"The Monkey's Paw" & "Pickman's Model": W.W. Jacobs & H.P. Lovecraft, Masters of Dread

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marler and this is Weird Darkness.
Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre,
unsolved and unexplained coming up in this episode of Weird Darkness.

(00:29):
It's the story I remember most from the books I
read in junior high, the classic short horror story The
Monkey's Paw by W. W. Jacobs. If you've never read
the story or seen any adaptation of it, I'm glad
of that, because that means I get the honor and
privilege of introducing you to the story for the first time.

(00:51):
The Monkey's Paw was first published in England in nineteen
oh two, without giving any spoilers. In the story, three
wishes are granted to the owner of the monk He's Paw,
but the wishes come with an enormous price for interfering
with fate. It's been adapted to film and stage numerous times,
and of course, now as a podcast episode, famed author

(01:14):
HP Lovecraft brings us his tale Pickman's Model. HP Lovecraft
released the story in nineteen twenty seven, so you might
want to consider that for context and perspective. While listening. Now,
mult your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights,
and come with me into the weird darkness. Before we

(01:53):
get to the story itself, let's learn just a bit
about the author. British author W. Jacobs lived from eighteen
sixty three to nineteen forty three. He's remembered most for
the creepy story I'm sharing in this episode, The Monkey's Paw.
William Wymark Jacobs was the eldest son of William Gage Jacobs,

(02:15):
the first w in W. W. Jacobs, and William Gage's
first wife, Sophia Wymark. Where the second w in WW
comes in. Sadly, Sophia would die while her son was
still very young. WW, as he later became known, spent
much of his time with his brothers and sisters among
the South Devon Wharf, where his father was the manager.

(02:37):
It was a large family, but it was also a
poor one, and WW, being shy, quiet and having a
fair complexion, didn't have many friends. WW was a good
student and graduated Burbeck College before the age of seventeen
in eighteen seventy nine. He became a clerk in the
civil service, then later at a bank from eighteen eight

(03:00):
three to eighteen ninety nine. It was a nice change
from the childhood of poverty he had lived before, now
having a steady paycheck. But the work and the income
still wasn't enough for ww and. In eighteen eighty five
he started submitting anonymous sketches in his spare time to
be published in Blackfriars, a historic religious and theatrical site

(03:21):
located at the eastern end of Victoria Embankment. Some of
his stories were published in Jerome k Jerome and Robert
Barr's satirical publications Idler and Today. In the early eighteen nineties,
The Strand magazine also published some of his writings. Even
early on, his stories showed he had a lot of talent,
and many known authors and publishers of his day said so.

(03:45):
W W. Jacob's first collection of stories published in book
form was Man Cargoes in eighteen ninety six. Only a
year later, his novelette The Skipper's Wooing was released, followed
the year after that by yet un another collection of
stories in eighteen ninety eight called Sea Urchins. In eighteen
ninety nine, W W. Jacobs felt stable enough in his

(04:08):
new writing career to make it a full time occupation
and resigned his clerical duties. Around that same time, possibly
due to his newly found boost of confidence. He married
Agnes Eleanor, whom would later bear him three daughters and
two sons. Jacob's best works are considered at some witch
Port from nineteen oh two and then dial Stone Lane

(04:31):
from nineteen oh four. Jacob's stories were often about the
common man, those on the lower rung of society, and
in a way he was the m night Shyamalan of
his day, with many of his stories having surprise endings.
While his nineteen oh two collection of horror stories, The
Lady of the Barge was not considered one of his
best works, it does contain the story he is most

(04:54):
well known for, The Monkey's Paw. While W. W. Jacobs
continued to write for men any more years, it is
this story that has most defined his legacy. It has
been adapted many times in other media, including plays, films,
TV series, operas, stories and comics as early as nineteen

(05:15):
oh three. The story was first adapted to film in
nineteen fifteen as a British silent film directed by Sydney Northcote.
The film now Lost starred John Lawson, who also played
the main character in Lewis Ann Parker's nineteen oh seven
stage play. It was also adapted to film as recently
as twenty nineteen on the Shutter Channel's Creep Show anthology series.

(05:39):
With a history like that, It's a story every horror
fan must hear when weird darkness returns. It's the classic
horror tale by W. W. Jacobs from nineteen oh two.

(06:00):
The Monkey's Paw without The night was cold and wet,

(06:35):
but in the small parlor of Laburnum Villa, the blinds
were drawn and the fire burned brightly. Father and son
were at chess, the former, who possessed ideas about the
game involving radical changes, putting his king into such sharp
and unnecessary perils that it even provoked comment from the
white haired old lady knitting placidly by the fire. Hark

(06:57):
at the wind, said mister white, who, having seen a
fatal mistake after it was too late, was amiably desirous
of preventing his son from saying it. I'm listening, said
the latter, grimly, surveying the board as he stretched out
his hand check. I should hardly think that he'd come tonight,
said his father, with his hand poised over the board, mate,

(07:22):
replied his son. That's the worst of living so far out,
bawled mister White with sudden and unlooked for violence. Of
all the beastly, slushy, out of the way places to
live in, this is the worst pathway is a bog,
and the road's a torrent. I don't know what people
are thinking about. I suppose because only two houses on

(07:44):
the road are left, they think it doesn't matter. Never mind, dear,
said his wife soothingly, Perhaps you'll win the next one.
Mister White looked up sharply, just in time to intercept
a knowing glance between mother and son. Words died away
on his lips, and he hid a guilty grin in
his thin gray beard. There he is, said Herbert White.

(08:07):
As the gate banged to loudly, and heavy footsteps came
toward the door. The old man rose with hospitable haste,
and opening the door, was heard condoling with the new arrival.
The new arrival also condoled with himself, so that missus
White said tut tut, and coughed gently as her husband
entered the room, followed by a tall, burly man, beady

(08:29):
of eye and rubicund of visage, Sergeant Major Morris, he said,
introducing him. The sergeant Major shook hands, and, taking the
proffered seat by the fire, watched contentedly while his host
got out whiskey and tumblers and stood a small copper
kettle on the fire. At the third glass, his eyes
got brighter, and he began to talk the little family circle,

(08:53):
regarding with eager interest this visitor from distant parts as
he squared his broad shoulders in the chair and spoke
of stream scenes and dofty deeds, of wars and plagues
and strange peoples. Twenty one years of it, said mister White,
nodding at his wife and son. When he went away,
he was a slip of a youth in the warehouse.

