Season six, y'all! We open with what Jess calls "The CW Lovecraft," a story based on H.P.'s dreams (which, along with everyone else's, Damien criticizes), and ponder over what was discovered in those subterranean depths. Welcome to Whiskey and the Weird, a podcast exploring the British Library Tales of the Weird series! This season, we're transmitting our sixth book in the collection, ‘The Night Wire: And Other Tales of Weird Media,’ edited by Aaron Worth. In this episode, our featured story is: The Statement of Randolph Carter by H.P. Lovecraft.
Bar Talk (our recommendations):
Jessica is reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones); drinking a Noble Oak double oak whiskey + Wegman's apple cider.
Damien is watching A Haunting in Venice (2023; dir. Kenneth Branagh); drinking Hibiki Japanese Harmony.
Ryan is watching Deadwax (Shudder Series, 2018); drinking Evan Williams 100 Bottled-in-Bond.
If you liked this week’s story, read "The Anatomy Lesson" (short story) in Rapture of the Deep and Other Lovecraftian Tales by Cody Goodfellow.
Up next: Rontgen's Curse by Charles Crosthwaite.
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
Jessica: [00:00:00] We're changing the definition of ghosting from disappearing on your significant other to screaming over the phone for your partner to leave you to beat it, that they need to run to escape the unimaginable horrors that you've unleashed and then disappear.
Damien: It sounds like a normal course of action.
Ryan: This just in, Whiskey and the Weird is back for its sixth season. Welcome back everybody. I'm Ryan Whitley.
Jessica: I'm Jessica Berg.
Damien: And I'm Damien Smith.
Ryan: And together we're Whiskey and the Weird, the podcast where we drink first and ask questions later. For the last five seasons, we've brought you literary critiques of some of the best Weird Stories of yesteryear, as well as some ones that were just fine.
All of them have been, though, from the British Library's Tales of the Weird series. Each season, we've covered one book, [00:01:00] and each episode, one story. We always Telegraph a full spoiler summary in ahead of time, so make sure you read the story first. Or, if you don't care about those sorts of things, feel free to dive right into listening.
And now we invite you to draw your chair closer to the radio, as all good families do on Sunday nights, because this season, friends, we're receiving a message. And it's called The Night Wire and Other Tales of Weird Media, edited by Aaron Wirth. Jessica's our radio operator for this season, so tell us.
What transmission do you have for us tonight, such
Damien: a ham? We are
Jessica: going with a ham radio.
Damien: Yeah, thanks for getting the reference there, Jess. I appreciate that.
Jessica: The Statement of Randolph Carter, by H. P. [00:02:00] Lovecraft
Damien: a
Ryan: bold choice for Jessica to choose first, but I'm pumped. I'm pumped. Before we get into that, we've got some bar talk to do.
Jess, why don't we start with you? What are you drinking tonight?
Jessica: I have a real big mug of a whiskey hot apple cider with the noble oak bourbon and Wegmans brand apple cider.
Ryan: Oh, Wegmans I miss.
Jessica: Yeah, I thought I would fancy it up with a little cinnamon stick and then Damien could tell us about cinnamon.
I feel
Damien: like that's a it's Kasha bark We've been there. We've done that. All right, I don't have
Jessica: cinnamon anyway
And I actually just read a Incredible book that has an incredible title called drive your plow over the bones of the dead. I read that It is by Olga Something like to Karsuk. It is. Olga T. I listened to a lot of YouTube interviews to try to figure out how to say her name [00:03:00] and Everyone says it differently So I'm trying my best.
It is translated by Antonia Lloyd Jones. It is like a murder mystery where the murders don't really matter. And the prime suspects are like deer and foxes. Just like wild animals. It's set in rural Poland. And I have not read a lot of Polish literature. But the writing is so original. The main character is just this like older woman.
Who's a caretaker to a bunch of properties, who loves astrology. But, I also wanted to read this one because thematically to our Halloween episode, It the title is from a William Blake poem. The main character spent a lot of time translating his work, translating his poetry into Polish. So he's a figure that's floating around throughout this novel too, in a fun way.
That I thought fit with what we've been working on lately. [00:04:00] Ryan, what are
Damien: you drinking?
Ryan: I'm drinking some Evan Williams Bottled and Bond 100 proof bourbon in a small glass with no ice. I'm starting the season off Not a giant mug? Not a giant mug. I'm starting the season off with a classic. I managed to find some Bottled and Bond whiskey, which isn't always easy to find outside of Kentucky.
And Took a chance on it. I like Alvin Williams products, so it wasn't a difficult chance to take, but listen, I'm not messing this one up. This one's just really tasty. It's a really smooth drinking bourbon. It is a higher proof bourbon so it's got a little bit of that burn to it.
It comes with the extra booze, but at the end of the day, still a smooth drinking bourbon. Really enjoy it. That's what I'm drinking. As for what I'm reading or watching I want to call your attention to a Shudder series that was released in 2018. I didn't watch it back then, but I watched it more recently than then.
But not all that recently. It's a limited series about a vinyl collector. Yeah, [00:05:00] it's that 100 proof bourbon,
I watched it sometime. It's a limited series about a vinyl collector who's looking for a mysterious record that supposedly drives a listener mad. And I thought it was a good recommendation to make here at the start of the season of The Night Wire, where we're talking about weird media and horrific forms of media that do horrific things to you.
Check out dead wax. I think it's six episodes and maybe the longest episode is 30 minutes. So it's a an afternoon or an early evening. You can get through the whole series. Lot of fun. Pretty freaky stuff. Dead wax on Shudder. Damien, how about you?
Damien: I'm kicking off this season like I do with most seasons and I'm turning to one of my favorite producers.
