#day one of revealing my malevolent podcast

[didyouforgetmeee]

I can't figure out if this is John Doe or Arthur Lester

[goodusernamepending]

I’m really digging Malevolent so far, here are my reactions to the first 5 episodes.

Warning: it's super long and dumb

E1

“~And you call it madness ~ Ah but I call it love~” a bop

Off to a great start, our head’s haunted and our eyes have stopped working. Also the voice in our head started growling when we picked that book up. This is some demonic possession shit

The voice started out so soft and friendly like ‘hey buddy, I’m your friend. Just calm down’ and then it immediately gets pissed when Arthur start asking questions

“I have your eyes” disconcerting

And we murdered our partner… this is a great start to the podcast

Several shenanigans including hiding a dead body and almost killing a guy later

We learn that the thing in our head was sent to Arthur via book, it’s possessing our eyes so we’re dependent on it. There are other worlds caused by the choices each world makes and when a being or world dies it is sent to The Dark World where our creepy new friend is from. A junkyard for realities.

We also learn that it’s 1934 and that Arthur lives in Arkham ma. The same town Lovecraft wrote about….

Catchy little tune from the opening again except… the voice recognizes it and Arthur doesn’t… I’m going to remember that for later

Obligatory: someone else (wearing a white mask the voice recognizes) is after the cursed artifact that we’re in possession of and almost shoots us

Voice reveals that they don’t remember who they are before getting very angry at Arthur for basically trying to be a good detective even though he’s blind now. *Growl*

Oh and the previous tenant of our office left town in a hurry… great!

Oh creepy mask guy knows where we live… GREAT!

The last detective who worked in our office that we got our cases from had a partner who died horrifically… GREAT!!!

And I’m so happy to know that our dead partner Peter (RIP) felt like he was being watched in this creepy house when they were trying to find that dead girl

But at least the voice is nice enough to tell us it’s a sunny day, right?

Nah, he’s suspicious, why did he get so angry when Arthur mentioned not asking more questions about the dismembered dead girl. Why is this important to them?

Hidden bookshelf door!!! 10/10 podcast!!!!

That mural… a mass of black tentacles, wet mouths and writhing goats legs…I kinda want to draw it now

And if there was any doubt in my mind that this was going to be some Lovecraft shit, Arthur name drops The Miskatonic University

What are you, voice? How do you know the mural’s name?

“Arthur, I am not this creature” oh but you’re totally a completely different eldritch horror, aren’t you?

A second more secret, more evil basement

Oh… very bad things are going to happen to us

E2

I agree with Arthur, you got a cult! What are you!

You saying “I have your eyes still” like it’s a threat doesn’t instill confidence!

This conversation with the librarian makes me realize that if this were one of the older cosmic horror short stories, Arthur would be the weird stranger someone meets that kicks off the plot. You meet this guy that walks as if he can’t see but his eyes are clearly assessing everything around him. He leaves long pauses when he talks as if he’s listening for something and once he slips up and calls himself we while asking to see a cursed book on an old god because he’s researching a cult. Our boy is a weird dude and I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets chased by monster hunters in the future.

congrats, you've upgraded to homicide

Wait. waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait! "I can't feel my arm!" "No, but I can" Body Snatcher!

I have a very bad feeling about this new development and Arthur agrees but at least Voice doesn't seem to actually want our body. can't tell whether or not this is foreshadowing.

God I love the conversations that these two have about their situation and the possibility of them switching places. And who tf are you voice?

dice again? why?

out of everything, Accidental child acquisition was not something I was expecting

Are we being chased by goats right now?

That song again! and something terrible happens immediately after

I swear to god if this child is the antichrist I will eat aquarium gravel

E3

"Where's the car?" "All over the place" "And the driver?" "All over the place as well" add vehicular manslaughter to our list of crimes

with the creepy mansion this feels like a ttrpg side quest

Arthur speaks so softly about the baby

dice sounds again? maybe this is a ttrpg. Is it a meta thing and the writers are choosing story beats with them or is it part of the story?

I think this show solved the problem of visual descriptions in podcasts.

Normally a writer has three choices for this 1: make the characters describe their surroundings and appearances of other people which can sound a bit stilted and out of place since sighted people don't do that, 2: choose not to describe anything or anyone unless you have to which feels more real but sometimes means the audience has no idea what's going on, or 3: have the audio show told in something other than first person or present tense (It's a radio show, series of letters, phone calls, there's an omnipotent narrator, ect...)

But with a blind main character and a secondary character guiding them, there's an in-universe reason to describe the scene to us. we can see just as much as Arthur can so the voice is our eyes as well. It's brilliant!

maybe that's why I feel the need to use the word we while talking about this podcast, I feel like I'm inside Arthur's head.

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

one of the missing girls was an unnamed immigrant, was this polish family related to her?

This is some spooky ghost shit that I can appreciate

I feel like the choice to free or destroy will have ramifications for Arthur down the line

"I have to hope that any creature can be redeemed" Damn! careful, your insecurities are showing (luv this)

E4

Arthur is very sweet with the baby

probably not a good idea to bring a baby on our horror road trip anyway

Aww <3 he described the baby for Arthur, this is so sweet

This is too relatable. If I accidentally asked for a ride from the wrong truck and the driver said yes I would also get in anyway just to avoid being rude.

I feel like every new episode is just a different horror movie, this one feels like a hitchhiker slasher flick

Maybe the weird gas mask guy is nice actually? Maybe I'm just being too judgemental.

nope he's going to kill us

it's like a bad joke 'Two men who hear voices are on a road trip together'

there are four known fear responses: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn. Arthur is a fawner, in times of danger he will become so polite that he will follow the serial killer into the creepy basement

first dice and now a coin flip I really hope this series has a Q&A

can he... hear us? is it something about sanity that brings you closer to these monsters? Oops never mind

"We need to get the fuck out of this basement now!" really Arthur? NOW YOUR CONCERNED!

Another Missing girl!

"Arthur, tell that voice in your head that my mother was not a whore" Literal chills

Arthur has been stabbed and Oh the tension is palatable!

Pros to bringing the severed head: We might get some answers. Cons to bringing the severed head: It's a rotting severed head.

Every time violence happens the voice gets very excited by the prospect of murder

Calamity follows these two wherever they go

Well Arthur is dead, that's the end of the podcast

"This too shall pass"

E5

Oh god not another voice. Fuck are we in jail!

Adam Fry

An asylum, if MoonKnight taught me anything it's that this is neither real nor harmless

the door feels oddly shaped... please don't be flesh

Oh that is not a human

"Wait did I tell you my name?" Oh god something was in our head and we just told it exactly where to go and who to find!

"We've been in a coma for over a month" I'm so excited to see how things can possibly get worse than this over the course of the podcast

At least our voice has a name now. Hello John, it's nice to meet you

That song again

Oh no... we're too late...so what killed her

Wait... I actually had to go back to listen to our confrontation with Eddie. Arthur did shoot him but I'm pretty damn sure that John strangling him is what finished the job... what game are you playing here, John?

Between the monster library book, Arthur dreaming of that otherworldly asylum, and these new visions I think that he might be slowly un-tethering from reality. Using these visions is tempting but I think John's right about this changing us. Let's see what the dead girl has to say

fingers

oh it's never good when the creature can see you through your visions

"It felt like he tricked us" "He wanted us to touch her" I am having all the bad feelings

"He can't come through"

"No"

"But?"

"But maybe other things can"

Not much to say about this next part there's a monster chasing our boys and I'm terrified. Good job podcast.

"It looks like foulness"

Ah yes when in doubt pull a Hansel and Gretel

John knows Robert Frost

Dice whenever we find something

We're being hunted, something has seen us, our lead is dead, and we need to find her diary to get some answers lets fucking go!

So far I am LIVING for everything going on here definitely going to keep listening

[thescrapbookingscientist]

Bimonthly Media Roundup

- Coraline (Movie) - Not much to say about this as I kinda only half watched it, it's a very visually stunning movie I just happened to be unusually tired that day. It's always nice to see stop motion and the other mother has a great design.

- Frieren (Anime) - Correctly assumed my sister would be a fan, so I did a re-watch with her. I talked about it previously this year and everything I had to say then still stands: Fern and Frieren's relationship is wholesome and adorable as is Fern and Starks, The exam arc is really good with a lot of interesting obstacles and characters to show off the simple but engaging magic system, the animation and music is great, and the overall themes of appreciating the small moments and every encounter/ relationship in life are nice and well executed. It's honestly a very pleasant watch that I would recommend to most people. That being said, I do feel that it's an exaggeration to put it on the tippy top of most best anime ever lists as it's frequently been. For one it's incomplete, so it's too early to say if the story will stand the test of time. It also can be a bit clumsy with it's use of flashbacks - I understand using Frieren's past and present as parallels to show how the people she loved had changed her, but they are often way too on the nose, literal, and frequent that they become a bit comical after awhile. Girl is like a sleeper agent that goes into That's so Raven flashbacks whenever someone says anything that she said to Himmel at any point lol. I also don't quite understand the reactions to Frieren and elves in general in this world, I understand that they don't want to waste time having people shock and awe every time she shows up but given how rare elves are and how famous she is the sheer nonchalance of the populace towards her is just strange. Also this is a nitpick but, man, Does Frieren really never get a single new outfit in like 100 years. Everyone else could get one too honestly, I want to see it. Anyway looking forward to the 2nd season, 2025 seems like it will be rather stacked.

- Over The Garden Wall (TV) - Annual fall re-watch of OtGW. This was also just on in the background but I've seen it enough to wholly recommend it. The vibes are spooky and pleasant and wholly unique, the soundtrack is great as is the voice acting, the stories are strange and memorable with really good character designs all around, and the length is just right for the story to feel complete without overstaying it's welcome. Go watch it.

- Jujutsu Kaisen (Anime) - Uh oh, We had a good run but alas, the hyper-fixation is slipping away. I'm sure I'll watch the next season when it comes out, or at least try to, but I can't say the latter half of the story seems all that interesting from the spoilers I've seen of it. Most of my favorite characters are out of commission and the world building is kind of laughably bad, uh but hey the past arc and thinly disguised homosexuality was fun.

- Malevolent (Podcast) - Officially caught up, I've definitely been having a lot of fun with seasons 4 and 5. I stated before that I was glad to get some more secondary characters, which is true, Noel and the Butcher and Oscar where all fun editions, to say nothing of Kayne and the sheer chaos he provides. The first few seasons where fun as well but I've really liked the heavy emotional storytelling and more involved plot-lines of the later seasons, as well as the fact that Arthur and John are finally more or less on the same page. Season 5 especially has included some much needed levity as well as a cool location switch, with some great John and Arthur moments already. Also the Christmas special was hilarious and the reveal of what was actually happening during it is a really great use of Kayne's character to make something absurd and sinister at the same time.

- The S Classes That I Raised (Webcomic) - S Class is one of the few things I tend to keep up regularly with but with all I've had going on lately I did get a bit behind. Catching up has been nice as it's always great to spend more time with this cast; I love the recent Han brothers scenes as well as the yuri-fication of Kang Soyoung upon discovering the hot playgirl dragon lady that is Riette (Girl me too). Jellyfish has a cool design so I'm interested in getting more of them, and it's nice to see Han Yoojin utilizing his pull over the gods more. Man I hope the ORV anime goes well and they give this one a chance, It's way to good to be as overlooked as it is.

- Dandadan (Anime) - Only two episodes in so not too much to say yet. For positives I love the main girls design, the bizarre premise, and the fact that the leads have pretty good chemistry even this early on. The animation is fun too, with the silly expressions and good action shots. For negatives I'm not thrilled that both the ghosts and aliens main motivation is committing sexual assault, particularly when it's played for male-gaze-centric fanservice at the expense of the female character. Hopefully that's just a one off thing as I do want to like this show, but we'll see how it goes.

- Dungeon Meshi (Manga) - I was putting off finishing this as I knew I would absolutely adore it. When I picked it back up though I gave in and ended up binging it straight to the end, because as I expected I absolutely adored it. I'll probably elaborate on it more later but for now, the art, characters, themes, world-building (specifically in the speculative biology vein), comedy, relationships, character designs, plot, and ending are all really stellar, and I can't wait to see the rest of the story animated. Most of the negatives for me lie in missed potential, as the series was a good length but I do feel some of the characters and plot elements (ie; Kabru and the Canaries) could have had more time to shine or been worked into the latter half of the story better. A lot of my favorite elements of the story such as the antagonist and character motivations are pretty big spoilers, but I can say they are very well done. For non spoiler compliments I adore the monster designs and how much detail went into working them into a believable Ecosystem. Falin in particular of course looks amazing and outside of her design her, her brother, and Marcille are all top tier characters that do a great job carrying the story. I do understand that the begging can be a little basic to get through especially for anime onlys, but I really urge anyone to stick with it, I promise it's not just a silly cooking show with stock characters and no consequences - the characters have a lot more depth than it appears and oh boy are there consequences.

- Genshin Impact (Video Game) - Since I have Navia I wanted to try to go for Xilonen once she dropped, as a geo healer is perfect for that team. Shockingly I got her on my first try, the first 10 pull, despite getting 2 five stars the last time I pulled (Alhaitham and a 2nd Keqing). In general I seem to have really good luck with Event banners but still, insane. I haven't leveled her up enough yet to be truly useful but I like her roller skates and voice so far.