(09:14):
Now look at him. You don't look to have taken
much harm, said missus White politely. I like to go
to India myself, said the old man, just to look
around a bit. You know better where you are, said
the Sergeant Major, shaking his head. He put down the
empty glass and, sighing softly, shook it again. I should

(09:35):
like to see those old temples and fakirs and jugglers,
said the old man. What was that you started telling me?
The other day about a monkey's paw or something. Morris, Nothing,
said the soldier hastily. Leastways, nothing worth hearing monkeys paw,
said Missus White curiously. Well, it's just a bit of

(09:56):
what you might call magic, perhaps, said the sergeant maure
off handedly. His three listeners leaned forward eagerly. The visitor,
absent mindedly put his empty glass to his lips, and
then set it down again. His host filled it for
him to look at, said the Sergeant Major, fumbling in
his pocket. It's just an ordinary little paw, dried to

(10:19):
a mummy. He took something out of his pocket and
proffered it. Missus White drew back with a grimace. But
her son, taking it, examined it curiously. And what is
there special about it? Inquired mister White, as he took
it from his son, and, having examined it, placed it
upon the table. It had a spell put on it
by an old fakir, said the sergeant Major, a very

(10:42):
holy man. He wanted to show that fate ruled people's lives,
and that those who interfered with it did so to
their sorrow. He put a spell on it so that
three separate men could each have three wishes from it.
His manner was so impressive that his hearer were conscious
that their light laughter jarred somewhat. Well, why don't you

(11:04):
have three, sir, said Herbert White cleverly. The soldier regarded
him in a way that Middle Ages wont to regard
presumptuous youth. I have, he said, quietly, and his blotchy
face whitened. And did you really have the three wishes granted?
Asked missus White. I did, said the sergeant major, and

(11:27):
his glass tapped against his strong teeth. And has anybody
else wished? Inquired the old lady. The first man had
his three wishes? Yes, was the reply. I don't know
what the first two were, but the third was for death.
That's how I got the paw. His tones were so

(11:47):
grave that a hush fell upon the group. If you've
had your three wishes, it's no good to you now, then, Morris,
said the old man. At last, what do you keep
it for? The soldier shook it head. Fancy I suppose,
he said slowly. If you could have another three wishes,
said the old man, eyeing him keenly, would you have them?

(12:11):
I don't know, said the other I don't know He
took the paw and dangled it between his front finger
and thumb. Suddenly threw it upon the fire. White, with
a slight cry, stooped down and snatched it off. Better
let it burn, said the soldier solemnly. If you don't
want it, Morris, said the old man, give it to me.

(12:34):
I won't, said his friend doggedly. I threw it on
the fire. If you keep it, don't blame me for
what happens. Pitch it on the fire again, like a
sensible man. The other shook his head and examined his
new possession closely. How do you do it, he inquired.
Hold it up in your right hand and wish aloud,

(12:57):
said the sergeant major. But I warn you of the consequences.
Sounds like the Arabian nights, said missus White, as she
rose and began to set the supper. Don't you think
you might wish for four pairs of hands for me?
Her husband drew the talisman from his pocket, and then
all three burst into laughter as the sergeant major, with

(13:17):
a look of alarm on his face, caught him by
the arm. If you must wish, he said, gruffly, wish
for something sensible, mister White dropped it back into his pocket, and,
placing chairs, motioned his friend to the table. In the
business of supper, the talisman was partly forgotten, and afterward
the three sat listening in enthralled fashion to a second

(13:40):
installment of the soldier's adventures in India. If the tale
about the monkey paw is not more truthful than those
he's been telling us, said Herbert, as the door closed
behind their guests, just in time for him to catch
the last train. We shan't make much of it. Did
you give him anything for it? Father, inquired Missus White,
regarding her husband closely. A trifle, said he, coloring slightly.

(14:06):
He didn't want it, but I made him take it,
and he pressed me again to throw it away. Likely,
said Herbert, with pretended horror. Why we're going to be
rich and famous and happy? Wish to be an emperor
father to begin with? Then you can't be hen packed
He darted around the table, pursued by the maligned Missus White,
armed with an antimacasser. Mister White took the paw from

(14:29):
his pocket and eyed it dubiously. I don't know what
to wish for, and that's a fact, he said slowly,
seems to me I've got all I want. If you
only cleared the house, you'd be quite happy, wouldn't you,
said Herbert, with his hand on his shoulder. Well, wish
for two hundred pounds, then that'll just do it. His father,

(14:49):
smiling shamefacedly at his own credulity, held up the talisman
as his son, with a solemn face somewhat marred by
a wink at his mother, sat down at the piano
and struck a few impressive chords. I wish for two
hundred pounds, said the old man distinctly. A fine crash

(15:10):
from the piano greeted the words, interrupted by a shuddering
cry from the old man. His wife and son ran
toward him. It moved, he cried with a glance of
disgust at the object as it lay on the floor.
As I wished, it twisted in my hands like a snake. Well,
I don't see the money, said his son, as he
picked it up and placed it on the table. And

(15:32):
I bet I never shall. It must have been your
fancy father, said his wife, regarding him anxiously. He shook
his head. Never mind, though there's no harm done. But
it gave me a shock all the same, I sat
down by the fire again while the two men finished
their pipes. Outside. The wind was higher than ever, and

(15:53):
the old man started nervously at the sound of a
door banging upstairs, a silence unusual and depressing upon all three,
which lasted until the old couple rose to retire for
the night. I expect to find the cash tied up
in a big bag in the middle of your bed,
said Herbert, as he bade them good night, and something
horrible squatting up on top of the wardrobe, watching you

(16:15):
as you pocket your ill gotten gains. He sat alone
in the darkness, gazing at the dying fire and seeing
faces in it. The last face was so horrible and
so simion, that he gazed at it in amazement. It
got so vivid that, with a little uneasy laugh, he
felt on the table for a glass containing a little
water to throw over it. His hand grasped the monkey's paw,

(16:39):
and with a little shiver, he wiped his hand on
his coat and went up to bed. In the brightness
of the wintery sun next morning, as it streamed over
the breakfast table, Herbert laughed at his fears. There was
an air of prosaic wholesomeness about the room, which it
had lacked on the previous night, and the dirty, shriveled
little paw was pitched on the sideboard with a carelessness

(17:03):
which betoked no great belief in its virtues. I suppose
all soldiers are the same, said missus White, the idea
of our listening to such nonsense? How could wishes be
granted in these days? And if they could, how could
two hundred pounds hurt you? Father? My drop on his
head from the sky, said the frivolous Herbert Morris said.

