Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind listener mail.
My name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
And I am Joe McCormick, and hey, welcome back, Rob
and I. We were out for a week, but now
we've returned to resume the Halloween season on the show.
If you're new to Stuff to Blow your Mind, you're
not familiar with what we do. Every year, we spend
all of October covering spooky topics on Stuff to Blow
Your Mind, And accordingly, most of our listener mail today
(00:35):
maybe all of it will be in response to Halloween
topics we've already done on the show. And man, our
loyal mail bot Carney, really seems to be in the
Halloween spirit. I received word from our it tech here
that Carney was recently upgraded with a new chip from
the Stone Hinge Magic Stone, and now he is aggressively
(00:56):
asking us to try on these masks. He's got a
pumpkin mask for me, Rob. Is this a witch masket?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
I think it is.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
I'm not sure what this is about, but he wants
us to put them on on Halloween Night.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
All right, I can't do I can't imagine any issue
with that. Let's do it probably around midnight, I'm thinking, Oh, and.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
There's supposed to be a special commercial on TV, so
we'll see what happens. But we got nine more days
before then, so there's plenty more Halloween stuff to do
before the big day. Rob By the way, so you
were out of town while you were out, anything you
want to share about your trip? Where'd you go?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Oh? Yeah, I mean that's the thing about October. It's
also always a there's always a fall break week in there.
So the fam and I we went out to California,
visited Somemoi's California family out there, and while we were there,
we went to let's see, Kings Canyon National Park, Assemity
National Park, the Lake Tahoe regions. So yeah, California listeners,
you have some excellent natural environments out there, though, though
(01:55):
I do have to mention the Kings Canyon due to
some forest fire in the region, the Happy Fire, I
believe is what it's dubbed. We had a very mordoor
ask environment there. It was still still beautiful country, but
there was definitely a smoky, ashy haze that did make
for some excellent photographs. We had a photo of like
(02:17):
me and my son and it looks like a band photo.
It looked pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
The fires of industry burning around door thonk make the urchai.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah yeah, not so good for the lungs, but good
for the optics.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
All right, Well, rob if you don't mind, I'm going
to kick things off with this first message in response
to our series of episodes on Trains of Terror.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yes, let's jump into it.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
So during the episodes, we asked listeners to send in
their local ghost train lore if you had any, and
this first message really sent me down some interesting trails.
So this is from and here's a good reminder, folks,
if you write into the show, we will usually just
identify you by your first name, but you can use
a pseudonym too if you want. This message is from
(02:59):
really cool wizard. All right, really cool wizard, says Robert
and Joe. All familiar cordialities in regards to the frequency
I listened to your broadcast and the rarity in which
I write in. But this week this was a temptation
(03:19):
because one of my local haunts has a ghost train
story of sorts. Down in San Antonio, Texas. There is
an urban legend that there was a car filled with
orphans that became trapped on a train track at midnight
and was decimated by a passing train sometime during the
Great Depression. This all happened allegedly in a location which
(03:40):
is now an abandoned industrial district. This is ideal, as
in the dead of night, the darkness is ever present
and the wilderness has crept into the desolate reminiscence of
a bygone era. The practice is to cover the back
of your car in baby powder and park on the tracks.
Parentheses not a good idea. The ghost children will push
(04:03):
your vehicle off of the tracks, and when you check
the back of your vehicle, you will witness their fingerprints
pressed into the powder. This is a brilliant haunt. It
has this A plus B equal C characteristic to it.
This isn't a bloody marry or a beetlejuice scenario where
you can conduct the action and prove it to be
a falsity meant to scare you. With this urban legend,
(04:26):
if you follow the steps, everything will actually happen. Now,
I suspect as many do that your car rolls because
tracks are beveled to deter rain and other weather as
mentioned in your show, guys, and the fingerprints you are
witnessing are likely your own. Still, I appreciate that someone
thought up the scare. It's worth mentioning that the census
(04:49):
has the population of San Antonio well over two million,
and I've never met anyone who hasn't at a minimum,
visited the ghost tracks. Love the show. Really cool, Wizard,
Well Wizard, thank you for your email. I thought this
story was really interesting, so I decided to dig a
little bit deeper. And yes, not only did I find
plenty of versions of the story bouncing around all over
(05:11):
the web, I also found extensive evidence of Texas locals
who seemed not only aware of, but rather attached to
the story and the phenomenon you described with like the
rolling car and the fingerprints. So one of the sources
I came across was a local news article from ksat
San Antonio from October nineteenth, twenty eighteen, reporting on work
(05:34):
that Union Pacific had slated for the intersection that month.
This is the intersection where the haunting is said to occur,
and the work scheduled would allegedly put an end to
the ghost track phenomenon. So how exactly would that work?