Listening To: Dial Drunk by Chloe Breez, Rule #18 - Lion by Fish in a Birdcage, Let Me Love You by Alex Goot, The Killing Kind by Marianas Trench, Hear You Me by Jimmy Eat World, Feeling Good and Stick Season by Reinaeiry, Break My Heart by Hey Violet, Could Have Been Me by The Struts, The Main Character by Will Wood, Rabbit Heart by Florence + The Machine, Bittersweet by Panic! At The Disco, HOT TO GO! By Chappell Roan, Tongues and Teeth by The Crane Wives, Taste and Please Please Please by Sabrina Carpenter.

[sharkselfies]

The Minds Behind The Terror Podcast Transcript - Episode 2

Here is a transcript for episode 2 of The Minds Behind The Terror! In this episode, showrunners Dave Kajganich and Soo Hugh are joined by author Dan Simmons and actor Adam Nagaitis, who plays Cornelius Hickey. They cover episodes 4-6  of the show, getting into Hickey’s psychology and Adam’s incredible acting, Dan’s feelings about never revealing the monster too soon, Adam getting locked in a conference room with the Tuunbaq prop for twenty minutes, and the spectacle that is Carnivale.

The Minds Behind The Terror Podcast - Episode 2

[The Terror opening theme music plays]

Soo Hugh: Welcome to The Minds Behind The Terror Podcast. I’m Soo Hugh, executive producer and showrunner of this labor of love, here with my partner in crime Dave Kajganich, executive producer and showrunner.

Dave Kajganich: Hello. 

SH: Today we welcome The Terror author Dan Simmons, and actor Adam Nagaitis who plays Cornelius Hickey in the TV series. Dan is calling in from Colorado, and Adam you’re here from London.

Adam Nagaitis: I am! Hi! 

DK: Adam and Dan, I don’t know that you have been introduced to one another, so welcome both we’re happy to have you! 

AN: Thank you! It’s lovely to be here. 

Dan Simmons: Thank you. I have to start with just a fanboy meltdown here, I don’t do this, I don’t praise actors that much even when I’ve met them, but I need to use a word that as a novelist and as a mature, American human being I don’t use because the younger generations have appropriated it, it’s the only adjective that they use in their whole vocabulary, but Adam, your performance as Cornelius Hickey was brilliant. It was awesome. 

AN: Thank you so much, Dan, and obviously the feeling is beyond mutual. There is no Cornelius Hickey without you, so, um, really overwhelming to hear someone like you say that, so thank you so much.

SH: This is so touching.

DS: And I’ll confess something else to Adam, the first time I watched it, I thought your character was a good guy because he jumped down in that grave to put the lid back on.

[laughter] 

DS: It was on my second viewing I thought, “Wait, he stole the boy’s ring! Bastard!” 

SH: So this is the second podcast of this series, if you haven’t heard the first one, episode 1, we recommend highly that you go back and listen to those, that first episode will cover episodes 1.01-1.03. Today we’ll talk about episodes 1.04-1.06, and if you have not seen those episodes please, please don’t break our hearts and listen to this podcast! Watch the show first! We’ll have many spoilers that we’ll be discussing. 

SH: So now since you guys have finally met one another, Dan and Hickey--Dan and Adam.

[laughter]

SH: Should we talk about, Dan, just how you first originally structured Hickey in the novel, and we know that you loved Hickey, but your experience watching the show in terms of seeing the changes that we have made and what we’ve kept from the book, how that affected you. 

DS: Mostly the changes that you guys and Adam did for the character of Hickey I think, uh, I don’t wanna praise too much, but they’re marvelous. They showed me a succession of, um, not villains but a complex, sometimes wicked character in a way that I don’t think I got to in the book. My character was like--a bit too much like Iago in Othello, you know, he tended to be motiveless malevolence, or malignancy, which is the way you describe Iago. And there are many Iagos in the world, but the way that Adam created Hickey out of the soft clay of my introduction was marvelous to me. I could just see all the wheels turning in Hickey’s head, all the ways he’s looking for an edge, so I took it to maybe point C or D, you guys took it through Y. 

DK: The last thing that we’ve seen Hickey do is that he has gone through the lower decks of Terror and has shat on a bed...

[laughter]

DK: ...and has found a resignation letter from Crozier that no one is meant to see, because Crozier is now in command of the expedition. We have laid out a different kind of ascension, if you will, or architecture for Hickey’s arc in the show from the book, and I wonder, Adam, if you could speak a little bit to having read, I think, part of the novel and been told to stop reading by me and Soo because we didn’t want you to be confused. How did you receive these episodes, and how did you plan to sort of make the--cover the distance between those two points in Hickey’s arc, which it’s a lot of distance to cover.

AN: There are pieces of the novel that stayed with me and unfortunately I could not get out of my head as much as I would try, ‘cause they were very potent aspects of Hickey, were always useful, but it’s as you said, Dan, it was just that the switch, I’m just backtracking ‘cause there’ll be a reason, but the switch from, the clarification for me, or the justification of his motivations was all really I had to find. A new soul, a new motor. And that motor sort of begins--perhaps changes gear, in episode 4, when Hickey is--I don’t wanna say betrayed? But you know, for the first time he’s proactive about a decision he makes when he goes and grabs Lady Silence.

[show audio]

Crozier: There’ll be no violence towards this woman without charges brought and well proved. Who is responsible for this?

Hickey: I am, sir. 

AN: He’s pushing the boundaries of what his courage is allowing him to do at that point, and he knows that this is dangerous. But it’s also completely necessary and he can’t help himself. And I think he’s fairly sure of a reward. But what ends up happening, he considers himself constantly self-aware, like an incredibly high introspective IQ, that if he’s achieved anything in his life, it’s that he is completely honest with himself at all times. He has these conversations in the mirror all day, every day, just to make sure that he’s sharp, that nobody will call him out on any sort of fracture that they can see within him. He sees his weaknesses, he accepts--that’s a soulful narcissist, I suppose, as a way of describing him, but one thing that has escaped him he realizes is that his desperate need to be accepted, to be loved, to be seen, and be patted, and to be, um, to have that authority figure, whatever you wanna call it, allowing you the rite of passage.

[show audio]

Hickey: Captain Crozier, there’s something I wanna say, but I hardly dare speak the words.

Fitzjames: Oh, speak the words, Mr. Hickey. 

Hickey: Well, of all I know in this world--and of this world… I tell you. That… I do not believe it is an animal we battle.

AN: And he realizes when he gets lashed, this day of sort of revelation, where he understands every time he gets hit, you know, he--I took a lot of the lashing I took through the way that Hickey’s described in the book, that his life has been this low level horror story, and pain is something that is incredibly interesting to him. It’s not something to be avoided, it’s something to be embraced. 

[show audio]

[sound of the lashing, Hickey gasping in pain]

SH: Adam, if we had to break down the whipping scene, ‘cause I mean your performance in that moment, I mean, it’s so extraordinary, the amount of what you were able to pull out physically as well as just emotionally in your face in that scene. Will you walk us through, what did you internally--‘cause in all you were saying about Hickey being with one foot planted in practice but also at the same time being the self-aware philosopher, but in that moment of the lashing, some different, higher kind of understanding must have been in place, ‘cause pain is at work there. Was your process different in that scene? 

AN: You must forgive me as well for goin’ on, ‘cause when I talk about Hickey I get lost 

[Crosstalk, Soo reassuringly saying “No!”]

AN: and I go forever, but I remember it sort of breaking it down, preparing it was breaking it down into how you are perceived when you enter that realm of torture or judgement or whatever it is, and he always is gonna make sure that he didn’t lose the experience in stupid, human things like shame, or, you know, consideration of embarrassment, he never walks in--it’s almost as if there’s never anybody else in the room, he doesn’t care to cloud it. And that was the very first point, was to get in and go, “What does it mean to be punished as a boy?” I was thinking, “You know, that’s it, what does that mean? I wonder what they’re gonna do to me?” When he realizes that and these people around him, that--I don’t know, it’s kind of--I suppose it was such a strange collaboration of sensations, because at the one point, you know, I’m in this, as an actor I’m naked in this scene with all these people, and being punished as a boy should have taken Hickey down, you know, the shame should have overwhelmed him, and it should have been this sort of embarrassing situation, and instead it became empowering. He wasn’t afraid of crying and screaming, and again, it’s not--if it’s practical, and it helps, it’s no big deal. It’s just pain. And everybody else would be in pain, and it doesn’t matter. Even if, you know, if people perceive him as weak, he’ll find a way to get ‘em. It doesn’t matter. 

[show audio]

Crozier: Again.

[whip cracking, ship creaking, muffled groan from Hickey] 

SH: And something we haven’t talked about much yet in these podcasts is this theme of hubris and the hierarchy and the patriarchy, and Dan you explore it fully in your book. In terms of figuring out, you know, where our characters come from, and their foundations and backbones, they come from a very distinct historical period that really thought that their empire was the crowning achievement of human civilization, right? And that the royal navy is this prime embodiment of that conquest. They were gonna go out into the world, find that sea route to China, and the world will be theirs. In both the book and our show, that kind of thinking is what drives them into the heart of peril, right? And what was always interesting about the Hickey character, in some ways, was he questioned--in some ways he’s very--too modern for his times, in some way, in that he questioned that hierarchy, that patriarchy. 

And that’s something that I think Dave and I can both sympathize with as well. The character was so interesting to write for because Hickey was in some ways an easy embodiment of our voice today. And then when you--when we watch your performance, what was great about your performance was it was never slippery, ‘cause it’s really easy to play Hickey as slippery. I always felt that your performance was always located in something very very direct. People can play characters like Hickey where you don’t--they never wanna commit to anything because he’s supposed to be nebulous, or too ambiguous. That was never the situation. When you had that smile on your face, when Irving is saying, you know, “climbing exercises!” we know you’re not playing Irving, which is great, and I think that’s such a success of your portrayal of Hickey, is it never feels slippery. 

DK: Well an awful lot of people came in to audition for this part, and what we found was a lot of people, most people--in fact, everyone but you, Adam--played Hickey as a kind of pre-built villain, and when we saw your first tape come in and you were open-handed, and you were smiling your way through the same monologue that everyone else had put fangs on, we knew that you were our Hickey, because that kind of charisma, and that kind of confidence, and that kind of hubris, in a way, is what were going to be the magic ingredients, I think, it’s what we sort of loved about the opportunity for the show to take the Hickey from Dan’s book and sort of turn it in a different unexpected way so that readers who hadn’t read the book wouldn’t know right off the bat whether they were meant to sympathize with Hickey or be wary of him or both, and I think that’s a great achievement of the performance is you sort of feel you’re on both rails the whole time, and I think that’s kind of an amazing achievement.

AN: That’s how you wrote it! I mean that was exactly--I think that you saw what you wrote, the real strength of that character was in his understanding of himself and his understanding of the hierarchy and how this world functions, you know? He’s studied it, gave him an intelligence, that’s the way I saw it when I read it.

DS: But it’s pretty amazing to think that by this point in the show, you have stolen a dead boy’s ring, you have shit on your ex-boyfriend’s bed, you have murdered our favorite doctor--

[laughter]

I mean there’s a lot, you’ve done a lot of things to turn the audience against you, but I don’t think that’s how an audience will feel! 

AN: All completely justified.

[laughter]

SH: You’re acquitted. 

[laughter]

SH: Can I steer the conversation just slightly in a different direction, ‘cause Dan, you made our lives very difficult in one way, so you have these two incredible set pieces in your book

[Crosstalk, Dave saying “yes.”]

SH: and they happen to fall chronologically so close to each other that production wise we had to film them one episode apart.

[Dave laughing, and he laughs a few more times in the background throughout the following]

SH: So in 1.05 we have the huge Blanky mast Tuunbaq fight sequence, and then in 1.06 we have Carnivale. They are along with something that comes at the end of our show, they are--those two scenes--those two sequences are, you know, some of our biggest biggest, just, action set pieces. They’re just extraordinary spectacles. But Dave and I, you know, we grew many grey hairs in this process because they’re so fantastic in the book, they’re fan favorites in the book, we knew that we had to--we knew we were gonna be pillaged based on whether or not we succeeded in those scenes. So seeing the mast sequence and seeing Carnivale, what did you think? DS: I know the difficulty in putting two set pieces like that close to each other, I mean, the chase with Blanky was pretty dynamic, and even more so from the book to your show, it was very dynamic.

[show audio]

[Tuunbaq fight scene! tense music, Blanky yelling, Tuunbaq roaring]

Hodgson: Fire!

[cannon fires, the shot hits the Tuunbaq and it growls, Blanky falls and screams, the mast creaks]

DS: And I love the character of Blanky, all the way through to, you know, his ending. He’s wonderful. 

SH: Speaking of the mast sequence, what we were discussing prior, this is the first time we actually get to see the Tuunbaq. We’re curious how both of you--you know, ‘cause Dave and I, we’ve been very careful about how we utilize and deploy the Tuunbaq in our show, and making sure also that narratively in the story-wise it didn’t feel like, “Oh, we need to ramp up this episode, we’ll throw the Tuunbaq in,” that we were very more deliberate about when we put the Tuunbaq in our show, and making sure that it didn’t, like Dave was saying, didn’t fit the monster of the week. But I mean Adam, you have a very particular relationship with the Tuunbaq that starts to become revealed in episode 4, could you just walk through how you were thinking about it? 

