Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And today is a thrilling
Speaker 3: occasion for us here on the podcast because this very
Speaker 3: episode is publishing on Tuesday, October first, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: which makes it the inaugural entry in our traditional month
Speaker 3: long celebration of Halloween. So longtime fans, you know what's
Speaker 3: going on, you know what's in store. But in case
Speaker 3: you're new to the show, the pitch is that every
Speaker 3: October on Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we devote all
Speaker 3: of that month's core episodes two topics related to monsters, ghosts, demons, curses,
Speaker 3: and horror Halloween stuff, and also for our weird House
Speaker 3: cinema episodes. For the Fridays of this month, we're going
Speaker 3: to be looking at horror movies.
Speaker 2: That's right. October is the month when you can turn
Speaker 2: to Stuff to Blow Your Mind and find that we
Speaker 2: were doing horror and monster stuff one hundred percent of
Speaker 2: the time, as opposed to our normal like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: thirty five to forty percent of the time.
Speaker 3: That's right. People have pointed out before. I mean, we're
Speaker 3: you know, we got monsters on the brain. That's kind
Speaker 3: of how we are. So throughout the year you'll get
Speaker 3: a smattering, but for October, it's it's all we do.
Speaker 2: And I'm excited about the episode we're going to kick
Speaker 2: off here today, the series we're kicking off here today
Speaker 2: because this is a topic we've been talking about doing
Speaker 2: for years now. This is well when we get around
Speaker 2: to planning out our October episodes, this one's been on
Speaker 2: the list for a while and we're finally hopping aboard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder why it took us this long. I
Speaker 3: don't think there's a particular reason just shook out that way.
Speaker 3: But today we're beginning a series on locomotive horror, the
Speaker 3: mini shades of menace and supernatural fright that we have
Speaker 3: projected onto trains. Now, this is a topic that's going
Speaker 3: to take us into a bunch of different realms of folklore, history, science,
Speaker 3: and technology. But I think the best best place to
Speaker 3: begin here is to look at some famous examples of
Speaker 3: trains in horror fiction and rob if you don't mind,
Speaker 3: I want to kick things off with an example of
Speaker 3: a story that I just read in full for the
Speaker 3: first time this weekend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's have it, okay.
Speaker 3: So the story in question is a short tale of ghosts,
Speaker 3: spectral visions, and premonitions by Charles Dickens, and it's called
Speaker 3: The Signalman. This story was published in eighteen sixty six
Speaker 3: as part of a set of short stories by Dickens
Speaker 3: and a handful of other authors, with the collection as
Speaker 3: a whole called Mugby Junction. So there's sort of a
Speaker 3: locomotive and railroad theme running throughout. This collection was a
Speaker 3: special Christmas edition of a magazine that Dickens founded called
Speaker 3: All the Year Round. And I'm going to briefly summarize
Speaker 3: the story, including the ending, so as a warning, if
Speaker 3: you want to read it without having the ending spoiled,
Speaker 3: you could pause and do that now. It's fairly short.
Speaker 3: It only takes like twenty minutes or so to read.
Speaker 3: The Signalman begins with an unnamed narrator who wanders to
Speaker 3: the edge of a huge trench in the earth around
Speaker 3: sunset one day. And at the bottom of this trench
Speaker 3: there is a railway line leading into a dark tunnel.
Speaker 3: And at the edge of the tunnel, beside the tracks
Speaker 3: there is a tiny box like signal house and the
Speaker 3: signalman who works it. So a bit of historical context
Speaker 3: that helps you understand the story better. In the nineteenth century,
Speaker 3: signal operators were a crucial part of railroads. These were
Speaker 3: workers who had to stay at little houses beside the tracks,
Speaker 3: and they would be equipped with lights and colored flags
Speaker 3: and usually a telegraph line to relay information to and
Speaker 3: about passing trains, which meant that signalers were pivotal to
Speaker 3: railroad safety. They gave the trains information, They passed the
Speaker 3: information via flags or sometimes even shouted verbal signals. They
Speaker 3: passed information to oncoming in engine drivers, and this could
Speaker 3: be information about the conditions of the tracks ahead, like
Speaker 3: is there an obstruction, a flood, some of their kind
Speaker 3: of problem, or about the movements of other trains like
Speaker 3: was there a train stalled on the tracks ahead or
Speaker 3: somewhere it shouldn't be. And they also kept information about
Speaker 3: when trains passed to make sure everything was running on
Speaker 3: schedule and alert other stations and trains if there was
Speaker 3: some kind of danger or delay. They were also sometimes
Speaker 3: responsible for operating track switches to divert the course of
Speaker 3: a train, like if there's a fork in the line.
Speaker 3: But because of the nature of their work, signal operators
Speaker 3: were sometimes characterized as kind of pitiable people like it
Speaker 3: was stressful work because the lives of many people were
Speaker 3: in their hands. If they made a mistake, it could
Speaker 3: lead to disaster. But it was also isolated, lonely work
Speaker 3: because they would be spending long shifts by themselves in
Speaker 3: remote and sometimes unpleasant locations along the rail lines. So
Speaker 3: anyway back to the story. The narrator comes to a
Speaker 3: deep cutting in the earth at the emergence of a
Speaker 3: rail tunnel, and he looks down into it and sees
Speaker 3: this tiny signal house and the man who works there
Speaker 3: standing at the door. Curious. The narrator calls out and says, Helloa,
Speaker 3: it's that one of those hellos that spelled halloa or
Speaker 3: how you say that? Do you say the oa? Or
Speaker 3: is that just oh hello, I die I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: It's like balbo helloa. Below there, He's trying to get
Speaker 3: the man's attention. The man at first seems confused and
Speaker 3: even frightened, but then reluctantly invites the narrator down a
Speaker 3: hidden pathway to meet him. And here, I'm going to
Speaker 3: read a descriptive passage to communicate the atmosphere of the story.
Speaker 3: The narrator says his post was in as solitary and
Speaker 3: dismal a place as I ever saw. On either side,
Speaker 3: a dripping, wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view
Speaker 3: but a strip of sky. The perspective one way only
Speaker 3: a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon, the shorter perspective
Speaker 3: in the other direction, terminating in a gloomy red light,
Speaker 3: and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose
Speaker 3: massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing and forbidding air.
Speaker 3: So little sunlight ever found its way to this spot
Speaker 3: that it had an earthy, deadly smell, and so much
Speaker 3: cold wind rushed through it that it struck chill to me,
Speaker 3: as if I had left the natural world.
Speaker 2: Ooh, that is nice.
Speaker 3: Anyway, The narrator notices that the signalman is acting weird.
Speaker 3: He's preoccupied, even a bit haunted, And they eventually get
Speaker 3: to know one another and become familiar, and after some
Speaker 3: time has passed between them, the signalman confesses what it
Speaker 3: is that's troubling him. At several times past, the signalman
Speaker 3: has had visions of a man in the night, posed
Speaker 3: against the red light, the danger light at the mouth
Speaker 3: of the tunnel. The figure stands with one arm raised up,
Speaker 3: waving violently, and the other arm thrown over his eyes
Speaker 3: like a blindfold. And when the signallman sees the figure,
Speaker 3: he hears a voice calling out, saying, Helloa below there,
Speaker 3: look out, And then as suddenly as it appeared, the
Speaker 3: figure vanishes into darkness. And twice before, at the time
Speaker 3: of the story, the signalman has seen this shadow man
Speaker 3: in the red light and heard the voice, and then
Speaker 3: immediately after those visions, disaster has fallen somewhere nearby on
Speaker 3: the tracks. A One time it was a terrible engine
Speaker 3: collision in which many people were killed. Another time it
Speaker 3: was the sudden and mysterious death of a young woman
Speaker 3: riding on board a passing train. And so now the
Speaker 3: signalman is not only haunted by this vision, but by
Speaker 3: what it means. When he sees it and when he
Speaker 3: hears the voice, he knows there will soon be a disaster,
Speaker 3: and he wants to telegraph the station so he can
Speaker 3: perhaps avert it. But he has no idea what the
Speaker 3: disaster will be, and he can't explain the reason he
Speaker 3: knows it's coming, so he can't give a warning that
Speaker 3: anybody will heed. So he's tortured with this terrible knowledge
Speaker 3: that he can't use to help anyone. Now the narrator
Speaker 3: is troubled by all this. He seems to believe that
Speaker 3: the man is suffering from a nervous condition, and the
Speaker 3: next day he plans to come back and find a
Speaker 3: way to convince the signalman to go see a doctor.
