Camazotz ft. Rafael Flores

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
A cool friend. It's me Adrian or Aiden. Either way,
I am still your host and you are still listening
to Sustill, the Podcast of Paranormal folk or from Latin
American cultures. Welcome back, Thank you for being here, and
if this is your first time, welcome to the circle,
the circle of light where we protect each other from

(00:42):
all the scary evil things out there. Even though I
am here just kidding, I hope everyone is having a
wonderful week. We are in a time right now where
many people are gathering with their loved ones, family, friends,
chosen family at the moment. So whether you are listening
to this while you are maybe cooking a feast in
the kitchen, you're traveling, you're working, whatever you happen to

(01:03):
be doing. Thank you for sharing this moment with me
and letting me haunt you. Quick updates, As you may
have seen, Strange and Extraordinary Fest was postponed. Bit of
a bummer there, but the organizers are working on securing
a new date, so please stay tuned for that. I'm
still locked in for that event, of course, pending the date.
Hopefully it'll work out with the new scheduled thing. But
this is why it's important to follow at Sustal podcast

(01:24):
on every social media platform because that is how you
get the most up to date information on what I'm doing,
on what's going on, you know, aside from the fun
content and all that, you know, you get that breaking
news so to speak. But either way, stay tuned for
that more information to come. We have prepared for you
today a monster of an episode because it's the last
episode of Sustal for the year. So next month in December,

(01:47):
as I have been doing for the last couple of years,
is the Sustal Swapathon. I cannot wait to bring you
some shows that I think that you will enjoy that
I have been enjoying. If this is your first Sustal swapethon, essentially,
what I do is I swap episodes with shows that
I have been enjoying that I think that you all
would like and kind of introduce you to some more
content that is out there some other really cool creators.

(02:09):
We have of course, another banger of a lineup this year,
so make sure that you tune in throughout the month
of December. Although there will not be any new Sustal episodes,
there will be something in the feed for you, so
you'll still get your notification and you can check out
something new while I am kind of on a bit
of a break. But like I said, this is a
monster of an episode because we actually worked in an

(02:31):
interview with comic creator at Florides into this episode. So
this is going to be like, you know, the full
Sustle episode with story. We'll have sources of course, but
we're also going to have an interview during the episode,
which I'm really excited about, and you will hear all
about that, of course once you get into it. After
the story. Before we do take Flight into the Darkness
that is today's episode, we are going to read a
comment from Spotify. Again. You all heard me talk about

(02:53):
Spotify last episode. We are not giving them our money,
we are not giving them our paid memberships, but people
do listen on Spotify and I do not want to
ignore them, and they're leaving comments, So this is gonna
be an interesting one. This is from quote the girl
who left a comment on the ELSIL one episode, and
they said, will the name of Jesus save you from
elsil one? My family is very Catholic, and my family

(03:16):
is from Latin America as well, and the name of
Jesus is more powerful than anyone and anything. I claim
no negative energy and may God protect you all. Okay,
miss girl. So actually, in order to protect yourself from
elsil one, you can rely on dogs and chili peppers
or a whip, because he is afraid of those things.
If you listen to the episode, I hope that you

(03:38):
got to that part of it, you would know that
aside from shore try Jesus, you can try these nifty
little tricks that will protect you from him. This is
kind of just a silly comment to me. I'm sure
this person was not being silly, but I think it's funny,
and I actually that's funny. I made a TikTok kind
of about that the other day because I get that
comment a lot, and not that I mock my audience, listeners,

(03:59):
my wolfriend, but it's just this thing. I don't know
what it is, and I'm sure you all have seen
it online where people on a scary video they will
leave the comment I claim no negative energy, and I
think I said something like, well, what if the energy
claims you? But what then? Diva? You gotta be prepared.
You cannot just say I want nothing to do with it,
because it might want something to do with you, So
mss girl, sure you have Jesus. Let me also suggest

(04:21):
for your arsenal of protection some chili and dogs and
a whip if you have one lying around by any chance.
I just got to be fun to read that comment.
And of course the link to the episode of one
if you have not heard the episode, will be in
the description below. Anyway, we are going to jump into
today's episode, which is all about the Gama SATs. The

(05:04):
hills outside Guaban were the kind of beautiful that felt
almost unreal. Rolling slopes coated in coffee plants shimmered in
the morning light. Narrow terraces cut into the mountain sides
glowed green and gold. Clouds drifted low and soft, snagging
lazily on the ridge lines like wool pulled across combs.

(05:27):
Birds traced arcs over the canopy, Scarlet macaws, emerald tucans,
flickers of neon life in the trees. Two brothers, Nico
and Jonah, had hiked through these hills dozens of times.
They knew the smell of the rich, damp earth. They
knew how the stones warmed under the sun. They knew

(05:48):
how the wind wandered through the leaves like fingers playing
harp strings. This place was alive, vibrantly, beautifully alive, which
made what came next feel impossible. Nico and Jonah had
only intended to follow the trail of missing tourists into
the hills of Alta Verapaz, nothing more than a search

(06:10):
and rescue attempt. They had packed plenty of food and
water to provide to the group of hikers who had
gotten lost. It wasn't a long trip back to town,
but the lost group had been out here for days
and probably needed sustenance. As the brothers hiked somewhere between
two limestone gorges, the ground crumbled beneath them. The world

(06:32):
flipped into blackness. They woke inside a cavern that wasn't
on any map. It smelled of damp stone and something older,
like mud mixed with blood. The walls were carved with
symbols that looked more like wounds than art, slashes in
the rock that pulsed faintly, as if they remembered pain.

(06:53):
Jonah whispered, where are we? Nico didn't know. The tunnel
they landed and smell damp and stale. Their flashlights flickered
across rough stone walls etched with a chaotic mix of
old and new markings. Some were ancient Maya glyphs carved
with deliberate skill, others were jagged, rushed scratches. No siegan, nobasin,

(07:19):
get out, death ahead, ayuda. One word they had only
heard of in legends stood out among them, Shivalba. Nico
called Jonah over to point out the word. Isn't this
the underworld myth? Nico asked, yeah, Jonah replied, Some of
the Kicha people believe the entrance to Shibalba was in

(07:41):
this area. I wonder if they think this is it.
Jonah continued reading through various messages scrawled on the walls,
some in languages he did not recognize. Finally, he ran
his finger over one message written in charcoal. The only
way out is through. The brothers looked at each other

(08:01):
and thought about this message that some one else had
left for them. Do we try to make our way
through the caves? Jonah asked. Nico responded with hesitation, I
don't think I can climb about of here, so I
guess we have to try the caves. They looked forward
into the cave system and started their journey Something dripped

(08:24):
in the darkness, something breathed. They kept moving and entered
a large cavern. At first, Nico thought it was just
the absence of light, but then his cell phone's flashlight dimmed,
the beam shrinking, shrinking, as if the darkness ate it.
Jonah tried his phone. It flared for a moment before

(08:46):
being snuffed out again. The dark wasn't empty. It was crowded,
breathing barely, but enough that they could hear something in
held behind them and ex held in front of them.
They pressed themselves against the wall, hands sliding over carvings
that felt warm and sticky, like coagulated blood. Every time

(09:10):
they moved, the darkness moved with them, squeezing tighter, brushing
their clothes like unseen fingers. Jonah whispered, don't stop, don't let.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
It catch you.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
In the black, Nico could hear clicking, not from machinery
or animals, but from hollow throats, the sound of teeth
counting their steps. They didn't run. Running felt like what
Schibalba wanted. They inched forward until a distant, sickly gray
glow appeared a threshold. They crossed it, trembling and breathless,

(09:48):
and The glow behind them folded up like a mouth closing.
Nico tried to catch his breath as he asked, what
was that? Nothing about that felt natural. I don't know,
Jonah replied, but I'm glad we're out of there. That
darkness felt never ending. I hope we don't have to

(10:09):
go through anything like that again. Nico gasped as he
pointed towards the walls. Just like before, they were covered
in writing. The tunnel walls were slick with moisture, and
the writing on the walls were denser. Here some glyphs
they couldn't read, but scratched on top of them were

(10:29):
more warnings guccillos, gayendo, don't stir the air, stay low.
A set of footprints, small and bare, stopped abruptly beneath
a warning that simply said, perdonemeh. The two brothers continued forward.
The next chamber yawned open. Nico swept his flashlight across

(10:51):
the room. At first, the ceiling appeared solid and black.
It took a moment for their eyes to adjust and
to realize it was back at them Like thousands of mirrors.
Obsidian blades filled the ceiling. Sheet after sheet of razor
stone packed into natural shelves of brittle rock. The blades

(11:13):
were not moving, just waiting. Jonah let out a deep breath,
and the obsidian blades shook loosely, holding onto the ceiling
of the cavern. The brothers looked down and saw the
floor was gravel and loose stone. If a breath was
enough to shake the blades, One wrong step on the

(11:33):
loose gravel threatened to rattle the cavern. Go slow, Nico whispered.
They placed each step with surgical precision, but when Nico
slipped on a patch of pebbles, crunch. The sound echoed
like a gunshot. A dozen obsidian shards cracked free and

(11:55):
plunged down, spearing the ground between them. The blades sliced
past Jonah's sleeve, opening a thin line of blood. Then
another cascade began run. Jonah yelled. They sprinted, the ceiling,
cracking open behind them. As obsidian shards fell like black hailstones,

(12:15):
fragments flew at their heels. One sliced Nko's shoulder deeply,
but he didn't stop. Only when they dove into the
next corridor did the deadly rain quiet. The brothers stopped
and tended to Nko's shoulder. The cut wasn't serious, but
it made it harder for him to move his arm around.

