Speaker 1: Cool Zon Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
Speaker 2: the podcast. That's always Margaret reading fiction to Prop. That's
Speaker 2: been the setup of the show the entire time, as
Speaker 2: well gaslight you and believing in it.
Speaker 3: I don't know why I keep saying cool people and
Speaker 3: is not just cool person?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it was because you too. It's all three
Speaker 2: of us. We're all cool people.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we're cool, says Margaret.
Speaker 3: We are us.
Speaker 2: The voices you're hearing in case you didn't listen to
Speaker 2: part one is Prop and Sophie. Hi, how are you
Speaker 2: all doing?
Speaker 4: Hi?
Speaker 3: We are us. You know what I'm saying. Dodgers are
Speaker 3: in the World Series. Yeah, Lakers have won a game
Speaker 3: a game. Yes, it's great being from Los Angeles for
Speaker 3: the next two days.
Speaker 2: I can bring myself to care about basketball so much
Speaker 2: more than I can bring myself to care about baseball.
Speaker 3: Yes see, here's the trick. No, I'm vibe with that.
Speaker 3: The trick is caring about Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Okay, huh, it's not that care about baseball. But like
Speaker 2: the Dodgers, that's culture.
Speaker 3: That's culture exactly. The Dodgers are culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know that makes sense.
Speaker 3: I don't watch Baseball till the playoffs, and only if
Speaker 3: the Dodgers are playing correct, you know, So like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's culture.
Speaker 2: It's literally culture, So.
Speaker 3: That's what you care about.
Speaker 2: I mean, I grew up watching the team that shall
Speaker 2: not be named because I grew up outside d c M.
Speaker 2: And so that was the that was the culture of
Speaker 2: watching the Yeah, watching the did they they only changed
Speaker 2: their name to like the Washington Sports team or something?
Speaker 2: What did they change their name?
Speaker 3: Commander It's Commanders now, oh okay, yeah, yeah, but yeah
Speaker 3: it at first it was the Washington Football.
Speaker 2: Club, yeah, which I thought was hilarious.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's Commanders now. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But then everyone who like was into the culture of
Speaker 2: that got really annoying during all of that, and so
Speaker 2: then I stop paying any attention to it. I know,
Speaker 2: everyone tunes in to hear my opinion.
Speaker 3: About all our all our opinion on sports.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you all actually have opinions about sports, so
Speaker 2: they're actually interesting.
Speaker 3: I have a good balance within like our group of
Speaker 3: friends of like us who like really like sports, but
Speaker 3: we are self aware enough to relegate that to its
Speaker 3: own group text, you know, and like it's fine, like
Speaker 3: we're not going to subject everybody else to our meme sharing.
Speaker 2: I spent so long hitch hiking, and the secret to
Speaker 2: hitchhiking is to just learn what the other person is
Speaker 2: interested in and then become interested in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Facts, so also the secret of dating.
Speaker 2: Yeah that makes sense.
Speaker 4: How many do you?
Speaker 1: Many friends of mine that like, do not watch a
Speaker 1: single minute of sports, but they come over and they
Speaker 1: watch me watch sports, or they like the other day,
Speaker 1: I have a friend and I won't I won't name it.
Speaker 1: My friend spit out a lebron fact like no other
Speaker 1: and I was like, chills, My soul is.
Speaker 4: Just kind of.
Speaker 1: And then she and then she knew who the enemy
Speaker 1: was too. She knew that's important. She's like, oh, was
Speaker 1: that the guy that got the game winner that made
Speaker 1: you so unhappy that one time? And I was like, yes,
Speaker 1: yes it was actually, yes.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes it was, yes it was Yeah.
Speaker 3: Beautiful.
Speaker 2: That is a good love language.
Speaker 3: It really is. You know, like, if you are listening
Speaker 3: and you're on the apps, we're giving you incredible game.
Speaker 3: Just just pay attention and be curious and let yourself
Speaker 3: be teachable and don't be weird. Maybe I'm talking to
Speaker 3: the to the cis hep fellas. You know what I'm saying, like,
Speaker 3: can't give nobody else because that's all I know, you know,
Speaker 3: So like I'm saying, as cis hep, like just just
Speaker 3: listen and be curious, ask questions and don't be weird.
Speaker 3: Just don't be weird.
Speaker 1: Don't be weird.
Speaker 3: Don't be weird. Do you see this person is into sports? Hey?
Speaker 3: Who's your team? Wow? That's dope. Do you go to
Speaker 3: bars to watch games? Oh? Cool? I found a bar
Speaker 3: that's down the street. Maybe we could go watch it there,
Speaker 3: like you see all that's just like, yeah, let's go
Speaker 3: watch the game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll see. That's another one. Probably so mad right now.
Speaker 3: I'm so frustrated because it's just like this is nothing,
Speaker 3: like this is our scooky season stuff because I just.
Speaker 1: Be like, in a way, is there anything scarier?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Trying to dating a man, trying to date straight man?
Speaker 3: Yeah, like why y'all so weird? Like I just I
Speaker 3: get so frustrated because of you know, just like the
Speaker 3: mannosphere stuff where I'd be like, fellas, like boys, where
Speaker 3: are your antennas? Like you know this man talking about
Speaker 3: he got seventeen bitches a day? Okay, words, So a
Speaker 3: man with seventeen bitches, right, who make one hundred thousand
Speaker 3: dollars a day on their online store? Why they's selling
Speaker 3: you classes? Don't you think if you had seventeen bitches
Speaker 3: and one hundred thousand dollars a day, you would have
Speaker 3: time to be online on TikTok selling people where is
Speaker 3: your Antenna's? Fellas like, I'm sorry, no.
