Sppoky season is nigh at its end, so Jess, Ryan and Damien are here to hack and slash another contemporary piece of short fiction: Lost in the Dark by pod fave John Langan! What's the worst way you can describe a whiskey? Are cement mines real? How you pronounce the year 2001? These baffling conundra and other inane observations in our very bonusy episode of Whiskey and the Weird!
Bar Talk (our recommendations):
Jessica is watching Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor (2023; dir. Stephen Cognetti); drinking Sloop Brewing Oktoberfest.
Damien is watching Bring Her Back (2025; dir. Phillipou Brothers); drinking a Painkiller with Pussers Rum (orange, pineapple, cream of coconut, nutmeg).
Ryan is reading "Lot No. 249" by Arthur Conan Doyle; drinking the Bowmore 15.
If you liked this week’s story, read Night Film by Marisha Pessl.
Special thank you to Dr Blake Brandes for our Whiskey and the Weird music!
Like, rate, and follow! Check us out @whiskeyandtheweird on Instagram, Threads & Facebook, and at whiskeyandtheweird.com
Ryan: [00:00:00] I would love to be the person that writes the whiskey descriptions sometime. I think that could be fun. .
Damien: I just feel like it's a bunch of whatever drunks that are sitting there and they hand each other. They've got like one of those wheels, eight words and they're like, you gotta do the thing.
Jess: Here you go. Green grass.
Coconut wet dog
Damien: tastes like upside down wicker basket. I'm catching notes of when you drop a nickel into toothpaste water.
Ryan: Welcome back everybody to Whiskey and the weird, the podcast that for the past eight or so seasons has brought you scintillating episodes, exploring the British library's tales of the weird. But for the last three Halloweens, we've done something scarily different.
Damien: What have we done?
Ryan: We've ventured into the realm of the modern did and picked some contemporary stories to bring you for our Halloween [00:01:00] special.
And we've done four or five of these Halloween specials now, but this is the third one that we've done where we've picked a modern story and we're gonna have a lot of fun with that tonight. Jess what story are we reading tonight?
Jess: Let's read John LAN's Lost in the Dark from John LAN's collection.
Lost in the dark.
Ryan: Ooh. Do we have time for all that?
I'm excited to talk about this. I enjoy this story and I'm gonna enjoy this Halloween episode with you guys. Happy Halloween, by the way, and happy Halloween you to all of our listeners as well. Well, before we dive into that, let's do some bar talk.
Damien: Damien, what are you drinking tonight? Oh, geez, y'all, I decided that it's getting chilly.
The leaves are turning, We have peeps showing up to do the leaf peeping tradition LEAFers in England. LEAFers. Yeah. And so I wanted to pretend I was back in the tropics and so I got an actual bottle of puss rum. Hey, a navy strength rum. That is a puss rum original recipe, allegedly for the [00:02:00] painkiller.
There's a lot of pain in this story tonight, so let's kill some, shall we? A painkiller is. Fresh orange juice, fresh pineapple juice, cream of coconut and pusser rum shaken over ice. And you may know it with it because of its gentle sprinkling of nutmeg on top. So that is a painkiller.
It's what I drink every time I go to the Caribbean. It's like a sure, if I'm sitting in a Caribbean resort every time I have to order a painkiller, it's simply scrumptious with the
Ryan: gentle sprinkling of nutmeg,
Damien: with a gentle spring with just a dash of nutmeg alleged. Also, another thing, if you happen to be a fan of painkillers, I was advised by a proper tiki bartender that you're not supposed to mix the nutmeg in the drink.
It's actually more for the scent of nutmeg while you're taking a sip than it is to blend with the rest of the the beverage. Well, it
Ryan: just sits on the
Damien: froth on the top. Yeah. You let it sit. Yeah, you let it froth, bathe. , And that's how you're supposed to drink your painkillers. So I have a proper pusser rum painkiller tonight.
Delicious. Yeah. You know what it is [00:03:00] as far as what I read or watched. I actually just watched Bring her back. Bring her back.
Ryan: Loved it.
Damien: Recent. Yeah. A good horror movie. Good, good, good Horror movie. 2025 directed by Michael Philipp. And Danny Philipp, also known as the Philippi Jew. Excellent. Didn't know what to expect. Knew the cover art, saw it pop up and do you wanna stream me now yet?
And I always wanted to heard good things about it, but fortunately stayed out of any sort of preview or review hype. So I went in fairly blind and I am so glad, much better, enjoyed not knowing too much about it. For that, I will keep it as vague as possible. And just let you know that this is rife with possession Rife.
It's rife with body horror. Oh yeah. Some. Some brutal, brutal body horror. And it's rife with everyone's favorite. Paddington's Mom, actress Sally Hawkins [00:04:00] in Treasure. In a completely different role, in a completely different role. That's about same role, I'm gonna say the crossover
Jess: event
Damien: about bring her back.
But I would also suggest that you pay attention to this film when you watch it. Don't have it on in the background. Give it a watch. There were things that I was thinking and there were moments in this film that I was thinking about afterwards, oh, mm-hmm. Oh, mm-hmm. And it had me doing that a lot, and I love that about it.
It's one of those movies that once you're done, you're like, that was really good. And then an hour later you're like, that was really good. And then the next day you're thinking that was an incredible film. Yes. I wanna watch it again. So again, that's, can I, can I just say,
Ryan: One of the things I loved about it was the precision with which the cinematography was done the way in which a shot would linger way too long.
Just a second longer than you needed it to. Yeah. But it was perfect. It was just
Damien: a perfect way to do it. You'll know that feeling when you when you like, scrape your teeth on a Popsicle stick, and you're just like, ah, God. When you think about it, that is 90% of [00:05:00] this film. So just set, settle in for really dreadful, horrific hicky feeling movie.
But that actually is surprisingly emotionally stirring. So, that's absolutely the truth. Yeah. Again, that's bring her back by the Philip who two. What about you Jess? What's up?
Jess: Well, Wegmans saved me from myself this week because I went to go buy some pumpkin beer. 'cause they usually have it despite just like never finding one that I like.
They have, they always have it in their like case of, make your own little six pack or they had no pumpkin beer. And I was like, I don't actually ever like it, so I don't want to buy a full six pack of one kind and then suffer through six cans of it.
Damien: Fair enough.
Jess: But I did get an October Fest to still be thematic.
This is of course by Sloop. What a label.
Damien: What a label that looks like if a kid had to draw his parent drinking a beer, that would be the [00:06:00] beer kid
Jess: I guess.
Damien: And print on their ink jet.
Jess: I was also
Damien: Matrix printer.
Jess: Picking this out of the, make your own six pack cooler at Definitely at 9:30 AM the other day.
And there was a,
Damien: a mom, you're like, you're like, no, you don't understand. I have a podcast.
Jess: Well, but there was a mom and her like 4-year-old son walking by and then the little boy said, mom, look, it's your favorite. And ran over and padded the beer and she was very embarrassed and it was very funny. And it made me feel a lot better.
She shouldn't
Ryan: have been embarrassed. You were there too. Yep. That's cute.
Jess: We were all bonding over our terrible decisions.
Ryan: Same
Damien: girl. Same.
Jess: Anyway, this is really good actually, despite looking kind of goofy and whatever. So
Damien: What's the brewery?
Jess: Sloop Brewing?
Damien: No, you've, you've drank some, you've drank
Jess: a few.
Yeah. It's a New York brewery. Yeah, it's like down by the city, I think. The label's just a big sticker, so I think they can do it very cheaply. But it's good. It's like fall toasty. Yum. Yum. Yum.
[00:07:00] Okay.
And then I have been watching my favorite Halloween series, which is of course, the hell house LLC
Damien: Oh boy.
Here we go. Quad,
Jess: quadruple. And there's a new one that I don't think I've talked about, but I just rewatched, and it's called, of course, hill House, LLC, origins, the Carmichael Manor, and it is the same director as all of the other, so is
Ryan: it worth going through just because I've seen the first two.
Yes. I haven't seen the third one or this fourth one.
Jess: Okay. This fourth one is better than the second one. The
Ryan: second one has some good creeps in it.
Jess: It's about as good as the third one. This one is like an unrelated house, of course, that some other family used to live in, and you find out how they're tied together.
But it has some of these like same goofy things where it's they're recording themselves and so there's just like lots of like bloody murdered women just like standing in the doorway. But there's one scene where one of the characters is doing a Zoom call and she's [00:08:00] like a realtor and she's trying to show pictures of this house, like a different house to her boss.
But as she's showing the pictures, it's the house that she's in and it's someone taking a picture going up the stairs and walking to the room that she's in. Mm-hmm. So every, and it's it's goofy. It's not done particularly well, but it was just like, ah, that's a smart little like scare for a movie that cost $5.
