3: of speaking directly to the reader's style. Opening and the
Speaker 3: narrator of this story is presumably an adult or a
Speaker 3: young man recounting a series of memories from his childhood,
Speaker 3: specifically when he was in middle school around the eighth
Speaker 3: grade or around the age of thirteen. The title of
Speaker 3: the story, the narrator remembers in his hometown, there was
Speaker 3: a movie theater called the Big Chief. Kind of a
Speaker 3: low effort movie theater because it had only two screens,
Speaker 3: and they were in fact right next to each other.
Speaker 3: And in fact, originally the two theaters were just one
Speaker 3: big room, now separated only by a heavy curtain, so
Speaker 3: that sound from one movie would always bleed through and
Speaker 3: become audible to the audience for the other movie. So
Speaker 3: there's kind of a loudness war the soundtrack from a
Speaker 3: war movie with machine guns and mortar shells encroaches on
Speaker 3: the quieter movie next door.
Speaker 2: I've never been to a movie theater like this. I've
Speaker 2: been to some that have you know, that are a
Speaker 2: little you know, kook ear and a little bit d
Speaker 2: i y to a certain extent, but never one quite
Speaker 2: like this. There was a was a really good one
Speaker 2: in Asheville called the Gray Ol movie House, and I
Speaker 2: think there will be again, but it was sadly heavily
Speaker 2: damaged during the flooding there recently. Oh that is sad,
Speaker 2: so look for it in its next incarnation. I think
Speaker 2: those guys really love cinema. It's a great place.
Speaker 3: Certainly, Best of luck to them. So the narrator of
Speaker 3: this story sort of relates to this theater personally in
Speaker 3: a number of ways. But one interesting detail he gives
Speaker 3: early on is that the theater is right next to
Speaker 3: the pizzeria where his father worked when he was in
Speaker 3: high school. And he thinks about the smooth scars on
Speaker 3: the tops of his father's forearms, which are I guess
Speaker 3: burns from working with the ovens, which he says, yawn
Speaker 3: with fire like mouths to hell. And it's a lot
Speaker 3: of details like this in the story that just kind
Speaker 3: of add up to create the full effect of the thing. Again,
Speaker 3: I can't communicate all of these details in my synopsis,
Speaker 3: but I love that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these little just sort of fragments of memory that
Speaker 2: he brings up that may not even be too closely
Speaker 2: connected to the plot and the story that he is
Speaker 2: laying out, but they are a vital part of the
Speaker 2: vibe that he is building and ultimately that tension of horror.
Speaker 3: That's right. So the story is about the movie theater.
Speaker 3: It's not only notable because it's all and kind of
Speaker 3: shoddily built. There is something special about this place. There
Speaker 3: is a power in it which is hard to explain,
Speaker 3: but everybody seems to know about, or at least all
Speaker 3: the kids do. There are weird rumors and stories that
Speaker 3: attach themselves to it. Who knows if they're true. There's
Speaker 3: one very grizzly story that fifteen years ago, somehow a
Speaker 3: guy mysteriously got castrated in one of the bathroom stalls.
Speaker 3: The narrator's friend's uncle heard all about it. There's no
Speaker 3: further detail on this story. It's just that kind of
Speaker 3: weird detail you'd hear about when you're a kid. It'd
Speaker 3: be like.
Speaker 2: Huh yeah, And no additional real explanation is provided, which
Speaker 2: keeps it cryptic and strange.
Speaker 3: But then he gets to the real point of the story,
Speaker 3: which is what should we call it? The game? Maybe
Speaker 3: the game?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah. So one of the urban legends that all of
Speaker 3: the kids know about this movie theater is the following.
Speaker 3: You get your ticket, your popcorn, you settle in to
Speaker 3: watch a scary movie. It needs to be a horror movie.
Speaker 3: And when it gets to the scariest part, maybe when
Speaker 3: the vampire is approaching the heroine's bedside to drink her blood,
Speaker 3: or the killer is raising up the knife, whatever, is
Speaker 3: the really scary part that makes you want to close
Speaker 3: your eyes because you can't bear to see what's next.
Speaker 3: You give in, and you do close your eyes, but
Speaker 3: you don't stop there. You also plug your ears and
Speaker 3: hum so that you can't hear what's happening. And then, finally,
Speaker 3: and this is crucial, you suck in your breath and
Speaker 3: you hold it, and you count to one hundred and twenty.
