The gang waxes reminiscent on PEMDAS, Ed Begley Jr, the wonders of a semi-decent ice ball, and their fondest funerary experiences... wait, wut? Welcome to Whiskey and the Weird, a podcast exploring the British Library Tales of the Weird series! This season, we're bowing in reverence to our eighth book in the collection, ‘Holy Ghosts: Classic Tales of the Ecclesiastical Uncanny’ edited by Fiona Snailham. In this episode, our featured story is: An Evicted Spirit by Marguerite Merington.
Bar Talk (our recommendations):
Jessica is watching They Cloned Tyrone (2023; dir Juel Taylor); drinking a Ghia Ginger Spritz.
Damien is watching Strange Darling (2024; dir. J.T. Mollner); drinking a Glenmorangie 12.
Ryan is play Blue Prince (VG; 2025) ; drinking a Glenlivet Caribbean Cask.
If you liked this week’s story, watch Presence (2024; dir. Steven Soderbergh)
Up next: "The Duchess at Prayer" by Edith Wharton
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
Damien: [00:00:00] that is what fuels me from wanting to know what people would say at my funeral, because arguably it's the one event that you can never attend. You know?
Jess: I think, I would hope that nobody ever thinks about me. I think that would be way better.
Damien: Jess, you're such a loner.
Ryan: I don't know.
I don't know about you afford. I'll show up to Jess's
funeral. I'll show up. I'll, I'll
Damien: show up
Ryan: too. Damien and I will come. I will just
Damien: trash
Ryan: talk the hell out. Birth
Damien: first.
She died. How she lived complaining about her ice trays.
Ryan: Welcome back everybody. I'm Father Ryan
Whitley.
Jess: I'm Sister Jessica,
Damien: and I'm the eternally damned Damian Smith.
Ryan: And together this Trinity is whiskey and the weird, the podcast that for the past seven seasons has been delivering you detailed and yes, sometimes even correct analysis of the best spooky stories from times gone by.
Each season, we've prayed that you have been enlightened by our disputations on [00:01:00] these themed selections from the British Libraries Tales of the Weird Series. As you know, we cover one volume of these canonical classics every season. And each episode we provide careful exegesis of one story. Please make sure you read the story first before listening as we always give a full spoiler summary.
This season, we turn to a testament of terror as we explore holy ghosts, classic tales of the ecclesiastical, uncanny, and now hark. I hear the cathedral bells. Calling us to Vespers. Hasten to your abbreviations. Scoop more incense on the coals and join us in the pews before the last candle. Flickers out for tonight's reading comes from an all together different lectionary and our master story planner, Jess is here to tell [00:02:00] us what it is
Jess: tonight we've got an evicted spirit by Marguerite Barrington.
Ryan: Marguerite Barrington. There's a new name for us. However, before we get to that, we've got some bar talk to do. Damien, what are you drinking this fine evening. Hey everybody, how you doing? Good. We're good. Thank you.
Damien: I feel like it's been forever since I've seen these lovely faces. Uh, tonight my glass. I've got the Glen Warren g 12 year.
It's good. I mentioned it before in the pod. I got it as a gift. Very thrilled about that. It's a nice scrumptious, easy scotch to have on the old shelf. It's a good one for sure. It's a cool art deco label. I feel like a little mod, a little orange and white. Speaking of orange, definitely a little bit of punch of citrus on the front end right away, but kind of smooths out.
A little sweet. A little sweet. I know it's not Ryan's favorite. Those I lay smoke bombs, but
Ryan: ooh, stay tuned. I think you're gonna find I'm right there with you tonight.
Damien: Ooh, really? Ooh, [00:03:00] exciting. What a, what? A sneak preview. So yeah, that's what's in the glass tonight. I have it over a single round cube.
I found this interesting. I think the aspect of having nice, like good solid square ice or good solid round ice or even those big like copper or brass ice presses that like put out a diamond, they cost like $3,000 and it takes a round piece of ice and melts it into a diamond, whatever. It's like boutique of course.
Yes. Shei. Yeah. Cocktail lounge type thing. But I found that you can get really good round ice makers on the cheap these days and I don't know what's going on with ice making science, but it's come a long way. Like I've got a couple old school ice ball molds that it's too many pieces. You have to wait till it sort of thaws till you can open it.
And then I just recently got like a. Four pack sphere ice maker, that puts out a perfect ball of clear ice. Even if you don't do any of the tips, like to pre boil it or anything like that. A perfect ball of clear [00:04:00] ice, not any of that. Yes. And there's four of 'em and it makes, and it costs like $7. And I was just like, this is true science.
There is a real market here for getting good ice balls on the cheap. So more so than the Glenn Morgie and the glass is the ice ball that I used and I couldn't even tell you where I got this sphere mold from, but I'm sure maybe I'll link it in the show notes. Anyway, I've been vamping a lot on what I'm drinking because I'm not gonna say anything about the film that I watched recently, which is, oh Strange Darling came out last year, 2024.
It directed by JT Ulner Stars, will Fitzgerald Stars Kyle Garner, who is a bit of one of those, you know his face when you see him. Mm-hmm. But you may not know his name. And it is a spectacular film. It is really interestingly shot. It is brilliantly acted and. It's got Ed Begley Jr. In it. I think that's all I'm gonna say.
Okay. Yeah, I think that's all I'm gonna say about this film because it is really, that's the best, that's funny.
Jess: Funniest selling point
Damien: to not read up anything [00:05:00] if you haven't already. If you've been able to avoid spoilers, great. Just go in as blind as possible and watch Strange Darling, knowing that we like fiction and contemporary pieces that are a little bit on the effed up side.
So just go in with that mentality and enjoy yourself being in the darkest possible for Strange Darling by JT Molnar.
Ryan: And before you do, make sure you get a ice ball.
Damien: Yeah. Get a perfect ice ball. Your film. Yeah.
Just hold onto it while you're watching the movie. See if it stays right. Make it better. Stay in one piece by the end of it.
It's a fast watch too. Anyway, Jess, what about you? Jess is still drinking for two, right?
Jess: I'm still drinking for two, but we're getting closer to that being not a reality. Yay.
Damien: Oh my gosh. We're gonna have another co-host by the next season.
Jess: And so because of that I splurged a little bit on a gia. Which on a what?
What On a gia. It is like the fanciest little fake cocktail you can buy. It comes in like a bottle or they [00:06:00] come in like little canned spritzes. I got the canned spritz.
Damien: Yeah, you did. Yes you did.
Jess: This is the ginger spritz. Mm-hmm. It, they're genuinely good. I can't even be like, what a stupid thing to buy.
Oh. 'cause they're so delicious. They're really good.
Damien: Poor Jess. She loves to hate on her drinks.
Jess: It's like, this is like ginger yuzu, rosemary shrub kind of. So it's like I
Ryan: know what one of those flavors is.
Jess: Yeah. It's like
Damien: yuzu is like Japanese citrus. Oh, okay.
Jess: Yeah, it's like a good gingery acidic hit. But you know, it just costs too much to drink regularly because they come in like this two stupid, tiny little cans.
So it's if you want to like really impress someone, get them some of these because they're delightful. And then Okay. Like send Jess, get her a six
Damien: pack of Gia. Gia.
Jess: Oh no. It only comes in a four pack. Well, of course, course it does. It does. Of
Damien: course it does. And each can is two tablespoons and you're supposed to pour it over.