(12:37):
As they wrapped the wound, they felt a gust of
cold air. The upcoming walkway was coated and frost, but
the brothers continued on. Their breath froze in the air.
Their boots crunched over a thick layer of ice and snow,
which should be impossible for this deep underground. More carvings

(12:57):
appeared on the walls, scratched with shaking hands. Cold is alive,
no nor mirror. Don't stop moving. One frozen handprint smeared
across the wall, ended in deep drag marks. Nico swallowed
and Jonah shivered. They kept going and stepped into the

(13:18):
next chamber. The temperature dropped so fast Nico's ears popped.
A wind moved through the cavern. It was not a
natural breeze, but a steady, rhythmic gust, like something enormous inside.
The ice was slowly inhaling and exhaling. Frost coated the walls.

(13:39):
Frozen footprints, dozens of them littered the floor, Some trailed
off into nothing, Others ended in sudden sideways drags. Icicles
hung from the ceiling like rows of transparent fangs. A
pale blue light glowed from all the ice, just enough
for the brothers to see where they are, but not

(14:01):
enough to make it easy to navigate. The wind grew stronger.
Something howled through the stalactites. A shriek formed from air
ripping past ice. Jonah's lips went blue. Nico forced him forward,
keep moving, keep talking. Their voices shook violently as they

(14:22):
spoke nonsense, just to stay conscious. Every time they slowed,
the freezing wind tightened around their legs like hands made
of ice. Only when they reached the next corridor did
the temperature ease, like the room had reluctantly released them.
Their skin was stinging from the cold. They sat together

(14:44):
until they got the feelings back in their limbs. I
don't want to stay here any longer. I want to
get out of these horrible caves, Nko decided. The brothers
looked around this new passage they found themselves in the
floors and walls were littered with not like any animal
markings they had seen, but also not human. Deep gashes

(15:07):
gouged into the rock, some fresh, some ancient. Blood stained
the floor in hand print smears more warnings covered the
walls nos on animales, don't run, demroon. A larger message
read they eat you slowly. Jonah swallowed hard. The air

(15:30):
changed again. In the next chamber, it reeked with musk
and rot. Then came the growls. Deep rolling, hungry eyes
opened in the darkness ahead, dozens of them, glinting like
polished gold, with slit pupils that narrowed as they approached.

(15:51):
These were not the jaguars you see in documentaries. Their
bodies were gaunt yet powerful, ribs sharp under pale fur.
Their tail were short, as if worn down by scraping
against stone. Their mouths were stained black and red. The
brothers froze. The jaguars didn't attack immediately. They circled, hurting

(16:14):
Nico and Jonah. Deciding how to divide the meal. Nico
slowly reached into his bag, remembering the food they had
packed for the missing hikers. Every jaguar tensed ready to spring.
He unwrapped some protein bars and tossed them onto the floor.
The beasts lunged, not at the brothers, but at the food.

(16:38):
They fought each other with snapping jaws and tearing claws.
The sound was wet, and frantic. Go Nico whispered. They
skirted the wall, keeping their eyes down, moving as silently
as possible. One jaguar lifted its blood slicked head and
watched them its growl low and questioning, but it did

(17:00):
not attack. As they crossed into the next passage, the
jaguar's feast developed into snarling chaos. Behind them, the air
grew sulfurous. The walls glowed faintly red beneath soot. Every
step they took down this passage, the air grew warmer
and warmer. Scrawled warnings covered every surface, eruptions below La

(17:24):
tierra rispira. Don't stop, don't ever stop, one message read
in English. I can hear the Earth's heartbeat. The heat
pressed against them like a warning to not continue to
the next chamber. With no other choice, they went ahead anyway.
The cavern pulsed red like a living wound. Rivers of

(17:46):
molten magma bled through cracks in the stone floor. Superheated
steam vented in great violent wishes. Ambers floated in the
air like malignant fireflies. The ground trembled in short, sharp quakes.
Jonah crouched near a vent it's breathing, he whispered, the mountain.

(18:10):
It's alive. They moved between eruptions, timing their steps. When
the ground inhaled, steam died down. When it exhaled, a
geyser of scalding vapor blasted upward. A near mists burned
Jonah's forearm. Instantly he bit down a scream. The cavern

(18:30):
shuddered harder. A glowing chunk of rock cracked loose from
the ceiling and burst against the floor behind them. They
sprinted across the last stretch as the magma rivers brightened,
the floor cracking open. They dove out just before a
wave of molten stone surged across where they'd stood. The
next passage felt normal. No heat followed them. The air

(18:55):
was stale and damp. The brothers sat and drank as
much of their water as they could. The heat from
the previous chamber had left them tired and dehydrated. I
don't know how much more I can do, Nico said softly.
I'm just too tired. Jonah paused for a moment. We

(19:16):
have to keep going. I don't want to die down here.
Every chamber is trying to kill us, but I won't
let it. We can rest, but we aren't going to
give up. Nico nodded at his brother and looked around
this space. This passage was more narrow than the others before.
It made the brothers feel claustrophobic. The walls were once

(19:36):
again packed with scratches. Don't look up, weavette and cilentcio.
The big one picks who dies. The air stank of
ammonia and decay. The sound came softly whispers, hungry whispers.

(19:57):
The brothers stepped into the next chamber during how many
more of these they would have to get through to
escape this otherworldly cave system. Their flashlights barely penetrated the darkness.
The beams seemed to recoil, bending away, as if afraid
of what lay ahead. The cavern looked like it had
been built. There were limestone pillars around the sides of it,

(20:20):
some of which had fallen with time. There was also
a raised platform in the middle with the pedestal for offerings.
As the brothers surveyed the space, the sounds grew louder,
the sound of claws scraping stone, not small claws. Jonah whispered,
Ko look as he pointed his phone's flashlight up. The

(20:44):
ceiling wasn't just textured rock. It was covered completely in bodies, pale,
skinless wings pressed together like layers of raw meat. Bats
hung in clusters, thousands of them, but each was odd,
their limbs too long, their rib cages visible, their snouts

(21:05):
elongated into jagged bone. Some were missing eyes, some had
too many, and some twitched in feverish dreams. As Nico's
flashlight swept across them, every single bat froze, and then
they opened their eyes. A wave of gleaming red pinpricks

(21:26):
stared down at the brothers. The room exhaled a wet,
rattling sound that made Jonah's knees buckle. Something large dropped
from the ceiling behind them. Nico turned the light and
wished he hadn't. The creature towering over them had the
posture of a man, but the anatomy of a nightmare.

(21:48):
Elongated limbs folded at wrong angles, leathery wings dragging across
the floor, a chest that rose and fell in ragged,
deliberate breaths. Its head was a grotesque bat skull with
obsidian fangs protruding like knives. Its nose ended in a sharp,
spear like point. Its eyes were pits of black honey, reflective, wet,

(22:13):
hungry Gamazots the death bat, the god of decapitation. The
creature leaned towards them and inhaled, deeply, sniffing the air
around their throats. Ego grabbed Jonah's jacket and pulled him
behind a limestone pillar. The bats on the ceiling began
to shudder, the beginnings of a frenzy. Gamazots stalked step

(22:38):
by slow step, its talents tapping the floor like fingernails
on a coffin. Tap tap tap. It wasn't chasing, it
was testing. Jonah whispered too loudly, Eko, what do we do?
A shriek erupted from the feature, a metallic bone scraping

(23:02):
sound that vibrated their ribs. The bats overhead exploded into flight,
a cyclone of bodies and teeth, filling the cavern in
a living storm. Nico shoved Jonah toward a fallen slab
of stone. They dove behind it as the swarm battered
the barrier, wings slapping like wet towels, claws scraping at

(23:23):
the edges. Gamasots approached the slab slowly with intention, Tap tap.
It leaned close, sniffing its breath was hot and damp
and smelled like rusty knives. Then impossibly fast, it slammed
the slab, the stone cracking like an egg. Nico and

(23:46):
Jonah ran. The bats descended behind them in a screeching tide.
Something heavy hit the ground, gamasots leaping into pursuit, its
claws gouging trenches in the floor. The exit tunnel narrowed,
too narrow for their monster, barely wide enough for a
human Jonah go. Jonah squeezed through the crack. Nko followed

(24:12):
until a talon wrapped around his ankle and dragged him back.
He screamed, clawing at the ground. Jonah grabbed his arms,
pulling with all his strength. Nico felt the claws digging
into his skin, the cold obsidian no spike, grazing his throat.
Commissants paused. It wanted him to look to understand. Then

(24:36):
it made its mark, a single precise slice, shallow but
bleeding across Nico's throat, not killing him, claiming him. Jonah
pulled with everything he had, and the crack in the
stone finally widened enough for Nico to slip through. They
collapsed into a side tunnel behind them, the bats shrieked

(24:59):
in fury, and Gamasots roared a sound that shook.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
The wall of the chamber.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
The passage collapsed, severing the chamber from them. The caves
returned to normal stone walls. With the faint light right ahead.
They ran until they reached the daylight. They survived Shibalba,
but Nico's scar never healed. Sometimes it pulses like a
heartbeat that isn't his. Jonah avoids nightfall like a phobia,

(25:31):
and Niko wakes to the sound of tap tap tap
at his window. Not always just on the darkest nights,
the nights when shadows move in ways they shouldn't, the
nights when the air tastes like blood. Because Gamasots doesn't
hunt just for food, He hunts for what escapes him.

(25:55):
And now he knows Niko's name. Welcome back, well friends.