AN: The way that I started to think about the Tuunbaq was as a character, that was the best way for me to think about it, as another, you know, another member of the narrative in general, and it’s a person--it, of all the people, there are only, including the Tuunbaq, there are two that I respect: Crozier, who I see as something of maybe a soul mate, would be a way of describing it; and the Tuunbaq, who I see as a person who is, he or she is, true to themselves and unafraid, and undeterred, and pure in their resolve, you know, and their execution, and so it’s almost admiration and mutual respect, and that when that Tuunbaq looks at me, and I look back, that I see myself. And I see what I might become, you know, and I have--and Hickey sees himself as having elements that the Tuunbaq doesn’t have, you know, the idea of, Hickey so rarely sees people that he acknowledges, that, in his mind, deserve or warrant his acknowledgement, and when he first meets eyes with the Tuunbaq, that’s what he goes through.

[show audio]

[wind whirling, footsteps, Tuunbaq growling]

DK: Dan I was always curious to ask you about the Tuunbaq in terms of your creation of that creature. I mean in our research we found elements of different sort of spirits from Inuit mythology that seem like the Tuunbaq is kind of an amalgam of, can you walk us through sort of how you hit on that idea and what parts of it are from Inuit mythology that you can remember and what parts of it are your own invention, or just how that creature came to be, it’s such an interesting, fascinating creation?

DS: That’s a good question, I’ll answer it, but first I wanted to add an unharmonious, non-praising comment, which is when I was watching the series on my little computer screen and I got to the Tuunbaq chasing Blanky up the rigging and so forth, I paused the show, walked out in my front yard, aimed west, and shouted, “Don’t show the fuckin’ Tuunbaq!”

[laughter]

DS: “Not yet!” I’m sure you heard that. 

SH: Did you think we showed it too much in that sequence? 

DS: I did when I saw the sequence. When I’d seen the show front to back, one and a half times now, I think it’s fine. Dave, you remember, when we first talked about things, that was--I was stressing that left, right, and center, which is--I was basing it on a favorite movie of mine, which nobody else has as a favorite movie, but it’s the 1951 version of The Thing. Howard Hawks directed it even though he gave the credit to his DP, but he directed it, and it got so every time a door opened, every head, every person turned to look. And the monster turned out to be James Arness in a silly suit. But the tension was tremendous, and I think you guys build up very nicely, you know, everybody’s ready, looking over his shoulder, there’s that scene where somebody does, and the wiser man says “It’s only the ice, Georgie, it’s only the ice,” but of course it’s not.

[show audio]

[Neptune the dog barking]

Strong: He’s been goin’ on like that since the wind died. 

Hartnell: Take your wigs off. 

[rustling, wind whistling, Neptune continues barking]

Hartnell: Don’t you hear that?

DK: It was a fine line to walk, because on the one hand, you know, I don’t know if anyone would have made the show if it didn’t have, you know, quote unquote “a monster” in it. So we were trying to be very intelligent on how we deployed the Tuunbaq in the show, and wanted to make sure that when we did it didn’t feel like it was meant to spice something up, that it felt sort of earned, in some way, and you were confident that the less we showed of the Tuunbaq the better. But that isn’t--it’s not the easiest sell if you don’t happen to agree with this point of view, and you know, luckily we were sort of able to have our cake and eat it too, in a way, but still, even when episodes one, two, and three aired, we were reading reviews and people’s comments online saying, “Is there a creature in this show or isn’t there?”

DS: Or what, yeah. 

DK: Some people really want that settled, and so we tried to do it both ways, we tried to show just enough to make sure that it felt like we weren’t being coy about it, but not so much that we exhausted what’s interesting about it.

SH: And also the fear--there is a danger, if you put it off, ‘cause, Dan, Dave and I agree with you that you wanna hold off the reveal of the monster as long as possible because it’s just gonna be more satisfying that way, but there’s a tipping point to that as well, of course, you know, right? ‘Cause if you delay it too long then the expectations are almost too great. And when you delay the monster for so long the level of perfection that the audience is gonna expect is never--we were never gonna please them. So at some point, by finding that right balance point of “we show them enough that they know we’re not playing coy with them.” 

DK: We also had a storytelling reason, a really good one, to make sure we did show it up front in the first third of the season, which is, you know, by the time you reach episode six you realize there’s something wrong with the Tuunbaq, that it is getting sick, or it is going off somehow, I mean, when Lady Silence finally decides that she’s going to offer her tongue to it in hopes that it will accept her as a Shaman and that she can contain this sort of mythological disaster that’s happening, and it rejects her, and it shows up to that scene looking a little woozy, and you know, there’s obviously a cause to be concerned about it.

[show audio]

[eerie music, Tuunbaq growling and snuffling]

DK: That wouldn’t have landed if we hadn’t seen, in some form, the Tuunbaq in all of its majestic glory. You know, we think of the Tuunbaq as quite presidential, in terms of its comportment, you know, that it is a pure expression of this mythology, it is the keeper of equilibrium, it is neither a hero nor a villain. But by the time we get to episode six, we should be feeling a little bit panicked about what this creature is becoming. It seems to be falling apart in front of us in the same way that the men are.

SH: Our Tuunbaq exists. We don’t play that game of “it’s a figment of our characters’ imagination.” That is one route we could have gone, we did not wanna do that. 

DK: Adam, I don’t know if you remember, when we finally got the scale model head of the Tuunbaq to Hungary, and we had it in a conference room, I think, and I grabbed you from set and I didn’t tell you where you were going, and I took you to a door and I pushed you through it and closed it behind you, and in that room was the Tuunbaq, and you were the first person in the cast to see it. Do you remember what that experience was like? 

[laughter]

AN: That was terrifying! 

[laughter]

AN: I do remember, I remember that day very very well. It was just a head on a stick, wasn’t it? 

DK: A big head, but yeah.

SH: Enormous. 

DK: It was just the head--

AN: A great big head on a stick! And I knew the importance of it, so I sort of closed my eyes and opened them. I remember thinking, it was the eyes, the human eyes, that convinced me that it was a unique, thinking machine. It was a unique creature that had--that was worthy of respect, that was kind of the thing that I remember thinking about it. And of course it was terrifying. But yeah, I remember the teeth, the human teeth. It was so brilliant, it was so brilliantly conceived. I remember it was head height, and I just stood in front of it for a while.

DK: I remember it was twenty minutes before I opened the door!

AN: You opened it for a long time! I was like, uh, is it gonna move? It was great. It was really scary.

DK: So Dan, walk us through where it came from. I mean, this is a creation from, almost from scratch, I think, from you. 

DS: Well first I built the Tuunbaq out of what I think is a good monster and would be a good monster in the Arctic. And after constructing it, I went just tearing through Inuit mythology and stories and oral tales for quite a while before I found the right creature. He was called Tuunbaq in the mythology, but it could’ve been Sedna, Sedna was a great sea monster. They have so many wonderful beings. But you guys summed it up in dialogue…

[show audio]

[man speaking Inuktitut, another man translating] 

Translator: From the Shamans… the thing that eats on two legs and four… a thing made of muscles… and spells. 

James Clark Ross: I don’t understand. Is he describing a man? 

Translator: Sorry, Sir James. I don’t know what the hell he’s describing. 

DS: That was the best summary of the Tuunbaq that I’ve heard. I’m gonna steal it from you if I ever do readings on this book again.

DK: Oh good.

[show audio]

[men cheering]

Fitzjames: There it is. We’ve not heard that sound in far too long.

DS: I especially enjoyed Carnivale. I like it that you didn’t follow my lead and turn the Carnivale on the ice into the scene from The Masque of the Red Death. I had a sailor who’d actually read that story in Boston in my novel, so he’s the one who set up the Carnivale with all the rooms from the Edgar Allan Poe story, and yours, the idea of celebrating, going home essentially, when the sun rose, that made a lot more sense to me. 

DK: Well do you know the reason we went in that direction, I think in the writer’s room when we were discovering all the different sort of signs and symptoms of things like scurvy, nostalgia was considered a primary symptom of scurvy, and one way you could diagnose it. And we thought, well, if these men were going to throw a party and all bets were off in terms of what the theme of that party would be, we wanted to embrace the likelihood that a lot of those men who were in early stages of scurvy at that point might have leaned too heavily on nostalgia. And that gave us a kind of a surprising new sort of code to sort of explore in Carnivale. 

[show audio]

Fitzjames: Come on, boys! 

[cheering]

Fitzjames: Now, let’s get our hair good and powdered before that damn sun finds us again.

[more cheering]

DK: The idea that Dr. Stanley, who has a child back in England, and, you know, has a clear sense of what the kind of illness that’s on the table being discussed could do to the men, and he hears the news of the beginning of episode six that they’re probably running out of food and, you know, the episode, that episode six is called “A Mercy” for a reason, that really Stanley thinks he’s doing a great favor to all of the men by killing them. And it just was--I’m curious, when you watched that reveal in particular, that the Carnivale disaster was not going to come from the Tuunbaq but was going to come from somebody who was a kind of Cassandra in a way, like understood what was coming, in a way that lot of the men didn’t understand, whether that rang true emotionally to you in terms of how you would position these characters at that point in the novel.

DS: In the novel, you don’t have to compress time like that. The things can almost coexist and still work. So I had a little more freedom to do the Carnivale. But when you showed the malignant motives of the various people behind it, the doctor and so forth, the burgeoning insanity made sense.

[show audio]

[distorted music, liquid pouring, yelling]

Crozier: Hold him, hold him!! 

[flames crackling, more yelling]

DK: Hickey’s arc between episode four and episode six, you sense someone who’s coming into a power, but doesn’t exactly know yet how he wants to use it, and is scanning other people and other relationships to try to find out where will the advantage come from. And I think what’s great about the final shot we have of Hickey in six, that is Hickey just before someone tells him, probably, that they’re going to be walking out.

AN: By the time we reach episode six, he’s well on the way to formulating in the material world, in our physical world, to formulating his sort of group. What’s going on inside him, what’s going on in his--maybe even subconsciously, or even very very very quietly consciously, is a furthering of his understanding that this universe is for him. These happenings are for him. They have his name all over them, his real--and since the beginning of his life he’s been checking the dials, trying to tune into the right radio station where there’s a clear voice of the numinous, or the supernatural, or the universe, or God, or whatever you wanna call it. He’s hoping for the clear voice that says his name. 

DS: I have a question for Dave and Soo, which you looked at the muster of the crew as I did, you know, I had to decide who was what in a fictional term, you have about 127 interesting stories if you want to pursue them, but were you aware early on that there was gonna be one messiah developing in the story? 

SH: I don’t know if we looked at it in terms of a messiah figure.

DS: Ah, but Hickey does. 

DK: In these episodes, I think he doesn’t quite yet know what he’s going to become, except he knows he doesn’t have to be subservient anymore to other people’s versions of what he could become. I think he’s not quite sure where he is. He knows he’s just moved from one ladder to another ladder, he’s no longer on sort of the hierarchical ladder of the ships, he’s on a bigger ladder and he’s climbing, and he doesn’t quite yet know what heights that will reach, but it’s fascinating to see Hickey unleashed in these episodes, but not yet know what he’s going to put his power toward. 

[audio from the show]

[the music from the end of episode six during the brief moment of sunrise plays]

SH: 1.04-1.06 takes place from the last sunrise of the year, and then the end of 1.06 is the sunrise of the year, so in terms of just that lovely visual metaphor, it’s also our dark nights, where we have polar nights. Did you guys, watching the episodes, did you guys feel that darkness? You know, Dave and I were so curious whether or not people understood what it feels like to live in perpetual darkness for months, and whether or not our audience was gonna get that. How did that come through for you? DS: The darkness, it was a hard thing, I think, to do in a series like this, it’s pressures, like the men in the ship not only have the pressure of the ice groaning and moaning and growling and pushing at the ship, they have the pressure of the months of darkness. And I think you did it well, I don’t know if it was a reviewer or a friend who said the show is all about--in the ship it’s all about claustrophobia, outside the ship it’s all agoraphobia, fear of open spaces. 

SH: Oh that’s wonderful! 

DK: Absolutely. We talked a lot about that in the writers’ room, about how there was--we didn’t know which was worse, you know, and characters would have different opinions about that. Is it better to be sort of sealed up in almost a coffin-like environment, or is it better to be exposed with no way to protect yourself? I don’t know what I would choose. 

[The Terror opening theme music plays]

SH: So that is episodes 1.04-1.06, Dave and I are here with Dan and Adam, and it’s been such a pleasure you guys, thank you for joining us, and next time we’ll be covering episodes 1.07 and 1.08. Dan and Adam, both of you will be back as well. 

DK: Wonderful. 

DS: Great. 

SH: Thank you! 

[preview snippet from the next episode plays]

AN: In complete honesty, it never occurred to me that any of those things were cruel or despicable!

[laughter]

[aion-rsa]

Ghost Adventures Checks into the Cecil Hotel: Zak Bagans on Investigating the Crime Landmark

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

In Stephen King’s novel The Shining, the Overlook Hotel is an expansive structure with a dark past, located in the remote Rocky Mountains. Despite its opulent beginnings, the hotel becomes a place where brutal murders occur, madness sets in, ghosts lurk, and evil itself is a permanent occupant.

