Gift hopes shattered, eggless nog, Svalbard seed vaults, and murderous staircases... All this plus another original poetic recap, this time for Smee by A.M. Barrage! Spike that cocoa and nestle in for a cozy tale of projecting knees, adults playing games, and absolutely zero pirates – it's a very Christmasy bonus from your pals at Whiskey and the Weird!
Bar Talk (our recommendations):
Jessica is watching Arctic Void (2022; dir. Darren R. Mann); drinking almond nog + Bright Lights, Big Bourbon.
Damien is watching Good Boy (2025; dir. Ben Leonberg); drinking a Bhakta 1928.
Ryan is watching Shrinking (Apple TV original series); drinking a Gingerbread fartini (vanilla vodka, Frangelico, Bailey's, gingerbread syrup).
If you liked this week’s story, watch Head Count (2018; dir. Elle Callahan)
Up next: Damn the fates, it's Season 9!
Special music licensed for non-commercial use through Creative Commons:
Intro/Outro: This is Christmas by Scott Holmes
Summary Poem: Christmas Meditation by Dee Yan-Key
Like, rate, and follow! Check us out @whiskeyandtheweird on Instagram, Threads & Facebook, and at whiskeyandtheweird.com
Damien: [00:00:00] but just the line. Maybe if you're good enough next year, year, if you're good enough, you'll get a real one like dagger milk, bone to the heart. Just, oh man, pull it out.
That's a rough one. So that, that is probably the most standout gift for all the wrong reasons,
Ryan: Ho, ho, ho, and Merry Christmas. Welcome back everyone. I'm Ryan Whitley.
Jess: I'm Jessica Berg.
Damien: And I'm Damien Smith.
Ryan: And together we are Whiskey and the weird, the podcast that for the last eight seasons has been saving you from the drudgery of the office Christmas party, and keeping you company by the fire for those chilly yule tide nights.
Actually, that could be an exaggeration, but we live in hope ever since Scrooge learned to find joy again. Ghost stories have been an important Christmas tradition in England and [00:01:00] hopefully beyond. We participate by bringing you a special Christmas episode of whiskey and the Weird, but unlike our normal episodes, we don't always draw from the tales of the weird series, and I didn't think that we did tonight, but Low in my pre-show research I found.
That it was not true. Tonight's story is in fact, in the tales of the weird series, it can be found in Spirits of the Season. Christmas hauntings, edited by Tanya Kirk. So Jess, what did we pick for tonight?
Uh oh. SME by a m. Burge.
Well, before we get to SMI and all that, and uh, speaking of spirits of the season, what are you drinking tonight, Jess?
Jess: I have in my glass the Hudson Whiskey, the Bright Lights, big bourbon, which I do enjoy and I currently have it mixed with some Almond Nog and it's pretty good. I don't usually use this whiskey for [00:02:00] mix in because I like to drink it, but I'm out of worse whiskey sometimes when I buy a novelty whiskey and it's not very good.
It then becomes the mixed drink whiskey. But I have to stock up before family gets here. I am running low on everything
Ryan: as one does.
Jess: And then recently, what a fun position
Ryan: to be in though,
Jess: to have to go stock up, stocking up on everything.
Ryan: Yeah.
Jess: You know, we're just running a little low. So recently I've just, I've become obsessed with Svalbard.
Ryan: You know what, I think that's a type of herring, right?
Jess: You're, you think you are not far off. It is a small amount of islands that are like between Norway and the North Pole.
Ryan: Oh, they might have herring. Yeah.
Damien: Which is a fish, if anywhere. Not far
off.
Jess: Well, they eat a lot of herring.
Damien: Oh, okay. There we go. Pickled ha pickled, creamed herring. Right.
Jess: So there every kind of pickled Harry, you can imagine.
Damien: Yeah. Now it's getting sexy already in this [00:03:00] episode. I love it.
Jess: Well, I was doing some reading about, of course, the SWA Bard Seed Vault. You know,
Damien: the seed vault, the Svalbard seed vault.
Yeah that's definitely a bit of a tongue twister from time to time. I like to do some reading about that too. Toy boat, red leather, yellow leather, and this fall Bard seed boat.
Jess: Anyway, then there's also this movie that was filled and is set in s fall, Svalbard, that's a like pretty medium horror movie, but it is very chilly and cold and it is currently blizzarding here, so I thought it was appropriate.
And it is called Arctic Void, and it's a 2022 film by Darren Mann. And it's like tourists are going to Svalbard to film like a travel documentary TV show, like on this touristy boat. And then they wake up and most of the tourists have disappeared, like off the boat. And then it's a kind of sci-fi horror mystery.
It's not [00:04:00] great. The acting is a little medium and the effects are less medium than that, but the scenery is really pretty. They filmed it on location. So if you're just like, you know what, I would like to go to small bar, just watch this movie, and you'll feel like you're there.
Ryan: I feel like you got behind that recommendation more than you normally get behind your recommendations.
Jess: Really just this is true really just in the mood to go to a small Arctic island apparently. So if we have any sponsors that are really into
Ryan: from Northern Finland,
Jess: Nordic boat tourism, you know what? Hit me up.
Ryan: Nice.
Jess: Damien, what are you drinking?
Damien: So gang, tis the season and my wife and I like to partake in.
Now, the second year that we're doing this, although there was a number of gap years in between, there's a, like a subscription whiskey service called Flaviar or Flaviar. And around this time of year they do a flight of whiskey Advent calendar. Okay. Mm-hmm. So every [00:05:00] day you get to open and take I don't know, two ounces, four ounces of whiskey and it's usually like reserves or some specialty blends and whatnot.
So I am not actually drinking this now. I am drinking some crappy house bourbon, but what a tease. Yeah. But I will tell you about the very first taste that came out of this box and we kind of blown away by the fact that most of these whiskeys are very expensive. Like the second one that I don't wanna talk about 'cause it wasn't that great, was a distillery that is owned by Beyonce.
Did you all know that Beyonce had her own distillery? Well, I do now. Distillery. Yeah, do now. That's for sure. So the one that we tried initially was called Bachta, and it's, it was by, its. Founder is Raj Peter Bachta, who also owns Whistle Pig Distillery. So a little bit of a whiskey enthusiast. He did this version that was a rye whiskey finished [00:06:00] in Armc casks.
Okay. And when I looked up the ca of this bottle, it was like 160 bucks for the bottle. That's too much. Was like, okay, I will take a nice little delicious taste here. And it was pretty good. It was a beautiful color again a deep it's, it was a hundred percent rye whiskey, I think a heavy rye mash as well.
And the finish in the arming Ya cast brought this like amazing fruitiness, like a little bit of a little bit of pear. Had a, a lot of sweetness, actually, a lot more than I expected for such a rye whiskey, which begged the question like, why did we use a rye if I'm not getting any of the bite? Because it was all sweetened out by that finish in the Arming Ya Cast.
But the description and this like little advent calendar was so hilarious. It kind of gave a lot of pomp and circumstance to the whole tasting. That being said, it was a pretty dang good finger or two of whiskey. So, again, it was Bachta, uh, 1928 Golden Age. But it did harken back to the golden Age with this Arman Yak finish. So, pretty cool.
Pretty very nice. Yeah. Give it a go. And it's got an interesting [00:07:00] founder story, not as interesting as being owned by Beyonce, but Raj Peter Bachta owning whistle's whistle page. What is as far as other things outside of the glass, I just finally, finally it landed on shutter. I've been waiting to see this movie forever.
I couldn't get anyone to go see it with me when it was in the limited run theaters around me, and I was. So happy I finally got to see it because it was a delightful film and it was the 2025 Good Boy, which is Run the Runtime is about an hour and 15 minutes. And the whole conceit on this is that it is essentially a ghost story, a haunting story, a bit of a possession story all through the eyes of Man's best friend.
The central character is Indie the Dog an adorable little canine?
Ryan: We named the dog Indiana.
Damien: Yeah, exactly. It's a cool story. It's very well shot. It's a little unpolished, but that's great. Again, an indie film. Indie film does good too because as it turns out, indie, the dog [00:08:00] from this indie film has been nominated for a best actor award in one of the, in one of the nuanced niche.
