CZM Book Club: Two Tales of Classic Horror, by Saki and Bierce

Margaret reads you "The Open Window" by Saki and "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" by Ambrose Bierce

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Media book Club, book Club Boo Club, Hello, and welcome
to close on Media book Club, the only book club
or you don't have to do the reading because I
do it for you.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
The only book club where you don't have to go
to your English class to hear an insufferable gay person
who won't shut up, because I am the insufferable gay
person in your phone on demand. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy.
And this week it is still spooky month, and let's
be honest, it's always spooky month. I have this really

(00:43):
love hate relationship with horror.

Speaker 4 (00:44):
I really like spooky and supernatural and the things that
make you feel.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
Closer to the veil. And I think about death all
the time and I read about it a lot. But
I also like, can't stand a lot of types of horror,
just like the slasher stuff or I don't know a
lot of it doesn't work for me. So when I
say it might always be spooky month, that doesn't mean
that i'll read you everything, because whatever. Okay, we are

(01:12):
still doing horror because it is October and I wanted
to do some old timey stories, So we're going to
do some old timey stories because I really like contrasting
new stories and old stories, and like thinking about the
ways that story itself has changed, and how we think
about the supernatural has changed, and all this kind of stuff.
We are going to do two stories for you this
week because they are slightly shorter, and I'm excited about

(01:35):
these stories because they're both really fun and spooky. They're
also both written by authors I'm really fascinated by and
I want to learn more about, possibly enough that I
want to do cool people episodes about them. And they
sit at this really interesting place in the lineage of
the horror genre. I never actually heard these stories before,

(01:56):
which you can call me a poser about if you
would like. All engagement is good engagement. Don't call me
a poser or hurt my feelings. Okay. The first story
is called The Open Window, and it's by Hector hu Monro,
better known and usually attributed by his pen name Saki.

(02:18):
He was inspired by people like Oscar Wilde, who I
did do a bunch of episodes about on Coole people,
and like Oscar wild Saki was gay. And actually it's
gonna come up in a really interesting way in this story,
in this like total offhand way that is like not
what you would expect from the nineteenth century. His pen
name Saki is a reference to a symbolic and erotic

(02:39):
figure in Arabic and Persian poetry, and Saki's writing is
remembered for how it satirizes English social conventions around the
turn of the century and seems to often feature stuffy
aristocrats being eaten by wild animals. And we are pro
old aristocrats being eaten by wild animals on this podcast,
although that's not what the story. This story is one

(03:01):
of his supernatural ghost stories, and it's full of little
jabs at weird Victorian mannerisms, and it's got a twist
because it's a horror story. How can a horror story
or not have a twist. Actually, if you go back
old enough, they probably don't have twists. But this story
The Open Window by Saki. My aunt will be down presently,

(03:23):
mister Nuttle said, a very self possessed young lady of fifteen.
In the meantime, you must try and put up with me.
Frampton Nuttle endeavored to say the correct something which should
duly flatter the niece of the moment, without unduly discounting
the aunt that was to come. Privately, he doubted more
than ever whether these formal visits on a secession of

(03:45):
total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure
which he was supposed to be undergoing. I know how
it'll be, his sister had said, when he was preparing
to migrate to this rural retreat. You will bury yourself
down there and not speak to a living soul, and
your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I
shall just give you letters of introduction to all the

(04:06):
people I know there. Some of them, as far as
I can remember, were quite nice. Frampton wondered whether missus Sappleton,
the lady to whom he was presenting one of the
letters of introduction, came into the nice division. Do you
know many of the people round here, asked the niece,
when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion

(04:29):
hardly a soul, said Frampton. My sister was staying here
at the rectory, you know, some four years ago, and
she gave me letters of introduction to some of the
people here. He made the last statement in a tone
of distant regret. Then you know practically nothing about my aunt,
pursued the self possessed young lady. Only her name and address,

(04:49):
admitted the caller. He was wondering whether missus Sappleton was
in the married or widowed state an undefinable. Something about
the room seemed to suggest masculine habitat. Her great tragedy
happened just three years ago, said the child. That would
be since your sister's time her tragedy, asked Frampton. Somehow