Relocate King’s Overlook to Downtown Los Angeles’ Skid Row, and you have its closest real-world equivalent: the Cecil Hotel. The hotel’s checkered history, and lore involving curses and ghosts, has made it a dark tourism landmark situated at the crossroads of true crime and paranormal fascination. But despite lots of interest on the internet, the Cecil, since rebranded as Stay on Main Hotel, has never officially permitted cameras inside for a paranormal investigation.

Until now. Enter Zak Bagans.

(Disclaimer: I have previously worked with Zak Bagans on television shows, and currently appear as an expert on the Travel Channel series Paranormal Caught on Camera.)

Executive producer and star of Ghost Adventures, the long-running paranormal reality series on Travel Channel, Bagans leads his team of investigators on an exploration of a location he calls “spectacularly frightening” in Ghost Adventures: Cecil Hotel, a two-hour special streaming exclusively on the new Discovery+ service.

For fans of the ghost-TV genre, Ghost Adventures: Cecil Hotel boasts evidence of scratches, disembodied voices, light anomalies, a faucet seemingly turned on by an invisible force, and more. But regardless of one’s personal beliefs about the unexplained, the special lives up to its hype of a “first time ever” examination of the infamous hotel.

Bagans tells Den of Geek the special is also a culmination of a decade-long pursuit that began “before Elisa even died.”

The “Elisa” that Bagans refers to is Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old Canadian student with a kind, sarcastic sense of humor who loved fashion and Harry Potter; she frequently blogged observations about guys she liked, figuring out a place in the world, as well as her own insecurities and mental health struggles. Lam was a daughter and sister, and a real person on a journey of self-discovery before her life ended too soon, and she made the Cecil internet famous. 

While on a solo trip to California in 2013, she went missing and died while staying at the hotel. An elevator surveillance video showed the young woman acting erratically as she pushed buttons, paced in and out of the elevator, and even appeared to be hiding from someone. Her body was discovered in a rooftop water tank weeks after she disappeared. Despite her death being ruled accidental, with her bipolar disorder deemed a contributing factor, questions remained as to how Lam could have gained access to the roof or closed the lid to the tank from within.

But before that two-and-half minute viral video made Lam a popular topic for podcasts — and before American Horror Story: Hotel drew inspiration from the landmark’s past — the Cecil’s reputation was more tied to tragedy than travel despite its beginnings in 1924 as an LA destination, complete with a grandiose lobby.

Multiple suicides took place at the Cecil as well as infanticide and the unsolved murder of Goldie Osgood in 1964. Elizabeth Short, aka the Black Dahlia, was reportedly seen in the hotel bar in the days leading up to her murder in 1947, and two serial killers are known to have stayed there – including Richard Ramirez, who committed a murder spree in the 1980s, and the investigation of whom is the focus of the Netflix documentary series Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer.

“I knew the history of Richard Ramirez there, and the deaths, and knew it was a big creepy building,” Bagans says.

Although prior attempts to gain permission to film there had been rejected, he thinks maybe the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing shutdowns convinced the hotel’s owners to allow it because of the location fee paid by production. “Or maybe they had things happening to themselves and had enough of it,” Bagans says.

Either way, Cecil fits neatly into Bagans’ pursuits, and it comes as no surprise that the hotel has long been on his bucket list. He has a fascination with the darker sides of this world — as well as the next. When not investigating the paranormal on television, he collects and exhibits haunted dolls and possessed possessions, along with “murderabilia” from serial killers, such as drawings by Ramirez.

“I collect his things. I have his death row TV, his sketches, his clothing,” says Bagans before adding, “I study these people.” Bagans says he even visited the Concordia cemetery in El Paso, Texas, where Ramirez “got started” and was said to practice satanic rituals.

As a result, Bagans believes that Ramirez was engaged in a “top-tier possession” with the horrors he was committing ultimately in the devil’s name. Bagans doesn’t give a pass to the murderer but does theorize that the serial killer was generating more negative energy and entities at the hotel.

Saying he believes the Cecil is “saturated with dark energies,” he thinks Ramirez’s satanic rituals added an evil residue to the building. Interestingly, however, Bagans also thinks there’s something supernatural about the grounds upon which the building stands.

Though he references The Shining, he says he also thinks of the Cecil like the vampire-infested strip club in From Dusk Till Dawn. In the final shot of the film, it’s revealed the club sits atop an Aztec temple. Bagans equates the hotel to this, saying it’s part of some ancient “machine.”

“I’ve been to a lot of places throughout the world, but when you walk through the doors of the Cecil Hotel, you know there are other doorways to other worlds,” he says. “If we were to see deeper dimensionally, you would see all these other doors and rooms, and I believe it goes way down into the earth and draws a lot of energy through the earth. It is then magnified by the dark energy and criminal activity of Skid Row, and amplified by the rituals [serial killer] Jack Unterweger and Richard Ramirez did.”

For the Discovery+ special, Bagans says he wanted to be delicate when discussing the circumstances of Lam’s death. He references the hotel’s history of suicide, and murder attributed to temporary insanity, and believes malevolent energies fed off her mental illness and influenced her.

It is admittedly a problematic theory for skeptics and non-believers of the paranormal, but Bagans — like many with lingering questions about Lam’s strange death — looks to her past behavior as telling. Lam had previously disappeared and required treatment but wasn’t known to have suicidal ideations. There were no unusual drugs detected in her system and the initial cause of death was deemed inconclusive.

“It didn’t make sense she was having a manic episode,” he says. “From my research, no one was able to say she had had a manic episode this bad before. If she was having an episode and acting that bad, how could she have taken such a calculated journey to end up in that water tank under that manic sense?”

While Bagans strives not to diminish Lam’s death, he says, “that building has the power to mess with your mind.” During the investigation he says teammate Aaron Goodwin was overcome with feelings of rage, and that his interviewees, including a crime scene photographer, were so disturbed they often needed to leave the hotel.

“You don’t know what you’re feeling there. There’s too many spirits, too much energy.”

Indeed, during the course of the special, the Ghost Adventures crew believe they encounter several spirits, including those of Lam, Ramirez, Osgood, and more. 

For Bagans, investigating Cecil, or even conducting interviews about it, only serves to charge the battery of this machine. But, quoting his favorite film, 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, he says, “there is much to be learned from beasts.” Bagans is seeking to understand the unknown despite the risks.

Whether or not viewers of Ghost Adventures: Cecil Hotel choose to share his paranormal theories about the building — or simply view it as a strange nexus of true crime — Bagans says there is no denying its inescapable reputation.

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“You can renovate it, change the name, or paint it a different color, but you’re never going to erase the darkness of the Cecil Hotel.”

Ghost Adventures: Cecil Hotel is available to stream on Discovery+.

Subscribe to Den of Geek magazine for FREE right here!

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from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2KEBW7b

[almostarchaeology]

Hogwarts Needs Archaeologists, Part 1: Fantastic Antiquities and Where to Find Them

By Adrián Maldonado

The Harry Potterverse is crawling with ancient artefacts and old magic. That doesn’t make it a story about archaeology as such – there is very little effort from the protagonists to do more than treasure-hunt (and in at least one case, tomb-raid) to collect and then destroy these artefacts. In one sense, the Harry Potter cycle is a parable of Fantastic Antiquities and How to Break Them.

Tom Riddle, Tomb Raider (source)

Which is why I haven’t felt the need to do an ‘archaeology of Harry Potter’ post on this blog. But then I went back to the books again. Well, sort of. I am lucky enough to share a timeline with the Binge Mode podcast by the superheroic duo Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion. Their breakdown of the books and films, chapter by chapter and scene by scene, with added detail culled from the wider (so wide) Potter canon, has reawakened my appreciation for the depth of JK’s creation. And, this should surprise absolutely no one by now, it makes me think there’s lessons for archaeologists in the Potterverse.

This will take more than one blog post to tease out. To begin with, we can start by looking at the vast array of antiquities which feature in the books’ own timeline. From there, we can explore how archaeology might work in the wizarding world, and then bring it back to reflections on Rowling’s uses of the past more generally. Speaking of the past, if you don’t want books from 20 years ago spoiled, well, tough look, my guy.

Medieval archaeology

Getting medieval in Diagon Alley (source)

To begin in the most obvious place, there is a lot in the wizarding world which owes its origins to the Middle Ages. According to Rowling’s Pottermore website, Diagon Alley and its major landmarks such as the Leaky Cauldron and Gringotts go back to c. 1500, retaining a ramshackle medieval aesthetic. The prison of Azkaban originated as the fortress of the fifteenth-century sorcerer Ezkidris. Even things which don’t appear obviously medieval are revealed to be medieval on Pottermore: the Quidditch World Cup has been played since 1473, and Floo powder, the magical form of transport, was invented in the thirteenth century by Ignatia Wildsmith (which, if I have another daughter, I will definitely adopt as a name).

The structural medievalism of the Potterverse includes Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry itself, a ponderous castle-university suffused with old magic. Oddly for Britain’s premier (only?) centre of magical learning, we do not seem to know exactly how old it is, but its founders all seem to have lived in the tenth century according to Pottermore. This would make it earlier than the first Muggle universities, themselves a product of the twelfth century and later. It is interesting to think that the robe-wearing denizens of Oxbridge and St Andrews are merely replicating earlier Hogwarts traditions.

Echoes of Hogwarts (source)

What is less immediately obvious is that Hogwarts’ medieval origins are communicated largely through material culture. The Sorting Hat belonged to founder Godric Gryffindor, and so is at least a thousand years old. The Mirror of Erised is also said to be ancient, though we are vague on dates. Does age confer magical properties, or have these objects survived due to the power of their magic? It can’t be the latter, as we are continually reminded of the precarious state of antiquities in the Potterverse. The Hogwarts houses retain stories about early medieval artefacts associated with the lives of their founders, including Rowena Ravenclaw’s lost diadem, Helga Hufflepuff’s cup, and Gryffindor’s Sword; Slytherin House has no equivalent relic-mascot although it does boast its own Chamber of Secrets (not a euphemism). Each of these objects is lost, stolen, or defiled in the course of these stories.

Ravenclaw’s diadem was lost almost as soon as it was made, and Slytherin’s Locket was never kept in Hogwarts, showing the somewhat less than reverential treatment of these artefacts, even among those who should best appreciate their value. More on Slytherin’s personal effects later, but it may be worth noting here that his Chamber was until lately populated with a living balrog, I mean Basilisk, which was at least as ancient as Slytherin before its murder by a student dangerously swinging another medieval artefact in 1998. Guys. Lock down your antiquities.

Days without an accident on site: 0 (source)

Of these artefacts, only the Sword of Gryffindor was curated to any extent, even if only as a wall-hanging which, let me repeat, students were allowed to handle. Hufflepuff’s cup was kept in the common room of its founder’s house, allowing it to be stolen and inhabited with cursed fragments of soul which almost led to the demise of the rules-based wizarding world order. In the end, Helga’s cup was found in a damn bank vault instead of a climate-controlled museum store. Listen, a secure, alarmed case may not have stopped Voldemort, but we could have at least saved these precious witnesses of wizarding origins from being callously destroyed in the war. Who will be the wizarding Mortimer Wheeler next time?

Excavating Hogwarts

Reading through Pottermore, it transpires that paying no heed to the medieval material world our protagonists live in is actively causing them harm. Two of Voldemort’s horcruxes, Slytherin’s Locket and Marvolo Gaunt’s Ring, date back to the early medieval period, but were kept as personal possessions passed down the Gaunt family line, allowing them to be easily stolen or sold, and, again, be haunted by evil curses. Guys. Where do I send my CV to develop a course in Material Culture Studies at Hogwarts? Better yet, let’s make it a MOOC, train members of the public, and then maybe next time someone tries to pawn an ancient relic our world isn’t threatened by cursed archaeology.

Please don’t drink from the archaeology (source)

My favourite revelation is that the Hogwarts pensieve, the expositional device in Dumbledore’s office which allows Harry to experience flashback sequences along with the reader, is a noted antiquity itself. It is said to be a stone basin inscribed with Saxon runes, and to have been found buried on the spot where Hogwarts would be built.

I can’t just pass this by. Why would a pensieve be buried? We know that wizards are buried with their wands, as recounted to plot-driving effect in Dumbledore’s case. It also transpires that, like wands, pensieves are very personal items, and are customarily buried with their owners along with any memories they have stored. What an incredible boon this would be for a wizarding archaeologist! And how well would this explain all the now-empty vessels we have found used as grave goods since prehistory, usually explained by us dull-minded archaeologists as ‘food-offerings’. Along with the spell priori incantatem, which allows one to see the last few spells a wand was used for, an archaeowitch encountering a burial furnished with wand and pensieve would have an unparalleled insight into the lives and deaths of the wizarding dead.

Back to the Hogwarts pensieve, then, we have a massive stone basin inscribed in Saxon runes, which would be rather out of place in the early medieval Scottish highlands, where Hogwarts is based. Is this a disturbed wizard’s tomb or a ritualised offering in a wetland setting? Once upon a time, this find would be taken as evidence for Anglo-Saxon invasion, but now we recognize that objects could be transported for a variety of reasons, and indeed are themselves more likely to be used in votive deposits due to the value they have accrued in the journey. It would certainly merit further investigation whether the Hogwarts loch was chosen by its founders not for its now-isolated and depopulated landscape, itself a product of fairly recent historical processes, but because it had an existing heritage as a site of ritual deposition. We can only hope, for the sake of its students, that the founders undertook some due-diligence magical remote sensing to detect any complicating factors from buried magic, dark or light, before undertaking a major construction project. But beyond health and safety concerns, I feel that we have lost something else by not recording what has presumably been a cult place.