Speaker 2: But see this is actually frustrated me about other things too, Right,
Speaker 2: where I like, whenever I want to go, like I
Speaker 2: watch music production videos, right, I'll go on YouTube and
Speaker 2: I'll be like, I want to learn how the following
Speaker 2: style is produced. But everyone's just trying to sell you
Speaker 2: the service of like of the classes. And I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't want. I want someone who makes music for
Speaker 2: a living, not someone who sells online classes for a living.
Speaker 2: I mean, real teachers are real teachers. But it gets
Speaker 2: so scammy so quick, and I'm like, it's so annoying
Speaker 2: to sort through. Who's actually so annoying?
Speaker 3: Man? And just like yeah, I just I'm like, Fellas,
Speaker 3: it's like it's really it's really not that serious. Player,
Speaker 3: like just it's not that serious. Just it's what do
Speaker 3: you like if you're into something. Would you like people
Speaker 3: to ask you questions about the stuff you into? Do
Speaker 3: you like sharing the things that bring you joy? Okay,
Speaker 3: so do other humans? Uh? Read the story? Read the story,
Speaker 3: mad guy.
Speaker 2: We're going to read stories. That's why we're here for
Speaker 2: Spooky Week. As Sovieks correctly pointed out, the scariest thing
Speaker 2: is dating men.
Speaker 3: But apologize. I apologize. No, No, I mean you know,
Speaker 3: I gotta own it. No, listen, you listen. I had
Speaker 3: to tell me that, Like, listen, if you're in the
Speaker 3: front of a line, that is your line, you are
Speaker 3: responsible for the dudes in the back of the line.
Speaker 3: They still that's still your line, you know. So I'm like,
Speaker 3: you're right, that's still my line.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Anyway, well it's okay because I don't have any
Speaker 2: I'm not in the white line, so it's wait no,
Speaker 2: yeah I am.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good for you. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to read you a story speaking of racists.
Speaker 2: Uh have you ever read Lovecraft?
Speaker 3: Because of exactly what you're talking about, Like, I do
Speaker 3: not need I do not need this for for fun. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So what I'm going to read you is a story
Speaker 2: that was for a an anthology of people reacting to Lovecraft. Okay,
Speaker 2: and so because I grew up reading some Lovecraft, but
Speaker 2: I kind of pretty quickly learned that he was this
Speaker 2: horrible racist, where like, literally I can't say the name
Speaker 2: of his cat, you know, that's how racist he is.
Speaker 2: Like that, But I thought it would be fun to
Speaker 2: write a story in which I claim that Lovecraft stole
Speaker 2: all of his ideas from a black man. Oh so, okay,
Speaker 2: that's the story I'm going to read for you.
Speaker 3: What is happening? All right?
Speaker 2: And I don't think you know, it's going to talk
Speaker 2: about Lovecraft. This story is going to talk about Lovecraft.
Speaker 2: But I think it should work. You know, I haven't
Speaker 2: read everything Lovecraft's written, and you know, for the aforementioned reasons.
Speaker 3: I'm here for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this story is called The Bones of Children to
Speaker 2: most of society. I am a monster. I don't have
Speaker 2: tentacles or horns or goat's feet or anything of the sort. Nevertheless,
Speaker 2: the first entry of Lieber Monsterum, the oldest known Western
Speaker 2: book of monsters, is a man who dresses as a woman.
Speaker 2: That part's true, by the way, actually, uh oh, and
Speaker 2: then yeah, the first I'm no longer reading the story.
Speaker 2: I'm just telling you a thinking yeah, I figured the
Speaker 2: first book of Monsters is just fucking the first page
Speaker 2: as a trans woman, and then like page three as
Speaker 2: a black man, you know, like it's.
Speaker 3: Like, you know, what's scary?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, and then it's like a chimera after
Speaker 2: timura whatever, like a fucking you know, like centaurs and shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, sure, I'm a woman who dresses like a woman,
Speaker 2: but most of society doesn't believe me about that, because
Speaker 2: trans women are still seen as deceivers. That book was
Speaker 2: written sometime in the seventh or eighth century, and I'm
Speaker 2: not entirely certain I can say that much has changed.
Speaker 2: It's strange, then, that I should wind up hunting after monsters.
Speaker 2: It's strange that I should be referring to ancient tomes,
Speaker 2: both real and fictional, as potential sources of truth. It's
Speaker 2: strange that I should come to take loved crafts works
Speaker 2: far too seriously, especially considering what I assume he would
Speaker 2: make of me. It's strange that I should be searching
Speaker 2: in atticts for portals into unknown and unknowable dimensions. Okay,
Speaker 2: that last bit would be strange for anybody. I mean
Speaker 2: to say, only that I was a reluctant scholar of
Speaker 2: the occult, as though any claims I might make of
Speaker 2: my inherent skepticism will make what I have to relate
Speaker 2: any more believable. I want to be clear that I
Speaker 2: understand HP Lovecraft to be a writer of fiction. I
Speaker 2: don't think he believed any of what he wrote to
Speaker 2: be true. His work is fanciful, and while his prose
Speaker 2: was outdated even for the time, I enjoy his ability
Speaker 2: to weave stories and touch at the horror hidden inside
Speaker 2: the human mind.
Speaker 1: Took all of me not to interrupt you and go,
Speaker 1: let's be clear immediately.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hey, let's be clear.
Speaker 1: It's just embedded in my brain.
Speaker 2: Wrot is fucking Lovecraft stuff.
Speaker 3: No, oh, Barack Obama, Barack Obama.
Speaker 2: Let's oh shit. Oh okay yeah yeah, second.
Speaker 1: Said, I was like, oh, it's like, my brain is rot.
Speaker 3: It's mush.
