Encore: Origins of Horror Tropes

Horror doesn’t hand down commandments from a mountaintop; it scavenges from headlines, folklore, and fear, then welds those scraps into images we can’t shake. We open the vault on a Halloween favorite to map where the genre’s “rules” actually come from—Lover’s Lane, masks without faces, babysitters on the edge, clowns that cross lines, and formless things that fall from the sky. The trail starts with the Texarkana Moonlight Murders and the media-born “Phantom Killer,” threads through the brutal, under-told case of Janet Christman and the babysitter myth it spawned, and crystallizes in Halloween’s The Shape: a mask that erases humanity so audiences can bear the unbearable. From there, we unpack how Ed Gein’s grotesque artifacts overwhelmed facts to seed Psycho, Texas Chainsaw, and Silence of the Lambs, proving horror borrows objects and builds archetypes. And that's just scratching the surface.

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Hey there, War Rockets.

(00:01):
We thought we'd open up thevault for one of our very first
Halloween installments, TheOrigin of Horror Tropes.
This is back when we were weepups, a little more raw and a
little less organized.
October 31st, Halloween itselfof 2021.
So without further ado,Horigons.
Enjoy.

SPEAKER_01 (00:20):
Trigger warning.
The following podcast containsmaterial that some may find
disturbing and are not suitablefor all audiences.
Instances of violence, sexualassault, murder, and further
loss of life are discussed.
Yeah, it's like there's onlyseven stories you can tell, and
one of them is probably this isDispatch Ajax.

(01:29):
I'm your host, Jake, and this ismy co-host.

SPEAKER_00 (01:34):
Oh, I yeah, Skip.

SPEAKER_01 (01:36):
Yeah, he he meant to talk, but he didn't.

SPEAKER_00 (01:39):
So I I was asleep.
The Dulcet Tones.
Jake Nelson lulled me intoslumber.

SPEAKER_01 (01:45):
It's ASMR Dispatch Ajax.
Let's have let's have a sleepylittle podcast today.
Just you and me.

SPEAKER_00 (01:56):
I think it's interesting that you categorize
yourself as a fellow listenersince you're the host of the
show.

SPEAKER_01 (02:02):
We're all listeners, aren't we, folks?
Just happy little listeners,just walk around doing the
dishes, listening to sleepylittle podcasts, huh?
Feels good, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_03 (02:14):
It's the Bob Ross podcast.

SPEAKER_01 (02:17):
Now we're gonna do a little bit here.
Just put a happy little bit inthere.
Oh, it's gonna be f full oflaughs.
I thought it would be fun to Canwe actually record a different
one?
Because that's that's weird.
That was a weird thing I did.
There's this boy named Skip.
I met him 15 years ago.

(02:37):
I was told there was nothingleft.
No reason, no conscience, nounderstanding.
Even the most rudimentary senseof life or death, good or evil,
right or wrong.
I met this six-year-old childwith this blind, pale,
emotionless face, and theblackest eyes.

(02:58):
The devil's eyes.
I spent eight years trying toreach him, and then another
seven trying to keep him lockedup before I realized what was
living behind those boys' eyeswas purely and simply evil.

SPEAKER_00 (03:11):
It's incredible too, because I mean we met in
college, so uh the fact that Iwas a six-year-old and I always
thought it was like a DoogieHauser kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03 (03:20):
Um Yeah, right.
Which is also a horror.

SPEAKER_02 (03:23):
Yeah, well, you know, if if if Doogie like held
a knife to somebody's throat,like Chucky, and made him like
get accepted to college.

SPEAKER_03 (03:33):
Speaking of Chucky, did you know that Chucky's
slightly based off a real story?
I thought it was just based onthat Twilight Zone episode.

SPEAKER_00 (03:41):
No, it's there's uh Telly Savalas.

SPEAKER_01 (03:45):
Who loves your baby?

SPEAKER_00 (03:46):
Right?

SPEAKER_01 (03:47):
No, that's No, I I know it's it's a great Twilight
Zone episode.
Uh episode.
Uh, what was that dolly's name?

SPEAKER_00 (03:54):
Jesus, the doll's not the villain.

SPEAKER_01 (03:56):
Little Polly Shore?

SPEAKER_03 (04:00):
The dolly.
Little Polly Shore.
It's little Polly Shore.
The wheels is gonna kill ya.

SPEAKER_00 (04:09):
Child's play is so brain dead.
The doll's just protecting thelittle girl from the abusive
father.

SPEAKER_01 (04:15):
Yes, yeah.
Apparently, this is uh there wasa doll in the early 1900s that
was supposedly haunted, and allthe people who received the doll
uh would wind up with grislydeaths, and then they they
stopped, they took it away, andit's been locked up ever since.

SPEAKER_03 (04:36):
Took it to doll jail.

SPEAKER_02 (04:39):
That doll is what we called in the prison system a
bitch.

SPEAKER_00 (04:43):
So Roger Ebert wrote this too, right?

SPEAKER_02 (04:46):
One day in a fit of rage, he cut out the bitch's
eyes.

SPEAKER_03 (04:52):
Like a doll's eyes.
Ah, the great circle of dollhorror life.
Jaws to Halloween to TwilightZone to Chucky.

SPEAKER_01 (05:02):
Um, so I married an axe murderer thrown in there.

SPEAKER_00 (05:05):
Hmm, that's right.
Yep.
Yep.
This is the cycle of life.

SPEAKER_01 (05:09):
Where's Salt and John when you need him?

SPEAKER_00 (05:13):
You know, I say that constantly.
Well, so it occurred to me thatuh, you know, and not by me, I
mean uh everyone who's ever seena horror movie, that they all
share similar tropes.
A lot of tropes areera-specific.
Um, you know, you had the 50saerotropes and the 70s
aerotropes and the 80s and 90saerotropes, which are all vastly
different from each other, but alot of them share common

(05:34):
ancestry.
So we thought we'd uh break downthis is Jake, by the way.
Wait, uh you didn't ever No,you're you're Skip.
You're Skip talking.
I'm Jake.
You said my name, though.
Yeah, but you're evil.
That's why you need to know.
I mean, you have to have aprotagonist and an antagonist,
right?
Yeah, that's uh that's I'm Skip,and this is the shape.

(05:54):
I'm the final girl in thisepisode.
So we're gonna explore some ofthe uh origins, some of these
tropes, because slashersobviously were a thing long
before Halloween, but Halloweenkind of like perfected the
model, I guess you could say.

SPEAKER_01 (06:09):
Well, there's I think taking some of those
elements from other films andcementing them to then that
everything is built off ofsince.
Kind of connecting the dots in alot of ways.
Taking stuff, you know, that yousaw in giallo horror films of
the of Italy in the in the 60s,and then you know, your peeping

(06:30):
tom and your psycho and stufffrom like Black Christmas or
Texas Chainsaw, The Town ThatDreaded Sundown, and then kind
of solidifying them, and that itbecame much more palatable and
marketable.

SPEAKER_00 (06:44):
If you're a certain age, especially, you kind of
intuitively get it.
The crazy thing, I think, with alot of these horror tropes that
span a diverse number and typeof film actually come from not
only real events, but a verylimited number of real events.
And their staying power andtheir like I think sometimes

(07:05):
it's coincidental because itplays on fears that we have as a
society, and sometimes it's itcomes from the fact that these
were real events, whether yourealize it or not.
Because it's sort of in like thecollective unconscious, the
zeitgeist of the of society.
Specifically, we discussed thefilm The Town of Dreaded
Sundown, which is a slasherfilm, technically, but it's

(07:25):
based on a true story.
The Texar Canon and MoonlightMurder, which were real, and
kind of created the slashercharacter that we know, like
Michael Myers or Jason.
It was based on an actual serialkilling spree in the late 1940s,
where a killer wore a mask, hadsort of like a persona that was
created by the media, and killedpeople in really, really brutal

(07:46):
ways that were kind of copiedlater by people like Son of Sam,
Ted Bundy to a certain extent.
So the perpetrator of theMoonlight Murders was a man
known as the Phantom Killer.
And he attacked at least eightpeople within ten weeks, and he
killed five of them.
The first two victims heattacked got away.
Now the interesting thing aboutthis to me is we all know the

(08:08):
trope of it's the people thattransgress whatever moral
institutions we have are usuallythe ones that die, right?
So if you have sex in a movie,you die.
If you're out too late, you die.
Alcohol or drug use?
Sure.
Usually that means you'redoomed.
If you're making uh fakepassports?
Yeah, fake vaccine passports.