Which is in the Centauri line. It's the Hibiki this season kicking off with the Hibiki Japanese Harmony. It's absolutely a beautiful blend whiskey. It's going to come forward with a little bit of some lighter notes. It's not a deep, as with most blends, it's going to be a bit on the sweeter [00:06:00] side, a little bit more balanced, get a lot of honey.
A lot of a little bit of citrus. A lot of like earthy spice on the nose, like you're going to pick up some serious, like rosemary and bark, but it just finishes really smooth. You really
Ryan: like these Japanese whiskeys,
Damien: don't you? The blends are just so delightful and they are an absolute counterbalance to those big, like I lay, scotches that are just like bold punch you in the palate.
These are just like gorgeous. Also the bottles, I'm going to go a little bit of the Jess route here. The bottles are just so beautiful. Nothing feels better than like pouring a little Suntory, like Japanese harmony whiskey from the bottle. Yeah, it just it, the whole experience is worth it. So that's going over an ice ball for me.
And I'm drinking it at a reasonable pace,
Ryan: as far as other stuff. I think Damien's suggesting that the Japanese are perhaps a bit more subtle than the Scottish.
Damien: Perhaps. I just went and I was, my wife and I took a date night. We [00:07:00] went and saw a haunting in Venice. Oh yeah. The new Hercule Poirot.
I think this is now the 3rd
Ryan: time
Damien: that Kenneth Branagh has brought that character to life on screen, and there was Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, and now Hunting in Venice, which is based on Agatha Christie's Halloween party. It was scenic. It was fun. Great cast. In addition to Brenna, there was Michelle Yeoh was in that.
Tina Fey was in it, in a surprisingly serious role, but not too serious. Jimmy Dornan. It was fun. It was good. It was atmospheric. It was definitely like, It was a nice entree into spooky season.
Ryan: So I didn't. So Damien, I haven't seen any of the Poirot films. If I was going to watch just one, is this the one I should start with?
Damien: I don't know. I think that the series. Is fun. It's a novel, modern take. Branagh directed this one. So he's got a very yeah, he's got a very unique directorial sense. And it reflects in a lot of the [00:08:00] cinematography.
Jessica: A lot of work. You could just sit down and
Damien: watch them. Yeah. Very simple to sit down and watch.
Yeah. Yeah. You'll
Jessica: be rewarded for paying attention, but. Not really
Damien: like they'll spell it. They're like they're like those Halloween movies, but I forget the film or not Halloween, the holiday movies by the filmmaker that just gets like mega ensemble casts. And even though it's Oh, Christmas or groundhogs day or Arbor day.
And then it's 30 well known a list. Yeah they're
Ryan: great. William H. Macy is in all of them. Yeah. If you don't, you should just leave.
Damien: But yeah, I think that this one was because it was spooky. It was definitely like the most ghostly, even though they all involve some sort of murder. Death on the Nile was a little bit too Egypt to files.
And I honestly think the best one was the murder on the already expressed because it was also the first in that, revitalized series or adaptations of Agatha Christie's works. But I really love Kenneth Branagh in [00:09:00] general, and his air Q. Poirot is phenomenal. It's just a lot of fun to watch. So it's an easy it's an easy breezy flick.
Go check it out. Sounds fun. I will. See some cool deaths. Yeah, you should. As you should.
Ryan: That's going to take us to our author and publication info for tonight. So back in season three, episode 10, we covered an H. P. Lovecraft story, which was from beyond. And I gave you the old gents biography then. So I.
Don't want to do that again here. Instead, I'll invite you to go back and listen to that episode. If you're interested in that bio information, if you've never heard of Lovecraft, you can go find out about him there. What I thought I'd do here though, is tell you a little bit about the origin of this story and then share a bit more about its main character, who was a recurring character in Lovecraft stories.
So this story actually came. To Lovecraft as a dream. Sure. In a 1919 letter to several of his friends, he details the dream he had and says that he hopes to [00:10:00] craft it into a story one day. Some of those exact details are absolutely present in the text as we have it today, including the shocker of a final line, though in TheDream, it was about his buddy Samuel Loveman.
The statement of Randolph Carter would remain one of Lovecraft's most favorite stories. We almost didn't have it though, as he subbed it to Weird Tales, but they rejected it, saying they couldn't possibly consider it unless it were retyped. Absolutely.
Damien: That's delightful. Murder by format. Lovecraft
Ryan: lamented this in another letter, because he hated to type, but luckily for us and Amateur Press, The Vagrant accepted it, single spaced.
So here we have. Wow, what a gift. The statement of Randolph Carter is alive today. The story features Randolph Carter, a very thinly veiled analog for Lovecraft himself, which makes sense on account of the story being a [00:11:00] dream he had. Carter, like Lovecraft, is an antiquarian, and in HPL's world, he was a student at Miskatonic University.
He became a bit of a recurring character, appearing in The Unnameable, The Silver Key, The dream quest of unknown Kadath through the gates of the silver key, which was a collab with E Hoffman price and. Out of the Eons, a collab with Hazel Heald, he was a popular character with other writers as well, appearing in a dozen or more stories all the way through our modern era.
Comics, games, films, and radio dramas have all made use of Randolph Carter. So that's a little bit about Where the story originated, a dream of HPL's and a little bit about the recurring character, Damian's here to tell us about this story. Yeah,
Damien: sure enough. I got a question though. Ryan, is your middle name Randolph?[00:12:00]
It is. Is this an homage to Randolph Carter?
Ryan: It came to me in a dream.
Damien: Nice. I don't know what the real origin is, but that should be your story from
Ryan: now on.
Damien: All right, here we go. The statement of Randolph Carter by H. P. Lovecraft. I'm telling you, I ain't seen nothing, see, says ostensibly one Randolph. The ran man Carter as the frogman grill him something fierce under the blistering lights of the 19th precinct sing.