An [00:07:00] active fire.
Jess: Yeah. Active volcano. Actually no ice. All there. No ice ball for these.
Damien: You know what's really interesting about that flavor combination is when you say ginger like. You know, I, ginger beer sort of ebbed and flowed. It went through its period. But now I feel like among the social media crowd, ginger bugs are coming back in style, which is just basically pouring water, adding a little bit of sugar, and then a bunch of sliced ginger and allowing it to naturally ferment.
And it's called a ginger bug. And now it's like the big, it's the big fermentation. Like standard.
Ryan: You guys are hipper than me. I don't know about those things. Well
Damien: look up different ginger bug recipes and I think it's all about, it's basically making a natural soda so it's like cold fermentation.
Jess: Yeah. And this one, it's not as sweet as they, as the like fake canned cocktails get too. Yeah. So it's just like refreshing in that like you can have one and enjoy it and not feel like you've gotten a hundred cavities.
Damien: Do you, do you stretch it out? Do you add a little club soda or something there? A little seltzer.
Not
Jess: on this one 'cause it's a spritz. Okay. So they have one that comes in a bottle that's like a little bit. [00:08:00] Juicier this. And then the spritz has come in a couple different like flavor profiles. So this one's like Ginger, but they have the original one. I wanna say. There's like a lime one and maybe a sumac one or something.
Really? So they're interesting. Yeah.
Damien: Little resinous. Little resinous. Sumac. Poison. Yeah little arsenic. Lavender neighbor. Yeah little cyanide cherry.
Jess: It's like sumac chili, I think. I haven't found that one. Oh, of course it is in a wild yet.
Damien: Yeah, I'm sure. But,
Jess: and then I have been on like a losing streak with movies lately.
Like I just keep watching kind of new horror releases and not being super wowed. So I went back and watched one that I really liked that's called, they Cloned Tyrone. It's a Netflix one, but they released it on that like the weekend they did the Barb Inheimer.
Damien: Oh really?
Jess: So I think everyone, so [00:09:00]
Damien: it got shuffled out of the theater.
Jess: I don't think it was even released in the theater. Yeah, I think it was just like on Netflix. But ev it was the one weekend that everyone went to the theater, so nobody watched it. But it's this really cool like sci-fi horror that is really funny and smart, but also just looks really cool. Like it's a really enjoyable viewing experience.
And it has John Boyega, Jim, Jamie Fox and Taylor's Harris in it. And they're very funny and it's just if you need something that's better than most Netflix things, yeah, I would throw that on.
, Came out in 2023 directed by Jewel Taylor on Netflix.
Damien: All right.
Jess: Is good.
Damien: Okay.
Jess: But also it's never, like I watch a lot of horror sci-fi stuff and it's never on the we think you'll like this. So for some reason Netflix made it, but just didn't push it enough to people. So I would say interesting.
Criminally under seen for how fun it is.
Ryan: And we like those kinds of [00:10:00] recommendations here. Definitely.
Jess: Nice. Ryan. What are you drinking?
Ryan: Well, as I teased a moment ago, I'm having a little bit of a sweeter scotch tonight. This is the Glen Livet Caribbean cask. This is Ooh, an affectation. Yeah, it's an affectation scotch.
I know. A couple years ago, all the distilleries wanted to do what I believe Veni did first with their Caribbean cask. So Glen Livet got in on it. This is a perfectly serviceable scotch. It is delicious. It is balanced like a lot of Glen Livet iterations, and it's got a touch of that rum sweetness at the end.
This would be a delicious scotch to serve someone for dessert or an introductory scotch for someone so. Really, I enjoy it. Do
Damien: you still take it with a couple drops of water or is the
Ryan: sweetness gonna I do, yeah. No, I take it, I take all my scotches with a couple drops of water. It really helps open it up for me.
Sure. Opens up the nose, opens up the body. I like this one. It's not what I'm gonna rush out to buy when the bottle is gone, but if I see one and it's [00:11:00] on sale or somebody gives it to me for a gift, like, I'm not saying no, someone buys it for you. Yeah. As Damien said, I do tend to like some of the smokier ones, those are the ones I try to stock more often.
But for one on the sweeter side, this is pretty good. And like I said, pretty balanced. As for my recommendation for tonight I'm gonna recommend a game. I haven't done that in a little while. Nice. This is a relatively new game that just came out, and it's a puzzle mystery game, which is not what I typically like to play.
Damien: Wait, wait,
Ryan: wait.
Damien: Tell me the initials of the title.
Ryan: TBP.
Damien: The
Ryan: blueprints. The blueprints. Alright. Yes, yes. You got it. So this is for friends who grew up playing Mist or Riven or Seventh guest. It's a puzzle game. It is a roguelike puzzle game. The premise, if you don't know what it is, which, which looks, looks like Jess does not know what it is.
You're saying a lot of words right now and never been less
Jess: familiar with anything in my life.
Ryan: So you're, you, you play a young kid who has inherited his uncle's estate, but there's a gimmick. [00:12:00] The, the inheritance is dependent upon, there's a contingency, I guess I should say. It's dependent upon you as the player discovering the 46th room of the 45 room estate.
And each time you go into it, the layout of the estate is different and you, you control the layout, you build the estate each time you play room by room. And within many of the rooms there are puzzles. That you have to figure out. I'm not too totally far into it yet. I'm already getting the impression that even the rooms that don't appear to have puzzles in them initially, there's things in them that are gonna be part of much larger puzzles as the game opens up.
So, for example, one thing I've noticed is that in a lot of the rooms, there's just somewhere in the room, like on a, on a counter or tucked away beside a couch or something, or, or even hidden, under a table, there are these different chess pieces. And that's gonna come back to, to play at some point.
So it's like, all right, in this room, the bishop in this room, the rook in this room, the night I'm following the, recommendations of many [00:13:00] people who who've played it already and said. Keep a notebook make notes. Oh, really? Of everything as you go along.
Damien: That takes me back. That does take me back to Mist and Seventh Guest and 11th Hour, where you're like, I have to take notes because I'm going through a maze.
And at the time, you know, every answer to any question or any, any spoiler is, is not readily available on YouTube or in some game guide. Exactly. Where you literally had to just kind of, and especially with the fact that it's generative, right. The fact that every time you play, it's a different layout for the rooms and stuff.
Right. That's cool.
Ryan: So, and you know, I I, I, I did an iteration, I did a run the other day where I sort of like tried to sprint to the back of the house, which, which I presuppose was gonna be the way to get to the end of the game. And that didn't, that didn't do it. That didn't help. I got all the way back.
There's like, all the doors were locked. There was nothing you could do about it. And you only get 50 steps per run. So every time you cross into a different room, that costs you a step. There's, there are ways to gain new steps.
Damien: Interesting.
Ryan: And so when you finish your 50 steps or however many you've gained.
[00:14:00] When you, you run out of steps, it says, all right, you have to take a break and you have to go, you have to call it a day. And when you come back, you start right back in that empty foyer and start building again. All right. Now in the rooms where, this is the last thing I'll say and I'll shut up about it.
In the rooms where there are puzzles that you think you're familiar with, the more this is, this is a gimmick. I learned the hard way. The more you place those rooms and, and the more you solve those puzzles, the less frequently they show up. No. The harder the puzzles get, they're different every time. All right.