How would upgrading the rail line banish the ghosts? Well,
(05:54):
the plan for the project included laying two miles of
new siding track to accommodate increased rail traffic passing through
San Antonio, and this would be a new line running
parallel to the existing one, and adding the second set
of tracks changes the slope of the intersection. And this
is what will, according to this article, put a stop
(06:16):
to cars seeming to be pushed by invisible hands. Now,
in the email, a really cool wizard suspects that the
cars roll because the tracks are beveled or raised for
drainage purposes, and this does appear to be the likely explanation,
or at least close to the likely explanation. In this
news article, it's explained that for some reason, the segment
(06:38):
of road intersecting the tracks appears to be, or did
appear to be before the upgrade slightly uphill in one direction,
but it's actually in reality slightly downhill in that direction.
And I'm going to come back to this issue in
just a minute. But anyway, because of that, adding the
second set of tracks would eliminate the illusory slow As
(07:01):
for the fingerprints. I thought this was kind of interesting.
Our correspondent here seems to be on the right track. Again.
If you sprinkle baby powder on your car in any circumstance,
there's a good chance that if you look closely, you
will see fingerprints. Even if you were very careful not
to touch your car after you did it, the fingerprints
(07:21):
that you see were already there, left by you or
whoever else has been touching your car lately. By adding
the baby powder, you are essentially dusting for prints. Now
in this article, A spokesman for Union Pacific told the
news station that the project was not designed to get
rid of the ghost track phenomenon, but this was kind
(07:42):
of an added benefit because, from his perspective, the urban
legend encouraged people to engage in unsafe behaviors at a
railroad crossing. Hard to argue with that.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, absolutely, you don't want to go messing around some
train tracks. Some trains don't like it, and they don't
mind showing you.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
But so there was a TV segment covering this story
as well, and their location reporter was asking people about it.
You know, do you know about the ghost tracks? Oh? Yeah,
have you tried it? And so forth. But when people
they talked to found out about the changes coming, they
seem to be quite upset about the idea that this
tradition would be made obsolete. One person, talking about the
(08:23):
idea that, like the car wouldn't roll off the tracks anymore, said,
isn't that illegal to make the changes? I mean, I
guess it's kind of perceived as like a crime against
culture to make an urban legend no longer work. But
I did want to come back to the idea of
illusory slopes because I was looking into this, and I
(08:43):
think this is actually a fairly interesting phenomenon. It's the
principle behind probably dozens of minor tourist tractions in the
United States alone, and there are ones in other continents
and countries as well, But in the US they're very
often called mystery hill or gravity hills, or just mystery spots.
(09:03):
There's one that I've been to before that was near Boone,
North Carolina. I think it was actually in Blowing Rock
that is called mystery hill. And there are places with
what appears to be anomalous gravitational phenomena, so you know,
you put a ball on the ground and it looks
like it is rolling uphill, or you have people stand
(09:24):
at what feels like straight up, but it looks like
a forty five degree angle. Why aren't they falling over? Right?
Have you ever been one of these tourist attractions.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Rob, I mean I might have, but I never really
checked gravity while I'm on vacation. Is there are these
the places where they brew the high gravity IPAs. I
also don't know much about beer.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Ah, well, you know that would be a if somebody
hasn't done that tie in, that's a crime. Right, You've
got to have a high gravity brewery at the gravity
hill because Yeah, these attractions often propose some weird, fake
scientific explanation why it happens. They say, there's there's an
electromagnetic disturbance, you know, a gravitational anomaly in the Earth's crust,
(10:05):
or like a great mass of magnetic material in the hill,
something like that. I think I came across one. I
think that said there's like a buried black hole or something.
These explanations tend to be for fun. Sometimes they straight
up blame it on ghosts or another supernatural cause. The
real reason in every case that I could find sources
(10:25):
on is at the same time, fairly mundane and kind
of interesting in analyzing how our perception of up and
down works. So the mundane explanation is that these mystery
spots are visual illusions. There's nothing unusual at all happening
with respect to gravity. There are little anomalous differences in
(10:46):
gravity at different spots on the surface of the Earth,
but the differences are so small they would not cause
a ball to roll uphill that that's not that's not
going to be the case with any of these places. Instead,
there is something about the location which causes an uphill
slope to look like a downhill slope, or causes an
inclined slope to look flat. So, for example, you can
(11:09):
have a place where the slope of a hill is
surrounded by maybe trees and buildings, and you expect trees
and buildings to always be sticking straight up, perfectly perpendicular
from the ground. But if you're in a place where
the trees are leaning slightly, maybe the trees are leaning
slightly downhill, and the buildings are leaning slightly downhill, and
(11:32):
your view of the horizon is obstructed by all of
this stuff around you, the slope of the hill could
actually look like it is descending to the south. But
then you place a ball on the ground and it
will roll apparently uphill to the north. The ball isn't
actually rolling up hill. It's just that the visual cues
in your environment are tricking your brain about which way
is downhill. And there was actually a study about this
(11:55):
I came across that was published in the journal Psychological
Science in the year two thousand and three by Paula Bresson,
Luigi Garla Shelly, and Monica Bericano called anti gravity hills
are visual illusions? Always love a research paper title that
is like a full sentence and states the core finding. Yeah.