Speaker 3: But when the narrator arrives at the trench in the
Speaker 3: earth the next day, he instead finds a large gathering
Speaker 3: of railroad officials on site. Apparently the signalman was cut
Speaker 3: down by a train the night before. He was standing
Speaker 3: in the tracks as if in a trance. The engine
Speaker 3: driver saw him as the train was approaching and tried
Speaker 3: to call out to him to get him to move
Speaker 3: out of the way. And he was calling out halloa
Speaker 3: below there look out and waved one arm violently to
Speaker 3: get the signalman's attention. But at the last moment the
Speaker 3: engine driver was terrified of what he was about to see,
Speaker 3: and so he threw his other arm over his face
Speaker 3: to cover his eyes.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I.
Speaker 3: Think it's a wonderfully chilling ending. Even now just telling
Speaker 3: it again, I got a little bit of a little
Speaker 3: bit of a shiver, a goosebump there. Now, you might think,
Speaker 3: because a lot of ghost stories, what they're really about
Speaker 3: is the ghost. And actually you could say that it's
Speaker 3: arguable whether or not this should be classified as a
Speaker 3: ghost story or whether it's actually a premonition story that
Speaker 3: just has a has a similar aesthetic reform to a
Speaker 3: ghost story. But but you could argue that, yeah, maybe
Speaker 3: the setting is kind of incidental. What it's really about
Speaker 3: is the ghost and the human interaction. But I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think the railway setting is not incidental here. I
Speaker 3: think the setting along the tracks is actually quite thematically central.
Speaker 3: It matters that the signalman is a signalman, like what
Speaker 3: his job is is core to the anguish that he's
Speaker 3: suffering with this terrible knowledge, and the fear and the
Speaker 3: dread and the gloomy atmosphere and the danger are all
Speaker 3: centrally based on railroad technology. And you can tell well
Speaker 3: and even Dickens himself had strange, i'd say, at best,
Speaker 3: ambivalent feelings about rail travel and its effects on the world.
Speaker 3: There's a different story in this same collection, Mugby Junction,
Speaker 3: where Dickens is writing about a character looking down at
Speaker 3: a railroad junction and says, but there were so many
Speaker 3: lines gazing down upon them from a bridge at the junction,
Speaker 3: it was as if the concentrating companies formed a great
Speaker 3: industrial exhibition of the works of extraordinary ground spiders that
Speaker 3: spun iron.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's nice anyway.
Speaker 3: All that to make the point that I think a
Speaker 3: lot of these horror stories that are about trains are
Speaker 3: not incidentally about trains. They're not just stories that could
Speaker 3: be set anywhere that just happened to be a setting
Speaker 3: the author liked. I think a lot of them really
Speaker 3: are in serious ways about trains and what trains mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And this is a really fascinating subject to
Speaker 2: get into, and I feel like I I do have
Speaker 2: to like mention at the top of all this that
Speaker 2: I love trains. I enjoy riding on trains, subway or otherwise,
Speaker 2: bullet trains everywhere ever I've really enjoyed trains. I live
Speaker 2: next to a train track, I've lived next to it
Speaker 2: for over a decade, and I still find reasons to
Speaker 2: enjoy watching the trains go by or especially the trucks
Speaker 2: on the tracks and various maintenance equipment or special loads.
Speaker 2: Occasionally that occurs, and I get a kick out of that.
Speaker 2: But so suffice to say, trains are very every day
Speaker 2: to me, and I like them. I don't inherently think
Speaker 2: they are creepy. And yet at the same time, there
Speaker 2: is something about the train that fits so well, not
Speaker 2: only fits well within these stories, but serves as a
Speaker 2: great skeleton for these stories. And a lot of it
Speaker 2: comes down to ideas that the train itself there's something
Speaker 2: unnatural about it. There's something really almost a sense of
Speaker 2: future shock that's never gone away, you know. And also
Speaker 2: the idea that the train is a location is inherently unnatural,
Speaker 2: and there's something about it that is sort of inherently haunted.
Speaker 2: And there are different ways to approach this, and I
Speaker 2: was thinking about this, and I was looking up various
Speaker 2: short stories and works of horror and thinking about various
Speaker 2: movies as well that use train settings, and some of
Speaker 2: them are you know, you can find overt examples of like, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is a movie about a train with a killer
Speaker 2: on the train. You know, it's you know, it is
Speaker 2: just a setting for murders. Plenty of examples of that,
Speaker 2: but one of the examples that I think came to
Speaker 2: my mind the most, and this is one that I
Speaker 2: remember watching an adaptation of it when I was younger.
Speaker 2: This comes from the works of Sarrothur Conan Doyle and
Speaker 2: a particular short story titled The Adventure of the Copper Beaches.
Speaker 2: This would have been an eighteen ninety two tale, and
Speaker 2: I vividly remember watching the Jeremy Brett Granada television adaptation
Speaker 2: of this when I was a kid. You can find
Speaker 2: this streaming, and you can get this on disc as well.
Speaker 2: It's It's, It's. These were all really accurate adaptations of
Speaker 2: the shlock Home stories. But basically this does not involve
Speaker 2: a haunted train. There's not even a murder on the
Speaker 2: train or anything of that nature. It's just Holmes and
Speaker 2: Watson are taking the train into the countryside to look
Speaker 2: into a particular crime. And at first Holmes is consumed
Speaker 2: by his newspaper much of the way, you know, if
Speaker 2: it were today, he'd be on his his iPhone or something.
Speaker 2: But he finally puts his newspaper way and he begins
Speaker 2: to survey the scenery outside the window and he makes
Speaker 2: a kind of terrifying observation. He goes on a bit
Speaker 2: of a ramt multiple paragraphs that I can't I can't
Speaker 2: read all of it here, but I'm gonna read essentially
Speaker 2: an abridged version. Okay, So Holmes says the following to Watson,
Speaker 2: you look at these scattered houses and you are impressed
Speaker 2: by their beauty. I look at them and the only
Speaker 2: thought which comes to me is a feeling of their
Speaker 2: isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be
Speaker 2: committed there. They always fill me with a certain horror.
Speaker 2: It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that
Speaker 2: the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present
Speaker 2: a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling
Speaker 2: and beautiful countryside. The pressure of public opinion can do
Speaker 2: in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is
Speaker 2: no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured
Speaker 2: child or the thud of a drunkard's blow does not
Speaker 2: beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbors. And then the
Speaker 2: whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a
Speaker 2: word of complaint can set it going. And there is
Speaker 2: but a step between the crime and the dock. But
Speaker 2: look at these lonely houses. Think of the deeds of
Speaker 2: hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on year in,
Speaker 2: year out in such places, and none the wiser. It
Speaker 2: is the five miles of country which makes the danger.
Speaker 3: That's a very interesting paragraph because it strikes me as
Speaker 3: both containing some wisdom and truth but also representing a
Speaker 3: pathological way of thinking. You know, it's like, yeah, there
Speaker 3: is some correct observation there, but also it's just it
Speaker 3: reveals Holmes's way of looking at the world as just
Speaker 3: like a place of dangers and miseries, and you can
Speaker 3: sort of do an inventory of the potential for dangers
Speaker 3: and miseries by looking at any place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it definitely reveals something of Holmes's nature.