(05:10):
in this RESTful country spot tragedy seemed out of place.
You may wonder why we keep that window wide open
on an October afternoon, said the niece, indicating a large
French window that opened on to a lawn. Just as
a side note, the phrase French window here, I think
is referencing what we would think of as like glass
porch doors. It is quite warm for the time of

(05:32):
the year, said Frampton. But has that window got anything
to do with the tragedy? Out through that window? Three
years ago to a day, her husband and her two
young brothers went off for their days shooting. They never
came back. In crossing the moor to their favorite snipe
shooting ground, they were all three engulfed in a treacherous

(05:54):
piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer,
you know, and places that were safe for other years
gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered.
That was the dreadful part of it. Here the child's
voice lost its self, possessed note and became falteringly human.
Poor aunt always things that they will come back someday,

(06:16):
they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them,
and walk in at that window, just like they used
to do. That is why the window is kept open
every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt.
She has often told me how they went out, her
husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie,

(06:37):
her youngest brother, singing, Bertie, why do you bound? As
he always did to tease her, because she said it
got on her nerves. Do you know sometimes on still
quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling
they will all walk in through that window. She broke

(06:57):
off with a little shudder. It was a relief to
Frampton when the aunt bustled into the room with a
whirl of apologies for being late and making her appearance.
I hope Vera has been amusing you, she said. She
has been quite interesting, said Frampton, I hope you don't
mind the open window, said missus Sappleton briskly. My husband

(07:18):
and brothers will be back home directly from shooting, and
they always come in this way. They've been out for
snipe in the marshes today, so they'll make a fine
mess over my poor carpets. So like you menfolk, isn't it.
She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity
of birds and the prospects for duck in the winter.
To Frampton, it was all purely horrible. He made a

(07:40):
desperate but only partially successful effort to turn the talk
on to a less ghastly topic. He was conscious that
his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention,
and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the
open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an
unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on

(08:01):
this tragic anniversary. And do you know what else is
here to pay a visit? It's the horrible visage of
goods and services that support this shure. I can't do this.

Speaker 4 (08:14):
I'm I'm trying to do it.

Speaker 3 (08:15):
This straight support this show.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
Isn't that fun? Don't we all love ads?

Speaker 3 (08:36):
And we're back, and I'm gonna start doing the thing
where I come back from ads, where I, like, say,
the last sentence or so before the break. It was
certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he Frampton should have paid
his visit on this tragic anniversary. The doctors agree in
ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and
avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise,

(09:00):
announced Frampton, who labored under the tolerably widespread delusion that
total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least
detail of one's ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure.
On the matter of diet, they are not so much
in agreement, he continued. Oh no, said missus Sappleton, in

(09:20):
a voice that only replaced a yawn at the last moment.
Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention, but not to
what Frampton was saying. Here they are at last, she cried,
just in time for tea. And don't they look as
if they were muddy up to the eyes? Frampton shivered
slightly and turned towards the nise with a look intended

(09:43):
to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through
the open window with dazed horror in her eyes. In
a chill shock of nameless fear, Frampton swung round in
his seat and looked in the same direction. In the
deepening twilight, three figures were walking across the lawn towards

(10:05):
the window. They all carried guns under their arms, and
one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat
hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close
at their heels noiselessly.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
They neared the house.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
Then a hoarse, young voice chanted out in the dusk,
I said, Birdie, why do you bow? Frampton grabbed wildly
at his stick and hat. The hall door, the gravel drive,
and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his
headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along the road had to

(10:46):
run into a hedge to avoid an imminent collision. Here
we are, my dear, said the bear of the white Macintosh,
coming in through the window. Fairly muddy, but most of
us dry. Who was that who bolted out as we
came up? A most extraordinary man, a mister Nuttle, said
missus Sappleton, who could only talk about his illnesses, and

(11:07):
then dashed off without a word of goodbye or apology.
When you arrived, one would think he had seen a ghost.
I expect it was the spaniel, said the niece calmly.
He told me he had a horror of dogs. He
was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks
of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs and