(08:29):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (08:29):
Oh, could we do a slasher film where we're just
killing anti-vaxxers?

SPEAKER_00 (08:33):
Yeah, totally.
There was this weird switchoverbeforehand.
And there are too many horrortropes for us to go into
completely in this episode, butsome of the main ones we're
sticking with are.
If you if you look back, youthink about a movie like um The
Blob, for instance.
Yes.
Which is a you know, popcorn,big group, big horrible popcorn

(08:54):
flag.
I mean not horrible, thehorrifying popcorn flag.

SPEAKER_03 (08:56):
It was atrocious.
It's actually a great movie.

SPEAKER_00 (08:59):
Well, this well, then you have the sequ the
remake, boy.
Um it's one of the first timesthat you actually have teenagers
as the main characters.
Because before that you had likesci-fi horror monster movies and
things like that, and thenusually the adults, a scientist,
or you'd look at something likeuh the the thing from another
world, you know, them Invasionof the Body Snatchers, Invasion

(09:21):
of the Body Snatchers, Day ofthe Triffids.
Yeah, it's all adults andscientists, usually, right?
Because they're the only oneswho explain what's going on.
But the blob is one of the firsttimes that you actually see
teenagers as like the mainprotagonists.
They're the only ones who knowwhat's going on.
And it's the adults who won'tlisten to them.
Because that's essentially aboutthe time when teenagers became a

(09:42):
thing.
Yeah.
Before a certain era, you were akid or you were an adult.
That's it.
There's no in between.
And then when teenagers became ademographic, and especially
after World War II, when theybecame a demographic that had
money to spend, and startedactually pushing pop culture,
like music and fashion,basically spending money and

(10:04):
creating the cultural zeitgeist,that's when you see a shift.
Oh, the the 50s teenager stuff,like the uh you know, rebel
without a cause era, like, youknow, we're teens and we're
whatever, screw society.
And then, you know, that ofcourse becoming like part of a
moral panic that causes themovies to reflect why they
should be punished for thethings that they do.

(10:25):
That ironic Cold War thing whereit was screw communism, like,
oh, that's all about fitting inand conformity.
Uh, but then like everythingthat America did was about
fitting in and conformity andbrainwashing and the entire
decade of the 50s.

SPEAKER_01 (10:39):
Everyone could be an individual, and as far as Leave
to Beaver would allow it.

SPEAKER_00 (10:43):
Right, yeah, exactly I mean look at those hygiene
films and like the film reelsabout etiquette.
That's some straight upbrainwashing, the kind of thing
that they would accuse theSoviet Union of doing.
So then you have you haveteenagers, for the first time
being like not just sidecharacters or reactionary
characters, but actually themain characters, starting around
the blob, which is in 58.

(11:05):
Then, and even those sci-fihorror monster movies before
that, you always had kids makingout in a car, left vulnerable to
attack from this whatevermonster that came out of the
woods, or whatever.
That was a trope that was usedquite often, and it's still
parodied today to whateverdegree.
But that wasn't really acontemporary narrative then.

(11:27):
But that trope appeared infilms, but the reason it stuck
in horror movies was because ofan actual case of serial murder
in the Moonlight Murders.
Because most of the PhantomKiller's kills took place in
people's cars, Lover's Lane typemurders, where two teenagers or

(11:47):
young people in general andtheir companions parked to make
out or whatever, and of course,then are attacked.
In the case of the first twovictims, they were not killed,
they actually live.
But that's what sets the stagefor that.
And of course, then people kindof run with that and turn it
into a moral panic stickingpoint, which America always does
for some idiot reason, like withsex or drugs or whatever they

(12:10):
think Satanism actually is.
Because it's not really a thing.
There really are no Satanists,they're just kind of
libertarians.

SPEAKER_03 (12:17):
Well, hmm.

SPEAKER_00 (12:19):
There are Satanists.
There are no actual Yeah, butnot like really that really
believe the Narc War whatever.

SPEAKER_01 (12:26):
I'm sure there are some that see it as more than
just a figurehead of theircultural idealism.
The like the Satanists who arelike kidnapping kids and like,
you know, the reason for satanicpanic in the 70s, that's that's
not a thing.

SPEAKER_00 (12:43):
In the 80s, yeah.
No, it never happened.
Other than the currentDemocratic Party, obviously, you
know.
Oh, of course.
Obviously, uh no, because I'veread the Protocols of the Elders
of Zion, so obviously I knowit's true.
Basically, between February22nd, 1946, and May 3rd, 1946,
there was a series of attacks bythe Phantom Killer.

(13:03):
First two victims, Jimmy Hollisand Mary Larry, lived.

SPEAKER_01 (13:09):
Alright, I just have Mary Larry.

SPEAKER_00 (13:12):
M-A-R-Y, L-A-R-E-Y.

SPEAKER_01 (13:15):
Who would do that to a child?

SPEAKER_00 (13:18):
I know! It's terrible.
Mary Larry.
I always said if we had a kid,we could never name it with a
vowel that sounded like Y.
Because like my mom, her namewas Terry.
She was Teresa.
And so she started going by TJwhen she married my father
because it'd be Terry Harvey.
And that sounds awful.
It's not good.

SPEAKER_01 (13:37):
But the the true rhyming of a of a name, that's
you just can't do that.
You can't do that.

SPEAKER_00 (13:43):
You don't do like Jake Lake, you know, or or Barry
Harry.
Actually, that sounds kind ofcool.
Jake Lake kind of sounds cool.
Uh like a hard-boiled detective.

SPEAKER_02 (13:55):
Uh Jake Lake took you to the lake and uh he he had
his way with you.

SPEAKER_00 (13:59):
Well, see, if you're like hanging out with a dude
named Jake Lake, do not go tothe lake with him.
That's what I'm saying.
Either he's really, really lame,he's obsessed with the lake
because that's his name, or he'sgoing to kill you.
I mean, there's no two way,there's no two ways about it.

SPEAKER_01 (14:13):
But I mean he's he's very attractive.
So maybe it's worth it eitherway.

SPEAKER_03 (14:18):
Projecting much.
Um he's also the star of thefootball team, and he gets
really good grades.
He's really hunky, and everyonelikes he's got a lot of friends.
His pants are really tight andit's nice.

SPEAKER_00 (14:32):
We're getting into different territory with that.
So uh those two survived, andtheir their account is horrible.
It's a it's a really harrowingtale.
It's really awful.
It involves sexual assault andattempted murder.
Um, if I remember right, JimmyHollis suffered multiple skull
fractures and was hospitalizedfor weeks.