Speaker 3: So you've got to hold it for two straight minutes.
Speaker 3: And if you can keep your eyes shut and keep
Speaker 3: the sound out and hold your breath for the two
Speaker 3: full minutes, something happens, something dangerous. Now apparently, in the
Speaker 3: world of this story, kids are trying this all the time.
Speaker 3: Everybody tells the story and they all practice it, and
Speaker 3: they do it, but basically nobody ever makes it the
Speaker 3: full two minutes. They let their breath out early. You know,
Speaker 3: they start laughing or something. They look back up at
Speaker 3: the screen, and when they do look back at the screen,
Speaker 3: they find themselves relieved, giddy in fact, to see nothing
Speaker 3: but the same movie they were so scared to look
Speaker 3: at a moment before. And the narrator says that your
Speaker 3: friends sitting next to you will be looking at you,
Speaker 3: wanting to know if it worked. So how is it
Speaker 3: supposed to work? Well, you get the feeling that nobody
Speaker 3: really knows. It's just a ritual. We don't know why
Speaker 3: we do it. It just gets passed on. But there
Speaker 3: is an attempt to explain it that feels kind of
Speaker 3: back engineered from the minds of kids trying this out.
Speaker 3: The narrator says, quote, how it works is that when
Speaker 3: you're not looking or listening or breathing. It's like how
Speaker 3: you're supposed to hold your breath when your parents are
Speaker 3: driving by the cemetery. If you don't, then you can
Speaker 3: accidentally breathe in a ghost. That's sort of how it
Speaker 3: works at the Big Chief, with you not breathing, playing
Speaker 3: dead like you are, it makes like a road or
Speaker 3: a door, and the movie seeps in and then a
Speaker 3: little later it goes on quote it's there because you
Speaker 3: and vice, because you left a crack it could come
Speaker 3: through because you made a sound like a wish, and
Speaker 3: the darkness just washed up in that direction to cover
Speaker 3: it up. Oh, and I love the ambiguity of the
Speaker 3: lore here, Like, how does it connect to the guy
Speaker 3: who supposedly got castrated in the bathroom stall? Unclear, but
Speaker 3: it suggested he must have done this game. Something from
Speaker 3: the movie came out and got him.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the narrator goes on to tell the stories of
Speaker 3: two people he knows who enacted the ritual to let
Speaker 3: the movie in. One was a boy in his class
Speaker 3: named Marcus, who was the new kid in school. He's
Speaker 3: very handsome, popular, full of bravado, and he's on the
Speaker 3: swim team, so he is good at holding his breath.
Speaker 3: His new friends tell him about the movie theater, they
Speaker 3: tell him about the game, so he does it. He
Speaker 3: plays dead for two minutes at the climax of a
Speaker 3: horror movie with this writhing, horrible, tentacled monster. They don't
Speaker 3: say what the movie is, but I was imagining like
Speaker 3: some kind of Cronenberg thing. And then it seems that
Speaker 3: nothing has happened to him. He's fine at first, until
Speaker 3: a few months later when Marcus suddenly gets sick and
Speaker 3: dies from the growth of an aggressive tumor, and the
Speaker 3: kids who know what happened. They're in a life sciences
Speaker 3: class and they see images of tumors and the shapes
Speaker 3: look familiar to them, and the ones who were there
Speaker 3: that night agreed they think somehow the monster from the
Speaker 3: movie got inside his body. Next, we learn about a
Speaker 3: character named Grace, and this is a character the narrator
Speaker 3: cares about a lot. They've been friends since they were young,
Speaker 3: and now they're in middle school and it seems like
Speaker 3: they're in that awkward phase where they're trying to figure
Speaker 3: out if their boyfriend girlfriend or not. But the narrator
Speaker 3: he is in love with her, and Grace's family has
Speaker 3: been through troubles. Her father recently moved away and her
Speaker 3: parents separated, and her mother seems to be from clues
Speaker 3: we get suffering from depression, and the narrator plans to
Speaker 3: take Grace to a homecoming game at school, but he
Speaker 3: ends up sick and unable to go, and so he
Speaker 3: stays home by himself. In having fear related to what
Speaker 3: happened to Marcus. He's obsessed with the idea that he
Speaker 3: has a monster tumor inside him as well because he
Speaker 3: was sitting close to Marcus the night of the game.