Damien: You gush about these films. And because of that, the first one is Gush
Ryan: Amazing.
Damien: I watched the first one and I was like, okay, it's fine. But I literally walked away going, it's fine. I'm shocked.
Ryan: I, the first one was terrifying. I thought,
Jess: yeah, I like them. I think it's just you got $6 and you have to do something creative.
They do the $6 worth of creativity. Well.
Damien: Yeah. And turned it into a multi-thousand dollar franchise here. So congratulations. Good for them.
Jess: Yeah. Great work. And now they got money to pretend
Damien: stacks on stacks.
Jess: Yeah. Now they have money to pretend to do a Zoom call. Like that's the, that's the big budget [00:09:00] effect in this one.
Anyway, it's great. Hell house LLC Origins. The Carmichael Manor is also a really funny Colin son
Damien: of Carmichael Colon.
Jess: Really funny title.
Damien: Hashtag jaws of tag.
Jess: Brian, what are you drinking?
Ryan: Well, thank you for asking Jess.
Jess: You are welcome.
Ryan: For a Halloween special, I thought I'd have a special drink myself, and I'm drinking some whiskey from my favorite distillery, but I'm going with the 15-year-old Bour this evening, getting a little fancy on us.
Jess: Oh, this is a, about less,
Ryan: a deep rich, beautifully golden red colored whiskey.
That is nice. It's got notes of toasted chocolate in there. And the label says something about raisins, but I haven't really tasted raisins yet. Toast.
Damien: Chocolate. You shut up. Nobody toasts chocolate.
Jess: Raisin's an unappealing fruit. You're not making this sound very great.
Ryan: This is a delicious.
Jess: What else you got? It's got, dump that out, get something else.
Damien: It's got prune undertones with a liver and fava beans, [00:10:00]
Jess: broccoli, waft.
Ryan: Listen, you guys don't have to like it more for me. I love the bour.
Damien: It's got a mustard cocoa.
Ryan: I would love to be the person that writes the whiskey descriptions sometime. I think that could be fun. .
Damien: I just feel like it's a bunch of whatever drunks that are sitting there and they hand each other. They've got like one of those wheels, eight words and they're like, you gotta do the thing.
Jess: Here you go. Green grass.
Damien: Yeah,
Jess: coconut wet dog
Damien: tastes like upside down wicker basket. I'm catching notes of when you drop a nickel into toothpaste water.
Jess: So, okay. When we make it big and we get our advertising deals for this podcast, I think our first merch should just be w whiskey, just a whiskey that we make.
And then we can write our own description, we
Ryan: can write our own description,
Damien: and it should all be like so incredibly vastly different that someone would be like, who's right?
Jess: Jessica says, this one tastes like batteries. [00:11:00] Jessica,
Ryan: if you do that, can you get the people that did the beer label that you're drinking?
Can they, can they get on the line? This, this
Jess: peels right off. I can just stick it on the,
Damien: on the whiskey. The name of it will be, we spell our whiskey with an E.
Ryan: Yeah, there you go. As for what I've been reading I've been getting in the Halloween mood. I've been reading a lot of really great short stories.
And one of the, one of the Halloween monsters that I think is underserved in literature is the Mummy. I'm always on the hunt for good mummy stories, and I went back to one of the original ones that I hadn't read before, which is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's lot number 249. Great lot. This is a great a great mummy story about a couple of kids in college.
And one of them acquires a mummy from one of these like auction things.
Jess: Of course.
Ryan: As one
Jess: does and
Ryan: does nefarious things with it or causes The mummy I guess I should say, causes the Mummy to do nefarious things. It's a creepy story. I do think that the ending is a bit neat and tidy.
Maybe that's just the way [00:12:00] Doyle liked to end his stories, but it could have ended in a different way. That may have been more impactful. But all that said, it's a classic Mummy story. It's about 40 or 50 pages long, so it's on par for with our story for tonight. Nice. That's gonna take us to our author and publication info for tonight.
Let's talk about John Langan. John Langan was born on July the sixth, 1969, and in some great news for him. He's not yet died.
Damien: Hey. Gives
Ryan: him a leg up on most of our other authors. I really hope you're
Damien: listening.
Ryan: I do too. Yeah. Gives him a leg up on most of our other authors. 2, 2, 2 legs. Really. Moving on.
Educated at SUNY and the graduate center of the City, university of New York. Lang holds both a master of the arts and a master of philosophy degree, which means he's more educated than most of us are. For almost 20 years, Lang taught creative writing and gothic fiction at suny. And he currently teaches, if I'm not mistaken, at a [00:13:00] private arts school.
He is a winner of the Bram Stoker Award for best novel for the fishermen, which I know all three of us have read.
Damien: Mm-hmm. Loved it.
Ryan: And in 2 0 0 8 he was nominated for a Stoker for Best collection, and I believe he still sits on the board for the Shirley Jackson Awards. I know he, he, at least he did, I think he's still on it.
A prolific writer. Langan has published six collections and two novels so far, but has written enough material, I think to fill about 437 more collections. Now, one thing you might not know about John Langan is he was first published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. So like for a first time publication, you can't get much higher than that.
That's pretty cool. He was published in that in August of 2001, and the very next month was another brand new author. Published in the September issue named Laird Baron. Oh, [00:14:00] the two were fond of each other's work. They struck up a correspondence based on the proximity of their publications, and that blossomed into a great friendship, a friendship that it should be noted on.
At least one occasion actually saved Laird Barron's life. I wanna tell you a little bit about my own history with John Langan, and it's an embarrassing one. When I first read John Langan I didn't like his stories. I didn't like the writing. I bought his first collection off of an ad in Weird Tales Magazine back in the 2010s when Weird Tales was still being helmed by Anne VanderMeer and was still being published on a monthly basis.
I really liked the look of the ad. The stories looked like they'd be up my alley, got the book beautiful, hardcover read it and went, eh, didn't really like it, didn't give it another thought. Somebody suggested to me a story by a new author a couple of years later that they had heard about, couldn't remember his name, but they remember the name of the story.
[00:15:00] And it was one of Lang's stories that appeared in Wide Carnivorous Sky. That was a take on the Mask of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe. I read it, I loved it. I decided to give Langan a second chance and very quickly devoured at that point, everything he had read. I guess I just was not in the right mood to read him the first time I did, but he's become probably one of my favorite, if not my favorite contemporary horror writer.
I need to ask you a quick question. Yeah. What
Damien: was the collection that you bought off the ad?
Ryan: Mr. Gaunt and other Uneasy encounters. Oh, was that his first? That was his first, that was his first collection. It's five stories or six stories. They're all longish, which is his thing. Yeah. And they're, and most of them if, yeah, I think most of them are all about different monsters.
There's a mummy story in there too. So tie it all together. And I had the great pleasure of meeting John Langan last year which was a lot of fun. Great guy. If you get the chance to meet him, you should do so. Our story tonight was first published in 2017 in haunted nights. Halloween had do [00:16:00] edited by Ellen DLow and Lisa Wharton was completely lost.
Jess,
Jess: Jess
Ryan: is
Damien: out.
Jess: If you get the chance to meet him, you should should's a really funny thing to say. Just be, oh, there he comes. I just run the other direction. What alternative do you have if
Damien: you get the chance to meet him? Turn terror. Run. Don't, don't succumb to his
Ryan: Wiley charms. I'm standing by what I said.
Okay. What I said. Sorry. That
Jess: was just the funniest thing to say. In a very funny way to say it.
Damien: Kinda like 2001. Yeah. You
Jess: also keep saying, you're so
said 28
Damien: and then 21
Jess: every time
Damien: he just are like, what is these? Nobody's ever
Jess: said that before.
Ryan: I am not used to such abuse during.
Jess: It's
Damien: 2008, bro. It's not
Jess: 2008. 2 0 8. It's the [00:17:00] funniest thing I've ever heard. At first, I was gonna give you a pass, but then he came, did it, and was 21.
Damien: It was a great year.
Jess: Alright, hold on. Oh man. Oh, alright. Alright. Raining it in. Sorry. It was just a couple of funny things in a row.
Damien: That was good. Good diversion. Good diversion.
Oh, Ryan's bad. I'm not bad. Ryan's bad.
Ryan: Our story tonight was first published in 2017 in haunted nights Halloween anthology, edited by Ellen DLow and Lisa Morton. It was reprinted in Dat Low's best horror of the year, volume 10 in 2018, and now appears here in Lang's latest collection by the same name featuring terrific cover art, I have to say.
That's, that highlights this story by Matthew Jaffa and a cover design by our favorite [00:18:00] stoned Canadian postman. Scott Jones.
Damien: Hey Scotty boy.
Ryan: It's published by Ross Lockhart at Word Hoard, a terrific outfit and a great brick and mortar bookstore too. So if you're ever out in wine country in California, make the side trip and go give word hoard emporium a look sea.