A medieval inheritance

Pottermore also traces the origins of several major wizarding families to the Middle Ages, most notably the Malfoys. Their lineage can be traced back to Armand Malfoy,  who helped William the Bastard become Conqueror of England in the real-world timeline: “Having rendered unknown, shady (and almost certainly magical) services to King William I, Malfoy was given a prime piece of land in Wiltshire, seized from local landowners, upon which his descendants have lived for ten consecutive centuries.” In gratitude for their help with the Norman Conquest, he was granted a manor, which has passed down the family for 1000 years to Draco Malfoy. The mansion itself is said to be filled with ancient magical and muggle artefacts and priceless artwork, as so many stately homes were by the nineteenth century. Many of Britain’s museums were founded through bequests of such private collections, and these would make an interesting, if dangerous, Dark Magic wing of a Wizarding Museum. Given the spectacular fall from grace of the Malfoy family in the second wizarding war, I do worry about the status of the Malfoy collection, and whether it is at risk of being hived off in auction. The Draco Malfoy essay does reveal that he still lives in the manor with its artefacts after the war, so we still live in hope that this heritage resource has not been lost.

Even dark artefacts need curators (source)

In light of their family history, it would be easy to laugh off the Malfoys’ malevolence as the entitlement that comes from old money, but it should be noted that Harry Potter is a noted trust-fund baby himself. For all his remarkable magical prowess, Harry Potter’s destiny is also down to some serious inherited privilege. His medieval progenitor Linfred of Stinchcombe, who also lived in the Norman era, built up the family’s wealth through his famous inventions, including potions like Skele-gro. Their marriage into a wealthy family in Godric’s Hollow is also auspicious – as home to the Peverils and the Dumbledores, whose stories are so indelibly entwined in the history of wizarding Britain, this little village in England’s west country seems to have been the epicentre of magical achievement for a millennium. Something in the water, perhaps? Or a self-segregating community of elite families? It is through these connections that the Potter family came into possession of one of the Deathly Hallows, the invisibility cloak, in another form of inheritance which increasingly looks like the secret of Harry’s success.

Godric’s Hollow - in dire need of graveyard survey (source)

The Hallows themselves are the key to Dumbledore and Harry’s success, and Voldemort’s undoing, Unbeknownst to many, the Resurrection Stone, invisibility cloak and Elder Wand all seem to be inventions of the Peveril brothers in the thirteenth century. We know this partly because Harry and Hermione stumble on Ignotus Peveril’s medieval gravestone in the churchyard of Godric’s Hollow, clearly marked with the sign of the Deathly Hallows, at which point things begin to come together. Basically, Voldemort is able to be defeated because he only trafficked in antiquities, without researching their archaeological context – but in fairness, neither did Dumbledore and Harry until very late in the game. A simple bit of churchyard recording may have brought this to the attention of local history buffs much sooner, and we may all have been safer for it. Basically, folks, local heritage is all of our heritage, and is not just for tourists obsessively chasing only their own family history.

Potter’s pedigree

And so we come to genealogy, which is the secret engine of this cycle of stories, just as it seems to be in so many of our favourite fantasy worlds. The objects, people and places profiled here all seem to be the remnants of stories which seem to begin no earlier than the tenth century or so. But it is clear that the wizarding world existed before then, and the limits of our vision can be explained by the fact that the first university was established at that time, and presumably the recording of historical events as well.  In short, the narrow focus on a small pool of influential families and their feuds are the unresolved business of the formation of medieval kingdoms of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, as indeed is so much of our own contemporary politics. What if our consciousness extended to the messier early medieval kingdoms, or (whisper it) prehistory? Just how problematic would a wizarding archaeology be? And could it free us from the Great Men and Their Battles vision of the human journey? Let’s pick up our trowel-wands and find out.

***

Forward to Part 2: Excavating Magic

Follow us on @AlmostArch

[houseofvans]

SKETCHY BEHAVIORS | Q&A w/ Marigold Santos 

Immigrating to Canada in the late 80′s from the Philippines with her family at seven years old, artist Marigold Santos creates beautiful works that reflect on this journey of uprooted selfhood and fragmented identities. Combining the supernatural and otherworldly beings from Filipino folklore, mainly the Asuang, Santos creates her own mythology by powerfully presenting these creatures to celebrate how we are all not just one thing, but many all at once, every changing. And Santos is not only one thing either, like her art, she is a multiple and plural talent – from sculptor, painter, print maker, ceramicist to animator.  We’re super excited to learn more about Marigold in our newest Sketchy Behaviors, where we talk about her early experiences, the folklore of the Asuang, and hear a story about what she saw when playing Bloody Mary with friends. 

Photographs courtesy of the artist | Portrait by Stacy Lee

Introduce yourself? Hello this is Marigold Santos, though my family and pals call me Goldie. I am a visual artist based out of both Montreal, Quebec and Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I am awful at doing summersaults. Or any gymnastics for that matter.

What can you tell us about your art background?   My art practice began with completing my BFA at the University of Calgary, where I did mainly printmaking and drawing, and then I moved to Montreal in 2008 to do my MFA at Concordia University, also in Print Media, but I hardly did any printmaking while I was there! I started on a journey of large-scale drawings, and eventually paintings, sculptural elements, and music/performance, and a bit of animation sometimes. Printmaking was another form of drawing, which is just a wider form of image-making for me. So I would say that though I work in mixed-media, I feel that drawing is the most immediate way for me to make an image, and one that I am the most comfortable with saying that my practice is really based on.

What were the influences that lead you to study and pursue art as a career as opposed to something else?   I was really stubborn when I was growing up about what I wanted to do for a career, I really disliked the feeling of others knowing what might be best for me, before I came to that conclusion myself. And I bring it up because I was always an artistic child, and throughout my early years it was a common understanding among my family and friends that I would go to art school, and I detested that idea! In some ways I was adamant about doing something opposite, so I decided I wanted to be a scientist, in the social field, and I actually started my University years studying Archaeology and Religious Studies. Halfway through the program, it became clear to me that although I loved the Ancient Maya, and learning about belief systems, it just wasn’t a good fit, and I had to make the decision to leave that program and take time off from school to figure out what I wanted to do. In the end it was a no-brainer after all, and I went back for art school, and didn’t turn around. My MFA followed shortly, and it all felt right from there. 

What would that “something else” have been? If you weren’t an artist, what would you be doing? But if I wasn’t an artist, what would I be doing? I sometimes shuffle around the idea of being a butcher, or a dental hygienist. Ha! Though very unlikely I suppose.

Tell us about how your personal experiences  that may have shaped your art? Specifically the importance of your childhood memories and family’s immigration to Canada? How does your art address or reflect these important memories. The departure point for all the art that I make is my family’s immigration to Canada in the late 80’s. I turn to that moment because it was such a pivotal moment for me, even as young person, having to negotiate your sense of identity, in a landscape (social, and geographical) that has dramatically changed. I gave up speaking Tagalog, so I could speak English, and I was desperate to fit in as a Canadian, whatever I thought that was at 7 years old. I started reflecting on identities shaped by diasporic or migratory experiences when I was in my MFA, specifically because I had uprooted myself again, moving across the country to another place where I didn’t know anybody really, and I didn’t know the language.

I came to embrace the idea of a self-hood that was fragmented, and in turn, multiple, or hybrid, or constantly evolving, based on your surroundings and your experience, what you take with you, and what you leave behind. And that this self that was in-flux or constantly in process is something to be celebrated, because the possibilities are empowering. This really creates the foundation for my work, and I began to explore it conceptually with the platform of the supernatural or otherworldly, and specifically with my relationship to the folklore of my upbringing, and where those Filipino mythologies collide with the North American ones I was then exposed to.

In your ink works, there are a lot of appearances of shrouded or draped figures that are very otherworldly and even spectral.  How did these series of works evolve and thematically what do they address and speak about? In Filipino folklore, there is a hybrid, multiple creature called an Asuang, that comes in various shapes and forms, depending on the region and who is telling the story. Predominantly it is a figure that appears to be female human in the day and at night shape-shifting into some sort of viscera sucker that hunts and eats humans. The version I was imparted with as a child was the Mananangal, which translates to “to separate”, because these creatures have the ability to self-sever at the waist, discarding their lower halves in the night, while their upper halves hunt and kill, only to rejoin before sunrise, lest the die fragmented.

Given the Asuang’s multiplicity of self, I was drawn to these creatures to speak about my own sense of self-hood, and reconfigure this character to be less about malevolence, and instead about empowerment and re-inversions of identity. So all the figures I make in my work are always called Asuangs. Including the shrouded figures that are draped in inky messes. These ‘garments’ are not so much fabrics, but are thematically functioning more like a second-skin where the ink reads like blood, or dirt, or rot, or even the cosmos, and represents experience and self. So the porousness of these marks are interchangeable from figure to shroud, and it’s not so much about hiding, but more about revealing. It’s about powerfully presenting your identity in the ways it is multiple, fragmented, plural.

You’ve worked with a lot of different mediums from drawing, printed works, painting, animation, and sculpture.  What is your approach with working in new mediums?  I really appreciate exploring new materials that I am not familiar with, and often I don’t know the first thing about this medium, so I’ll either teach myself (and watch so many Youtube videos. 

Give us an example of one of the mediums you’ve worked with and how that process evolved? For instance I once taught myself how to make a real wig) or I’ll find some others who know, and trade/exchange for their knowledge, and workshop with me. An example would be when I decided I wanted to make images on a surface similar to paper, but was a completely different format, and something I would have to make – and I gravitated towards ceramics. I found a ceramicist in Montreal and asked her to workshop with me and teach me how to wheel throw. I made a series of ceramic plates of which I drew on directly with glaze, and then fired, and then finished with gold rim. It was such a great process, and was completely challenging physically, but also reminded me that you have to adapt your drawing skills depending on the medium you’re working in. Drawing on clay is a totally different surface for instance, and the element of surprise (you never know what it will look like until after it has been fired) reminded me to be open to the element of surprise.

What were some of your early artistic influences and what are some of your contemporary ones? Truly I don’t have too many influences, but I can say I have favourites whose works just move me, from Artemisia Gentileschi, Mary Cassatt, Paul Thek, David Hockney, Cindy Sherman, Yayoi Kusama.

Describe your artist process. How do you organize your thoughts and ideas to the medium or canvas you’re working on? I carry a black book around with me that is full of notes, I start and finish one of these books on average once a year, but I keep them all because they house all of my thoughts, and research, and scribbles. So they become reference points in some ways, an archive of my thoughts. I find that I write more about what I want to do, rather than make preparatory drawings or sketches of them. 

New projects are usually sparked by conversation, research,  a book I’m reading, a film I’ve watched, a memory or dream I am reflecting on, and I build on those in my note taking. Most of the actual image-making happens during the creation process, as I continue to respond to previous marks I’ve made. But not all of my works are intuitive, the larger works definitely need some preparation because of their scale. The wall-sized pieces (9’x13’ for instance) are not projected, but are drawn free hand, but I need to make thumbnails to figure out composition before I begin, otherwise it’s a disaster on a ladder. If I am making a giant work, I can only have that one piece to work on until it is finished to the end, which can sometimes be up to 8 weeks. It takes up all the wall space in my studio, and sometimes I do get bored with it and just want it to end! I can forget that large pieces with tiny details take forever to do. But I just hunker down with true crime podcasts, audio books, and a lot of Dolly Parton.

What has been the best project or experience art wise in 2017? Definitely presenting my work at the Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art, which opened in both the Art Gallery of Alberta, and the Walter Phillips Gallery in Banff. My piece SUBLIMATION / CONSTELLACHEMY was such a huge work for me, and I was so happy to be able to present it in that context. It was one of the first pieces you see when you come in, and I was happy to start the exhibition with a strong female voice, and representing POC.

You recently did an artist talk and storytelling workshop at Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA). Can you tell us a little about that talk and what were some of the highlights from it? It turned out to be a fantastic talk, and the crowd was full of such diversity. It was so great to have a supportive Filipino community come out to see my talk, and hear my story, but also was amazing to share stories with the audience who wanted to share their diasporic experiences and the folklore of their youth, and how in turn it has shaped their experience and their identities. A large portion of the crowd consisted of the Canadian Council for Refugees Youth Group of Edmonton, and I loved speaking to each one of the youth after the talk – they were so engaged and excited to tell me about themselves. It was really a gift.

What’s been your biggest challenge as an artist and how have you overcome those obstacles?  What have you learned over the years? I think the biggest challenge at first has been to manage and balance your time. Keeping regular studio hours, while maintaining other life commitments, can sometimes be difficult, especially because the onus is on you to be the enforcer of your own dedication. Sometimes you want to just be lazy! And I definitely give in to those days. But I think over time, you figure out a balance, and when to turn it off, and when to get the ball rolling, and to keep the momentum. I suppose it really is dictated by the fact that I can’t really imagine myself dedicating my hours to any other way of life, so that does drive me.