Speaker 3: Could it be contagious, But nothing happens there. So to
Speaker 3: make up for the failed homecoming date, the narrator and
Speaker 3: Grace decide to go see a movie at the theater.
Speaker 3: Not a horror movie this time. They're done with the horror. Instead,
Speaker 3: they go see a romantic comedy about a young woman
Speaker 3: who gets her heart broken and then her well meaning
Speaker 3: but bumbling father tries to set her up with the
Speaker 3: perfect guy. And it's a comedy of errors. By the way,
Speaker 3: there's a detail that while they're watching this movie they
Speaker 3: hear screams and clanking metal bleeding over from the theater
Speaker 3: next door. And the movie date is going well, but
Speaker 3: at one point during the film, the narrator leaves to
Speaker 3: get some more snacks from the lobby and sneaks a
Speaker 3: look into the theater next door, and Jones writes, quote,
Speaker 3: it was in there chainsaws and were wolves. It looked
Speaker 3: like no were wolves with chainsaws. The chocolate and peanut
Speaker 3: butter of the horror world. Very good line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm pretty sure this is not a real movie.
Speaker 2: He's alitty to this is something made up, But I
Speaker 2: love the idea of the just pure excess of this.
Speaker 3: I mean, he has written novels that invoke both were
Speaker 3: wolves and chainsaws. That one of his recent novels was
Speaker 3: called My Heart as a Chainsaw.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I don't know about that anyway.
Speaker 3: The narrator in the story comes back to Grace and
Speaker 3: he finds her having a strangely emotional experience with the
Speaker 3: romantic comedy. He says that he could see that her
Speaker 3: cheeks were shiny and wet, and that she had her
Speaker 3: eyes closed, and then when he brushes against her arm,
Speaker 3: she suddenly gets very startled and she starts coughing like
Speaker 3: she's going to vomit, so she runs to the bathroom.
Speaker 3: Narrator doesn't know what's going on, but then she comes
Speaker 3: out later after the movie and they go home without
Speaker 3: discussing what happened. Then the final setting of the story
Speaker 3: comes a couple of weeks later, on Halloween night. So
Speaker 3: here's the Halloween tie in. The narrator has plans to
Speaker 3: sneak off and smoke cigarettes with the bad kids in
Speaker 3: the graveyard behind a condemned convent building perfect and there
Speaker 3: are more urban legends. I mean they're urban legends throughout
Speaker 3: the story. One is the story that the kids tell
Speaker 3: about the abandoned convent. They say it's haunted by a
Speaker 3: zombie nun who wanders at night carrying a candle in
Speaker 3: front of her, and when she sees you, she comes
Speaker 3: closer and closer, and just when she draws right up
Speaker 3: to you, the candle goes out. The narrator and his
Speaker 3: middle school friends are out in the cemetery behind the
Speaker 3: you know, the haunted graveyard, and they are engaging in
Speaker 3: a performance of courage. You know, they're breaking rules, doing
Speaker 3: what they're not supposed to. They are treading where the
Speaker 3: ghost thread is high. And at one point the narrator
Speaker 3: steps aside from the group, I think to be sick
Speaker 3: because he smoked a cigarette and you shouldn't have and
Speaker 3: he's going to be sick. And he goes to the
Speaker 3: edge of a small cliff looking out over a neighborhood
Speaker 3: where kids are trick or treating below. He knows that
Speaker 3: Grace is out there because she apparently volunteered to chaperone
Speaker 3: elementary school kids for the evening while they're trick or treating.