The researchers who looked into this were affiliated with the
(12:18):
University of Padua and the University of Pavia, both in Italy,
and in this study, the authors recreated the conditions of
various anti gravity attractions using laboratory settings with like planks
of wood and stuff to create slopes and then the
appearance of different kinds of surroundings, and they write, quote,
we conclude that anti gravity hill effects follow from a
(12:41):
misperception of the eye level relative to gravity, caused by
the presence of either contextual inclines or a false horizon line.
So if subjects. If people could see a true horizon,
they were much less likely to fall for the illusion.
If the true horizon were obscured, though, then it was
more likely. They also say quote when proceeded, followed or
(13:05):
flanked by a steep downhill slope, a slight downhill stretch
is perceived as uphill. So you can have a slight
downhill incline that looks like it's going uphill if it's
surrounded by steeper downhill grades. And another interesting psychological quirk
is that they apparently discovered that our with our perception,
(13:27):
it's easier to create the illusion in one direction than
it is in the other. Specifically, it's easier to trick
the brain into falsely seeing a surface as tilted uphill
than it is to trick the brain into falsely seeing
a surface as downhill. Maybe we're just primed to notice
uphill because I don't know looking at an uphill slope
ahead of you. You're trying to do the calculations to
(13:50):
be like, Okay, this is going to be more work
to walk up or something. But also there was a
quote from the researchers that made me laugh. This was
quoted in a science reporting piece on it where they
say quote. After each observer's task was concluded, we placed
a small roll of tape on the misperceived slope, and
the tape appeared to move against the law of gravity,
(14:12):
producing surprise and on occasion, reverential fear. So I was
looking at some images of this San Antonio rail crossing
where the ghosts allegedly pushed the car off, and I
couldn't tell exactly what it is about this location that
would cause people to misperceive the downhill slope, or to
(14:34):
think that it was flat, or to think it was
uphill when it was actually downhill. There are trees and
telephone poles around that may have something to do with it.
It might also just have something to do with the
crossing's relationship to the surrounding roads. It could be masking
a kind of raised or beveled area like a really
cool wizard was talking about. But I also am still
thinking about how I don't know. It's just interesting that
(14:58):
in that reporting people were feeling up set that a
physical alteration of transportation infrastructure would destroy a visual illusion
that causes people to believe in ghosts touching their car.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yeah, I mean, it's like you have some sort of
little curio like this. There's a lot of you know,
there's a lot of culture built up around it. So
I guess it's understandable if you feel like it is
threatened in the same way you feel threatened when aling
like local businesses that are institutions might go away, you know,
or just curious landmarks will go away. I mean, it's
just part of it's part of the landscape, and you
(15:33):
want it to remain a part of your life.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Oh yeah, they can't close the old ghost pushing store.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yeah, but if they turn it into a microbrewery for
high gravity ipa, I guess it's all right.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Brewers out there, take this idea and run with it.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Yeah, and roll right in and tell me. Why is
it called a high gravity beer? I have no idea.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
I think that just means higher alcohol, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
That it's that's kind of an elaborate way of stating it.
Just say it's like boozier, right, higher alcohol level.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Stronger beer. I don't know. Maybe gravity has something to
do with I wonder if there's some kind of something
about the brewing process that involves gravity that results in
a stronger, more alcoholic brewer. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
I'm just not I'm just not hip to the terminology.
All right, this next one, I see you have this
one labeled as another great horror story, so I'm gonna
i'm sight unseen. I haven't read this one yet. I'm
gonna try and give it a nice creepy read. Here
(16:45):
we go. Good morning, Robert and Joe. I just started
listening to your second episode on ghost Trains and it
reminded me of a spooky experience my wife and I
had a couple of years ago. One night, at around
two am, my wife and I woke up to a thundering,
monotone sound that felt like it was coming from all
(17:05):
around our apartment. The sound was relentless and jarring. My
brains still hazy, immediately thought aliens are officially real and
we are about to be abducted. My wife did not
want me to peek through our curtains to see what
it was, and our dog was shook. The sound kept going,
and as time passed it started to distort and warble,
(17:27):
which did not ease my mind. Like any human being
questioning their sanity, we went to social media, hoping that
other people in the area might be experiencing this sound.
Multiple people seemed to have the same question about this sound,
but did not have answers. This roaring sound went on
for what felt like hours until our brains finally were
(17:49):
able to drown it out and sleep. The next day,
we learned it was not aliens, but instead a conductor
operating a train. Apparently he decided to end his ship
when his replacement was late and left with the train
horn on full blast. No one turned off the horn
until later that morning. I hope you enjoyed this anecdotal
(18:11):
account that ended up related to trains. It was one
of the eeriest experiences of my life, and I could
really see a good scary story involving trains leaning into that.
Thanks for reading. I love the podcast and I hope
you guys keep it up for years to come. Best Jake, Well.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Thank you Jake that that email for me. It started
very spooky and it ended very funny. So that if
I understand right, you're saying that the conductor just literally
left the horn on full blast and it did.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Not stop all night. Yeah. I mean, I'm used to
a lot of racket from the trains, because again I
live right next to them, but this would definitely disturb
my sleep if it was something, you know, out of
the ordinary and consistent like this. True ghost trains, I
guess are usually they're more fleeting, like they're they're through.