(17:24):
The things happened so naturally, said his father, that you might,
if you so wish, to attribute it to coincidence. Well,
don't break into the money before I come back, said Herbert,
as he rose from the table. I'm afraid it'll turn
you into a mean, avaricious man, and we shall have
to disown you. His mother laughed and followed him to

(17:44):
the door, watched him down the road, and returned to
the breakfast table. Was very happy at the expense of
her husband's credulity, all of which did not prevent her
from scurrying to the door at the postman's knock, nor
prevent her from referring somewhat shortly to retired so argent
majors of b bibulous habits when she found that the
post brought a tailor's bill. Herbert will have some more

(18:07):
of his funny remarks I expect when he comes home,
she said. As they sat at dinner, I dare say,
said mister White, pouring himself out some beer. But for
all that the thing moved in my hand that I'll
swear to you, thought it did, said the old lady soothingly.
I say it did, replied the other. There was no

(18:29):
thought about it. I just what's the matter? His wife
made no reply. She was watching the mysterious movements of
a man outside, who, peering in an undecided fashion at
the house, appeared to be trying to make up his
mind to enter in mental connection with the two hundred pounds.
She noticed that the stranger was well dressed and wore

(18:51):
a silk hat of glossy newness. Three times he paused
at the gate and then walked on again. The fourth
timetood with his hands upon it, and then, with sudden resolution,
flung it open and walked up the path. Missus White,
at the same moment placed her hands behind her and
hurriedly unfastened the strings of her apron, put that useful

(19:13):
article of apparel beneath the cushion of her chair. She
brought the stranger, who seemed ill at ease into the room.
He gazed at her furtively and listened in a preoccupied
fashion as the old lady apologized for the appearance of
the room and her husband's coat, a garment which he
usually reserved for the garden. She then waited as patiently

(19:33):
as her sex would permit for him to broach his business.
But he was at first strangely silent. I was asked
to call, he said at last, and stooped and picked
a piece of cotton from his trousers. I come from
maw and Meggan's. The old lady started, Is anything the matter?

(19:54):
She asked, breathlessly. Has anything happened to Herbert? What is it?
Her husband interposed, There there, mother, he said, hastily, sit down,
and don't jump to conclusions. You've not brought bad news.
I'm sure, sir, and he eyed the other wistfully. I'm sorry,
began the visitor. Is he hurt? Demanded the mother. The

(20:17):
visitor bowed in assent, badly hurt, he said quietly. But
he's not in any pain. Oh, thank God, said the
old woman, clasping her hands, Thank God for that think.
She broke off suddenly as the sinister meaning of the
assurance dawned upon her, and she saw the awful confirmation

(20:37):
of her fears in the other's averted face. She caught
her breath, and, turning to her slower witted husband, laid
her trembling old hand upon his. There was a long silence.
He was caught in the machinery, said the visitor at length,
in a low voice. Caught in the machinery, repeated mister White,

(20:58):
in a dazed fashion. Yes, he sat, staring blankly out
at the window, and taking his wife's hand between his own,
pressed it, as he had been wont to do in
their old courting days, nearly forty years before. He was
the only one left to us, he said, turning gently
to the visitor. It's hard. The other coughed, and rising,

(21:20):
walked slowly to the window. The firm wished me to
convey their sincere sympathy with you in your great loss,
he said, without looking round. I beg that you will understand.
I'm only their servant in merely obeying orders. There was
no reply. The old woman's face was white, her eyes staring,
and her breath inaudible. On the husband's face was a

(21:44):
look such as his friend the sergeant might have carried
into his first action. I was to say that Maw
and Meggin's disclaim all responsibility continued the other They admit
no liability at all, but in consideration of your son's service,
they wished to present you with a certain sum as compensation.

(22:05):
Mister White dropped his wife's hand, and, rising to his feet,
gazed with a look of horror at his visitor. His
dry lips shaped the words how much two hundred pounds
was the answer? Unconscious of his wife's shriek, the old
man smiled faintly, put out his hands like a sightless man,

(22:26):
and dropped a senseless heap to the floor. In the
huge new cemetery some two miles distant, the old people
buried their dead and came back to a house steeped
in shadow, in silence. It was all over so quickly
that at first they could hardly realize it, and remained

(22:48):
in a state of expectation, as though of something else
to happen something else, which was to lighten this load
too heavy for old hearts to bear. But the days passed,
and expectation gave place to resignation, the hopeless resignation of
the old sometimes miscalled apathy. Sometimes they hardly exchanged a word,

(23:12):
for now they had nothing to talk about, and their
days were long to weariness. It was about a week
after that the old man, waking suddenly in the night,
stretched out his hand and found himself alone. The room
was in darkness, and the sound of subdued weeping came
from the window. He raised himself in bed and listened.

(23:34):
Come back, he said, tenderly. You'll be cold. It's colder
for my son, said the old woman, and wept afresh.
The sound of her sobs died away on his ears.
The bed was warm, and his eyes heavy with sleep.
He dozed fitfully, and then slept until a sudden wild
cry from his wife awoke him with a start. The paw,

(23:57):
she cried, wildly, the monkey's paw. He started up in alarm.
Where where is it? What's the matter? She came, stumbling
across the room toward him. I want it, she said, quietly.
You've not destroyed it. It's in the parlor on the bracket,
he replied, marveling. Why she cried, Anne laughed together and,
bending over, kissed his cheek. I only just thought of it,

(24:20):
she said, hysterically. Why didn't I think of it before?
Why didn't you think of it? Think of what? He questioned?
The other two wishes? She replied rapidly. We've only had one.
Was not that enough, he demanded fiercely, No, she cried triumphantly.
We'll have one more. Go down and get it quickly,

(24:41):
and wish our boy alive again. The man sat up
in bed and flung the bedclothes from his quaking limbs.
Good god, you're mad, he cried. Aghast, get it, she panted,
Get it quickly, and wish oh my boy, my boy.
Her husband struck a match and lit the candle. Get
back to bed, he said, unsteadily. You don't know what