Um, I saw
Jess: that
Damien: the dog would be up against
Ryan: the AI actress. It might be, or just like, yeah.
Jess: Imagine if you were an actor and you thought you did so good this year. And they're just like
Damien: you. Like, buy a dog. Nailed it. Yeah.
Jess: Have you seen this dog? This dog is wild about this dog.
Damien: Everyone loves this dog. Yeah, it's pretty funny.
It's, so, it's the Astro Film Awards and Indie the Dog gets a nomination, so, yeah. I can abide by that, Ryan, where it's pretty funny to just imagine all the other, all the other nominees like, this is my mo. Oh, dammit. A dog. Are you serious? The dog. The other nominees are like a little kid with a lollipop, just like, you know, this isn't fair.
No, but I will say this, the way the film was shot, you know, there's that old adage about you should never work with kids or animals in movies 'cause it's just too difficult. This entire [00:09:00] movie was really centralized around the dog. As a matter of fact, there are other humans in the movie, but I think you only see a full human face once.
So it's pretty wild to see it. Interesting. I thought, yeah, I thought the movie would drag. I was like, how are they gonna take this very, very niche concept and draw it out to a full feature film? But they did, and it was wonderful. It was spooky. Again, solid cinematography. There was a lot of emotion in Indie's face.
There were very few needs for gimmicky tricks. You know, it wasn't like, there's one time where indie jumps through window and I was like, eh, was that necessary? A lot of it was this subtle nuance of when a dog like Intuits that something's wrong. Around its master, around its house, around its, it's, its land, its property it's safe haven.
And it was cool and the ghost element was creepy. I think there's probably some illusion to cancer or some terminal illness in this. I won't go beyond that because it's really a very, very easy film to sit back and watch [00:10:00] and enjoy. So again, that is good boy 2025.
And the director of that film is Ben Leonberg. Ben Leonberg 91% Rotten Tomatoes. Good boy. 2025 Now on Shutter China. Hmm. Well, you right,
Ryan: well, before I answer that, I've gotta a note. Jess, is this a movie that you're gonna see?
Jess: I th well, I think it probably helps knowing that the dog is alive now. Like he didn't die in the movie and is on red carpets.
I've seen this dog on red carpets that I feel like will make it, that helps. Easier to be like, I bet that dog's gonna be okay. You know, if, I don't know, if I don't know the fate of the dog after,
Ryan: I don't know why I don't learn my lesson, but I don't. And so every time we have themed nights, I try to do a themed cocktail and it just never ends up working out in quite the way that I hope.
No, this one's not as bad as the one that I made one time. That was truly [00:11:00] awful. I tried to make a ginger bread. It was like green or
Damien: something. Yeah. You had one that was like, something in Tokyo or like Godzilla tears through something. Yeah, I think
Ryan: it was Kullu takes Tokyo or something like that. Yes. And that was
Damien: so ugly.
And you were like, I'm struggling through this. I'll never forget how this, my
Ryan: cocktail looked. It was neon green. Yeah. This one looks normal. So this is a gingerbread martini. I made the gingerbread syrup. I thought that would be good to make one's own syrup. And all the ingredients individually taste good.
And the drink tastes pretty good too, but it just, it doesn't like it all. Everything's not coming together in the way that I want it to come together.
Jess: Okay.
Ryan: So all, what
Jess: else is in this bad boy?
Ryan: So this is vanilla vodka, Angelico, Bailey's, and some gingerbread syrup.
Damien: And by gingerbread syrup do you mean what?
Ginger.
Ryan: So I made grated ginger with some water and some sugar like uh, simple syrup, cinnamon and molasses.
Damien: Okay. All right. Fair.
Ryan: So everything's there that should make for a delicious drink. Mm-hmm. And again, it's [00:12:00] not bad. I'm gonna give it six outta 10. But it's, but it sounds straight
Damien: outta the eighties though.
It really does.
Ryan: It's, and it's very potent. And I've tried several already, so. Oh, right. Good episode. If, uh, if by the end of the episode I'm in sensate, it's the fart of the fault of the gingerbread martini. As for what I've been watching also a rare recommendation from me. I'm gonna recommend a comedy.
And maybe you guys have seen this. It's on Apple tv. It's called Shrinking. It's two. Oh, I've never watched it. The wife wants it. She said, I have. Oh my God. It's so good. So it stars Jason Siegel and Harrison Ford, and they play therapists out in California. The backstory to what's happened when the first episode opens up is Jason Siegel's wife has been killed in an automobile accident.
Jess: Sounds funny. He's
Ryan: right. So he's gone off the, he's gone off the deep end trying to cope with drugs, drinking and and prostitutes. And he's completely abandoned his 17-year-old daughter. And so their relationship is in shambles. Now, on top of that backstory, [00:13:00] they write a comedy. And so the result is something that is, is very charming and sad and beautiful and just a really human story.
Each episode is like 25 to 30 minutes long. And I gotta be honest, I've not laughed and cried so much in 25 minutes, spans in a long, long time. If ever I loved this show the two seasons I ripped through 'em. There's a third season coming out on 28th of January, and I can't wait. So, if you're looking for something a little bit different that it's a little bit feel good, it's a little bit funny, it's a little bit tragic.
And it shows you that it's okay to be a little bit of a mess in the midst of this thing we call life. I think you should check out shrinking on Apple tv. Good reco. Alright, that's gonna take us to our author and publication info tonight. We've got an interesting guy here, Alfred McClelland Burbridge.
I watched a couple of videos to figure out how to pronounce that. Rhymes with courage. Burridge, I
Jess: did the same [00:14:00] thing.
Ryan: Yeah. So Burge was born in London in July of 1889 into a family of writers. Both his father and his uncle were established writers, published in various magazines. So perhaps it's no surprise that whatever else Burridge did, he is best remembered as a writer.
Not much is known about his upbringing, but thanks to the great research of George Simers. We know a bit more than we otherwise might. We think he went away to school at St. Augustine's Catholic School in Ramsgate and that it was there when he first published his first story. By the time World War I broke out.
Burge was a known magazine writer, and in 1916, he voluntarily joined something called a territorial unit. I don't, that's not a term that's I'm familiar with, but maybe some listeners are. It's a military unit, and it was entitled the Artist's Rifles A Move that he did that seemed to have somehow preempted his [00:15:00] possible conscription.
The unit was interesting too because it was comprised of poets, writers, painters, musicians, and engravers. Surely you agree the tip of the spear of the Royal Army. One of his more enduring pieces of writing is his truly excellent war memoir, which is entitled War Is War, published anonymously under the pen, name X, private X.
It's a realistic and honest take on the Great War with some really haunting descriptions of both the vagaries of war and the cheapness of human life. And I just was taken aback by this description. Listen to what he says here. We are slowly becoming real soldiers, although many of us have not yet set eyes on a German at large.
Few of us have killed our man, and we are slowly realizing that the job of the infantry isn't to kill. It is the artillery and the machine gun corps who do the killing. We are merely there to be killed. We are the little [00:16:00] flags, which the general sticks on the war map to show the position of the frontline.
That just gives me goosebumps. Yeah. Dang. That's some haunted there. They did the killing. We're
Damien: there to be killed. We're there to
Ryan: be killed.
Damien: Yikes.
Ryan: That said he did survive World War I, although he was wounded he describes in another section when he was shot. It seems that he and it's, it's funny now 'cause he talks about like how gravely wounded he thought he was and how the burning pain of being shot and like, he was just grazed with a bullet.
but maybe, maybe, I'd probably still
Jess: complain.
Ryan: Yeah, he complained and who wouldn't. So war is, war is actually still in print. And if you're interested in a copy. Why not buy it directly from my very good friend David's Publishing house called Casem Mate, which publish publishes all manner of military history.
This isn't a paid advertisement. David is really my friend and Casem mate really does publish this book. I just thought that was Blue Connection, so check it out if you're interesting. Besides that, Burge is [00:17:00] today best known for his ghost stories, which are also still in print. Mr. Mr. James praised the stories saying they quote, keep on the right side of the line, and if about half his ghosts are amiable, the rest have their terrors and no mean ones.