(14:53):
The first actual double murderwas Richard Griffin and Polly
Ann Moore four weeks later.
Then there was a series ofsuccessive ones, but most of
them were either in a car orthey were a couple of them were
in their houses, and when hestarted escalating.
But this is where you start tosee a lot of these tropes take
shape.
So a lot of the whole like moralpanic stuff about teenagers or

(15:16):
young people in cars, likepossibly doing something
unsavory, being killed as aresult, starts to take shape
because of these events.
And then other tropes, based onhow these murders escalated,
started to form.
One of the double murders, or atleast attempted murders, from
Moonlight Murders, happened onuh Friday, May 3, 1946, shortly

(15:38):
before 9 p.m.
Virgil Starks, a blue-collardude, who had a uh 500 acre farm
in Texarkana, sat after work,listening to the radio.
While his wife is in herbedroom, lying on the bed in her
nightgown, she heard somethingin the backyard and asked Virgil
to turn down the radio.
Seconds later, while Virgil wasreading the newspaper, two shots
were fired into the back of hishead from a closed double window

(16:01):
three feet away.
So he stalked them outside theirwindow, saw their routine, and
planned a murder accordingly.
Katie didn't hear the gunshots,but she did hear the sound of
breaking glass, because it wouldhave been broke plate glass back
then.
She thought that Virgil haddropped something, so she went
to investigate.
When she came into the doorwayof the living room, she saw

(16:22):
Virgil stand up and thensuddenly slumped back into his
chair.
Yeah.
She saw blood, ran to him andlifted up his head, and then
realized he was already dead.
The second shot killed himinstantly.
And they only had a hand crankphone, so she's trying to charge
the phone so that she can callthe police, and she only gets

(16:43):
two cranks in before she shottwice in the face from the same
wind.
One bullet entered her rightcheek and exited her left ear.
The other went in just below herlip, broke her jaw, knocked out
several teeth, and then lodgedunder her tongue.
She managed to get to her feet,got a gun.
Wow.
Yeah, managed to run and find agun, but couldn't defend herself

(17:07):
because she had too much bloodin her eyes.
Which is rough.
Yeah.
So then she hears the screen onthe back porch door being torn
open by the killer.
She assumed she was going todie.
So she did her best to staggerto her bedroom to leave a note
so that someone would know whathappened.
So the killer ran back into theto the back of the house and

(17:28):
made his way up the stairs, intothe side screen porch, and then
through the back door.
She heard him coming through thekitchen window, so she turned
around and ran through thedining room, through the
bedroom, down the hallway, intoanother bedroom, and then into
the living room and out thefront door.
And we know all of this, notjust from the story, but she

(17:49):
left a trail of blood throughthe entire house, which was easy
to follow.
Yeah.
Uh oh, in one account, it wasreferred to as a virtual river
of blood and teeth.
That's fun.
So she was barefoot and still inher nightgown, she ran across
the street to her sister andbrother-in-law's house, but no

(18:10):
one was home.
So she ran fifty more yards to aneighbor's house.
He finally entered the door.
She said Virgil's dead, and thencollapsed.
The neighbor shot his rifle intothe air to get everyone's
attention, and then anotherneighbor went to get his car,
and the whole family took Katieto the hospital, and then she

(18:32):
was so delirious that and hadbeen shot in the mouth.
She felt guilty for for needinghelp and gave one of her gold
teeth to her rescuers because inher delirium thought that that
would be appropriate payment.

SPEAKER_01 (18:46):
Okay.

SPEAKER_00 (18:46):
We got a lot going on here.
So, like, she had lost a lot ofblood, but her heart rate
apparently remained normal, andshe was thankfully stabilized in
the hospital and was and wasquestioned by the sheriff.
Of course, the newspapers printa story.
The headline was Murder RockCity Again, Farmer Slain, Wife
Wounded.
The sheriff came back and onceagain tried to get more

(19:09):
information, and she discountedalmost everything that was
written in the article becauseit was just clickbait garbage.
So apparently they had printedthat her husband Virgil had
heard a car outside their homeseveral nights in a row,
stalking them.
Kind of like Michael does inHalloween with Lori.
But apparently that wasn't true.
You just see from this oneinstance that a lot of these

(19:29):
tropes that you will see inmovies again and again and
again, kind of come from oneactual event, an event that was
so crazy that you could pull adozen different tropes.
What are the odds of all of thishappening, right?
You start putting thesedifferent tropes together during
the moral panic of theconservative era in 1980s.
Probably in the late 70s, intothe 80s.

unknown (19:49):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (19:50):
Yeah.
Young people making out in theircar, stalked by some serial
slasher, uh, you know, theattempted murder, the stalking
with their house, and then the80s galvanizes this.
Well, this happened because theywere doing something immoral.
They were doing something thatgoes against social norms by
having sex outside of marriageor whatever.

(20:10):
You put these things together aswhat I think society thinks is
cautionary tales about morality,but in fact had nothing to do
with each other or anythingelse.
One person created all thesecrazy circumstances.

SPEAKER_01 (20:24):
It's kind of a an auroboros of reality and
fiction, you know, because youhave that happen, which then
leads to stories about it, whichthen leads to urban legends,
which then bleeds into otherpeople, you know, like uh Son of
Sam doing a similar kind ofthing, you know, or um Bundy.
Um although Bundy didn't go upto people's cars and kill them,

(20:47):
stalk people in their houses.
He did it at Sorordi House inFlorida.
That version isn't necessarilywhat he's known for.
Much more of a a smoothcriminal, I think, is the idea
of Ted Bundy rather than aslasher vibe.

SPEAKER_00 (21:04):
Which is funny, because like is in reality, but
yeah, his archetype isn't that.

SPEAKER_01 (21:09):
Yeah, I mean the the version like uh a son of Sam or
uh a zodiac killer, those areseen, I think, differently than
uh Ted Bundy is.
Um but you kind of have those,and those lead to more things in
pop culture, which then you knowit's kind of the um the scream
line.
Don't blame the movies.
Uh movies don't create psychos,movies make psychos more

(21:31):
creative.

SPEAKER_00 (21:32):
Great line.
It's a fascinating thing.

SPEAKER_01 (21:33):
It is.
That's why both the real casesand the fictional cases pull us
into them, you know, the thesalacious nature of the outline
of sex, you know, beingimprinted on them, the ability
for anybody to be attacked bythese driven maniacs.
Everyone can put themselves intothat situation, which is much

(21:54):
different than a giant antcoming after you.

SPEAKER_00 (21:58):
When I was living in Oregon walking Starbuck one day,
I actually saw a guy that had atruck with a vanity license
plate that said Bundy.
An Oregon license plate thatsays Bundy.
Seems a little tone-deaf,doesn't it?
I mean one would think.
Because it's either Ted Bundy orit's that crazy separatist

(22:18):
family.
Oh yeah.
Either way, that's not a goodthing to have.
In this vein that helpedcontribute to this trope,
another actual event thatinspired a lot of different
stuff.
I have a personal tie to thisbecause I I've lived where this
happened for 15 years.
I know people that live on thisstreet, and you'd be surprised

(22:39):
at how many tropes come from themurder of Janet Crispin.
Janet Christman was born inMarch 1936 in Boonville,
Missouri, closer to the riverwhere the University of Missouri
is.
Janet's parents owned Ernie'sCafe, where you have eaten with
me, right next to the comic bookstore.
Oh, the um the the diner, right?

(22:59):
Yep.
Fascinating.
Yeah, so that's a weird one.
Poor Janet was a babysitter.
On the night of March 18th,1950, there was a bad storm with
heavy wind and rain and sleet.
The temperatures had dropped tothe mid-twenties, and not a lot
of people were going out, butthere was an eighth grade party
that night.
Janet didn't go because someonehad called her family, asking

(23:24):
for her to babysit athree-year-old, the son of Mr
and Mrs.
Ed Romack.
She told everyone she needed themoney to make the last payments
on a suit that she had boughtfor Easter.
And their home was on Stewart,which at that point was sort of
like on the city limit line, butnow it's basically right
downtown.
Not right downtown, but close todowntown.