What advice would you give folks out there who want to pursue art as a career? It’s going to be feast or famine sometimes, but that’s the curl of the burl. Just do what feels right for you, and do what you want to do.

Okay, when you’re not doing awesome works and shows or giving talks, how do you unwind or spend your free time? I don’t know if this qualifies as unwinding, but I’ve started tattooing and it’s what I do when I am not painting or drawing! But outside of the studio, I stay active by going for runs and hikes, and I also box. But I also love croissants, so I dedicate my time to eating the best croissants I can find. .

What would be your ideal collaboration? I would love to work with some of my favourite musicians to create a moving image piece, animation or projection!

What’s a question you never get asked–what would that be and how would you answer it. Q: What’s a thing you love that others don’t really love? A: Going to the dentist, flossing my teeth.

What’s a common misconception folks might have about artists that you might have come across? One misconception I find is that artists have the ability to channel their feelings always in to art, and whether they are experiencing good to bad times in their life, they should just take that energy and channel it into their work. I don’t think it always works that way. It would be amazing if it did, but art making is also work, and is work for many artists, and sometimes those don’t intersect the way we imagine it to.

What are your favorite Vans? My old checkered Slip Ons!

How are you not just ONE thing? Maybe it’s because I am a Libra, it prevents me from pigeonholing myself in any of my multiple interests – I just want it all, I just want to do it all!

What are you looking forward to project wise in 2018? I have a solo show in Montreal at Galerie D’Este in the fall of 2018 and I am really excited to be making new works for it. I’ve really been making images of landscapes lately, and plenty referenced from my experiences in Joshua Tree. I’d love to do more ceramics for this show, and possibly some brass works.

What’s your strangest or sketchiest art story that you can share? Because most of my works are a response and reflection of identity informed by lived experience, and presented on a platform of the supernatural or otherworldly, naturally I am drawn to all things scary, grotesque, weird and wild. I’ve only had one supernatural experience – and that when we I was really young a school friend came over and made me do Bloody Mary (scary urban legend) with her in the bathroom. I had no idea what this was, but I knew it was supposed to be scary, sort of. Nothing immediately happened in the dark bathroom we were locked in, but at one point, I saw a blue hand pressed up against the mirror on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR. It also had a blue triangle in the palm. I squinted my shut my eyes multiple times to check, but then the light was turned on, and there was nothing there. I can still see that blue hand in my mind’s eye, and if you see a blue hand in my art work on occasion, it’s because it’s referencing that story.

Follow Marigold Santos Website | www.marigoldsantos.com/ Instagram | @marigoldasantos 

[markisan]

TOP 40 METAL ALBUMS of 2019 Part 2 of 2 (#1-20)

I’ve been making a Best Metal Albums of the Year list for nearly two decades, but 2019 is the 1st time I’ve done so as an official member of the METALHEADS Podcast. Last year the boys gave me a chance to share my top picks as a guest, and this year I was invited to be a permanent part of the show. It’s been an honor and a blast to discuss metal, interview musicians, and throw a few beers back every month with George, Jay, Will, John and Matt. 

2019 was an incredible year for metal. We all spent a lot of time listening to hundreds of albums, honing our lists and cursing the metal gods every time a great contender had to be cut. But when we finally put down our scalpel blades and wiped away the blood, some damn selections were revealed. 

My final choices for the top 20 metal albums are below. You can read my choices for #21-40 HERE.

Listen to me and the boys count down ALL 40 of our favorite LPs here:

METALHEADS Ep. 90 “Top 40 Metal Albums of 2019″

20. Wilderun “Veil of Imagination”

Self-Released

This album is musical imagination science. Intricate. Breathtaking. It truly feels like the next evolutionary step in progressive metal.

19. Cranial “Alternate Endings”

Moment of Collapse

An absolutely monstrous and aggressive sludge and post-metal album that occasionally dips its toe into sci-fi synth waters. One of the biggest sounding LPs I’ve heard this year.

18. The Great Old Ones "Cosmicism"

Season of Mist

I’ve enjoyed The Great Old Ones for a while now, but this album takes their sound to a grand cosmic level. As immersive and visceral as the H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos it’s based on.  

17. Obsequaie "The Palms of Sorrowed Kings"

20 Buck Spin

Brilliant, melodic black metal mixed with the sounds of the Renaissance Faire on a summer day. This is classic, medieval literature in musical form and it’s glorious.

16. Inculter "Fatal Visions"

Edged Circle Productions

I found this sinister thrash album a few weeks before the end of 2019 and it quickly left the other speed metal competitors in its blood-soaked wake. I didn’t hear this kind of malevolence in another trash band this year. And I very much dig malevolence.

15. Adrift "Pure"

Temple of Torturous

An absolutely thunderous, progressive metal album, propelled by a jet-fuel fired bass sound, vicious black metal vocals and colossal riffs. A street painter in Madrid told me about this band several years ago and I've been thankful ever since.

14. Vacivus “Annihilism”

Profound Lore

This is exemplary, modern death metal with merciless, unrelenting riffs, savage breakdowns and tremolo-picking tendrils that will wrap around your ear drums like a constrictor snake.

13. Immortal Bird “Thrive On Neglect”

20 Buck Spin

No other band sounds like Immortal Bird. “Thrive on Neglect” is a soaring statement of pummeling death, black and grind metal, mixed with complex hardcore and progressive elements. An amalgamate maelstrom not to be missed.

12. False “Portent”

Gilead Media

This album is pain and loss in musical form. Engrossing black metal with scope, skill, and gorgeously constructed songs that pour out aggression and emotion like blood from an open wound.

11. Gatecreeper “Deserted”

Relapse

In a recent issue of Decibel Magazine, Gatecreeper referred to their sound as “Stadium Death Metal” and that’s an apt characterization of the band’s sound. They focus on writing huge, catchy hooks that audiences will remember. Mission accomplished.

10. Falls of Rauros "Patterns in Mythology"

Gilead Media

This is amazing, black and post-metal alchemy with a big, cinematic feel. Gorgeous melodies, folk atmospherics and masterful riffs make "Patterns in Mythology” mesmerizing from start to finish.

9. Blood Incantation "Hidden History of the Human Race"

Dark Descent

"Hidden History of the Human Race” is a cosmic roar of destruction that takes death metal to places it hasn’t been before. You’ll feel like you’re seeking out new life and new civilizations with every spin.

8. Weeping Sores “False Confession”

I, Voidhanger

If you asked me to describe the kind of music Weeping Sores plays, I'd tell you progressive death-doom with violin. But that label falls way short of capturing the dynamic and colorfully devastating experiment of "False Confession." Surprising and phenomenal.

7.  Tomb Mold "Planetary Clairvoyance"

20 Buck Spin

The cover to “Planetary Clairvoyance” features a bio-engineered alien cyclops gestating in an otherworldly basement of sludge and stardust. The music sounds pretty much exactly like that description. This album also solidifies Tomb Mold as one of the best metal bands on our planet.

6. Arctic Sleep “Kindred Spirits”

Self Released

Dedicated to a beloved cat who passed away last year, “Kindred Spirits” is a stunning and emotional metal experience. In addition to the gorgeous, arresting music that deftly mixes doom, post-metal, ambient and a 90s rock sound that reminds me of Hum, Kieth D’s lyrics tug hard on my heart strings every time I listen. RIP Yoda. 

5. Vastum “Orificial Purge”

20 Buck Spin

“Orificial Purge” is brutal with some of the most memorable, galloping riffs of 2019 and a triumphal, modern aura to it that makes it stand apart in the thriving death metal field. I’ve plunged into this orifice often.

4. Crypt Sermon "The Ruins of Fading Light"

Dark Descent

“The Ruins of Fading Light” is an album that has one boot in traditional metal and the other in doom. And both of those boots kick you in the gut with super-heavy impact. This album is thick with hooks, grooves and bombastic lead guitar solos, and the dynamic vocals by Brooks Wilson fill “The Ruins of Fading Light” with iron and emotion.

3. Crowhurst "III"

Prophecy Productions

"III” is a sensory spice blend of sludgy black metal, noise, shoegaze and electronica that feels like it was mixed inside a dark and dangerous heart. A truly unique and special album.

2. Cattle Decapitation "Death Atlas"

Metal Blade

“Death Atlas” is an apocalyptic masterpiece, featuring some of the sharpest and most sophisticated songwriting in 2019. The tracks are remarkably varied, delivering brutal riffs, theatrical and infectious vocals, and a real progressive sense of adventure. It’s also catchy as hell. “Death Atlas” demands repeat spins until you sing along and smile as the world ends.

1. Atlantean Kodex "The Course of Empire"

Ván Records

A long while ago, my friend Garrett played the first Atlantean Kodex album, “The Golden Bough,” for me in his metal basement because he thought I'd like it. He was right, as G often is about the kind of metal that speaks to me. The band followed that album with “The White Goddess,” which was a critically-acclaimed, grand triumph. It took another six years for Atlantean Kodex to release their third LP because the band is so meticulous about the way they make music. To tell you it was was worth the long wait is an enormous understatement. “The Course of Empire” is one of the greatest, epic metal albums of all time. If Iron Maiden and Manowar were magically merged inside a medieval cauldron during the Battle of Helms Deep this would be the soundtrack. It’s an exceptionally crafted collection of songs, featuring mountainous guitar riffs, soaring choruses and some of the best vocals and lyrics in metal this year from Markus Becker. “The Course of Empire” has the kind of breadth and scope that make me feel like the ancient worlds of my dreams – worlds forged by blood and steel – are calling for me to pick up my sword and make them real once more.

CLICK HERE FOR PART 1 (#21-40)

[podcake]

Week One: The Bridge Review

In the spirit of innovation to start this fine month of September, I found myself in a mild panic over the summer to find just the right shows to discuss for my review month. These next five weeks are sure to be filled with audio drama galore that I personally deem one of the most creative by far, and even that is vague in itself.

I spend my days raking through the long lists and the little cracks, spelunking the deep archives of iTunes and Twitter bios to seek out the goods, the bads, and the meh emojis out there, giving each and every one it’s shot. But no matter the title, efforts in innovation seems to be something each and every audio drama producer seems to have in mind from the get-go.

When you throw yourself into a community reveling the plights of being a stand out, unique product, how do you properly pinpoint ones that utterly, truly encompass the concept? Simple-you focus on the teeny, tiny little details. 

Thus I found myself feeling dead set on talking about The Bridge, a podcast that emerged some time around the summer of 2016 but I have yet to properly cover despite me occasionally bringing it up. The Bridge tells the story of an alternative modern day where a Transcontinental Bridge is watched over by the appropriately titled Watchtower 10 in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. From here we get to know our main character Henrietta Perrault, better known as Etta, who much rather be telling spooky stories than giving her assigned traffic reports. 

Etta is also haunted by the disappearance of her mother, among other missing people, something that has plagued her childhood and followed her into adulthood and is the fuel behind most of her actions throughout the series aside from her own natural curiosity. 

I can’t help but give it kudos for avoiding the dreaded “strapped to a chair narrating over more interesting past events” formula, despite having all the qualifications to completely revel in it. Quite a bit of the exchanges happen in the safety of the broadcast room though it’s properly utilized to have it both be a place of Etta’s storytelling and her interactions with her crew. 

It’s more or less a framing device that makes way for some interesting and often humorous interactions and expanding lore. The bridge in question turns out to be a rather mysterious and eldritch location, providing a kind of suspense and spook factor the show transitions into rather seamlessly with a certain level of self awareness from the watchtower crew, as if they’ve been through this all before.

The eerie elements are not of the heavily grim and gritty variety and more in that slightly off-putting category that labels the bridge as something possibly not of this world or merely haunted or both. And that’s nothing to say of the villains in the first few episodes, providing some interesting psychological warfare with the heroes and even some grisly violence sprinkled in. Nothing on SABLE levels, though enough to elicit an uncomfortable shift in your chair.

All around, The Bridge has the same appeal as Wolf 359: providing a small but plucky cast we quickly get attached to as we slowly watch the layers peel back and whatever character type their filling to be picked apart. And of course there’s the crucial similarity of The Bridge easing its way into deeper, darker territory about its world without entirely losing its sense of humor. If this is a trend forming in audio drama is something I’ve been puzzling over for some time, but it’s certainly one I encourage if it means raising stakes while still keeping its heart in the right place. 

But, if there is any weak point in the show it’s in its audio editing. The Bridge comes with some pretty effective backing tracks and a cast of actors that are expressive in their deliveries, but the shifts in perspectives are a rocky boat. It can be hard to tell when exactly a character’s view point is being swapped out for another, mainly because the audio doesn’t properly communicate it. 

This may or may not be a noticeable detail to some, but perspective changes in an audio drama are normally signified by a variety of ways, normally as a break of silence followed by some sort of new sound effect that shows a transition to a new location or even a music cue. The Bridge has yet to fully establish changes of scene, which could make following dialogue very confusing. And given the moderate sized cast we have so far, it makes backtracking pretty much inevitable. 

The sound is clear and yet still feels messy due to the scenes seeming like they’re not entirely in relation to each other. It’s a bummer seeing as how this is much more of a problem with plot relevant dialogue than in its side missions.

A little detail I’d like to point out, and the main reason The Bridge is being marked for “innovation”, is due to its take on mini-episodes. What helps The Bridge breathe life into its world while still having an ongoing narrative is the clever inclusion of these little shorts that are just cool enough to be standalone projects. These are smaller and simpler stories shipped out in between the original episode continuations, some of which have little relevance to what might be going on in the linear timeline, and yet it’s easily the most effective way to have the best of both worlds.