That's gonna do it for our author summary, and now Jess is here to tell us what the story is all about.
Jess: I sure am, and it is a little bit longer than our usual story. So bear with me a little bit. I think I got the highlights and maybe don't get too in the weeds, but if there's stuff we talk about later that is not in the summary, I definitely knew it was there and I'm not just an idiot who forgot it.
Ryan: No short. I'm coming for you in this. I'm just letting you know there's a mind.
Jess: Okay, so we open on a spooky Halloween night. Just kidding. It's Halloween, but it is a sunny day in a cozy college dive bar because it's the middle of the day. It's pretty [00:19:00] quiet. And our narrator, a man named John Lang is meeting Sarah Fiore.
Sarah is John's former Comp two student from more than 20 years ago. He remembers that she loved horror and they loved to argue about it in class. And she was only in John's SUNY school briefly before transferring to NYU for film. 11 years after that class, 21 years ago, she did make a horror movie. It's called Lost in the Dark.
It's described as a Smarter Blair Witch Project, which I think is stupid because the Blair Witch was and is. Pretty smart.
Lost In the Dark is based around the character called Bad Agatha, who now seems like Michael Meyer or the Scream Mask kinda character. Sarah made the first film, was involved in a couple more [00:20:00] films, was not very involved in a couple more after that, but it's also a comic series and is maybe being turned into a TV series.
It was originally released on Halloween and the marketing material included, of course a bad Agatha mask, and the brand has grown since then. And the reason that John and Sarah are meeting in the first place is to talk about. Some bonus footage that was included in the 10th anniversary Blu-ray release of the movie, so we are
Damien: laser disc.
Jess: We're watching Sarah sitting around a table with some of her other creatives who worked on the movie when she admits that the film started out as a documentary. Whoa. Wow. Wow. What okay. Time for more backstory, which we get via continuing to watch this entire DVD bonus material.
Sarah was friends with Isabelle, who plays the [00:21:00] character of Isabelle in the movie, and after they graduated, they stayed in touch. Isabelle was researching a local folklore story, and a few years later when Sarah was struggling to find a topic for a movie to make, she remembered this story. The story is in upstate New York, a train stopped by, I think a cement mine is what I wrote.
It's a cement mine, a thing, I don't know. And a nun and a man escorted a young woman off the train and delivered her to two men waiting outside of this mine. There weren't a ton of people on the train, but the story got spread and elaborated on. Maybe she was in a nightgown, maybe she was in a straight jacket, whatever.
What it was disturbing enough that someone called the cops and Isabelle's state trooper uncle was sent out to investigate the mine. That's how she's involved in [00:22:00] no's story. What he finds are the bodies of the two guys. Mm-hmm. All bashed up. Mm-hmm. And one has his throat ripped out. After some research, they were Polish brothers from Brooklyn or something.
There were no signs of the nun or the other guy, or the straight jacket gal. The story grew after that and people guessed maybe it was the mafia or had something to do with the Cold War, and it turned into an urban legend for our local teens. On, of course, a Halloween night, 10 years later, the same state trooper uncle is called back out to the mine this time because some teens dared each other to go in and one got lost.
Uncle Trooper goes in to investigate and he sees a creepy charcoal portrait of a woman and finds a bloody straight [00:23:00] jacket with creepy symbols all over it.
He
also finds the teen who is hiding because he claims. He saw a woman wandering around in the mine with him. Mm-hmm. Isabel wants to turn this story into her dissertation.
I think something about both the story and the way that it's grown and changed and has new date details added every time, like a new horror movie franchise comes out that kind of lines up with this story. But her professor slash advisor thought her idea for research sucked and wanted her to do a different project, I think about a lizard person.
And so Sarah and Isabel decide to make this
Damien: because that's better
Jess: they decide to make this documentary. Instead, this info is still coming to us from watching this DVD bonus footage, and we see the people who also worked on the film being like, oh, whoa, whoa. It was a documentary. Which maybe doesn't totally make sense, but I would like to talk about that later.
[00:24:00] Okay. Next part. We get a fairly long section of. He says IMTB style, but I think it's a Wikipedia style summary combined with John's own narration about key scenes. He
Damien: did say it was the longest IMDB, but does IM movie summary in history
Jess: even have summaries?
Damien: They do, but, and this was a bit of a stretch.
Jess: Is this a thing that I need to get worked up about? No. Did I write it down anyway? Yes. Okay. So the movie is a found footage kind of fake documentary style. So we start off with an interview of Isabelle in an office. She's summarizing the girl on the train and the mind story that we know from before, but we get added info on the girl whose name was Agatha and who's being kept in the basement of her home by her parents.
Police got involved, but then the church got more involved and that's what led Agatha to be on the train with the nun and the two murdered guys in the mine and the missing [00:25:00] Agatha, the whole thing.
Ryan: Pesky church.
Jess: So true story, and everyone searched the nearby town, the mine, et cetera, et cetera, until it was mysteriously called off.
Then we transition into filming in the mine, Isabelle, maybe six or seven, assorted crew. And then actress who is playing the director are wandering around, arguing and hearing creeping noises. They find a puddle of blood and some kind of rock based Ouija board. The crew uses it to communicate immediately, gets some ghostly responses until they don't, and then the rock starts bleeding.
The actor playing the director admits that she did extra research and got some extra, extra backstory on Agatha. She actually murdered people when she was 14, and then the family moved and kept her locked in the basement and the church was involved. And then the police came and the church took her to the mine.
Anyway, the big reveal is that she's some kind of death [00:26:00] monster. Isabelle claims, she just thought it was a crazy story about a troubled girl with mental health issues that the church, didn't handle well.
Damien: AKA church death monster.
Jess: Actually, she was possessed and a death monster, and now the director, the actor, and the crew, which are really actors in this version of the movie, are all lost in the dark in the mine with her.
And the director knew it.
Ryan: Everybody takes a shot. Yeah.
Jess: Okay, so then they see another Agatha portrait drawn on the mind wall, but oh no, actually it's not. It's Agatha. Ah, she kills, I wrote that in my note. Ah, she kills one of the crew. RIP, Ben. I think one of the guys I did not name, because it gets a little confusing about who is who when you're trying to recap it.
She also kills, let's say, Megan and another character that's been around Carmen. And then she climbs the wall like [00:27:00] a spider. And everyone screams and screams. One of the crew speaks into the camera and to Isabelle like Blair, witch style. Isabelle, you knew more about this than you said, didn't you? Yes.
And if anyone finds this footage, I'm so sorry, et cetera. The remaining crew wander into the darkness with more eerie sounds. Credits roll, and then we see Agatha's creepy face. Now, back to John. He talks about the film about a bit more, talks about the visual connection between Agatha and Isabelle and how they look very similar in the movie.
And then he recaps more of Sarah's Blu-ray feature. We learned that she actually did go into the mines with a crew and they got lost down there, lost in the
dark, the dark shot shot.
They were there for 20 hours, had a bunch of creepy stuff happen, some of which they caught on film. And when Sarah brought this footage back to the guy who was paying for the original [00:28:00] documentary, he suggested making it into a horror movie instead of the documentary.
And she just says, yeah, and they film a bunch of extra stuff. John tries to do some research and reaches out to the old cast and crew, none of whom want to talk to him. We learn that Sarah and Isabelle had a disagreement after filming the movie part after the documentary part of the movie, and they still don't talk to each other.
He does interview Isabelle, who dropped outta school to become a yoga instructor and has questions about what Sarah is doing now. Okay. Okay. That brings us to why we're in this bar interviewing Sarah. She has all of the original footage that had been meant to be this original documentary. She said she's hesitant to show it because she knows how easy it is to fake this stuff, but they watch it anyway.
So at this point, John, our narrator has seen [00:29:00] the Blu-ray extra DVD footage of them talking about this documentary footage has not seen it. So we press play. It is pretty similar to the fake movie version, right down to the weird portraits on the wall. The crew argue about who could have drawn it. They find the corpse of a bear with its throat torn out.
But then eventually the footage stops and starts because they're lost in the dark. And also they lost Isabelle. They kind of debate leaving her down there, but decide to keep looking and then they find. A tooth and maybe an old finger. They go deeper into this mine that's a cave, and they find Isabel and she is standing in some kind of underground lake.
She's confused and acting weird, and she decides they need to leave and like hustles back to the entrance. But when they get to the entrance and back to the portrait on the cave wall, she starts screaming and snotting [00:30:00] and blood splatters out of her mouth and then credits. When Sarah shows this cut to the guy financing the movie, that's when he pushes her to make it a full length more fictionalized version.