Interesting. The rules of the game are always the same. Like one of them is a math puzzle. Just the different, just the, the difficulty ramps up each time. You really need to remember, at least for the math puzzle, you really need to remember your order of operations from like sixth grade. Come on. MDAs or what?
MDAs. That's what It's MDAs. Yeah. See, Damien would be good at this. Yeah. Is this Yeah, that's the computer game. It's on every platform. Okay. It's on Xbox, PlayStation and and pc. Yeah. It's Andie game.
Damien: Right.
Ryan: So it's, yeah.
Damien: I love that. I love the indie. Yeah. I've been getting into indie games recently. I played, I played this [00:15:00] one called Plucky Squire.
It was really cute. Oh, I've heard of that one. Yeah. Like the animation is a lot of fun, but then the elements behind it where you're essentially a storybook character that has really great art, but then you come out into a 3D realm where you leave the book and you go onto the kids' table where the book stands.
Mm-hmm. It's, it's really awesome. It's super cute. It's really adorable. Very fun to play. But it's, it's a Devolver game and they do a lot of like indie releases. Mm-hmm. And it was just. A blast. It was really super sweet. Nice. It's completely anti Call of Duty, anti Fortnite, anti all those like massive shooters.
But just a really fun story. Clever writing, beautiful art design. And I, I love supporting those indie games. Yeah, I definitely wanna check out blueprints. No doubt. Yeah, if you
Ryan: check check out blueprints, it's very cerebral. It's very chill. It's, it's one of the, for me anyway, it's a game that I'll do a run maybe two and then that'll be what I, what I play for it, for that sitting.
Damien: Yeah.
Ryan: You know, some people will sit there and just do five or six days worth. But I just like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go through it once and then I'm gonna make some notes and come back to it tomorrow and see what happens.
Damien: Interesting.
Ryan: [00:16:00] Yeah. Blueprints. Uh, well, you recommended Dredge and
Damien: I loved dredge.
Oh, dredge is fun. I'll, I'll definitely check out blueprints.
Ryan: Alright, that's gonna take us to our author and publication info for tonight. Just is like, just like, I'm not gonna
Damien: do any of this. No, I, this is garbage. This recommendation is trash.
Ryan: Have another sip of your spritz juice.
Jess: A fun math computer game is not anywhere on the list of things I enjoy.
Ryan: Perhaps I sold it the wrong way anyway. I know there's, I know there's listeners that are gonna be there. Can't wait
Jess: to p dos. I can't wait.
Damien: Yeah, you laughed, but you just remembered it. It, it caused a flush of memories to go sweep it through that Prego brain right now.
Ryan: Rough. So tonight we've got Marguerite Barrington. Who was born in 1857 in Stoke Newington, England into a family of very comfortable means. Her father worked as a [00:17:00] clerk in the Bank of England, making his family a part of the new and rising middle class.
While not much is known about her mother, and honestly for many of these authors, is anything ever known about the mother? It's getting to be a little annoying to this particular researcher. Gee, are you trying to indicate that women of this time really had no station? I'm just, uh, I'm just suggesting that evidence points in that direction.
Geez. Her aunt, however, Martha Barrington was not only a politician, but the first female poor law guardian. I had to look up what that meant. Our, what is that? Our British friends might know what that is, but this is a position which helped administer the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which was sort of a prelude to welfare, but a lot more draconian, of course.
Sure. So, so like welfare might be, might have as its principled aim to lift up the poor. This was to rather keep the poor in their place while providing for their basic needs.
Damien: Okay. So to, to quell the uprising. We'll give you a bag of spelt every, every [00:18:00] fortnight. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And occasionally
Ryan: a small fish.
When Marguerite was 12, she moved with her parents from England to Buffalo, New York for their sins. There she was sent to school at a convent. Yeah. May Lake Effect. Effect. Ye, that's right. And in the convent, she became known for her talent at writing plays. We know that one of her first jobs was to serve as a Greek and Latin teacher at the normal college in New York, which has since changed its name to Hunter College.
So that, that you've heard of that perhaps? I like the normal college and it's, and it's not, it's not, it's not like it's normal college. It was capital T, the normal college. Oh, okay. But she only worked at Hunter College, Ohio Stairs. The normal college. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. She only worked there for a few years.
She left to follow her dreams of becoming a writer. Her first play was called Captain Letter Blair, and it was not only well-regarded critically, but it was financially [00:19:00] successful bringing large audiences to the Lyce Theater on Fourth Avenue in New York City. She would go on to write other plays, poems, and even worked on a comic opera.
Perhaps her most well-known publication though is her edited volume of the correspondence of General Custer and his wife that had to be riveting stuff. Yeah. Wow. General
Damien: Custer snooze and his wife. The what?
Ryan: Yeah. Last letter starts out, boy, is today gonna be easy? Marton came to this work through meeting Mrs.
Elizabeth Kuster in 1894. They kicked off a close friendship and Mrs. Custer named Marton executor of her literary estate. Upon her death in 1950, Marton published the letters and it remains her lasting influence today. So in fact, when I was researching Marguerite Barrington, you look her up, it's like 99 out of a hundred.
Search results are related to the edited volume of Custers, the Custer's [00:20:00] letters. But she enjoyed a 59 year long career as a serious writer and is well remembered for her dedication to the craft. She died in Manhattan on May the 20th. 1951 perhaps testament to her regard. This story first appeared in the March 18, 99 edition of The Atlantic, a magazine as well regarded then as it is now.
It began in Boston in 1857, the same year Marguerite was born and has consistently maintained a focus on educational, writing, politics, culture, and find fiction. It is always aimed at a serious relationship at a serious readership, and has published works by Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Henry James Martin Luther King Jr.
Todd Hesi Coates, and George Packer, and that's Marguerite Barrington. All right, we're over to our summary now, and I believe Jess has that for us tonight.
Jess: Do I ever?
Damien: Yes, you do.
Jess: All [00:21:00] right, well, here we go.
Damien: Sorry folks. We just, Jess. Jess is just down to business.
Jess: Our narrator quickly recounts her life. She was born into a, folks, I'm real pregnant in real time.
Damien: This late stage, late stage pregnancy. Friends, these, these full spoiler summaries are gonna end up being, this is two lines from Jessica who has that amount of patience to tell you exactly what you should have read before listening to our podcast.
Anyway. That's right.
Jess: She lived, she died. She narrated.
Damien: Move on.
Jess: Okay. Well, we start with our narrator quickly recounting her life. She was born to a pretty well-liked, well established family, and even as a child, she was, you know, smart, cool, perfect hot even, but not so hot that she like knew she was hot, you know?
Ryan: Right.
Jess: She was chill and fulfilled and happy and then she died. The nurse told her and her parents that she was gonna die, and then she did. She takes us through the process of her [00:22:00] death. She'd been sick and like getting a little better and a little worse with her family around her. She was kind of in pain, but also pretty out of it.
And then eventually the nurse just announces that she's dead. Oof. Assorted family members cry and our narrator watches and narrates as the news of her death spreads along to the rest of the fam. She gets philosophical about the nature of death and dying and the difference between life and death in a way that's not particularly thrilling to recap.
So just imagine that she thinks she's having some profound now dead thoughts, but is also still dead and still narrating.
Cut to her mother is downstairs getting fitted for a funeral dress while her cousin Oia writes the narrator's obituary. Our narrator hates that her cousin is writing it because unlike Oia, our narrator has a love of language and is a good writer. Aha [00:23:00] means well, but kind of sucks, and our ghost narrator isn't thrilled with her work.