Speaker 2: And again it's the train itself is not creepy. Here
Speaker 2: in the adaptation and in the book you get the
Speaker 2: very you know, Holmes the insense of oh, these are
Speaker 2: just gentlemen on a train. But then when you get
Speaker 2: this morbid observation, ultimately it's about how the countryside is
Speaker 2: creepy and not even the city is creepy. But there's
Speaker 2: something about the train technology's role in this.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yes, I would have no way of proving that
Speaker 3: that Arthur Conan Doyle was actually trying to make this
Speaker 3: particular point, but I would not be surprised if this
Speaker 3: kind of observation was actually a state. And about the
Speaker 3: way a train changes the way you look at the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's about the vantage point that it provides
Speaker 2: the broadening human travel abilities, It permits homes a chance
Speaker 2: to observe something terrifying about human nature and human civilization.
Speaker 2: And it's a scene that I think just got stuck
Speaker 2: in my head at an early age. So I literally
Speaker 2: think about the scene almost anytime I'm on a train,
Speaker 2: certainly if it's a novel train and I get to
Speaker 2: look out at the countryside.
Speaker 3: Which, by the way, I love doing rob I'm like you,
Speaker 3: I also very much love trains. I mostly have just
Speaker 3: positive feelings about them. So I did not pick this
Speaker 3: topic because I think trains are inherently creepy, but maybe
Speaker 3: because they're sort of cuddly to me. I wonder I'm
Speaker 3: interested in the way is that they might bring terrors
Speaker 3: to mind for many people, especially people in say the
Speaker 3: nineteenth century.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but seriously, I'll be riding a train like
Speaker 2: even more recently, a few months back, I had to
Speaker 2: ride the bullet train Japan. Look out of the beautiful
Speaker 2: countryside and yet here Sherlock Holmes whispering my ear. They
Speaker 2: might be murdering in there.
Speaker 3: So thank you, Sherlock, but they think of the horror
Speaker 3: is hidden beyond.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 2: Now, another tale that comes to mind concerning trains is
Speaker 2: the Ray Bradbury story The Town where No One Got Off,
Speaker 2: And I'm mostly familiar with this one from a nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty six adaptation on the Ray Bradbury Theater television show
Speaker 2: starring a young Jeff Goldblin Oh or you know. This
Speaker 2: was what the same year as The Fly, so you
Speaker 2: know young Jeff Goblin. I don't remember how old he
Speaker 2: would have been at this point in his career, but anyway,
Speaker 2: so this is another story where the train itself is
Speaker 2: not creepy, but there's something about the way it connects
Speaker 2: people in places that takes on a very sinister air.
Speaker 2: So in this story we follow a man from the
Speaker 2: city this is Jeff Goblum's character in the adaptation, who
Speaker 2: takes a train ride out into the country side to
Speaker 2: confirm according to him, his ideals about country living, and
Speaker 2: his of course curiosity with this particular stop where nobody
Speaker 2: ever gets off. You know, what is it with this town?
Speaker 2: And you know this also ties into some general fascination
Speaker 2: with train travel. You're like, well, what is this stop?
Speaker 2: Who lives here? Who are these people? And he meets
Speaker 2: up and tags along with an old countryman during this journey.
Speaker 2: And there's a twist though, and I'm about to spoil it,
Speaker 2: so skip ahead, pause, and so forth if you don't
Speaker 2: want it to be spoiled. But the twist is that
Speaker 2: the city man has ventured out to the country to
Speaker 2: commit the perfect murder of a stranger, and the old
Speaker 2: man has lured him out to do the same, to
Speaker 2: commit the perfect murder of a city guy who has
Speaker 2: wandered into the country. And I'm going to read it
Speaker 2: just a quick quote here from the original rapere Very
Speaker 2: short story. Now, the darkness that had brought us together
Speaker 2: stood between the old man, the station, the town, the
Speaker 2: forest were lost in the night. For an hour. I
Speaker 2: stood in the roaring blast, staring back at all that darkness.
Speaker 2: So this is a story that works in a number
Speaker 2: of ways, exploring course just the darkness of human nature
Speaker 2: and you know, temptation to do evil and so forth
Speaker 2: our attitudes towards others, and perhaps as well a little
Speaker 2: commentary on the idea that you still see in modern
Speaker 2: objections to say, the expansion of city rail, that oh, well,
Speaker 2: if you do this, it's going to allow criminals to
Speaker 2: just move around super easily. They'll just they'll just go
Speaker 2: right into the into the really nice parts of town
Speaker 2: and just start doing crimes. But uh, and then on
Speaker 2: top of all of this, I feel like this there
Speaker 2: is also this sense of the train as a technology
Speaker 2: that shortens the distance between individuals, so it brings us
Speaker 2: closer together. But does it maybe bring us two close?
Speaker 2: You know, does it just it just opens up the
Speaker 2: room for it breaks down barriers that should be in place,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Hmmm, I'm gonna have to think on that. But in
Speaker 3: a minute, I do want to get into talking about
Speaker 3: some of the most common themes I feel like I've
Speaker 3: observed in train related horror stories, and so maybe this
Speaker 3: will come back up then. But before we do that,
Speaker 3: I know you wanted to mention a few more examples.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some of these are gonna be a little more
Speaker 2: in passing, but I was just trying to list off
Speaker 2: a few in my head that stood out. The Midnight
Speaker 2: Meat Train by Clive Barker.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: If you're only familiar with the movie, let me just
Speaker 2: remind you that the original Books of Blood short story
Speaker 2: is quite good.
Speaker 3: It's one of those stories where, if this makes any sense,
Speaker 3: I kept expecting it to turn out to be less
Speaker 3: literal than it was, and like the literalness of the
Speaker 3: payoff is actually kind of genius.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it works better in short story format.
Speaker 2: Another one is The Tall Grass by Joe R. Lansdale.
Speaker 2: This one was adapted on the Love and Robots television
Speaker 2: series the animated anthology series, and it's quite good. Involves
Speaker 2: a train sort of I forget if it breaks down
Speaker 2: or slows down, but it kind of gets into that
Speaker 2: area of like, oh, the train is something that connects
Speaker 2: point A to point B, but then what goes on
Speaker 2: in between and the idea that you know, you're you're
Speaker 2: often going through you know, very isolated countryside or you know,
Speaker 2: so it seems to the observer. Yeah, let's see getting
Speaker 2: into the realm of not only train horror fiction, but
Speaker 2: subway horror fiction, which we already got into a little
Speaker 2: bit of midnight me Train. There's an excellent older weird
Speaker 2: fiction tale called Far Below by Robert Barbara Johnson, and
Speaker 2: this one is adapted into an okay episode of the
Speaker 2: anthology series Monsters, but the original short story is fabulous.
Speaker 2: It involves people becoming ghouls in the deep tunnels beneath
Speaker 2: New York City.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 2: Let's see, oh, we we would have to we have
Speaker 2: to mention blame the monorail from Kings The Dark Tower
Speaker 2: series is a like a super intelligent computer train that
Speaker 2: goes crazy. And I'd forgotten about this one, but a
Speaker 2: problematic horror. Master HP Lovecraft, in describing the Shoguth at
Speaker 2: the end of nineteen thirty one's At the Mountains of Madness,
Speaker 2: compares this indescribable monster, you know, it's like this blob
Speaker 2: monster in part to a subway train. Okay, yeah, like
Speaker 2: there's not much you could compare it to, but to
Speaker 2: a train, which maybe reveals something about some of the
Speaker 2: attitudes one might, you know, have about trains or observe
Speaker 2: about them. I'm going to read a quick quote here,
Speaker 2: but we were not on a station platform. We were
Speaker 2: on the track ahead as the nightmare plastic column of
Speaker 2: fetid black herodescence, oozed tightly onward through its fifteen foot sinus,
Speaker 2: gathering unholy speed and driving before it a spiral, re
Speaker 2: thickening cloud of the palette abyss vapor. It was a terrible,
Speaker 2: indescribable thing. You just kind of described it, though, Yeah,
Speaker 2: vaster than any subway train.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, first of all, I do love that comparison. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I can picture that the monsters moving like a subway train. Also, yeah,
Speaker 3: this doesn't Lovecraft do this all the time. He says
Speaker 3: it's impossible to describe this, and then he describes it.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yeah, yeah, I can't describe it, but I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go on for about a good page. They alling you
Speaker 2: how impossible this is to describe.