(11:29):
had to spend the night in a newly dug grave
with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming just above him,
enough to make anyone lose their nerve. Romance at short
notice was her specialty. Okay, I always say I like
that story so much because I like that story so

(11:49):
much because I like how mischievous it is. Also, we
don't use the word of romance to mean fantasy enough,
Like why are they two separate genres fantasy romanticy but
they're synonyms already synonyms Anyway. The reveal at the end
of the story that the teenager just loves fucking with
all the adults around her by making them ghost stories
I love. I also love that the protagonist's name is

(12:10):
a Frampton nuttle, which is absolutely the perfect name for
like a boring, neurotic Victorian Englishman. It also is a
name that I would make up if I was trying
to make fun of the English. I also thought that
there was a line in there about like you like
the menfolk, don't you, And I actually was mistaken on
first read. I thought it was like you're a gay,

(12:31):
but actually it was just something like just like you menfolk,
like you know, oh, you're always getting mud on the carpets.
And the story was also released in the nineteen tens,
about twenty to thirty years after the big Gothic revival
of the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties, which was the
time period that gave us things like Robert Lows Stevenson's
The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyl and Mister Highe of

(12:52):
eighteen eighty six, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray
eighteen ninety one, and Bram Strow Stoker's Dracula eighteen ninety seven.
And then Hazel, who does a lot of the episode
prep and picks a lot of stories, said about this
that Gothic fiction or Gothic herd, depending on how you
like it, is obsessed with ghosts, and it's obsessed with

(13:13):
hysteric women, and they're obsessed with this ever creeping fear
of the past intruding upon the present, like in Jane Eyre.
So Hazel wrote this, by the way, in prep for
this episode, Hazel read a lot of ooh, emotionally tortured
lady saw a ghost, and it's a metaphor kind of stories,
and so this one was frankly a breath of fresh air.

(13:33):
So the story is really interesting one because we see
all of those things madness, ghosts, etc. Played for laughs,
but we also see a young girl acting with agency
and weaponizing the stereotypes for her own amusement. And it
feels like this story is really poking fun at this
preoccupation where every small thing must have a creepy tragedy

(13:54):
behind it, and it's driving the wife insane, especially given
how easily framped and Nuttle, whose name none of us
are going to get over. It's especially given how easily
framped and Nuddle is led to believe a supernatural tale
over what his own eyes are telling him that like,
you know, men live in the house, that the returned
hunters are alive, and well he's still just like, oh,

(14:15):
it's clearly a ghost and it ends up being a
story about how easily we believe that women are crazy
in a fun way, and that's something. It's a signpost
in the development for the genre. Horror has mostly been
supernatural and folkloric through the end of the eighteen hundreds,
like ghost stories, haunted mansions, vampires, all that shit, and
at the turn of the twentieth century it takes a

(14:37):
turn towards psychological and fantastical, cosmic horror, alien pulp fiction
and all that. So this story's emphasis on sanity and
whose narration we're willing to believe ends up foreshadowing a
lot of where horror is going to go, and we're
going to trace how Gotha Karr becomes psychological horror becomes
cosmic car with this next story. Our next story is

(14:58):
called a hal of Carcosa by Ambrose Bierce. Bierce is
really fucking interesting from what I can tell. He's mostly
known as this satirist and journalist, like a lot of
writers back then who are like kind of like just
doing their thing or whatever, but he's also well respected
for short stories. He was born in Ohio. He fought
for the Union in the Civil War, and he writes

(15:20):
a lot about his experiences of war in a way
that I think i'd really respect. But I haven't read
all of his stuff yet, but it seems like he
both hated the horrors of war and he fucking hated Confederates,
which is the right mix if you ask me. Like,
he has this whole story that the name.