The mother and the dress maker have a funny convo where the dress maker tries to tell her that everyone at the funeral is gonna be so impressed with how great she looks simple and cool and elegant, and the mother reiterates that she absolutely could not care less.
Ryan: Her daughter
Jess: literally just died.
Then the hat maker comes in with the same spiel talking about this ball or hat that she's made to go with the dress and she gets it. Maybe. The mother thinks she doesn't care, but she knows that our dead narrator would want her mother to look, look
Damien: her best. Oh, no doubt, no doubt.
Jess: So the cousin asks the mother to proofread the obituary, but the mother cannot possibly deal with one more thing and directs her to her husband.
The dead narrator's dad, the narrator is [00:24:00] glad of this because her dad will be more critical and be a better editor than her mom. So he crosses out some of the like, passive language that the narrator hated in her cousin's draft, but also clarifies that she died in her father's home, not in her own home, because he pays the mortgage, then he leaves
Ryan: one less, one less dig from dad.
We also, you're my roof. You'll live under my
Jess: rules. You are gonna, you die under my
Ryan: roof.
Jess: We also learned that our narrator is named Gillian, probably, but maybe Gillian, depending on your pronunciation. I, I'm gonna go Gillian. I always think Gillian, but I've met more Gillian's lately, so
Damien: that that's, that's a lie.
And I call you out
Ryan: on it. I think it's Gian. Sorry,
Jess: get
Damien: outta here. Right? Go play blue games. I think it's probably dial
Jess: again. Okay. So our first post death visitor is Mrs. Piper, the large asthmatic neighbor who's always been vaguely annoying. [00:25:00] She normally just lets herself in the servant's door, but on this deathly occasion, she has a little bit more formality.
She uses the front door and is even dressed up a little bit. Oh, the next visitors are the two Jenkins sisters. They're named Luelle and Jane, and they do let themselves in the servant store. And actually they've been trying to get in for the last couple of days to see the almost dead narrator, but were turned away.
And even now, they just kind of wanna see the dead body.
Ryan: There's always these people,
Damien: you know who they are. They're there for the finger sandwiches and the corpse, so.
Jess: They turned away and instead they decided to gossip about the narrator's age. She claimed, and the newspaper claims that she was 27, but these ladies are dubious.
Mm-hmm. They also have lots of opinions about the best kinds of caskets. One of them actually went to the undertaker to figure out which one the family [00:26:00] purchased, and they don't actually think that our hot dead narrator was that hot. She just wore stylish clothes. And also wasn't she pretty stuck up
Ryan: these women on this occasion?
Honestly, on this day,
Jess: the sisters make their way to the florist because they wanna get something flashy to bring to the funeral that they were kind of back and forth on if they were going to go, because they didn't get to see the dead body. And everyone there has a lot of opinions about flowers and baskets and birds.
There are a few more visitors to the house, some of whom. Leave like written condolences that are dead ghost narrator critiques because she does not like their writing and she's annoyed when people tell her mother that she's at peace or hint that anything was part of God's will. She doesn't not have any time for this.
One of her old friends comes by to sit with the body overnight, and our narrator tries to like psychically give him strength, [00:27:00] but instead he just writes a really bad poem that no publishers want anything to do with. Okay, now a nurse and an undertaker are preparing the body for the funeral. They're discussing the horrors of the job, but at least it's steady business.
Am I
Damien: right?
Jess: The undertaker says that actually he has a really great sense of humor, but he's just a pro when he's on the job. So you would never know they finish the work when the undertaker notices that the cousin did our corpse narrator's hair terribly.
Ryan: Oops.
Jess: The nurse says I mean, it's whatever.
It's probably fine.
Ryan: Not gonna have that problem.
Jess: But the hairdo contains both a bun and a pompadour, and he's both, he's not convinced that he's gonna get the casket to close. You
Damien: can't have volume in the front and the back. That's a very valid concern. Not unless it's Halloween. That's a great
Ryan: costume though.
Jess: So the nurse [00:28:00] like waggle some braids around to get the head to fit in the casket, and then at the funeral, the church service doesn't actually mean that much to our dead and departing narrator, but she kind of realizes that they're like important to her family and I guess. Society. So for once, she's not that critical because it's a funeral.
There's no like church collection plate. But a friend asks for some of the moolah to support some of the narrator's favorite charities, which she kind of thinks is nice. Okay. And now we're driving to the cemetery and the narrator is again like sort of pleased that she's leading the way. She likes to be a trailblazer.
She's in the first car, but she would rather, you know, be alive. The atheist dad surprises everyone at the funeral by like chucking in the first handful of dirt, at the dust to dust part.
Damien: Yes.
Jess: Then her grave is filled in and our narrator's fading now. And so she spends her [00:29:00] sort of last conscious, are they conscious thoughts?
Remembering one lover she had and projecting that consciousness into his hope? He's crying obviously.
Ryan: That's an uncomfortable feeling and she
Jess: never really wanted to get married. But after just kinda like creepily, I guess, staring at him and remembering their time together. She thinks they probably would've gotten married eventually.
Uh, a laugh. Her floating ghost mind wanders back to her home where her dad is hanging out in the study and he's already looking older together. Her and her dad, she's just sort of floating around. Go look for her mother, and she is nowhere to be found. Oh wait, there she is. And she looking at old baby clothes.
They're not the narrator's baby clothes. She had those donated to the poor. I don't know whose baby clothes these are. But [00:30:00] her parents start reconnecting in a way they haven't in a long time. Sharing memories of their dead daughter and our dead daughter narrator goes away, floats away knowing that her parents will actually have a nice and kind life together.
The end.
Ryan: Yeah,
Damien: that's it. It, wow. What a whirlwind, Jess.
Jess: Yeah. There was somehow both a lot happening and nothing. Stories all over the place.
Damien: Not
Ryan: a lot. Yeah. It's all over the place. Well, this is the first, and perhaps the only story this season written from the perspective of the ghost. So I wanted to check in and see, did that upend your reading or alter your experience in any way?
What did you think about that perspective shift?
Damien: I'm a, I'm a sucker for like novel, you know, observer. Narrator. I, I am. So if it's, you know, I know we've, we probably mentioned like the hound from hell or whatever. Hell hound or whatever it was. That, that paperback from Hell book that was just [00:31:00] mm-hmm. There are a few chapters in it that's about a murderous dog, and it's from Dog's Perspective.
Oh, that the dog's narrated. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, this is novel. And then there's a couple other, I won't name them because they play, they play into a little bit of a plot twist and a character device, but contemporary horror novels where you have an a non-standard, maybe an unconventional narrator.
And so I like that sort of stuff. You know, I would read a book if I found out the narrator was a refrigerator. I like stupid horror movies where the main character is a tire, you know, or, or a pair of pants. So that kind of stuff, I think I dive into the fact that it's a ghost. The fact that it's a spectral sort of observer feeds into my personal curiosity, and I'm sure it's a shared curiosity of.
What if I could watch my own funeral? Mm-hmm. What if I could watch my own afterlife, you know, procession and see who showed up? What did they say? What did they do? So the fact that that was the device [00:32:00] that sort of carried through this entire story, it hooked me, but it hooked me for not great reasons. It didn't hook me for literary value.
It hooked me for the same reason I look at a, a car accident if I'm driving by it. Okay. It's, it's sort of, yeah. A rubberneck, that McCobb sort self-interest. Yeah.