Speaker 2: What I've come to believe, however, and what I expect
Speaker 2: to fail to convince you of, is that HP Lovecraft
Speaker 2: worked from sources, sometimes near to plagiaristically, that were not
Speaker 2: nearly so fictional. It started with my dreams. I've always
Speaker 2: been a deep sleeper, never bothered much by dreams. No
Speaker 2: dreams so beautiful that waking life cannot compare. No dreams
Speaker 2: so horrid that I wake up screaming. I've always had mundane,
Speaker 2: forgettable dreams until two years ago, in my fifth decade
Speaker 2: of life, I moved in with a partner, a woman
Speaker 2: named E. Two years ago, along with a small group
Speaker 2: of miscreants and queers, we'd bought a derelict farm in
Speaker 2: western Massachusetts. Everyone else wanted to build their own houses
Speaker 2: on the property, so E and I moved into the
Speaker 2: old farmhouse. Things were fine for the first six months
Speaker 2: when we lived in the library on the ground floor,
Speaker 2: but as soon as we finish renovations on the master
Speaker 2: bedroom and moved upstairs, the dreams started. Most of the dreams,
Speaker 2: though bizarre, were non egregious. I had dreams about washing
Speaker 2: blades and washing bones in a skyscraper overlooking a dead city.
Speaker 2: The city was always the same, full of brutalist structures,
Speaker 2: shorter than the tower. The tasks I was engaged and
Speaker 2: changed from dream to dream, but they were always mundane
Speaker 2: and generally contained enough traces of what I'd done that
Speaker 2: day to convince me that nothing untoward was happening to
Speaker 2: my mind as I slept at midwinter, I dreamt of
Speaker 2: carving a living child into quarters. As I dreamt of
Speaker 2: piercing his skin, my hands shook. The visceral feel of
Speaker 2: it made me want to wretch or cry or stop,
Speaker 2: but I did none of those things. As I pulled
Speaker 2: bones from sockets, my whole body shook so hard that
Speaker 2: I woke. I wanted E to hold me, but she
Speaker 2: slept every night with the help of pills, haunted by
Speaker 2: her own nightmares, as she had had been since her youth.
Speaker 2: So I held her instead and cried into her hair.
Speaker 2: Only in the morning did I notice the dried blood
Speaker 2: beneath my fingernails. It was E who told me that
Speaker 2: my dream reminded her of a Lovecraft story, The Dreams
Speaker 2: of the Witch House, and set me on the terrible
Speaker 2: path I walked today. I listened to an audio production
Speaker 2: of the story the next day while I worked in
Speaker 2: the garden. Then I devoured book after book, after story
Speaker 2: after poem by H. P. Lovecraft. Every word he'd put
Speaker 2: to paper felt like it hit some discordant note in
Speaker 2: my soul. Okay, I don't believe in soul, so let's
Speaker 2: say brain. Everything he'd written was so close to yet
Speaker 2: so far from some truth. I knew it in my
Speaker 2: heart and by heart again, I mean brain. In the
Speaker 2: story the City of the Elder Things is lit by
Speaker 2: three stars, one red, one yellow, one blue. In my dreams,
Speaker 2: that dead Brutalis city had three yellow sons, and it
Speaker 2: had buildings suited for people, not winged demon barrels. So close,
Speaker 2: get so far away. A few weeks later, I had
Speaker 2: another dream about another human sacrifice. I still didn't believe
Speaker 2: the dreams, but I assure you I went over every
Speaker 2: inch of that bedroom with tape measure to prove the
Speaker 2: euclidian nature of its geometry. In the end, I started
Speaker 2: sharing ease medication, and the dream subsided. Thank the Lord,
Speaker 2: and by the Lord, I mean pharmacology and the sponsors
Speaker 2: of this show, which probably include sleep aids. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Try keep getting me. I started doing this like a
Speaker 2: very long time ago. I would read my partner stories
Speaker 2: and then I would just change them as I was
Speaker 2: reading them, like not stories i'd written. I'd be reading
Speaker 2: her some book and I'd be like, and then, yeah,
Speaker 2: I've learned I should probably just write instead.
Speaker 3: Was it like waiting for her to catch on?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think so. It's also a good way to
Speaker 2: test if like someone's falling asleep when you read to
Speaker 2: them totally is he then like you then like say
Speaker 2: their name and just like work in the story and they're.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, uh huh yeah yeah. Oh, I as the
Speaker 3: parent of a nine year old who we just now
Speaker 3: stopped reading our stories at night. Yeah, and like barely,
Speaker 3: like it'll rather than every night now it's like down
Speaker 3: to four to five nights.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: We all fall asleep before she does, like as me reading,
Speaker 3: or if I'm in the room while Alma's reading, I'm
Speaker 3: dozing off, like she's putting me to sleep. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: just it's great.
Speaker 2: One of my one of my best friends, listens to
Speaker 2: my podcast to go to sleep. So now when I
Speaker 2: when I hang out with him, he's like, oh, I'm
Speaker 2: getting kind of tired whenever he talked to him.
Speaker 3: Man, yeah, stop talking.
Speaker 2: It's so funny.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, what puts me to sleep are the ads? Here
Speaker 2: they are and we're back. None of my landmates, least
Speaker 2: of all, my partner wanted to discuss the matter with me.
Speaker 2: He herself had lost a child to sit and I
Speaker 2: knew better than to push the issue of dead children.
Speaker 2: I did what any girl would do in the same situation.