Speaker 4 (15:37):
Of it escapes me because I forgot to put it
in the script. But it's like a story about like
a hanging, and it's about a Confederate being hanged, and
it's just this, like I don't know, really, it's a
shockingly visceral description of the experience of being hanged. He
also wrote The Devil's Dictionary, which is the whole dictionary
of satirical definitions. There's actually a modern one called the

(15:59):
contrad Dictionary by Crime think that's really cool, and I
think it must be a reference to this one. But
within the Devil's Dictionary there's a couple good ones, like
conservative noun a statesman who is enamored of existing evils,
as distinguished from the liberal who wishes to replace them
with others. And egotist noun a person of low taste

(16:22):
more interested in himself than me. And maybe the one
of the season is autocrat noun a dictatorial gentleman with
no other restraint upon him than the hand of the assassin.
The founder and patron of that great political institution, the
Dynamite Bombshell System. He also wrote a satirical poem about

(16:46):
I think President McKinley getting assassinated the year before President
McKinley was assassinated, and so he kind of got some
hot water about that. And in nineteen thirteen he went
down to Mexico to embed with Pantovilla to cover the
Mexican Revolution as a conflict journalist, and he disappeared and
his body was never recovered. Oral tradition in that area

(17:08):
of Mexico holds that he was shot by Spaniards. But
if Game of Thrones has taught me anything it's that
if a character dies off screen, they're coming back. So
I like to believe that Beers is still out there
killing imperialists and writing witty little diatribes. But eventually I
might do a whole thing about him. And actually, the

(17:29):
beginning of this story talks about how sometimes a person
dies and their body disappears, and I don't know, it's
just interesting because then like his body was never recovered,
just saying, just saying, this is a ghost story written
by him. It's from eighteen eighty six, and so it's
from that Gothic revival, and it's about twenty.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
Years earlier than the story we just read. And it's
got a good twist. And maybe you'll even see it coming.

Speaker 4 (17:52):
I didn't.

Speaker 3 (17:52):
Hazel claims that they did. The story is called an
Inhabitant of Carcosa by Ambrose Biers And you're gonna have
to bear with me. The first paragraph has a lot
of v's and thoos and haseth and I'm gonna do
my best. An Inhabitant of Carcosa by Ambrose Biers. For

(18:18):
there be diverse sources of death. Somewhere in the body remaineth,
and in some it vanisheth quite away with the spirit.
This commonly occurreth only in solitude, such as God's will,
and none seeing the end. We say the man is
lost or gone on some long journey, which indeed he hath,

(18:38):
But sometimes it hath happened in sight of many, as
abundant testimony showeth. In one kind of death, the spirit
also dieth, and this it hath been known to do
while yet the body was in vigor for many years. Sometimes,
as is veritably attested, it dieth with the body, but

(18:58):
after a season is raised up again, and in that
place where the body did decay. Pondering these words of Halley,
whom God rest, and questioning their full meeting, as one who,
having an intimation, yet doubts if there be not something
behind other than that which he has discerned, I noted
not whither I had strayed, until a sudden chill wind

(19:22):
striking my face revived me in a sense of my surroundings.
I observed with astonishment that everything seemed unfamiliar. On every
side of me stretched a bleak and desolate expanse of
plane covered with a tall overgrowth of sear grass, which
rustled and whistled in the autumn wind. With Heaven knows

(19:43):
what mysterious and disquieting suggestion protruded at long intervals. Above
it stood strangely shaped in somber colored rocks, which seemed
to have an understanding with one another, and to exchange
looks of uncomfortable significance, as if they had reared their
heads to watch the issue of some foreseen event. A

(20:04):
few blasted trees here and there appeared as leaders in
this malevolent conspiracy of silent expectation. The day I thought
must be far advanced. Though the sun was invisible, and
although sensible that the air was raw and chill, my
consciousness of that fact was rather mental than physical. I

(20:25):
had no feeling of discomfort. Over All the dismal landscape,
a canopy of low lead colored clouds, hung like a
visible curse. In all this there were a menace and
a portent, a hint of evil, and intimation of doom, bird,
beast or insect there was none. The wind sighed in

(20:46):
the bare branches of the dead trees, and the gray
grass bent to whisper its dread secret to the earth.
But no other sound nor motion broke the awful repose
of that dismal place. I observed in the herbage a
number of weather worn stones, evidently shaped with tools. They
were broken, covered with moss, and half sunken in the earth.