Jess: I think this was, yeah, an interesting way to write this character. And I think we do get books and movies and things that are from the perspective of ghosts, but I feel like they're either usually like something like the others mm-hmm.
Where, sorry, spoiler for a hundred year old movie, they don't know their ghosts.
Ryan: Right. You
Jess: know, and so it's just like the twist is that they're dead or it's from the perspective of the ghost, trying to get a message across, right? Like mm-hmm. Trying to do something, right. Trying to advance the story.
And so this one was so weird that it was just like ghosts not doing anything. It really was. This is like, she was absolutely just floating around, around hanging out and
Ryan: watching
Jess: for a couple of days,
Ryan: which, which is oddly [00:33:00] like, this is gonna sound silly, but oddly, that's probably more realistic, right? If this, if this is whatcha gonna do, if you're a ghost, yeah.
You're probably just gonna float there and, and sort of fade away into non-existence eventually, right?
Jess: So, yeah. Maybe not the most exciting, but a novel way to think about it. It's just like. And the way I thought
Ryan: about it was, was I kept trying to, I kept trying to convince myself you gotta think it's 1899, right?
This is probably a convention that hasn't been used or seen a whole lot. And, and sure scholars of this kind of literature can tell us if, if we're wrong on that. I'm, I'm happy to stand corrected, but I can't imagine this was very popular, that this was a popular, you know, convention and, and, and that it had to be somewhat startling, at least in well, yeah.
Well, becausecause likely the perception in, in
Damien: like Euro Catholic society was that there was no residual hanging outness, no floating around. Right? Right. So to write a story from the perspective of somebody is to assign it a consciousness, is to assign it a [00:34:00] a wherewithal. Yeah. And if you're gonna have some residual, like spectral energy.
It damn well isn't gonna have a soul, right? Because that soul has gone one direction or another.
Ryan: And that's what I wondered about. I think if in the original presentation of this story, would it have come off as anti-Christian or anti-religious?
Damien: 100%. Because, because, because the soul didn't go anywhere.
Because a Christian or Catholic ghost would've been dumb. It would've been a dumb ghost. It would've been something that moans and like walks around in an area, it does a repetitive action because that's what it knew in life. But the essence of what made it individual, of what made it, you know, conscious has gone on to the afterworld, whereas its spectral residual or residue is, is there and experiencing like the, the a somewhat corporeal like universe, right?
Mm-hmm. So if it were following, I think the true like Catholic Way would've, okay, fine. You want to have something that looks like, you know, like a, like a spectral imprint of this person who once was fine, but it sure is hell [00:35:00] can identify itself. It can't take in its surroundings. It just wanders around like a zombie almost.
Mm-hmm.
Jess: She doesn't do anything as a ghost, but she also doesn't have any of the like. Unfinished business. A mystery. You know, like when you read a ghost story, like the ghost is usually there for some reason. There's no
Ryan: wrong. There's no wrong to write. That's a good call. No, she just got sick.
No, no mission. No mission. There's no
Jess: mission. She just got sick and died and also seemed fine with it. Like her unfinished business was like, I guess she could have gotten married, but she didn't really seem that bothered by that either. And then at the A, you know, within a couple days, she's just like, oh yeah, my parents are doing okay too.
BI
Ryan: was like, oh, dead baby clothes from, that's a good point. Yeah,
Damien: that's a very good point.
Ryan: Well, I think that the danger of writing something like this is that it can easily devolve into the overly sentimental. Do you think that this story fell into that trap, or do you think [00:36:00] that it, it rode that line?
Damien: I, I don't think that it went into the overly sentimental because all the experiences that the, you know, the after presence of Gill and Gillian had were, were pretty novel, and were pretty like standard when it comes to how people grieve.
Like she goes and, you know, peep shows in on her, on the one guy who loved her and on the guy that she loved, and she was very, he seemed like an, a very average, but really good dude. Mm-hmm. Who was a lumberjack, he was like a big, beefy dude who was sitting there with like tear streaks and he had a picture of him and his mom on his like dresser table.
He didn't move on to somebody else. He wasn't like, you know, having his way with, with the neighbor or something like that. It wasn't, it wasn't anything too salacious. Yeah. There was no twist in that either. Yeah. There was no twist in that. It was just, that was the guy that could have been your guy and mm-hmm.
You know. And so everything was just really sort of plain in the observation, which didn't feed into any sort of sentimental, you know, meter [00:37:00] where I'm like, yeah, really ramp this up. Really had me identify for what could have been. It was just like, oh, you died and this is what happens after you died. Yeah, next.
And our
Jess: narrator thought pretty highly of herself, right? Oh yeah. In these first couple paragraphs where she's like, well, I was beautiful, but I didn't know it. And so it would've been easy to carry that sort of like cheesy sentimentality over to her family, right? Like they could've been like, oh, our perfect daughter who died.
But there isn't any of that. Everyone is appropriately sad that she died if it's like the ex-boyfriend or her family, or it's just kind of like neighborhood gossips. And I think that's, yeah, like that's a funny way to approach it . Some people are a little sad and some people are just there to get the good gossip and see a corpse
Damien: and, and the finger sandwiches.
Jess: And the finger
Damien: sandwiches, obviously. Yeah. Let's stop, ignore that. I
Ryan: felt like it was a little more sentimental than you guys are making out, but maybe that's just the way I read it. Yeah, you're, you're a [00:38:00] guie, bro. The thing I wished I kept wishing to happen, I mean, aside from anything was,
Damien: aside from an action,
Ryan: I kept wanting her to do something like a little bit mischievous.
That's fair. You know, just like move something or, or put something out of place or just do something that was just not mean-spirited, not violent, not revenge driven or anything like that, that wouldn't have fit with this story, but Sure. Just something a little bit like that that says to those with eyes to see like, I'm still hanging around here I am.
Jess: Yeah.
Ryan: Well, you talked about the parents grieving and the lumberjack grieving.
How did you feel about the various experiences of grief on the part of the family and friends? Were they well written? Did you find them believable?
Jess: I thought the mom was very funny where everyone was trying to be like, listen, okay, here's your dress. Here's your hat here. You know, like, and she's
Damien: like,
Jess: I don't care, folks.
I don't care. My daughter just died. I could wear a stack of potatoes and it would be very fine. And everyone was just like, actually, your [00:39:00] daughter? Like I can tell that she would want you to look her best. Yeah, just the overwhelming yeah. When someone dies, you have, you have stuff to do, but people keep bothering you about stuff that's not important,
Damien: which is funny to me because I think it feeds into the overarching theme of this, which is it's not about a ghost, like sort of narrating their observations.
It's really just a, a speculative piece of fiction. Mm-hmm. About how people grieve and the different ways that they grieve. And so, to me it was, it was like a, it was like, it was like a montage of different scenes. Yeah, just happened to be witnessed by a ghost who could transcend space and time because they had 60 minutes where they could go through 60 ghost minutes, where they could go through and check in on people before they a sharp shuffle off this mortal coil or whatever.
And, and this,
Ryan: this, I
Damien: think
Ryan: for me, was the strongest part of the story. The, the expressions of grief that were shown. I, I I deal with [00:40:00] that quite a lot. And so I see, yeah, I bet quite a variety of ways in which people grieve from, from the spectacular to the mundane. So there's a, there's a quote here on page 212 in the volume that, that just really rang true to me because it shows everybody grieving just a little bit differently at the moment of death.