Okay, I'm embellishing this. That's not how it goes at all, but it definitely does open with most definitely Carter at the narrator. Absolutely. Giving a statement to some body of inquisitors. It seems his friend and fellow paranormal investigator? Question mark. Harley Warren is missing and Carter being the last person who is with him is the prime suspect for, I don't know, whatever may have happened.
But this is Lovecraft, very short Lovecraft, mind you. And so we know that something else is at play.[00:13:00] Carter begins to recount that he and Warren had basically one night packed up a few shovels, electric lanterns and a field telephone, because sure, why not to go explore big cypress swamp via the Gainesville Pike go Gators because Warren.
Had made some discoveries in a little symbol laden book he'd acquired from India. The two gents come across this dilapidated, overgrown, cemetery type, sepulchre, above ground, ceremonial altar of some sorts, deep in the marshlands, and instinctively, without mentioning a word, begin to clear the center of the plot to uncover three massive stone slabs.
Warren double checks his unholy moleskin, this Indian notebook, indicating to his friend that they must pry open one of these slabs because underneath holds the truth of why they're there. So they do, and they unveil a downward spiraling stone [00:14:00] staircase that plunges into a cavernous, dark, dank void.
Ryan: Lovecraft. The first rule of finding these things should always be don't go in there. Absolutely. Pry
it
Damien: open. Pry it open. When you see a staircase, 100 percent go down the stairs. Alright I'm going in, says Warren, but you stay up here until I see what's up because I'm not going to lie, it might be terrible down there, that's what I anticipate.
No, I'm going with says Carter, which Warren rejects saying he has to remain, but they'll be connected by this phone with it's really long wire. Harley throws up deuces and makes his way down the staircase with his lantern fading and suddenly disappearing as though a stair turned out from under him.
After 15 minutes of silence, Carter starts to panic, but then the cell, the phone begins to click. It didn't ring folks. It clicked. All right. So as the phone starts clicking, Warren whisper shouts through the line, [00:15:00] such little ditties as quote, God, if you could see what I'm seeing. And it's terrible, monstrous, unbelievable, and of course, the classic quote, It's too utterly beyond thought.
I dare not tell you. No man could know it. And of course. Okay. All right. So now that we've really put out a nice trailer for what's to come. Carter swallows up these words like jagged little pills and Warren begs him to replace the slab and essentially GTFO. He's telling him, you can't stay here. You got to go.
It's too late for me. The stairs belong to Warren, but maybe you Carter can escape. They bicker in this traditional. I'm not leaving you. You must stay. No, I got to go or no, you can't go. You get a, or you, I'm not leaving without you style. Whatever. Before Warren's voice goes from this enraptured.[00:16:00] teStimonial tone to this insistent.
You got to get out of here to this consigned. I'm facing my fate. And finally, this desolate hauntingly a tonal. The world is meaningless, blah, blah, blah. And then finally, silence. Back to the present. Carter says to the gentleman around him. Look, I know you discovered me dazed and away from this place that we haven't been able to locate since.
Sorry about that. Can't help you. I woke up in a haze, but I'm telling you that I somehow must have gotten out of there. And I'm also telling you that the last words that I heard over the phone is what sent me packing. I kept calling for Warren, he wouldn't answer. But finally, in reply, I got a quote, deep, hollow, gelatinous, remote, unearthly, inhuman, disembodied voice that spoke.
As if to not only conclude the event, but to erase [00:17:00] the memory of what had happened. And that voice said, You fool. Warren is dead. Hehehehehehe. The end. Seriously, that's it. We're done. We're
Ryan: done. Yep. Very short Lovecraft here. Short and sweet. Nice summary, Damien. Thank you. Thanks. Excellent voice work. Yeah, you like that.
So this anthology is ostensibly all about weird or weird use of different types of media. What are some of the things you're hoping to see this season?
Jessica: I've read them all.
So I probably. Don't have the greatest inquisitiveness. Do we get
Ryan: one of those those tin cans with a string in between them? Telephones, I hope. It is a
Jessica: surprising mix of devices. And some of them are More traditionally a haunted [00:18:00] thing and some like this story are a thing that is used to convey something spooky.
The phone in this story is not haunted, but it sure is contributing to
Ryan: it makes the communication possible. Yes. The weird thing that's happening.
Damien: So it's so it could be, it could theoretically be like a haunted television or a haunted radio, but it could also be, it could also be that.
That thing that device or whatever is also a central vehicle. But when we're talking h haunted media or weird media as the title indicates, a medium I could write in a foggy mirror, and that's a medium for communication. You could write in a foggy mirror, it could be a haunted foggy mirror.
So are there foggy mirror stories or We look at it mostly technology.
Jessica: It's mostly technology. There is
Damien: She doesn't want to spoil it, folks. I know, I don't want to get spoiled either. Is there a monkey? Are people talking through a monkey? Just tell me there's a monkey.
Jessica: Yeah, we'll get there, we'll get there.
And then we can decide is, I [00:19:00] guess
Damien: Does it need EDA?
Ryan: Yeah,
Jessica: I don't know what our That's what our scale is for
Damien: this one. How about media or meaty, duh. No? Okay. Wow. Zero response. That
Jessica: was a remarkable silence.
Damien: That was a stone cold silence.
Ryan: One of the things that I hope to see is, or one of the things I'll be interested to see, with haunted media technology, like we have to advance the age of some of these stories, right? We're typically used to late 19th century, early 20th century stuff. If we're getting haunted televisions, for example,
Damien: that's 1920s.
Ryan: Televisions.
Damien: Yeah,
Ryan: you look it up. I'll continue my thought.
I just think that the stories are going to be from a little bit more of a modern period and I'll be interested to see how they hold up against what we've been talking about in the past.