Speaker 2: I joined a support group for the Lovecraft obsessed. A
Speaker 2: few friends from Boston had been into all this occult shit,
Speaker 2: so I hit them up and started going to meetings,
Speaker 2: driving the couple hours every week. They didn't call them
Speaker 2: support group meetings. And if there had been twelve steps,
Speaker 2: they would have been the twelve steps for summoning Yog's
Speaker 2: a thoth or something, not the steps for ridding oneself
Speaker 2: of eldritch nightmares. Yeah no, Lovecraft had terrible names for everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: I still used it as a support group. Everyone had
Speaker 2: stories about occurrences and observations of the uncanny and arcane.
Speaker 2: I didn't believe any of them, and I eventually realized
Speaker 2: I thought they were idiots for believing me. Still attending
Speaker 2: seemed to quiet the growing nagging sensation in the back
Speaker 2: of my throat, in the back of my mind. It
Speaker 2: stopped for a few blissful hours, the ever present sensation
Speaker 2: I had under my fingernails of rending and tearing. It
Speaker 2: stopped the chanting the demonic mantras that broke into my
Speaker 2: consciousness as intrusive thoughts. A man named Why was at
Speaker 2: almost every meeting. He was a young, attractive, light skinned
Speaker 2: black man with old fashioned spectacles perched perilously on the
Speaker 2: edge of his nose. He always had a different book
Speaker 2: sticking out of his coat pocket, and he always kept
Speaker 2: his eye on the door of wherever we met, often
Speaker 2: a bookstore's basement or some diy show space that would
Speaker 2: never pass fire code. For months, he never said a word.
Speaker 2: Along with the other women and people of color who came,
Speaker 2: we shared a sort of illicit bond. We were the
Speaker 2: sorts that Lovecraft reviled, and that brought us together. At
Speaker 2: least I assumed it did. Maybe that was just me
Speaker 2: as a white girl projecting. One night in early May,
Speaker 2: at least fifteen of us crowded into the back room
Speaker 2: of a punk owned pizza joint after clothes. We just
Speaker 2: heard from another woman with dreams of child sacrifice frighteningly
Speaker 2: similar to my own, though hers took place in a
Speaker 2: birch forest. When Why walked to the center of the
Speaker 2: room to speak, I'm going to find the witch house,
Speaker 2: he said. That's what Lovecraft called it, right, the witch house,
Speaker 2: a boarding house with the bones of children in the walls,
Speaker 2: with a person faced rat in a timeless witch, a
Speaker 2: house with an attic room. You can't measure right, it's real.
Speaker 2: I'm going to find it. The room got so quiet
Speaker 2: we heard a bicycle pass on the street. Most of
Speaker 2: you don't know me well enough to know I'm a
Speaker 2: cat burglar by trade, but I am. It pays me
Speaker 2: well enough. I don't have to work more than once
Speaker 2: or twice a year, and I'm good enough at my
Speaker 2: job that even if you ratted me out to the cops,
Speaker 2: they wouldn't be able to pin anything on me. I
Speaker 2: don't think. He looked around the room as he talked.
Speaker 2: Gone was the quiet, shy man i'd seen for months.
Speaker 2: In his place was a man who was charismatic, outgoing,
Speaker 2: with a sort of infectious enthusiasm. I started coming here
Speaker 2: to this group because of a book I found robbing
Speaker 2: a place last year in let's just say, a different city,
Speaker 2: a real far north city. I got a tip about
Speaker 2: a rare book collector who didn't treat people very well.
Speaker 2: And I like sleeping at night, so I like robbing
Speaker 2: people like that. I got in the front door because
Speaker 2: people think having their locks and alarms and cameras wired
Speaker 2: into the internet is a good idea, made my way
Speaker 2: to the library and took my fill.
Speaker 3: Such a good line, thanks, and think plugging their locks
Speaker 3: to the internet. It's a good idea, like yeah, maybe
Speaker 3: that's yeah, anyway going.
Speaker 2: I sold off the esoteric pornography in the overpriced occultist
Speaker 2: groups easily enough, but some of what looked interesting to
Speaker 2: me was much harder to find buyers. For a few
Speaker 2: things were so rare I couldn't safely move them without
Speaker 2: going through so many middlemen that I wouldn't make shit.
Speaker 2: And a few were just so weird that I couldn't
Speaker 2: figure out how and where to list them, let alone
Speaker 2: figure out how to advertise them as worth anything. He
Speaker 2: walked back over to his chair, picked up his book bag,
Speaker 2: and pulled out a stack of pamphlets and plastic sleeves.
Speaker 2: He held up one, yellow aged its tattered cover, but
Speaker 2: in black letter font I could see the title Ruminations
Speaker 2: on non Secular Matters. He held up another, The Church
Speaker 2: of Christ the Weeping Man, a third Underneath The Dreams
Speaker 2: of Men, a final inside the Stars of Gods. I
Speaker 2: looked around the room. All of us were almost hungry
Speaker 2: with desire for those books. Whatever they held, that was
Speaker 2: the sort of obsession. This group fostered that I was
Speaker 2: participating in. All of these works are anonymous, all of
Speaker 2: them can be dated to the turn of the twentieth century.
Speaker 2: None of them exists on the Internet, even as references
Speaker 2: or in library catalogs. They're written in fairly different styles.
Speaker 2: If I'd had to guess, I'd say Dreams of Men
Speaker 2: and Stars of God have one author, and the other
Speaker 2: two were written by two different people. And if I'll
Speaker 2: cut right to it, the thing is, I am convinced
Speaker 2: that Lovecraft read these and maybe others in this series.
Speaker 2: I am also convinced that these are works of journalism.
Speaker 2: I gasped. I was kind of embarrassed by the gesture
Speaker 2: and put my hand over my mouth. But there it was.