So it begins in this way. Is she dead? The words struck with a jarring note upon the tense chord to which the listener's hearts were strung. My cousin Ofia shuttered and fell to stifled sobbing. My mother moved to throw her arms about my frame, but fell forward with hidden face and aimless outstretched hands, while my father with an impatient exclamation strode, noisily from the room as if death had done him a personal injury without offering him a decent opportunity for the reprisals.
Do A gentleman I thought that was perfect because that is what happens, right? People react to the, to the moment of death, to the moment of the bad news in profoundly [00:41:00] different ways and in in ways that are, that are to the outside viewer, even silly. Or, or incredulous. Or people say things like, are you sure?
Well, yes, of course, I'm sure. To the offended father, you know, the anger manifests itself. Wasn't that one of the, the four stages of the five stages, Kubler Ross's stages of death and dying and grieving. His anger, anger and denial and all that stuff. So I thought, I thought the approach to that was, for me, the strongest part of the story.
Damien: It was interesting because I I can understand that especially for someone who, as a part of their, you know, job deals with grief, a great deal, but it in for a short story, it's not really fleshed out enough to take that emotional route. Right. And to really deliver those various stages or those various phases.
And it seemed like it was flitting, it seemed like it was a, a genuinely interesting splitting Spectral narrator. Yeah. Was going from person to person and not giving them their time and due [00:42:00] to build emotional weight and anchor into the reader. And that's fine. But it also felt like a speed masterclass.
This is the way that different people just, you know. Well, so what it
Ryan: said to me was that the author is a person who has sat in a room like that. Probably that's, yeah,
Damien: that's a good point. And just observed sort of externally.
Ryan: Right. But your point is well taken that, that for a short story. It does.
The emotional aspect of it does not have time to take. It's a big challenge. I
Damien: don't, I don't know if it delivered on what that challenge demands, but that's not to say it wasn't well written. I'm sure we'll get to all those pieces. It's interesting though, because I do like one I thought about, as I mentioned earlier, what, you know, who would show up to my funeral.
I'm, I'm not gonna have a funeral, but who would show up to my funeral, my afterlife services, et cetera. What would they say? How would I be viewed? Like blah, blah, blah. But also. I've been in a situation where I've dealt with , death at different stages. Mm-hmm. Expected, unexpected, close, not so close, kind of distant and able to look at it from a more analytical point of view and a [00:43:00] cultural point of view.
Ryan: The reactions vary to each particular case, right?
Damien: 100%. Yeah. 100 and, and unpredictably I had no idea, like I didn't know that I would care this much about person I, a person I didn't know so well just because there was a lot of other stuff that was going on in my life that all of a sudden had gravitas.
Right. Yeah. Whereas, you know, one particular death earlier on in my life when I was early 20 something, and it was an unexpected death of a close friend. And I just remember as we were going to his internment. I was a pallbearer and I was carrying his casket and I started laughing because me and the other people who were carrying the caskets started walking like penguins because there were so many of us on one side of his casket.
Like there was like 12 people carrying his cas. Yes. You know, it was just one of those weird moments where all of a sudden I'm laughing and I'm like, I'm laughing, but I'm also burying one of my closest friends like, it, you can't predict this stuff.
Ryan: And I, I mean, to be fair, he
was also probably laughing.
Damien: Yeah, he probably was. He probably was. He was, he was, he was watching us, like this narrator just being like, you know, look [00:44:00] at these, look at these jokers. Can't even carry my box. You know? Yeah. So it was, it was an interesting perspective, and having those real life experiences, I think lend to the gravitas that the text itself didn't deliver.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's fair. Yeah. No, that's a good, that's a good observation.
Jess: Well, I wanna have a slight counter point do it to that, which is that our narrator, I don't think is maybe the most reliable in. The, like conveying the depths that people are feeling.
Damien: Okay. Fair.
Jess: Because I think that she is like you said, kind of flitting around, but even things that would've had some like emotional resonance to her, I think because she's kind of dead and fading away, those things aren't hidden kind
Damien: of dead.
She's dead.
Jess: She's kind of dead. So even when she's at her funeral and people are saying things about her, and you would think if you were at your funeral, you would be incredibly invested in what people are saying about you. She's just sort of like, yeah, that was [00:45:00] nice. I get why that was important. You know?
So I don't think she's truly, truly, oh, and she's,
Ryan: she's also a fickle personality to begin with. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Right.
Jess: So she's maybe a little self-absorbed, also a little checked out and then, you know, so I think that that matches up well with. How it's written. Like we don't get a deep dive into how the mom mm-hmm.
Or dad are actually feeling, 'cause like our narrator maybe didn't care even when she was alive and now is even more checked out.
Damien: Do you think that's a cop out or is that a character choice?
Jess: I'm going with character choice.
Damien: It is interesting that you say that though, because it's it's interesting 'cause some of those curiosities that I have that I just talked about,, I have those because I'm alive.
Jess: Sure.
Damien: But if I'm dead and seeing it, would I really give two hoots?
Jess: Am I gonna stay down? I give it down here.
Damien: Yeah. Like, this is lame. I got a whole new spectral, I got a whole new plane of existence. I'm gonna sit here and worry about what these people who aren't gonna be a part of my life, quote unquote, anymore.
[00:46:00] So, that's a good point.
Ryan: I, I wonder, I'm gonna provide a third option between cop out and, and character choice. So, and this comes from her, the author's biography. We know her as an author of plays. Sure. If you, if you see this as a stage play right. Which you could, this would make, which you could easily see this would make, this would make a very simple one act right there.
There isn't the option in the dialogue necessarily to go deep into some of these emotions out. you would have to see that kind of decision come alive on the stage through the character choices, through the acting choices that are being made, not necessarily written into the script. And, and maybe that's what's happening here as an author who's more familiar with writing scripts.
Jess: Sure. But also if you're an author, you should be able to write, and my mom was really sad or whatever, just
Damien: doesn't buy that at all. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. Because you could take, you could take stage directions and turn them No, that's true. And turn them into That's true. Turn them into text. So,
Jess: and she was really mad at the hat lady because,
Damien: right.
Jess: Like,
Damien: I don't
give a tune
about this [00:47:00] hat. It, it. It was a touch on. And I think it's fair because to your point that you made earlier, Ryan, that, you know, this wasn't a popular like narrator, this wasn't a common device. Mm-hmm. At this era of literature, we're figuring it out.
So I think, I think the entire novelty behind this was Ghost tells a story. Yes, yes,
Ryan: you're right. Yes. Like,
Damien: man Bites dog, and then you can just, or most is nice, you could ride that for 25 pages mm-hmm. And call it, call it a tail, and then, you know, cut your check for whatever magazine publishes it. So I think, I think that that's fine.
And given the station and given the upbringing of the author like that, write a story that could turn a quick buck by playing into everyone's morbid curiosity. Yeah. I think makes sense.
Ryan: Well, human interest piece here then we've danced around this topic for, for a couple of minutes. Would you want the ability to witness your own funeral?
Yeah. What would you, what would you hope that people would say? What, how would you hope people to react? We got a yes and we gotta No. [00:48:00] Jess, absolutely not. You say, yeah, I'd
Damien: rather stay alive. Just to be, just be honest. Like instead of,
Ryan: okay, so if it came between staying alive and winning a funeral, I'd rather stay alive.