The mini episodes may seem like filler and padding to others, and perhaps it was always intended to be, and yet I can’t help but be impressed by the simplicity and organization that these shorts provide for the story’s general lore while not weighing down the main story to shoehorn it in. It is by no means the ultimate highlight or the most exciting part, but provides a kind of flourish to what is within the realm of reality for this world.

If things like immortality inducing macguffins will be used later in the series as relevant plot points is its own question, though they make for neat little asides for now.

The Bridge is easily at its best during its tenser moments, “Oops! Part Two” still being one of its most intriguing episodes in terms of dialogue and an effective build in tension that might make way for some interesting confrontations in later seasons. Even it’s follow up episode works to strengthen the events presented before and makes way for a broader lens we are slowly being introduced to, opening up the audience to what could be a much bigger mystery about certain characters, their roles, and whatever secrets the bridge may be hiding.

For me personally, I’ve always been a fan of concepts about bringing life to usually inanimate landmarks and The Bridge certainly scratches that itch for me. It didn’t quite work for me in Mabel, though The Bridge manages this formula in a way that’s just subtle enough that any stranger events to come are anticipated. If what we are to expect from the bridge’s otherworldly nature is that of utter malevolence or perhaps something simply beyond the comprehension of our characters is something certainly worth tuning into. 

What makes The Bridge worth listening to, in a technical sense, is its simple but effective storytelling overall. If it plans to truly dedicate itself to its main mysteries and flesh out its world more for the better is something to hope for in the future. It still feels like the show is still in its training wheels and has yet to truly reach its ultimate peaks and reveals, though I enjoy the even pacing it has adapted so far. It’s patient and steady, unlike the fictional waters its fictional towers reside in, but seems to know the benefits of a climb that keeps listeners invested but not bored or rushed.

The Bridge has the makings to be a pretty impressive audio drama experience: a good set up filled with little hidden mysteries to discover, decent voice acting, and a willingness to progress and build from its focal point rather than letting its oddness consume its overarching story. As to where it plans to go is still up in the air but in a way that seems focused and could make for some cool and creative episodes overtime. In the mean time, I say The Bridge has a strong, and steady current that’s easy to get swept up in.

[vinayv224]

Former eBay CEO Devin Wenig. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Devin Wenig says he had “no knowledge, no private understanding, no tacit approval” of the harassment campaign.

Earlier this week, reports emerged of a very strange corporate scandal: Federal authorities charged several former eBay corporate security employees for their roles in a cyberstalking campaign targeting a blogger that involved Twitter harassment and mailing insects to her house. Now, former eBay CEO Devin Wenig, who led the company at the time, tells Recode that he was shocked to hear details of the campaign this week and that he gave “no direction” nor “tacit approval” for it.

But the former eBay chief executive was at times so frustrated with coverage from the news website in question that he on several occasions floated the idea internally that eBay should create its own competitor publication, multiple former eBay insiders told Recode.

“On Monday, I read the charges along with everyone else, and was shocked and outraged,” Wenig told Recode in a statement. “It is important for me to reiterate, and an independent investigation confirmed, that I had nothing to do with and no knowledge of the activities alleged to have occurred. There was no direction, no knowledge, no private understanding, no tacit approval. Ever.”

Still, the fact that eBay’s security team allegedly felt comfortable executing such a campaign against the blogger and her husband suggest that the leadership team had, at best, problematic blind spots.

On Monday, the US Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts revealed a case against six former eBay workers who allegedly waged an “aggressive cyberstalking campaign” against the husband-and-wife team that runs EcommerceBytes, which reports business news geared toward online merchants who sell on eBay and Amazon. The site, and some of its readers who post comments below articles, were often critical of eBay under Wenig’s leadership and sometimes of Wenig himself.

Authorities accuse the former eBay workers of a wide range of malevolent activities, including shipping them “a funeral wreath, a book on surviving the loss of a spouse, and pornography – the last of these addressed to the newsletter’s publisher but sent to his neighbors’ homes.” The group, led by former eBay security head James Baugh, also surveilled the couple and considered breaking into their garage to place a GPS tracking device on their vehicle.

In court documents, copies of text messages showed Wenig twice instructing his communications chief, Steve Wymer, to “take her down,” referring to the EcommerceBytes owner and writer Ina Steiner. On Thursday, Wenig told Recode in a statement that those texts “have been wildly misinterpreted and taken completely out of context in some media reports.”

“I was speaking off the cuff to a communications executive about my desire to be more aggressive in our PR effort; never in my wildest dreams would I fathom that, later, someone might associate that communication with the type of activity mentioned in the Massachusetts complaint,” Wenig said in the statement.

Wenig’s statement added: “I am genuinely sorry for the couple that had to endure these obscene acts. No one should have to experience that, especially not a journalist. What happened isn’t representative of the company culture I spent 8 years building, or the employees I knew there.”

Court documents show that Wymer, eBay’s communications chief, hired a consultancy that “prepared a document [which] included the recommendation, among others, that eBay promote company-friendly content that would drive the Newsletter’s posts lower in search engine results.” Such an action could be seen as a fairly benign PR strategy. But Wymer also sent text messages with an aggressive tone such as: “We are going to crush this lady.”

Court documents also include an exchange between Wymer and the security chief Baugh in which Baugh references an unspecified “Plan B” in relation to the EcommerceBytes couple. Wymer expressed a willingness to manage any fallout internally, but the messages do not indicate that Wymer had any knowledge of what the “Plan B” entailed.

Reached for comment, Wymer told Recode, “I would never condone or participate in any such activity.”

Steiner did not respond to an email seeking comment.

EBay has said it conducted an internal investigation and found no evidence that Wenig directed or had any knowledge of the harassment campaign. But the company implied that “inappropriate communications” from him played a role in his ouster in September 2019. The company fired Wymer that same month in relation to an internal investigation it conducted with the help of an external law firm, after federal authorities notified the company of “suspicious actions by its security personnel toward a blogger,” according to a statement eBay posted on its website Monday.

Neither Wymer nor Wenig have been charged, and authorities did not name them in the affidavit; instead, the two were simply referred to as Executive 1 and Executive 2. A spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts declined to comment on whether other eBay employees might be charged. “[I]t’s an ongoing investigation,” the spokesperson said.

Multiple former eBay insiders say that over his four years as eBay CEO, Wenig often took negative press personally, and that when it came to EcommerceBytes and Steiner, he was especially thin skinned. “He would often have very colorful words to say about her,” according to one former insider. Wenig on several occasions promoted the idea internally that eBay should create its own news site for sellers to counter what he saw as biased coverage from EcommerceBytes, sources said. The competitor site was never created.

Other executives, including current eBay executive Wendy Smith, also frequently aired frustrations about the site, multiple former eBay insiders told Recode.

But those same sources were in agreement that they never witnessed Wenig say or do anything that would make them think he would approve, or tolerate, the alleged criminal activity. Similarly, a person who worked closely with Wymer in a previous job, told Recode that they would be shocked if the communications executive was involved with the alleged crimes. The same source admitted that the communications executive could sometimes come across as extreme in work discussions.

“It’s hyperbole,” the person said of Wymer’s language in the text messages revealed in the affidavit. “Steve wouldn’t crush an ant. But in heat of the sport, he will say things that are extreme.”

The eBay security team that allegedly carried out the crimes reported up to Wendy Smith, the company’s current senior vice president of global customer experience and operations, Recode has learned. EBay spokesperson Trina Somera told Recode that the company’s internal investigation “found no wrongdoing with regard to Wendy” and that “she is not one of the people referenced in the government’s complaint.”

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[elwright13]

The Hatred, (directed by Michael G. Kehoe and starring Andrew Divoff, David Naughton, Amanda Wyss, Sarah Davenport, Gabrielle Bourne, Bailey Corman, Alisha Wainwright, Nina Siemaszko, Shae Smolik, and Darby Walker) was released on DVD/Blu yesterday. i’m very excited about the upcoming podcast interview with Michael Kehoe, and Andrew Divoff’s upcoming announcement of his new business venture, Three Marm Brewing. In the meantime, I’ll share my thoughts about the film itself.

Without  revealing major spoilers, the first part of the film takes place in 1968, in which former Nazi soldier Samuel Sears (Andrew Divoff) has assimilated into American society as a reclusive farmer. He receives an amulet in the mail from one of his Nazi associates, and the amulet prompts a series of violent events at the farmhouse. In the present day, a group of young women on a weekend retreat at the old farmhouse encounter the amulet’s evil influence along with the ghosts of Sears’ family.

The trailer looked massively creepy, but the scenes involving the four young women in the present-day scenes made me a bit worried that the film itself would involve a bunch of shallow, bubble-headed bimboes being terrorized in typical slasher film fashion. Fortunately, I was very wrong about this point. The young women are actually intelligent and inquisitive. One of the funniest moments that counters audience expectations is when the blonde Samantha (Bailey Corman, the niece of Roger Corman) not only recognizes a gruesome artifact as an 11th century Viking death mask, but also exclaims, “I’m in heaven!” Later, Samantha is revealed to be a scholar and serious history buff. Once the malevolent supernatural activity really kicks off, the young women react by researching the history and properties of the amulet rather than becoming hysterical.

Andrew Divoff as the Nazi Samuel Sears

The film’s performances are solid. Darby Walker is great as Sears’ daughter, Alice, who meets an unpleasant end early in the film. Andrew Divoff is phenomenal as the ex-Nazi Samuel Sears. He’s as menacing as you would expect, based on Andrew’s other bad-guy roles, but he also shows some sensitivity an d emotional vulnerability in some of the scenes, adding complexity to his his overbearing, authoritarian patriarch character. There  are also some unanswered questions about this character and his relationship to the local Sheriff. It seems like the Sheriff has some skeletons in his own closet, and Sears leverages this knowledge to prevent the Sheriff from conducting any serious investigation into Alice’s disappearance, or from outing Sears as a former Nazi. 

Don’t go into this movie expecting a T&A slasher film, or even blood and gore. (Though there is a flashback sequence that makes me wonder if Sears disemboweled and taxidermied Alice.) Instead, it’s a character-centric ghost story with an emphasis on atmosphere and spookiness. Pick up your copy of The Hatred on Blu-ray today! Also, those of you in Southern California can meet  director Michael Kehoe, FX designer Gary Tunnicliffe, and cast members Andrew Divoff, Sarah Davenport,  Amanda Wyss, Gabrielle Bourne, Musetta Vander, and Nina Siemaszko at Dark Delicacies on September 16, 2017.

[squatchdetective]

Expedition None

Introduction

Here comes a long one folks…

There are times that make me shake my head. As with all things in life there are folks out there that lie through their teeth, to deceive and obtain funds from folks. One such person is an self proclaimed East Texas Sasquatch researcher by the name of Robert “Bob” Garrett, who often calls himself, “The Hermit.” The man eventually became the leader of a for profit LLC, called the The Texas Big Thicket Watch Guide Service.

  Bob “The Hermit” Garrett

Many came to know Garrett from the controversial podcast, “The Sasquatch Chronicles.” Which for a long time catered to the notion that Sasquatch is a violent creature with a disdain for his less hairy primate relatives, us.

Garrett started off appearing to be a legitimate, caring researcher, never espousing a violent nature of the creatures, but I believe, in my opinion, seeing the early success of the “Sasquatch Chronicles,” hitched his wagon to the malevolent side of Sasquatch, and began to tell tales on the podcast of the mean streak of the hairy hominid creatures.

The Sasquatch Chronicles, itself was not shy of controversy as it was born out of the show hosts’ encounter. Wes and Woody had alleged an encounter in which they claim they were surrounded by a group of Sasquatch, where some of the environmental surroundings claimed on the encounter, did not seem to mesh up with the actual weather data collected at the time.

They asked for the intervention of the Washington Sasquatch Research Team (WASRT), which responded to the scene the next day, but they failed to find any corroborative evidence to their claims.

…Wes said on the show that he’d contacted WASRT—perhaps hoping for great validity. So WASRT’s report was revealed (no moon, no evidence) and then Wes curiously insisted that he’d merely called them (even though their website had no phone number) and certainly had never emailed them. Upon hearing this, WASRT promptly disclosed that at least 26 emails existed between Wes and the team.

                                                  – Brad Lockwood May 9th, 2015

                                                               The Daily Beast

  A full account of that can be read here in the DailyBeast.com

As far as Garrett’s tales of violence inside the Big Thicket of east Texas, Researcher Julie Rench, having relatives in the area decided to reach out on her own to corroborate Garrett’s claims with Texas Wildlife and Law Enforcement Officials.

“…Mrs.  Rench, we have not found anyone dead in the big thicket. We have no reports of such story. This does not match any deaths that we in Hardin County have had. If you get more information on this let us know…

…Not aware of this story you are asking about. We did have two people missing near Chester who were later found deceased in 2012-2013. This investigation was conducted by Tyler County Sheriff’s Office. They were residents of Polk County.

…I sent an email to Sasquatch Chronicles on February 1st and advised them that I had been in contact with some of the Law Enforcement in Texas and I could not verify the story that two people were killed and asked if they had checked into it as well.  I did not receive a response.  Shortly after the email I was removed and blocked from the Sasquatch Chronicles Facebook group.”