(19:00):
It's not what is that sound that won't stop? It
is what was that sound that I heard briefly in
the night.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Yeah, And it's also funny how something like of that sort,
like a like a loud scary sound, can only be
scary for a certain limited amount of time before it's
not scary anymore and just becomes annoying.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah, especially if it becomes obvious that it has no
real meaning or import you know, it is not a
warning siren. It is not trying to tell you something
about what the train is doing. It is just malfunctioning. Yeah,
that's a good point. It can't be a warning if
it's just like, you know, like somebody leaning.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
On the horn all night. All right, I'm gonna do this.
Next message from Dennis, Dennis says it's still on the
subject of horror trains. Hello, Rob, Joe and JJ. Your
recent pair of episodes on ghost trains reminded me of
a local celebrity of sorts. It's Lower Bay Station in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
(20:04):
Lower Bay was part of an experiment in subway routing
that the TTC, the Toronto Transit Commission, the agency that
administers public transit in the city, ran and subsequently abandoned.
It's an almost complete subway station underneath the existing Bay
Street station, right in the middle of downtown Toronto. It
(20:25):
was used for a few months in nineteen sixty six,
but proved confusing and was abandoned in short order. It's
not accessible by the public, and trains bypass it as
part of their normal route, so most people aren't even
aware it's there. It's basically a duplicate of the existing
Bay Street station, just unused by commuters. Oh wow, Oh,
(20:49):
this is a great tie into our variation we talked
about in these episodes, where it's not the train that's
spectral but the station. There's like a sort of otherworldly
stop that maybe exist or doesn't exist in physical space.
Let's see. And then Dennis links to a blog that
has photos of the station. Robi also included in our
(21:09):
outline a photo I found of the station platform that
is gorgeous. Oh my, like the it's got these blue
and yellow colored tile patterns. On the floor. That looks
so cool. It looks you know, I just want all
the John Carpenter movies shot in this station, and let's see.
(21:30):
Dennis goes on to say, what's interesting is that, unlike
a traditional abandoned station, Lower Bay is still maintained. It's
designed in the same style and has been regularly updated
to test everything from floor cleaning and repair techniques to
safety technologies to train car driver training. And as such,
it's lit, kept up and maintained, but otherwise completely empty
(21:53):
most of the time. This just gets better and better,
Dennis says. What's even more interesting is that it's probably famous,
albeit unknowingly two stuff to blow your mind listeners as
the go to location for many, many, many weird house
grade films and TV series. Toronto stands in for New
York with some regularity, but Lower Bay punches above its
(22:16):
weight even by that standard. Here's a list of films
that Lower Bay features in, in no particular order. Feel
free to chop this list for brevity. Okay, it's in
Johnny naemonic from nineteen ninety five, it's in Mimic from
nineteen ninety seven. That one, yeah, yeah, does that take
place in a museum or my thinking of Relic.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
You're thinking of Relic. Mimic is the Del Toro picture
that is based on an excellent short story about giant
insects that have begun mimicking human beings. And there were
some real problems with production to who the producers were
on that picture, if I remember correctly, but he came
(22:59):
out did a director's cut. I believe it's one of
the few cases where the director's cut is shorter than
the original theatrical release. But great cast, cool monsters. I mean,
you expect as much from theon mental tour.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Oh okay, maybe we'll have to come check that out
for weird house. Yeah, I was confusing it with Relic,
the one that takes place in like the Field Museum,
maybe in some museum anyway. But also Dennis says that, yes,
Mimick is, according to him, about human sized, genetically engineered,
hyper intelligent cockroaches.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
There you go.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Also, oh, how could we not lead with this? It
is an overdrawn at the Memory Bank starring Raul Julia
featured in a famous Mystery Science Theater three thousand episode.
Oh boy, do you remember what part of the movie
this would be?
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Rob ooh there are a few different locations. There's some
great Toronto locations. I think in that picture it was
a Canadian production of Memory Serves, and I think it
would this one would probably be more of a shoe
in for us if there was a great to watch it.
If Memory Serves, this one has not been really released
(24:05):
in any acceptable format. I think you have to buy
a Last time I checked, you had to buy a
VHS tape to get it. Maybe maybe there's been some
sort of release since then. But there's some great mall
shots in that picture for sure.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yeah, distributors, if you're listening, get overdrawn at the Memory
Bank on disc. Get it for us. I want a
pristine Blu Ray. I want to see Fingle in all
his glory.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
I mean, it has a lot of great ideas in it.
It's it's it's it's wonderful to riff on, but it
has a great cast and it has has some interesting
concepts based on what a John Varley novel of Memory Serves.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Okay, the list does not stop there. Dennis goes on
to say that it's in dark Man from nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
The great one.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Oh who is that? Who directed that? Sam Raimi? Right?