Probably an option. Option. That's not an option. Ultimately,
Jess: I prefer to go through life and it's gotten me this far just assuming that I, I'm likable. Is that true? It doesn't matter, but if I believe it, then I can just kind of love it. I can just kind of go through life at this level and be okay if I have to.
My Jess is
Ryan: manifesting her likability
Jess: or just I'm fine being oblivious to my un unlikeability, but if I have to sit in a room and people are just like, oh my God, thank God she's gone, then what? I'm gonna die and be, I'm only here
Damien: for the finger sandwiches.
Jess: I'm gonna die and be miserable. No thank you.
I would like to float off and just assume that everyone's really bummed out. And they're gonna make a cool statue of me and remember me fondly for the rest [00:49:00] of their lives.
Damien: That's funny because that seems like a moral concern. And just like I mentioned earlier, like I think that my moral curiosity or my, my physical curiosity in life would not carry as much weight.
So I think that your moral concern would probably die with your body. Right.
Ryan: Well then I'm gonna, and then you might have a different
Damien: perspective if you're there and you're like, all right, I have an option. I could either go over here to whatever lies beyond, or it could swing by this little room where they're talking about me.
And I think maybe at this stage I might have a different opinion.
Jess: Nope. Seems foundational right now
Damien: in this moment, I would want to see what people say about me. Mm-hmm. But not because I want to get like. You know, over the fact that people thought less of me than they did in life, but just because I'm a curious person and everyone likes the sound of their own voice and everyone likes hearing their own name, and so I think we all have this egoistic drive that resides in us whether we wanna address it or not.
So that is what fuels me from wanting to know what people would say at my funeral, because arguably it's the one event that you can never [00:50:00] attend. You know?
Jess: I think, I would hope that nobody ever thinks about me. I think that would be way better.
Damien: Jess, you're such a loner. Have another Gia. You know, have another spritz.
Ryan: I don't know.
I don't know about you afford. I'll show up to Jess's
funeral. I'll show up. I'll, I'll
Damien: show up
Ryan: too. Damien and I will come. I will just
Damien: trash
Ryan: talk the hell out. Birth
Damien: first.
She died. How she lived complaining about her ice trays.
Ryan: I don't know. Again, been to a lot of funerals. Participated in a lot of funerals. I've seen the good bit bad and the ugly want people. I would want people to tell the truth to a certain extent, right?
Damien: But they never do, don't make me out to be
Ryan: the hero, the hero that I'm not.
But, but, you know, talk honestly about who, who I was and, and what my impact on people was,
Damien: but they never do. The mere right. And ceremony of a funeral is where people talk about sometimes they do the best parts of you really. Sometimes they do. I tell, tell us the best from the pulpit. Sometimes the best truthful thing you've ever heard at a [00:51:00] funeral that absolutely dogged on the dead.
Ryan: Okay. So recently we heard about a person who just couldn't cook at all. That was Yeah, that, I mean, but that was like, that was like a piece of honesty that was. That was a choice. That individual didn't have to say that. But
Damien: did, did people like knowingly laugh and like d their eyes and being like they were the worst cook and they were.
Yeah. They all still love them. Yeah. But that's an earnest dogging. That's not a, like this person sucks. No, that's not, no, I haven't heard of this person sucks. Okay. Because that's not what you do at funerals.
Jess: Right. Has five secret families and they're all here. That would be, and they're
Ryan: all here did, I did get a, a, a chuckle out of the line about there was no offering taking up at funerals.
There was a horrible, horrible incident once at a funeral that I was presiding over and which are ushers that were serving for that funeral. Were, were brand new. And they had never done a funeral before. They had only done Sunday mornings. And so when it came time in the service on a Sunday when the offering would normally be collected?
[00:52:00] No, they, they just went into it and they just passed the plates.
Jess: Did you say anything
Ryan: like, like it's one of those moments where like it started and you can't stop it. And, and, and just. Can you imagine
Damien: kind of knowing the person that you're there for and receiving a, an alms plate and being like, here's a buck, here's a dollar.
Oh
Jess: God, I didn't bring any cash to funeral. Funeral. I got a piece of juicy
Ryan: fruit. You think that's good? I will say like, for as awful as that was, like folks were generous. They liked this guy.
Damien: You're like, you're getting, you're getting the accident Sweet plot on the hill.
Ryan: Oh, we had a long conversation as a staff about that.
Holy cow. How do you address that? Like it's just one of those, it's just one of those moments. It was a pure accident. It was a pure sure misfire, but it was just, it was like the worst, awful timing.
Damien: That's all right.
Ryan: But we, we had, we had one woman who's like a perennial funeral attender great lady.
Like she's, she's Jewish. Yeah. I don't wanna be her
Damien: [00:53:00] friend. Nope. I don't wanna be her friend.
Ryan: She comes to every Episcopalian funeral there is. And she's this, she's this old Jewish woman. She's really delightful. But she tells it like it is, and she comes up to me, she's like, well, father, I've never seen that before.
Jess: You're right.
Ryan: You're really reaching father. I'm like, no,
Damien: no, you're, you're right. That shouldn't have happened. Wow. Awkward. Imagine when it gets to the front row with the family members. Oh my God. Can you imagine? Just, I would've just been, what do I do here?
Jess: Be like, these are my friends. Dump it in my bag.
Yeah. The, the family pockets the cat.
Damien: Yeah. I, I got you, boo. Thank You'll get some very much.
Ryan: This reception wasn't gonna pay for itself. I'll get a couple GIAs
Damien: for the after party on this. This
Jess: cask, it was expensive. Thanks everybody. Oh, man.
Ryan: Just as a, as a real quick note something struck me as interesting.
The title of this story is An Evicted Spirit. And in in what way is this story In about an eviction? I, I, I didn't see it Evicted
Damien: from the [00:54:00] corporeal form. Evicted from the body? Yeah, but
Ryan: not really. I mean, evicted from
Damien: society maybe. I don't know. Maybe, I dunno. Evicted. It's a salacious title again. Ang thought, thought it was a good title.
I thought it was too. It was. I didn't like
Ryan: it. Right. Well, I didn't, I didn't see the eviction. Like she didn't like, I dunno, it's not in their body anymore. It happens. Yeah, she got the
Damien: pink slip. Not to me.
Ryan: It will
Damien: soon. You're evicting your only tenant.
Ryan: So what about the writing then? What did y'all like, what didn't you like?
What stood out to you?
Jess: I oscillated a little bit. I really liked the first few paragraphs where it Same.
Ryan: Yeah.
Jess: It started out same. Super strong. We're getting a really funny intro about this character.
Ryan: Some beautiful turns of phrase and, and at the beginning,
Jess: and then I died and then the nurse that I died.
But I, you know, then it kind of gets into that flitting thing that I was trying to justify, but actually just didn't really like that much where you're not [00:55:00] with any character long enough to care because she doesn't care. So I understand like the writing style mimics how the narrator would have dealt with all of this.
Mm-hmm. But it wasn't like that rewarding. And so kind of the jumping around, I either wanted it was un it was uneven.
Ryan: Yeah, that's, that was what I wrote down. It was uneven. It was really good in places and
Jess: yeah, like I liked the gossipy sisters. But then I didn't care about the hunky lumberjack.
Mm-hmm. You know,
Damien: poor that guy. I, it started with, I was an only child, so it had me right away. 'cause I was an only child. I was like, you get me story, you get me. Marguerite. Agree. I don't think I, I don't think it was consistent. I thought it was pretty effective. Ultimately forgettable with regards to writing style.