Jessica: Yeah, there will definitely be. More like media that we still use, right?
It's not all haunted [00:20:00] phonographs.
Ryan: Haunted quill pens. Yes.
Jessica: iT's a fun mix, I think. And this collection has more stories than we have episodes. So we are going to jump around a little bit more. I think the last couple of lines.
Ryan: All right, Damien, when was TV invented?
Damien: thE earliest version of the CRT was invented by German physicist Ferdinand Braun in 1897, is also known as the Braun tube, but the first iteration of the electronic television was first successfully demonstrated in San Francisco on September 7th, 1927.
Look at that! By Philo Taylor Farnsworth. A
Ryan: 21 year old. I think, didn't we talk about that in the Weird Science season? We talked about that a little bit? It might have been. Those earliest televisions. Yeah. But I should have remembered. I stand
Damien: corrected. But also, the Scottish inventor John Logie Baird made the first ever public display of moving visuals, on television in March of 1925.
So I was right. 1920s, the broad distribution of televisions as we know them today.
Ryan: wHen was Wonka?
Damien: When did my TV go across the world?[00:21:00]
Ryan: So I know that I've probably read more Lovecraft than the two of you willingly at least combined. But what were you expecting from this story, knowing that Lovecraft was the writer and were those expectations met or was there something that surprised you?
Damien: No, I'll say straight up. I Expected more because I've read much greater. And this felt like. It was a bit whimsical it was a bit flip I didn't like the whole, Oh my gosh, you got to see what's down.
Oh, you can't see what's down. Oh, it's terrible. Oh, the devils. There's so many of them. And the protagonist is basically on the other end of the line What? No, I can't tell you. Words cannot encapsulate how horrible the horrors are in front of my horrid mind.
Ryan: If you actually just told him, it'd be fewer words.
Yeah. Yeah, it really would. Yeah,
Damien: monster! I felt that was a really elongated bit. Somehow turned into a story, although it is only a nine page story. So how much can you do with
Jessica: it? It really [00:22:00] read like a
Damien: bit, like I was picturing. It just read like a bit. It was like a
Ryan: dream snap snap, figure, snippet.
Jessica: There we go. He just does not want to be friends with this guy anymore. So he's just Oh no, leave me. Oh, monster, leave me here. Yeah. And really he's just
Damien: like moving. But that said HPL is master of the written word and the descriptions of the area that they went to and the amount of decay and the miasma and the I Core and all the other cool little, lovecraftianisms.
Ryan: Down in the, in that Florida Valley that they were in, right? Yeah whatever. Yeah, so it, it was,
it
Damien: was cool. It was an easy nine pages, but it wasn't anything that was like groundbreaking. No pun intended. I'll
Ryan: tell you the thing that. If I were coming at this as a fairly new Lovecraft reader and when I think of Lovecraft, I think of the Cthulhu mythos, I think of the big cosmic horror world ending threat.
What I like about this story is that it's a fairly tight narrative and it's actually genuinely creepy. Not a lot of [00:23:00] Lovecraft is Creepy in the way this is like the setting of the graveyard and going down into the
Damien: sepulcher and but I would say what I expect from Lovecraft is that creeping dread is that okay, lasting ominous threat.
Ryan: And this was a big shocker italicized line. Yeah. And it characterizes a lot of early
Damien: Lovecraft to be honest. Okay. That's fine. But just like the you fool worn is dead. It was right. Oh, that's it. That's it. That's the big line. All right. Great. Thanks. Thanks. Ghostly DJ Casey case. From the other end of the line or whatever.
I don't know. It's just, it was, it felt like anyone could have written this story. I wouldn't attribute it to HBO.
Ryan: Yeah, I and I don't disagree with that. I think that it is a, it is pretty early Lovecraft and so he's working out his skill. He's working on his craft and he's trying to figure out what kind of a writer he's going to be.
Maybe it was one that he wanted to go back to at some point. Maybe that's why he returned to the character of Randolph Carter over and over again. What I can't. What I [00:24:00] can't understand, though, honestly, is of all the stories that Lovecraft wrote, like, why is this one of his favorites? It repeatedly shows up in the letters, that this is one of his favorites.
I don't know if it's because he just turned it from a dream into a story, if that's what did it. I don't know. Is
Jessica: it the first Randolph Carter story?
Ryan: It is, yes.
Jessica: And if he's using that as like a stand in for him, I can, I get having a special attachment to the story you wrote. Yeah, he's
Damien: also, he's also writing down a dream that he had, right?
Of course, it's going to have some sort of personal stickiness to him.
Ryan: How do you think Lovecraft tries to make this a creepy story, craft wise? What does he do what does he do with the writing to attempt to pull this off?
Jessica: I think the creepiness has two parts, but the story kind of has two parts also, right?
We've got our creepy setting, where we are describing the, the mist, the smell, the cavernous void or whatever, immediately, you're just like, where are you? It's so creepy. [00:25:00] And then the other part is the dialogue, right? There's not a lot else. And it's the
Ryan: Those are the two parts of the story.
Damien: And then there's the characters.
Jessica: And it reads cheesy. Now it probably read a little cheesy even then of the you have to leave. It's so unimaginable. I'll never leave you, If you're a, you're a 16 year old reading this in your, monthly horror publication, something like this. The Vagrant. Yeah that's great.
That's what you want. You don't need a whole story. You're not picking up a literary magazine. You're picking up a magazine with a, tombstone on the cover and then the next story is something, Equally creepy, equally pulpy, right? Like you, it seems to be written exactly for publication in a kind of pulpy little magazine, even if it was only single
Damien: spaced.
So [00:26:00] does that mean it made its way into this anthology just because it involved the use of a telephone as like I think so. As like a weird medium to communicate to otherwise distanced entities?