(26:22):
As I mentioned earlier before the story, we are joined
now by Rafael Flores, who is the writer and creator
of the comic The Return of Kama Sorts and a
co owner of Grim Corps Studios. Rafael, Welcome to Susto.
Thank you so much for being here today.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
Hey, thanks for having me man. I've been you know,
following you for like, you know, since like maybe it's
like a year now last the Next Americon.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
Yeah, first met mex American.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
Yeah yeah, yeah, and dude, I've been so excited to
be on the podcast though. I love your your vibe
and the headphone everything, man, everything my porns.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
Thank you. Well, I also love your vibe. And yeah,
I remember we met a year ago. We just did
mex American again this year November first, and that was
my second year there, I think too, okay perfect, Yeah,
and our first year. We also we did that panel together,
which is really great. So yeah, this has been basically

(27:21):
year in the making because as my listeners, if they
know me at all, they know that I have these
ideas and I'm like, it's going to happen, and then
who knows, you know, life gets in the way. So
I'm glad that we were finally here and I'm excited
to talk to you about your work and speaking of
can you just share a bit about your background as
a comic creator and how you got into writing comics.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
So I was always a fan of comics growing up
like a very young age. They were what taught me
to read, that what got me interested in reading, even
though my teachers wouldn't, like, don't consider it real reading,
you know what I mean. Like, but I knew I
was reading. And it's interesting because the comics in the nineties,
you know, the reading level is like it's for men,

(28:05):
you know what I mean. It was for grown adults.
But you were a kid reading these books. Yeah, so
like you were learning. I was learning vocabulary and all
that kind of stuff. But and also it was just cool.
I love the art work. I loved reading like X Men,
spider Man, Batman. Batman was one of my favorites. I
would get him very reagularly. I remember when I was young,
like maybe like six, I got like my first like

(28:26):
shoe box of comics from one of my older cousins,
and it was just a bunch of random nineties comics.
And I've read those and like loved them so much,
like that, you know, the pages would fall out. I
would pin them on my wall because, like, you know,
I love the artwork. I was just such a big
fan at a very young age, and so that just
kind of continued as I got older. I started reading

(28:49):
more like of the classic graphic novels, things like Watchmen,
like Batman, along Halloween and I started getting more into
like Vertigo and Image comics as I got older and
worked at a comic shop for a couple of years,
collected comics and games here in Holkin City. I always
always knew I wanted to write comics. I always I
wanted to make comic books. I didn't think I could

(29:11):
be an artist, but I knew I could write a
good story. I was. I've always been a good storyteller.
I felt, you know, my essays and stuff in college.
I aceed to do filmmaking. In college, I wrote a
lot of scripts, screenplays, I studied that kind of stuff.
So I kind of applied all that stuff to writing
comic books just because there's no like real comic book

(29:32):
school over here in Texas, you know what I mean,
Like they don't teach that. I think it should be
something that they teach, But like, at least where I'm
from in Dallas for work area, there's like nothing you
can't So I had to basically teach myself how to
write comic books from like going online, listening to interviews
with other comic creators. One of my favorite thing what
I would do is I would watch those recordings of

(29:54):
like Comic Con panels at like San Diego Comic Con
or something, and I would listen to the writers how
about their process, or the artists talk about their process.
And that's kind of how I taught myself.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
I was like my school, yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
And I would like I would check out comic books
from the library, and a lot of times in the
back of the graphic novel they'll have like a look
behind the scenes section where they they'll show you like
a piece of script or they'll show you like smart
work and stuff. Advanced a couple of years, I became
a librarian working at a library, and that was all
just because like I wanted to be around all the

(30:28):
inspiration movies, books, you know, comic books, so that I
could continue achieving my dream or reaching for my dream
of writing comic books and so, but I knew I
needed a job so I could like pay the bills
and afford to make comic books and stuff, because making
comics is expensive. It's actually very if you're the writer,
you're paying for everything. You're the producer of the comic.

(30:49):
So a lot of times els if it's independent, when
you're working with DC or Marvel, they'll pay you. But
when you're getting started. You really have to kind of
get your own work out there.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
I said that you were a librarian. I had no
idea about that, and I think that is so so cool.
I'm interested in hearing a bit more about your time
as a librarian, Like what was that like for you?
I think I'm like, I guess like a fan is
I think it's a weird say the weird thing to say,
but how I feel, Yeah about libraries and librarians. I
do events at the Austin Public Library. I've been very

(31:22):
fortunate to have them invite me out for certain things,
and every time I'm like, everybody get a library card, Like,
please use your libraries. They're amazing resources, not just for
books but as community centers and so so one. Thank
you for that. I think that's amazing that you were
a librarian. And I don't know, like what was like
maybe like the most interesting thing that you saw as

(31:44):
a librarian.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
Okay, I'll say this as a release to me, The
most interesting thing I've seen and noticed is that kids
today they love comic books, and parents are little bit
more You're right, people are more becoming more accepting. Teachers
are more accepting now, and I think it's because maybe
because of the Marvel movies that came out, you know,
after that, it was like nothing they could do about it. Right, kids,
they're gonna be comic books. But also we got things

(32:07):
like dog Man, which is like literally the king of
comic books right now. He makes more money than anything.
So you know, you got these really good kid comics
going on right now. It's like a it's like a
golden age of kid comics. Ya. And so I'm noticing
the shift of the of the acceptance, but also just

(32:29):
there's more of it. There's more comics being made now
than ever. You're seeing it now for you know, all
the way from children to adults, and and you're seeing
more money put into like Scholastic, you know, everything they
make nowadays. It's really cool. And they're on these lists
of like awards or winning awards now, you know what

(32:50):
I mean. So, like it's been really cool to see
that shift happen. Because when I was in college going
to the library school, like there it's I would I
would talk to people, Well, the librarian school was actually
really cool, Like those classes were cool, and I'll be
like a history class or something, and my teacher would
say like I didn't at all read a book, you know,

(33:10):
based off that was made into the movie. And I've
raised my hand and I was like Watchman. I read Watchmen.
And he was like, what's that And I was like,
it's a comic book, it's a graphic novel. He goes,
I'm talking about a real book, and he like on
my face. He just goes like he laughs on my face,
and he just walks away, like you're an idiot.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
And I was just like, what the that's terrible, what
the hell? Oh my god?

Speaker 2 (33:31):
And so like I'm dealing with that in college and stuff,
and I'm like, nothing's changed, you know, people are still
the same. I was thinking, you know, but if you
go when you go into libraries, I think librarians are
on the edge of everything. So they know what's popular,
they know what's the trends are, and they can see
comic books are growing and more people are enjoying reading
them and they're being more accepted. Librarians are going to

(33:53):
accept them because it's reading. They understand that comic books
are reading. Yeah. So yeah, And how I got into it,
I was working. I don't know. Honestly, my college was
terrible because, like I started as like I wanted to
be an animator because I love cartoons. I loved comic books,
and I wanted to make cartoons, right. And then I

(34:14):
was like, well, I can't really draw good, so I'm
going to be a writer. I'll write the cartoons, right.
And so I was taking like filmmaking, journalism, any writing
class I could find, and I taught myself a lot
about writing, did a bunch of short stories and screenplays
and stuff like that. But I kept I would make
short films, right, and I would enter them to like
the school competition, right, and I'd win, and then I

(34:34):
would talk to the you know, the people, the judges
and whatever get my prize money. And I'd be like,
so like what should I do next? And They're like,
you should just drop out because like like like basically
like there's like if you want to make movies, just
you're doing it already, like like just keep making them
and like you don't need school for that. And I
was just like, well, I still need a job. Yeah.

(34:56):
So my sister, my oldest sister, was taking library courses
and and I was like, well, this is this looks
like a pretty cool chill job. You know, I make
some money obviously, So I took the I changed my
major or whatever again and did library courses. And it
was like a thing where it was like if I

(35:17):
just take these library courses and like like one or
two other classes, I'll get my degree like right away.
And so I did that. I can get the hell
out of court.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yeah. And I mean they told you were wasting your
time there, so yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
Yeah. So and it was funny because like I was
taking all these writing courses and they're like they're saying
the same thing, you know what I mean, Like they're
just like, what is a writing degree gonna do for you?
Just go make books? You know? Yeah? Yeah, And so I,
you know, I took the library courses and I got
my library degree, and I just after that, I just
started working at a library. And at first I didn't

(35:50):
really care too much about it. But as I've gotten
through it, like i've been almost for ten years now,
I really do love the profession. I love being a librarian.
I love giving people like it's a very it's a
very I don't even know how to explain it. Good karma.
I don't know what it's saying, but like like I
feel like I'm helping people and and uh and just

(36:10):
to giving them a book, checking a book out to them,
Like I can change someone's life just by doing that.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
Yeah. And so as I've gotten more into it, I've
I've got started to do things like programming and like
teaching kids art, teaching kids comic books, and so now
I'm trying to do that more and uh. But also
I love writing comic books and I want to do
like you said, I want to do like local events
at libraries and like go around and he well, yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
Have a sister who lives in the DFW area, So
if I need to go crash at her plates for
a weekend and do an event at your library, I
would be more than happy to do.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
So yeah, like yeah, and I love it. I'm not
I'm not an actual librarian yet. I'm still getting my
degrees my at least my master's degree, so I'm a
my libry assistant right now. But I do everything that
a librarian does. I managed the building whenever the manager
isn't there, you know, that kind of stuff. So yeah,
and it's a it's a great job. And honestly, I

(37:07):
think I think libraries are needing more now than ever, honestly,
but I think the awareness of libraries is probably lower
than it's been in a while. At least I hear
all the time like people are like, I didn't know
people go to libraries anymore, and I'm like, they still come,
they do?

Speaker 1 (37:25):
They do? Oh man, well, I'm glad that we brought
it up today because yeah, like I said earlier, I'm
a big proponent and big fan of libraries. I love
them as like just I think just I don't know,
like just like a fun thing to do in the
middle of the day. You're like, well, let's go see
what's going on the library. Usually something going on.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
And they got programs, they got free resources, they got
comic books, they got movies. But when I work at
they have video games. Now they have they sometimes they'll
have like passes you can get into like you know,
your nature center or your Tangil garden or whatever. Yeah,
so they got e books so you can just you
just get your card and leave and just use your
phone for the rest of your life, you know, and

(38:05):
check out things on your phone. So it's great. It's
a great resource, and it's a free resource. You're paying
for it ready with your tax money.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
Might as we use it. So everybody get a library
card to day and go to the library. Please.

