Carrie White: Telekinesis and Teenage Trauma

Grab a date and put on your prom dress, because today, we’re getting a broader understanding of adolescent rage, telekinetic revenge, teenage trauma and Carrie White

:

On Writing, Stephen King

Is Telekinesis Real? (Ted Ed)

https://youtu.be/Jq9D_HkQhAA?s...

Analyzing Evil Margaret White from Carrie (The Vile Eye)
https://youtu.be/tihF7bFKvW8?s...

How Did Carrie Get Her Powers (Screen Rant)

https://screenrant.com/stephen...


Carrie White (The Take)

https://youtu.be/9bSCYqKsu_w?s...

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/broads-next-door--5803223/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Carrie White, the girl no one likes.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Oh sorry about this incident of Kessy.

Speaker 3 (00:08):
It's Carry and everyone makes fun out.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Of a creepy house with her crazy mother.

Speaker 4 (00:23):
House help woman to say the sinemar days and winds
show her if she had remained symptoms.

Speaker 5 (00:31):
The curse of blood would never have come up.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
The girl with the strange power. If I concentrate on
no fucking know things but tonight, no one will laugh
at Carrie.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
You don't have a date of the prong next Friday,
should like to go with me.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
She's with the best looking boy in the senior class.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
She'll be voted queen of the prom.

Speaker 6 (00:53):
You know I can make sure that you don't hurt
Carry's adam.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Though for Carrie it would be a dream come true,
for everyone else, it will be a nightmare. Carrie is
filmed by Brian da Palmer, based on the chilling bestseller

(01:20):
I'm Starring Sissy, spacing Hyper Laurie and introducing John.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Travolta in his first motion picture role.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
If you have a taste for terror, you have a
date with Carrie.

Speaker 5 (01:42):
Hello, neighbors, lovers, friends, and anyone who ever tried to
move a pencil with their minds. I'm Daniella Screama, and
you're listening to Broad's next Door. Grab a date and
put on your prom dress, because today we're getting a
broader understanding of Adelaie and Rage, telekinetic revenge, and Carrie White. Hi, Hello,

(02:09):
how is everyone? I hope you're doing well. I hope
you haven't been locked in any closets lately by your
religious fanatic mother, because today we're talking about Carrie, the
original film, the remake, the musical, the sequel, the Rage,
Carrie Too, which tried very hard and still flopped, But

(02:31):
mostly the book that it's started at all, the first
published novel by Stephen King, a story so soaked in
blood it changed horror and prom nights forever. I am
currently delirious with fever right now. Literally it was one
hundred and three degrees before I took tailinal, so this

(02:52):
felt like the perfect fever dream episode to record. I
was just thinking about how we all wanted to be Matila,
with her flying books and her punishing teachers and her
whimsical soundtrack. But did anyone ever want to be Carrie?
I mean, I suppose I've had my moments. I love

(03:15):
both the book and the original movie. I think I
even enjoyed some of the remakes because it's a story
that just hits so close to home. I didn't have
a religiously insane mother, but I was a teenage girl.
I was bullied, and I think sometimes, without realizing it,

(03:36):
I was also the bully. So let's get into the
story of Carrie. Before Carrie White ever set foot in
Baits High, she lived in the shadows of two real girls,
ghosts and Stephen King's memory and the inspiration for this
tale didn't strike while he was holed up in a
haunted hotel. It happened while he was scrubbing shower stains

(03:59):
as a part time janitor. Let's go straight to the source.
Here's what Stephen King wrote in his memoir on writing,
I absolutely adore this book. While he was going to college,
my brother Dame worked summers as a janitor at Brunswick High.
For part of one summer, I worked there too. One day,

(04:19):
I was supposed to scrub the rust stains off the
walls and the girl's shower. I noticed that the showers,
unlike those in the boys' locker room, had chrome you
rings with pink plastic curtains. Attached. This memory came back
to me one day while I was working in the laundry,
and I started seeing the opening scene of a story
girls showering in a locker room where there were no