Speaker 2: Why didn't you say anything? One of the more cumbersome
Speaker 2: of our group asked, that was G. I think there
Speaker 2: were three types of people in attendance, the curious who
Speaker 2: came for entertainment, the cursed like myself, who came to
Speaker 2: find answers. Then there were the true believers, who just
Speaker 2: wanted something to be interesting in this world, and it
Speaker 2: attached themselves to Lovecraft. For whatever reason. G was a
Speaker 2: true believer. I should be kinder to the true believers,
Speaker 2: but they grated on me. G was the worst of them.
Speaker 2: Like Lovecraft, I assumed they were fiction, But after hearing
Speaker 2: everyone's stories during the past months, I found myself doubting
Speaker 2: one of these, in particular, with this he held up underneath.
Speaker 2: The Dreams of Men is so startlingly similar, not to
Speaker 2: Lovecraft's dreams in the Witch House, but to some of
Speaker 2: the stories I've heard you all tell. I got sort
Speaker 2: of obsessed. Everyone turned to look at me and the
Speaker 2: other woman with the sacrificial dreams. In the Dream of Men,
Speaker 2: our journalist author relates the story of an old man
Speaker 2: he meets known only as X. He's ebony black, and
Speaker 2: he describes himself as a free man, the son of
Speaker 2: a free woman, the daughter of a slave. When he
Speaker 2: was younger, before the war, X took up residence in
Speaker 2: a boarding house in upstate New York. He's subject to
Speaker 2: a fair amount of racial abuse at the hands of
Speaker 2: the matron of the house, some of the white guests,
Speaker 2: and even from another black guest with lighter skin. To
Speaker 2: get away from everyone, he ends up taking the worst room,
Speaker 2: the attic room. Things aren't right up there, and he
Speaker 2: hears things, he sees things, he can't make sense of it.
Speaker 2: He starts dreaming. In his dreams, he's sacrificing children in
Speaker 2: a strange city. He wakes up every morning with bones
Speaker 2: at the foot of his bed, and every morning he
Speaker 2: packs them into the walls and goes a little bit crazier.
Speaker 2: One day he wakes up with a statue about a
Speaker 2: foot high of a satyr or a devil, made out
Speaker 2: of some metal he can't figure out, with writing across
Speaker 2: the bottom in letters he doesn't recogniz eyes. Then what happens?
Speaker 2: I asked, I'd never woken up to bones, but it
Speaker 2: still felt like I was asking about my own future.
Speaker 2: That's about the sum of it, why, said X. Moves
Speaker 2: out after a year when he can't handle it anymore,
Speaker 2: and settles in Maine. Becomes a lobster fisherman because lobsters
Speaker 2: don't have bones and fishermen don't have to deal with
Speaker 2: people much. Throws the statue into the ocean. After a
Speaker 2: couple years of staring at it. The journalist relates his story,
Speaker 2: adds a couple notes about failing to find any of
Speaker 2: the people or places he's referenced, plus some nineteenth century
Speaker 2: theories about dreams and their meaning. And that's it. I've
Speaker 2: got a lot of free time, what with my generous
Speaker 2: work schedule. I never found out the author of the text,
Speaker 2: but I've been trying to track down the subject of
Speaker 2: this story. Two weeks ago I found him. He was
Speaker 2: real Xavier Day. Thank god his name started with an
Speaker 2: X or I probably never would have found him, but
Speaker 2: a black as night lobster fisherman was let's go with,
Speaker 2: something of a rarity in nineteenth century Maine, so that helped.
Speaker 2: He lived on a town near Lubeck. He's buried in
Speaker 2: an overgrown cemetery on private land. Near as I can tell,
Speaker 2: the town was too racist to bury him in the churchyard,
Speaker 2: or maybe they considered him a witch. Here's a photo
Speaker 2: of his stone. Why passed around his phone. The stone
Speaker 2: was hard to read and completely unadorned. This says he
Speaker 2: lived from eighteen twelve till nineteen twenty five. I said
Speaker 2: that can't be right. I looked into that. Why said,
Speaker 2: it's what he claimed, and no one had evidence otherwise.
Speaker 2: He told people he figured he was immortal. How'd he die?
Speaker 2: I asked, drowned? What's this In the lower left of
Speaker 2: the photo, I asked, There was a blur of something
Speaker 2: yellowish white, a pile of something on his grave. Go
Speaker 2: to the next photo, Why said it did? They were bones? Bones?
Speaker 2: Why said, the bones of children. For a long moment,
Speaker 2: no one said a word. I passed the phone on
Speaker 2: and everyone stared in disbelief. Then theatrically Why reached into
Speaker 2: his bag and pulled out a statuette and placed it
Speaker 2: on the table. I did some diving, Why said, and
Speaker 2: I found this. It was a devil in that Christian
Speaker 2: style of a man with Caucasian features and the legs
Speaker 2: of a goat. A band of Norse ruines encircled the base.
Speaker 2: What does that say? G asked Why, And I answered
Speaker 2: at the same time, Neil r Hotep. And this is
Speaker 2: now a new scene. That's the name of one of
Speaker 2: Lovecraft's million things with a million weird names.
Speaker 3: Oh tep Oo. Tep has a has a fun history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually need to do more research about how
Speaker 2: it relates to I don't know, do you know more
Speaker 2: about like the hotep thing that currently exists?
Speaker 3: Uh? Yes, I do.
Speaker 2: I assume Lovecraft basically just was like, what's a scary
Speaker 2: sounding word from a foreign culture?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what they're doing. Yeah yeah, but we we
Speaker 3: use that as a term for a black man that's
Speaker 3: like full misogyn noir, overwoke, like just just annoying, like
Speaker 3: just like Doctor Umar, which I think would be a
Speaker 3: great Uh well I don't think of bastards, but like
Speaker 3: it's just a great, Like he's not a bastard, it's
Speaker 3: but it's just like just just you do it too much,
Speaker 3: like you know, a strong black man and a strong
Speaker 3: black woman. No, you know, a strong black woman should
Speaker 3: support his black men.