Speaker 3 (38:16):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
After high school, I was trying like all that whole time,
I was studying screenplay and writing structure and all that stuff.
And so that was kind of like my school. And then,
like I want to say, in twenty twenty two, around
that time, I was working at the comic book store.
My owner was he used to be a former publisher

(38:51):
comic book writer as well. He gave me a lot
of his scripts and like his like bibles that he
would use for new comics, and so I studied that
stuff he asked me to. There was like the Joe
Cubert School. They have an online portion where you can
sign up for an online class. It's like a six
week class. I did one of those for writing. It

(39:14):
was taught by Blake Northcott, who worked on Catwoman and
Heavy Metal Magazine. She's actually or I don't know if
she is still, but she was working as the Massive
Massive Publishing, which is like a Thankful the what not
app but like that she's like their CEO or I
don't know if she is still, but I think she is. Anyways,

(39:35):
So during all this time I was like trying to
get my feet wet. I was first, I was trying
to do like long, these big stories that I had
been wanting to do, right. I have one called Mother
Wolfing Cubs that's like who knows how long that's going
to be. But I was doing I was, I was
trying to get these series off the ground, right. But
I kept on realizing like if I even like just
try to do this, I might be getting like one

(39:57):
book a year, like one little comic a year, and
if it's like a thirty years like thirty issue thing,
like it's gonna take me thirty years, you know to
finish this. I'm just not at the level yet to
where I can tell this long of a story that
I want to tell, right. So what I kept hearing
was start with short comics. And so I finally took
that advice because I just I was just tired of

(40:18):
not having anything, and I just like, I just need something.
I want a comic book that's like mine. And so
I did this short comic called the Return of Commaizots
and it was just a two page because I knew it.
I was like, anyone can do a two page commic, surely, right,
So it was just two pages. I worked with artists
Azrael a gi Are or Maximum actually good bye that now. Yeah.

(40:40):
He was just this guy looking for work, you know,
on these Facebook groups and stuff, and so I reached
out to him. He had this really cool gothic like
mikela esque style, and so I was really gravitated to
that also, Azrael Raphael. I felt like that was a
good match and like names, yeah, yeah, yeah, So I
was like, and I'm a big fan of like, you know,

(41:00):
I've read comics, so there's a lot of like good
pairings of artists and writers throughout comic books, like Jeff
Lob and Tim Sale or you know, like a lot
lots of people out there, Scott Snyder, Gregor Pulo. You know,
you associate a lot of times a writer with an
artist because they work so well together, right yeah, And
so that was something that I just kind of felt

(41:20):
like right away, and so I sent them that two
page just the script. You know, we've worked on it together.
I developed it myself with the I got a letterer,
a colorist, you know. I taught myself how to make
a comic book, you know, and see it through completion.
And that was really what I needed to do to
kind of really light that fire under me, because before

(41:41):
that I was just kind of thinking of ideas or
I was pitching. I was trying to send you know,
submissions to like you know, comic book companies, trying to
get their attention, but like obviously I didn't have anything
under my belt, right, so there I was getting nothing back.
So once I had that one little this that one
little two page short, and it kind of blew up
a little bit on Instagram. It was on I entered

(42:01):
it into like a Negative Space competition and it was
a finalist in that, and along with my other short
comic Mother Wolfing Cubs, which was like a five page
like short that I made based off that series that
I was wanting to do, So they were both finalists
and that helped me get a little bit more traction.

(42:22):
That's from Grim Court Studios. I was already talking with
their editor, the publisher. His name is Daniel Grimm. I
was already talking to him about like maybe having him
edit some of my ideas, you know, And then once
that short comic came out of the China comicizots, he
was like, dude, this is what you need to focus on.
This is what we need and like, like he basically

(42:43):
was like, oh, edit it for you, we'll publish it.
Like we're going to get this out and that's what
That was another thing I really needed. I really needed
an editor to like help me because I didn't know
what I was doing, you know what I mean. Yeah,
So he really did. He held my hand throughout the
whole process. He helped me write the script. He gave
me a lot of great feedback throughout while I was
writing it, a lot of advice. One thing he said

(43:04):
was like, just get a page done a day, right,
And I was like, wow, I didn't even think about that, Like,
like it makes it so that writing isn't hard, you know,
it's it's you just just get one page done and
then you can go to sleep or you can you
can be happy with that. And I also build momentum
while you're doing that, so like like the first week,
you'll do like one page, one page, and then the

(43:25):
third day you'll be like, oh, I did like three pages,
and then the fourth day you'll do like, oh I
did ten pages, you know what I mean. Like it
builds a momentum and builds consistency as a writer. So
when I always say, like when you're doing a when
you're starting to write a script for a project, at
least try to aim for like one page a day.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
Yeah, and that's like exercising a muscle.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
Yeah, it is, it is, it is. And after that,
you know, we we wrote the comic book. I wrote it.
It was a graphic novel. We decided to split it
up into three parts so that we could release it,
you know, issue by issue on Kickstarter, And right now
we have the all three issues and the graphic novel
and kicks outer and yeah, and it's been a three

(44:04):
year work in progress. We're finally happy to have it,
you know, done, and and the reception has been really
cool for it and like great, yeah, and uh, you know,
I'm just so proud of it, and for that to
be my first comic book, like, it's just amazing to me.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
Honestly, Yeah, as you should be proud of it. It's
it's amazing. I have read the first issue. I need
to get the next ones. But I loved it. I
was such a fan, and like, you know, and kudos
to your artists and you know, the whole team, because visually,
visually it really stands out when I saw your booth
last year or a year ago. I was like, okay, I
need to make sure to step away from my table

(44:41):
and go check that out because that looks really cool.
And then learning about what the story it was, and
then you know, I was like, well, I'm going to
buy this of course, and then read it and it
was it was great. But there was a couple of
things that you said that really stuck out to me
that I thought were interesting right now, and I think
things that I've spoken about before, but I think it's interesting.
You know, you mentioned about how you you basically learn
to read basically with comics, and but you have this

(45:04):
sort of negative response from teachers at the time, and
I'm I think, or at least I hope that that
is shifting, that's changing, because you know, you you think
about things like you know, game theory for example, you
know games are being used or there's like the study
of games as like a learning model for for for

(45:24):
kids and for students, and so I, yeah, I think
it's really interesting. And they think that comics do you
deserve more respect in that sense, like you're you're, like
you said, you're reading at this advanced level and a
lot of time. There are like really deep lessons or
critical or like important conversations that are happening in comics

(45:46):
that people may not realize because they just you know,
they see the arts and the pictures. Yeah, yeah, they
make yeah, and it's like there's a real conversation happening
in here, and it can teach a person a lot.
So that's really amazing to hear that. And then you know,
you mentioned you're like how you said you didn't think
you could be an artist, but you could be a writer,

(46:06):
and you are a great writer. But I think in
a sense with something like comics, the writing in itself,
it's its own kind of art form too. You know,
your your world building, and your artists who are making
these illustrations, they're taking cues from your work. And so
I want to make sure that you give yourself that
credit that you are an artist in a sense, because

(46:28):
like I said, it's it's really great writing. And I
really like this because it is a comic. I haven't
in a while, but I used to be a really big,
like comic person like I was. I have I have
my collection somewhere here in my office, but at one

(46:49):
point my one of my friends and my boyfriend myself
we started back home a queer Comic book club and
we called it Brunch to the Comic book Club because
we would meet over a brunch with people in the
Grande Valley and so cool. We would get together and
we would discuss comics that were typically they were centered

(47:10):
around like queer stories and so. Like I mentioned earlier,
you know, there are really important stories being told in
these comics and so, and.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
The really good thing I want to like mention about
that is that those stories are just being told like like,
like the evolution of comics is kind of crazy if
you think about it in an American sense, because you know,
in the fifties, whenever comics were being censored, they were
like new, like they were Comics were basically neutered in

(47:40):
the fifties and sixties and like, and it continued basically
until today. I mean, it's still kind of going on.
We're still kind of facing a little bit of the
ramifications of all that, because you know, people think about
like manga versus American comics. There is the reason why
manga was able to flourish and advance so well that
it that it has. It's because they didn't have that
Comics Code Authority saying you cannot tell these kind of stories. Yeah,

(48:04):
and that's what happened in America and because of that,
we're still dealing with the just every when people think
of comics, they just think of superos because I was
basically don't need these stories they could tell. They couldn't
tell whar they couldn't tell stories about gay people, they
couldn't tell anything, you know what I mean, Like you
couldn't have a lot of there's a lot of crazy
rules in that Comics co authority. And so I think

(48:25):
that the stories that we are telling today, like in
the modern time, like it's it's revolutionary and because we
don't have the code and Moore telling us what we
can and can't do. So that's why I love comics
and I think in America like it's it really is
a flourishing uh genre that people really need to tap into.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
So yeah, absolutely, So speaking of these stories and your work,
can you just because I think we haven't done it yet,
but you give like a description about what the Return
of Commas is, about what it's about.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
Yes, So the Return of Commizots is a Mayan Gothic
horror story It's about these twin brothers, Victor and Vincent,
who go to Mexico to honor their mother, who passed
away through tragic means along their way there. There they
they go to Mayan ball court. They call some noise
and this awakens the god of death uh uh, Commaizots,

(49:16):
and it awakens him. He attacks the brothers. One dies,
the other one is now infected and cursed to become
the next Commisants. After that, you know, he starts seeing
his brother as a ghost. There's love, there's death, there's bats,
there's gothic characters, there's blood and gore at you know

(49:36):
that's going to be coming in the third issue. So
it's been a really cool ride. I took a lot
of inspiration from just movies I love like America Warner
from London, The Crow and Just and also the mythology
of Commaizants, the mind hero twins, and I kind of
just you know, jumbled it all together. And I knew
that this would be a cruel but a really cool
story that people would be able to instantly like, oh

(49:59):
this is this is cool and I understand it like
right away, you know what I mean? Yeah, that was
a big point of of writing it the way I
did was because, like I knew, I wanted to use
like a werewolf type you know story with the Mayan
mythology because I know people understand what were wolves. I
know people understand you know, werewolf cinema, right, So if
you if you add that with the Mayan mythology, they'll