In many of the ghost stories, his war experiences would creep in often with the ghost being a dead soldier. So this story tonight was first published in Nash's Palm Mall Magazine in December, 1929. Now the moment you wait all year for rendition of. A night before sme.
Damien: A night before sme, okay. Yes. As is tradition when we do the holiday recap.
I've somehow found my way into doing it in verse. So without further ado Damien Smith original SME by AM barrage,
Jess: Godspeed
Damien: godspeed to us all [00:18:00] to Christmas Eve in a manner full of bored young adults. No, they're not. Members of some weird thrill kill cults. It's just a gaggle of friends who want to play games, but to one, hide and seek will never be the same.
See, Jackson opts out to the whole group's chagrin. He smiles and takes it by the scruff of his chin. I knew of a girl who played once a top, a dark flight, and she fell down the stairs, broke her neck, died that night. OMG, were you there? Asked one of his friends. No, I wasn't. But here's another tale that has a worse end,
worse than a kid who toppled to their doom. Dang Jackson. My dude. Way to capture the room. It was five years ago in a big house like this. I was with 12 other friends. One I wanted to kiss. When we decided to play hide and seek for a chuckle, the host said, no way my poor knees will buckle. A decade ago this girl died playing that she raced through a door, [00:19:00] skipped a flight, went bla.
And instead we can play this cool game we call sme. It's me for short. Take that JM Barry. There you go. Yeah. You knew it was coming. Players draw papers and on one of the sheets is Ritz sme, that one hides and the rest all hit the streets. And by streets I mean halls as they search in the black call SME to whomever they pass from their pack.
The non SMEEs say SME and keeping compliant. The Smee doesn't reply and you join them in silence. And the last to find Smee takes the L. We restart. What a joy. Yes. Let's try. Now, here's the weird part. A few rounds are conducted and everyone's found, but then in tallying the end of a particular round, the pack totals up to one extra guest that can't be correct.
Surely you jest. On the next round, Jackson sees some nice knees sticking out from a window seat. Behind Draperies, he calls sme, [00:20:00] no reply. So he plops on down, tries to chat, is met with nothing. So he starts to frown. Then he gets mad, even though it's the rules of the game. Oh, come now. Can't you even tell me your name?
The mysterious gal whispers. It's Brenda Ford, the girl Jackson saw earlier, but ignored. Soon they were met by Jackson's, right Proper crush, who sat down beside him and caused him to blush. She reached across his lap to feel a satiny dress. And they were waiting for a word that came from all the rest.
This game had been over. Wait was something wrong? Smee had been found somewhere else all along that can't be. Jackson said his brain in a struggle. Wright said the host. Y'all just wanted to snuggle. No. Brenda Ford is this me. We caught her in the West. Jackson's pal pulled him aside and away from the [00:21:00] rest.
Hey, this isn't funny. Says his friend pal is Snow for Ford was the girl who broke her neck years ago. Oh, Mary. Next. Miss everyone.
Ryan: Bravo. Damian Excellently done as always.
Damien: Thank you.
Ryan: I truly do look forward to that. I think that's fun.
Jess: Great job.
Damien: It's a good time.
Ryan: So in the opening paragraphs, Burge sets his story on Christmas Eve, which. First glance might seem an easy choice for this kind of tale, but aside from saying, Hey y'all, this is a Christmas story, you're about to hear what makes this story seasonal in your opinion?
Or is that it?
Jess: Yeah, I think that's mostly it. I mean, it's an excuse for friends to gather.
Which is Christmasy, but it's also Thanksgiving or Right. Halloweeny or whatever.
Damien: I think maybe the [00:22:00] ambiance, you know, you can assume it's snowy out. Most of the story takes place in the dark 'cause they're playing games.
Mm-hmm. They're playing games. It's a novel, festive atmosphere. I think it could have been any holiday, honestly. I agree. There is something nice about some of the little minor elements like the. The semi elegance that's conducted. You know, they're all meeting in like a study. There's a fireplace cracking eventually after the game,
Jess: the ladies are wearing silk dresses.
Damien: Yes.
The ladies are wearing satiny silky dresses, as is indicated when the gal she screes on the ghost, scri on the ghost dress. Right. So there's those pieces I think. But ultimately it really is just, hey, this happened to take place on Christmas. So, yeah. You know, I dunno if he's like ghost story, ghost story.
He's trying to write a Christmas ghost story. Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
Ryan: I wished I had seen some glimpse of a, a snowy field or a decorated tree or some other, A gremlin sprinkle. Yeah. A gremlin. Even a, a dry, a dry one. Hopefully some other seasonal. Pieces in there somewhere , would've been [00:23:00] nice.
I think for me. So I'm glad to hear that I wasn't alone in that,
Damien: even like a themed death. I mean, you know, the, the alluded to death is just her falling down the stairs, which happened to be mm-hmm. Like placed just after a door.
Ryan: That's poor construction.
Well, I detected a number of themes in the story as I read it and reread it and the two that stood out most prominently to me were themes of concealment and mistaken identity.
What might Burge be saying about identity? I mean either the identity of his characters or identity more broadly through these themes of concealment.
Jess: I think what I mean caught my attention thinking about like identity is throughout the story, but especially in the section where they're counting the guests, like the players. Mm-hmm. They're like, oh, there should be 12, but there's 13 that it's a group of friends that are all hanging out, but they don't quite know each other.
And I think that makes it easier too, to have kind of someone slip in and out. [00:24:00] Mm-hmm. Is it's not the tightest friend group.
Ryan: Right.
Jess: And that's reflected just in that there's a. Mysterious woman who's, he doesn't, the, our narrator doesn't know the name of, they refer, I mean, they refer to each other as, you know, Mrs.
Gorman and everything else. So you get that. Well,
Ryan: do you think that, I thought that was because several of them were younger and there are, there are some adults there,
Damien: Like older teens and Yes. And younger adults and, but, but the one he refers to as Ms. Gorman that Jackson refers to as Ms. Gorman is the one he has the crush on.
Right. Right. So, but isn't that somebody's
Ryan: mom?
Jess: I mean, it's weird that she's a Mrs. Go. She's a Mrs. Yeah. There, that's how I read it, miss forward. But I got the sense that our narrator is not that young,
Ryan: not. Not a team. I mean, maybe this, maybe this leads into it, this, this, this sense of how old are these? Oh. Also
Damien: the action of [00:25:00] the story, like even in recollection, takes place over, what, 15 years?
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Opening of the story when he is like, no to his new group of friends, he's saying, no, I'm not gonna play hide and seek. Because five years ago, five years ago this happened, and 10 years prior to that is when the girl fell down the stairs. So he's, he's gotta be up there at least a little bit, probably early thirties, like most old men in that, in that time interest.
Ryan: Interesting. So I sort of envisioned these people, like I know that this isn't a great contemporary analysis to the time that the story was written, but I sort of, I imagined these people as like folks that came home for, from college for Christmas. Oh, okay. Like, they knew each other in the past, but they've had a, they've had a bunch of individual experiences since then.
They become different people and yet. Somehow gathered all together. They're the same again. And they're at somebody's house and those people's parents are there and, Hey, let's play a game. I don't know. Games are weird. We're too old for games now. Come on. Who's too? Who's too old for games?
Oh, I, yeah, that was how I envisioned it.
Damien: I thought for sure that they were a little bit older and they were just playing some cheeky games. [00:26:00] Wouldn't hide and seek, be weird for a bunch of 30 year olds to play, but they weren't playing hide and seek.
Jess: Okay. So Jack and Violet are the hosts, and they're old enough that they have a 17-year-old son, and he is the youngest. Reggie suggested sme and he's a 17-year-old, and then everyone is kind of going around all along with it. So I get the sense that they're older than him and just kind of being like, okay, we'll play. I
Ryan: sm I think I have to confess that I have you at a disadvantage because I knew the man's history as I was writing the questions.
And what, so I, what I'm really asking, what I'm really wondering here is, is there something of the war story in, in this story is, is the sense of lost innocence?