(21:09):
Some lay prostrate, some leaned at various angles. None was vertical.
They were obviously headstones of graves, though the graves themselves
no longer existed as either mouths or depressions. The years
had leveled all scattered here and there more massive blocks
showed where some pompous tomb or ambitious monument had once

(21:30):
flung its feeble defiance at oblivion. So old seemed these relics,
these vestiges of vanity and memorials of affection and piety,
so battered and worn and stained, so neglected, deserted, forgotten
the place that I could not help thinking myself, the
discoverer of the burial ground of a prehistoric race of
men whose very name was long extinct. Filled with these reflections,

(21:56):
I was for some time heedless of the sequence of
my own experiences. But soon I thought, how came I hither?
A moment's reflection seemed to make this all clear and
explain at the same time, though in a disquieting way,
the singular character with which my fancy had invested all
that I saw or heard. I was ill. I remembered

(22:19):
now that I had been prostrated by a sudden fever
that my family had told me. In my periods of delirium,
I had constantly cried out for liberty and air, and
had been held in bed to prevent my escape out
of doors. Now I had eluded the vigilance of my
attendants and wandered hither to where I could not conjecture clearly.

(22:42):
I was at a considerable distance from the city where
I dwelt, the ancient and famous city of Carcosa. No
signs of human life were anywhere visible nor audible. No
rising smoke, no watchdog's bark, no lowing of cattle, no
shouts of children at play, nothing but that dismal burial place,

(23:03):
with its air of mystery and dread due to my
own disordered brain. Was I not becoming again delirious there
beyond human aid? Was it not, indeed all an illusion
of my madness? I called aloud the names of my
wives and sons, reached out my hands in search of theirs.
Even as I walked among the crumbling stones and in

(23:25):
the withered grass, A noise behind me caused me to
turn about. A wild animal, a lynx, was approaching. The
thought came to me, if I break down here in
the desert, if the fever return and I fail, this
beast will be at my throat. I sprang toward it, shouting.

(23:47):
It trotted tranquility by within a hand's breath of me,
and disappeared behind a rock. A moment later, a man's
head appeared to rise out of the ground. A short
distance away. He was ascend, seeing the farther slope of
a low hill whose crest was hardly to be distinguished
from the general level. His whole figure soon came into

(24:08):
view against the background of gray cloud. He was half naked,
half clad in skins. His hair was unkempt, his beard
long and ragged. In one hand he carried a bow
and arrow. The other held a blazing torch with a
long trail of black smoke. He walked slowly and with caution,

(24:28):
as if he feared falling into some open brave concealed
by the tall glass. This strange apparition surprised but did
not alarm, and taking such a course as to intercept him,
I met him almost face to face, accosting him with
the familiar salutation God keep you. He gave no heed,
nor did he arrest his pace. Good stranger, I continued,

(24:50):
I am ill and lost direct me. I beseech you
to carcosa. The man broke into a barbarous chant, and
an unknown tongue, passing on and away. An owl on
the branch of a decayed tree hooted dismally and was
answered by another in the distance. Looking upward, I saw,
through a sudden rift in the clouds Albadarin and the Hiates.

(25:13):
In all this there was a hint of night, the lynx,
the man with the torch, the owl. Yet I saw,
I saw even the stars and absence of the darkness.
I saw, but was apparently not seen nor heard. Under
what awful spell? Did I exist? And dear listeners, I

(25:34):
exist under a spell? Or twice an episode. I have
to break the flow and promote the wonderful.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
Ads that support this podcast.

Speaker 3 (25:53):
And rebec I saw, but was apparently not seen nor heard.
Under what awful spell did I exist? I seated myself
at the root of a great tree seriously to consider
what it were best to do. That I was mad,
I could no longer doubt. Yet I recognized a ground

(26:15):
of doubt in the conviction a fever I had no trace.
I had withal a sense of exhilaration and vigor altogether
unknown to me, a feeling of mental and physical exultation.
My senses seemed all alert. I could feel the air
as a ponderous substance. I could hear the silence a

(26:35):
great root of the giant tree, against whose trunk.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
I leaned.

Speaker 3 (26:39):
As I sat held enclosed in its grasp a slab
of stone, a part of which protruded into a recess
formed by another root. The stone was thus partly protected
from the weather, though greatly decomposed. Its edges were worn round,
its corners eaten away, its surface deeply furrowed and scaled.