(23:45):
Ed Romack, who was leaving to goplay cards at 7 50 PM, showed
Janet the loaded shotgun that hekept by his front door and
instructed her on how to use itif something ever happened.
And basically it was just toanswer the door with it.
Greg, the three year old she waswatching, slept with the radio
turned on, so he would not haveheard anything that was about to

(24:06):
happen.
Now, in the middle of the night,Officer Ray McCowan, who was on
duty with the Columbia PD,answered a phone call, and the
only words that came out inscreaming panic were come quick.
He tried to get moreinformation, but the line was
cut, and all he got was a dialtone.
And he knew that it was a prankbased on the terror in her

(24:28):
voice.
So he waited for the phone toring again because he didn't
have any way to trace where itcame from or who it was.
So all he could do was wait tohopefully call back.
Soon after that, Thoromax calledfrom the Moon Valley Villa,
where she, her husband, and theMuellers were all playing cards,
just to check on Janet and seehow the night went, but nobody
answered.
But it was late, so they weren'tworried about it, presuming that

(24:50):
she had just fallen asleep.
They stayed there for a few morehours, and about 135 AM they
returned home, noticed that theporch light was still on, and
the front window blinds werewide open, which was unusual and
kind of goes against theinstructions they had given her.
Ed tried to unlock the door, butrealized it was already
unlocked.
That's where they found thirteenyear old Janet Chrisman on the

(25:10):
floor of the living room in apool of blood.
She had been sexually assaultedand murdered.
She had a head wound from ablunt instrument and multiple
puncture wounds from amechanical pencil, plus a cord
from an electric iron that hadbeen snipped with a pair of
scissors around her neck as agarot, and a few feet away they
could see the phone dangling offthe hook.

(25:31):
So Ed Romack called the police,and the police came out.
So Janet Chrisman, she onlyweighed about 135 pounds, and
police knew immediately that shehad put up a real fight.
They could find evidence of astruggle that went from the
kitchen to the hallway and tothe living room in front of the
house.
There were wounds on both sidesof her head, including puncture
marks that appeared to have beenmade by mechanical pencil, and

(25:53):
her face appeared to have beenscratched.
And the sheriff's deputy whoinvestigated the scene thought
that things were a littleconvenient because it was
strange that she'd been killedwith an instrument that was
hidden in the house.
The iron where the cord was cutfrom wasn't in plain sight, and
the gun was still by the frontdoor.

(26:14):
So they suspected whoever it waslikely knew the house, knew the
family, knew Janet Christman,and knew the routine that they
used when they left the house.
It seems that whoever killed herknew she would be there alone.

(26:36):
Or knew that that child wasgoing to be asleep with the
radio on.
And since she was instructedvery specifically to only answer
the door with the shotgun, whichhadn't been touched, either she
knew the person who had knockedon the front door, or that
person didn't go to the frontdoor and distracted her, and was

(26:58):
somehow able to unlock the frontdoor and get in without a
struggle.
Because the door was not broken,the lock wasn't broken, it was
unlocked.
But the shotgun was still there.
Untouched.
So the killer was familiar withthe entire situation, which
means it was somebody that thefamily most likely knew and knew
intimately.

(27:18):
Also disturbingly, there hadbeen another similar murder in
1946.
That was a bad year.
Two blocks away from the Romachome, a girl named uh Mary Lou
Jenkins was strangled with anextension cord.
They didn't think that wassimilar?

SPEAKER_01 (27:35):
They didn't put those two and two together?

SPEAKER_00 (27:38):
Now, CPD, in all of their glorious wisdom that
stands to this day, did charge ablack janitor at the university
who was uh mentally challenged,uh about 70.
They coerced a confession fromhim, they prosecuted him, he
recanted, they refused toretract it, and he was executed.

(28:02):
So that's fun.
What was his name?
Uh Floyd Cochran.
Floyd Cochrane.
They blamed it on FloydCochrane.
And he'd done both killings.
And basically, there so therehad been reports of PP Tom
incidents, a string of rapes,all in that just couple block

(28:23):
radius over that four-year spanbetween 46 and 50.
They blamed it all on FloydCochran.
So everyone involved in the coldcase now obviously it's reopened
as a cold case.
And you know, it has been for along time because it was very
obvious that that man committedno crime.

SPEAKER_01 (28:41):
It was piling on the tragedy.

SPEAKER_00 (28:43):
Even though they had blamed the whole thing on at
least the prosecutor had blamedthe whole thing on Floyd
Cochran, the police had focusedon another suspect, Robert
Mueller.
Weird.
I'm surprised this hasn't comeup in QAnon circles.
This could be Mueller.

(29:03):
I don't really know, but it'sit's spelled the same as Robert
Mueller.
Mueller.
Mueller.
He was actually a family friend,and he had been into the house
on multiple occasions.
Um according to testimony thatwas introduced to a grand jury
later on, uh Mrs.
Romack said that she feltfrightened and uncomfortable

(29:24):
around Mueller and said he hadrun his hand across her dress
two days before when they werealone.
Basically top to feel.
Right.
And Ed Romack also testifiedthat Mueller had once convinced
him that he admired Crispin'squote well developed form.

SPEAKER_01 (29:46):
That's what all non creepy people say.

SPEAKER_00 (29:49):
Right.
So also the night of her murder,he had called the Romac's house
asking Janet to babysit for him.
But they they told him Told himthat she was babysitting at the
Romax.
So he knew where she would be,that she'd be alone, what house
it was, and the layout of thehouse.

(30:12):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then he also testified infront of a grand jury that
Muller at one point said to him,I might have done it and then
forgot about it.
What does that mean?
Pretty fing damning to me.
And yet they convicted andexecuted another man.
On top of that, Muller carried amechanical pencil that had a

(30:34):
round end that generally matchedthe puncture wound on Chrisman's
head.
Come on.
Yeah.
Um but then there was a bunch ofuh legal stuff.
They had given him a liedetector test without alerting
his attorney.
So that was problematic.
They didn't have an arrestwarrant for him, but they still
took him into custody and thentook him to Jeff City to get the

(30:56):
lie detector test, which that'salso a problem.
Uh, because he was under theimpression he was under arrest.
Um on May 24th, the grand jurydid not return an indictment.
Instead, they just criticizedthe police and the sheriff's
departments for not workingtogether.
So uh the report said, quote, inthe opinion of the grand jurors,

(31:19):
much of the effort expended hasbeen wasted and dissipated
because of the failure tocorrelate the information
available.
So basically, they knew betterand they still f ⁇ ed it up.
It goes on to say that itblames, quote, petty jealousies
and it fueled a quote almostcomplete lack of cooperation
between various law enforcementagencies.

(31:41):
So that's good.
So immediately afterward,Mueller joined the Air Force and
moved away.
He tried to sue the uh sheriffsand police departments for
violating his civil rights, butlost the case, and died a free
man in 2006 at the age of 83.

(32:02):
Yeah, it's a terrible story.
It's a really, really, really,really horrible story.
Yeah.
And obviously nothing will evercome of it.
They will never figure it out,I'm sure, since everyone
involved is dead.
But this this horrible andtragic event that's so brutal
and gruesome, you can see wherethe horror tropes come from
here.

SPEAKER_01 (32:22):
Yeah, I mean that's that's a distinct starting point
for the kind of the legend ofthe the babysitter you know
being attacked, you know,oftentimes stalked and toyed
with by the perpetrator, whichyou've seen in many things like
Black Christmas or The Sitter,or distinctly When a Stranger

(32:43):
Calls in 1979.
Um that's when you get, youknow, the have you have you
checked on the children, thecall is coming from inside the
house.
In inside the house, yeah.
Which is a natural evolution ofthat.
But you know, a lot of thosethings, it's often again some
roving sociopath who's a trickeror to yeah, yeah, it's out to to

(33:07):
kill for for killing sake, butunlike you know, most actual
human tragedies, it's mostlypeople that they know.
But it's a terrifying conceptbecause it's it's usually a uh
again, a babysitter tends to be,you know, someone a teenage or
you know, in their youngtwenties, uh usually alone by

(33:28):
themselves in a somewhatunfamiliar place.
They are put in the possessionand protective uh stance of even
younger innocents.
So it's it's an easy target forolder, stronger people to attack
and play with.