Sarah was worried that Isabelle wouldn't be on board to fill more because she ended up hospitalized after they left the mine, but nope, she was fine. She even helped. Write the new version, adding a bunch of fictionalized, bad Agatha backstory, they refilled bad Agathe, backstory, a bunch of stuff, kept some stuff, and then they had creative differences that led to a falling out about, oh, whoops.
Look at the time. Sarah voids the subject. John and Sarah go outside just in time to catch the beginning of a Halloween parade. There are people wearing bad Agatha masks and Sarah gets handed one, which she puts on as she drifts into the crowd.
Damien: The end. [00:31:00] Great ending. Unreal. And by the way, a really tricky story to recap, and I think you did a very, okay.
You did. Thank you. A very hard story to recap. Yeah.
Jess: I feel like I, this one is worth reading versus.
Damien: Being recapped at. It's gimme, gimme the five minute summary of Inception, please. Or really any Christopher Nolan film. And you're like, no, can't do it. Who's in the case? She can,
Ryan: well, this is perfect.
'cause where I wanna start tonight is with some discussion on craft and technique. Langan likes framing devices.
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Ryan: And we're experienced with those in reading through the tales of the weird series. Right. Like, how many of the stories have we read have started off with a bunch of dudes sitting around a fire in a bar?
That's one of them tells a story and then, yeah. It's it really single frame is just a frame. Yeah. Lang does a bit more with them than that. So you have this structure that looks like a B and then a prime where a prime is dramatically changed or informed by events that [00:32:00] happened in B even though B might not have had anything to do with a, to begin with.
That kind of structure is definitely in play here, and I wanted to get your thoughts on it. What was effective about it for you? What maybe didn't work so well?
Damien: When you look at a story like this, and even with a single frame, many of the tales of weird it's fine because at the end of the day, we need someone who one can bring in fairly unreliable traits or false accounts or shaky accounts because I think if someone, if a story like this were being told actively by an omnisci narrator or a first person narrative, then it's too factual.
Mm-hmm. And I, I say that to mean like it plays into the genre to have a little bit of shakiness in the recap. And then in this particular instance, like a literary version of the shaky cam. Right, right, right. And laying and expounds on that by giving [00:33:00] various. Iterations of additional info. Mm-hmm. Or here's an extension of that, or here's what actually happened and it's done.
So in a way that one is very contemporary and two pretty identifiable. We all know the bonus features and we all like the idea of like mm-hmm. Seeing raw footage or a director's cut or something like that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so where he lacks details or is not given details willfully, like he's left the reader and himself or his own character inside the story to have to put the pieces together.
And I think his, one of his crafts is being able to do that. Yeah. Looking back on like the fishermen, the first novel that I like the entire story within a story, the entire second act is like wholly. In is a novel in and of itself. Yeah, yeah. It really is. But it worked. It worked really well.
So I was glad to see those elements of what I was most familiar with with this particular author in the story. And I thought that the way he executed it [00:34:00] was really well done. So much so that it caused me to give Jess a much or a well deserved compliment on the fact that this was a super tricky story to recap because he did that so well.
Jess: I don't wanna like jump on another book, but I read, we used to live here fairly recently before this one, and it's above it. Everyone likes it. I really didn't like, didn't like. And it isn't that similar to this story other than that it incorporates summaries and texts. Mm-hmm. And there's a kind of a central narration, and then other characters get involved and then you're interrupted by a, old police report.
Mm-hmm. A psychologist report, but it's handled significantly less skillfully than this. Mm-hmm. It's clunky. It's clunky. And this is not clunky, right. This, it could be clunky. Right. If you're pretending that you are reading three pages of IMDB [00:35:00] summary, it has the potential
Ryan: to just, that's, that's the only part that I think is clunky is the length of the IMDB section.
Jess: But he goes between IMDB section and then his own kind of and this scene does this right. And then goes back to the IMDB stuff. Whereas I think a lot of other place or other authors who incorporate. Other media into their stuff, it's so nobody's reacting to it. Whereas he's like incorporating it into a story.
Mm-hmm. Instead of it just
Ryan: being breaking it up. Yeah. Yes.
Jess: Instead of it being chapter breaks and just sort of like, woo. A thing that you find later or whatever. So I think that was really effective in that, when I was reading it, I was asking myself like why is it written this way?
Why isn't it just written as a, a screenplay summary of the movie and then, a summary of what actually the documentary footage could be. And that has potential to be an interesting story. But there's, but then
Ryan: that's all that is.
Jess: But then that's all that is. Yeah. Then there's not this relationship [00:36:00] between the director and her friend, the actress, the relationship of John with his student who knows, this woman and this more likely to believe her because.
She's a real person. All of these things are built in and you get actual humans interacting with media instead of media just being plunked in kind of willy-nilly for like scary effect, a police report.
Ryan: Right, right. No, I really like this structure that Langdon develops and the exploration of this structure at real length is, as Damian already said in the novel, the fishermen, which if you haven't read yet, go out tomorrow and pick up a copy.
What it does here really well for me is it adds that level of vari similitude right. That level of believability. Yeah. It sucks me into the story. Life is complicated. Life is not easy. You've all been in that position where you've started telling a story to a group of friends.
You realize your story is way more complicated than, than is actually socially [00:37:00] acceptable at a cocktail party or whatever. But you're already in it. You can't help yourself. And then this person came in and then this person came in and they knew each other, and that was so and so's second cousin.
And like when Langen does that here and as Jess said, he pulls it off so skillfully. It just makes it seem so real to me.
Damien: Yeah.
Ryan: And so that, that's what I really liked about it. And that's also where my frustration comes in with the IMDB section, because that pulled me out. That's fair.
That, that's a very solitude. That's fair. Yeah.
Damien: There, there's, there what I. It's an organic, to your point, Ryan, it's an organic way to introduce a different layer and extension to a certain aspect of the story. But I also think it brings an entirely new texture to the story. Mm-hmm.
Jess: Like
Damien: using different forms of media.
Right. And using it well, I think gives a little bit of roundness to the tale. It doesn't like any, like any good piece of mixed
Ryan: media art. This is mixed media literature. That's, yeah.
Damien: That's a great way to, that's a great way to put it. It was also interesting because with every new element or every new storytelling device or vehicle I feel [00:38:00] like.
There was, there were moments where he's referencing how bad Agatha, or basically implying that bad Agatha served as the inspiration for the scream killer. Mm-hmm. And most, like mass monsters and is inspired to, or has inspired other, contemporary like horror icons and stuff.
Right. It was like, it was fun. That was pretty funny. Oh, I, I dig that. So giving sort of an origin story to the modern movie monster and I thought that was pretty clever as well. And it, it's every new extension or every new whatever brought that different element. Mm-hmm.
And sometimes that element was. There's more to this story and I am gonna know about it, or I'm not gonna know about it. And so it just, it kept you guessing. Yeah. And unlike when you're telling a story that ends up being too complicated at a party and people end up glazing over, you don't know how to end it.
You didn't glaze over there and then I found $20. John Lang does it Right, right.
Ryan: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, the best of Lang stories, at least in my opinion, are often his longer ones. I really enjoyed the length of the novella [00:39:00] Sphera which I think is almost like a hundred pages.
It's a crazy tale
Damien: too.
Ryan: It is a crazy tale. This one checks in at around 45 pages. How did the length work for you here? Was it the right length to tell this story? Was it too long, too short? What did you think?
Jess: I think reading it, it was a great length when I kept rereading it. To recap it. I was,
Ryan: it got long for you.
I was struggling a little bit. I
Jess: think at one point I just, summarize that there's a bunch of characters. Sure. Those characters are in there and they're fleshed out and they're real characters. Just if I'm going to recap it and list another 12 people wandering around in the minds Yeah.
They're, two of them are dating, one of 'em is. Yeah. But
Damien: if, I feel like all that happened in the matter of a couple pages or there's these two that were talking off camera and it was, yeah. We know who they are but it was like a flat, it was like, all right, meet for the grinder.
Here's some characters, and then,
Ryan: but yeah, it's a little, for me, it's a little bit in between where the two of you are saying it's like it's a little bit more than Meet for the Grinder, but they're not totally fleshed out characters. We know their eye color, their hair color, and one or two interesting [00:40:00] facts about them.
Right.
Damien: That's all but about anybody. But then they pretty rapidly in rapid succession I'll die. Yeah. In, well, in the one version anyway.
I to answer your original question, I like the length. I thought it worked, and I was surprised that so much so much of that texture, so many layers, so many extensions, so many new levels to the story could be introduced. Mm-hmm. 8 45 pages. I was like, wow, , I think it was a, another flex and a testament to his craft.
Ryan: Well, I agree. I don't think every author can do this, and in fact, I think a lot of authors try to lengthen stories. Because the Novelette and the novella's kind of having a moment right now in the horror, you sell it for
Jess: $20 and you can sell it for $20. Yeah. Mad about it. Exactly.