                                                              -Julie Rench March 19th, 2015

                                                             Bigfoot Anarchy Blog

Her research can be found here on the Bigfoot Anarchy Blog. It is very thorough and concise. 

The phone call

In December I had received a call from a couple of concerned members of the Mid-America Bigfoot Research Center (MABRC) that a friend of theirs had been taken for $1000.00 on one of Garrett’s expeditions that had been cancelled. They set up a phone call with the young lady from Missouri.

The victim, receiving instructions from Garrett’s daughter.

In February of 2016 she had paid for an expedition with the Texas Big Thicket Watch Guide Service, payable to one Robert Garrett, in the amount of $1000.00. Only to be told later that the expedition had been cancelled because they had been shut down by the federal government. When she spoke with Garrett she had asked about getting her money back, but Garrett said he was broke because he had to pay huge fines. If he gave her some time he would pay her back. He eventually stopped answering her calls.

First, I had to research Garrett’s claims and second, see if he would be willing to pay the victim back.

Garrett had made claims of Federal harassment because of the “murders” he uncovered of the Sasquatch, including a ripped up campsite he allegedly came across with his son Brandon.

“I have reviewed the videos and I still do not see anything that can not be attributed to human activity. In my younger days I went to many bush parties and witnessed things far worse than this. I have seen "tore up" woods and it was due to drunken idiots hacking down trees or from people intentionally running in to trees with their trucks. People due stupid things while under the influence of alcohol.

I have been on bike runs and plenty of poker runs that involved over night stays in campgrounds. I have seen what sauced up, half-in-the-pail adults will do. I have seen torn up camps and the camp in this video pales in comparison.”

                                                            – Steve Alcorn March 24th, 2015

                                                          Bigfoot Anarchy Blog

  An analysis of that was done by researcher Steve Alcorn and can be found here on Bigfoot Anarchy.

I had to be sure Garrett was telling the truth about being shut down by the Feds. It was…just not for the reasons he claimed. We all know about running paid expeditions on Federal lands. In case you don’t; You need permits. Something Garrett wasn’t apparently willing to do, or unable to do.

  An investigation full of surprises

First and foremost I wanted to ascertain the validity he was shut down by the government. The answer to that was no. He just wasn’t able to go to the National Park anymore. Last I knew the NP wasn’t the only game in town in East Texas for Bigfoot research, as I have been there in the past on expeditions and never hit that NP once. So he was not “shut down,” just at that location. His acumen as a Bigfoot researcher really shows poorly, for if he as good as he claims, he could have moved onto another active area (as Texas is full of them) and at least had some modest results.

This led me to looking at the profiles of Bob Garrett, Tim Sermons and Mo Michaux who were the three involved in organizing the Big Thicket expeditions.

Nothing on Garrett or Sermons on social media. Sermons was not active at all, and Garrett was very active, but just not about Sasquatch for some time. However in looking at The Big Thicket Watch Guide Service Facebook profile, I noticed  comments by Mo Michaux.

    Intrigued I contacted Michaux and got a plethora of information.  So lets go over the basics.

1. The Texas Big Thicket Watch Guide Service conducted 3 expeditions between February 2016 and April 2016.

2. In February 16th they were confronted by the NPS. The NPS warned them and told them they had to leave within 24 hours.

This was confirmed by a participant I contacted,

FEDs showed up and informed us that BG didn’t have a permit and we all need to be out of there within 24 hours.

3. The Texas Big Thicket Watch Guide Service was not shut down because of any government conspiracy covering up murders in the park as claimed by Garrett, but because he was consistently told he did not have a permit to do what he was doing. He ignored the first warning and got shut down and fined. But just in the park.

4. The first expedition Garrett proceeded to play an audio recording and spin a yarn at the “real reason” why they were being thrown out. Because a Sasquatch had torn up a camp and after the night video they had shot, he and his son had found a woman twisted, but alive, in a tree with a Sasquatch guarding it, in which Garrett had gotten an audio of it growling at them. He then proceeded to play the audio for the expeditioners.

Again confirmed with the participant,

“We were then informed by either Mo or Tim that Bob was pissed-off about the FED’s harassing him and was going to tell us the whole story about the Torn Up Camp Ground. BG presented the whole story which I conveyed to you. He then played the.…vocals for the first time.”

5. It was also confirmed to me by Sasquatch Chronicles host Wes Germer that the recording indeed was Garrett’s.

6. Germer originally blew off Michaux’s revelation that Garrett was hoaxing, by stating the two recordings sounded similar but weren’t the same in his opinion. He did try to say that to me as well but I told him, in no uncertain terms the recordings were the same and provided him the waveforms which proved such.

Here’s our analysis of the audio which is concrete evidence of Garrett hoaxing,

  The original sound came from a YouTube video which contained Gorilla Sound effects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1ViN9Q8iao

It was very clear from the wave form analysis that this was the same audio file. The waveform on the alleged “Bigfoot” was not as loud indicating it was recorded from perhaps a speaker, and had noise in it, with a fan or electronic noise in the background creating the “fuzziness” on the waveform.

  The top stereo track is from the Gorilla effects video and the bottom Mono track is Garrett’s alleged audio of a Sasquatch.

When the two recordings were lined up the perfectly matched in timing and spacial distance. When played together they are clearly the same recording.

Another interesting fact, was that in speaking with Michaux, he stated they never set an LLC up. I had asked that because I had seen that in some of the NDA’s and Waiver forms sent to the victim.

I found out indeed that an LLC was set up electronically by someone without Michaux’s knowledge, despite listing him as a managing member.

Back to the Money Trail

April 2016 –

“BG gathered everyone together and stated that if the FED’s showed-up and asked if we paid to be on the expedition that we were to say NO. Ten minutes later the FEDS pulled up and stated BG did not have a permit and began to questioned us separately & in groups for approximately 2 hours. While the FEDs where speaking to some of the participants at the other end of the camp, Bob sat down with a few of us and stated that he would be refunding everyone’s money.”

This is again another quote from the participant that went to all of Bob’s expeditions. She ended up having to reverse the charge on her credit card.

Another person I spoke with is from Canada, and she too never had gotten her money back as well from Garrett. To pacify the crowd Garrett had given Michaux the recording to play for everyone which is how the recording ended up in his hands. He in turn shared it with the one of the participants who discovered the Gorilla clip.

The Canadian witness was appalled.

 “For someone you don’t even know to ask people that he doesn’t know to lie…he didn’t even blink an eye.”

Not only was she out the $500, but she was out the money  for the car rental, flights, hotel etc., because Garrett did not obtain a permit. Something he was warned about on his very first expedition.

She wrote the Big Thicket email, but never received a response.

After the last incident with the NPS, he was barred, so the remaining expeditions were cancelled, (not rescheduled elsewhere)

  The Confrontation

On March 20th, 2017 I had an 18 minute conversation with Bob Garrett after contacting Wes Germer. I had tried for a  week via Facebook messenger and for that day on YouTube mail to contact Garrett with no response, which seems to be a common denominator with him.

    To make a long story short, Garrett stated he had no money and ha to pay $6000 in fines. He blamed Michaux, stating he gave him the money to pay people back. When asked about a list of paid participants for the June expedition he said Michaux had it and that he never had one.

“Well if people were paying you, how did Mo know who to pay?”

The conversation went south from there and he raised his voice to me, first questioning why I am involved. My answer was, because one of the people you owe money to asked me.

He stated he doesn’t do the Facebook thing as the reason why he didn’t answer me. But didn’t know what to say when I gave him the exact amount of posts he put on Facebook since my message.

That aggravated him even more. Caught in his own lie.

In fairness, I reached out to Wes Germer afterwards and told him point blank what I thought of Garrett, showed him the evidence and that he is refusing to pay anyone back on the claims that he has no money. Funny thing is Wes knew the real fine, but I had informed him of EXACTLY what Garrett had said. His fine was $6000 Wes stated he had felt horrible people had lost money to this because of his show.

Michaux upon hearing what Garrett had said confronted Garrett and stated I, yes me, had lied and that Tim Sermons had been given the money to pay people back. At that point I needed no verification or authentication that Garrett was a liar and had no intention whatsoever paying people back.

In actuality the fines were slightly less $6000, but it was to be divided by the three men involved, costing each around $1400.

And the kicker…it could be paid in installments.

    The Case of the Missing FLIR

A friend known to many Sasquatch researcher by the pseudonym Maximus Decimus Meridius was the property master of a FLIR project where they built FLIR devices much like trap cameras. He provided Tim Sermons with three of them and researcher Chris Noel mailed them one. Long story short they all turned up into the hands of Bob Garrett and only 3 were returned, after first reporting the mailed one never got to him and another was stolen in the woods.

The FLIRs returned in a horrible state.

  Three of the cameras were returned with $5000 in damage according to Max. According to Michaux, Garrett made the claim they were “given” to him and that wording was used once to “Max.” Michaux also claims that Garrett still has one in proper working order. Michaux also stated that Garrett stated his intention of keeping one stating he will tell them one was stolen. Again these claims are of a he said she said type of thing, but the corroboration of the act of being “given” them versus lent them, was both in the narratives of Michaux and Max.

  Thoughts and lessons

First let me give you my thoughts on the Sasquatch Chronicles. Do I think badly of Wes Germer. Well the show’s premise is based on an alleged event, that has been disputed, mainly the evidence of weather. Was Wes caught in a lie when he stated he did not email WASRT. It appears so.

Wes had told me that night of the confrontation that, he told Garrett that I wanted to talk to him and that’s all. He said he was going to call him right away but it took a while for Garrett to get back to me via a text message.

  Text from Garrett before the phone call.

So does it look like Germer had just told Garrett I wanted to talk to him? It would appear much of my conversation with him went to Garrett thus preparing him for what was coming.

In 2005 Coast to Coast with George Nhouri had Tom Biscardi on, where Biscardi claimed he had a captured Sasquatch in Stagecoach, Nevada. Biscardi at the time had a webcam feed subscription and had promised he would get the cams on the captured Sasquatch. Of course the story turned out to be false.

What did George Nhouri do? He banned Biscardi and demanded that all the extra web cam subscriptions since the night of the announcement were refunded.

That is what a responsible journalist does. It’s not Germer’s fault directly that people had gotten taken money. It is a show host to entertain, and yes sometimes people get on shows that are full of shit, but most of the time we are not in a position to immediately investigate their claims. That is entertainment. However as a journalist, and I have does this countless times, if something doesn’t sound right, I question it. If something like this happened on my show, you are damned straight, there are announcements about the validity of the previous guest. If one story is a lie, then guess what? The rest of them true or not are worth a pile of crap.

Germer stated he felt bad about what had happened, and I would like to truly believe him. And if he is truly the man he claims to be then he will do in kind what George Nhouri had done on Coast to Coast some 12 years ago. He will not see this as an attack but as a reflection of perception and reality.

He has known this for a week now…and not a peep as far as I can tell. As to his encounter with his brother, I cannot state any opinion, only report the facts as told by others. I did not investigate it, I was not there end of story. But the first thing I always check is the weather data to help prove some corroboration. That was not there.  I will let the audience be the jury.

I hold no ill will because he provides a service for the money he gets. A form of entertainment. How real is it? Again that’s the audience’s decision. I can only report what I can prove and give you my opinion when I clearly state it is my opinion.

On Tim Sermons, I cannot speak wholly for the FLIR deal, but it seems like he was pressured to do Garrett’s bidding, again an opinion. Not being able to speak to the man, I withhold judgment.

On Mo Michaux, I can only state that when he smelled something rotten, the oblivious hoax by Garrett, at least one he could prove, did his due diligence and he tried to warn Germer, tried to give Garrett time to come clean, and when it didn’t happen he bailed, and was attacked for doing such by Garrett’s friends.

Sometimes, as we have seen in other cases, you need a slap across the face to see the truth around you. And when Michaux opened his eyes he did what he could. When he crossed paths with me, he gave me everything I asked for and more, feeling his name was tarnished with his association with Garrett.

Now on to Garrett. In my opinion of him, well here’s a guy that lies and lies about those lies. He’s easy to catch in them if you listen carefully. But he likes manipulation, and will call someone with truth on their side a liar, we’ve given ample and concrete evidence of a hoax and a man who clearly received $1000 from at least one person, and didn’t bother to even pay them back. It’s his name on that PayPal receipt, not anyone else’s. It’s his responsibility to pay them back.

We know though he never had any intention of paying anyone back for 3 day expeditions that last a day or hours, or one that didn’t even kick off.

That is why Mr. Garrett has earned himself a spot in the Squatchdetective Hall of Shame.

Bob Garrett in his final sentence to stated he wished he never heard of me. Well I take that as a compliment coming from him.

But I dare assume there is at least a few people out of money that wish they never heard of Bob Garrett.

  Till Next Time,

Squatch-D

“The Anti-Hermit”

Tagged: Bigfoot Anarchy, Bob Garrett, Brandon Garrett, Chris Noel, Coast to Coast, FLIR Project, George Nhouri, Julie Rench, Maximus Decimus Meridius, Mo Michaux, Robert Garrett, Steve Alcorn, The Sasquatch Chronicles, Tim Sermons, Tom Biscardi, Wes Germer, Woody Germer from WordPress http://ift.tt/2nstXdt via IFTTT