(33:49):
And it's easy to put yourself inthat spot because we've all,
again, been in a similarsituation.

SPEAKER_00 (33:57):
Yeah, I mean, and of course, yeah, this inspired
directly all of those troops,but also that's the basically
the story of Lori Strode inHalloween.
Yeah.
She didn't go out, she was askedto babysit, she was being
stalked by a guy who figured outthe routine, where she was gonna
be.
Um I mean, it's just Lori, butLori happened to live.

(34:17):
That's the only real differencethere.
Um so I mean it's like the it'skind of the archetypal story in
that sense.
Like all almost all slashers,like in amalgamation with other
tropes, come from this onestory.
And it's it's really sad.
Um it happened.
Uh, and I think that's one ofthe reasons it still rings true
to people today.
It still feeds into these primalfears because uh, you know,

(34:37):
whether they consciously knowthat it was real or not, they
could see how it could be.
And and it's you get acharacter, a killer in a horror
movie that's something like theshape Michael Myers, or he's
like Jason for he's it's usuallybecause they can't imagine real
people doing this.
And it has to be something sortof disembodied and like a force

(35:01):
of nature that because howthat's one reason why you you
put the the mask on them.

SPEAKER_01 (35:07):
It takes away any humanity that they have.

SPEAKER_00 (35:10):
Right.
Which is another interestingpoint because like the reason
that the mask thing evolved wasbecause of the phantom killer
who wore a mask during thesekillings.
And yet the reason it stuck wasfor that reason.
There's a real human tendency todehumanize a killer like that.

(35:30):
Putting a mask on them is easierfor them to deal with.
It's scary, it's even more scarythan a real person.
But at the same time, they're soscared that it could be a real
person that they have to detachlike that.
It comes from a real place.
I mean, and and yeah.
But that's that's a heavy one.

SPEAKER_01 (35:48):
But uh, real events lead to urban legends, which
then lead to tropes from thosebecause they they stick with
you.

SPEAKER_00 (35:59):
Which brings me to another interesting one.
Another one that inspired a hugeswath of tropes.
Um is of course the serialmurder well, how do I even say
serial murders?
The crimes of Ed Ghee.
That's a good way to put it.
Right.
Because there's a good chance hewas not a serial killer, but

(36:19):
everyone puts him on that shelf.
He really wasn't, though.

SPEAKER_01 (36:24):
He's just kind of a creep.
It's become kind of a ubiquitousterm for these horrific human
monsters.
But whether these peopleactually never killed anyone,
like a Charles Manson, you know,whether they killed someone all
at once, you know, like a lot ofpeople in a certain setting,
those are mass murders, thosedon't count.

(36:45):
But a lot of people are you justyou just labeled those things
because you're of such devianceand such atrocity.

SPEAKER_00 (36:52):
And then you have spree killers, which were very
different.
Completely different thing.
Like it's the difference betweenlike BTK and I don't know, like
um Bonnie and Clyde, you knowwhat I mean?
Like, which are those arecompletely different tropes, but
they're they're a thing, youknow, and other people have done
the same thing.
Of course, Edgeen, a shockinglylarge number of horror tropes

(37:14):
came from Edgein, who was noteven a serial killer.
He admitted to killing twowomen, but in actuality, he was
a grave robber, a mama's boy,and uh insert joke there, I
guess.
Right, exactly.
Uh he was Well, I mean, we can'twe need to get into it.

SPEAKER_01 (37:32):
I mean, if we're talking about Ed.

SPEAKER_00 (37:34):
Necrophile, I think, kind of?
Maybe?
Was that more ritualistic thatit was sexual?
I I'm not really sure.

SPEAKER_01 (37:41):
Uh it's tough.
Then you're getting into thepsychology that's behind the
what he's doing and why he'sdoing it.
I I it's how how can you trulyexplain?

SPEAKER_00 (37:52):
Yeah, and so so the evidence of Gean's crimes were
so much more horrific than theactual crimes he committed that
I think people had a hard timebelieving he wasn't a serial
killer.
Or at least what what we wouldcall later a serial killer.
In 1957, hardware store owner,Bernice Warden, went missing.
And the last person that wasreported uh seen with her was Ed

(38:15):
Gean.
If I remember Ed, he was like alocal handyman, just did odd
jobs and and and gigs for money.
So he was the main suspect, andhe was arrested.
And when authorities searchedhis house, they not only found
Bernice Warden decapitated, buta smorgasbord of human remains,
manipulated and adornedritualistically, including

(38:40):
skulls as bedposts, trash cans,and chair cushions made of human
flesh, nine preserved vulvas ina shoebox, uh leggings made from
legs, uh a belt made out ofnipples, and face masks made

(39:00):
from female corpses.
Now he did admit duringquestioning to murdering Bernice
Warden and bar owner Mary Hogan,who he killed in 1954, but it
turns out the rest of the bodyparts were actually just stolen
corpses from local cemeteries.
His ultimate goal in this wholeexercise was to make a bodysuit

(39:24):
made of human flesh to resemblehis mother, so he could once
again be inside his dead mother.

SPEAKER_01 (39:30):
Uh mark me down for a no, please.

SPEAKER_00 (39:35):
Ed Gean wasn't actually a serial killer by any
real definition, but his hiscrimes inspired well, there's a
controversy about whether or notit inspired Psycho directly,
because the novelist who wrotethe book actually lived only 35
miles from Ed Gean, but he hadnearly completed the book when
Geane's murders came to light.

(39:57):
He was noted as saying that hewas shocked at how closely his
character resembled Ed Gean.
Which, I mean, come on.
I mean, I'm just gonna say itinspired Psycho.
We'll leave that for people todecide, but uh it also became
the foundation for TexasChainsaw Massacre, Silence of
the Lambs, uh, a movie calledThree on a Meat Hook, which is
exactly how it sounds, Deranged,and a Corbick McCarthy book,

(40:21):
Child of God.

SPEAKER_01 (40:24):
So the true horrors of this world come not only from
the waking moments, but alsofrom the unknown terrors in the
dark.
Such it was for Wes Craven, whowas inspired to create the
killer nightmare of FreddieKrueger in Nightmare on Elm
Street by the all-too real andall too deadly experiences.
He had heard stories of refugeesin the 1970s escaping the

(40:47):
genocide of the killing fills.
A particular story that caughthis attention was that of a
young Cambodian man who had cometo America with his family.
He was plagued by nightmares andPTSD.
He was suffering such vividnight terrors that he refused to
sleep.
He told his parents he wasafraid that if he slept the
thing in his nightmares chasinghim would get him.

(41:09):
He was assured that thenightmares were not that unusual
and he shouldn't be soterrified.
But he didn't buy that, and hestarted staying up, refusing to
sleep.
His family and doctors wereconcerned and began to give him
sleeping pills to induceslumber.
He had a coffee pot in his roomto stay awake, and nobody knew
quite what to do.

(41:31):
Finally, one day, he waswatching TV with his family, and
he fell asleep on the couch.
They saw him asleep, let out asigh, brought him up to his
room, put him to bed, pleasedthat he had finally gone into
the night.
Unfortunately, sleep would takehim in all too real away.

(41:53):
Soon thereafter, they heard hisscreams, and they found him
thrashing his bed.
They ran to call for theambulance, but by the time they
got to him, he had died.
He was a youngster havingvisions of a horror, that of his
time in Cambodia.