(25:01):
you're saying. We had the first wish, granted, said the
old woman feverishly. Why not the second a coincidence, stammered
the old man. Go and get it and wish, cried
the old woman, quivering with excitement. The old man turned
and regarded her, and his voice shook. He's been dead
ten days, and besides he I would not tell you else,

(25:25):
but I could only recognize him by his clothing. If
he was too terrible for you to see, then how
now bring him back? Cried the old woman, and dragged
him toward the door. Do you think I fear the
child I have nursed? He went down in the darkness
and felt his way to the parlor, and then to

(25:45):
the mantelpiece. The talisman was in its place, and a
horrible fear that the unspoken wish might bring his mutilated
son before him ere he could escape from the room
seized upon him, and he caught his breath as he
found that he had lost the direction at the door.
His brow cold was sweat. He felt his way around
the table and groped along the wall until he found

(26:07):
himself in the small passage with the unwholesome thing in
his hand. Even his wife's face seemed changed as he
entered the room. It was white and expectant, and to
his fears, seemed to have an unnatural look upon it.
He was afraid of her wish, she cried in a
strong voice. It is foolish and wicked. He faltered, wish,

(26:31):
repeated his wife. He raised his hand a I I
wish my son alive again. The talisman fell to the floor,
and he regarded it fearfully. Then he sank, trembling into
a chair, as the old woman, with burning eyes, walked
to the window and raised the blind. He sat until

(26:54):
he was chilled with the cold, glancing occasionally at the
figure of the old woman peering through the window. The
candle land, which had burnt below the rim of the
china candlestick, was throwing pulsating shadows on the ceiling and walls, until,
with a flicker larger than the rest, it expired. The
old man, with an unspeakable sense of relief at the

(27:16):
failure of the talisman, crept back to his bed, and
a minute or two afterward, the old woman came silently
and apathetically beside him. Neither spoke, but both lay silently
listening to the ticking of the clock. A stair creaked,
and the squeaky mouse scurried noisily through the wall. The

(27:36):
darkness was oppressive, and after lying for some time, screwing
up his courage, the husband took the box of matches,
and striking one, went downstairs for a candle. At the
foot of the stairs. The match went out, and he
paused to strike another, and at the same moment, a
knock so quiet and stealthily as to be scarcely audible,

(27:58):
sounded on the front door. The matches fell from his hand.
He stood motionless, his breath suspended, until the knock was repeated.
Then he turned and fled swiftly back to his room
and closed the door behind him. A third knock sounded
through the house. What's that, cried the old woman, starting up.

(28:19):
A rat, said the old man, in shaking tones. A rat.
It passed me on the stairs. His wife sat up
in bed, listening. A loud knock resounded through the house.
It's Herbert, she screamed, it's Herbert. She ran to the door,
but her husband was before her, and, catching her by
the arm, held her tightly. What are you going to do,

(28:39):
he whispered hoarsely. It's my boy, It's Herbert, she cried,
struggling mechanically. I forgot it was two miles away. What
are you holding me for? Let go? I must open
the door, for God's sake. Don't let it in, cried
the old man, trembling. You're afraid of your own son,
She cried, struggling. Let me go. I'm coming her, I'm coming.

(29:01):
There was another knock, and another. The old woman, with
a sudden wrench, broke free and ran from the room.
Her husband followed to the landing and called after her appealingly.
As she hurried downstairs. He heard the chain rattle back
and the bottom bolt draw slowly and stiffly from the socket.
Then the old woman's voice, straining and panting the bolt.

(29:22):
She cried loudly, come down, I can't reach it. But
her husband was on his hands and knees, groping wildly
on the floor in search of the paw. If he
could only find it before the thing outside got in.
A perfect fuselage of knocks reverberated through the house, and
he heard the scraping of a chair as his wife
put it down in the passage against the door. He

(29:43):
heard the creaking of the bolt as it came slowly back,
and at the same moment he found the monkey's paw
and frantically breathed his third and last wish. The knocking
ceased suddenly, although the echoes of it were still in
the house. He heard the chair draw back and the
door opened. The cold wind rushed up the staircase, and

(30:05):
a long loud wail of disappointment and misery from his
wife gave him courage to run down to her side,
and then to the gate beyond the street. Lamp flickering
opposite shone on a quiet and deserted road. You needn't

(30:47):
think I'm crazy, Elliott. Plenty of others have queerer prejudices
than this. Why don't you laugh at Oliver's grandfather who
won't ride in a motor Yeah, I don't like that
damn subway. It's my own business, and we got here
more quickly anyhow in the taxi. We'd have had to
walk up the hill from Park Street if we'd taken
the car. I know I'm more nervous than I was

(31:09):
when you saw me last year, but you don't need
to hold a clinic over it. There's plenty of reason,
God knows, and I fancy I'm lucky to be seen
at all. Why the third degree? You didn't used to
be so inquisitive. Well, if you must hear it, I
don't know why you shouldn't. Maybe you ought to anyhow,
or you kept writing me like a grieved parent when

(31:32):
you heard I'd begun to cut the art club and
keep away from Pigman. Now that he's disappeared. I go
around to the club once in a while, but my
nerves aren't what they were. No, I don't know what's
become of Pickman, and I don't like to guests. You
might have surmised I had some inside information when I

(31:52):
dropped him, and that's why I don't want to think
where he is gone. Let the police find what they can.
It won't be much, judging from the fact that they
don't know yet of the old North End place he
hired under the name of Peters. I'm not sure that
I could find it again myself, or not that i'd
ever try, even in broad daylight. Yes, I do know,

(32:15):
or am afraid. I know why he maintained it. I'm
coming to that, and I think you'll understand before i'm
through why I don't tell the police. They would ask
me to guide them, but I couldn't go back there
even if I knew the way. There was something there,
and now I can't use the subway. Or you may

(32:36):
as well have your laugh at this too, go down
into cellars anymore. I should think you'd have known I
didn't drop Pickman for the same silly reasons that fussy
old women like doctor Reed or Joe Mino or Bosworth did.
Morbid art doesn't shock me. And when a man has
the genius Pickman had, I feel it an honor to

(32:58):
know him, no matter what there in his work takes.
Boston never had a greater painter than Richard Upton Pickman.
I said it at first, and I say it still,
And I never swerved a nch either when he showed
that ghoul feeding that you remember was when Minou cut him.