(04:41):
U rings, pink plastic curtains, or privacy, and this one
girl starts to have her period, only she doesn't know
what it is, and the other girls, grossed out, horrified, amused,
start pelding her with sanitary napkins. The girls begin to
scream all that blood. I'd read an article in Life

(05:03):
magazine some years before suggesting that at least some reported
poltergeist activity might actually be telekinetic phenomenon. Telekinesis being the
ability to move objects just by thinking about them. There
were some evidence to suggest that young people might have
such powers, the article said, especially girls in early adolescents,

(05:26):
right around the time of their first period POW. Two
unrelated ideas, adolescent cruelty and telekinesists came together, and I
had an idea. You know how they say to kill
your daughterlings, Well, King almost killed this one. He had

(05:47):
three unpublished novels under his belt, and he'd been writing
a lot of short stories. This was actually supposed to
be a short story. He threw out the first three pages,
literally crumbled them up, and tossed them in the trash.
But his wife, Tabitha King, an absolute real one, rescued
them and told him to turn it into a book.

(06:11):
Before I had completed two pages, ghost of my own
began to intrude, the ghosts of two girls, both dead,
who eventually combined to become Carrie White. I will call
one of them Tina White, and the other Sandra Irving.
Tina went to Durham Elementary School with me. There's a
goat in every class, the kid who was always left

(06:31):
without a chair in musical chairs, the one who winds
up wearing the kick me hard sign, the one who
stands at the end of the pecking order. This was Tina.
Not because she was stupid she wasn't, and not because
her family was peculiar it was, but because she wore
the same clothes to school every day. The cruelty of kids.

(06:53):
It sticks. Sandra Irving lived about a mile and a
half from Sandra Irving lived about a mile and a
half from the house where I grew up. Missus Irving
hired me one day to help her remove some furniture.
I was struck by the crucifix hanging in the living
room over the irving couch. If such a gigantic icon
had fallen when the two of them were watching the TV,

(07:15):
the person it fell on would almost certainly have been killed.
That's how Carrie began, not with horror tropes, not with
a haunted house, but with girls who were mocked, with
blood and shame and religion, with a mother's obsession, and
across above the couch, and with the wife who knew
a good story when she saw one. In short, Carrie

(07:39):
was born from shame, science fiction curiosity, and a memory
of scrub bushes and soap streaks in a locker room shower.
So let's talk about teenage powers, telekinesis, and rumors. What
is telekinesis. It's the hypothetical ability to move objects using

(08:00):
only the mind. In parapsychology, it's often called psychokinesis. In horror,
its biblical wrath incarnate in Carrie's world. It's the only
weapon a brollied girl has. Paranormal researchers have long studied
poltergeist phenomenon objects flying lights, flickering, things breaking, and sometimes

(08:21):
speculated these could be unconscious telekinetic outbursts, especially around stressed adolescence.
So when King read that life piece on telekinesis, he
didn't just see sci fi. He saw metaphor and possibility.
Here's a clip from a Ted talk called is telekinesis real?

Speaker 6 (08:41):
When the infamous fictional character Carrie White left her high
school prom haul a blaze and brought terror upon her town,
she relied on her powers of telekinesis, the ability to
manipulate physical objects using.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
The power of the mind alone.

Speaker 6 (08:59):
While Carry is just a fictional film based upon a
fictional book, belief in telekinesis isn't fictional at all. For centuries,
humans have claimed they really do have the power to
control the motion of objects using only their minds. Levitation,
opening doors at will, and spoon bending are all intriguing examples.

(09:22):
It happens in the Matrix when Neo freezes bullets mid air,
and it's a skill that Yoda has honed to a tee.
But is telekinesis real or just as fictional as Carrie,
Yoda and Neo combined? To investigate, we need to evaluate
telekinetic claims through a scientific lens. Using the scientific method,

(09:43):
telekinesis is part of the discipline called parapsychology, in which
researchers study psychic phenomena. Parapsychologists regard what they do as
a science, but other scientists disagree. Let's start with a
few basic observations. Observation number one. While there are loads
of anecdotes out there about telekinesis, there's no scientific proof

(10:05):
that it exists.