Ryan: Because one of the things that I liked about it was, the main character has to stay behind from the action.
And at least for me, Lovecraft maintains the tension that is necessary, even though it's only over a short period. Period of time and perhaps that's why it works because it's only over a short number of pages but Lovecraft maintains that tension with the main character up above the ground and the Warren character below the ground with this telephone thing connecting them
Jessica: Would it be a significantly different story if he just heard yelling coming from the hole in the ground?
Damien: Yeah. And I'll tell you why, because the one thing that was truly chilling to me about this story when I got past the whole like, Oh, enough with the, you wouldn't believe what I'm seeing right now is I really had to think at what point.[00:27:00] I Have to assume there was some trans dimensional travel.
Something. There was some
Ryan: portal. Oh, that's what you think was going on?
Damien: What I think is, just knowing what I know about Lovecraft, right? And what I'm thinking is, when did that happen? And, did the utilization of this device, this field telephone, sort of Impact
Ryan: that or cause that or yeah,
Damien: or that discussion between the two dimensions.
So at what point did they go? Was it when the lantern suddenly went out? Cause it went from fading. It was a very specific story where it was like fading fading, and then gone. That's not how light works like goes out. So the question is that when he like crossed over into another dimension and then did this technology allow them to communicate through the dimensions?
Is that why we saw or we heard this like slow degradation of sanity or perception or whatever? Is that why he said he didn't see things in a physical space in that tomb? He didn't
Jessica: just see a
Damien: real weird. He was in like another world and [00:28:00] like report, reporting from the scene, here's Warren,
Ryan: that's such an interesting idea because I like that.
That's not at all the way I've ever taken this story. I've always interpreted it as he discovered some sort of underground space. That was another world like in, I don't know if you've read, but in Lovecraft's story, the rats in the walls, the underground city that's underneath the ancestral home.
That's how I've always interpreted this story, but I like the idea that he went through some sort of dimensional portal and was in. In the plains of Lang or dwelling place of Yogg Sothoth or something like that. Because Jessica's right on board with all of those
Damien: suggestions.
Jessica: Yes, that's where I would be too.
No, I like, I envisioned some sort of. I don't portal situation, right? Like he steps on the last staircase down and suddenly he's somewhere else, right? In my mind. I'm seeing the, he [00:29:00] mentions how long the phone cord is I'm seeing that where it's like unspooling and then like.
Cinematically gets faster and faster and starts like a fishing, like
Ryan: a
Jessica: fishing line. Yes, like he's gone so much further than would make sense in an actual underground cemetery. Like having that little thing in there that you can imagine unspooling as he moves into wherever he
Ryan: is. So this story reads much more for you guys like like John Langan's The Fisherman.
It reads us into the river and then gets transported
Damien: somewhere. I was actually going to mention that part of the creepiness of this story was a lot of the creepiness that I felt from the, ocean based or deep sea or like black water based. Whether it's season one stuff that we read or just in general, the idea of the unknown, the impenetrable darkness and void below us, but within reach, but still like where we don't want to explore it.
Like that to me is scary. For me, it's scary. I grew up in an ocean. [00:30:00] Facing state and I still when I'm in deep water and there's nothing around me, like I get pretty spooked not knowing what could be, I don't like that. Yeah, I don't like that at all. Yeah. So that's, that was the same sort of chillingness that this story presented to me.
It wasn't the idea of what Warren saw when he was down in that pit or wherever he was. It was the fact of not. Of, of Carter not being able to know what was going on below and only relying on this report through a telephon a telephonic device. That to me was the most chilling part.
Ryan: What do you think about the idea Oh, go ahead. Oh, sorry.
Jessica: Like an Event Horizon vibe where someone's gone crazy because they crossed something they're not supposed to and you're getting
Ryan: bits of that back. What do you think about the idea of writing based on your dreams? In general, is this a worthy pursuit of authors?
Damien: Yeah, why not? Go for it. People get inspired by the lunch that they had. Why can't they get inspired by their
Jessica: dreams? I am occasionally skeptical of that. I wrote the story because it came to me in a [00:31:00] dream or whatever. Because it's harder to criticize, too. It removes the agency of you. Yeah, I don't know.
It's just it's If someone tells you your dream, you're not just that dream sucks. I feel like it's harder
Damien: to But why not? Can't you still say that dream sucks? And you're like, alright, that's cool. My dream's not for everybody. Only if you want to
Ryan: be a jerk. Yeah, I feel like it
Jessica: removes any, like Not quite agency, but like responsibility.
If you don't like the ending, I don't know. That's how the dream
Damien: ended. So are you saying it gives the author like an out? Yeah, yes, that's exactly what
Ryan: I'm saying. Let's move on to the setting. This The story takes place in Florida, which cracked me up. Now granted it could also take place in Georgia or Virginia, both of which have places called big cypress swamps and Gainesville.
But because I'm in Florida, I interpret it as Florida and I'm sure Damien, you did too.
Damien: I wanted to, except for the fact that Gainesville is spelled without the E without the first E rather. And so that to me ruled out.
Ryan: So what did you think of [00:32:00] the theoretical Florida setting as a good setting for a underground story?
Damien: I like the idea of the southeast. Yeah. Oh that's pretty funny. Now that you mentioned it there is no underground in Florida. Water tables are like 70 inches and then you're like, you're done. You're done, kid. But I, I do harken back to the Lovecraft country and the the Southeasterly setting of.
Some real occult activity and like foundations for occult practices and ritual practices. So I was like, okay, cool. That's the vibe that I got when I saw that it was, I initially thought it was Florida, but then to your point, it was just like, maybe this isn't convenient enough to be Florida, but it's definitely, it seems like it's like Appalachian country.