Mm-hmm. It just didn't sing as anything that was like particularly, you know, identifiable to this author. Well,
Ryan: and it's got one thing in it that, that is symptomatic of this period in a lot of ways. And that's [00:56:00] dialect. And I just don't like dialect in writing. Yes. It's so hard. The Oh, the
Damien: Swedish fish.
Yeah. Yeah. The Swedish, like deferred. Deferred, right. Yeah. That was,
Jess: I just breezed past that 'cause I was just like, I don't have the time. It gave
Damien: Giant Flea or whatever it was. The Irish mm-hmm. The Irish copper. That was like, right. You, yeah. Well what about did it church. I don't think it churched, but I do understand why it's here.
Because the service took place in a church. Right. I thought zero
Ryan: I zero church bells zero church. This is about,
Damien: this has nothing to do with the church. Right. This funeral, I would say like, I would say like one or two church bells.
Jess: Like that was kind of my question was just like, okay, there's not, I mean there's a funeral in this, but there's a funeral in a lot of stories and there's ghosts in a lot of stories.
Yeah, yeah. Are ghost stories automatically religious churchy? Because you have to think about why ghosts is, I think it's here because there's
Ryan: a funeral.
Damien: Well, yeah. I mean, it was, it was in a funeral that was observed and the funeral was in a church and there was an anti-church component, an [00:57:00] anti-church character in the atheist dad and that sort of thing.
So I think. That that alone gave it a bell, a bell and a half enough, but the rest of it had zero, zero bell. So I, yeah, I think I'll concede
Ryan: to a bell.
Damien: Yeah, I think, I think, I think Ryan went a little hard with no bells, but you know, that's, he gives the Nobel Prize to this story. Thank you very much.
Ryan: Thank you.
He'll be here. I'll
Damien: give it a single bell.
Ryan: Not scary. Scare doesn't hold up. It's not intended to be scary. There's no scare here. There's no debate here. Yeah,
Jess: no, that was, it was just a
Ryan: scarless.
Jess: Nice little weird story. Yeah, right.
Ryan: It was cute. Well, that's gonna take us to our whiskey ratings. That's how we rate our stories here on whiskey and the weird from Zero Fingers of Whiskey to the coveted full fist of whiskey.
Jessica, what are you given an evicted spirit?
Jess: I wrote down a three, and that is,
Ryan: oh.
Jess: Higher than I think the story warrants, but I actually really did like the title and that gets a little bump and the first page was really [00:58:00] strong. I thought that that was like one of the better intros to a story that we've read of like, and now you're dead.
I thought that was fun. So I went with a three.
Damien: D for
Jess: only those reasons.
Damien: Yeah. I gave it a two. And the only thing that's gonna last from this story is the fact that if someone says, Hey, do you know of a older story where it's told from the ghost point of view? I'll be like, yes, an evicted spirit by Marguerite Mannington, I don't even remember last name.
And that's it. Because nothing else about this story was incredibly memorable. So it was just a, a one and done for me.
Ryan: I'm with, I'm with Damien on this one, two fingers of whiskey. For me, this was a fairly boring story At one point, it's talking about birds and I realized that I was looking at the birds in the yard rather than reading the story.
And that doesn't happen very often, nor is it a good sign. It's saved from zero fingers by some periods of gorgeous writing and some really what I felt were really sort of honest and truthful. Reflections of grief,
Damien: agree.
Ryan: I will not remember this story, right. Two, two [00:59:00] weeks from now, this is gonna be one that goes in one ear and out the other.
So two fingers from me. That's gonna take us to our, if this, then that. If you did like an evicted spirit, Jess has another suggestion for you.
Jess: I sure do. It is present, which is the 2024 Stephen Soderberg ghost movie
Damien: and my to watch, which,
Jess: yeah, I watched it recently. It is, the entire film is told from the point of view of a ghost in a haunted house who is like our narrator, just kind of floating around and observing things and you know, it's a movie, not a short story.
So the ghost gets slightly more involved in things and has a little more agency. But yeah, it's just sort of like, if you wanna know what it's like to just sort of drift around a house observing a family, it's, it's enjoyable. It's really weird. Soderberg kind of does. It's something super different every time he makes a movie.
Right? Yeah,
Damien: that's fair. Like he
Jess: [01:00:00] jumps wildly from genre and style and whatever. So this is kind of a like slow moving, haunted house story with a twist.
Damien: I feel like it came and went with a, with a whisper though. I don't know if it was poor marketing or whatnot. I know that it came out and I was like, oh, this is interesting.
I'll check it out. But then it was like, and then I didn't see it. The theater? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I watched it
Jess: recently.
Damien: Okay.
Jess: But I think it came out last year, like around Halloween
Damien: presence. It's interesting 'cause there's so many, stories and pieces of media, like, , they've always lived in a castle or we've always lived in a castle is obviously told from the perspective of.
Dead people, but it had more meat on the bone I guess. And there's that a 24 movie, A Ghost Story. I haven't seen it. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jess: We are.
Damien: But that a little behind the scenes. But def definitely, I know for a fact that that is like an old school, like sheet over a, over a body with two eye holes cut out and it just goes around like looking at its life after it died.
Jess: Yeah.
Damien: So there's no sort. That would've
Jess: been a good one. Had anyone seen it? Yeah.
Damien: Nobody. Literally zero people have seen it. It's crazy. Not, not even the ghost in the, in the [01:01:00] film. Nope. But one that everyone's seen is Ghost, you know? So there you go. We could have given Patrick Sway way a shout out 'cause he's also dead and probably watching this podcast right now.
I imagine he is,
Ryan: right? Yeah. What else? Well, I mean, will, what else would he be doing? What else are you doing? Come on. Peace Swayze. Well, if you're with Patrick Swayze, but I'm still alive. We wanna thank you for listening to Whiskey in The Weird. We're always delighted to join you in the morning, in the afternoon, or in the evening, whenever you'd like to listen to podcasts.
Oh,
Damien: in the morning. Get it. Morning. Hey.
Ryan: Morning. Uh, morning Jacket. Indeed. If you wouldn't mind dropping a rating or review wherever you catch your podcasts, we would be eternally grateful. No. Oops. We always wanna thank Dr. Blake Brandis for providing the music for whiskey and the weird, and Damien, if they want to tell us what they'd say at our funerals, where can they do that on the socials?
Don't hit
Damien: us up on the socials. We're at whiskey and the weird at whiskey and the weird on blue sky and all the meta properties we're there. Now who knows? I just read careless people and maybe we will eject ourselves from the meta property soon, but you can [01:02:00] find us there. We are not on X proudly. So again, that's at whiskey and the weird at whiskey and the weird on all those channels.
We spell our whiskeys with an E and we hope you do too. If not, I will not be serving finger sandwiches at your funeral padre. Or they might be really gross or they'll be gross. They'll be soggy. I'll wrap them in Saran wrap and leave them out moist the sun with egg salad on the inside. Enjoy that. And Biffy.
I'm Ryan Whitley.
Jess: I'm Jessica Berg
Ryan: for long Suffering. And I'm Damien Smith. And together we're whiskey in the weird. Thanks so much for joining us tonight, friends. We'll see you next time. Somebody send us home.
Jess: As always, keep your friends through the ages and your creeps in the pages.
Ryan: Bye-bye. [01:03:00]