Damien: Yeah. I mean, sure. The lost innocence, I think. On in, in life tragic early life.
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Damien: You know, sort of serving as a reference point for some traumatic response to an innocent kid's game.
Hey, do you wanna play hide and seek? No, no, no, I can't because, you know, I know of this story that happened, then I've got ptsd,
Ryan: TSD from when I
Damien: [00:27:00] learned of that story, it influenced something else that happened mm-hmm. In me that was even more severe and traumatic. Going back to your original question about concealment and, you know, sort of muddled identity, I mean, a lot of the story takes place in the dark, right?
Because the nature of the game, right? To Jess's point these people don't seem to know each other very well, so it is very easy for some mysterious figure to sort of slide in and blend in with the crowd, and even when they're directly noticed. It's also interesting to me that it wasn't worthy enough or at least top of mind enough for the person who's there to ask anybody else about.
This tall like swath lady mm-hmm. That they notice even and he acknowledges that. And do you think, oh, I forgot, I forgot to say they all notice her. Maybe, maybe they do, but this also feeds into that theme. Right? Right. Yeah. It's like, who else noticed her? And the only real indicator that we have that someone else had any sense of running into this manifestation is when Ms.
Gorman reaches over and like tickles her dress or whatever mm-hmm. Across, uh, Jackson's lap. [00:28:00] Right. So is she there yet? But they also don't, they mention like someone else was standing in front of the captain or whoever it was and then, but it was behind another person and they were like, oh, who was that person?
Like, someone was on speaker, right. Yeah. It was kind of, they were trying to do like an order. So one of those
Ryan: things where you see somebody outta the corner of your eye and Yeah. Right. So I mean it's,
Damien: I think you could walk away with a little bit of ambiguity with regards to, I think there's a lot of
Ryan: ambiguity in the story.
Damien: Yeah. But the, I mean, knowing the militaristic background and , the war times experience by the author, is it definitely you could see how that comes through and like manifest in this otherwise, like sort of on the surface ghost story, that also happens to be a Christmas story. I think the concealment though is pretty interesting because.
It's, I would call it a more subtle theme. Like . , I didn't close the last page on this and think to myself, oh, this is, this reeks of concealment and muddled identity. I thought it was a, a little light and fluffy, um, ghost story, but
Ryan: I, I agree. I felt the same way after the first time I read it.
And then once I researched him back, learned about, and then I'm like, oh, he's, he [00:29:00] spent this whole story hiding. He spent the whole war hiding Sure. In trenches. Yeah. You know, it just was all conflating to me. Okay. But let's return for a second to that scene behind the curtain. Okay. With, Mrs.
Gorman and then the ghostly visage. I think I picked up a little of this in your recap, Damien, but. There's more than a hint of frustrated sexuality here.
Damien: Dude, what's up with that? I have to explain 'cause it was a one line in the whatever. So I'm gonna go back and give this some texture. I was so put off by the fact that Jackson sat down and started talking to this specter Uhhuh.
Of course not realizing that's the specter. The rules of the game dictate that if you are sme, you don't reply. When someone says sme, if you are not smi, the person says sme, if you are smi, you say nothing. Right? So if he sits down next to the person who he's decided because of their lack of response is S me.
And then gets ticked off and they continue to be silent and says, oh I
Ryan: can tell this is a person who hates men.
Damien: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Like the misogyny, like instantly busts out. And I was like, whoa [00:30:00] dude. What? That is easy so quickly. I dunno.
Jess: I, yeah, that's really funny. Just that you are right next to a supernatural terror.
Right. Just like a mind blowing apparition that like you just assume is a girl who doesn't like you. And so she must be a man hate, like it's just a really funny jump
Damien: to be like, it's like early, early in
Ryan: cells.
Damien: He like talks himself up and then down all at once. It happens so quickly. It's like bizarre.
Yeah. It was just a couple lines and it's, we still not, oh, you hate men. You hate men. Okay. Well actually no, it's nice to see you. Well at least tell me your name. Okay. Yeah. Do you come here often or what? Deborah Ford.
Jess: Okay.
Ryan: Yeah. I couldn't figure it out, but it's definitely a thread that's present.
Not just with the ghost, but also didn't you say like his real crush is the mom?
Damien: I see. I Or
Ryan: someone. I don't think it's the
Damien: mom.
Jess: I don't think it's the mom or the Mrs. Gorman
Ryan: character.
Jess: Mrs. Gorman.
Damien: I think that he's old [00:31:00] enough to where Mrs. Gorman, or where Ms. Gorman is like they might be
Jess: contemporaries.
Yeah.
Ryan: Okay. Well then it's a less interesting story
Jess: because, well then it's just like, because I'm taking it off a finger. 'cause the host says basically I know you're in love with Mrs. Gorman, but please don't make love to her in my house during gay. Please don't love her in my house. You kept everyone waiting and it was very rude of you.
Like I feel like if that's also a strange
Ryan: thing to say right at a party, a Christmas party. Yes. I feel like
Jess: it'd be a, I mean, I dunno, who knows what's happening at these Christmas parties, but I feel like it would be more of a shock if it was an 18-year-old boy. Right. And someone's mom. Right.
Ryan: I might have sold more copies.
Damien: The cover art though. Vo Yeah,
Ryan: so, so we've been talking about this anonymity thing and one of the interesting things that struck me was there's a lot of rules in this game that are all about silence and anonymity and secrecy, [00:32:00] and then they get broken. So what is it that bridge is doing that is appealing to the innate sense that I think most of us have that it's fun to have rules for others and it's also fun to break the rules.
I think there's a lot of boundary crossing here.
Damien: Well, it's interesting that you mention that because. Like the boundary crossing is the metaphysical boundary, right? Yeah. The spirits joining us in our games, but I thought that they were breaking rules 'cause they were bored.
Like there was a couple times where, you know, and actually he talked about the rounds. 'cause they played this a bunch of times. Yeah. I'm like, seriously? How many times can anyone play? It's just a couple times, right? Yeah. Just that's enough. But it's, but then it's just like, people start to get frustrated and it's even mentioned, Ms.
Gorman is because the ice is broken and now they wanna get on
Ryan: with the business of the party. Mm-hmm.
Damien: Right, right, right. Exactly. Exactly. So I think that the perseverance of the game naturally warrants some rogue behavior. Mm-hmm.
Jess: You know,
Damien: and so I didn't really read that much into it. I think you found a lot more weight to [00:33:00] that theme than I did.
I didn't really see the breaking rules as being something that A, contributed to anyone's character or B, contributed to the plot line. I just thought it was indicative of a bunch of poor people getting bored with whatever they were doing and wanted to do something else. What about you, Jess?
Jess: The fact, yeah, I don't know the rule breaking seemed appropriate for what they were doing, so I don't, I guess I, yeah, I didn't read quite as much into it either, other than the rule is you're supposed to be quiet and sit there and be SME with your people, you know? But if one is your crush, the hot Mrs.
Gorman, they're gonna talk to her and that's fine and appropriate, but then the other ghost woman doesn't respond. So she must be a, you know, stuck up because she is following the rules. So the rules exist, but you shouldn't follow them, but you should follow them. 'cause otherwise you're gonna fall down the stairs and die.
You also,
Ryan: I just felt it was so strange for this group of people that, that I think, [00:34:00] Jess, you pointed out earlier it, they don't know each other that well. They, I mean, they're familiar with each other, but they don't know each other that well. And now they're gonna play this game where you just sit in the dark.
You have to, you have to be quiet in the dark. And it felt a little bit like a juvenile version of a masquerade ball or something like that.
Jess: Like a very boring version of like bodies, bodies, bodies. Like in that movie mm-hmm. Where you're creeping around the house, but that one you have a light up necklace and you're, you know, pretending to murder someone.
And, you know, there's rules to it, but there's. It's more about like having fun with your friends. This one seems like one you would do one time and then you would go play cards. Mm-hmm. So that you can drink and chat. Right. It's, it's a weird game to play repetitively come over to my house and hide in a closet for most of the night.
Ryan: Although there is always that one person at a party where there's games that wants to play one more round than everybody else does. Yes.