I think
Ryan: it is Florida. Okay, Jess, what about you? That's what,
Jessica: Okay, I'm not from there or anywhere around there, but as I was reading this, I was picturing the, Southern horror of fog along the ground trees with that mossy stuff.
Damien: Spanish moss. [00:33:00] Yeah, Spanish moss. Yeah,
Jessica: like that kind of stuff where it's just like you're walking through the woods and you're moving stuff out of your way and
Ryan: there's, the occasional palm tree of some sort. Palmetto
Damien: brush.
Jessica: But yeah, then digging. A hole, I feel like you just would get a puddle, right? You
Damien: do. In fact but let's be honest, we're not talking about something that exists in a physical reality. So if they want to breach the Floridian water tables and be like, why is there a deep hole?
How is that possible? Oh, it's because we're dealing with Cthulhu mythology. All right. I guess we'll give you the out.
Ryan: No, I do think it took place, it takes place in Florida because Lovecraft did spend time in Florida on at least two or three occasions. He visited his friend Robert Barlow over in DeLand.
DeLand's not a great place to go visit, I don't think, but that's where his buddy, that's where his buddy was.
And the other place that he spent time was with Was with his friend Henry S. Whitehead in Dunedin. Now that has always interested me [00:34:00] because Dunedin is just a short 35 minute drive north of where I currently am.
And his friend Henry S. Whitehead, who was a sort of a voodoo horror writer, was also an Episcopal priest. He was the rector of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Dunedin. Oh, cool. And I'm Of course, very interested in that. So a couple of years ago, I called up the then rector of good shepherd done Eden and started asking all these questions.
Do you have any papers or letters or photographs? Do you know who this guy is? Do you know what I'm talking about? And I'm very interested in any memorabilia you might have in your archives there. And the rector at the time, she's, she says, she's you're one of them. I can't believe it, but you're one of them.
What are you talking about? She's every year these weirdos call up and ask me about this guy. I was
Damien: like, I never thought you would be one of them. You thought wrong. You thought wrong
Ryan: because I will drive up there right now if you say you have something cool. But, [00:35:00] alas. They had nothing cool.
So it's cool enough to me to know that just a short drive up the road was the Episcopal church where Henry White has, was the rector and where Lovecraft spent time on at least two, two different occasions. I think that's neat. Yeah. So I think and to get there from wherever he came up in the Northeast, he would have had to come through or near Gainesville.
It makes sense that's what he's thinking about. Yeah,
Damien: true, but he, you said there were a few other Gainesvilles, I don't know. There are. There's one in Jordan. I don't know where they are. Yeah, I'm looking at the spelling. And without the double E's,
Ryan: then. He wasn't a great speller. I don't know.
Yeah. Alright, let's go to the I guess we're calling this does this media question. How do you think them? How do you think the media tech worked in this story? Was it integral to the story or could the story have gotten along without it?
Jessica: I think Ryan your version of the story of.
They just walk underground and, or the guy walks underground and there's a monster and, ah, it's scary. [00:36:00] I don't think the phone was important to that story. Okay, yep. But I think how Damien and I are reading it as interdimensional, he's gone somewhere else, that phone connection makes that possible. In a fun way.
I think that's the connective thing. I don't know if it would have been, it could have been walkie talkies, right? But having some sort of device between them I think was, cheesy, but effective for what it needed to
Damien: do. Yeah, with Jess. I think it was a central part of the story.
It was odd how it was utilized in their taste, but I think it helped to cement this story as being proper for the collection and I think it was appropriately used to open up various channels for interpretation as to why. This voice was being communicating exactly what was happening deep down in that hole.
Ryan: I, I wonder where these two guys would have gotten it though, because when I looked it up, like this kind of technology was really only available to the military. [00:37:00] These sort of field telephones, as they called them, were World War One tech. Yeah. How different buy anything.
Damien: If you're they all said they also had military trials, right?
They had
Ryan: multi, maybe they were, maybe they, maybe one of them was certainly not. Certainly not Randolph Carter, but perhaps Warren was a military man. Yeah, I think it
Damien: makes sense.
Ryan: What did you think about the ending? Damien, I know that you loved all the italicized lines in this. A lot of people criticize HPL for these melodramatic, shocker endings.
But what were your thoughts?
Damien: If this was a shocker ending, it was a pretty mid shocker, just the, you fool Warren is dead. It was like, Oh, the end. Okay. Thanks. Now cut to next show. Now cut to next story in this magazine. Now, whatever, I don't know. It felt a little it felt like it, Could easily become a punchline even among HPL fans.
I think it has. Yeah, I think it has. Then that makes a ton of sense. I'm not as ingrained in the culture, but I can see that as being a bit of a punchline, a little cheesy and I'm sure [00:38:00] I've
Ryan: seen it on a t shirt somewhere.
Damien: Yeah, you fool. Warren is dead, right? It's like Han shot first or something.
Yeah.
Ryan: I know that when I read the story for the first time as a kid, it worked on me a lot more. That it does this go around as a kid it was terrifying. Yeah, this
Jessica: story seems Aimed lower than a lot of his other stuff, right? The language isn't as like over the top, the
Damien: dialogue
Jessica: Isn't two scientists talking to each other in the most
Damien: boring
Ryan: way possible.
Yeah, but it's more lavender than straight on purple, right? Yeah, no,
Damien: You're right. And
Jessica: a lot of my like biggest Problems with Lovecraft stories is that every character speaks the same right? There are no characters who speak in short sentences. Everyone has a full paragraph and then the next person paragraphs back.
This one seems less like that, which is probably why I like it more where it's just like it's quick dialogue. It's easy reading. It [00:39:00] seems like it is. More of the CW TV series.
Ryan: The CW
Damien: Lovecraft. Yeah, like It's Victor Hugo, but on like The VMAs, Victor Hugo host the VMAs. .