Speaker 3: It's sort of like a way of saying, let me
Speaker 3: describe this, but just know that it's worse than whatever
Speaker 3: I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Yes, And of course there are just great train moments
Speaker 2: sprinkled throughout horror and even just horror flavored fiction. For instance.
Speaker 2: I mean there's We've talked about the Vampire action sequence
Speaker 2: with Subways and Blade on Weird House Cinema before. Who
Speaker 2: can forget the arrival of the Dementors on Hogwarts Express
Speaker 2: in Alfonso Quran's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,
Speaker 2: which for my money, is the best film in that
Speaker 2: whole series, and a very creepy sequences these rates or
Speaker 2: creeping aboard the train and the ice is forming over
Speaker 2: the glass and so forth.
Speaker 3: I only barely remember the moment you're talking about. Wait,
Speaker 3: do the Dementtors get on the train and arrive by train?
Speaker 3: Or they're like surrounding a train.
Speaker 2: They're surrounding the train. Yeah, they didn't get it, they
Speaker 2: didn't buy a ticket, things about it. So at any rate,
Speaker 2: suffice to say, there are a lot of great horror
Speaker 2: and horror flavored train scenes in film and television, in
Speaker 2: fiction written fiction. So I'm sure there are some excellent
Speaker 2: examples that I haven't even thought to mention here. So
Speaker 2: as always, we'd love to hear from folks out there
Speaker 2: if you have any examples that stand out in your
Speaker 2: mind and line up with some of the examples we're
Speaker 2: discussing here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely right in now, Rob, if you don't mind,
Speaker 3: I thought it would be interesting to try to look
Speaker 3: at what are some of the most common and distinctive
Speaker 3: themes of locomotive horror. What do train horror stories often
Speaker 3: get focused on as opposed to just the usual themes
Speaker 3: of horror. Here's what I could think of so far.
Speaker 3: First of all, I think a big theme of train
Speaker 3: horror is fate. These stories very often focus on people
Speaker 3: who have some kind of foreknowledge or premonition of horrible
Speaker 3: events or outcomes, but have no way to prevent them
Speaker 3: from happening. This is a core idea of the Dickens
Speaker 3: story The Signalman. But it happens in a lot of
Speaker 3: train fiction that you know something is going to happen,
Speaker 3: and you usually don't want it to happen, but you
Speaker 3: can't stop it. And I think this relates to unique features,
Speaker 3: especially in the nineteenth century, of trains as a transportation technology.
Speaker 3: When you're on a train, you are headed somewhere, and
Speaker 3: you've usually usually chosen to get on the train, but
Speaker 3: the travel is not occurring by your own physical power,
Speaker 3: and the train is not under your control to steer,
Speaker 3: and it is not within your practical power to get
Speaker 3: off the train. So once you're on a moving train,
Speaker 3: you are being taken ineluctably to the train's destination, and
Speaker 3: no matter how much you may want to, you cannot
Speaker 3: change course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is this is indeed a great, a
Speaker 2: great observation of horror train fiction. Yeah, and even science fiction.
Speaker 2: You know, you get into even examples like I keep
Speaker 2: thinking of snow Piercer, the TV series, in the film,
Speaker 2: and like, what are they doing with trains? And they're
Speaker 2: doing a lot with trains thematically and with setting, but
Speaker 2: one of them kind of turning this concept on its head,
Speaker 2: is that the train has no destination. It's just going
Speaker 2: endlessly around the world. There's like no destination left to
Speaker 2: go to because there's nothing left of human civilization except
Speaker 2: the journey of the train.
Speaker 3: But that has some metaphorical potency of its own, right,
Speaker 3: the idea of just a movement that never ceases with
Speaker 3: no endpoint or goal. Yeah, infinite games, right, Yeah. But
Speaker 3: also I was thinking about how the physical characteristics of
Speaker 3: locomotives and travel by rail feed into this theme of
Speaker 3: fate and unavoidable outcomes, because trains are enormous and enormously
Speaker 3: powerful machines, which it would be you know, not only
Speaker 3: while if you're a passenger on a train, can you
Speaker 3: not steer the train yourself? You know, it's stuck to
Speaker 3: the tracks. It's going wherever the engine driver takes it.
Speaker 3: It would also be hopeless to personally resist the movement
Speaker 3: of the train. You know, you can't like push it
Speaker 3: or anything overwhelming physical power. Also, travel by train is fast.
Speaker 3: You enter the belly of this great beast in one place,
Speaker 3: and then before you know it, you're just in another city,
Speaker 3: another part of the country, another part of the world,
Speaker 3: contributing to this sense of too quickness, like I have
Speaker 3: not had time to prepare for what's coming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this this theme instantly makes me think of this
Speaker 2: particular reggae song I believe Bob Marley and the Whaler's
Speaker 2: covered it at one point, called stop that Train, and
Speaker 2: it's you know, the chorus is stop that train, I
Speaker 2: want to get off, and so forth, And like we
Speaker 2: instantly connect with this idea, like something is propelling me
Speaker 2: toward a destination and I've changed my mind about it,
Speaker 2: or I never wanted to go there to begin with,
Speaker 2: I would like to get off the train.
Speaker 3: Or maybe you just now understand what it means to
Speaker 3: go to this destination. You got on the train thinking
Speaker 3: one thing, and then you learn something it changes your mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So It's like the technology becomes this excellent metaphor
Speaker 2: for so many different aspects of human life, including life
Speaker 2: itself in our linear experience of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, okay. I think fate and fatalism, unavoidable outcomes,
Speaker 3: that's a big theme. Second theme I would say is
Speaker 3: very common in these stories is isolation and alienation. I
Speaker 3: think because you cannot safely exit a train in motion.
Speaker 3: Stories set on trains often emphasize themes of being cut
Speaker 3: off and isolated from the rest of the world, the
Speaker 3: world outside. So you can look out the windows of
Speaker 3: the train at the world as it goes by, but
Speaker 3: you can't interact with that world. You can only watch
Speaker 3: pieces of it quickly merge into and out of your view,
Speaker 3: And I think that creates this feeling of unreality and distance.
Speaker 3: This is sort of what I was getting at in
Speaker 3: response to that rant by Sherlock Holmes looking out at
Speaker 3: the world. I wonder if this feeling of unreality and
Speaker 3: alienation contributes to the malice that Home sees when looking
Speaker 3: out it houses through a passing train window. If he
Speaker 3: would feel any different if he were just standing on
Speaker 3: the ground looking at the same scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, beyond that more abstract feeling, the kind of uncanny
Speaker 3: separation of the train and its passengers from the outside world,
Speaker 3: there's a different type of isolation that often comes up
Speaker 3: in these stories, and it's much more practical individual isolation
Speaker 3: in closed train compartments. In a lot of the non
Speaker 3: fiction writings about trains from the nineteenth century, and we're
Speaker 3: going to get into some of these as the series
Speaker 3: goes on, you see a particular concern about people being
Speaker 3: by themselves and vulnerable to attacks in the privacy compartments
Speaker 3: of passenger trains. Now, I think this is interesting because
Speaker 3: obviously the train was not the first time there were
Speaker 3: ever rooms with walls and small spaces where people could
Speaker 3: become isolated and trapped, say with a dangerous person. But
Speaker 3: for some reason, compartments on trains seemed especially frightening to
Speaker 3: people in this regard. Like if you read newspaper articles
Speaker 3: from London in the eighteen sixties, people are writing about
Speaker 3: with terror about this idea of getting stock or cornered
Speaker 3: in a train car. But it's interesting to look at
Speaker 3: like why this environment in particular struck people as a
Speaker 3: place that was dangerous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that is interesting to think about it. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm tempted to think of it as like the world
Speaker 2: has been squished down and elongated, and so all of
Speaker 2: those little confined spaces that you might encounter in the
Speaker 2: world are just maybe a little more confined or seem
Speaker 2: a little more confined because the world has been narrowed
Speaker 2: down into these uniform bricks of habitation.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Another theme that I think pops up in these
Speaker 3: stories is train tunnels as journeys to the underworld, so
Speaker 3: passing through into darkness, literally traveling under the earth. This
Speaker 3: serves as metaphorical in the same way that journeys to
Speaker 3: the underworld often do in fiction, as a way of
Speaker 3: speaking about death often or great transitions and changes, and
Speaker 3: then speaking of change. One more theme I think that
Speaker 3: is quite prominent, especially in stories from the nineteenth century.