Ryan: And yeah, you can take a, you can take a lot outta the middle of some of those stories, but Langan is really good at this length.
He's playing a lot here with our experiences of reality, I think. What really happened is an easy question to ask about this story. So how does the found footage in text trope work here did it heighten the [00:41:00] fear or the dread for you or did it did it take you out of the story? I think I already know some of this answer based on our conversation already.
Jess: I don't know that it filled me with dread, but I think it was a good vehicle for this story where you're trying to figure out what's true, what's real, who's making what up. Especially since multiple characters are talking about, they're interacting with this original legend based on interest and history in folk stories.
So they're already viewing the history of what happened through a lens of and this is how the teens have interpreted it, and this is mm-hmm. How it changed when Freddy Krueger came out and he was all scarred up. Up. Yeah. That was really interesting. Yeah.
Ryan: Yeah.
Jess: And so you're understanding that the story, there's probably a true ish version somewhere, but by the time it gets to our characters, it's definitely not that, [00:42:00] and it's a, it's
Ryan: its own creation at that point.
Yes.
Jess: And then they're interpreting it in literally multiple different ways. Yeah. We get a documentary, we get a real movie, we get bonus features, we get behind the scenes and because now it's film, film is automatically just associated with, you're cutting stuff, you're leaving stuff out, you're, every documentary has stuff cut, or every documentary would be 24 hours long for every day you've covered.
And so you're building that into it too, of even if we believe. Our director and that some of this stuff happened. She says, we caught some of it on film. Yeah. I included some of it in the documentary and then some of that made it to the movie and now I'm talking about it differently. And so it's a not unbelievable amount of stuff that's included.
But you are also very conscious of all the stuff that was cut or was not included, or wasn't [00:43:00] even caught on film in the first place.
Damien: But it's also self-aware. It's even more Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the character I, I was hesitant to even show this because we know how easily film could be manipulated.
It's it's that's, I loved all those touches, the story. It's mm-hmm. But it's that little like nuance that lets you know that it's a wink to the readers saying we know where your mind's at right now. We know. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So I appreciate that.
Ryan: It's another way.
John is just smart about his writing.
Damien: Yeah. Did my, when you asked, did it take you outta the story? The answer is no. I vacillated. Right? I was like, oh, we're going down a predictable arc, and then all of a sudden it's just, oh, no wait. Actually we're not okay. It's changing again. And the story is changing again.
And I think at some point I was just like, all right. The whole motif here is that it's never what it seems to be, and it's always gonna change and. It may make it more realistic, it may make it less authentic. You might be peeling back the curtain and seeing how the sausage is made. It's a lot of torn throats, but like I it's still the fact that there were, the stuff that could have been told, could have been told, like firsthand, like [00:44:00] why, Isabelle and and Sarah were like, what caused a rift?
Mm-hmm. It could have been told. It purposely wasn't,
Jess: purposely wasn't,
Damien: And so that's the sort of thing, like neither
Jess: of them. Yeah,
Damien: right. Exactly. I think those were those interesting elements that allowed me to vacillate but not be mad about it.
Ryan: Yeah, I'm one of the, I'm one of the people for whom found footage films really work at scaring me.
Jess: Yeah.
Ryan: I like them and don't like them for that reason. We were talking a little bit before we started recording about the Hell House franchise and I said that I really was terrified by the first movie. And Damien thought it was ho-hum me, me,
Jess: me, me. But
Ryan: like I was curious to see is, is found footage in text version effective for me.
And I was thrilled that it was, yeah I was creeped out by the story a hundred percent. I thought bad Agatha was scary. Any other comments? Hard to say,
Damien: but scary nonetheless.
Ryan: Hard to say, but scary. But aga, but Agatha. But
Jess: Agatha. But Agatha,
Ryan: but Agatha, [00:45:00] ba any other comments about the writing?
Jess: One that I was thinking about, so. Yeah. This story is as reported by John Langan, like that's how it's introduced. Yes. Is that he's the professor who's recapping this and is researching it.
Ryan: And he is a professor.
Jess: And he is a professor.
Ryan: Right.
Jess: And he theoretically has probably had a student named Sarah, just mathematically.
So one of the things that gets talked about, I think pretty regularly right now is just the world is becoming generally less like media literate. Is that anytime an author writes a character or a villain or someone who does something like bad, there's inevitably someone who's I can't believe the author would write this.
It must mean that the author is a bad person.
Ryan: Mm-hmm. Right. Gotcha. Yeah.
Jess: And then the way that you come combat that is well, no, the [00:46:00] author is a guy who wrote it, and the character is a different guy. And the author is you. The author can write bad guys. Right. Books would not be interesting if there wasn't perhaps a bad guy sometimes.
But I think it's, and sometimes you want
Ryan: your bad guys to be abhorrent.
Jess: Yes. Like sometimes, right? Yeah. Things have to happen and conflicts have whatever, but media literacy is waning. But in these defining
Ryan: days of empire,
Jess: if you write yourself as the author, as a character, it's a funny way to well, that come back, doesn't quite work anymore.
It neutralizes it, right? Yeah. Yeah. Which is well, the author isn't a bad guy for writing this, except that his name is John Lang, and it's just like this author's not writing himself as a villain. He's not doing anything particularly villainous. But it was interesting to think about as I was reading this, because, no, I loved it.
Because that comes up where it's just sort of like, it's like Lolita, right? Oh my God, who could have ever written this? They must be a pervert. Yeah.
Damien: That, but [00:47:00] that's what you could blame 'em for is having that thought go through your mouth. Like, how did they come up with this?
They must have these perverse thoughts. And it's yeah, well guess what? Literally everyone has perverse thoughts. It's impossible not to, you're Chas, you're chastising individuals for putting these thoughts to paper and doing it for entertainment factor. It's yeah, I
Jess: mean, I was thinking more yeah, there's just normally you could point to a separation between an author and his characters, but when the author writes himself as a character, right, that separation is, is funnier to divide.
Ryan: Langan has bought you the dartboard for your birthday and said, I went ahead and put my picture right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jess: Exactly. So this is me.
Ryan: You're right.
Jess: But anyway, but not a huge point. I just, it was fun to read that as. Just as reported by John Langan.
Damien: I think that the commentary on media literacy, yes, it's absolutely true, but on the same accord, like there are very few people there.
They're, book Karens that are just like, oh, how could he write something so disgusting? Oh, the things that they're doing. Talking about King, going back to the [00:48:00] master. So he made a habit. If mm-hmm Stephen King wasn't killing half of the children that are featured in his books, then he's doing something wrong.
For a while that was just unheard of. Why would somebody do that? Why would you talk about killing or injuring children like they're innocence, blah, blah, blah. They're true innocence, this and that. It's just no, Stephen King's not going out killing people. Just that's him, like writing his demons and knowing what's gonna make an impact.
So Stephen King also, if have one thing to criticize,
Jess: has the ability to write himself into all of his books in a way that like is oh, there he is,
Damien: the Stanley of horror for this movie adaptations, I reckon. Yeah. Yeah.
Jess: Oh, Stephen King.
Ryan: Well, I wanna read a bit from the story. No Jessica commented that the story is perhaps better read than summarized and I think that's true.
I just wanna give you a sample of language's writing. That's
Damien: true.
Jess: Take a
Damien: seat,
Ryan: Jess. No, it totally is. It totally is. But this is one of my favorite but John Lang story, if
Jess: you want me to record this section as the audio book instead, I'll just do my summary. Just lemme know.
Ryan: [00:49:00] This comes from a section of the story that is a description of the film that's being made. And this was one of my favorite sections. Three quick scenes show the crew traversing the darkness that lies between the subterranean lake and the tunnel to the mine, even after she cuts her right foot on a rock leaving a bloody footprint until the others catch up to her and insist on banding it, which George does.
Isabelle maintains a brisk pace. She does not let up after they have reentered the mine. Though the comments from the others shift from complaint to relief throughout. Christie continues to return to the question of what happened to Isabelle asking it at sufficient volume for her to hear. Isabelle, however, does not answer, not until they have reached the portrait of the woman nearer the mind's entrance.
Does Isabelle stop immobile? She stares at the artwork as the rest of the crew gathers around her. What now? Christy says,
in [00:50:00] reply, Isabelle screams a loud, high pitched shriek that startles everyone into stepping back. The scream goes on and on and on. Doubling Isabel over. Breaking into static as it exceeds the limits of the recording equipment. While Isabelle staggers from foot to foot, bent in half, her mouth stretched too wide, the soundtrack cuts in and out, alternating her, screaming with an electronic hum.