(50:22):
be able to understand the my mythology better, like cause,
and they won't be so that a lot of people
they say, it's you know, it's about my mythology, they
just you know, they give up. Oh, it's history, it's born,
you know what I mean, Like, no, no, this is cool,
Like this is I'm reinventing it and I'm making it
cool again, you know.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
So yeah, and history it can be really cool too,
Yeah it is.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
I'm glad that you brought up that inspiration or those
those few points of inspiration, because I remember, shortly before
I read your comic, I had actually just seen American
were Wolf in London for the first time, like a
couple months before that, so a little over a year ago,
and I got to see it in a movie theater

(51:15):
and so, I mean it was great. I loved it.
And then I read your comic and I was like, wow,
I was like, these parallels are really cool, and like,
so I'm glad that you brought that up, and but
I think it is interesting, you know, you that you
apply this sort of like the storytelling of the werewolf
to this creature who I think is when we look
at the lore of it and in the research that

(51:37):
we've done for the for this episode, it's it's it's
more similar to or it's a type of vampire.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
I think it's really cool to merge that, like this
vampiric creature, but with this sort of like story structure
of werewolf stories. So yeah, I just I think it's
really great. And I wanted to ask you why, and
I feel like I know the answer already to this,
but I want you to kind of like explain more
to us. Why why the the commisots, Like why how

(52:06):
did you discover that legend specifically? Because when I looked
online there are of course, I mean it's the Internet, right,
there's tons of stuff everywhere, but there's not as many
resources about this specific creature versus other ones, you know,
like werewolves for sure, or just the regular you know egyptire. Yeah. Right,

(52:27):
So how did you come across this legend and why
did you choose this one?

Speaker 2 (52:31):
So I can't honestly remember when I first heard about commissants,
but I do remember seeing that Batman Mayan statue that
I think his name is Kimball. He created that, and
it kind of went viral. People were like, oh, look,
you know Batman existed in Mayan culture like a long
time ago, and you know they people can say it

(52:52):
was comizots, you know, that's what it was, right, So
I think that was what really first might have like
piqued my Anxians about it, you know, and I maybe
i'd read a little bit about the Wikipedia page of
commaisants or whatever, you know what I mean, learned a
little bit about him through that. But then I kind of,
you know, I study. I'm a librarian, right, so I
do like to look at and read a lot of

(53:13):
the Mayan and Aztec books. That there's very few of them,
but I do like to look at them and read them,
and I get some information about the gods at cheltle Quatda,
like all of them, like you know, the Aztec gods
and the Mayan gods, because a lot of times they
have a lot of spiritual meanings between the behind them
that is not just like they're not just like an
Egyptian god that comes and kills people or whatever. But there,

(53:35):
I don't know, they have a lot of cool spiritual meanings.
So I do like learning about that stuff. One book
I'll shout out David Bowles Feathered Serpent Dark Heart of Sky.
If you've read that, it's basically like a retelling of
the Mayan and Aztec codexes in a very laid out
like this is the beginning and this is you know
where we are now. And in that book there's a

(53:58):
story you know of commaizants in the mind hero twins
and then encountered with Kamisants and so uh oh. And
and also I was working at a comic book store, right,
and I remember it was during COVID, Right, this is
whenever I really came up with the short comic. I
it was during COVID, and I just remember hearing about
how the whole COVID started because of a bat, right,

(54:20):
somebody ate a bat or something, and so I was like,
so something just clicked in my head and I was like, wait,
if a bat started this whole epidemic and people are dying,
Like is this like some kind of force of comazants
like commazots, It is a kind.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
Of like controlling this, you.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
Know, And that's what I don't know. My mind works
that way, you know what I mean. And so and
I remember like I started seeing like bats and like
everywhere I was, like it was like it was like signs,
you know. So I made that short comic and then
you know, it blew up and then you know, now
I'm doing this, and so I don't know, there was

(54:55):
something about it. I love Batman, I love bats, I
love Gothic culture. It was something that was like just
kind of telling me to tell the story. And I
don't know, like, I you're right, like there, when I
was doing the research for this, there isn't a lot
of real good resources that you can use, Like you know,
you can use Wikipedia, but that's how accurate is that.
You know, There's there's tons of articles you can read

(55:16):
about him, but who knows how accurate those are. And
so I kind of just read everything. I read everything,
and I try to figure out what he meant to me.
Like there was like this one there was a lot
of people saying Commazots is like you know, a singular
deity God and like he's like, you know, he's commizants
and he's like one guy. There's other people saying that
commaisants is like a group of bats that live in

(55:39):
shabal but and they're all collectively known as commizants and
there isn't just one like you know God. So I
was hearing this two different you know, sides, and I
was like, well, maybe it's both, Like maybe there is
a commaizants and maybe there is a race of commizants
you know what I mean, and they're just collectively called commisarts.
And that's how that's what it made sense to me.
And that was just because I was taking in all

(55:59):
the in from right. Yeah. And I even talked to
David Bowles like and a couple like a podcast or
not podcast, but like Latin's Visions. I asked him. I
asked him. I was like, hey, like what is it?
Is it? Is it one or is it the other?
And he was like it's both And I was like
I knew it. I was like I knew that, man,
Like why are people fighting about it? Yeah? And so

(56:21):
I didn't like whenever I was writing it, I didn't
really know which one it was, right, So but I
was like, well, people think it's he's a singular god,
so I'll make him the singular god. But then while
you're writing the story, while I'm working on the story,
it's like it's both, like it I really make it both.
So I don't know, like I felt like that was
another part of writing the story, or like the meaning

(56:43):
of writing it. Like I wanted it to be like
it's all the mythology, like there's no one true mythology,
it's all of it. All of it has has has
created the mythology of commizonts, right, because we're mythology doesn't end,
it doesn't have the like a you know ending. You know,
we're constantly retelling the story. We're adding new mythology to it.
And this is what we're trying to comazots is it's

(57:03):
like another layer of the mythology. So that's what I
wanted to really explain to people. And it's like, yeah, yeah,
that's just what we'd see.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
I like this idea of it being like a cluster
or a group of them, and then also being like
this one singular thing, right.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
Yeah, Yeah, he's the leader of the commaizants, you know,
like that's what I That's how I pictured it.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
Yeah, was there ever an option for it to be
a different like monster or entity or deity? Like was
that ever on the table? Has it? Just it's always been.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
Once once the publisher came in, it was like it's
common duds, Like I wanted to be about commisants. And
so whenever I was first developing an idea that that
wasn't going to be. It was a separate idea that
I was trying to work on my own right, and
I was trying to do this idea of the mind
hero twins and their journey through Shobablah and all this
stuff right, and it was gonna be like a modern

(58:00):
telling him that. That's when the publisher reached out to me.
He was like, hey, I want you to do this
commizance book. And I was like, okay, well I can.
I can try to make I can push this and
I can like you know, add it, apply it, you
know what I mean, I've done all this work and
I don't know. That's how I feel writing really is,
or coming up with ideas, is that like whenever you
come up with ideas or you're writing. It's good to
do it, and even if you don't make it, don't

(58:22):
worry because you can always apply it to something else
that does get made, and that way it's not not
wasting your time doing what you did right right.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
Yeah, yeah, I think as like any creator can relate
to that. It's like you get to a point with
something we were like, Okay, I need a pivot because
the demand is over here. So yes, But I mean
and and that's such a good skill though. That is
a real skill to skill to have because I've i
think early on in the days if this show, I
wouldn't have been able to do that, But now I've

(58:52):
gotten really good at it where I'm like, all right,
we're just we're going with it now, we're taking the direction.
So yeah, yeah, I think that's a real testament to
your skill as well.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
Yeah. Also, and uh yeah, I think was the rest
of the question was.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
No, I was just asking me if there was ever
any sort of other options.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
Oh so yeah, basically not like once the publisher got
there and it was like, no, this is about commazots.
I got to really focus in on commizants. So nice.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
And were there any I know that you mentioned the
movies earlier American role in London, The Crow, the Batman maybe,
But were there ever any other or are there any
other inspirations for for this story and for this.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
Yeah, I'll say for the artist, he's very inspired by
like hell Boy, but also I mean Helboy has his
own encounter with commazots and you know in hell Boy goes.

Speaker 1 (59:36):
To Mexico, I think it's called all Right, So right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
I remember I studied that book because I wanted because
I knew that's what a kind of looked like, so
I wanted to kind of like read that and then
like write my book so I can kind of like
just have that in my mind. Yeah, the colors of
I think it's Dave Stewart who does the colors on
that book, as well as just movies like s Area

(01:00:01):
the colors in that movie, and you know Dajario Argento,
I forget how to say that. Yeah, yea, yeah, his
his style was very influential. And yeah, I think I
think that's about it, just like horror movies in general,
but also that Batman too, I mean Baman Man that

(01:00:22):
like the even science fiction movies like The Fly or
like I know, I don't call it a science fiction book,
but there's a little bit of science fiction in the
story too, and which I like. I like that it's
all of it, you know what I mean? Yeah, And yeah,
the fly was another one. So just this idea of
a man turning into it and being gross about it,

(01:00:42):
you know. Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
Yeah. I want to ask just because I think people
make a lot of assumptions when we do this sort
of work, for people who work in like horror or
paranormal stuff or anything related to it. But I'm curious,
as we approach the end of our time today, do
you believe in or have you ever experienced anything paranormal?