Speaker 3: The narrator called her mother earlier to try to call
Speaker 3: her house to try to make plans, but her mother
Speaker 3: answered the phone, said where she was going to be,
Speaker 3: and just said look for bo Peep. So looking out
Speaker 3: over the children wandering the neighborhoods in the dark, he
Speaker 3: does see her in the bo Peep costume with a
Speaker 3: shepherd's crook, escorting a second grader in a robot costume,
Speaker 3: and they're just coming up to a house that the
Speaker 3: narrator knows it's his former English teacher, who would always
Speaker 3: write out verses of poetry on little strips of paper
Speaker 3: and tie them to the candy she handed out on Halloween,
Speaker 3: and the narrator remembers once getting a candy bar from
Speaker 3: her that told him the fields are white, the fields
Speaker 3: are long, the fields are waiting. He never knew what
Speaker 3: that meant. And frankly, I tried to look this up,
Speaker 3: and I'm not sure I might have just missed the
Speaker 3: reference somewhere, but it could be referring to a verse
Speaker 3: in the Gospel of John where Jesus talks about the
Speaker 3: fields being white, meaning essentially, you think that they're not
Speaker 3: ready for harvest, but they are. It is time for
Speaker 3: the harvest and now anyway, what happens next in the
Speaker 3: story is so strange. The narrator sees Grace he's looking
Speaker 3: down from the cliff, and he tries to wave and
Speaker 3: get her attention, but she doesn't see him. Instead, he
Speaker 3: watches as she begins to talk to someone in a
Speaker 3: car that's been driving around the neighborhood. Then, for some reason,
Speaker 3: she just abandons the kid that she's been chaperoning and
Speaker 3: gets into the car, and it starts to drive away,
Speaker 3: and the narrator is very confused. He runs along the
Speaker 3: cliff until he finds a place he can climb down.
Speaker 3: He chases through the neighborhood looking for the car, and
Speaker 3: finally he sees it just before it it leaves the
Speaker 3: town and pulls out onto the highway. When he sees it,
Speaker 3: he sees the driver and he is sure he recognizes
Speaker 3: the face. It's the face of a movie character, the
Speaker 3: father from the romantic comedy movie they saw in the theater,
Speaker 3: with what the narrator characterizes as a wide, sharp and
Speaker 3: trustworthy smile. He sees them in a flash, and the
Speaker 3: car drives away, and then nobody ever sees Grace again.
Speaker 3: So the implication is that Grace played the summoning game
Speaker 3: two In the interval when the narrator was out looking
Speaker 3: in on the werewolves and Chainsaws movie, she must have
Speaker 3: closed her eyes and held her breath. But it wasn't
Speaker 3: a horror movie. There was no monster, so what did
Speaker 3: she summon? Later, having swirling emotions about this whole series
Speaker 3: of events, the narrator sneaks out one night and he
Speaker 3: sets fire to the movie theater. He burns it down.
Speaker 3: He never gets caught for the arson. His friends come
Speaker 3: and meet him there and they sort of give him
Speaker 3: an alibi, and they never tell on him, so he
Speaker 3: gets away with it. But in the fire that night,
Speaker 3: he sees shapes moving around in the flames, including a
Speaker 3: boy covered in blood and Marcus and his swim goggles.
Speaker 3: And then finally it says quote, and I saw a
Speaker 3: pale white shepherd's crook ahead of them, leading them through,
Speaker 3: leading them on, And he ends the story saying that
Speaker 3: he's waiting to meet her again. So, as I said earlier,
Speaker 3: I love this story, but I think it's kind of
Speaker 3: hard to convey the force of the story in summary,
Speaker 3: because so much of it comes from this careful stacking
Speaker 3: up of these only vaguely related details, but you can't
Speaker 3: tell all of them without just reading the text in full.
Speaker 3: But this is my favorite kind of horror story, one
Speaker 3: that's both evocative and full of all these little observations,
Speaker 3: but also with an original mythology and also just ambiguous
Speaker 3: enough about what it all means. I was thinking, like,
Speaker 3: how are we supposed to interpret the way the summoning
Speaker 3: game works, especially since it's presented as just one of
Speaker 3: many silly urban legends that the kids in the story
Speaker 3: make up and repeat. Where does the power come from? Also,
Speaker 3: how are we supposed to interpret what happens to Grace
Speaker 3: when she tries it? Is it more benign or more sinister?
Speaker 3: I feel like that's kind of left open. Has Grace
Speaker 3: transcended the mundane world and become a kind of shepherding
Speaker 3: angel for the lost? Or has she been like murdered
Speaker 3: by a demon that she invited onto our plane and
Speaker 3: become a ghost ready to reap a harvest of souls?
Speaker 3: And the shepherd's crook is such a wonderful image because
Speaker 3: it adds to the ambiguity there. If you're the sheep,
Speaker 3: the crook could be seen either as your protection, keeping
Speaker 3: you in the flock and away from predators, or it
Speaker 3: could be your doom pulling you in for the mutton slaughter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so good. I too love the ambiguity here.