The members of the crew stand stunned. Their expressions shocked. Tears stream from Isabelle's eyes, snot pours from her nostrils, flakes of blood spray onto her lips and chin. The audio gives up the fight yielding to the empty hum. Finally, Pryor runs to Isabelle, putting her arms around her and steers her away from the drawing toward the exit.
While she remains doubled over, Isabelle goes with her. Chad and [00:51:00] George. Follow for a moment. Isabelle studies the portrait, then she too turns to leave. The camera remains focused on the wall at the weird image that so strikingly resembles Isabelle router. It zooms in until the half skeletal portion of the face fills the screen.
As it does the soundtrack recovers. Isabelle is still screaming the sound echoing down the mind's tunnels. The picture goes black. Directed by Sarah Fre flashes onto the screen in white letters. I love that because you're there you're either in that room or you're watching the movie.
Mm-hmm. Or you're somewhere in between, but you're not reading a book. Yeah. When that's happening, you're following every character whether you know who they're or not. You're right. Over their shoulder. And the terrifying conclusion. It just drives it all home. I, well done Mr.
Langan. I [00:52:00] think that's terrific.
Damien: You know what's really interesting, Ryan, is that with you rereading that section and kind of hearkening back to the intensity of the scream, it reminds me about how we were all very impressed about LAN's ability to express magnitude.
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Damien: And going back to the fishermen and the fishermen particularly.
Yeah. Yeah. The fishermen features, a, a particular. Character ness. Very large. Very vast. Yeah. And the way that the vastness is described is both creative and effective. And I think the same when, he is talking about the intensity of the scream. Mm-hmm. We could say she screamed as if, her life depended on her or something.
She screamed, screamed so loud. Yeah, it was really, really loud. You got, you had to be there. But he doesn't, he says things like it goes to static. It distorted the audio levels on the recording equipment. And I just think that's creative. It's a good use of the media through which we mm-hmm.
Consuming this story or this piece of the tail. But it also is [00:53:00] really effective at talking about the intensity of that screen. Oh yeah, totally. So just another little. Another little gold star I think to Mr. Langan for being able to express magnitude and scale really well.
Ryan: Well, and I'm glad you brought up the fishermen too, because one point I wanted to make is there's little interconnections between a lot of Langan stories and there's some website on the internet just faithfully and painstakingly put together by a super fan who has identified all of the connections between all of his stories.
Oh,
Jess: cool.
Ryan: One of the things that connects some of Lang's stories is this underground subterranean water. Mm-hmm. Bodies of water. And so I, I think as I read this story. And we get to that portion of the narrative, what I'm immediately thinking about is the subterranean body of water and the fishermen.
And is this the same body of water, right?
Jess: If she keeps walking,
Ryan: yeah, yeah. Where is she gonna end up? Which I love, I just love thinking about that. I love that idea. Well, John Lenon loves monsters. Many of his stories are new takes on familiar [00:54:00] monsters like the aforementioned Ona Island, which is his mummy story.
But here he invents his own monster with its own mythology. What did you think of Bad Agatha as a monster character?
Jess: It was fun and defective in the way that you're introduced to it, where you immediately think abused girl, taken advantage of by the church, locked up by her parents for nefarious church related reasons, probably.
And then, horribly murdered in a mine. But then as you get more and more fake backstory, real backstory, made up things that might be real and you get okay, maybe she's possessed, maybe she's this weird death monster. It gets more interesting, right? Like, why is her portrait everywhere?
Why is she got a weird eye? The, the mix of like super supernatural [00:55:00] things, right? There are bloody hand prints and footprints in the cave, like 12 feet up. And Right. Initially they just dismiss it as what the heck is that? And then later she just spiderman's up the wall.
Mm-hmm.
They're, that's
what, that is one of the versions of this, but also
Damien: telekinetic enough to be able to move around a bloody stone for a makeshift sure.
What you call it, a Ouija board.
Jess: They think maybe she was in a nightgown, well, actually, maybe a straight jacket is a better story. Yeah. And then we find a bloody straight jacket.
Ryan: Yeah.
Jess: Like the kind of mythology in building this character up from where she started, which was just a girl someone saw on a train for five seconds
Ryan: all the way up to having a mask sold around to having a,
Jess: having a mask, having parents with names, knowing what she did at 14 years old before she was locked in a basement.
Ah, great. I like even if I like, I don't know, spooky ladies a fine. [00:56:00] Monster, but I liked the way that it built and built. Mm-hmm. Until you get the backstory of the monster,
Damien: and then you're like, wow. Masks inspiring bunch of movie monsters, like the scarification inspiring or, ping homage to the
Jess: Freddie Krueger rig, Fred
Damien: Kruger and like the Mask inspiring the Scream Killer and Michael Myers and the vicious murderous ways.
And, she gives Samara, she gives Reagan from Yep. The Exorcist and all these iconic horror characters. But then when you think about it, you're like, no, this is likely a very abused, ostracized, probably removed from her family and sent to die in a mine by the church. Because it's just that a damaged victim who's a 14-year-old girl, it's that's likely the most probable.
Backstory to this, but it's been glamorized by Hollywood, right? It's been commercialized and so then it gets like super weird and you feel bad when you're right, because there's like assuming all this modern media, you're like, yeah, yeah. And then you go, oh [00:57:00] crap. When you think about it, oh,
Jess: actually that sucks.
Based on
Damien: the trooper's recollection, it was just like, oh, this is what really happened. This is no boy now. So,
Ryan: so I feel compelled to say that to the best of my knowledge, which on this subject is somewhat extensive. This is not a current practice of the church. Thank you
Jess: to lock a girl in a mine.
Ryan: Yeah.
Yeah. Okay, great. We don't, we don't do that. He said current anymore.
Damien: We
Jess: don't do that
Damien: anymore
Ryan: as of October 12th.
Damien: We're done with that. That's a problem. I
Ryan: like bagga bad. Agatha I like lion's take on a, but I don't know why I can't say that I'm having, maybe it's the, no, nobody can say it. It's the BMO 15. I dunno. Every time I
Damien: say it. No, it's not. It's bad. Agatha. It's bad Agatha. It's a hard name.
It's toy Boat.
Jess: I think
Ryan: she's a great monster. I think that the the creepy eye and the way she looks just like the one actress was Ooh, shiver. Shiver wasn't, yeah.
Jess: What's up with that?
Damien: Do you think the eye was a little hat tip to Laird? Oh, it could be, I
Ryan: suppose. '
Damien: cause they're pals, [00:58:00] right?
Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. So some have said that this story, quote, resists closure. Do you agree with that? And if so, how might that invite a reader deeper into the story? Yeah,
I would,
Damien: I've been known to ask this question. To what extent does, yeah. I'm quoting Damien here is what's happening. To what extent does an author o it's reader a conclusion, like an end to their story?
And I think when the entire purpose is to leave, the, reminds me of like Paul Tremblay's head full of ghosts. Mm-hmm. Where, spoiler alert, close your eyes that the ending is intentionally nebulous and not just the ending. Like everything leading up to that ending was having. You wonder what's real, what's not, what is closed, what is open.
And then when you see those elements play out again in this story, when you see the undisclosed reason for the rift between Isabelle and Sarah. [00:59:00] When you see so much that's just unexplained, why the eye, what really happened? Mm-hmm. To Agatha or Agatha's origin, like person, the real human. It just makes sense that it is a, it is an anti closure story.
Mm-hmm. So I would agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly. And I look the way it's framed.
Jess: Yeah. I think that's a nicer way to say Woo. Open-end.
Ryan: Yeah.
Jess: Which is fine. I don't have a problem with that.
Ryan: I just like how it invites you to dwell on the questions. Did this, yeah. I'm dwelling.
Did this really happen? Is there a bad Agatha out there?
Damien: Oh, how about this? In most stories where there's like a mass villain at the end, they take the mask off.
Ryan: Mm-hmm.
Damien: But in this one, in the end, she puts the mask on.
Ryan: She puts the mask on. There you go. Part bad. Agatha two.
Damien: Bad Agatha continues.
Too bad, too Agatha. Too bad. Too Agatha.
Ryan: Well, well, all three of us have alluded to this at some [01:00:00] point this evening, but what, if any commentary on horror media and how we consume it can we read into this story? Is John poking, poking fun at things? Is he poking holes in other what is he doing at the meta level, do you think?
Jess: I think he's showing how everything is built on a thing that came before it. Every version mm-hmm. Is
Damien: good call
Jess: collaborative. Every
Damien: and cumulative
Jess: and every movie has, I like that. A little nod at some other movie. Mm-hmm. Like it's also connected and it's so connected to, folktales, like Yeah.
A teen and gossip about what really happened that turns into a big story that turns into a six movie franchise that turns into an A MC TV series.
Ryan: Nothing's created ex nilo, right? Like we all are owing, a debt of gratitude to those who came before.