Speaker 3: I think this is less true as time goes on,
Speaker 3: but in stories from the nineteenth century, when passenger trains
Speaker 3: were a more recent innovation, trains often are used as
Speaker 3: the singular symbol of the technological era. So in the
Speaker 3: same way that if you wanted to write a story
Speaker 3: today commenting on the digital age, you might have as
Speaker 3: an object in that story like a phone or a computer,
Speaker 3: that's like the icon of the technological environment. I think
Speaker 3: in the same way, the locomotive was the core physical
Speaker 3: symbol of the steam age and everything that came with it.
Speaker 3: So the replacement of human labor with machine power changes
Speaker 3: to the physical landscape of the world, a pollution of
Speaker 3: the environment, the accelerating pace of human life, increasing power
Speaker 3: to both create and destroy. All these things I think
Speaker 3: were symbolized in the physical object of the train. The
Speaker 3: train could key out to all of those technological ideas,
Speaker 3: and I think for that reason, it's not high purble
Speaker 3: to say that somebody, especially in the nineteenth century, could
Speaker 3: easily look on the steam engine and the steam engine
Speaker 3: powered locomotive as something demonic, something unholy. It is humanities
Speaker 3: packed with the devil that has given us great power
Speaker 3: at the cost of our souls.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think it's also worth keeping in mind
Speaker 2: that again, no matter how every day and new and
Speaker 2: even old fashioned train transportation may seem to us today,
Speaker 2: we also have to look at the fact that, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of our fiction that we read today has,
Speaker 2: in one way or another, has sort of roots in
Speaker 2: the storytelling of this time period. You know, like you
Speaker 2: may not be setting around reading a bunch of Charles Dickens,
Speaker 2: but inevitably you're reading people that were inspired by people
Speaker 2: who are inspired by Dickens. Or Yeah, you can add, however,
Speaker 2: many layers of transition or and play there, but you
Speaker 2: can't deny, at least in the English lange, which is
Speaker 2: the importance of these works. Likewise, when you look at film, like,
Speaker 2: trains have always been a part of the moving picture,
Speaker 2: and so you see cinema coming out of the late
Speaker 2: nineteenth century still you know, fascinated with trains and capturing trains,
Speaker 2: and we've never stopped being fascinated with trains in our
Speaker 2: visual cinematic storytelling. Yeah, all right, so we've alluded to
Speaker 2: some of the history here. I thought it would be
Speaker 2: a good idea just to run through rather quickly some
Speaker 2: of the big moments in development of locomotive technology. This
Speaker 2: is not going to be a full blown invention episode,
Speaker 2: so we're not going to go through everything in detail.
Speaker 2: And ultimately it's not just a hey, one day, a
Speaker 2: guy invented a locomotive and they went with it. You know,
Speaker 2: there are a number of different people involved, different technologies
Speaker 2: that end up being utilized and built upon. But you know,
Speaker 2: to start with the basic concept of a wheeled vehicle
Speaker 2: on a set track, sometimes called like a wagonway. This
Speaker 2: dates back as far as ancient Babylon wheeled carts affixed
Speaker 2: to some sort of rail, you know, to keep the
Speaker 2: cart on track, literally on track, like that's how how
Speaker 2: do you refer to it? The language has already embedded concept.
Speaker 2: But wheeled carts affixed to rails or of course have
Speaker 2: long been used in mining operations pulled by human or
Speaker 2: animal labor, well in advance of any kind of steam
Speaker 2: technology or electric like electronic technology, which would and this
Speaker 2: would have all would would lay the groundwork for the
Speaker 2: locomotive revolution that's to come. And it's honestly kind of
Speaker 2: interesting to think about the connection between trains and mine
Speaker 2: carts here because mines, of course, as we've discussed in
Speaker 2: the show before, are also places with their own deep
Speaker 2: seated myths and legends and definitely themes of traveling into
Speaker 2: the underworld.
Speaker 3: Yeah I was about to say, overlapping themes. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, steam technology also runs pretty deep in its basic
Speaker 2: conception and theorized, for instance, in the second half of
Speaker 2: the first century CE by Greek mathematician hero sometimes called
Speaker 2: Heros or Heron. For centuries, however, steam technology was mostly
Speaker 2: the domain of theories and concepts, followed by experiments and novelties,
Speaker 2: you know, essentially little toys, leading up to a let's
Speaker 2: see a seventeenth century pressure cooker, and then in sixteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight Thomas Savory's steam pump the Miner's Friend. This
Speaker 2: was invented as a way to use steam power to
Speaker 2: remove water from mines, sort.
Speaker 3: Of pump them out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, it actually wasn't that successful in pumping water
Speaker 2: out of mines for a number of technological reasons and
Speaker 2: technological limitations at the time, but it pushed the technology forward.
Speaker 2: And there are various examples of this sort of thing
Speaker 2: in the development of steam technology. Leading up to the
Speaker 2: steam train, we get the Newcomen engine, the Bolton and
Speaker 2: Watt engine, we get the Cornish engine, and each of
Speaker 2: these has its own story that we don't have time
Speaker 2: to get into here. And then at the same time,
Speaker 2: there were plenty of other schemes to power a land
Speaker 2: vehicle with some sort of technology it steam or otherwise.
Speaker 2: So concepts and attempts at steam driven cars date back
Speaker 2: to the sixteen hundreds and French inventor Nicholas Joseph Kuno
Speaker 2: made the first steam powered vehicle in seventeen sixty nine.
Speaker 2: But then Richard Trevithek, one of the mines behind the
Speaker 2: Cornish engine, took it to the next level with a
Speaker 2: steam powered engine designed to take advantage of the pre
Speaker 2: existing iron enforced wooden rails called tramways that were already
Speaker 2: used in industrial parts of England, on which you had
Speaker 2: horses pulling carts full of sa coal. Two decades after this,
Speaker 2: British engineer George Stevenson advanced the concept and locomotion number
Speaker 2: one carried cargo and I believest six hundred passengers in
Speaker 2: a test run. And at this point there are various
Speaker 2: important figures in the UK, in the US and l
Speaker 2: elsewhere who end up pushing the technology and the industry
Speaker 2: of trains forward, because it's kind of like a push
Speaker 2: and pull there, like you need the technology, but you
Speaker 2: also need the industry, you need the business savvy, you
Speaker 2: need applications of the technology, and so it's a it's
Speaker 2: a fascinating but also kind of ever expanding history at
Speaker 2: this point. But the way this ends up affecting the
Speaker 2: world is of course, train tracks steadily began to stitch
Speaker 2: together major centers of population within a given country, within
Speaker 2: a given nation, but then also between cities and neighboring nations,
Speaker 2: and they eventually seem to be encircling the earth kind
Speaker 2: of like that iron spider that was referenced the Dickens quote.
Speaker 3: The great ground spiders that spun only iron.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and they're also burrowing underneath the earth.
Speaker 2: We have to remember that the London underground parts of it,
Speaker 2: at any rate, the earliest parts of it began opening
Speaker 2: in like eighteen sixty three, So base trained technology, you know,
Speaker 2: spinning off of these other technologies, it ends up changing
Speaker 2: the way humans and goods traverse the world, just changing
Speaker 2: so many things about the shape of human life.
Speaker 3: And I think you can argue having ripple effects out
Speaker 3: through culture that are much bigger than just making it
Speaker 3: faster to get stuff and people from one place to another.