(33:18):
You know, it takes profound art and profound insights into
nature to turn out stuff like Pickman's. Any magazine cover
hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a
nightmare or a witch's sabbath or a portrait of the devil,
but only a great painter can make such a thing

(33:38):
really scare or ring true. That's because only a real
artist knows the actual anatomy of the terrible or the
physiology of fear, the exact sort of lines and proportions
that connect up with latent instincts or hereditary memories of fright,
and the proper color contrasts and lighting effects to stir

(34:00):
or the dormant sense of strangeness. I don't have to
tell you why a Fuselli really brings a shiver, while
a cheap ghost story frontist piece merely makes us laugh.
There's something those fellows catch beyond life that they're able
to make us catch. For a second. Doray had it,

(34:20):
Sime has it, and Goola of Chicago has it, and
Pigman had it as no man ever had it before,
or I hope to Heaven ever will again. Don't ask
me what it is they see. You know, in ordinary art,
there's all the difference in the world between the vital,
breathing things drawn from nature or models and the artificial truck,

(34:44):
the commercial small fry reel off in a bear studio.
By rule well, I should say that the really weird
artist as a kind of vision which makes models or
summons up what amounts to actual scenes from the spectral
world he lives in. Anyhow, he manages to turn out
results that differ from the pretender's mince pie dreams in

(35:06):
just about the same way that the life painter's results
differ from the concoctions of a correspondence school cartoonist. If
I had ever seen what Pickman saw but no, here,
let's have a drink before we get any deeper. Dad,
I wouldn't be alive if I'd ever seen what that man,

(35:27):
if he was a man, saw you recall that Pickman's
forte was faces. I don't believe anybody since Guya could
put so much of sheer hell into a set of
features or a twist of expression. And before Guya, you
have to go back to the medieval chaps who did

(35:47):
the gargoyles and chimeras on Notre Dame and Mount Saint Michael.
They believed all sorts of things, and maybe they saw
all sorts of things too, For the Middle Ages had
some curious phases. I remember your asking Pickman yourself once
the year before you went away wherever in thunder he

(36:09):
got such ideas and visions? Wasn't that a nasty laugh
he gave you? It was partly because of that laugh
that Reed dropped him. Reed, you know, had just taken
up comparative pathology, and was full of pompous inside stuff
about the biological or evolutionary significance of this or that

(36:31):
mental or physical symptom. He said. Pickman repelled him more
and more every day. It almost frightened him toward the
last that the fellow's features and expression were slowly developing
in a way he didn't like, in a way that
wasn't human. He had a lot of talk about diet
and said Pickman must be abnormal and eccentric to the

(36:53):
last degree. I suppose you told Reid if you and
he had any correspondence over that he'd let Pickman's paintings
get on his nerves or harrow up his imagination. I
know I told him that myself then, But keep in
mind that I didn't drop Pickman for anything like this.

(37:15):
On the contrary, my admiration for him kept growing. For
that ghoul feeding was a tremendous achievement. As you know,
the Club wouldn't exhibit it, and the Museum of Fine
Arts wouldn't accept it as a gift. And I can
add that nobody would buy it. So Pickman had it
right in his house till he went. Now his father
has it in Salem. You know. Pickman comes of old

(37:39):
Salem stock and had a witch ancestor hanged in sixteen
ninety two. I got into the habit of calling on
Pickman quite often, especially after I began making notes for
a monograph on weird art. Probably it was his work
which put the idea into my head, and anyhow I
found him a mine of data and suggestions. When I

(38:00):
came to develop it. He showed me all the paintings
and drawings he had about, including some pen and ink
sketches that would I verily believe have got him kicked
out of the club if many of the members had
seen them. Before long, I was pretty nearly a devote
and would listen for hours like a schoolboy, to art

(38:21):
theories and philosophic speculations wild enough to qualify him for
the Danvers Asylum. My hero worship, coupled with the fact
that people generally were commencing to have less and less
to do with him, made him get very confidential with me,
and one evening he hinted that if I were fairly
close mouthed and none too squeamish, he might show me

(38:44):
something rather unusual, something a bit stronger than anything he
had in the house. You know, he said, there are
things that won't do for Newberry Street, things that are
out of place here, that can't be conceived here. Any How,
it's my business to catch the overtones of the soul,
and you won't find those in a parvenu set of

(39:06):
artificial streets on made land. Back Bay isn't Boston. It
isn't anything yet, because it's had no time to pick
up memories and attract local spirits. If there are any
ghosts here, they're the tame ghosts of a salt marsh
and a shallow cove. And I want human ghosts, the
ghosts of beings highly organized enough to have looked on

(39:29):
hell and known the meaning of what they saw. The
place for an artist to live is the North End.
If any esteta were sincere, he'd put up with the
slums for the sake of the massed traditions. God, man,
don't you realize that places like that weren't merely made,
but actually grew. Generation after generation lived and felled and

(39:51):
died there, and in days when people weren't afraid to
live and feel and die. Don't you know there was
a mill on Cops Hill in sixteen thirty, and that
half the present streets were laid out by sixteen fifty.
I can show you houses that have stood two centuries
and a half, and more houses that have witnessed what
would make a modern house crumble into powder. What do

(40:14):
moderns know of life and the forces behind it? You
called a Salem witchcraft a delusion, But I'll wage my
four times great grandmother could have told you things. They
hanged her on Gallows Hill with Cotton Mather looking sanctimoniously
on Mather. Damn him was afraid somebody might succeed in

(40:34):
kicking free of this accursed cage of monotony. I wish
someone had laid a spell on him, or sucked his
blood in the night. I can show you a house
he lived in, and I can show you another one
he was afraid to enter. In spite of all his
fine bold talk. He knew things he didn't dare put
into that stupid magnalia or that puerile wonders of the

(40:58):
invisible world? Do you know? The whole North End once
had a set of tunnels that kept certain people in
touch with each other's houses, and the burying ground and
the sea let them prosecute and persecute. Above ground things
went on every day that they couldn't reach, and voices
laughed at night that they couldn't place. Why man out

(41:21):
of ten surviving houses built before seventeen hundred and not moved,
since I'll wager that in eight I can show you
something queer in the cellar. There is hardly a month
that you don't read of workmen finding bricked up arches
and wells leading nowhere in this or that old place.
As it comes down you could see one near Henchman

(41:42):
Street from the elevated last year. There were witches and
what their spells summoned, Pirates and what they brought in
from the sea, smugglers, privateers, And I tell you people
knew how to live and how to enlarge the bounds
of life in the old times. This wasn't the old world.
A bold and wise man could know fuck and to