Jess: And horror especially because everyone is so like,
Ryan: why do you think that?
Yeah. Why do you think that is?
Jess: I, well, [01:01:00] I think people who read horror, read horror
Damien: mythology, but I think they really embrace mythology. They embrace lo they embrace, like how did something become something else and becomes so twisted. Yeah.
Jess: And the stories often have, history built into them too.
There's a legend of a legend that turned into this movie or whatever,
right.
But horror people are like protective of their horror and they like to talk about movies they've seen, they like to talk about weird stories that they've read on a podcast. They like to allude to if you like, what if you like this or these
Damien: freaks,
Jess: you should check out this, right?
Everyone is drawing all these connections in a way that is like best case scenario, community building, worst case scenario gatekeeping because
mm-hmm. Your
horror knowledge isn't as good as my horror knowledge, but it is very like, everyone's coming in with something that they liked.
Everyone knows their first scary movie that they saw. Everyone has a favorite, murdery
Damien: fear is a [01:02:00] powerful emotion, right? So you say that horror people are emotional, but I also think that they're they, we are a bit ba well they not me as well. We're like the. It we're like the hot sauce eaters of, cinema in that the more extreme, the somewhat better, maybe not in the moment, but later when you're talking about it, it makes for a better story.
So, and,
Ryan: and I think that's actually because we're empathic. We're more empathic Horror fans are more empathic by nature. That's why Horror Works.
Jess: One of the other podcasts I listen to says, everyone's a member of the feel bad club that likes horror. Like it's just a thing that you enjoy feeling a little bad.
Damien: I don't know. It's hard because I think in concept I would agree with that. But then also I've found that as horrors become more extreme, especially in the mainstream, like you're not digging up faces of death and being like, what is this mat? It's just literal. No. And that, that's, everyone's got their
Jess: own level of what that means.
What their, and everybody
Ryan: slows down at an [01:03:00] accident.
Damien: It's
Ryan: true, but I
Damien: don't, I jump it, I make it worse when I think of what scared me or what impacted me 10 years ago, and I think about what I'm watching and how, like it, I, I'm a totally different person. I've built up, up a bit of a callous, I've become a nerd to a lot of stuff that's a little unning.
And your life has changed unnerving too. But it doesn't change who I am when the credits roll and then I go back to my real life, I think that the escapism is appreciated and I think that we are truly more empathic because we're able to watch this and consume it as media and not, sit here and freak out.
Think Comfort Humbert is a weirdo because he's writing a book. Right. So I do see both sides to that coin. It's hard though, because some of the stuff I'll watch and I'll go, wow I watched that. I didn't stop it. I didn't pause it. I didn't take a break and. That's, is that, am I wrong?
Am I a bit broken because of that? I don't know.
Jess: Maybe.
Damien: Maybe.
Ryan: Alright. Imagine with me it's Halloween night. No,
Jess: it is [01:04:00] Halloween night.
Ryan: Hello. You are in high school or college maybe, and you're with your friends and you're walking through the woods and you come upon the entrance to the mine, the cement, and somebody says, this is it. Let's go in
Jess: the cement Mine.
Ryan: Are you going in after bat, looking after bad Agatha? God, I can't say it be. Aha. Are you going to look for bad Agatha?
Damien: Are you looking for a baguette? I'm going in no doubt are you going in.
You're going in.
Yeah. 'cause that's high school, college, Damien, right? Modern. Damien. Absolutely not. Okay. I'm fair enough. I'm vanilla. I'm too boring. I have no sense of exploration left.
I would think would be terrified to
Ryan: go in. I might go in a few steps, but I'd probably I'd probably bail.
Jess: I'd go in far enough to take a picture.
But I've got a
Ryan: decent, I do it for the gram.
Jess: I've got a decent sense of a picture
Ryan: Of the [01:05:00] etched like face of Yeah,
Jess: yeah, yeah. I got that. That I'm out. Like I have enough self preservation. You're gonna the
Ryan: underground lake?
Jess: No. To just be like, oh, abandoned mine. What a cool place to walk around.
No, I'm not an idiot. If it was like a haunted target, okay, I'll go in there because I'm probably
not gonna fall in a
Ryan: crevasse. Jessica prefers to find herself in a Grady Hendrick story rather than a John Langer.
Jess: Yeah. Kind of port of,
Ryan: port of stored.
Jess: That's I'm not going in just because I don't wanna die in a mine.
Not because I'm afraid a ghost will get me.
Damien: Right. Yeah. I think the nature of it being a mine definitely that that's what dissuades me from being modern, practical dad. I don't want to go into a cave, but if it were something like, yeah, a haunted target, sure, I'd go in and pop on that.
Ryan: I'm not going in because I don't wanna die in a mine.
And I also don't want bad Agatha to get me. Really, this stuff is what
Jess: if you could see bad Agatha, I don't
Ryan: wanna see, I don't wanna see her. I don't wanna see her.
Damien: that is the trope, right? That's why [01:06:00] people die in horror movies is because they just don't believe in the thing that, you know, that the viewing audience knows to be true.
I've learned too much, Damien. So you carry that to real life. You're like, Nope.
Ryan: Certain places I'm not going.
Damien: All right. Makes sense.
Ryan: Alright, well that's gonna lead us neatly into, did the scare hold up for this? Jessica, were you frightened by this story?
Jess: No. Yeah, I thought it was you. Yeah. I got a good combo of again, I don't wanna die in a cave.
I feel like the idea of going in, oh, we're just gonna shoot an hour's worth of footage and 20 hours later your dumb friend is lost in the cave and you can't leave. That's scary.
Ryan: That would be Sean.
Jess: You find a, a body of a bear in there, that probably means there's another bear. Even if you don't believe there's a ghost.
I don't wanna be in a cave with a bear. So yeah, I thought
Ryan: it was, I don't wanna be a cave with anything.
Jess: Yeah. If I'm
Ryan: going into
Damien: a cave, I want it to be an empty cave. So
Jess: even
Damien: that's where the Fraggle live. You guys need to give Cave a little more respect.
Jess: I guess I would go in the [01:07:00] Fraggle cave.
But yeah, I think the scare of the situation and I would be the one who would be like, Ooh, I don't think we can leave our stupid friend. Let's go find her. I'm not that afraid of a ghost demon lady who spidermans up a wall. I think I would just block it out and just be like, well, I didn't see that.
And then continue on my way.
Damien: Yeah. I bad Agatha didn't scare me. And I thought
Jess: she was a good character, but I'm not scared of her. And a
Damien: good catalyst for thought that made the effects of Bad Agatha or the impact of Bad Agatha Pretty terrifying because when we came back to real world, when we came back to actual footage mm-hmm.
When we came back to that and we saw what happened, like that is okay I get it. I get it. I see. So, and then also again, going back to the origins about Agatha, that's pretty horrific. That's pretty scary. Yeah. Yeah. I don't wanna be locked in the basement, so that part scared me. So the story itself I thought was a little chilling.
So did the scare hold up? Yes. I will give it a yes on the, on the binary [01:08:00] scale. But not for the reasons, not for the tote or the throat tearing, not for the, haunted Ouija. Not for the, not even for the hellacious screams, but just knowing the reach, not knowing the why. Was it the lake? Was it the cut?
Was it the cut on the foot? Who knows? It could be a million things, right? Not, she died of tetanus. It's probably a fungal infection. God knows. Need more fungus and among us, yeah. Yeah. Mushroom stories. Yeah, so I think that part is what made it really chilling, not so much the movie Monster.
I,
Ryan: I was frightened by the story, and I'll give it the surface scares, like I remember. Literally finishing the story after everybody else in my house had gone to bed and all the lights were out, and normally I would just it's my house, right? I wouldn't walk through it without having to turn all the lights on.
I know where I'm going. This is, this is one of those moments no I'm gonna turn on a light here because she is right around the corner. I know it. Wow.
Jess: At least a portrait is
Ryan: I, listen, I'm a simple person. I [01:09:00] like appreciating the stories at the surface level. And then whatever I can get at the deep level, I'm, I consider a gravy.
I consider a bonus.
Damien: I will say when I read this and they were describing bad iha and the mask and everything. I did think of the Alvin Schwartz, like scary stories to dark artwork.
Ryan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jess: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Ryan: And I think that that jaffa's cover art pays homage to that, whether intentionally or not.
It looks similar to that kind of artwork. That's a good point. Yeah.
Damien: Yeah. With the missing eye and the kind of. Rakish upper jawline.
Ryan: Creepy. Well, that's gonna take us to our whiskey ratings. This is how we rate our stories here on whiskey and the Weird From Zero Fingers of Whiskey or the Sad empty Glass.
Mm-hmm. All the way up to the coveted full fist of whiskey. Damien, what are you giving Lost in the Dark?