Speaker 2: I also loved the completely accidental synergy with the Clark
Speaker 2: Ashton Smith story, and that both to some degree deal
Speaker 2: with the idea of a channeling of dark energy and
Speaker 2: works of art, yes, in this case cinema. So it's
Speaker 2: a nice to a certain degree, this story meditates on
Speaker 2: the power of cinema and the importance of cinema in
Speaker 2: our life, and then it has this wonderful coming of
Speaker 2: age energy to it, like young a young character trying
Speaker 2: to sort of figure out how he works as a
Speaker 2: as a human and how he fits into the world,
Speaker 2: how the world works. It's just so beautifully put together,
Speaker 2: and again, to your point, almost completely defies any kind
Speaker 2: of an elevator pitch, because you can't make a statement like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is a movie about a monster that's X, or
Speaker 2: about a haunting that's why. No, it's You've got to
Speaker 2: take in all the pieces in order to get the
Speaker 2: full mosaic.
Speaker 3: I feel it took me great length to explain it,
Speaker 3: and I feel like I still didn't fully get it,
Speaker 3: like you cannot summarize this story in a sentence. Another
Speaker 3: thing I really love about the story is that it
Speaker 3: creates an original urban legend. And it's not just a
Speaker 3: descriptive legend, one that tells a story, but it's the
Speaker 3: kind of legend that has an enacted ritual. So with
Speaker 3: this kind of urban legend, you you can go through
Speaker 3: the steps of a specified behavioral algorithm, and in doing so,
Speaker 3: you can experience the subject of the legend directly in
Speaker 3: some kind of paranormal encounter. I was trying to figure
Speaker 3: out if there is a standard term for this type
Speaker 3: of ritual summoning game in the anthropology, in folklore literature.
Speaker 3: Maybe there is. If so, I couldn't identify what that
Speaker 3: term is, but a well known example from American culture
Speaker 3: would be the Bloody Mary game. Where you stand in
Speaker 3: front of a mirror in a dark room, perhaps on
Speaker 3: Halloween night in some versions, and you recite an incantation.
Speaker 3: Often it's just the name Bloody Mary a specified number
Speaker 3: of times, maybe you say three times or thirteen times,
Speaker 3: and according to the legend, you will have a supernatural encounter.
Speaker 3: Maybe you will see a witch standing behind you in
Speaker 3: the mirror, or maybe you'll see a woman covered in
Speaker 3: blood who screams at you, or maybe a ghost that
Speaker 3: reaches out of the mirror and tries to harm you,
Speaker 3: tries to attack your eye or something. And though I'm
Speaker 3: less familiar with these, apparently ritual ghost summoning games are
Speaker 3: very popular in multiple East Asian cultures as well. For example,
Speaker 3: there's something known as the I think the Corner game
Speaker 3: in Korea or the Square game in Japan, which involved
Speaker 3: four participants, and it's a similar kind of thing. You
Speaker 3: do a sequence of activities and it's supposed to summon
Speaker 3: a ghost.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this weird connection between thought and action and ideas
Speaker 2: of the supernatural. And if you put thought and action
Speaker 2: in motion, like what does that? What does that do?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: It's weird because that also sounds like completely simple, like
Speaker 2: I'm making them out out of a molehile here, But
Speaker 2: there is there's something strange going on. I think we
Speaker 2: we sometimes interact with this in a like non game
Speaker 2: even almost subconscious level, you know, like choosing not to
Speaker 2: think about the thing that you know isn't real lest
Speaker 2: it become real.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, totally, No, I think we do, even people
Speaker 3: who you know, at the rational level, you don't think
Speaker 3: that your activities it will become a kind of spell
Speaker 3: to summon spirits. You know, there's a part of you
Speaker 3: that wonders, and you just kind of shy away from it.
Speaker 3: And it does require I would say, like, I am
Speaker 3: not a person who believes in ghosts. I don't literally
Speaker 3: believe in ghosts, but I think it would take some
Speaker 3: real bravery for me to play a ghost summoning game,
Speaker 3: because like there's a difference between what you consciously assent
Speaker 3: to believing and what kind of scares you in theory.