(42:14):
This particular case came froman article in Los Angeles Times,
which served as some of theoriginal source material for
West Craven.
That article noted that 104 menwith an average age of 33 had
mysteriously died in theirsleep.
Now, this all comes from anoutbreak during the 70s and 80s

(42:34):
of a syndrome that affectedSoutheast Asians.
A lot of them were refugees.

SPEAKER_00 (42:39):
Um trying to It's called the CIA.

SPEAKER_01 (42:43):
It'll get ya.
Unfortunately, a lot of themthey weren't able to worship
properly due to the guerrillawar in Laos with the United
States.
The Hmong people, an ethnicgroup which mainly lives in
southern China, Vietnam, Laos,Thailand, and Myanmar, they
believed that if they did notworship properly and perform the
proper spiritual rites, theancestors of the and spirits of

(43:07):
the village wouldn't be there toprotect them in their sleep, and
thus evil spirits would be ableto attack them.
These attacks induced anightmare that leads to sleep
paralysis, and they would feel agreat weight on their chest.
Some of these people who werespread out over the United
States, they wanted to get ashaman who would come and
protect them, but many of themnever had access to the shaman.

SPEAKER_03 (43:29):
That's why we need shaman care for all.
People shouldn't pay forshamanic care.
It should be for everyone.

SPEAKER_01 (43:37):
Hamong people believed that rejecting the role
of becoming shamans and helpingthem into sleep, that they are
no.

SPEAKER_00 (43:46):
That line.

SPEAKER_01 (43:52):
Oh, atomic shamans is killer.

SPEAKER_00 (43:54):
Headlighting dispatch Ajax.

SPEAKER_01 (43:57):
In a medical journal, an author suggested
that the Huang people didn't dieby their own beliefs in the
spiritual world, otherwise knownas uh nocturnal pressing spirit
attacks.
There are different ways ofsaying this all throughout
Southern Asia.
In Indonesia, it's uh Dijuton,which translates pressed on in
English.
In China, they have the Baiguya,which translates to being

(44:23):
crushed by a ghost.
In the Dutch, it's pronouncedNachmeri with nightmare, but
also the Merry comes from theMiddle Dutch, Mer, an incubus,
who lies on people's chests,suffocating them.

SPEAKER_04 (44:36):
Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 (44:37):
This phenomenon is also known among people of Laos,
who say that malign spiritspronounced dachwa, and they also
take the form of a jealous womanand would sit on people.
Now, a lot of this is folklore,but unfortunately, there is an
actual physical thing that iskilling these people.
Sudden unexplained nocturnaldeath syndrome, or sun.

(45:01):
Yeah, it's also consideredsudden arrhythmic death
syndrome, or sad.
Uh what they call them.
This syndrome was reported inthe Southeast Asian countries.
The condition could often berecognized by people falling
asleep, making loud groans, andshowing signs of difficulty in

(45:22):
breathing or labored respirationbefore becoming rigid and dying.
Just out of nowhere.
This happens mostly in people ofAsian descent, particularly
Japanese and Southeast Asianheritage, most acutely of the
Hamong peoples.
It also occurs 8 to 10 timesmore often in men than women.

(45:44):
One of these versions of this,SADs or sons, is uh called
Brugata syndrome.
And Brukata syndrome is actuallya genetic defect that is found
in Hmong and other South Asianpeople.
It is a malfunction of thesodium channels within the heart
muscle cells, which leads toabnormal heart rhythms and

(46:07):
hearts just stopping.
That is a believed version, acause of some of these suns and
sads.
But honestly, no one reallyknows.
And it's it seems to have been athing that continues to happen,
you can't get medication for,and that doctors can see you

(46:27):
for.
But apparently, post-70s and80s, a lot of people coming from
Cambodia, they would have thesenightmares that either would
help lead to the stuns or be thecause of it.
Um, so these true horrorsaffecting these people, escaping
those horrors, but taking theirlife when they're at their most

(46:49):
vulnerable point, which I thinkis something that West really
dug into and used for FreddyKrueger.
The idea of just, you know, whenyou're asleep, you have no
defenses, and uh unfortunatelyit was these real-life deaths
that sparked his his brain withthat.

SPEAKER_00 (47:08):
So it sounds like that it's a combination of the
centuries-old phenomenon of uhsleep paralysis, succubus,
incubus, alien abduction, shadowpeople sometimes, and a genetic
disorder, sort of mixing withfolklore.

SPEAKER_01 (47:23):
Yes.
The research on that it tends tokind of focus more on one or the
other, but I think it's a it's acombining of the two where it's
the gray in between that's youknow, one leading to the other,
or it's the grays in between,yeah.
Oh god, I hope it's not thegrays.

SPEAKER_00 (47:41):
Jake, there's a fire in the sky, did you know?

SPEAKER_01 (47:44):
I don't wanna.

SPEAKER_00 (47:46):
We're coming up on a communion, brother.

SPEAKER_01 (47:50):
I don't want to believe.

SPEAKER_00 (47:53):
Yeah, but it's funny that like you go from that to um
a child molester with razorhands.

SPEAKER_01 (47:59):
Well, I mean, it's it's taking like uh, you know,
just one idea.
So there's there's an uh anexample that I didn't that I
looked into that I didn't reallyget into.
So the original writer of Screamcame up with the concept.
He wrote a 16-page draft becausehe had seen this serial killer
in Florida killing collegestudents, doing some awful

(48:21):
things to them, like he wouldhave tortured them, raped them.
One woman, he did that, left,thought he forgot his wallet, so
he went back to the woman'sapartment, decided to cut her
head off, put it on a mirrorlooking at her body.
He had read these stories, andthen he had gone up to write and
he saw that his window was open,and he was like, Oh, what if

(48:43):
someone got in?
He wrote a short little bit,which is essentially the first
bit of the film of Scream thatthen got turned into a bigger
film that was all a discussionon the tropes of horror films.
Right, right, but it didn'tstart like that at all.
Yeah, I mean it that all camelater, and actually was a lot in

(49:06):
the script because a lot ofpeople like they think, oh, this
is kind of West Craven's idea.
A lot of other people were giventhat the option to sh to make
that movie and they just didn'tget it before it's a lot of
people still to this day don'tget it.

SPEAKER_00 (49:19):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (49:20):
That's why Scary Movie exists, which was the name
of Scream originally.

unknown (49:24):
Oh no!

SPEAKER_00 (49:26):
It's so meta that they don't even know how meta
they are.

SPEAKER_01 (49:30):
Yeah, these real life events that just kind of
spark one line of thought, andthat can go in a completely
different direction.
Honestly, it's it's probablymuch better that Wes decided to
do this weird child molesterwith knives her fingers who you
know fights people in theirdreams, other than the horrors
of genocide of uh displacedpeople.

SPEAKER_00 (49:53):
Yeah, it's yeah, if you if you want to watch a good
a good uh take on that, watchthe terror season two.
You know, I haven't seen theterror season.
I liked season one.
I liked that one a lot.
I actually thought it endedbetter than season one.
Okay.
It's it takes place in theJapanese internment camps in
World War II.

(50:14):
Yeah, it's got George Takei init, which is awesome.
It's all about um not an Oni,but a different kind of ghost.

SPEAKER_01 (50:22):
Fascinating.
No, I'll have to check that out.
Yeah, I like season one.
Talk about a show that nobodytalks about.

SPEAKER_00 (50:28):
Most likely, an asteroid that crashed billions
of years ago.
It's finally thawed out and it'sattacked a research team in
Antarctica.

SPEAKER_01 (50:39):
Finally.
You researchers.