Jessica: It's I don't know if you guys watched Supernatural.
It was
Damien: four years. I wanna start watching that. I know it's 37 seasons, but it loses its
Ryan: way by season 21 or something. The first
Damien: season, go through the first seven years of watching it's
Jessica: Monster of the week, serialized, there's a big bad every season, but most of the episodes they're fighting a little or whatever.
Most of the episodes have this. Cold open, at least in the beginning, like where I watched it, where you see what the monster is that they're going to be hunting. And a lot of them open like this. It's two guys doing something stupid that they're not supposed to be. And then someone has to come in and rescue them.
It's people going on a road trip that they shouldn't. So this it read to me [00:40:00] like The cold open of a CW monster hunting show. And
Damien: now I can see that. Yeah, I guess you could say if that's the case I could see that as being like, a criminal minds or one of those CSI shows where it opens up with the murder.
And there's a lot of like misdirection. And then all of a sudden, there's like the dead body. Yeah. And so this could be something just as quick and dirty that would help to maybe that's all maybe that was the entire purpose then Maybe Lovecraft knew that he didn't really have much of a substantial story here, so he's just let's take Randolph Carter and make him a fixture in my world.
Ryan: A lot of his early stories.
Damien: Yeah, we're going to launch Carter. Yeah,
Ryan: I can see that. A lot of his early stories, he's, he does have a lot of the very short stories, like one of his other earlier ones was called Dagon. It's just a couple of pages, but it looms large in the minds of Lovecraft fans.
It's a prototypical type story for his like underwater monster god thing. But I, I think that some of these shorter ones can be fun too. So we've [00:41:00] talked to, we've touched on the writing just a tad. Was there anything about the writing that stood out to you or that you wanted to bring up in discussion?
Damien: You know, I think you called it, it was lavender, not purple, but I think that his ability to lay on the vegetal decaying I core oozing, me as mole vaporous environment of of like a. Trans dimensional cemetery and lands of Florida. That was effective. It wasn't really much else to the story, right?
We didn't have characters that we could fall in love with. We didn't have a big bad. We had someone reporting on a big bad. He couldn't actually give any descriptive languages. Yeah. So what do we rely on? We rely on that HPL sense of being able to describe a scene and put us there. And I think it was done effective.
Yeah, we didn't
Jessica: even have. The investigators or whoever he's talking. We just have like stupid thing of let me [00:42:00] repeat your question back to you, like reality TV talk. So
Ryan: so that the reader understands.
Jessica: Yes. Rather than having some guy ask what were you doing in that swamp?
Yeah, his character says, I don't want to tell you for the hundredth time what I was doing in that swamp. Whatever worked
Damien: for this story. The other interesting thing is I was like, is he even sitting in front of people? Or is he writing this down as like a confession? I was like, there's really no interaction or anything like he could, this could seriously be a written letter.
So who knows? This is
Ryan: why I think it really was a dream that he just is writing this fragment down and sure. Not really worried about anything else. Damien, the passage Still got paid. Still got paid. The passage I think this is the passage you're referencing when you talk about the prose that you enjoyed.
I really enjoyed this too. This is on page 191 of the text. He writes, Over the valley's rim, a wan, waning crescent moon peered through the noisome vapors that seemed to emanate. From unheard of catacombs, [00:43:00] and by its feeble, wavering beams, I could distinguish a repellent array of antique slabs, urns, cenotaphs, and mausoleum facades, all crumbling, moss grown and moisture stained, and partly concealed by the gross luxuriance of the unhealthy.
Vegetation
Damien: so good. That puts you there, right? That's that, that's a literal word, salad, it is with all the vegetation,
Ryan: it's . But you are there, you can smell it, you can taste it, you can
Damien: feel it. Yeah. There's even there's even a little bit of the what is it, Anana p where the words like, create, become the sens the sensation in your mouth Yes. That you want to feel. So I, yeah. It even you reading it the way. Struck the ears was very like unhealthy luxurious. Yeah slow sprawl. It was gross.
Ryan: So did the scare hold up for you? Is this a scary story?
Jessica: What a great question.
Yeah, [00:44:00] you know what? I thought that this one was scary in the kind of like mad scientist way of you're pushing the boundaries too far. Just don't go in a hole in the ground, right? You have a mysterious book. Just be the other guy. Just stay on the top. Just stay on the
Damien: top. The Lovecraft
Ryan: analogs always wimp out, don't worry.
Yeah,
Jessica: which I thought was genuinely very funny that you're like self insert character is like A wimpy nervy guy delight.
Damien: Yeah, it was shaggy of the mystery machine crew. Yeah, I I disagree. I don't think it was very scary. Like I said, the only element of fear that I felt that little tingle was equating this to being out in the middle of the deep ocean, just not knowing what's going on beneath.
And the fact that our narrator was a non observer. Who was getting relayed information in the worst possible, you're never gonna believe [00:45:00]
Ryan: the terror.
Damien: It was just like, come on. So that made it a little too campy for me to actually get caught up in the moment. But the element itself was frightening.
Just knowing that something's happening that you can't see and that all you rely on is what you're hearing. And then all of a sudden you hear some like separate disembodied voice. It's okay.
Jessica: Like this really would have worked as a. Radio drama,
Damien: yeah, maybe, but I still don't know if it would be scary.
It would be entertaining, but I don't think it would be entertaining. So the fear, the scare didn't hold up for
Ryan: me. I'm going to, I'm going to agree with a little bit of both of what you said and land somewhere in the middle. I think this is a scary story under certain parameters and those parameters are this is a story that is perfect for campfire recitation.
Or bedtime terrify your kid's storytelling. This is when the and that's why I think it's scary, because when I first read this, I was probably in high school, and it was a scary story to me. So I go back to that time in my mind, and I think that[00:46:00] if you could memorize this story, or at least memorize the story beats, this is a great tale to You can memorize this story!