(42:04):
think of today in contrast with such peel pink brains
that even a club of supposed artists gets shutters and
convulsions if a picture goes beyond the feelings of a
Beacon Street tea table. The only saving grace of the
present is that it's too damned stupid to question the
past very closely? What do maps and records and guide

(42:27):
books really tell of the North End? Boh and a
guess I'll guarantee to lead you to thirty or forty
alleys and networks of alleys north of Prince Street that
aren't suspected by ten living beings outside of the foreigners
that swarm them. And what do those dagoes know of
their meaning? No, Thurber, these ancient places are dreaming gorgeously

(42:51):
and overflowing with wonder and terror and escapes from the commonplace.
And yet there's not a living soul to understand or
by them. Or rather, there's only one living soul, for
I haven't been digging around in the past for nothing.
See here, you're interested in this sort of thing. What

(43:13):
if I told you that I've got another studio up
there where I can catch the night spirit of antique
horror and paint things that I couldn't even think of
in Newberry Street. Naturally, I don't tell those cursed old
maids at the club with Reed damn him whispering, even
as it is, that I'm a sort of monster bound

(43:34):
down to Toboggan of reverse evolution. Yes, Thurber, I decided
long ago that one must paint terror as well as
beauty from life. So I did some exploring in places
where I had reason to know terror lives. I've got
a place that I don't believe three living Nordic men

(43:54):
besides myself have ever seen. It isn't so very far
from the elevator as distance goes, but it's centuries away
as the soul goes. I took it because of the
queer old brick well in the cellar, one of the
sort I told you about, the shacks almost tumbling down
so that nobody else would live there, And I'd hate

(44:17):
to tell you how little I pay for it. The
windows are boarded up, but I like that all the better,
since I don't want daylight for what I do. I
paint in the cellar where the inspiration is thickest, but
I have other rooms furnished on the ground floor. A
Sicilian owns it, and I've hired it under the name

(44:38):
of Peters. Now, if you're game, i'll take you there tonight.
I think you'd enjoy the pictures, for as I said,
I've let myself go a bit there. It's no vast tour.
I sometimes do it on foot, for I don't want
to attract attention with a taxi in such a place.
We can take the shuttle at the South station for

(44:59):
a battery s Street, and after that the walk isn't
much well. Elliott There wasn't much for me to do
after that harangue, but to keep myself from running. Instead
of walking for the first vacant cab we could sight,
we changed to the elevated at the South Station, and
at about twelve o'clock had climbed down the steps at

(45:21):
Battery Street and struck along the old waterfront past Constitution. Wharph.
I didn't keep track of the cross streets, and I
can't tell you which it was we turned up, but
I know it wasn't a greenough lane. When we did turn,
it was to climb through the deserted length of the
oldest and dirtiest alley I ever saw in my life,

(45:42):
with crumbling looking gables, broken small paned windows, and archaic
chimneys that stood out half disintegrated against the moonlit sky.
I don't believe there were three houses in sight that
hadn't been standing in Cotton Mathers time. Certainly I glimpsed
at least two with an overhang, and once I thought

(46:02):
I saw a peaked roofline of the almost forgotten pre
Gambrel type, though antiquarians tell us there are none left
in Boston. From that alley, which had a dim light.
We turned to the left into an equally silent and
still narrower alley with no light at all, and in
a minute made what I think was an obtuse angled

(46:24):
bend toward the right in the dark. Not long after this,
pickman produced a flashlight and revealed an antediluvian ten paneled
door that looked damnably worm eaten. Unlocking it, he ushered
me into a barren hallway with what was once splendid
dark oak paneling, simple of course, but thrillingly suggestive of

(46:47):
the times of Andros and Phipps in the Witchcraft. Then
he took me through a door on the left, lighted
an oil lamp, and told me to make myself at home. Now, Elliott,
I'm what the man in the street would call fairly
hard boiled, but I'll confess that what I saw on
the walls of that room gave me a bad turn.

(47:08):
They were his pictures, you know, the ones he couldn't
paint or even show in Newberry Street. And he was
right when he said he had let himself go here,
have another drink. I need one anyhow. There's no use
in my trying to tell you what they were like,
because the awful the blasphemous horror and the unbelievably loathsomeness

(47:33):
and moral fetter came from simple touches, quite beyond the
power of words to classify. There was none of the
exotic technique you see in Sydney Syme, none of the
trans Saturnian landscapes and lunar fungi that Clark Ashton Smith
uses to freeze the blood. The backgrounds were mostly old churchyards,

(47:56):
deep woods, cliffs by the sea, tunnels, ancient paneled rooms,
or simple vaults of masonry. CoP's Hill burying ground, which
could not be many blocks away from this very house,
was a favorite scene. The madness and monstrosity lay in
the figures in the foreground. For Pickman's morbid art was

(48:18):
pre eminently one of demonic portraiture. These figures were seldom
completely human, but often approached humanity in varying degrees. Most
of the bodies, while roughly bipedal, had a forward slumping
and a vaguely canine cast. The texture of the majority
was a kind of unpleasant rubberiness. I can see them now.

(48:42):
Their occupations, well, don't ask me to be too precise.
They were usually feeding. I won't say on what They
were sometimes shown in groups in cemeteries or underground passages,
and often appeared to be in battle over their prey,
or rather their treasure trove. And what damnable expressiveness. Pickman

(49:03):
sometimes gave these sightless faces of the carnal booty. Occasionally
the things were shown leaping through open windows at night,
or squatting on the chests of sleepers, worrying at their throats.
One canvas showed a ring of them baying about a
hanged witch on Gallows Hill, whose dead face held a

(49:25):
close kinship to theirs. But don't get the idea that
it was all this hideous business of theme and setting
which struck me faint. I'm not a three year old kid,
and I'd seen much like this before. It was the faces, Elliot,
those accursed faces that leered and slavered out of the
canvas with the very breath of life. By God, Man,

(49:49):
I verily believe they were alive. That nauseous wizard had
woken the fires of hell in pigment, and his brush
had been a nightmare spawning Wand give me that decanta, Eliot,
this one thing called the lesson heaven. Pity me that
I ever saw it listen. Can you fancy a squatting

(50:11):
circle of nameless dog like things in a churchyard teaching
a small child how to feed like themselves the price
of a changeling. I suppose you know the old myth
about how the weird people leave their spawns in cradles
and exchange for the human babes they steal. Pickman was
showing what happens to those stolen babes, how they grow up.