Speaker 2: My family and I we've been watching Agatha all along,
Speaker 2: which is a witch based show on Disney about the
Speaker 2: witch Agatha or Coven, and there's a scene with the
Speaker 2: Wigi board, and so we had to explain to our
Speaker 2: son what a Ouiji board is because they just had not
Speaker 2: been exposed to it. And it's weird to explain this
Speaker 2: as like, oh, yeah, it's like a supernatural summoning game
Speaker 2: that as children growing up up and you know, predominantly
Speaker 2: you know these very you know, Christian environments, you were
Speaker 2: totally not supposed to do. It was witchcraft. Stay away
Speaker 2: from it. But at the same time, you could buy
Speaker 2: it at Walmart.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, made by Parker Brothers. Yeah, so, I don't know.
Speaker 3: This story got me thinking about these kinds of summoning games.
Speaker 3: Scholars studying the history of the Bloody Marry game. In fact,
Speaker 3: they relate it back to earlier summoning games. I think
Speaker 3: there were a lot around the turn of the twentieth
Speaker 3: century which were sometimes practiced by young women with the
Speaker 3: goal of seeing the face of their future husband.
Speaker 2: This is oh my god. Yeah, that's like gets into
Speaker 2: a whole other realm of board games, right, like those
Speaker 2: yeah street date stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly. So you know. A version of this is
Speaker 3: you like get a candle and a handheld mirror and
Speaker 3: you walk backwards up or down a staircase holding the
Speaker 3: candle in the mirror. Don't please do people, no one
Speaker 3: listening try this because you heard it. That sounds so dangerous.
Speaker 3: But you do this, and then you look in the
Speaker 3: mirror and you are supposed to see a glimpse of
Speaker 3: the future, either your future husband's face or you see
Speaker 3: the grim face of death, which means you'll die instead.
Speaker 3: And other versions of this don't rely on a staircase,
Speaker 3: just a dark room and a mirror, some kind of
Speaker 3: ritual Rabbi attached here for you to look at. Some
Speaker 3: just like one hundred year old Halloween postcards that are
Speaker 3: like again to come back to, like the Parker Brothers thing.
Speaker 3: These are just like mass produced postcards that are like,
Speaker 3: here's how you look in the mirror and see the ghost.
Speaker 3: But I guess it's a little more benign because it's
Speaker 3: giving you this supposedly happy information about like ooh, look
Speaker 3: at the handsome face of your future husband.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look at the cute cartoon cat in the background. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love old timy Halloween stuff like this.
Speaker 3: So the technical term for divination specifically with the use
Speaker 3: of a mirror is catoptromancy from catoptron Greek for mirror,
Speaker 3: and in a more general sense, as a type of
Speaker 3: div nation practice. This has been documented since ancient times
Speaker 3: in many cultures. The treatment of it more like a
Speaker 3: scary game allah bloody Mary, played by young people to
Speaker 3: conjure a supernatural encounter. I'd say, primarily for fun and
Speaker 3: to test one's bravery. That's something I would be really
Speaker 3: interested in finding evidence of going farther back in history,
Speaker 3: but I couldn't. I wasn't able to turn up anything
Speaker 3: explicitly of that sort. It seems like the most ancient
Speaker 3: references to catoptromancy are about sincere attempts at divination, genuine
Speaker 3: desires to get hidden information from the gods or from
Speaker 3: the spirit world, or to commune with the souls of
Speaker 3: the dead. So that obviously the lack of evidence doesn't
Speaker 3: rule out that there were games of this sort going
Speaker 3: back hundreds or thousands of years. I just haven't come
Speaker 3: across that documentation of that anyway, whether it's for sincere
Speaker 3: attempts to get hidden information or just as a game
Speaker 3: you play to scare yourself for fun. It's interesting to
Speaker 3: think about the phenomenon of seeing faces in mirrors. I
Speaker 3: don't have space to rehash everything here, but in our
Speaker 3: series on the Invention of the mirror, we extensively got
Speaker 3: into research on something known as the strange face in
Speaker 3: the mirror effect, which is a documented psychological phenomenon where
Speaker 3: people with typical psychological histories will often report hallucinating strange
Speaker 3: faces if they simply stare into a mirror for a
Speaker 3: long period of time in low light conditions. I think
Speaker 3: the rough numbers were that if you just like darken
Speaker 3: a room look in a mirror for ten minutes, roughly
Speaker 3: two thirds of people reported seeing weird stuff. This was
Speaker 3: largely explored in some papers by a researcher whose name
Speaker 3: is Giovanni Caputo, and there are a number of interesting
Speaker 3: perceptual and neurological explanations that might contribute to it. But
Speaker 3: the strange face in a mirror effect has been postulated
Speaker 3: as contributing to the pop popularity of catoptromancy games and
Speaker 3: things like Bloody Mary. Due to this common quirk in
Speaker 3: our brains, it's apparently just not unusual to actually see
Speaker 3: weird stuff if you stare into a mirror in a
Speaker 3: darkened room. And it doesn't take drugs, it doesn't take
Speaker 3: a history of hallucinations. It's just a normal thing that happens.