Damien: I remember in the era of when you had like house gatherings and if people, there were two things that signaled to me [00:35:00] the end of a party. One is when. Folks started showing each other like YouTubes, right?
Yep. Or some, they're like, oh yeah, hey, you gotta see this. It's really fun. Time to go. It's like a waffle falling over and you're like, okay, great. So that's the time to go. The other was when, remember when Guitar Hero was really big?
Ryan: Yeah.
Damien: So like everyone seemed to have Guitar Hero, and then as soon as that got busted out, it was like, all right, there's probably seven to 10 minutes of Guitar Hero and then everyone is gonna leave.
It always signaled the end of the night. That was the end of the night game. So those were the two. Yeah, it's time to go. You don't have to go home, but you can't be here. Indicators is a, Hey, let's play some Guitar Hero, get through three songs and then I'll hate each other. Or let me show you some YouTubes.
So maybe this was done a little bit early in the night and that's why it felt so weird and dragged on so odd. And
Jess: it's also like this would be a game to play if we thought our crowd was a little bit younger than we probably think. They are. And yeah. I mean,
Damien: it was brought up by the youngest kid there.
Right. So, and
Jess: but, and the expectation is you're a bunch of hot 20 year olds sneaking around in the dark together. Mm-hmm. [00:36:00] For sexy related reasons.
Ryan: But that's a good, because there's a part of this story that felt like it was a game in a fraternity party.
Jess: Yeah. Like, so like that could be a fun game.
But then it's not that because the other guy's just like, I think you are smooching on Mrs. Gorman and I'm ashamed of you. And it's just like, okay, well obviously that's not the point of this game then it is literally just to sit in the dark, weird choice.
Ryan: Weird choice. Damien, you brought something up a moment ago that piqued my interest and you talked about, you know, the real boundary crossing of the story is between the living world and the dead world.
I think there's a. There's a couple more places of, how do I wanna say it? Like in Betweenness? Yeah. That I found in the story. So first of all, the setting, right? The timeframe. It's that Christmas to New Year's time. It's what I call in my office, the gray days. Like I say, if you've got something to do, come in and do it.
And if you don't, don't come in. You don't have, you don't have to take a vacation day. But, you know, it's kind of this weird time. [00:37:00] I love the cartoon that comes out every year. It says, I love the time between Christmas and New Year's when you're sitting around in sweatpants full of cheese with no idea what day it is.
So it's this, liminal time.
Jess: Yeah.
Ryan: So the ghost, as you pointed out, is between life and death. The characters, at least some of them I think are adolescents. A strange liminal time in and of itself. And the game itself, with the lights turned off, creates a space between the expected and the unexpected.
I just wanted to get your thoughts on the, in betweenness of this story, they add anything to the story for you? Did they take away anything?
Jess: The house had that feeling too, where there's mm-hmm.
Damien: Yeah.
Jess: There's rooms and there's deep window wells blocked off by curtains, but there's also, and there's wings.
Damien: There's wings, there's there's wings and there's,
Jess: there's servant quarters and servant and places. Places you can't go.
Damien: Right.
Jess: Like things that you are not meant to navigate because you're a valuable person, but we can have a servant stare that just ends at a door, because that's a risk that we're willing the [00:38:00] servants to take, but you can't go in there because someone who mattered, got hurt.
Damien: I think that's fair. Again, and I don't know if this really jumped out to me. When you said boundary, I just thought, okay, it's a haunting story, right. So we might as well cross that boundary.
Jess: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Damien: One of the literary boundaries that were crossed, or even like lower boundaries, maybe.
Is, I found it extremely interesting and if this isn't related to this, I do want to talk about it. That this is one of the only works I can think of where that the ghost or the specter actually aged, and didn't stay frozen in time at the time of their death.
Ryan: Ah. Because it was a girl that died.
Yeah. And this is an older, yeah. That I did not pick up on that. I think that is interesting.
Damien: I just thought that was particularly interesting because I think it's just naturally inferred that when somebody perishes, they stay that age, come back as a ghost, they just stay that forever. But it seems as though that wasn't the case.
And of course it became corporeal because it was, they were tangible. We had two right witnesses that validated either [00:39:00] bumping knees or mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Holding a hand. Even the guy earlier who says he hand and the guy that can't count. Well, yeah. The guy who's earlier, like felt a hand, and so I thought that was pretty cool as far as like crossing the boundaries of what expectations are for Yeah, that's just another example of it.
Yeah.
Ryan: Yeah. I think that was one of the things I liked the most about the story was the senses of the many boundaries that were being crossed or the boundaries that were there to be crossed and not crossed.
Damien: Yeah, sure.
Ryan: Yeah. I'm also thinking too about his time in World War I, his time in the trenches, just reading through some of the memoir.
Obviously I didn't read the whole thing, but I did flip through several sections of it.
Damien: I skimmed, I skimmed it.
Ryan: I skimmed it, and you're gonna have to go with me on this. 'cause it reminded me when I read that and when I read the story, it reminded me a little bit of Rambo first blood. I said, I'm gonna ask
Damien: you to go with me on this.
Okay. Oh, we're already jumping into if this, then that, huh? So
Ryan: Rambo is a [00:40:00] great action flick. Yes. But it's also a very serious story about the reentry of a soldier, of a veteran into normal society and how that doesn't go well at all. And, and it's obviously a, it's a hyperbolic example of that. But I see a little bit of that here too.
And I wondered what his experience must have been like coming back from the war. Because this game is all about creating disorder and chaos. And then that. Sets the stage for new expectations, like the expectation that the Jackson character had for this budding romance that does not get met at all.
And then when order is restored when the game is over, those expectations are very fragile, if not outright dashed. And I just wondered if his war experiences, if what he's wrestling with here are, is whether or not the ghosts should stay buried and how hard that would be
Maybe a behavior. I think that is a very
Jess: convincing argument.
Ryan: Thank you.
Jess: I don't know. But , I'm [00:41:00] not reading this in the mind of someone who is reading it in 1929, I think. Right, right. So I think that's gonna be the biggest divider is I'm not going into this being like
Ryan: Fuse and I'm also sort of World Wars, you know, I'm also sort of trying to find some deeper meanings to what on the surface is a fairly story, which is fair.
Jess: It's a fairly simple story and maybe, maybe
Ryan: they're not there.
Damien: I don't know. It is, it is a fairly simple effective story, but fairly simple. Yeah. And so\ I didn't see it through that lens. I think you going a little bit deeper into the author helps to materialize a lot of those themes with what it seems that Jess and I were reading to be just, you know, a couple columns in a weekly reader and where someone reads it and goes, oh, that's a cool, fun story.
It was fun. Stick with it for a little while and then hangs it. But when you mention this, it, you know, I start to cycle through and I just think of the nature of the game itself when you're talking about disorder, right? How many games, like when you think about hide and seek, [00:42:00] it's mm-hmm. Someone hides or one person seeks out everyone else who's hiding.
Mm-hmm. And in this game, one person hides and if you find them, you lose you, you lose. And you, the last person join that person, the last person who's there wins. But they say, I think the last person is the loser rejection. Right? That's the
Ryan: object is to be part of the sme.
Damien: Right. It's, but it's, which is a little chaotic.
It's a little in reverse. It's like a reverse blob. Yeah, exactly. So I, some of those elements were really sort of interesting and when you bring up this added stuff and we're, you know, having active conversation about it I'm now thinking back on it going like this, maybe there is that deeper meaning.
Maybe I did just take it at the surface. I'm
Ryan: just aware that. Every time a writer puts pen to paper, right. They're bringing a part of themself out. They're bringing their whole experience to the page, whether it comes out in, in, in a conscious way or in a subconscious way. And it seems at least from the war is war memoir, that he was [00:43:00] profoundly affected by his experience.
Yeah. Right. And how could you not be? Right, of course. How could you not be? And then he writes these ghost stories. And the other ones, as I mentioned, and a lot of the other ones, a soldier, a dead soldier is the ghost. And sometimes the dead soldier ghost is there to help the protagonist. Right.
And sometimes they're there to harm the protagonist. So I just, if this stuff isn't there, if it really isn't there, that's fine too. And then this is just a simple, fun Christmas Eve ghost story. And that can be okay.