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
Yes, like every day or like all the time. And yeah,
I just I just live in it, you know what
I mean. That's why I do my That's why I
study Aztec mind calendar, and I like I learned about
ways to kind of like honor my ancestors and you know,
and just be respectful to Mother Earth and all the
deities and entities that exist around us. So I do

(01:01:27):
believe in the spiritual. I think it's always around us.
I think I think things move all the time, where
things get lost all the time, and it's because these
things are trying to hide things from me or whatever,
or maybe get this thing off my mind for a
little bit so I can focus on something else. I
don't know. I think I live in the spiritual so
ghost Yes, I've experienced ghosts. I remember when I've moved
into my first department, the first couple of weeks, I

(01:01:51):
would have this encounter where like I would see a
spirit kind of like go like past me or something
like to and it was like a light almost a
little bit when it got really close to you see
kind of like a like a like a light around him.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
And uh, did you feel that as it was Yeah,
I could feel like.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
It feels like a wind almost, or it feels like
a little bit of like light like touching you or something. Yeah.
And that I've later learned that the person that lived
there previously had died there, So I was like, holy shit,
that was his spirit maybe trying to like I'm in
here now right and I'm doing this sage and stuff.
You know what I mean, Yeah, because that's just that's

(01:02:27):
how I am. But like, uh, and so yeah, I
think he maybe he vanished or maybe he's still living there.
I don't know. I didn't he didn't really bother me
too much. I have like this this uh toy Halloween dog,
and and I swear it's my one of my dogs
is possessed and to that that toy because like sometimes

(01:02:48):
that thing will like turn on for no reason, and
I swear there was no batteries that at one time
it was turning on. I used to leave it outside
my door, you know, my apartment, so like, you know,
just so I can stay out there. Sometimes just turn
on on its own and I've had to get run
out there and like turn it off and mess with it.
And yeah, so I don't know, I believe in that

(01:03:09):
kind of stuff. So that's just how it is for me.

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
Yeah, I love that answer to that you said, I
live in the spiritual like because I think and like
like we all do. Yeah, I think it's one of
those things where and I'm sure you know there are
some people who would say, like, well, no, like that's
not for me, but I don't know. I feel like
there's there's no option. Yeah, we just it just is
what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
I used to be super like when I was younger.
I used to like, no, I don't believe in all
this stuff, Like I like, I was very trying to
scientific and agnostic in a way, but it was because
the experience kept happening to me and you can't stop it.
You know. It's just something that you either had to
learn to like understand and and just accept, you know
what I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, because it's one of those things
where it's and some would argue like, well, there is
a science to it, but yeah, I feel like we
don't understand it yet, you know, yeah yeah, And I
was like, and that's kind of what science is. Science
is just a bunch of questions, you know, It's it's
we don't it's things that we don't understand that we
try to figure out. And so I think that is
definitely part of it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
And the Indigenous people they kind of do understand it
and they can't explain it better and they do have
a science almost for it. And so that's what I
like to study. That's the like indigenous understanding of life
and everything. So it's it's all there, man, And yeah, yeah, So.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
Do you have any other like Indigenous legends that you
know of that that you really like or that come
to mind?

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
I don't allow you don't know, I mean, I would
love to do a story. I mean I had an
idea of doing a story with her and mother Wolf
and cubs. So and the mother Wolf and Cubs is
like this samurai werewolf story about this this mother and
her two kids, and you know, she turns into a werewolf,
but she's also a samurai or she was trying to
be a samurai. Whoa, And it takes place. It takes

(01:04:52):
place in like, uh in Texas. But during the whole
like is this Texas or is this America? Or is
this Mexico? And during that whole, during that whole terrible time,
well it was tough to be a Mexican during that time.
Oh yeah, So I wanted to set it in that
have to tell a little bit about her and have

(01:05:13):
her fight you know, mother wolfings.

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
I don't know, I feel like a comic around like
like lio On and like maybe like the Curse of
Liodon are like surviving her. I think that would be
a great story and I would love to see that happens.
I will be patiently waiting, I'm sure with many other
people for that to come out of Grim Coore and
from you. It would be amazing. So we are nearing

(01:05:40):
or we are at the end of our time today,
I just wanted to say thank you again, so so much.
And if people wanted to follow your work, if they
wanted to support your work, how can they do that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
They can follow me at common Zarts comics on almost
every social media because we got to have them all,
And you can find the publisher at grim Coore Studios
or grimcore Core, depending on the social media app. You
can always follow them on the website and check out
all our stuff that we have at grimcore Studios dot com.
And yeah, I live in the DFW area. I'm at

(01:06:13):
local conventions over here all the time. I try to
do things in Austin or you know, in Texas mostly
uh and so yeah, come visit me at a convention.
I'll sign your comics and you know, I'll have chat
so nice.

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
And is the Kickstarter? How is that still running? How
long is that running?

Speaker 2 (01:06:28):
Yes, it's running till the end of November, so you
still got a couple of weeks to pick it up.
Get it check it out. We have a lot of
comics for sale, a lot of variant covers. For the
third issue, we got the graphic novel. We have a
limited cover for the graphic novel, which will be very limited,
so that's a cool one to get. And yeah, support
it until you can. And then after this, you know,

(01:06:49):
the only way you'll be able to get it for
a little while is be through me personally, So so
get it now while you can donate it to your library.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
And yeah, off again, Thank you so much for your
time today. This has meant a lot to me, and
I'm so excited to share the Return of Commisants with everybody.
If they have not read it, please please please go
check it out. Do yourself a favor. It is a
great comic and I'm excited to see what else you do.
And yeah, thank you again for your time today.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
Thank you man, Thank you Aiden for having me. It's
always a pleasure of talking to you and getting to
hang out. So just love what you do and just
keep doing what you're doing, man, because you're doing great.

Speaker 1 (01:07:25):
Thank you and you too, vi aall welcome back. Wel friends.
Thank you so much for listening to that story and

(01:07:47):
then the interview with Rafael. I hope that you enjoyed
it as much as I did. Again, I'm gonna I
know that I said it before, but I'm going to
say it again, and the links will be in the
description notes below. But by the time this episode comes out,
we will be reaching the last few days of the kickstarter,
so you will have time to back it. If there's
still slots open, make sure that you go do that.
If you ran out of slots for whatever reason, Like

(01:08:09):
off I said in the interview, you can reach out
to him directly to get your copy of the Return
of Gamasots. It's such a good comic, a good graphic novel,
and I'm so excited to see what else they do.
Do yourself a favor and check it out. We're gonna
go ahead and get into some sources that we have here.
This first one is of course from good old Wikipedia.
We're getting just like a general kind of background of

(01:08:32):
Gama SATs. This says in the late post classic Maya
Mythology of the which is kind of like it's a
text from the people of Guatemala, the indigenous people. It's
kind of like their creation story or stories. That's what
this text is. The vu or va, it's vuh, but

(01:08:52):
Kamasots is reference in that. This says that Kamasots is
a bat spirit at the service of the lords of
the underworld. Gamasots means death bat in the Kicha language
and in meso America generally, the bat is often associated
with knight, death and sacrifice. And there's a quick section
here about the etymology of the word, and it says
gamasots is formed from the Kicha words game kame e

(01:09:15):
meaning death and sots so ot z meaning bat. So
game sots death bat. And then about the mythology that
says in the Popovu again that creation story text says
gamasots are the bat like spirits encountered in the Maya
hero twins Hanapu and Shibalanka. During their trials in the
outer world of Shibadabah, which is what, of course the

(01:09:37):
story was based around, the twins had to spend the
night in the house of bats, where they squeezed themselves
into their own blowguns in order to defend themselves from
the circling bats. Hanapu stuck his head out of his
blowgun to see if the sun had risen, and kamasots
immediately snatched off his head and carried it to the
ball court to be hung up as the ball to
be used by the gods in their next ballgame. So

(01:09:59):
there's that kind of god of decapitation thing. The bat said, yoink,
here's the ball for this game. Have fun. So that
is broadly what the Kamasots is, right, Moving on to
this next source. This is from Historical Mexico and its
HISTORICALMX dot org. Again, all direct links to these sources
will be in these Sustal Google docs on Patreon dot com,
slash Sustal podcast. But this was written by an Eli Adams,

(01:10:22):
and this does a bit more of like a full
explanation of what the Mayan bat Good Gamasots is. It
says Templo Mayor, located in downtown Mexico City, has an
adjacent museum that proudly displays artifacts and renditions of items
from the Mesoamerican civilizations. The top floor of this museum
contains a recreated statue of the Mayan bat Good Gamasots,

(01:10:44):
also known as Zotzilaha Chamaghan. The name Kamasots translates to
either death bat like we said earlier, or snatch bat.
This deity appears in the and is still a very
prominent figure in the continuing Maya religion. So this is
still a deity or an entity that is recognized to
this day right, This says Gamasots is described as an

(01:11:05):
anthropomorphized leaf nosed bat, which you all, if you know me,
if you're new here, you know that I or maybe
you don't. Actually I don't know if I talk about
this lot, but I love bats. I follow the Austin
Bat Sanctuary, which if anybody out there in the Austin
Bat Sanctuary is listening, hey hi, I first of all,
I want to go volunteer. And number two, I feel
like I should have turned this into an episode that

(01:11:26):
was that would have been like the triple threat feature
of this episode is doing something there. But hey, you
know what, there's still time. Maybe in the new year
I will make a visit there. And also, you may
have seen in one of my most recent episodes at
Lost Edge Tattoo that I got a tattoo of a
bat on my knee because I just think bats are cool.
And then learning all of this lore, I was like, wow, yeah,
hell yeah, I was right. Bats are cool and fun. Fact,

(01:11:47):
they are one of Texas's natural pollinators. So protect bats,
and you can protect them by staying away from them.
Do not handle them if you're not a professional. I
would just say that even though they can be really
cute a lot of the times. So anyway, Gamasots is
described as a bat in anthropomorphized leaf nosed bats, so
kind of like humanoid bat figure. This, though, has led

(01:12:07):
to conjecture about the source of the myth. Some believe
that the ancient peoples based him on the common vampire
bat or on Dismota's draculae, a much larger species, but
both are leaf nosed bats as well. Because there's there's
I think well over one hundred species of bat, that
word I always have trouble with it species. Both of
these species inhabited the area of Wajaca, Mexico in one

(01:12:30):
hundred a d when a bat deity was first mentioned
in a cult of the Sapothec tribe. The Sapotheks believed
bats represented knight, death and sacrifice. This was likely due
to the fact that the bats would inhabit the caves
around the sacred Senotes, which the meso Americans believed were
portals to the underworld or Shibabawa. Right being one of
those places, it would be a very chilling site at