(50:34):
And then I began to see a hideous relationship in
the faces of the human and non human figures. He was,
in all his gradations of morbidity, between the frankly non
human and the degradingly human, establishing a sardonic linkage an evolution.
The dog things were developed from mortals, and no sooner

(50:57):
had I wondered what he made of their young as
left with mankind and the form of changelings. Then my
eye caught a picture embodying that very thought. It was
that of an ancient Puritan interior, a heavily beamed room
with lattice windows, a settle, a clumsy seventeenth century furniture,
with the family sitting about while the father read from

(51:19):
the scriptures. Every face but one showed nobility and reverence,
but that one reflected the mockery of the pit. It
was that of a young man in years, and no
doubt belonged to a supposed son of that pious father.
But in essence it was the kin of the unclean things.

(51:39):
It was their changeling, and in a spirit of supreme irony,
Pigman had given the features a very perceptible resemblance to
his own. By this time, Pickman had lighted a lamp
in an adjoining room and was politely holding open the
door for me, asking me if I would care to
see his modern studies. I hadn't been able to give

(52:01):
him much of my opinions. I was too speechless with
fright and loathing. But I think he fully understood and
felt highly complimented. And now I want to assure you again, Elliott,
that I am no molly coddler to scream anything which
shows a bit of departure from the usual. I'm middle
aged and decently sophisticated, and I guess you saw enough

(52:23):
of me in France to know I'm not easily knocked out.
Remember too, that i'd just about recovered my wind and
gotten used to those frightful pictures which turned colonial New
England into a kind of annex of Hell. Well, in
spite of all of this, that next room forced a
real scream out of me. I had to clutch at

(52:47):
the doorway to keep from keeling over. The other chamber
had shown a pack of ghouls and witches overrunning the
world of our forefathers, but this one brought the horror
right into our own daily life. Dad, how that man
could paint. There was a study called Subway Accident, in

(53:07):
which a flock of the vile things were clamoring up
from some unknown catacomb through a crack in the floor
of the Boylston Street subway and attacking a crowd of
people on the platform. Another showed a dance on CoP's
Hill among the tombs with the background of today. Then
there were any number of cellar views with monsters creeping
in through holes and rifts in the masonry and grinning

(53:30):
as they squatted behind barrels or furnaces and waited for
their first victim to descend the stairs. One disgusting canvas
seemed to depict a vast cross section of Beacon Hill
with ant like armies of the Mephitic monsters squeezing themselves
through burrows that honeycombed the ground. Dances in the modern

(53:51):
cemeteries were freely pictured. And another conception, somehow shocked me
more than all the rest. A scene in an unknown vault,
where schools of the beasts crowded about one who held
a very well known Boston guide book and was evidently
reading aloud. All were pointing to a certain passage, and
every face seemed so distorted with epileptic and reverberant laughter

(54:15):
that I almost thought I heard the fiend to sh echos.
The title of the picture was Holmes Lowell and Longfellow
lie buried in Mount Auburn. As I gradually steadied myself
and got readjusted to this second room of deviltry and morbidity,
I began to analyze some of the points in my
sickening loathing. In the first place, I said to myself,

(54:38):
these things repelled because of the utter inhumanity and callous
cruelty they showed in pigment. The Fellow must be a
relentless enemy of all mankind to take such glee in
the torture of brain and flesh, and the degradation of
the mortal tenement. In the second place, they terrified me
because of their very greatness. Was the art that convinced.

(55:01):
When we saw the pictures, we saw the daemons themselves
and were afraid of them. And the queer part was
that Pigman got none of his power from the use
of selectiveness or bizarrey. Nothing was blurred, distorted or conventionalized.
Outlines were sharp and lifelike, and details were almost painfully defined.

(55:23):
And the faces it was not any mere artists interpretation
that we saw. It was pandemonium itself, crystal clear in
stark objectivity. That was it. By heaven, the man was
not a fanaicist or romanticist at all. He did not
even try to give us the chuming, prismatic ephemera of dreams,

(55:44):
but coldly and sardonically reflected some stable, mechanistic and well
established horror world which he saw fully, brilliantly, squarely, and unfalteringly.
God knows what that world can be, or where he
ever glimpsed the blasphemous shapes that loped and trotted and

(56:05):
crawled through it. But whatever the baffling source of his images,
one thing was plain. Pittman was, in a very sense
in conception and in execution, a thorough, painstaking and almost
scientific realist. My host was now leading the way down
cellar to his actual studio, and I braced myself for

(56:29):
some hellish effects among the unfinished canvases. As we reached
the bottom of the damp stairs, he turned his flashlight
to a corner of the large open space at hand,
revealing the circular brick curb of what was evidently a
great well in the earthen floor. We walked nearer, and
I saw that it must be five feet across, with

(56:50):
walls a good foot thick, and some six inches above
the ground level solid work of the seventeenth century or
I was much mistaken that Pickman said was the kind
of thing he had been talking about, an aperture of
the network of tunnels that used to undermine the hill.
I noticed idly that it did not seem to be

(57:11):
bricked up, and that a heavy disk of wood formed
the apparent cover. Thinking of the things this well must
have been connected with, if Pickman's wild hints had not
been mere rhetoric, I shivered slightly, then turned to follow
him up a step and through a narrow door into
a room of fair size provided with a wooden floor

(57:32):
and furnished as a studio, and a subtlene gas outfit
gave the light necessary for work. The unfinished pictures on
easels or propped against the walls were as ghastly as
the finished ones upstairs, and showed the painstaking methods of
the artist. Scenes were blocked out with extreme care and

(57:52):
penciled guidelines told of the minute exactitude which Pickman used
in getting the right perspective and proportions. The man was great.
I say it even now, knowing as much as I do.
A large camera on a table excited my notice, and
Pickman told me that he used it in taking scenes
for backgrounds, so that he might paint them from photographs

(58:15):
in the studio instead of carding his outfit around the
town for this or that view. He thought a photograph
quite as good as an actual scene or model for
sustained work, and declared he employed them regularly. There was
something very disturbing about the nauseous sketches and half finished
monstrosities that leered around from every side of the room,

(58:37):
And when Pickman suddenly unveiled a huge canvas on the
side away from the light, I could not for the
life keep back a loud scream the second I had
emitted that night, it echoed and echoed through the dim
vaultings of that ancient and nitrous cellar, and I had
to choke back a flood of reaction that threatened to
burst out as physterical laughter. Merciful creator, elliot. But I