Speaker 3: I mean, one example we've talked about on the show
Speaker 3: before is the way that train scheduled affected the cultural
Speaker 3: concept of time. Yes, like trains, it's very important that
Speaker 3: you are operating on schedule. There can be danger if there,
Speaker 3: you know, miscommunications of time even down to the to
Speaker 3: a matter of minutes. So like suddenly there is a
Speaker 3: necessity for exact measures of time that are you know,
Speaker 3: held throughout a place, and that sort of changes everything
Speaker 3: in a way. Lots of stuff follows downstream from that,
Speaker 3: and there are other things like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's almost like the continuity of the rail itself
Speaker 2: stretching from this big city to this small town, like
Speaker 2: they are one now in the is as far as
Speaker 2: time is concerned. I mean, it always was, but you
Speaker 2: can no longer have just sort of local time, like yeah,
Speaker 2: it's you know here, it's like three thirty five. Now,
Speaker 2: if you're saying it's three thirty five here, it has
Speaker 2: to be three thirty five back in the city. These
Speaker 2: times absolutely have to match.
Speaker 3: Okay. So we've talked about the use of trains as
Speaker 3: a setting or plot device in weird fiction. We've talked
Speaker 3: about common themes attaching to locomotive horror themes like fate
Speaker 3: and helplessness, isolation and alienation. We talked a bit about
Speaker 3: the early steam locomotive models like George and Robert Stevenson's
Speaker 3: Locomotion Number one in the eighteen twenties, and then the
Speaker 3: emerging cultural impact of steam powered trains in the mid
Speaker 3: nineteenth century as they became more or incorporated into everyday
Speaker 3: life within industrial societies. But with technological and cultural changes
Speaker 3: we know there often come anxieties. New technologies have not
Speaker 3: only a way of creating new fears and stresses, but
Speaker 3: also of exposing and tenderizing anxieties that existed before. So
Speaker 3: I wanted to talk briefly about what I think is
Speaker 3: a really interesting phenomenon which we could call the Victorian
Speaker 3: railway madness panic. This was a particular journalistic and cultural
Speaker 3: obsession in Great Britain lasting between roughly eighteen sixty and
Speaker 3: eighteen eighty, in which it seems people were both fascinated
Speaker 3: with and horrified by the idea of being confined with violent,
Speaker 3: raving madmen on moving trains. So my main source on
Speaker 3: this subject is a historical article published in the Journal
Speaker 3: of Victorian Culture in twenty sixteen called Shattered Minds mad
Speaker 3: Men on the Railways eighteen sixty to eighteen eighty. And
Speaker 3: this article is by a scholar named Amy Milne Smith,
Speaker 3: who is a professor of history at Wilfrid Laurier University. Overall,
Speaker 3: it's a fascinating read, and I regret that we don't
Speaker 3: have time to get into all of the interesting details
Speaker 3: and arguments that the author brings up here. I'm going
Speaker 3: to mention some of the major points that stood out
Speaker 3: to me as relevant for our discussion today, but it's
Speaker 3: possible we'll come back to this paper a bit more
Speaker 3: in the next episode as well. So this article begins
Speaker 3: by highlighting another article, an article from eighteen sixty three,
Speaker 3: which is great because it's one of those social trend
Speaker 3: articles that we still get today. Like you know, five
Speaker 3: or ten years ago, it was like all the teens
Speaker 3: are reading tide pods. But this one is from eighteen
Speaker 3: sixty three and it's called A Madman on the Rail,
Speaker 3: published in the London Review. And so I looked this
Speaker 3: article up in full, actually, so I could see everything
Speaker 3: it says. I found a full scan of it on
Speaker 3: archive dot org and it is packed with interesting claims.
Speaker 3: But I have to mention the opening lines because the
Speaker 3: editors of the London Review really know how to grab you.
Speaker 3: They say, we demand that a bishop or privy counselor
Speaker 3: be slaughtered in a railway carriage for the benefit of
Speaker 3: his country. Sidney Smith long ago made a similar demand
Speaker 3: that a dignitary of the church be burnt alive in
Speaker 3: a railway carriage which had spontaneously caught fire, for this
Speaker 3: is the only means of impressing railway directors with the
Speaker 3: propriety of affording travelers some means of communicating with the guard. Okay,
Speaker 3: So if I'm grading this as a first year persuasive essay,
Speaker 3: that might be coming on a little strong, but not
Speaker 3: bad to begin by making it clear how serious you
Speaker 3: think an issue is that? What's the problem that they
Speaker 3: say can only be solved by human sacrifice?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, threatening the clergy with ritual death seems a
Speaker 2: little Styes.
Speaker 3: So here's the problem quote. Traveling express with madmen is
Speaker 3: unfortunately not an improbable circumstance of real life. And if
Speaker 3: there be any tendency to mania, the excitement of rapid
Speaker 3: transit through the air is the very thing to bring
Speaker 3: it on. So this article is not isolated. I think
Speaker 3: we could characterize this as part of a journalistic phenomenon
Speaker 3: of the eighteen sixties of newspaper and magazine articles really
Speaker 3: focusing on and highlighting the dangers of madmen on trains,
Speaker 3: and so this article by Amy Miln Smith explores a
Speaker 3: lot of that cultural obsession, and it concerns two different
Speaker 3: nightmare train ride scenarios that sort of gripped the minds
Speaker 3: of the British public in these decades. So the first
Speaker 3: scenario is I think more plausible from our perspective today,
Speaker 3: and that scenario is violent madmen are getting on board
Speaker 3: trains and other passengers are trapped in the cars with them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because this is an idea that has never completely
Speaker 2: gone away and still makes the headlines, whether you're talking
Speaker 2: about the trains, particularly say New York subway. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's become it's a trope. It's a joke about the
Speaker 2: individual's misbehaving or posing a danger on an un given
Speaker 2: train car. And then likewise we see echoes of this
Speaker 2: with in aviation as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's you know, to a certain extent or reality,
Speaker 2: but also something that is easily easily built up in
Speaker 2: the imagination as well.
Speaker 3: Well. Yeah, exactly. So there is no doubt there were
Speaker 3: cases in this time period where people were violently attacked
Speaker 3: by a stranger on a train. Of course, this can
Speaker 3: happen in pretty much any public place, and that the
Speaker 3: train is one place it does happen. And while I
Speaker 3: think a kind of vividness bias probably made this scenario
Speaker 3: seem more calm than it actually was, you can't blame
Speaker 3: people for being alarmed. I mean, nobody would want to
Speaker 3: be trapped in a confined space with a person who's
Speaker 3: acting erratically and then becomes violent. That's a bad situation
Speaker 3: to be in. So you can't blame people for seeing
Speaker 3: that as a problem. But the issue seems to be
Speaker 3: that people came to believe, because of the reporting environment,
Speaker 3: that this was an extremely common problem, when in fact
Speaker 3: it probably was not. The second scenario described in this article, however,
Speaker 3: is more strange and intriguing, certainly from our modern medical
Speaker 3: point of view, and that idea is that the act
Speaker 3: of riding on board a steam train could itself drive
Speaker 3: someone mad and send them shrieking and slashing at their
Speaker 3: fellow passengers. The author writes about this as a common
Speaker 3: medical expert sentiment of the eighteen sixties, saying quote, doctors
Speaker 3: warned that intense vibrations of the railway carriage, the speed
Speaker 3: of travel, and the danger of traumatic accidents could unsettle
Speaker 3: both people's physical and mental health. So this led to
Speaker 3: not only the fear that you might be the victim
Speaker 3: of a railway madman, but that without any prior warning,
Speaker 3: you might become one yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah again, getting decided there's something about train travel that
Speaker 2: is inherently abnormal, and it can make you abnormal as
Speaker 2: well or enhance abnormal tendencies.