Speaker 1: Sixteenth minute maybe sixteenth.
Speaker 3: Minute would be great about doctor Umar. Yeah uh yeah,
Speaker 3: but yeah, just a hotep like I don't play pool
Speaker 3: because the game ain't over to the white ball hits
Speaker 3: the black ball into the hole like all right, maam,
Speaker 3: all right man. Yeah, so it's just okay.
Speaker 2: It reminds me a little bit of Uh. There's this
Speaker 2: fucking piece of shit black metal Nazi guy named burzum
Speaker 2: and Uh and he like writes these long screens about
Speaker 2: how he stopped playing guitar in his metal band because
Speaker 2: it's a it's an N word instrument, what a banjo.
Speaker 3: It's from West Africa.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he only plays synthesizer. He's a fucking asshole.
Speaker 3: Ah, what a dork.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a standing offer to fight that man
Speaker 2: to the death.
Speaker 3: Anyway, the joy of a dude like that, just getting
Speaker 3: the dog shit beat out of him, Yeah, by a
Speaker 3: trans woman, Yeah, would just be the most glorious. Like,
Speaker 3: I mean this is tangential.
Speaker 5: But like, yeah, one of my friends showed me this
Speaker 5: tweet from his friend that was like, damn man, Like
Speaker 5: I got to fight with this gay dude and ended
Speaker 5: up jumping me.
Speaker 3: That beat the shit out of me. And he was
Speaker 3: like he was like, as I got my ass kicked
Speaker 3: by a gay man, he was like, well there's still men. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like I don't, like, what are you talking about, Like,
Speaker 3: he's still a man. Yeah, so yeah he beat your ass, like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he knows how to fight because he's a
Speaker 2: gay man dealing with the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, you know that a fight because he's a
Speaker 3: gay man.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I love that people think that like queer people
Speaker 2: are softer.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, like, what is you talking about, Like
Speaker 3: you know, like clearly you don't know any Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, so the story and I almost feel bad.
Speaker 2: I'm like, now I'm reading it aloud. This is a
Speaker 2: very like everything is about this like book that references
Speaker 2: this other book and shit. But I just like things
Speaker 2: that get all weird and esoteric.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, yeah, let's get let's get Russian doll.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do it. At our insistence, why read each
Speaker 2: of the four pamphlets to us. We stayed so late
Speaker 2: that night that we only left when an employee came
Speaker 2: to open the restaurant in the morning. For the curious,
Speaker 2: this was the best entertainment they'd had in ages. For
Speaker 2: the true believers, it was vindication For us cursed well,
Speaker 2: I didn't know what to believe or what to think.
Speaker 2: I still don't. Over the next week we tracked down
Speaker 2: that boarding house in New York. It's one of the
Speaker 2: only parts in this whole thing I can take any
Speaker 2: credit for. My family is from upstate, and one of
Speaker 2: my aunt's studies regional folklore and another studies regional history.
Speaker 2: There was a town where kids of the nineteenth century
Speaker 2: had died young and the old had seemed to live
Speaker 2: past one hundred. No one told ghost stories about the place.
Speaker 2: Every other town in New York has ghost stories about them,
Speaker 2: but this one it was so conspicuously unhaunted that it
Speaker 2: was clearly haunted. It wasn't a town anymore, but a
Speaker 2: few buildings remained, most of them on the state's historic registry.
Speaker 2: That's how I found myself in the company of a
Speaker 2: gentleman thief, as we scaled the outside wall of a
Speaker 2: witch house under the light of a full moon. Old
Speaker 2: fashioned security means old fashioned method of entry, Why told
Speaker 2: me as he opened the storm shutters of the attic
Speaker 2: window with a crowbar. I'd wanted to take a tour
Speaker 2: during the day and slip away from the guide, but
Speaker 2: Why had insisted what we needed to do required the
Speaker 2: dead of night. The attic room was wrong. That much
Speaker 2: was obvious. It was unnameably wrong, though almost indescribably so.
Speaker 2: Like that feeling when you're trying to put on fishnets
Speaker 2: and they're tangled in more than one direction at once,
Speaker 2: and you have to somehow unroll them in both directions
Speaker 2: at the same time. That's what it felt like looking
Speaker 2: at the room. There were four walls and a vaulted ceiling,
Speaker 2: but sometimes it felt like there were five walls. And
Speaker 2: when I stood, I got a trace of vertigo, like
Speaker 2: I was high in the air, like I was in
Speaker 2: that skyscraper looking out over that city, sharpening knives. I
Speaker 2: wanted to leave. We've got to pry open the walls carefully,
Speaker 2: Why said, let me try. He handed me the crowbar.
Speaker 2: I smashed it into the nearest wall, putting my hip
Speaker 2: into it like swinging a bat and little League again again.
Speaker 2: There was no carefully left in my body. I needed answers.
Speaker 2: Bones came pouring out as the wall fell down, the
Speaker 2: bones of children. And I don't have a way to
Speaker 2: go into ads from that, but I'm gonna here's ads.
Speaker 3: Sheesh, and we're back.
Speaker 2: After that night, I spent a month trying to convince
Speaker 2: E and the rest of my friends to sell the
Speaker 2: land and move somewhere else, anywhere else. It became clear, however,
Speaker 2: that she didn't believe me, and she wouldn't come with me,
Speaker 2: so I left her. The dreams haven't come back, not
Speaker 2: since I left that place. Instead, I dream of E
Speaker 2: and I miss her. I live with Why now and
Speaker 2: a few of the other cursed ones from the group.