(59:01):
don't know how much was real and how much was
feverish fancy. It doesn't seem to me that Earth can
hold a dream like that. It was a colossal and
nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes, and it held in
bony claws a thing that had been a man, gnawing
at the head as a child nibbles in a stick
of candy. Its physician was a kind of crouch, and

(59:26):
as one looked, one felt at any moment it might
drop its present prey and seek a juicier morsel. But
damn at all. It wasn't even the fiendish subject that
made it such an immortal fountain head of all panic.
Not that, nor the dog face with its pointed ears,
bloodshot eyes, flat nose, and drooling lips. It wasn't the

(59:47):
scaly claws, nor the mold caked body, nor the half
hooved feet. None of these, though any one of them
might well have driven an excitable man to madness. It
was the technique, elliot, the cursed, the imfious, the unnatural technique.
As I am a living being, I never elsewhere saw

(01:00:09):
the actual breath of life so fused into a canvas.
The monster was there. It glared and gnawed and gnawed
and glared, And I knew that only a suspension of
nature's laws could ever let a man paint a thing
like that, without a model, without some glimpse of the
nether world, which no mortal unsold to the fiend has

(01:00:32):
ever had. Pinned with a thumbtack to a vacant part
of the canvas was a piece of paper, now badly
curled up, Probably, I thought, a photograph from which Pickman
meant to paint a background as hideous as the nightmare
it was to enhance. I reached out to uncurl and
look at it, when suddenly I saw Pickman start as

(01:00:52):
if shot. He'd been listening with peculiar intensity ever since
my shocked scream had waked unaccustomed echoes in the dark cellar,
and now he seemed struck with fright, which, though not
comparable to my own, had in it more of the
physical than of the spiritual. He drew a revolver and
motioned me to silence, then stepped out into the main

(01:01:13):
cellar and closed the door behind him. I think I
was paralyzed for an instant imitating Pickman's listening, I fancied
I heard a faint scurrying sound somewhere, and a series
of squeals or bleats in a direction I couldn't determine.
I thought of huge rats and shuddered. Then there came
a subdued sort of clatter, which somehow set me all

(01:01:36):
in goose flesh, A furtive, groping kind of clatter. Though
I can't attempt to convey what I mean in words.
It was like heavy wood falling on stone, or brick,
wood on brick. What did that make me think of?
It came again and louder. There was a vibration, as
if the wood had fallen farther than it had fallen before.

(01:02:00):
After that followed a sharp greeting noise, a shouted gibberish
from Pigman, and the deafening discharge of all six chambers
of a revolver fired spectacularly as a lion tamer might
fire in the air for effect, a muffled squeal or
squawk and a thud, then more wood and brick, grating,
a pause, and the opening of the door, at which

(01:02:21):
I'll confess I started violently. Pickman reappeared with his smoking weapon,
cursing the bloated rats that infested the ancient well. The
deuce knows what they eat thurber. He grinned for those
archaic tunnels touched graveyard and witched den and seacoast. But
whatever it is, they must have run short, for they
were devilish, anxious to get out. Your yelling stirred them up.

(01:02:45):
I fancy better be cautious in these old places. Our
rodent friends are the one drawback, though I sometimes think
they're a positive asset by way of atmosphere and color. Well, Elliot,
that was the of the night's adventure. Pickman had promised
to show me the place, and heaven knows he had
done it. He led me out of that tangle of

(01:03:08):
alleys in another direction, it seems, for when we sighted
a lamppost, we were in a half familiar street with
monotonous rows of mingled tenement blocks and old houses. Charter Street,
turned out to be, but I was too flustered to
notice just where we hit it. We were too late
for the elevated and walked back downtown through Hanover Street.

(01:03:29):
I remember that walk. We switched from Tremont up Beacon,
and Pickman left me at the corner of Joy, where
I turned off. I never spoke to him again. Why
did I drop him? Don't be impatient, wait till I
ring for coffee. We've had enough of the other stuff,
but I, for one need something. No, it wasn't the

(01:03:52):
paintings I saw in that place, though I'll swear they
were enough to get him ostracized in nine tenths at
the homes and clubs of Boston. And I guess you
won't wonder now why I have to steer clear of
subways and cellars. It was something I found in my
coat the next morning, you know, the curled up paper

(01:04:14):
tacked to that frightful canvas in the cellar. The thing
I thought was a photograph of some scene he meant
to use as a background for that monster. That last
scare had come while I was reaching to uncurl it,
and it seems I had vacantly crumpled it into my pocket.
But here's the coffee ticket, black Elliot, If you're wise, yes,

(01:04:35):
that paper was the reason I dropped Pickman. Richard Upton Pickman,
the greatest artist I have ever known, and the foulest
being that ever leaped the bounds of life into the
pits of myth and madness. Elliott old Read was right.
He wasn't strictly human either. He was born in strange shadow,

(01:04:58):
or he'd found a way to unlock the forbidden gait.
It's all the same now, for he's gone back into
the fabulous darkness he loved to haunt. Here. Let's have
the chandelier going. Don't ask me to explain or even
conjecture about what I burned. Don't ask me either, what

(01:05:19):
lay behind that mole like scrambling Pickman was so keen
to pass off as rats. There are secrets, you know,
which might have come down from old Salem times, and
Cotton Mather tells even stranger things. You know, how damned
lifelike Pickman's paintings were. How we all wondered how he
got those faces. Well, that paper wasn't a photograph of

(01:05:44):
any background. After all. What it showed was simply the
monstrous being he was painting on that awful canvas. It
was the model he was using, and its background was
merely the wall of the cellar's studio minute detail, but
by God Iliot, it was a photograph from life. Thanks

(01:06:19):
for listening. If you like the show, please share it
with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories,
true crime, monsters, or unsolved mysteries like you do. The
Monkey's Fall is by W. W. Jacobs and it's in
the public domain. Pickman's Model was written by HP Lovecraft.
Weird Darkness is a registered trademark copyright Weird Darkness. And

(01:06:43):
now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave
you with a little light first, John three, verse eighteen.
Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue,
but with actions and in truth and a final but
not all storms come to disrupt your life. Some come

(01:07:05):
to clear your path. I'm Daryn Marler. Thanks for joining
me in the Weird Darkness.

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