Speaker 3: Now, Milne Smith sort of charts the historical arc of
Speaker 3: this panic about railway mad men, saying that it sort
Speaker 3: of begins as a topic in the eighteen sixties, peaks
Speaker 3: in the eighteen seventies, and then pretty much completely disappears
Speaker 3: by later in the nineteenth century. It's sort of gone
Speaker 3: by the eighteen eighties, or the same kind of phenomenon
Speaker 3: when reported on in the later decades of the nineteenth
Speaker 3: century for some reason, or treated as kind of quaint
Speaker 3: instead of as terrifying. She also says that railway madness
Speaker 3: in this cultural context really meets all of the key
Speaker 3: criteria to find to be defined as a moral panic
Speaker 3: in the way academics would normally understand the term. So
Speaker 3: there's sort of a topical consensus of fear and apprehension
Speaker 3: about some apparent or alleged trend in society. Quote, drawing
Speaker 3: on latent fears and triggered by sensational events, and so
Speaker 3: she says that while the normal moral panic lasts maybe
Speaker 3: several months for a number of reasons, the railway madness
Speaker 3: panic lasted roughly two decades, again, from about eighteen sixty
Speaker 3: to about eighteen eighty. And what made this especially potent
Speaker 3: was that it triggered at the same time anxieties about
Speaker 3: technological change, but also apparently some kind of gendered anxieties
Speaker 3: about failed masculinity, because she says in the eighteen sixties
Speaker 3: in Britain there was generally increasing public consciousness of mental illness.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of talk in the press about
Speaker 3: what was at the time often referred to as lunacy
Speaker 3: and lunatics, and about perceived failures of the asylum system.
Speaker 3: And while this consciousness of mental illness, the author contends,
Speaker 3: was in general observed in both men and women with
Speaker 3: rough parody, for some reason, the railway travel induced madness
Speaker 3: was believed to be a distinctly male phenomenon. The railway
Speaker 3: mad men were, for some reason, specifically mad men. She
Speaker 3: also gets into some interesting things about the sensationalism demands
Speaker 3: of the press at the time. In the eighteen sixties,
Speaker 3: there were a lot of newspapers that were at the
Speaker 3: same time that they might look down on and have
Speaker 3: scathing editorials about the idea of the so called sensation novels.
Speaker 3: In fiction, they were very happy to really ramp up
Speaker 3: the gory details and exaggerate anything about violent crime or
Speaker 3: mad men in the papers, and so there was there
Speaker 3: was a hunger in the British press in the eighteen
Speaker 3: sixties for stories about violent mad men, and especially if
Speaker 3: the circumstances of the story were strange, and apparently for
Speaker 3: some reason people just really latched onto the setting of
Speaker 3: the railway train for this kind of story. So it
Speaker 3: was like, this is what the eighteen sixty equivalent of,
Speaker 3: This is what people are clicking on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And you could basically take anything and spin
Speaker 2: it out, right, because even if you a week goes
Speaker 2: by you don't have an actual madman attack on a train,
Speaker 2: perhaps you have something that could be played up as
Speaker 2: they brush with a train madman, you know, like some
Speaker 2: are amount of erratic behavior or reported erratic behavior or
Speaker 2: reported shiftiness that can then be blown up into a story.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's exactly right, very perceptive roll because she does
Speaker 3: get into exactly that that dynamic. I mean we're still
Speaker 3: doing it today, yes, yeah. And so like the way
Speaker 3: it is is there are some initially very terrible events,
Speaker 3: Like there was one very famous case of an actual
Speaker 3: murder on a train in Great Britain. It was in
Speaker 3: July eighteen sixty four. A London banker named Thomas Briggs
Speaker 3: was beaten and murdered inside of a locked train compartment. Eventually,
Speaker 3: a German tailor named Franz Mueller was convicted of the murder.
Speaker 3: I think it involved like a transatlantic pursuit of the suspect,
Speaker 3: but what he was eventually convicted. So that was an actual,
Speaker 3: like terrifying violent crime on a train. But then you
Speaker 3: could spin that out into a lot of other scenarios
Speaker 3: where in many cases like nobody was actually even hurt,
Speaker 3: but they would just the press would put a lot
Speaker 3: of emphasis on something kind of weird and disturbing happened
Speaker 3: on a train and think of the danger that could
Speaker 3: have unfolded. So there's one example that the author cites
Speaker 3: in this paper of a story where there's an express
Speaker 3: train from King's Cross to Peterborough and a large sailor
Speaker 3: gets on board. The journey begins, and then the sailor
Speaker 3: begins behaving erradically, accusing his fellow passengers of stealing from him,
Speaker 3: and then at one point he tries to leap out
Speaker 3: of one of the windows of the moving train. Several
Speaker 3: other passengers prevent him from getting out of the window.
Speaker 3: They're able to restrain him until the train comes to
Speaker 3: a stop, and then authorities take over. And note how
Speaker 3: in the story there's no indication that anyone was actually
Speaker 3: badly hurt, but the press reporting just really emphasized the
Speaker 3: theme of madness and the threat that the sailor could
Speaker 3: have posed to the other passengers. There's another report she
Speaker 3: mentions that's in the Wrexham Advertiser in eighteen sixty nine.
Speaker 3: It's the story of an aristocratic man from Falkirk who
Speaker 3: got onto a train and then took off all his clothes,
Speaker 3: leaned out the window and started talking nonsense. After the
Speaker 3: station master was alerted, they got him off the train,
Speaker 3: and then, strangely, after they got him off the train,
Speaker 3: it reports that he seemed to come back to his senses,
Speaker 3: and this ties into the idea I mentioned a minute ago.
Speaker 3: The strange belief at the time that there was such
Speaker 3: a thing as sudden railway madness, so that essentially a
Speaker 3: man who was, by all outward indications previously healthy, could,
Speaker 3: by some mechanism of the movements and environment of the train,
Speaker 3: be rendered instantly violently insane. And this was not considered
Speaker 3: a fringe or quack theory at the time. From what
Speaker 3: I can tell, like, the idea was advanced by many
Speaker 3: physicians and in articles in some of the leading medical
Speaker 3: journals of the eighteen sixties. One example that Miln Smith
Speaker 3: sites is in eighteen sixty two, the medical journal The
Speaker 3: Lancet published a series of articles about the threats to
Speaker 3: public health posed by railway travel. Uh and, as she
Speaker 3: summarizes as follows quote, the articles listed a number of
Speaker 3: potentially dangerous effects of railway travel on the unsuspecting passenger,
Speaker 3: ranging from fatigue to hemorrhoids to paralysis. A man suffering
Speaker 3: hemorrhoids Okay, maybe I don't know, but it goes on,
Speaker 3: A man suffering from underlying mental anxieties or born with
Speaker 3: a predisposition to insanity could have his illness triggered by
Speaker 3: the railway trip itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean this is one of those things
Speaker 2: where on one hand, it seems outrageous. But then also,
Speaker 2: I mean, there is some nugget of truth to the
Speaker 2: fact that travel can be stressful, sure, and can aggravate
Speaker 2: other you know, things going on in your your mental
Speaker 2: life or you know, your mental health. So yeah, there's
Speaker 2: there's a line though, between you know, actual concern and
Speaker 2: something that just becomes a panic.
Speaker 3: That's right. And then once again, as we said earlier,
Speaker 3: like in the cases where somebody is actually acting violently
Speaker 3: on a train, that's obviously a huge problem, but the
Speaker 3: social panic around this seemed to vastly exaggerate the prevalence
Speaker 3: of the problem. There was this perception that it's happening
Speaker 3: all the time and it's just a persistent danger of
Speaker 3: riding the trains and something must be done about it.
Speaker 3: And yet another interesting thing Melan Smith gets into is
Speaker 3: the kind of difficulty in enacting any of the proposed
Speaker 3: solutions to this alleged problem. So the solutions included things
Speaker 3: like changes in the design of rail cars, because some
Speaker 3: passenger cars at the time would have a situation where
Speaker 3: like you'd be in a compartment or a carriage and
Speaker 3: you'd be essentially locked in from the outside with no
Speaker 3: way of traveling to like other parts of the train.
Speaker 3: If something bad was happening in your compartment or carriage
Speaker 3: and you wanted to go some where else, you couldn't
Speaker 3: really leave until the train came to a stop. So
Speaker 3: that's a possible solution. You could change the design of
Speaker 3: the train. You could add interior corridors and ways of
Speaker 3: getting back and forth. You could also add in ways
Speaker 3: to communicate with the train guard, so people in compartments
Speaker 3: could you know, could have like a like a cord
Speaker 3: or some kind of thing they could pull, or way
Speaker 3: of communicating with some kind of authority figure on the train.