Speaker 2: I think investigating this shit is driving me as crazy
Speaker 2: as the dreams had, but I don't know what else
Speaker 2: to do. I can't get it out of my brain.
Speaker 2: I can't forgive myself for the monster I was in
Speaker 2: my sleep and some alien city across the cosmos. I
Speaker 2: understand now that I was sacrificing real children to a
Speaker 2: devil I don't believe in now. Whenever I cut anything,
Speaker 2: even vegetables, I think about human flesh. Whenever I see
Speaker 2: the concrete of a city, I think about the three suns.
Speaker 2: Whenever I imagine the rest of death, I think about
Speaker 2: who or what will leave mementos of horror on my grave.
Speaker 2: Worst of all, when I see children, I think of
Speaker 2: their bones. Yep, that's that story. Wow.
Speaker 3: Oh word, okay yo. The chill that like shot down
Speaker 3: my back when he was like, I think it's journalism. Hey,
Speaker 3: I mean I knew you were good at this, but like,
Speaker 3: see was amazing you good at this? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Thank you? This story was really fun. I tell you
Speaker 2: the story behind this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, tell me the story.
Speaker 2: So these people were putting together this like love Craft
Speaker 2: anthology of responses to Lovecraft and stuff, and someone got
Speaker 2: me too it out of the table of contents at
Speaker 2: the last minute, basically like someone who was going to
Speaker 2: have a story in it did some real terrible stuff
Speaker 2: and so and so they were like, who do we
Speaker 2: know we think can turn around a story in like
Speaker 2: a week. Who writes horror, who doesn't sexually assault anybody?
Speaker 3: And that's how you got here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I got in and so and then it's
Speaker 2: funny because I almost I almost always write sober. I
Speaker 2: got drunk in the middle of the day, wrote this
Speaker 2: entire story, sent it to a friend of mine to
Speaker 2: do like sensitivity reading because the's a lot of black
Speaker 2: characters in it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was like, so I sent it to my friend
Speaker 2: and like we made some changes, and then I sent
Speaker 2: it off to the editor, all while I was still
Speaker 2: drunk on the same day.
Speaker 3: A machine. Yeah that's what that means.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, totally, yeah, because it was like I'd done
Speaker 2: it enough that I could just do it, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And the real, like the other level of psychological
Speaker 3: horror is the reality of how much actually can trace
Speaker 3: its origins back to a black person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: There's so much of the world that is like, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: that was yeah, that was us. Yeah yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 3: invented that too, you know, and just so just being
Speaker 3: like oh again, you know, like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, it's like that's kind of what I'm trying
Speaker 2: to reference. Is that so much gets stolen from black culture. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I have no evidence that Lovecraft stole any of the shit.
Speaker 2: I just know that hated black people, and I think
Speaker 2: it's fun to troll him even though he's dead, you know,
Speaker 2: of course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of in the vein of like get
Speaker 3: out and like the Jordan Peel stuff to where you're like,
Speaker 3: this is the the haunting like actual funny fear behind
Speaker 3: really nice like bleeding liberal white people where you're just
Speaker 3: like is it wait wait you know, like yeah, so
Speaker 3: so that's so that's like kind of like to me,
Speaker 3: it's like it's in that vein of like damn even
Speaker 3: Lovecraft was.
Speaker 2: Even that, you know what I mean, Like yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: So I think all the time, like the thing that
Speaker 2: Lovecraft isn't famed for inventing but he didn't invent is
Speaker 2: this idea of like cosmic horror. And it's the style
Speaker 2: of horror that's about fear of sort of the unknowable,
Speaker 2: not just the unknown, but the things that are too
Speaker 2: complex where you go crazy if you think about them
Speaker 2: too hard. And it's it's funny because one of my
Speaker 2: friends made the argument to me that all cosmic car
Speaker 2: is rooted in racism, and for for Lovecraft, it one
Speaker 2: hundred percent was right. Like the idea of like going
Speaker 2: into Brooklyn was so bad that he wrote the like
Speaker 2: it's called like the Horror of Red Hook or I
Speaker 2: can't remember, yeah, you know, and he like wrote constantly
Speaker 2: about how terrified he was of people who didn't look
Speaker 2: like him. Right, dude, But I hold that cosmic car
Speaker 2: is real because that's how I feel about things from
Speaker 2: under the ocean.
Speaker 3: Yes, I know they not they're technically not aliens. I
Speaker 3: know that because it's the same planet, it's the same carbon,
Speaker 3: and yeah, I get it, but still, like nothing should
Speaker 3: look like that.
Speaker 2: Yes, it gets the piss out of me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I still think things as basic as jellyfish. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like this shouldn't exist jellyfish. Yeah, this shouldn't be a thing.
Speaker 3: There shouldn't be mammals the size of buses. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: there shouldn't. You I'm I'm with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I respect their right to exist over there in
Speaker 2: the ocean, and then I will stay away from the ocean.
Speaker 3: Just be over there, like that's exactly we don't have gills. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm good and that I'm good, But then
Speaker 3: the ship that makes me even most scary is like
Speaker 3: they don't all have gills either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's true. They come up for air.
Speaker 3: We else have lungs. And I'm like, you're not supposed
Speaker 3: to be that big, yeah, and live in the water.
Speaker 3: You can't breathe the water. This shouldn't exist. I know
Speaker 3: I'm yelling, but you tapped into some I'm telling listen you,
Speaker 3: I'm fascinated. But I'll watch you on that geo and
Speaker 3: be marveling. But like jellyfish over there, that's a that's
Speaker 3: a clear that's a nervous system. Yeah, it is clear,
Speaker 3: and it's a nervous system. That's all that thing is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and some of them will kill you, and.