(01:12:52):
dusk when the bats would swarm out of these portals
and begin drinking the blood of the other animals. The
god is also commonly depicted holding a sacrificial knife in
one hand and a human head or sacrificial victim in
the other. Maybe that should be on my other knee.
That should be with my other tattoo, right, is like
a hand with the dagger and a head. I don't know,
We'll see, I don't know. But also this reminds me

(01:13:13):
of you know, you all know I live in Austin,
and I don't think I've ever been to see the
bats to the Bat Bridge, which is like a super
touristy popular thing to do here in Austin. Austin is
like a bat city because of that bridge. But yeah,
it's like people will go to the bridge to watch
the bats fly out. That makes me think, is that
place a portal? I need to reach out to some
paranormal investigators and say, let's go do some investigation under

(01:13:37):
the bat bridge and see, because the bats are these
communicators with the underworld, Like, is that a portal? Is
there a portal to the underworld there? Now I'm getting
really conspiracy theory, but anyway, this continues. Kamasats was eventually
adopted into the mythology of the che or Maya in Guatemala,
though they merged him with their god of fire, Sotsi
la Chamrkhan Sosilaha was the name of the house of

(01:14:01):
bats in the underworld where the hero twins were forced
to spend the night by the lords of Shibalba. And
then this talks more about that and kind of what
we base the story on. This says the legend is
that the hero twins slept inside their blowguns. Again what
we ran a wikipedia to protect themselves from the bats. However,
when the bats went silent, that's when Balanque asked Hunapu
to check if Don had come, and when he did,

(01:14:22):
he poked his head out of the tube, but in
fact it was not yet Don, and one of the
bats took the opportunity to swoop down and rip away
Hanapu's head, leaving him decapitated. The other brother, sch Balanque,
was left inside the tube, questioning what his brother was
seeing and why he had gone so still without receiving
any answers. That actually would make for like a terrifying
scary movie kind of scene, right, this continues. The bat

(01:14:44):
then took the head of Hanapu to the ball court
of the Shivahdabah lords to be gruesomely displayed and used
as a ball, while the lords rejoiced in their assumed victory.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
This says.

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
Later in the VU, a messenger from the underworld in
the form of a humanoid bat, again believed be Kamasots,
appeared to broker a deal between humanity and Lord Dohil,
the patron god of the Geeche. In this deal, mankind
promised their armpits and their wists in exchange for fire,
which is how the ritual of cutting open a person's
breast and sacrifice came to be. Some myths claim that

(01:15:17):
during the day, gamasots would turn into a stone statue
and therefore could only move at night, but this has
not been confirmed. This is interesting, this wording of promising
their armpits and their waists. I guess I did that
because my waist is missing. Can you find I'm kidding?
That's interesting again, wording. I would be curious to see

(01:15:38):
this in like a more full context, right, But we're
going to move on to the next source. This is
from all That's Interesting dot com. This is titled Gamasots
the Maya deathbat that served the lords of the underworld.
This says a fearsome spirit of the Maya underworld, whose
name means death bat in the Guiche language. Gamasots was
associated with night, death and again human sacrifice. This was

(01:15:59):
the same specifically with human sacrifice, not just I was
thinking initially general, like you know, you have to sacrifice things,
and it's like more inspirational that way. But no, this
is specifically about human sacrifice. And this says the ancient
Maya had hundreds of deities that they believed watched over humanity,
established order, and controlled the realm of the dead. Many
of these gods and spirits were downright terrifying, but one

(01:16:21):
of the scariest of them all was Kama SATs portrayed
it is an athromomorphic leaf knows bat. Again, as we
heard in the previous source, Gama SATs was the spirit
of death, night, and sacrifice. He supposedly fed on blood,
and legend says he even played a role in the
origin of the sacrificial rituals the Maya were known for.
See we always see I think a lot about and
we talked about this in the last episode about the Ubchantru.

(01:16:42):
Right we're like on a vampire kick right now, but
we spoke a lot about the different kinds of vampires
around the world and how there is a very large
and strong European influence on vampire stories or vampire lore
in general. Right, but this is an ancient thing, right,
And they're saying that this anthropomorphic bass, So this kind
of like humanoid bat fed on blood, so that like,

(01:17:04):
is that a vampire then?

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:17:06):
Like I would assume that's that's vampire. Anyway, this continues.
Experts believe gamasots was inspired by the giant vampire bats
that used to swarm the skies over Central America. One
of these species of bats, Dismodius draculate, is now extinct,
but it's nearly two foot wingspan and tendency to prey
on animals as large as deer likely contributed to the
idea of a vicious bat like spirit. So there was

(01:17:27):
this giant bat that would prey on larger animals, right
Because normally when you think of bat, I think of
like palm size, something small, right, or at least their bodies.
Their bodies always like palm size. But if there's a
bat with the two foot wingspan, I would assume that
would be bigger than the hand and I'm sure there
are bats that are bigger than a hand. Now, I'm
just like when I think of a bat, I think
of something small and cute. This continues while the Maya

(01:17:48):
civilization rapidly declined by the eleventh century CE, the mythology
surrounding gamasots carries onto this day and it's just as
horrifying now as it was nearly two thousand years ago.
This talks about the origins of kamasots and a bat
like deity, was first mentioned by the indigenous Tepple dec
people of Mexico around one hundred to CE. The sepple
Decks believed that bats represented death because they often saw

(01:18:10):
them flying out of the sacred sinatas or caves that
they believed report or caves that they believed were portals
to the underworld. Again, I'm going to go back to
the Austin batbridge idea, because that is a bridge over water.
So there's like there's there's this combination of things, right
is the caves in the Senotis, which we know are
like the there are bodies of water, and the Austin
Bat bridge they're under the bridge, which could serve its

(01:18:33):
kind of it's cavernous, so to speak, and it's over
a body of water. There may be a portal to
the underworld under Austin, y'all, we need to look into
the I'm trying to remember what were the indigenous people
that were in Austin. I think is the Tonka. Let
me look it up and not be wrong. Tonkawa. That's
what I knew it. So I know the guawe Decon
people were inhabitants of like many parts of Texas. But

(01:18:56):
I think even guawe Decon is like a more broad
way to categoriz indigenous groups of people's. But I think
the Tankawa we're also specifically here in Austin. So anyway,
I'm going off the deep end here. Sorry, We're going
to continue here. The Giecha Maya of modern day Guatemala

(01:19:26):
likely adopted this bat deity and combined it with their
own fire god to create the horror that is Gamma SATs.
So I wonder, like where more of this the features
of fire come into Gama SATs like kamasots control fire,
create fire, like is there any influence on Gama Sots itself?
This continues even Kamasots his name is frightening. Again, this

(01:19:46):
explains the gummet and sorts death bat etymology there says
that he was a large leaf nosed bat with a
human like form. He was usually depicted with a sacrificial
knife in one hand again and a human heart in
the other. See I think that is a badass image
for its to the bat and the heart or the
knife and the heart. I think I got my next
one set up already. Sorry, mom. This says according to

(01:20:06):
ancient origins, Gamasots was said to fly out of caves,
grab victims by the neck, and decapitate them before soaring away.
This idea likely came from one of the most well
known myths about the death bat, or that could easily
be mistaken for a nightmare. Again, this question comes has
come up before, or this conversation has come up in
live events that I've done where we talk about Latina
people and being afraid of birds or things that fly,

(01:20:29):
because you have you know, like the flowerpucci, which is
like turkey vulture kind of thing. We have the latusas
which is the owl, and there's been other ones that
have come up and people are like, why why is
it always birds? Why is it things that can fly?
The Latina people are afraid of. And again there's ties
to like indigenous beliefs and how certain things were what

(01:20:50):
would work for or were part of the underworld or
could go between the underworld and our world. And so
it was like omens of death and that listen, you
can listen to just throw a dart to any Susto
episode and we've had this conversation before, but again this
is just reinforcing that conversation, or it's bringing it up
again for me. But this continues the blood soaked depictions
of Gamasots in Maya mythology. The gruesome story of Kamasots

(01:21:12):
and the hero twins Hanapou and Balankie can be found
in the Popova again, a sacred narrative of the Gieche
Maya that contains all the indigenous mythology of the civilization,
including the Maya creation myth and a chronicle of the
Gicha people according to the World History Encyclopedia. And then
this talks about the Popovu and it says it translates
literally to Book of the mat because so many Maya

(01:21:34):
people heard its stories while sitting on mats and listening
to their elders, passed them down However, it's essentially a
record of the community as it preserves the history and
culture of the Gicha civilization. The stories have existed for millennia,
but they weren't committed to paper until the sixteenth century.
Within the Popovu are numerous stories about Hanapou and Sperlanke,
the demi god hero twins who played a large role

(01:21:56):
in Maya mythology. In one of the tales, the twins
were challenged again to spend the night in Sosilaja, or
the house of bats. And then again this talks about
the blowguns, how they hid in it, and then how
they tried to peak out, but they were Ultimately they
met their their demise right and there were or one
of them was decapitated. And then I'm going to skip
down to the last part of this source, and this
talks about how the legend of the nightmarish Maya death

(01:22:17):
bat persists to this day. This says vampire bats still
fly the skies above Mexico and Central America today, but
the common vampire bat has nothing on the species that
existed alongside the Maya Dosmodius draculae went extinct in the
eighteen hundreds, but while it lived, it would have been
a sight to behold. With the wingspan of twenty inches,
the creature was larger than a computer keyboard, and it

(01:22:39):
sucked the blood of animals like deer and lamas. While
these giant bats died out hundreds of years ago, strange
sightings of huge bat like creatures continued well into the
twentieth century. According to Blue Roadrunner, in the nineteen fifties,
a couple walking in Perota's Brazil reported seeing two large
humanoids in a tree one night. Authorities wrote them off,
insisting they'd simply spotted large birds, but the sidings continued.