SPEAKER_00 (50:41):
So the killer clown thing and fear of clowns in
general, uh, has been a trope.
Um, but really it it's it's amodern trope, but one that has
really old roots that are kindof universal.
It just kind of galvanized inrecent years.
For various reasons.

(51:02):
Basically, since forever, theidea of a clown or a fool or a
jester, they've been in societysince we've had society.
They're kind of a way ofcreating satire in parody and
talking about in a humorous waythe ills of society or the
things that are going on withoutbreaking these social mores that

(51:22):
exist.
So they get away with stuff.
You know, they get away withcritique, they get away with
parody, they get away withslapstick violence and things
that normal humans wouldn't beable to.
This comes from an author namedWolfgang Zucker.
He points out that a clown'sappearance and the cultural
depictions of demons and otherinfernal creatures, like the
chalk-white face in which theeyes almost disappear, the mouth

(51:46):
enlarged to ghoulish size, uh,it looks like the mask of death.
So they've got that visually.
And then a professor ofpsychology, uh Joseph Derwin at
California State University ofNorthridge, pointed out that
young children are very reactiveto a familiar body type with an

(52:06):
unfamiliar face.
And so there's some sort ofcorrelation to the uncanny
valley that we experience nowwith AI and robotics.
And in addition to that, like Iwas saying, clown behavior is uh
antisocial.
We all sort of accept that theycan get away with things like uh
slapstick violence, or when itwas a jester, you know, poking

(52:30):
fun at the king, even thoughthat would normally get you
killed, he was the one that wassupposed to make light of it and
he was allowed to do so.
In fact, you played a veryimportant role in critique of
whatever the modern society was.
But that kind of liketransgressive behavior can make
people feel uncomfortable.
It puts you sort of on edgebecause you know where they're
allowed to do that, but ifthey're allowed to break social

(52:52):
mores and you're not, if theyever diverted from that and went
down a different path, they'd becapable of anything.
And so, like, that's sort ofalways in people in the back of
people's minds.
Clowns, fools, and harlequin,they've always been symbols of
exaggerated behavior,mischievous scamps who subverted
authority for amusement.
They get away with parody andcriticism, the average person

(53:15):
couldn't.
And so the trickster behavior isexpected.
The knowledge that the fool whogets away with this kind of
behavior is secretly alsocompletely in control and they
know exactly what they're doing,is terrifying because they're
not just a random comedic event,they're doing it on purpose and
they're subverting social moreson purpose.

(53:36):
So if they did something bad,that's why clowns are scary to
most people deep down inside.
And there are modern events thatmade people scared of clowns.
But I'd like to dispel the ideathat John Wayne Gacy is in any
way, shape, or form responsiblefor this because he's not.
John Wayne Gacy was a serialkiller and a piece of sh.
And then also had completelyunrelated.

SPEAKER_03 (54:00):
Well, I mean, are you gonna argue that he was no,
no, it was just like Hitler wasa dick, uh, I don't like him.

SPEAKER_00 (54:06):
Yeah, yeah, hard truths.
I know.
But I mean, he never killedanyone as a clown.
A menacing clown wasn't hisshtick, that wasn't a thing.
They found out afterwards thathe just happened to be a clown.
Those lives were different,completely separate.
Like he was a clown atchildren's parties, no
incidents, nothing weird.

(54:28):
In his personal life, he was arapist and a serial killer.
Those are different things.
You know, they associated thatbecause it was so bizarre.
And then, of course, the randomclown sightings between
basically then and I don't know,a couple years ago.
The night clowns, the cryptoclowns that you you'd see on the
streets all around the world.
Which were can I invest incrypto clowns?

SPEAKER_01 (54:49):
Is that the hot new property?

SPEAKER_00 (54:50):
It's not worth much.
It just makes a honking sound.
It doesn't really, it's notworth any actual money.

SPEAKER_01 (54:55):
I do like the idea of their tokens with just clown
faces on them.

SPEAKER_00 (54:58):
Or what they do in clown college.
When you graduate from clowncollege, your face paint pattern
is supposed to be unique to you.
And so when you graduate, youhave to paint your face paint
pattern on an egg, and then theyput that on a shelf forever, and
that's like for your everyonewho's ever.

SPEAKER_01 (55:13):
And then they sell it as an NFT?

SPEAKER_00 (55:15):
That's too physical to be an NFT.
You can't even that's what NFT'sfor.
Because then it's just rare.
Like normal rare.

SPEAKER_01 (55:22):
I'll paint a picture of the egg digitally, and
that'll be an NFT.

SPEAKER_00 (55:28):
That's the whole thing behind clowns.
But here's a really, really,really interesting story.
Ever heard of the Sandown clown?

SPEAKER_01 (55:35):
Uh yes, yes.
This uh wise old man told meabout it.

unknown (55:41):
Okay.

SPEAKER_00 (55:42):
I don't know where you're going with that, but I'm
curious.

SPEAKER_01 (55:44):
That was you.
You told me about it.
I hadn't heard about it before,but yeah, you you told me about
it.
Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 (55:48):
Please do it.
All right.
So it was a strange beingencountered by two children
vacationing in Lake CommonSandown on the Isle of Wight,
uh, which if you don't know isin the United Kingdom, in May of
1973.
Following a sound that theycompared to an ambulance siren,
these children wandered acrossthe footbridge over a stream and

(56:09):
met a being that has beendescribed by them as a cross
between a clown, a robot, and analien.
The Holy Trinity, right?
I mean, that's wild.
So while crossing the bridge,they first saw a blue gloved
hand appear below them, and thena baffling entity emerge.

(56:31):
Okay, so this is where you getStephen King's the thing, this
kind of thing, influenced bystories like this.
Which is another reason theclowns are in sort of our
cultural lexicon.
This creature was approximatelysix and a half foot tall, and he
uh retrieved a book that he haddropped into the water in front

(56:51):
of the kids.
When he retrieved the book, hewalked several feet away with a
strange hopping motion, I'mguessing like uh Chinese
vampires.

SPEAKER_01 (57:00):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (57:01):
And then he entered a small metallic hut that had no
windows.
The children began to leave whenhe reappeared about 150 feet
away, this time holding amicrophone.
They heard the sharp siren-likenoise again, and then they were
terrified.
As if it weren't weird enough.
When the sound stopped, thecreature spoke into the

(57:23):
microphone and said, Are youstill here?
Its friendly tone convinced thekids that it was harmless, and
they approached it.
It was described as uh being toolarge for its otherwise thin
frame, and its head was shapedlike a near perfect sphere.
Skin was white, had consistencyof paper, its hands and feet
possessed only three digitsapiece, and its face seemed to

(57:45):
have been crudely painted ontothe surface of its head.
Two blue triangles for eyes anda flat brown rectangle for a
nose, and its mouth had thinyellow lips shaped like an oval,
which did not move when itspoke.
Its hair hung down beneath itshat in a sparse frizzled reddish
brown, and two wooden antennaestuck out from the sides of its

(58:05):
head, while more woodenslat-like antennae exited from
its wrist and ankles.
Wow, okay.
Um the children described it asresembling resembling a clown
costume, with a tall painted hatand a black knob or bobble at
the top, and a high-collaredsuit of red and green.
It had blue gloves, but itdidn't have shoes.

(58:29):
It had trousers and sleeves, butthey were long and frilly.
So when they went into the hut,because they followed the
creature into the hut, it hadwalls papered with blue green
dial patterns and all metallicfloors.
It contained rough woodenfurniture similar to table and

(58:49):
chairs.
The clown thing told thechildren that it was frightened
of humans and would not defenditself if it were attacked.
It claimed that it drank waterfrom the stream after, quote,
cleaning it, and gathered wildberries which it ate in an odd
manner, they said, by thrustingits head forward and somehow
moving the berries back andforth between its eyes and then
down to its mouth.