Speaker 3: So if you want to hear all the details about
Speaker 3: that research, go look up our episodes on the invention
Speaker 3: of the mirror. We go in depth there. But to
Speaker 3: bring it back to the Stephen Graham Jones story, I'm
Speaker 3: interested that this invented ritual, this invented summoning game, involves it,
Speaker 3: like there are a lot of parallels with the Bloody
Speaker 3: Mary thing, but it involves not a mirror, but a
Speaker 3: movie screen, and not prolonged staring, not prolonged stimulus relating
Speaker 3: to the surface, but actually the opposite, completely cutting yourself
Speaker 3: off from the stimulus while everyone around you is still watching.
Speaker 3: So by playing dead and not watching the scariest part
Speaker 3: of the movie, this is actually what quote lets the
Speaker 3: movie in. It conjures the most terrifying or powerful aspect
Speaker 3: of it into our world. I love this variation and
Speaker 3: I love how it interacts with the standard lore. And again,
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly what to say about what it means,
Speaker 3: but it feels so potent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, this reminds me of something my
Speaker 2: friend David Streepy does or used to do, where he
Speaker 2: said that if he was watching a scary movie and
Speaker 2: there was a scary part, he didn't necessarily want to
Speaker 2: watch the scary part and he would like squint his
Speaker 2: eyes blur out his vision during that portion. You know.
Speaker 2: So maybe it is rooted in sort of especially a
Speaker 2: you know, a childhood attempt to sort of save face
Speaker 2: but make it through the scary parts of the movie
Speaker 2: without actually watching them. And yeah, it kind of turns
Speaker 2: that on its head. What if by not watching you're
Speaker 2: allowing it to seep into you in other ways. But again,
Speaker 2: it's very ambiguous here, and that's kind of the beauty
Speaker 2: of the Stephen Graham Jones. You know what actually is
Speaker 2: going on here? Am I? What am I doing or
Speaker 2: doing wrong that allows the darkness to seep in at
Speaker 2: least at this one theater, you know, wherever it is
Speaker 2: and whatever its dark history may be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I love that story. I love a lot
Speaker 3: of Stephen Graham Jones's work, And if you want to
Speaker 3: pick up that collection, you look for after the people
Speaker 3: lights have gone off in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I noticed that Joe R. Lansdale wrote the introduction
Speaker 2: to that collection, which I think is fitting because, I mean,
Speaker 2: these are both authors of sort of the same era,
Speaker 2: I believe, and their work kind of reminds me of
Speaker 2: each other's work. You know, both have a often have
Speaker 2: a great sense of sort of in a way something
Speaker 2: that Stephen King did a lot. I mean, Stephen King
Speaker 2: wrote a lot about author about professional writers dealing with
Speaker 2: you know, darkness, but also a lot of like working
Speaker 2: class blue collars sort of characters encountering a very you know,
Speaker 2: unpaved road level version of horror. And I get that
Speaker 2: in these two authors as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm gonna have to look and figure out
Speaker 3: if Stephen Graham Jones's paleo anthropological thriller and Slasher and
Speaker 3: Other Slasher are already out, so I'm I'm gonna try
Speaker 3: to read them.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, there we have a couple of I
Speaker 2: think solid Halloween stories for you to potentially read, or
Speaker 2: maybe you have read them, or maybe you feel like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I got enough, I don't need to read them, but
Speaker 2: you have thoughts about them, you know, write in. We
Speaker 2: would love to hear from you. If you have ideas
Speaker 2: for next year, If you want us to continue this series,
Speaker 2: ride in and let us know. Just a reminder that
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
Speaker 2: culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but
Speaker 2: on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just
Speaker 2: talk about a weird film on Weird Houses Cinema. If
Speaker 2: you're on Instagram, follow us. We are stb ym podcast
Speaker 2: and that's a good way to just stay abreast of
Speaker 2: whatever's coming out in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 2: podcast feed.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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