Speaker 3: They could Margaret killed Joy. The thing can kill listen.
Speaker 3: I was gonna go another direction with this, which I
Speaker 3: still want to say because I am. We're talking to
Speaker 3: you about stuff, but like facts, like so when you
Speaker 3: think about like we did I did. I think I
Speaker 3: did A did an episode on her politics about the
Speaker 3: Mothership baby like that. Uh, the way that that black
Speaker 3: people talk about space for future. Yeah, afro futurism, that
Speaker 3: like Funkadelic in Parliament, that is about aliens coming and
Speaker 3: it's because they coming to get us, and we for
Speaker 3: the party. You know what I'm saying, Like it's the
Speaker 3: baptized and the funk Baby, it's the Mothership. Like we're
Speaker 3: black people excited because we all obviously rooted in our
Speaker 3: experience on this planet. Is just like we okay, we
Speaker 3: don't belong here, Like this is y'all are this is weird.
Speaker 3: And what's funny is like out of white culture when
Speaker 3: they talk about abduction, it's yass. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 3: like that, y'all are afraid of the aliens because they
Speaker 3: gonna do experiments on you, which has more to do
Speaker 3: with the way for which white culture has treated the
Speaker 3: rest of the world. Like well that's what y'all did.
Speaker 3: Y'all found the other lands and colonized it and then
Speaker 3: made experiments on the local population. We don't come, We
Speaker 3: don't think like that.
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, you show up and go party instead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're coming to get us. Yeah, I'm say, like.
Speaker 2: We going home. Yeah no, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: I hadn't thought about that and that yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I love also that, Like I don't know, have you
Speaker 2: ever read Parable the Sower and Parable the Talents? Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: like I love that the thing that has taken Like
Speaker 2: those are two the most influential books are for people
Speaker 2: who haven't read them. Octavia Butler's kind of the most
Speaker 2: prophetic science fiction authors probably ever lived. She was writing
Speaker 2: about basically Christian nationalists running for president on the platform
Speaker 2: of make America great again.
Speaker 3: Like literally, yeah, she nailed it.
Speaker 2: And yeah, this like idea of earth seed, the idea
Speaker 2: of like, oh no, we're going to get to space,
Speaker 2: and like coming from this like I don't know, it
Speaker 2: just makes me happy.
Speaker 3: No, you're right, I'll Tavid Butler should be required reading
Speaker 3: for everyone. And plus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, no, that's true. Yeah yeah. And also
Speaker 2: the best description of how the apocalypse is going to go,
Speaker 2: which is we think it's going to be like instant
Speaker 2: mad maxim. Instead it's gonna be slow and hard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like yeah, just as slow. You're just gonna look
Speaker 3: up and be like, oh, the Earth's dead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how I feel about how there's like no
Speaker 2: insects anymore, you know, like like the number of bugs
Speaker 2: that you killed driving across the country thirty years ago
Speaker 2: versus now, you know, oh my god.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that goes back to the coffee episode. That's one
Speaker 3: of the one of the things I learned at one
Speaker 3: of the coffee farms was like, if your farm ain't
Speaker 3: got no insects, it is not organic, Like you can't
Speaker 3: you that. It means the soil is toxic. That's why
Speaker 3: there's no bugs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's the real spooky season thing to end on. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the h it's the fact that our world is getting
Speaker 2: real spooky. But anyway, thanks for listening to my stories.
Speaker 2: And if people want to hear more of what you do,
Speaker 2: how can they do that.
Speaker 3: They can hear me on the Hood Politics with Prop
Speaker 3: podcast where we talk about unscary things like the twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four election and wars across the world. So there's that.
Speaker 3: There's you know, prop hip hop dot com. You can
Speaker 3: get some music and poetry and so working on some
Speaker 3: new poetry, which is kind of cool. Like, okay, so
Speaker 3: side note, not that I've ever really cared about the Grammys,
Speaker 3: but now there's like a category for spoken word albums.
Speaker 3: Oh really, and I'm like, I should do an album.
Speaker 2: Yeah you should, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I've always only done poetry on my rap albums. Like,
Speaker 3: so there's songs, there are poems, on the album I
Speaker 3: never did them. It was like, I think I want
Speaker 3: to do that next year.
Speaker 2: Now you should do it. For the same reason that
Speaker 2: the Science Fiction Awards are divided into categories based on
Speaker 2: how long the story is. So there's like short story, novelette, novella,
Speaker 2: and novel. And the reason people write novelettes is because
Speaker 2: no one writes novelettes, so you have a better chance
Speaker 2: of winning the award.
Speaker 3: You're reading my mind? Am I gonna? Am I gonna
Speaker 3: if this year? Am I gonna get Song of the Year?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: Kenjick Lamar is getting it for they not like us.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying. Are you gonna get Artists
Speaker 3: of the Year. No, Kendrick Lamar is gonna get it.
Speaker 3: No Jelly Roll is gonna get it. Like am I
Speaker 3: gonna get Album of the Year for rap? No, Kendrick
Speaker 3: Lamar is going know what I'm saying. So you're just
Speaker 3: like right, like you're not. I Am never going to
Speaker 3: win that category.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you do more spoken word than they do.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: Anyway, all right, well, happy spooky season and see you
Speaker 2: all next week when we bring you more cool people
Speaker 2: did cool stuff or weird things that I'm doing instead
Speaker 2: because I'm on tour. I don't know yet. You'll find
Speaker 2: out nice, all right job.
Speaker 4: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 4: cool Zone Media. A more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
Speaker 4: visit our website Fulezonemedia dot com, or check us out
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