Damien: I mean, well, you know, I, maybe it's a testament to the quality of the story itself, that it obviously has those layers that you either notice or you don.
And I think with appropriate context, you could uncover them with multiple readings with going in from a different perspective. But it is interesting to find a tale that is short.
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Damien: Complete entertaining, but also can be so multifaceted that you don't even realize it. It's sort of cuts like a razor's edge.
And I think that's kind of interesting and it's [00:44:00] conversations like this that help to bring that to the surface. Yeah. For me individually.
Ryan: So let's talk about that door to the stairwell. What the heck
Damien: it has to be? I'm like, the only time that this occurs is when it's a door to a basement. Right?
So you think it's a bedroom door, you jump in. But there was something I, maybe I'm misremembering, but I thought it was on like a second tier of the house.
Jess: Yeah. So some houses, and you see it some out here, but also just kind of people I know who have big old houses, you'll sometimes have a servant's back, like a back staircase.
A back
Ryan: staircase, and you're just
Jess: hiding it. So there's a door in front of a staircase so that people don't basically know it exists. And then your, you know, servants can come up and bring you wine. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And they usually will go down to the back kitchen through like the back of the house. And so, so these
Ryan: houses come with these employees already, or
Jess: I imagine that, like, do you have
Ryan: one.
Jess: No, my house has no hidden staircase of the sale. No one,
Ryan: no one brings you wine if you want it.
Jess: Well, I think Josh probably [00:45:00] would if I asked. Really nice, but maybe not the same circumstances. So yeah it's a staircase that literally is, if you take one step in the wrong, you're wrong direction, you're in, you could tumble down the stairs because there's not like a window in there or anything.
It's just dark. What
Damien: you're seeing is that this is not only a boundary between classes, right, because it's the servant stairwell. It's the aha. Another boundary bridge gateway to the servant quarters. But by crossing that boundary ensures certain doom.
Ryan: It's not a surprise that Jess found the boundary related to class.
Damien: I also have just been in a couple of, no, look at this MF door, look at this door.
Jess: I've also just been in some of these houses where, you know, it's like the house is so big that it needs Yeah, this staircase too. Otherwise you have to, you know, like wind all the way from the kitchen that might be at the back of the house all the way to the main staircase and up and then [00:46:00] out to other bedrooms.
So there's staircases, but you also don't wanna look at them because then you have to Yeah, I
Damien: see what you're saying.
Ryan: The hardships that people with houses with wings must endure. Yes,
Jess: you get it.
Ryan: My winged
Damien: house, a memoir.
Jess: Well, and if they're hauling like laundry and stuff, so they're hauling.
Your dirty clothes to where they would wash them. Oh. You know, like you don't Oh, that's what shoots
Damien: and dumb waiters are for you, peasants.
Jess: Yeah. But you don't, don't wanna see it. You want it to get out of there as discreetly as possible.
Damien: It's actually very interesting talking about this like colonial architecture.
I think it's pretty funny, although there weren't a lot of colonies in Britain, but who knows.
Ryan: So before we leave the story entirely, what'd you think of the writing? How was it here?
Jess: I think to me, the writing is what made it the most Christmasy, other than it being set on Christmas, because the first time I read it I was just like, well, what are we gonna talk about?
You know, like[00:47:00]
there just maybe wasn't quite as much meat on them bones as I thought there was gonna be. But then I listened to a couple different audio book versions of it and like the YouTube, you know, people who read books on YouTube and it's lovely. And you definitely get the sense of this was not written to be read in a magazine.
It was written to be read out loud from the magazine to your friends and family and you know, or as like a
Ryan: radio play or something. Yeah. Yeah. It's in the December issue, so is fitting.
Jess: Yes. So it's definitely not one that you just read and put the magazine away. You are narrating it, you are doing voices.
You are doing the, and it was 10 years ago tonight. Right. You know how, and that's not an ending that's meant to be read. You are reading it out loud. Mm-hmm. To your spooked audience. Forming. Yeah. Yeah. Right, right. Of 12-year-old kids with your,
Damien: with your mold cider in hands. Yes. Yeah. So that, so that's a really good call.
That's a really good call. Yeah.
Jess: The po the time of the publication, the, you know, that it's set in [00:48:00] Christmas and then how it's written where we have this cast of characters, but there's thir 12 or 13 of them and we only know four people's names. Like the rest are just there to be extra bodies, you know, like we don't care about it.
Doesn matter, we're titles.
Damien: Remember there is the captain, who's the captain, I dunno, but the captain is there.
Jess: Yeah. It's just, I think this will be much more rewarding if you listen to it than if you just read it with your own eyes. Interesting.
Ryan: I, I thought the writing was fine. It wasn't particularly stunning in any one way.
As Jess mentioned, I thought the pacing was really good. It's a tight story. It doesn't, but it doesn't drag. The one thing I thought that was unnecessary, and I want to get your opinion on this, I thought the frame narrative was unnecessary for the story.
Jess: I thought it was confusing.
For being a simple story.
Yeah. 'cause he's like, no, I don't wanna play hide and seek because one time I played SME and here's how you played sme. And here's the one time I played Smee and it [00:49:00] was very scary. It also, the frame kind of gives away the ending. It totally does. Right? In a way that's
Not as fun as it could have been if it just was like less spelled out.
Damien: This wasn't a story that was meant to be twisty. That's No, that's for sure. It was very much,
Jess: it's a Christmas ghost story. You, you're gonna get that. There's a ghost at,
Damien: I actually thought it was hilarious. Intentionally or unintentionally, I don't know. But when they're like, oh my God, did you, you know, basically you saw a girl died.
Were you there for that? Did you witness this? He's like, oh, no, no, no, no. This was a story that was told to me, but that night that it was told to me, here's something else that happened. Yeah. I just thought that was like, so like it reminded me of Wayne's World where they do the fan. No, not yet. We're still here.
We Right. It was a joke almost. Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was, I thought it was sort of silly, like not corny, but definitely just a silly element. I mean, was it necessary? No. Was it expected? Yeah. Yeah. When reading the stories from the twenties and thirties and stuff, it's just like that's, that [00:50:00] was a, that was the prevailing device.
Like people love to do this and you needed something that up, and it's totally different than what the actual main construct of the story is. And
Jess: you need an excuse for retelling it. Like why are you reading it out loud? Oh, because it's a story that's being told out loud.
Damien: I just picture him like sitting in a chair and everyone's like, let's play hide and seek.
And he's like, he freaks the chair around you and he's holding Brandy sniffer. And he is like, I won't be playing hide and seek tonight. Hide and seek. Why not you fuddy duddy. And he's like, I shall tell you a tale of games. You know? And then it just kind, kind of launches into it. So. Whatever. It didn't bother me and I wasn't surprised by it.
I wasn't turned off by it, but I think you're right. It definitely did spoil the end, but story, so I wasn't expecting twists.
Ryan: The thing about the writing that en encourages me to read some other bird ghost stories is I thought when he was writing in the creepy mode, he did very well, and this was a quote that I really enjoyed.
This is from the creepiest part of the [00:51:00] story, or what I think is supposed to be the creepiest part of the story. It came upon me just as quickly as I've uttered the words. My flesh suddenly shrank from her. As you see a strip of gelatin shrink and wither before the heat of a fire. That feeling of something being wrong had come back to me, but multiplied to an extent, which turned foreboding into actual terror.
I firmly believe that I should have got up and run if I had not felt that at my first movement. She would have divined my intention and compelled me to stay by some means of which I could not bear. To think. The memory of having touched her bare arm made me wince and draw in my lips. I prayed that somebody else would come along soon, stop drawing.
They're all drawing in their lips. You can't see this on radio, but for people who are watching, it made me feel like this. I just, I thought that was good. Creepy writing, and that [00:52:00] was another Burge ghost story.
Damien: Yeah. The, the, that's my point. The will, the Willy Factor was strong, I think, in this story. Yeah. A terrifying, no, I mean, you're gonna ask us how scary it was, I'm sure.