It's only nine pages,
Damien: right? This is this isn't a real, this isn't a real like multi arc, deep tome.
Ryan: Alright Damien, what we're gonna go to you first on our whiskey ratings. This is how we rate Stories here at Whiskey and the Weird, all the way from zero fingers of whiskey to five fingers, or the coveted full fist, I want to ask Damien, like, where are you coming in on this one
Damien: first?
Yeah,
mad respect to the author all, easy things to complain about aside, but I've just read so many other works that were so much stronger that this one comes in at a two and a half for me. Okay. I thought it was a digestible piece of short fiction, but nothing that really stood out, so it's going to go straight middle of the pack, two and a half fingers.
Jess?
Jessica: With very little respect to the author, generally. I like this one more than I like most Lovecraft stories. I think, to me, the YA [00:47:00] y, whatever. For whatever reason, this worked for me more than, sort of his stuff that aims a little bit higher. So I'm gonna go with a three.
Ryan: Nice. Wow, what a gift. I think that we should write down the day and time that Jess rated a Lovecraft story higher than Damien did. That's pretty awesome. I'm coming in with a four and I think mostly for the nostalgia factor. I know. I know you're gonna fall out of your chair.
I'm a fanboy and it's the nostalgia factor for me. I remember reading this story. I remember being scared by it. I do wish that some of what Warren saw was at least somewhat describable. So we would have some idea of what's going on. I think the prose that's on display here is a lot of fun.
It's not super purpley as we mentioned. It gets the job done. It gets the job done. Yeah. And it does. So without getting in the way, sometimes Lovecraft can really get in his own way with the writing. Sure. So I think you're
Jessica: right with the like nostalgia, like it reminds me of like the [00:48:00] scary story anthologies that you'd read when you were like 12.
You the girl with the yellow ribbon.
Ryan: Exactly. It's , that kind of stuff. And the illustrations like this would be perfect for one of those
Damien: illustrations. Yes. Yeah. White
Jessica: wolf. Yeah I loved that kind of stuff when I was a kid.
Damien: Yeah, but those stories I actually have some volumes right now that I can go, and I have some Alvin Schwartz volumes of scary stories to tell in the dark, and I could go and read those, and they would at least hold up to some extent and still resonate with regards to the element of fear that they introduced.
This just wasn't very scary, but all due respect, you have your own rating, I have mine. Heck yeah,
Ryan: Jessica. I look forward to continuing the podcast with you next week. Yeah, whatever No, I'm teasing. No, it's this is is this anywhere near the best Lovecraft story? No, not at all. It's all it's also not near the worst there's some pretty
Damien: bad that's that's what I want to expound on is what you think is worse than this
Ryan: Oh, the moon bog, but that's for another podcast on another day.
I like the [00:49:00] sound of that one. That's going to take us to our If This, Then That. And I've got that for you tonight, actually. I want to introduce you to another short story called The Anatomy Lesson by a gentleman named Cody Goodfellow. This can be found in his 2016 Collection entitled Rapture of the Deep, published by Hippocampus Press.
The reason I like this story is it takes everything that the Lovecraft story we read threatens and puts it up on the screen for you. So this is a story about a whole expedition that goes down below a graveyard. These are anatomy students who are doing a little bit of grave robbing to get some extra credit.
They discover This one does. As one does they make a horrible discovery in a graveyard, they fall down a big hole, a lot of hijinks ensue. It is very gross and very fun, and if you want to know what the story that Lovecraft wrote would be like from the perspective of what Warren [00:50:00] saw, then you need to read The Anatomy Lesson by Cody Goodfellow.
Damien: That's fun. Yeah I'll check that out.
Ryan: It's, you're gonna enjoy it. You're gonna enjoy it. We want to thank you very much for tuning in to this first episode of the sixth season of Whiskey and the Weird. We would always appreciate it if you would give us a rating or a review wherever you catch your podcasts.
We want to thank Dr. Blake Brandes for providing the music for Whiskey and the Weird and Damien if they would like to tell us about their weird media choices. Where can they do that?
Damien: You can find us on Twitter now known as X at whiskey weird pod. That's at whiskey weird pod on Twitter. We're also on Instagram at whiskey and the weird at whiskey and the weird on Instagram.
It's good dog Insta as well. If you want to see some good guy shots, he's always down to model where you can ping us. You can see a little bit of the recap of the shows. You can see the Books, movies that we're reading, we discuss our bar [00:51:00] talk and we're also super responsive, so we'd love to engage you there.
So feel free to ask us questions. Feel free to just say hello. We spell our whiskeys with an E, by the way, in our handles, and we hope you do, too. If not, I'm gonna take your phone out of your hands and throw it down a deep, dark chasm that will probably go through a transdimensional portal and you'll never see it again.
That would be too bad. Yeah, but you'll still pay for your data, so don't do it. Just spell your whiskeys with an E.
Ryan: Jess, what are we reading
Jessica: next? We are going with Rontgen's Curse by Charles Crosswaithe.
Ryan: Excellent. Sounds fascinating. Yeah! And I'd also like to take this opportunity to put Aaron Wirth on notice.
We would love to talk to you at the end of this season, so if you listen to the first episode and we haven't heard from you or you haven't heard from us yet, we'll be reaching out. We'd love to chat with you. Whitley.
Jessica: I'm Jessica
Damien: Berg. And I am Damien Smith.
Ryan: And together, we're Whiskey and the Weird. Somebody send us home.
Jessica: As always, keep your [00:52:00] friends through the ages, and your creeps in the pages.
Damien: You fool!
Ryan: Morin is dead! Goodnight. Goodnight
Damien: everybody. Bye!