M Yep, apparently it's in time Shifters. I think I've
seen this one, but I don't recall it. This is
from nineteen ninety nine. Dennis calls this a Casper Van
Deen classic, except the original email speed spelled his name
Casper van Diem. I guess brother of Karpe. It's in
(25:11):
The Recruit from two thousand and three. I don't know
that movie, the Sound from twenty seventeen, Extreme Measures from
ninety six, Bait from two thousand, Bless the Child from
two thousand, Bulletproof, Monk from two thousand and three. I
know less of these later movies.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Yeah, I don't know these either, but yeah, certainly there's
plenty of other cases too, where it's Toronto standing in
for New York.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Anyway, Dennis's message continues, I've never actually seen the inside
of the station, except briefly through an open door to
the lower level, which piqued my interest at the time
because I didn't understand what I was looking at. I
have friends in the local film industry who've been in it,
and it is quite interesting to see, especially when it's
cosplaying New York or Chicago. Thought you might find this
(25:56):
one interesting and thank you doubly for the years of
great content you've seen my way. Dennis. Well, thank you, Dennis.
Great message. I knew nothing about this. I'm gonna have
to check out that blog post and see what I've seen.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Yeah, you pulled up some of these images from this
phantom train station and they're they're very, very evocative. I
love these. I've never been to Toronto. I need to
rectify that at some point.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Yeah, I've only ever had a layover at the airport there.
I've never visited the city, and I know it's supposed
to be a great city in a lot of ways.
So I would love to see this station if I could.
An abandoned subway station that is still kept up is
like that. That is such a delicious idea to me.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
All right. This next one comes to us from Jim
in New Jersey. Jim Riot's Robert, Joe and JJ. You
only briefly mentioned the linear nature of trains. There's only
one major path through them. This aspect has been used
effectively in many train plots in movies and television. As
(27:00):
for horror movies with trains, I'll submit train to Poissan
In this South Korean movie from twenty sixteen, a divorced
father is taking his daughter from Soul to Bassan so
she can spend her birthday with her mother. The zombie
apocalypse occurs at the start of their journey, and an
infected person boards the train and quickly infects others. Most
of the movie involves the uninfected passengers avoiding being bitten
(27:22):
by the infected passengers, and due to the linear nature
of the train, there's at least one scene where the
uninfected have to battle through a car of the infected.
Jim in New Jersey, Oh, thanks, Jim.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
This movie has been on my list for years. It's
one of those I've got a bunch of movies like
this that I've been meaning to watch for a long time.
I've always heard it's great, and I've never seen it yet.
Maybe this October is the time I'll finally watch it.
But yes, Jim, I think you're right about like the
linear nature of trains having some kind of thematic resonance
in these stories. It's definitely there in Snow Piercer the way,
(27:58):
like you know, the making your way through through the
train one car at a time, and each train is
kind of each car is its own miniature world. And
having to fight through them one at a time to
get to the front.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Yeah. Yeah, this is definitely a post snow Piercer film.
I can't help but notice. But you know, it's again,
it's a great concept, like the train creates a linear
world for us, and in more than one way. You know,
linear space is one car after after another, and then
you're headed from point A to point B. It just
(28:31):
I don't know, it just works so well with linear storytelling, right.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Yeah, totally. And when the story involves a kind of
adventure or journey or track of moving through the cars
gives you a very natural kind of structure. There's only
one way to go, and that can sometimes be fun
for stories, you know, having having the physical environment in
which the story takes place shape the direction of the
narrative can be It can be a fun riding exercise.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
M all right, speaking of linear progress, what is the
next listener mail in our chain of listener mails?
Speaker 3 (29:11):
All right? This next message comes from Anna, And at
the beginning of this message, Anna brings up something we
were talking about in the Trains episode where where a
ghost train is a kind of interesting thing because it
can be like a ghost in that it can be
a spectral entity itself that you know, kind of appears
and then vanishes, just like an individual embodied human ghost.
(29:35):
But then it can also be like a haunted location,
like a haunted house, because a train is something you
can go inside. There's an interior environment, so technically a
train could be haunted. And we talked about the sort
of the differences there. It seems to be more often
that ghost train stories are more like the train is
the ghost, rather than it's like a haunted house. But
(29:56):
it could in principle be the latter. Let's see. Anna
goes on to say, hello, Robert and Joe, I really
enjoyed your episodes on Trains of Terror. You were talking
about haunted trains versus haunted ships. I think ships are
different because people actually lived on ships, so that would
make them more like a haunted house. And I think
(30:18):
that's a good point. Yeah, that you can have the
idea of a haunted ship makes more sense because more
of life was taking place there, whereas treating a train
like a haunted house feels a little bit less intuitive
because people don't spend as much of their life on
the train, you know, they just kind of get on
and get off. But somebody might live on a ship
(30:38):
for months or something, or.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Oh, I don't know. There's nothing that happens on a
ship that doesn't happen on a train. Name one thing,
it's happened on a train, gotten a fish. Yes, it's
happened on a train. I guarantee you.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Okay, well, fair enough, let's see. And his message goes
on to say, also, I think one thing you did
not cover is that when you're on a train, you
can get a glimpse into the lives of other people.