But it, you know, it's like the Willy Factor was good. Right, right. And, and it was wholesome. You could tell the story to anybody.
Ryan: Yes, you can.
Jess: Yeah. It's, it's a family story.
Ryan: Yeah. Totally. Well, speaking of Christmas stories, I want to end on a thematic note, and my last question for you tonight is, what is the most memorable holiday gift you've either given?
Received or witnessed.
Jess: Whoa. I
Damien: got one that's memorable For all the wrong reasons. 'cause you look best sometimes we do not. We do not have, you know, we do not pre-game these shows by like sharing the questions. Ryan hits us with these questions and is like, Hey, think back on your entire life friends and give us your, but one does jump out.
It's not the most memorable for the right reasons. And I'll tell you why. when I was young, I was probably like six or seven years old and all I wanted was a dog. I mean, this is not like [00:53:00] unique, right? All kids want some sort of pet or some sort of responsibility at some point in their life.
Great. Cool. Fine. I grew up with cats. My mom was always like digging on cats. Okay, fine. I wanted a dog. I wanted a dog for my own. And I was good all year. And I asked Santa for a dog. And I wake up Christmas morning and next to my bed, on my bedside table is a box. And I open up the box and inside is a stuffed dog and I later named him Buster, kind of a chocolate lab looking stuffed dog.
Okay, next to Buster, inside the box was a note. I open up the note and it says, Damien, I hope you enjoy this stuffed dog this year. Maybe next year. If you're good enough, you'll get a real one. Love Santa. Oh no. I still think about that to this day, how brutal my parents must have [00:54:00] been to just leave that note and I later confronted, I mean years later obviously.
I was like, mom, I gotta tell you I'm thinking about this and I can't believe that you did that. She's like, I don't think it was a proper decision. I thought it was a good idea at the time, looking back on it, I don't know what I was thinking. I was like, this is literally Christmas trauma in the form of a gift.
It was also like dog
Jess: the he is like, parenting was a little hit or miss, just generally. Yeah, it
Damien: was a little hit or bit, no doubt, but just the line. Maybe if you're good enough next year, year, if you're good enough, you'll get a real one like dagger milk, bone to the heart. Just, oh man, pull it out.
That's a rough one. So that, that is probably the most standout gift for all the wrong reasons, but to this day, you know, decades later, that's a good memory for radio right there decades later. Tough one. Ryan, do you have one in mind if Jess like, yeah, Jess is still taken.
Ryan: There was one year where one of my brothers was super into collecting pens and it was a [00:55:00] strange collection for me.
It was not something I understood, but he liked collecting fancy pens and so one year at Christmas he opened up the pen that he received that year, and it was in a box, a small white box, and it said NASA on it, and it was the space pen.
Jess: Wow. Wow, wow, wow. It could write upside down and underwater.
Ryan: It could write upside down underwater.
Zero G, no problem. The whole thing. And it tells the story of the space pen on the inside of the box, and he's reading it. It, it goes into all of this about all the different circumstances. It could write correctly in, and, the time and the expense it took to research this.
And I, I don't know whether this was actually in the description or not or something that like my dad or my uncle might've said afterwards. But the next thing I remember was that somebody said, you know, the Russian space program faced the same issue and issued pencils.
Jess: Yes. Yeah, yeah. That's, that's the context in which I, the [00:56:00] space is that line.
Ryan: So it must be in the box or something on the story that it says that It's so funny
Jess: because yeah, it can write in, you know, 200 degrees below zero and if it's raining or if it's dark out, it's just like, alright,
Ryan: you know, meanwhile, Boris has got his number two behind his ear. No problems here.
Jess: It's pretty funny.
Ryan: That is
Damien: pretty funny
Jess: for our family. When I was a wee little kid, we would do cousin Christmas, like on Christmas Eve, usually at either our place or by grandma who lived next door, or my cousins who lived next door to my grandma. We lived kind of on a little compound and you would get your, you know, family cousin gifts.
Mm-hmm. And then the next morning we would do immediate family Christmas, open the stuff from Santa and my brother and I, when we were little, we could wake up as early as we wanted and go downstairs and inspect the presents. But you couldn't open them until mom and dad woke up and you couldn't wake [00:57:00] up mom and dad.
And so, because we were very little and very excited, we would wake up at 4:00 AM Sure. Sure. And then just go and sit in front of the tree and wait for our parents to get up. At a normal time, but during those like couple hours before anyone woke up, we would play with the toys we had gotten at the cousin Christmas.
Damien: Nice.
Jess: And I remember there was one year where one of us I don't even, it doesn't matter who got it, had gotten a Monopoly game and so I'm probably, I'll keep
Damien: you busy for a few hours,
Jess: right? Like I'm probably. Eight.
Damien: Jess is still playing to this day, and so
Jess: my brother is, you know, three years younger and we're just trying to play Monopoly by Christmas tree light and it's just like a very nice little memory of
Damien: that is a cute compartmentalized memory of
Jess: trying to keep ourselves entertained while also being incredibly impatient.
Damien: That is, that's like a core memory on lock. I think that's cool. I can picture it too, like the soft [00:58:00] lights of the tree. You sit there, there's like lots of wrap presents and you're just salivating 8-year-old and a
Ryan: 5-year-old trying to understand Monopoly. The mortgages,
Jess: right? Like we don't understand what we're doing.
We're playing on the base, like the tree was in the basement and it was like thick shag carpet. Nice. So the monopoly board is also like at a tilt because it's on this like thick carpet
Damien: there. There's no stability. No. You're moving around and everything is like creeping. That's too funny.
Jess: But yeah, this is our first, that's good one, Jess.
I can picture that too. Our first year with the baby, and so we're also just like looking forward to, you're gonna have a whole
Ryan: host of new memories now, little baby
Jess: stuff, and trying to find like the mix of what's his first Christmas, so I have to find the perfect gifts and also his favorite, or you could just
Ryan: leave him a note that says the perfect gift will come next to you.
Yeah. If, if
Damien: you're good enough. A better baby. If you're better. If you're a better baby Christmas too. Yeah, that's, oh yeah. That's really funny. It's really funny I don't know about [00:59:00] you Ryan, but for my kids', first Christmas I was just like, first Christmas, they won't remember any of this. I could totally just phone it in, so it is not, nothing's gonna be perfect.
Yeah. Yeah. It's
Jess: just gonna be his favorite thing is like a washcloth. Right? Nice. Like it does, it doesn't really matter that I've put thought into. Anything. So a lot of the gifts are like four us. My two kids were born
Ryan: in the fall, so their first Christmas, they were still very little baby. Baby babies.
Yeah. Nice. Yeah.
Damien: Yeah. It's like, oh, here are the boxes of the things that we got each other. Right. Enjoy baby.
Ryan: So back to the story briefly before we wrap up. Did it Christmas? How many trees?
Damien: Boy of 10 trees? No, I guess we're going back to finger trees. The bells were the caron, right? So if we're going five fingers, five trees, I'm gonna give it one and a half trees,
Ryan: one tree and a stump,
Damien: one tree and a stump.
It just, I mean we discussed this right off the bat, it mentioned Christmas. Yep. It had some Christmas undertones to Jess's point, it read like a [01:00:00] radio play that should be shared by the fire, and that gives sort of Christmas, but that's subtext relies on the reader or that goes beyond the text and relies on the reader.
So for me, one and a half trees. I think
Ryan: I'm gonna take away the stump. I'm gonna say just one tree out of five. Yeah, it just says it's Christmas.
Jess: I'm gonna say three Christmases out of five. You read a different story.
Damien: Where do you Christmas madam?
Jess: If I'm reading this in my Christmas themed magazine out loud to my, you know, little cherub children in front of the fire and I've had a bunch of brandy or whatever.
This is
Damien: a lot of context for this. There was a brandy and soda that was drank during this. You
Jess: cannot have a whole half. This episode was about the context of knowing this guy's war, horror stories and so to say that's true.
Ryan: The context of this, I would track that statement.
Jess: Being in a Christmas magazine is too much.
I think the context of it being in a Christmas magazine is probably important for its Christmases. Thank you. Can
Damien: you take your three trees and enjoy your [01:01:00] more oxygen than me and my one and a half? And Ryan with his stump list one.