(01:23:02):
In nineteen seventy six, two girls spite a large bird
like figure they described as having a gorilla like face.
The next day, it was discovered that the creature had
left behind several three toed tracks. Sidings of this bird
or bat with a gorilla face have occurred as far
north as Texas. I was going to bring that up
where several farmers claim to have encountered it in their field.
With so many sightings on record, it's difficult to write

(01:23:23):
off the existence of some sort of humanoid back creature
that flies around consuming livestock. Perhaps it's even gama SATs himself.
So I'm seeing there needs to be a team up
of like Gamasots and the Chupak gabaa. Right. But also
this thing about Texas, this is interesting because I've heard
stories and we need to cover it. We'll probably do
that in this next year. Is there's the stories of

(01:23:43):
like the thunderbird I think is what they called it.
There may be other names for it, but I've heard
these stories about like these large anomalous birds in Texas,
especially in agricultural areas. Of course in South Texas where
I'm front, there's stories about sidings of these giant birds.
Keep your ears open for that one. I'm going to
look into that. We're going to move on to the

(01:24:04):
next source. This is Mythical Creatures and Beasts dot com.
So this one says a lot of well I've already
spoken about in these other sources, but there's something interesting here.
And this is something that mentioned in his interview as well.
Is this says that Kamasats was not just one creature,
but in some stories, an entire race of bat like
death gods or demons. Ancient Maya mythology is rich with

(01:24:25):
tales of God's monsters and cosmic punishments, and Totilaja Chamakhan
remains one of the most feared beings within those narratives.
He emerged as a symbol of divine retribution and the
price of disobedience to the gods. He was a punisher.
Something also really interesting in this sources, they talk about
the abilities that Kamasats has. It says blood drinking, much
like a vampire. He fed on the blood of humans

(01:24:46):
and animals, often leaving entire villages drained. Then there's nocaternal flight.
He would only appear at night, flying in total silence
and attacking without warning. This could also be not only
an ability, but maybe kind of like a curse or
like a detriment to the because in the other source earlier,
they said that during the day, Gamasots turns into a
statue and they can only so That means that they're

(01:25:08):
stuck for twelve hours out of each day, right and
they can only fly in the night they can that's
when they come to life, which this moves on says
daytime concealments. Some legends say that he turns to stone
by day, hiding in temples or cliffs to avoid detection.
So I mean that could be a good cover, right, like, oh,
it's just a statue, but then when night falls they
come out of that disguise, right. And then lastly, this

(01:25:28):
says commanding infernal armies. In some stories he led death
spirits and bat demons in battle against rebellious humans or
rival gods. And then this talks about some symbols with
the gamasots and it says there's a course, a symbol
of the cave, which symbolized entrances to the underworld. As
we've said repeatedly, there is the blood and death, which
is due to their nocturnal nature and their association with decay.

(01:25:52):
And then sacrifice, which is a central theme in Mayan spirituality,
is what it says here, and it says Soti Laha
Chamakhan was the embodiment of these ideas. He was not
only feared for his appearance and power, but for what
he represented, the absolute dominance of the gods and the
ever present threat of annihilation for disobedience. In certain regions,
rituals and offerings were made to bat deities or spirits

(01:26:12):
to avoid disease, disaster, or invasion. This suggests a deeper
cultural reverence wrapped in dread see. Now this is interesting
because this says absolute dominance of the gods, where I
think in other sources the wording is that gamasots basically
like works for the gods or the lords of the underworld.
Who knows like what kind of like what the hierarchy,
so to speak, is with this relationship, and maybe there

(01:26:33):
is no hierarchy, and it's like a vertical or a
lateral sort of relationship. The next source that we have here,
this is from j Store. This is an academic one,
and this is from an article, a journal article, and
this says Bats and the Gamasots correcting a century of
mistaken identity. And this one, I'm going to be very
honest with you all. I did not read through these articles.

(01:26:55):
But this is all about the Gamasats. This is going
to make a really interesting read if you do have
access us to this article, and I'm sure there are
other places to find it that are outside of Jstore
and not behind a like a loggin wall or something.
But this is again Bats and the Kammasots correcting a
century of mistaken identity. And this is by I believe
James E. Brady and Jeremy D. Coltman in Latin American Antiquity,

(01:27:18):
Volume twenty seven. However, I will say, just like grazing
over this, there is a ton of imagery and it's
really really cool to see this. I'll see what I
can post on social media that is in here. There's
like a firemouthed cave bat with crossbones on its wings,
which just looks cool as hell. And then the last
rest that we have here, this is actually a chapter

(01:27:40):
or part of a chapter at least from the Popova
It says Popova Book to chapter ten, Creations Sacred Myths
of Gicha people. I'm going to read this and it
says chapter ten. Afterward, they entered the House of Cold,
which I believe is this is part of the brothers
stories and again part of what we base our story
off of. They entered the House of Cold. It is
impot possible to describe how cold it was. The house

(01:28:02):
was full of hail. It was the mansion of cold. Soon, however,
the cold was ended because with a fire of old logs,
the boys made the cold disappear. That is why they
did not die. They were still alive when it donned.
Surely what the lords of Shibahdebah wanted was that they
would die, but it was not thus, and when it donned,
they were still full of health, and they went out
again when the messengers came to get them. How is this?

(01:28:25):
They are not dead yet, said the lords of Shibadabah.
They were amazed to see the deeds of Hanapu and Shblnakieh.
Presently the boys entered the house of jaguars. The house
was full of jaguars. Do not bite us, here's what
belongs to you, the boys said to the jaguars, And
quickly they threw them some bones to the animals, which
pounced upon the bones. Now surely they are finished. Now
already they have eaten their own entrails. At least they

(01:28:46):
have given themselves up. Now their bones have been broken,
so said the guards, all happy because of this. So
you can see we did just like a modern adaptation
in our modern retelling of these stories. So they're in
the house of jaguars, and instead of throwing the animal bones,
they threw them protein bars that they had packed with
them right in our story. Again, as always, kudos and
random applause for Jeffrey taking the lead on this story

(01:29:06):
and writing it, I'm gonna skip a little bit ahead,
and this talks about how they then go into the
house of the bats. That says they then put them
in the house of bats. There was nothing but bats
inside this house, the house of Gamasots, a large animal
whose weapons for killing were like a dry point, and
instantly those who came into their presence perished. They were
in there then, but they slept inside their blowguns, and
they were not bitten by those who were in the house. Nevertheless,

(01:29:29):
one of them had to give up because of another
Gamasots that came from the sky and made him come
into sight. The bats were assembled in council all night
and flew about. There was a word here that we
tried to use as a sound que in the script,
and I'd never seen this word here, and it's here now.
It says quilits quillits. They said, so they were saying
all night, which I believe is the sound that the

(01:29:50):
bats are making. That is how they on a monopeed
that noise qwilits quilits, which could be could sound like
a chirping maybe of the bats, even though I know
bats don't sure, but they make these like kind of
chittering sounds. This continues. They stopped for a little while, however,
and they did not move and were pressed against the
end of one of the blowguns. Then Sbaankie said to Hanapoo,

(01:30:10):
look you, has it begun already to get light? Maybe?
So I am going to see. Hanapu answered, and as
he wished very much to look out the mouth of
the blowgun and wished to see if it had donned. Instantly,
Gama Sotz cut off his head and the body of
Hanapoo is decapitated. Sparalankie asked again, has it not yet donned?
But Hanapu did not move. Where have you gone, Hanapoo?

(01:30:31):
What have you done? But he did not move and
remained silent. That's actually so sad. Then Sparlankie felt concerned
and exclaimed, unfortunate are we we are completely undone. They
went immediately to hang the head of Hanapu in the
ball court, and by special order of hant Kameh and
vukub Game, all the people rejoiced for what had happened

(01:30:51):
to the head of Hanapu. That that's intense. This is
an intense story. This quote is so I don't know
why This quote just stuck out to me. Unfortunate are
we We are completely undone. It's so just like filled
with gloom and doom. Just god, what it's like this
admission of we're defeated and it's sad. Really and those
were all these sources that we have for you. Welcome back,

(01:31:27):
well friends, Thank you so much for listening to this episode,
the last episode of Sustal for the year of twenty
twenty five. Again, make sure you stick around through December
for the Sustal swap thon, and also remember to hear
your story on Sustal. You can visit my website or
my link tree and send your story in. It doesn't
have to be just a written story, although we love those,
I love giving them the Sustal treatment, but you can

(01:31:49):
also send in a photo, a video, an audio recording,
anything that you think is paranormal. Please send it in
and I will share it either on Sustal or on
sustal social media's which you can follow at at Soustal
podcast on every platform for all things spooky and updates
on the show. And if you'd like to support the show.
As always, the easiest way is by engaging with the
show wherever you are listening to it, sharing it with

(01:32:10):
your girl friends, and leaving positive ratings and reviews, reviews
like this one from Anita Sanchez, and Anita said, definitely
love all the stories, listening to them all one by one.
Definitely love it and I hope to hear more soon.
Hearts emojis. Anita, thank you so so much. I'm not
sure where you are on your listening journey. This review
was left a while ago, and so maybe you're caught up.

(01:32:32):
Maybe you haven't. If you are, I hope you get
to this point and you hear this, and I want
to say thank you so much for listening and for
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to support, you can also support Sustal for three dollars
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decide what works for you. It is winter holiday season

(01:32:55):
coming up, so if you want to gift someone a subscription,
you can maybe look into that seaking of I want
to say thank you to this episode's patrons. As always,
you mean the underworld the Shivaba Underworld to me and
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(01:33:16):
desire c Ashes, Nedessa, rachel A, Asusena, Marlene Laney, Desiree A, Ricardo, Vanessa, Mariza, Nievis,
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(01:33:37):
I'm so excited to continue keep bringing you content both
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for the year of twenty twenty five. I am looking
forward to twenty twenty six. Listen just because there are
no new Susto episodes. I will definitely be online, so
please hit me up all over the socials, email me,
message me whatever. I'm still going to be online. I'm

(01:33:59):
not like going anywhere, just you know, taking a little
break from the production cycle. So either way, just really
grateful for this year. I hope that you all have
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bye

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