Maybe you witness something terrible, like a murder, but there
is nothing you can really do about it. This would
partly fit into the unchangeable fate aspect of trains, But
(31:14):
I do think there's something slightly spooky about just getting
a glimpse into other people's lives. Well respectfully, and I
think we did get into this a little bit. This
is sort of what we were talking about with the
idea of the train stories having these themes of alienation,
like with the Sherlock Holmes monologue where he's looking out
(31:35):
the train the train window and imagining all of the
horrors and the sordid details and the miseries in the
places he sees as he goes by. I think this
is actually a common thing in a lot of train stories. Yeah,
this feeling of like that you can see other people,
but you're only passing by, and there's no way to
get out and interact. So there's this built in disconnect
(31:58):
from the rest of humanity which you witness out the windows. Yeah. Yeah,
bridging this email a little bit, and I also includes
a very nice poem on the theme of getting a
glimpse into other people's lives through the windows of a train,
which is very nice indeed. But then she goes on
to say the next thing I wanted to mention is
(32:18):
the musical Starlight Express. It's a musical about a train
that only exists in the imagination. It's very cheesy and
a lot of fun. When I was growing up, the
Starlight Express soundtrack was in high rotation in our house. Lastly,
I don't have an example of a ghost train, but
there it was an incident in our family that we
call the phantom ute. For context, a ute is similar
(32:41):
to a pickup truck. It is short for utility vehicle.
I think this is Australian slaying. I'm pretty sure about that. Okay,
and it says we were traveling down an unpaved country
road at night, so it was really dark. We were
the only ones on the road. We approached a crossroad
and a white ute just try through the crossroad. Because
(33:02):
of the dark. It seemed to come from nowhere and
then disappear, so it was kind of haunting. Anyway, I
hope you've enjoyed my stories. Keep up the good work.
In a Yeah, if you've ever had the experience of
coming across a moving car in the night, well you've
got your headlights headlights on, but the other car does
not have its headlights on. I find that. Ah, that
(33:22):
is a very surprising and memorable experience.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
You know, this mention of Starlight Express. This is a
musical that I've only ever been familiar with the name of,
and it's kind of surprising because it's Andrew Lloyd Webber,
of course, a huge name in musicals, and growing up
I was a big fan like The Phantom of the
Opera and all, you know, horror musical with some really
catchy numbers. But I know virtually nothing about Starlight Express.
(33:51):
So I pulled it up your Palmer chatting, and I
was instantly instantly recognized one of the names and interet Yes,
sure enough. The original West End cast from nineteen eighty
four featured in the lead as Rusty ray Shell. Ray
Shell played the character Shake in the Apple that we
talked about in Weird House Cinema. So this was the
(34:13):
character that it's kind of like the Devil's Number two.
He's I think he's supposed to be very serpentine and
at one point is in a speedo. But his very
flamboyant performance. Great, great performance in the Apple.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Oh yes, yeah, okay, So I didn't remember who you
were talking about at first, but now I've got him
pulled up. He was great in the Apple. I loved him.
I want to see all the movies he's in now.
And so he's in the he's in the movie version
of Starlight Express.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Well, right, there's a movie version, I think.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
So unless I'm wrong, Oh maybe I'm wrong, Maybe I
am wrong. Sorry for smashing your dreams. No, you're right,
it's just a musical. It's not a movie as far
as I can tell.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
I was like, whey, is it not a movie? It
seems like Andrew Lai Webber, you'd make a movie yet.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Yeah, yeah, Well, I would love to see this. I
wish there were a movie. I'm sure I could go
listen to the soundtrack, but yeah, but i'll do.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
I was glancing at the soundtrack and I'm like, I
don't recognize any of these songs either. So this one
was just completely off my radar. But again, I certainly
loved some of vanrew lke Webber's work in the past.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
There are, wait, there are characters that I'm not understanding this.
It seems like characters are trains. They're not people on
a train. But there's like a character who is who
is the Trans Siberian Express engine and a character who
is I don't know, some other engine.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Maybe this is too high concept. That's why they never
made end into a movie.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
All right, Well, after this, I'm gonna go listen to
some of the soundtrack.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
All right. This next one comes to us from Ian
Ian says, gentlemen, great podcasts, you guys are the best,
et cetera, et cetera. A short time after listening to
Trains of Teror episode one, I was working at my
desk while listening to ambient music, and I realized that
the dark ambient album I was listening to on Spotify
featured some top notch train of terror art. Look up
the album Echoes by artist Eternal Dystopia to see a
(36:07):
grim photorealistic depiction of a blackened locomotive of the damned
with a single glowing red light cutting through the foggy hellscape.
To me, this seemed a perfect example of the first
type of train, one that isn't inherently malevolent itself, but
that is certainly staffed by a crew of the dead
looking for victims to ferry through the seven layers of hell.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
This is a very threatening looking train. It also looks
like I don't see any differentiation in this artwork from
the engine part of the train and the cars that follow.