Jess: I will, I'm having a great, I'm gonna read this out loud tonight.
Damien: You should, you won't,
Ryan: I will not read
Damien: it to the pickles in your purse.
Know what I mean?
Ryan: What about the scare? Did the scare hold up?
Damien: W Willie Factor High Scare. Yeah, you said that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm gonna, I'll say it wasn't very scary.
Ryan: I didn't differentiate. I said I thought it was creepy.
Jess: Yeah, creepy vibes. Good
Ryan: writing about the creepy
Jess: bits.
Ryan: You know what it really reminded me of, it really reminded me of an old fashioned version of one of those scary stories to tell in the dark.
Damien: Yeah, sure. I could see that with
Ryan: like an italicized ending.
Damien: It's softer. I mean, in those stories, the art was more terrifying than the stories themselves sometimes. I mean, I remember the white wolf and that was very gory, but then there were other ones that were just like horrific discoveries.
And so the art magnified, the scariness I'll give you that.
Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. Alright, that's gonna take us to our whiskey rating. This is how we rate our stories here on whiskey and the weird from Zero Fingers of [01:02:00] Whiskey to five fingers of the coveted full fist of whiskey. Jess, how many fingers of whiskey are you giving sme?
Jess: I'm giving it a three. I think I've gone a little back and forth on this. If I was just reading it as a story today and had no context that it was published around Christmas, I would give it a lower score. If I'm reading it with the enjoyment that I should be reading it out loud at Christmas, then I think it bumps it way up.
So we're gonna go somewhere in the middle with a three. Okay.
Damien: D? Yeah. I'm gonna go three and a half. To me, the Christmas relevance wasn't that big. I'm just going off the story alone. So, standalone it. Mm-hmm. Fun, fast you know, adept writing. The characters were sort of inconsequential. 'cause this is more a almost a morality story it seems, but, or not morality, I guess that's more religious.
But, it is like a rounded tail in a tight timeframe. You said, you know, type it, it didn't drag on, I think type, but it didn't like leave things unaddressed. Mm-hmm. You know, [01:03:00] it, it, it told a complete story. And so because of that, it was enjoyable. I mean, I did read it a few times 'cause I, had to put it to power, had to rhyme it out.
Had to rhyme it out. And I didn't feel like I was bored reading it after multiple times. So, yeah. I'll give it three and a half. What about you, Ry?
Ryan: I'm gonna do kind of the opposite thing that Jess did. 'cause I, I went back and forth too. I think if I'm reading this as a Christmas story, I'm gonna give it a lower score.
Yeah, I would agree. But if I'm reading it just as a ghost story, I'm gonna give it a three and a half. One thing we didn't talk about was, and what I, my, the note that I made here was that, is it perhaps a bit over hyped? It's in every anthology ever for sure. For Chris, for Christmas stories and even just regular ghost stories.
It's anthologized out the wazoo. I was surprised. So when I see that some,
Jess: we hadn't read it yet, honestly. Yeah.
Ryan: When I see that it's like, oh, this must be a banger. Everybody publishes this one. That's true. And it's like,
Jess: it just says Christmas Eve in the first paragraph, so, right.
Damien: Also just that over hippiness, it's just [01:04:00] like, yeah.
By the time you actually read it, you probably had skyhigh expectations.
Ryan: Yeah.
Damien: All good. Good. Three and a half. Three and a half. I'm with you. Three and a
Ryan: half. It's a good, it's a good Christmas story. Or a good story to read at Christmas. I don't know if it's a good Christmas story, but Yeah, sure. Uh, that's gonna take us to our, if this then that.
If you really liked SMI and want. Another piece of media that might tickle your same fancy.
Jess: There is a movie that came out in 2018 called Head Count. It was directed by L Callahan. And if you liked the bits of this story where they're just like, 1, 2, 3, hold on, we got an extra person here. Yeah. Like, oh no, I don't think we do.
This is a movie that is kind of set in a loose group of college friends who are, you know, they've rented a house in the desert for like hiking and partying and spring break, but they kind of inadvertently summons something and it gives the rest of their vacation the feeling that there's one extra person.[01:05:00]
And so they'll be having a conversation with one person in the kitchen and walk out into that living room or the living room. And that person is also in the living room. But because they're college students, they're also drinking and partying. And so a lot of it can kind of get blamed on that and it's a good story and the, or the vibes are really good.
It's a more fun movie than I'm maybe making it sound like
Damien: I love the concept,
Jess: but it's enjoyable and it really echoes I think, kind of the best parts of this story with the uncertainty, the creepiness and then it obviously, because it's a horror movie, escalates significantly more than this short story and the end is worth it too.
So that is called head count and it's count one of those movies that just kinda pops up on streaming, different streaming services all the time. And I watch it all the time. I really like it.
Damien: Really? 2018, I guess that's enough time for it to be like on a tubie or something. Yeah. Like yeah,
Jess: this is [01:06:00] like a nice tier of Tuby movie, you know, like's not
Damien: a nice tuby tier.
Yeah. That's funny. You know what that reminds me of? You giving that synopsis of that movie is. yeah, I do watch Rick and Morty and well, I did. And uh, there was one episode where it was like there was this alien parasite that basically infected everyone and made them think that they knew somebody in the room, that they had always been there and it was actually like a brand new character, but still like, implanted an entire lifetime of memory.
So they're like, wait a minute, something's weird, but nobody can put their finger on it. Right. Yeah, it's fine.
Jess: It's that, that feeling for sure of I feel like something is off, but nothing is visibly wrong, so it must be fine. We'll just keep going.
Damien: Yeah, that sounds cool. I'm gonna, I'm gonna check it out.
Ryan: Headcount, headcount coming your way. Coming to tubing near you. Well that's gonna do it for this very special Christmas episode of Whiskey and the Weird, thank you so much for joining us and if you enjoyed this Christmas episode, if. Would you mind dropping us a rating or a review or [01:07:00] perhaps share the episode on your social media?
That would do us a huge favor, help spread the word about this podcast that we enjoy bringing to you and we hope that you enjoy listening to. We always wanna thank Dr. Blake Brandis for providing the music for whiskey and the weird, and Damien, if they want to tell us about the puppy they didn't get, where can they do that?
Damien: Oh, sorry. Let me just dry my eyes out. Now you can find us on the socials at whiskey in the Weird, at whiskey, in the weird, on all the meta properties. So we're on Instagram, we are on Facebook, we are on threads, and we are on Blue sky. If you're flying through the blue sky, find us out. Whiskey in the Weird, we spell our whiskeys with any, we hope you do too.
If not, I eventually got a dog. I'm happy to send you pictures. If you follow us on the socials, so I do have a dog now. Christmas to you. Take that Santa from
Ryan: decades ago. Well, I think by the time this airs on Christmas, we will be at the end of season eight. And Jess, are we ready [01:08:00] to drop a teaser for what season nine's gonna be about?
We are ready for
Jess: roads of destiny and other tales of alternative histories and parallel realms. So it is really a heck of a title and it is a collection that includes other worlds like paths converging, alternate histories. It's kind of a mixed bag of stories and I think we will hopefully. Have a good time figuring out why they're all connected, why they're all in this collection together.
Ryan: I'm excited already. Sounds so fun. If you're
Damien: not a sci-fi fan or you have a sci-fi nerd buddy, you better let 'em know about our next season, because that sounds like it's jumping boundaries.
Ryan: I'm calling it now. I will at some point make the, if this, then that the Live Action Heman movie
Damien: with the trans dimensional key.
Yeah. Nice word. Absolutely. Yeah. Of
Jess: course, of course. Wow. Well, of course that's how
Damien: we're ending this. This is great.
Jess: Heman, huh? [01:09:00]
Damien: I'm Ryan Whitley.
Jess: I am Jessica Berg
Damien: and I am Heman Damien Smith.
Ryan: Together we're whiskey in the weird, happy Holidays. Merry Christmas everybody. Somebody send us home.
Damien: As always, keep your friends through the ages and your creeps in the pages. Bye-bye everybody.