(59:10):
Not really sure how to visualizethat.
It could write in English usinga pencil and paper, and when
asked what its name was, itresponded, Sam, all colours.
Uh it's kind of like all dressedchips in Canada.
Uh when asked if it was human,it said it was not.
When asked if it was a ghost, itsaid, Well, not really, but I am

(59:35):
in an odd sort of way.
They talked to these kids forabout a half an hour, and then
they walked home to theirparents, told their parents of
this story, told everyone theyknew of this story, and for the
rest of their lives insistedthat the story was real.
Um even the British um at thetime it was uh Bufora, even the

(59:57):
British sort of move on.
investigated it, copsinvestigated it, nobody found
anything, nobody found anythingout of the ordinary, but these
girls swear that this happenedto this day.
And I I do think that this hasto be kind of at least even
subconsciously somewhere ininspiration for things like it
and other scary clownarchetypes.

SPEAKER_01 (01:00:20):
Yeah, it's so good.
I guess my my main question ofall of that is that you're
having this conversation withthis interdimensional alien
clown robot alien thing.
At what point do you end theconversation?
Uh okay we have nothing left totalk about gotta gotta go get

(01:00:42):
lunch I guess.

SPEAKER_00 (01:00:44):
Well apparently according to the to the kids he
wasn't a very goodconversationalist about his
origin and like his being ingeneral and he would just say oh
you know and shrug and so theykind of got bored with it.
Yes you have to tell me youexist now I need to know forget

(01:01:09):
about it.
Yeah that's what he did andbasically they got bored
realized they were never goingto learn anything and was like
we gotta listen we gotta get outof here to work in the morning.
And then they went home and thething was like okay and then
disappeared and no one ever sawit again.
Why would kids make that up?

SPEAKER_01 (01:01:25):
That doesn't sound like a story kids would make up
it really doesn't I mean likeespecially because nothing
happens right there's nofollow-up and there's no like
yeah yeah you they didn't takeme to this grand place or or
show me the you know tricks ofthe world or just like oh he's
here he he didn't really sayanything he was pretty boring he

(01:01:45):
was weird and then we left andhe was gone especially yeah
considering like how bizarre thething looked and his basic just
existence is complete and sodetailed and so weird.

SPEAKER_00 (01:01:57):
And then they were kind of like they they just left
after half an hour because theywere bored.
That doesn't sound made up tome.
I wouldn't you and I wouldn'tmake up stories like that when
we were kids.
I mine would be much morefantastical yeah exactly that's
I think one of the reasons thatit's like stood out for so many
people is that it it doesn'tmake sense that these two girls

(01:02:19):
made it up.
Now I one of the theories is uhthat phenomenon uh the shared
hallucination which it may ormay not be a thing but um I mean
it's it's easy to sort of likehype each other into things but
then in that scenario you wouldthink that the hype would just
get higher like you'd get morelike it would be more
fantastical.

SPEAKER_01 (01:02:39):
Oh he took me on the ship and you know like well
that's what happens with thosethings it's like oh we saw a
fairy and then that fairy liketurned our clothes pink and then
we got on this giant toadstooland we went into the fairy
kingdom.
It's not just like oh he justkind of stood there and he he he
couldn't hold the conversationand he was kind of boring.

SPEAKER_00 (01:03:02):
Right after all these interesting things about
him he ends up being boring isnot a way that a child's story
ends that's a weird one that's aweird one but that that's the
that was the more because thethe killer clown thing is bull
uh it's not really a thing.
It's just it's a lot of otherthings.

SPEAKER_01 (01:03:21):
I thought it'd be funny to look into that one
which I did think in influencedsome other like Killer Clowns
from Outer Space and it there isa thought out there in you know
the wild wild conspiracy youknow paranormal world that
clowns are actually some type oftopic being from another

(01:03:43):
universe or dimension.
Um that's why we don't reallyknow exactly where they came
from or started and that theythey prey on our fears.

SPEAKER_00 (01:03:56):
Uh since this is probably the coolest uh thing
you did research on for thiswhole thing, Jake why don't you
play us out it's September 26,1950.

SPEAKER_01 (01:04:09):
Philadelphia Pennsylvania police officers Joe
Keenan and John Collins are onpatrol and they see something
something falling from the sky.
They travel to the area andsearch around dangling from a
telephone pole there appears tobe some kind of mysterious ooze.
It was a sparkly mass six feetin diameter one foot thick at

(01:04:31):
the center and an inch or twonear the edge of some kind of
purple jelly that had a crystallike substance inside of it and
was letting off a mist of somesort perhaps it was tricks that
were being played on their mindbut it appeared to undulate and
to move seemingly crawling withits strange nature and possibly

(01:04:54):
of live vibration the cop duocalled for backup.
Officers James Cooper andSergeant Joe Cook arrive and
witness this disc of gelatinousmystery as well as any
right-minded policeman wouldthen do Collins decided to make
first contact he reached out hishand and touches it globules

(01:05:17):
stuck to his hand but quicklydissolved into an odorless
sticky scum as with the gooretrieved by Collins the rest of
the globs seemed to disappearentirely in about 30 minutes
after the cops first sightingthe following day the Men of

(01:05:40):
Blue addressed the local mediaclaiming what they saw was
indeed a living thing possiblyfrom outer space.
Following its discovery by thePhiladelphia police both the FBI
and U.S.
Air Force were called in toinvestigate the quote unquote
flying saucer that had crashedand dissolved without a trace
the incident made a number ofheadlines at the time too the

(01:06:03):
story was distributed nationallyby the Associated Press, though
no explanation was everpresented as to the origin of
the substance or whether theofficers had misinterpreted the
situation.
Now we jump to the mid-1950swhere Jack Harris, a former
vaudevillian and aspiring filmdistributor is trying to further

(01:06:24):
break into the movie biz.
Struggling to find an engagingelement for the monster movie he
wanted to make he asked hisfriend and fellow Pennsylvanian
Irvine H.
Milgate for assistance as theytalked that evening the skeleton
structure of a meteoritecrashing down outside of
Philadelphia containing amystery space jelly evolved.

(01:06:44):
While the connection could neverbe confirmed by Milgate Harris
nor the further screenwriters ofTheodore Simpson and Kay Lineker
no denial was ever put forth andit is easy to see how these men
might have drawn inspirationfrom the bizarre events a few
years earlier.
The discovery and descriptionwithin the film eerily matches

(01:07:07):
the real life account and that'snot even mentioning that it was
written by FilmDt and starredmostly Pennsylvania locals all
of which probably had heard thestory as well now as to what
that jelly was no one is stillsure but that's not the only

(01:07:31):
incident of some type ofmysterious goo falling from
space that has occurredthroughout the centuries.
This phenomenon is known asPoudraser Welsh for the rot of
the stars it was given this nameback in the 1600s and has
reoccurred sporadicallythroughout history it's happened

(01:07:53):
in Tasmania Scotland as well asTexas and other places cut that
last bit outy different namessuch as Starfallen Starfalling

(01:08:14):
Star Jelly Star Shot Star SlimeStar Slough Star Slubber Spurt
and Star Slutch.
It's been called Caca de Lunathe Moon's excrement and whether
it's extraterrestrial cellularorganic matter or some type of

(01:08:36):
melted meteorite or even the uhjelly like glands and from
overducts of frogs and toads noone can quite put their finger
on what this weird and deviatingunknown slime is but it was

(01:08:56):
strange enough to inspire notonly these filmmakers but
generations henceforth that'sall I got I don't know uh blob
out and if you guys wouldn'tmind reading and reviewing uh
perhaps I don't know giving usfive stars or whatever um that's

(01:09:17):
actually how we get seen it'snot really an ego thing it's
just how the algorithms work sowe'd really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_04 (01:09:25):
No matter where you go there you are