Speaker 3: Or another idea that would come about a good deal
Speaker 3: later was you could get emergency brake cords. People talked
Speaker 3: about adding in windows, interior windows to the train compartments,
Speaker 3: so that you know, you could signal for help, you
Speaker 3: could look at somebody else. But apparently a lot of
Speaker 3: these solutions took a long time to implement because they
Speaker 3: faced opposition, often on the grounds that they were violations
Speaker 3: of the privacy of the individual carriage or compartment. But
Speaker 3: the author argues that the social panic about railway madness
Speaker 3: went on because, in her opinion, it wasn't actually about
Speaker 3: the true practical question of safety on a train car.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's an element, but that's not the main thing.
Speaker 3: It was a way of expressing deeper anxieties that could
Speaker 3: not be fixed by a rail guard or a breake cord.
Speaker 3: She writes, quote the railway was a symbol of civilization,
Speaker 3: and yet it demonstrated how quickly civilization could fall away
Speaker 3: from modern man. So the underlying anxiety has to do,
Speaker 3: in her opinion, with a perceived fragility of the body
Speaker 3: and the mind, a fear that was sort of in
Speaker 3: the air in Victorian culture in Great Britain in the
Speaker 3: eighteen sixties and seventies, related to consciousness of mental illness,
Speaker 3: but then also spurred on by these popular stories about madmen,
Speaker 3: and the fear was that someone could go mad at
Speaker 3: any moment, even by the jostling of a train car.
Speaker 3: And so this sort of symbol of changes in the
Speaker 3: society around them, the technological environment, and of things happening
Speaker 3: faster than you can understand, and the pace of modern
Speaker 3: life changing and all this like stuff coming on so fast,
Speaker 3: and that colliding with this idea of the fragility of
Speaker 3: our minds and bodies, and that leading to this fear
Speaker 3: that people could be changed in an instant. They're they're
Speaker 3: moving too fast through the air, the loud train car,
Speaker 3: the jostling back and forth of the train car, it
Speaker 3: sets them off. And now it could be someone in
Speaker 3: the train car with you, or it could be you yourself
Speaker 3: that now you are no longer in control.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And what you mentioned about this increasing awareness of
Speaker 2: or this view of one's mental state as being fragile.
Speaker 2: Do you see this reflected, you know, in the fiction
Speaker 2: of the time period as well. I can't help but
Speaker 2: think of at least of a couple a couple of
Speaker 2: cases in the cases of Sherlock Holmes, where we see
Speaker 2: madness play an important role, often affecting people of means,
Speaker 2: people of status. There's, of course, the case of the
Speaker 2: Creeping Man, and that one, of course involves some gorilla
Speaker 2: hijinks and is borderline science fiction. But then there's the
Speaker 2: and there's the excellent case of the Devil's Foot, which
Speaker 2: involves on the outset some sort of unknown occurrence or substance.
Speaker 2: It's unknown what actually happens that drives an entire room
Speaker 2: full of people either kills them dead or drives them insane,
Speaker 2: and at the beginning. It seems like it could even
Speaker 2: have a supernatural cause. We don't know, but you know
Speaker 2: both of these stories that there are stories that seemed
Speaker 2: to drive home this idea that was in the public
Speaker 2: consciousness that yeah, nobody is immune. Anybody can be affected
Speaker 2: by some sort of change in their mental state.
Speaker 3: Yes. And the prominence, the emerging prominence of railway travel
Speaker 3: in human life in the eighteen sixties. I mean again,
Speaker 3: remember how how quickly railways became central to industrial societies
Speaker 3: in the mid nineteenth century. There was just an explosion
Speaker 3: in the number of railway lines and the number of
Speaker 3: passengers from like eighteen fifty to eighteen sixty in Great Britain.
Speaker 3: That came on so quick. I think that change in
Speaker 3: the world around them and in travel and infrastructure in
Speaker 3: human life probably created this feeling that one could change
Speaker 3: internally very quickly as well. So, Rob, I think you
Speaker 3: said this earlier, but I think one could plausibly argue
Speaker 3: that there is a kind of Victorian era future shot
Speaker 3: going on, that all of this technological change coming on
Speaker 3: so fast and changing the character of human life so much,
Speaker 3: really does create in itself a kind of anxiety that
Speaker 3: people end up working out in these horror stories and
Speaker 3: in these sensational journalistic obsessions.
Speaker 2: Again, this is so fascinating, given how every day train
Speaker 2: travel really is and how at least from my vantage point,
Speaker 2: how pleasant it can be. Like even you know, I
Speaker 2: rode public transportation trains here in Atlanta for a long time,
Speaker 2: and you know, sometimes it's weird, sometimes it's startling, you know,
Speaker 2: but even in those cases, often found it kind of peaceful,
Speaker 2: you know, you used to. Nowadays, I guess you can
Speaker 2: probably get some sort of a wireless connection just about
Speaker 2: anywhere on most major train train rides. But there was
Speaker 2: a while where when you were underground on the train,
Speaker 2: you were, or at least I was completely cut off
Speaker 2: and there was nothing I could do on my phone.
Speaker 2: You know, I would just have to to read. I
Speaker 2: got to read, uh, you know, I got to be
Speaker 2: sort of cut off from everything in a good way.
Speaker 2: And in that could happen no matter what the other
Speaker 2: conditions were. If there was like somebody loud on the train,
Speaker 2: if the train was hot, if the train was maybe
Speaker 2: empty and spooky, you know, all that could could could
Speaker 2: play play into it. But it's it's fascinating to look
Speaker 2: back on this time period where again there is something
Speaker 2: there's maybe a little bit of Victorian future shot going on.
Speaker 2: There is also, undeniably so many other things coming into play.
Speaker 2: We discussed, you know, awareness of sort of a growing
Speaker 2: but unbalanced awareness of mental health. I can't help but
Speaker 2: think about how syphilis might have played into all this
Speaker 2: as well, you know, awareness of how that can affect
Speaker 2: one's mental state. Yeah, there is a fascinating topic, and
Speaker 2: then of course we see how it plays out, how
Speaker 2: it influences all of these various fictions and remains a
Speaker 2: part of say, railway fiction in general.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot more to talk about,
Speaker 3: and that's why we are not done with this topic.
Speaker 3: This was part one. We will be back with part
Speaker 3: two of our discussion of the locomotive Horror and Trains
Speaker 3: of Terror on Thursday of this week.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right, that's right. In the meantime, also recommend
Speaker 2: do yourself a favor. Do a Google image search for
Speaker 2: some punch cartoons and throw train in there. You'll see
Speaker 2: various examples of alleged Victorian train madness. I really wanted
Speaker 2: to see the one with the lady thinking she's looking
Speaker 2: at her own reflection but it's actually somebody's face. Oh,
Speaker 2: I couldn't find out.
Speaker 3: I think this was a cartoon actually arguing against one
Speaker 3: of the safety innovations that was proposed on trains. So
Speaker 3: the idea was that you would put these windows in
Speaker 3: the compartments so that it would be easier to communicate
Speaker 3: back and forth or see what's going on. But then
Speaker 3: the idea is, oh, a lady's like, you know, dressing
Speaker 3: in front of the mirror and on the other side
Speaker 3: there's some kind of creep looking at her.
Speaker 2: All right, well, we'll be back on Thursday. Then we'll
Speaker 2: get into ghost trains a bit in that one, and
Speaker 2: so it should be a good time. But in the
Speaker 2: meantime we'll remind you that's stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 2: It is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core
Speaker 2: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, where, of course very much
Speaker 2: in the Halloween spirit of things this month, so most
Speaker 2: of our topics are going to be a little bit
Speaker 2: creepy as intended, and then on Fridays we set aside
Speaker 2: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema, and this week it is going
Speaker 2: to be train oriented, so we're excited for the tie
Speaker 2: in here.
Speaker 3: We're gonna have trains. Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Telly Savalas
Speaker 3: ooh boy, it's going to be a good time.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
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: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
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