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