It just looks like infinite engine going back.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
You know, I should mention here that there is in
the Dungeons and Dragons world of raven Loft full of
domains of dread. One of the domains of dread is
the Morning Rail Sirie thirteen thirteen, where the domain itself
is a train. I don't know that there's been a
lot created officially around it. I mean, certainly fans and
(37:06):
creators in the Dungeons and Dragons world have worked on it,
but that one was one that caught my attention a
while back, and actually Dungeon mastered some at least a
few encounters on this train. As I sort of envisioned
it coming together.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
I don't know anything about raven Loft is, so that's
like a different time or space setting where you'd have
some technology.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Well. No, the way it's come together, and these things
evolve over time, is that you have these dark domains
where these dark powers, unknowable entities, maybe gods, maybe something
beyond God's who knows, pluck particularly evil beings out of
other realms and kind of trap them in a pocket universe.
(37:50):
And in that pocket universe they have absolute power usually
but are also absolute prisoners of that realm. And so
you know, inevitably you have players like popping in and
out of these realms and encountering characters like Strad the
Great Vampire of Dungeons and Dragons, and you know there'll
be one they've gotten to the point where they have them,
(38:10):
like one that is based on say Chinese mythology. There's
another of course that has mummies in it and so forth.
It's a really rich realm of dungeons and dragons in
my opinion, but it too does have a cursed ghost train. Okay,
anyway back to the email here. This caused me to
look through my library and I quickly found a brilliant
example of the second type of terror train, one that
(38:33):
most certainly is alive and malevolent. Check out the album
cover of Orgasmatron by motor Ahead. The cover features a locomotive,
the front of which has transmorgrified into the band's iconic
war pig mascot snaggletooth, belching smoke and fire while galloping
across the darkened countryside like one of Lemmy's Juggernaut baselines.
(38:57):
This train definitely means you harm and will a fifth
of Jack Daniels while doing it.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
Yeah, so it's the mascot has got the toothy mouth open,
and I'm just thinking you're gonna get a lot of
bugs in there, dude.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
I mean, maybe it has to consume bugs, you know, cows.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
The cowcatcher just sort of feeds everything up into the mouth.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
This one is new to me. I don't know this
particular Motorhead album.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Yeah, I don't know it either.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Looks like the main track off of this is Death Forever,
which is again not one I know. Anyway, the email continues.
It didn't take long on Google to realize that there
is quite the rabbit hole of album cover train art
to fall down, including other solid examples of the darker
subject matter such as hell Bound Train by Savoy Brown,
The Coffin Train by Diamond Head, One Way Ticket to
(39:48):
Hell and Back by the Darkness, and Swerve Driver's Last
Train to Satansville. There are also many examples of the
train image being used as a critique of modernity or
as a shining example of the promise of that same modernity.
Fair warning, there is also a stunning amount of cheesy
track featuring trains. No offense Rod Stewart, but please knock
(40:11):
it off. Take care, gents, and keep up the good work.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Yeah. I don't get the Rod Stewart reference. What's the
Rod Stuart train?
Speaker 2 (40:17):
You have to look of Rod Stewart train?
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Now, apparently Rod Stewart is a model train enthusiast, like
he builds model trains. What's wrong with that?
Speaker 2 (40:26):
That's great, that's great love model trains. Yeah, I guess
he had the track Downtown Train, So maybe it's that album.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
Oh okay, I don't know anything about that, but I
can't vouch for the song, but I support anyone's model
train hobby. Go for it. Make those little cities, build
those tracks.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Yeah. Oh, I bet there's some spooky ones out there too.
You generally see Christmas e ones, but there's gotta be
some spooky model trains as well.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
Oh yeah, that's a nice idea. You know what, I'd
even venture that. I'm certain we have at least one listener.
You know who you are listening. You have a model
train set that is spooky in nature. Send us a picture,
Send us your little spooky vista.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
All right, what's next? Have we gotten to the caboose yet?
Or do we saw have a few train cars to
go here?
Speaker 3 (41:24):
Joe, Oh, we got a few more. You know what,
I think today is going to turn out to be
all horror trains, because we're still not at the end
of even these. This one is from Ryan. Ryan says Hello,
Robin Joe. After the Train of Terror episodes, I had
to contribute my favorite fictional example the nineteen ninety four
Super Nintendo RPG Final Fantasy VIX, released as Final Fantasy
(41:48):
three outside of Japan. It features a sequence where some
of the characters unknowingly bored a ghost Train also translated
phantom train that ferries departed souls to their eternal rest.
The characters make their way from the caboose to the engine,
fighting ghosts and other undead enemies. You can also recruit
(42:09):
some ghosts to temporarily join your party. They are not
very strong, but they can possess enemies, which kills both
the enemy and the ghost. Midway through, you can eat
in the dining car. One character has misgivings about the
safety of the food, but it does heal the whole party.
Once you reach the engine, you fight a battle against
(42:29):
the train itself, all while your characters are shown running
away in front of it. Somehow, keeping pays WHOA that's intense.