Damien: Really, really, really strong. Four leaning towards four and a half, but I'm gonna give it a strong four, and I don't really have a reason why it wouldn't be higher. It's not a perfect [01:10:00] story to me, and it's not my favorite John Langan story.
But that being said, as I've often said, I don't like to do the finger ratings based on comparisons to other stories. Mm-hmm. Whether it's in the same collection or by the same author, et cetera. So, I just think that there was something, I can't put my finger on
Jess: one
Damien: of the, the missing finger, the fifth finger.
Right. I think one of the things that I. And it, it was in the cave. They found it was either, that's it. And also my tooth and my dead bear. One of the things I finished the story wondering is there a deeper meaning to this that I'm, that I didn't pick up? Mm-hmm. Or is it really just on the surface as I read it as it was meant to be?
And that frustration in not knowing or feeling like I may have missed something and I deserve to not miss that thing, I think probably left me with a little more frustration. Again, not because there wasn't closure, but because I didn't know if there was something deeper to this story. And reading Lang in the past, I've [01:11:00] experienced both.
I've experienced like pretty deep underlying themes. Mm-hmm. But then I've also experienced just. Rock and roll. Haunted Vets, right. Out there like battling flying beasts. So, I would say that's what probably keeps me from giving it a higher rating, but still very, very enough strong for, fair enough, strong Four from Damien.
Ryan: Jessica,
Jess: you know what? I like my beer. I'm having a good time. I'm gonna give this a five. Oh hey, full fist. My only notes of like critique are like, he says a mean thing about the Blair Witch Project and it's not
Ryan: that mean.
Jess: Well, he's just sort of like, this movie's not like the Blair Witch project at all.
It's it's a lot. I think that, I think,
Ryan: well I think what he's doing there is exactly what Damien alluded to earlier when he said it's being self-aware.
Jess: Yeah, it's fine. I just read it as me, me, me. But no, other than that I thought it was on an appropriate amount of characters. I like the mystery.
I like the stuff you're left with. I was like, why does she look like the portrait of the [01:12:00] tortured?
Girl. Yeah. What was her falling out about? Is she just possessed? Is that why she moved and does yoga now? Is she just bad? Agatha is released from the cave doing yoga. I like that.
Damien: But the interesting, I don't need a bad Agatha universe.
No, I dont need to find that stuff out. I think that's but i's a really interesting balance.
Jess: I, it's funny to
think and this
movie has six other movies and a comic book, and that's, that's fine. That's how many people you shoving in that cave?
Damien: All
Ryan: of them. How about you Ry? Well, I'm coming in at four and a half.
Jess: All right.
Ryan: I thought long and hard about this, and I really like John Langan stories, and I really like this story in particular, but the thing I kept coming back to was how I was pulled out of the story in the lengthy Wikipedia IMDB entry. Do you think
Jess: you would've liked it if they said it was a Wikipedia summary, because that's more accurate?
No, I, I
Ryan: didn't, I just didn't like that at all. I would've [01:13:00] liked it. I liked the idea of a, of an IMDB entry as a part of the text. But I've read IMDB things before and there at most a paragraph. Yeah. Oh my God. Langdon does not operate at that length. So there was a conflict of interest there.
Damien: It's like when you see Star Wars, when you see like episode four or whatever for the first time and. You're like watching this, space opera take place. And there's the one scene where they dive down a shaft and their butt like hits the grate. And the grate is very obviously made of like AFLs and rubber or something like that.
Or styrofoam, because it wiggles and you're just like, look at that. Look at that. You call that realistic two stars. Yeah, exactly. That's the I mdb is gonna knock it down. All right, that's fine. No, I don't
Jess: care. Be petty. I love it. Just,
Damien: just a half star.
Jess: Just a half star. I didn't like the font. I've critiqued worse.
Ryan: Well, I think the reason it stands out to me, Damien, is that the thing [01:14:00] I love about this story is how it feels so real. Yeah. And then there was just that one part that just didn't for me. So Half finger, I'm taking it off.
Damien: All right. Alright. We got a Halloween bonus question. I would've ded it for Bad Agatha, it's just the Baha, the cumbersome way of saying Bad Agatha.
It just feels
Ryan: clunky. I wanna know, for our Halloween bonus question this year. Mm-hmm. Do you have a favorite, scary movie to watch at Halloween that you, it is like one you like to watch every year at Halloween? Jess.
Jess: Yeah, man, I'm just gonna keep talking about hell House LLCI genuinely like it. It's good, it's short.
You do not have to pay any attention to it at all.
The end. It's great. Watch that. The end.
Damien: I wish I did. I don't have a scary movie that I watch over and over. I don't watch a lot of scary movies over and over. I just, there's the magic gets lost for most of them. For me. I have cheeky, goofy movies that I watch [01:15:00] every year around Halloween Nightmare before Christmas.
Yeah, like there more practice pocus, Christmas
Ryan: movies are more, more, more specific. Okay. So it doesn't have to be scary but a Halloween movie you like to watch every year? Nightmare Before
Damien: Christmas. I do Nightmare Before Christmas. It's
Ryan: a lot of fun. So for me it's not really a Halloween themed movie, but it's the thing and the reason I like to watch that in Halloween is because that was the time that I first saw it.
Oh really? I was in college and I think it was, I must have been a freshman and my RA was showing it on Halloween weekend. It wasn't like Halloween night or whatever. Stayed
Jess: it Halloween.
Ryan: No, it was just a, it was just a movie that was on at that time in the hall and I'd never seen it before.
And so I watched it. Yeah.
Damien: That's cool. It's nostalgia and still arguably it's, I bet watching a movie like that, seeing how the practical effects still hold up all these years later, like Totally. Every area you like still, it's still as spooky as heck. Oh yeah. That's cool. Absolutely. I love that. I love that movie.
That's a good one. The thing. Nice.
Jess: Yeah, that's a good [01:16:00] one. That's a very re watchable one.
Ryan: Well, that's gonna take us to our, if this, then that for us horror weirdos here. So Jess has got it for us tonight.
Jess: Yes. Number one, finish the rest of this book. Read,
Ryan: right.
Jess: Read the whole book. It's called Lost in the Dark and Other Excursions.
So read that first. And then we were all reminiscing about very randomly the 2013 novel night film by Martia pestle. Loved it. Loved it.
Damien: So good.
Jess: Just like a weird book that everyone has read. Came out in 2013. It's a thriller horror literary adventure. It's about like the death of the daughter, of one of those directors that everyone is obsessed with that nobody's really like
Ryan: Argento Orci nobody.
Yeah, nobody's seen him in
Jess: person in 30 years and he lives on this compound and there's this mystery about like how he makes this movie, what happened to his daughter. The story itself is great. [01:17:00] The author also includes
Damien: a Bunch Coppola, Michael Pay.
Jess: Yeah. So yeah, this is about Michael Bay's daughter.
The book itself is weird and it's a little bit like stuck in Time because I don't know if you remember, it had all of these things where it was like you were supposed to go to a website and that's I love, that was so cool stuff. And it was like before. Before you had an app, before people had apps, I think,
Damien: yeah,
Jess: it was like that kind of interactive, which was great for a book about movies to be brought to all this kind of multimedia stuff.
Well, it was one
Ryan: of those books where they would talk about a piece of music and I would go and listen to that piece of music. It was just
Jess: a really, a fun way to write a book, write an interesting book. The author has written a bunch of other stuff that is also all good. So read that.
Ryan: Alright, well happy Halloween everybody. We're so glad you could join us for this [01:18:00] Halloween bonus episode here at Whiskey.
And the weird, we're delighted that you are hanging out with us on your Halloween evening or whenever you're listening to the podcast. If you wouldn't mind drop us a rating or a review wherever you catch your podcasts, we would enjoy hearing from you.
Jess: It'd be a, we always wanna
Ryan: thank it would be a treat, not a trick.
We always wanna thank Dr. Blake Brandis for providing the music for whiskey in the Weird. And Damien if they do wanna trick us where can they find us?
Damien: Yeah, tricks away. We're at whiskey in the Weird, on all the meta properties. So you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and the other one. We're also in Blue Sky, so give us a look there at Whiskey in the Weird, we spell our whiskeys with an e.
We hope you do too. If not, I will tear your throat out.
Let's just keep it simple. Stupid. What? Fair
Ryan: enough, Damien. Fair enough.
Damien: Don't tear your throat out. [01:19:00]
Ryan: Happy Halloween everyone. I'm Ryan Whitley.
Damien: Oh, I'm Jessica Berg.
Ryan: I'm
Damien: Damien Smith.
Ryan: And together we're whiskey in the Weird, somebody Send us Home.
Damien: As always, keep your friends through the ages and your creeps in the pages.
Ryan: Trick or treat everyone