(27:00):
Glittering particles of mica were visible in the earth around it,
vestiges of its decomposition. This stone had apparently marked the
grave out of which the tree had sprung ages ago.
The trees exacting roots had robbed the grave.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
And made the stone a prisoner.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
A sudden wind pushed some dry leaves and twigs from
the uppermost face of the stone. I saw the low
relief letters of an inscription, and bent to read it.
God in Heaven, my name in full, the date of
my birth, the date of my death. A level shaft

(27:40):
of light illuminated the whole side of the tree. As
I sprang to my feet in terror, the sun was
rising in the rosy east. I stood between the tree
and his broad red disk. No shadow darkened the trunk.
A chorus of howling wolves saluted the dawn. I saw
them sitting on their haunches, singly and in groups, on

(28:04):
the summits of irregular mounds, and to my oli, filling
a half of my desert prospect and extending to the horizon.
And then I knew that these were the ruins of
the ancient and famous city of Carcosa. Such are the
facts imparted to the medium by Rolis, by the spirit

(28:24):
usseb Alar Robardin. That's the end of the story. Okay,
So the prose in the story is so biblical without
feeling too purple or overwritten, at least for the standards
of the time. Like it's not like you can see
the difference in only like twenty years later how they
were writing, But nineteenth century had this whole thing. And
it uses the like the was dead all along trope,

(28:47):
which is a sort of staple of Gothic horror, but
it also gets using contemporary stuff like the show Lost
spoilers for the TV show Lost, I guess, even though
whatever you fuck lost us the long Shaggy Dog story,
the most expensive shaggy dog story ever put to film,
And I think that he was dead all along trope
isn't exactly my favorite trope. These days, but where they

(29:10):
come from before it's really as much of a trope,
is actually much more interesting to me, And I think
that Beers uses it to heighten the horror really well
rather than just to kill all the steaks, right, because
it's like, oh, fuck, I'm dead instead of like, ah,
that explains it. I'm dead five seasons in fuck you Lost,

(29:30):
which I don't think they even knew what was going
to happen ahead of time. I'm so mad about Lost, Okay,
and then Hazel wrote a lot of really interesting stuff
about this, so I'm gonna read it to you. I'm
really drawn to this impulse to establish the point of
view character as sane and fully capacitated. Gothic KR and
later Cosmic are so fixated on madness, but the choice

(29:51):
to zoom in on sanity is a really interesting contrast.
It's an important part of this story's horror that our
narrator fully understands what's going on and can be tr
us when he reveals that he's dead. Right, And even
the spirit name checks at the end Beerston just invent
this story. No, he wants you to know the name
of the medium they channeled it through. He's actively trying
to cultivate as much credibility in the framing of the

(30:13):
story as he can. So this story is like weirdly
and quietly important in the horror lineage in that it
introduces a ton of names. They get picked up and
recycled by later authors. Most notably, the City of Carcosa
gets picked up by Robert W. Chambers for his eighteen
ninety five short story collection called The King in Yellow,
which is a series of interrelated stories where the characters

(30:36):
discover and read a play called The King in Yellow
that contains profound incomprehensible truths about the universe that drive
you mad. And as a sidebar, Chambers is also using
yellow as the color of madness, much like Book Club
alum Charlotte Perkins Gilman does later in The Yellow Wallpaper,
which you can go back and re listen to if

(30:56):
you want so The King in Yellow, which goes on
to inspire none other than and please note that I'm
crossing myself in penance when I name check this fucking guy,
HP Lovecraft. The ancient city of Carcosa, as well as
the names Holly, Hyaatees, and Aldebaran, appear in Lovecraft's Caffulu
mythos obviously influential in the genre, less because readers at

(31:18):
the time were reading him he died early and lonely
and broke as he deserved Lovecraft again, but because other
authors were reading him and being inspired. And also Carcosa
shows up in a ton of other stuff, like True
Detective Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and also book Club alum
Haley Piper's new book A Game in Yellow, which sounds