Even more absurdly, one of your characters can use a
move called suplex, and if you use this on the train,
he will in fact grab it, leap up off of
the screen, and slam it down on its quote back.
(42:53):
The train can also be defeated by giving it an
item called a phoenix down. This item revived fallen characters,
which defeats the train since the train is undead. After
defeating the train, it allows the characters to disembark safely
at the same time, other souls board the train, including
the recently departed wife and son of one of your characters,
(43:16):
allowing them a brief final farewell as the train pulls away.
It's a touching ending to what is, in many ways
a rather silly segment of the game, and all the
more memorable for it. Thank you for the continued entertainment,
especially during October every year. Ryan, Well, thank you. Ryan.
You know, somehow I'm a big fan of some of
(43:37):
the Super Nintendo era RPGs. Some of them really were great.
I've gushed on the show before about how lovely I
think Crono Trigger is. But somehow I've never played the
I've never in full played the Super Nintendo Final Fantasy games.
I know they're supposed to be wonderful.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Yeah, I've never played any of the Final Fantasies. I mean,
over the years, I have friends and I've had friends
in the past who are super endto the them, and
at times I'll think maybe I should pick one up,
but then I don't know which one. They keep remastering
them and re releasing them, but I don't even know
which which one would be ideal for me, So I'm
open to suggestions. A short one, which my preference at
(44:14):
this point in my life. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
Oh man, Rob, have we talked about how we both
like enjoy video games when we have time for them,
but like increasingly just don't have space for open world games.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Yeah, I just I need. I need something that's really
on the tracks, you know, I won't like it.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Like a tight, good narrative with fun gameplay. That's what
I get to.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Yeah, short, short game, decent amount of exploration, but a
definite end of beginning and an end.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
All right.
Speaker 2 (44:45):
This next one comes to us from SHANEA. Shana writes
it and says, hello, y'all ask for haunted trains in
horror media, how do you feel about a train possessed
by a demon? I think we feel pretty good about yeah,
she continues. In the anime Demon Slayer Kemetsu no Yaiba,
(45:07):
the movie Mug and Train twenty twenty are demons slaying
heroes are dispatched to investigate people disappearing on a certain
train in the countryside. They discover a demon has been
using the train as it's hunting ground. During the battle,
the demon is able to possess the train itself, turning
it into a fleshy Eldrick abomination with tentacles. I have
(45:28):
attached a few screenshots of the flesh train. I'm looking
at one right now. Yes, fleshy and terrifying. It's like
the train as intestinal track.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
Yes. And there's one shot here where the train so
you've got all this like membrane or epithelium on the
outside of the train and then running over top. It
is like a buff guy with a pig's head. Yes, okay,
I would want him slaying demons for me.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
And then there's more as You're rights Demons or Kamitsu
Nouyaiba is a very popular anime manga that takes place
during the Taisho Era between nineteen fifteen and nineteen twenty six.
The Taisho era was a time of rapid change in
Japan as Western culture and technology continue to spread into
the country. The anime sometimes deals directly with this cultural change,
(46:19):
and the point of a demon feeding on humans by
taking possession of a train seems quite on point. As
always loved the show Shame.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
Yeah, I wonder how this interacts with the Japanese ghost
train examples we talked about in the episode with the
It was the Tanuki trains, right Yeah, the Tanuki, the
wild Tanuki would morph into the shape of a train,
but then if you stopped believing in it, then it
would the train would stop appearing.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
Yeah, it's kind of like natural, this conflict occurring between
the natural world of the tanukis and the modern world
of the train.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
All right, well, I think we're out of time for today.
It's a shame. We've got a lot more great messages
to get to. We'll have to save them for next time.
But Carney the mailbot is really trying to move us along.
He is insisting that we practice putting on our masks
right now and we won't mess it up on the
big night. So we're gonna have a little practice session
with Carney here, and we will see you again soon.
(47:16):
We will have more seasonal stuff for you on Thursday
of this week, and then also on Friday with our
Weird House Cinema episode.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
That's right, Yeah, we have more Halloween episodes to come
here before October thirty first. And oh and I'm also
supposed to pass along that we have a new Halloween
themed T shirt and our t shirt shop over at
Tea Public. You can find a link to the store
on the Good to Stuff to Blowrmind dot com and
you can find over. You have to search for it.
(47:44):
It's not very apparent, but there is somewhere in all
of that link to our shop. I think our instagram
STBUI and podcast, which you should follow if you're on Instagram.
I believe our link tree also goes to this shop,
so it's a little hidden, but we do have some
merch there, various designs that have accumulated over the years,
and they just added a new one that has like
an orange and black version of the logo and you
(48:05):
can try it on different short colors. You know, it's
gonna work better with some than others, but we have
some Halloween options in there if you were so inclined.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays and on Fridays. We set aside most
serious concerns and just talk about a weird film on
Weird House Cinema, and yes, we did talk about a
train movie. Earlier this month we talked about Horror Express,
which was a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
Oh yeah, yeah, huge. Thanks as always to our excellent
audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like to get
in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or
just to say hello, you can email us at contact
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.