(31:38):
really fucking red. It's about a lesbian couple that starts
microdosing that play that drives you mad, the King in
Yellow for sex reasons, and it's a happy coincidence that
these two are back to back anyway. This shit even
pops up in A Song of Ice and Fire by
George R.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
Martin.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
There's multiple Wikipedia pages about the stuff if you want
a good rabbit hole, but Beers doesn't give us too
much information about the famed in ancient city of Carcosa.
It's maybe in space, or maybe it's like Atlantis but
in the desert, depending on who's writing it. Hazel's take
is that for Carcosa is meant to sound like carcass
or whatever just does regardless of what the author intended,

(32:14):
so the city ends up serving as a parallel to
the narrator's body, the city as body. Initially, the narrator
is looking for the city he inhabited in the splendor
of its heyday after he realizes that he's dead. He
sees the city and ruins ancient and distant. But that's
all the city really has to quote unquote do in
the story. But importantly, none of the world building is

(32:35):
what's brought forward in horror legacy. But that's okay because
this story isn't about world building. It's about mood, and
fuck does Beers know how to construct a mood for me? Hazel?
This story is at a really interesting junction and juncture.
Please get that the story is at a really interesting
juncture and horror legacy. We've talked before about Gothakar being
about ghosts and madness and the fear of the past

(32:57):
intruding upon the present, which is absolutely the world that
this story is swimming in with the death and spirits
and ancient ruins. But Biers is sometimes credited as an
early writer of psychological horror, and we know that this
story goes on to influence early cosmic car and that's
a genre that's also interested in madness, but more so
about the ununderstandable, the vastness of the universe, the inevitability

(33:18):
that the future will come to erase the present. To
draw an overly simplified binary, we often see Gothic carr
stories is about fear of one's self and one's family members,
a fear of the known, and cosmic car is often
about the fear of things beyond us and beyond our comprehension,
fear of time and space and oblivion, a fear of
the unknown. And to me, Hazel, an inhabitant of Carcosa,

(33:41):
sits at such an interesting place between the two. This
isn't a story where the ghost is a manifestation of trauma.
Death and decay are very literal here. The ancient ruins
of the city are not invoked to mark that the
past is here now, but to show that the future
has arrived and has pushed you out of the way.
Literally no one can see or interact with the narrator.
We get some good like Isn't Nature spooky scenes that

(34:03):
are a touchstone of Gothic fiction, and we also get
a cosmic car classic unknowable tongue spoken by the man
on the road at the end of the day. This
is a story about waking up to realize the world
is continued without you. The slanger used to isn't hip anymore.
The young people are suddenly so much younger than you.
Time comes for us all in the end. Or is

(34:23):
something like that. And Tazel wrote me a lot about
this because both of us have been having a stressful week.
I also really like this is Margaret's voice.

Speaker 4 (34:32):
Now, well it's always my voice, but this is me
saying what I think about it. HP Lovecraft is like
famously a racist and cosmic Car for him is about
this fear of like the unknown, spooky foreigners and nature.
He writes about trees, like he's just terrified of trees,
you know. So he's clearly afraid of like the chaos
and like change and diversity and organic stuff. Because he's

(34:57):
sounds like a skill issue.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
But I think it gets really interesting that so people
will be like, oh, well, cosmic car comes from this shit. Well, actually,
cosmic car if you trace it back far enough as
someone who like fought for the Union and went off
to go support Pancho Villa, you know, who is famously
a right wing character in history, So whatever, take that

(35:19):
HP Lovecraft's a dead person and yeah, I don't know.
That's it for today, too early psychological horror adjacent stories
about madness, credibility, point of view, and ghosts. We got
both of these stories from classic tales of horror from
Canterbury Classics. I'm Margaret Kiljoy. You can find me on
this feed and on the internet. I have a substack
that's called Birds before the Storm and that's as good

(35:41):
of a place as I need to keep up with me.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
I'm on the various things.

Speaker 3 (35:45):
Take care of yourself, stay safe, stay dangerous, and never
forget that the HP of HP Lovecraft stands or Harry
Potter good night.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
For more podcasts from cool.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com or check
us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to podcasts. You can find sources where it
could Happen here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Thanks for listening,