Speaker 5 (10:06):
I think it does if you couldn't tell.

Speaker 6 (10:09):
No studies conducted according to the scientific method and repeated
under lab.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
Conditions can show that it's real.

Speaker 6 (10:16):
In the nineteen thirties, the so called father of parapsychology,
Joseph Banks Rhyn, tested in the lab whether people could
use telekinesis to make a dice roll the way they
wanted it to. But afterwards scientists couldn't replicate his results,
and since replication is key to proving an idea, that
was a problem. Aside from scientists, there are also countless

(10:38):
self proclaimed telekinetics, but all have been exposed as tricksters
or can't perform under conditions where they're not totally in control,
suggesting that they manipulate the situation to get the results
they want. Today, there's even a huge stash of prize
money available from lots of organizations for anyone who can

(10:59):
prove that psychic abilities like telekinesis are real.

Speaker 5 (11:04):
I just republished my Celebrity Psychic since Scammer's episode, and
I douce a whole section on the million dollar Psychic
prize and why no one has won it yet.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
But these riches remain unclaimed. Observation number two.

Speaker 6 (11:19):
When we investigate telekinesis, there's no consensus about what exactly
is being measured.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
Are powerful Yoda like brain waves at work? Perhaps?

Speaker 6 (11:29):
Since nobody agrees, it's difficult to apply a research standard,
something required in all other types of science to test
the validity of ideas.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
Observation number three. The point of.

Speaker 6 (11:40):
Science is to discover the unknown, and in the history
of scientific investigation, it's definitely happened that new discoveries have
gone against established science and even overturned whole branches of science.
Such discoveries must be proven extra carefully to withstand skepticism.
In the case of telekinesis, the idea goes against established

(12:02):
science but lacks the powerful evidence in favor of it.
Our universe is controlled and explained by the laws of physics,
and one of these laws tells us that brain waves
can't control objects because they're neither strong nor far reaching
enough to influence anything outside of our skulls. Physics also
tells us that the only forces that can influence objects

(12:24):
from afar are magnetic and gravitational. Probably the closest thing
to telekinesis that science can explain is the use of
thoughts to control a robotic arm in the brains of
stroke patients who can't move. Researchers can implant tiny wires
into the region that controls movement and then train the
patient to concentrate on moving a robotic arm, which acts

(12:48):
like an extension of their minds, and it works. It's amazing,
but it isn't telekinesis. The patient's thoughts aren't just vague,
undetectable things. They're measurable brain signals translated through through wires
into a robot. Science can measure, test, and explain the motion.
And that's how we've shown that this kind of mind
control is real. Science is a slow process of accumulating

(13:12):
the evidence that either stands for or against an idea.
When we stack up evidence, we can see which tower
grows tallest and in the case of telekinesis, it's not
the tower showing that it exists. Some say this mystical
phenomenon can't fit within the confines of science, and that's okay,
But then telekinesis becomes purely a matter of personal conviction.

(13:34):
If something can't be assessed scientifically, then it can't be
described as scientific either. So the results of our investigation
reveal that, however much we may want to believe that
the force really is within us, the case for telekinesis
remains weak.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
Sorry Neo Carrie and Yoda.

Speaker 5 (13:53):
In Carrie's case, her power is bound up with puberty, shame,
and repression. She doesn't choose to have it until the
moment it becomes a scream. The more she's humiliated, the
more the world trembles. But how does Carrie get this power?
This is an article from ScreenRant by Adrian Tyler, How

(14:15):
and Why Carrie gets Powers? In Stephen King's story, Carrie
tells a story of a teenage girl with destructive superpowers.
But how and why did she get her powers? Stephen
King has rightfully earned the title of King of Horror
thanks to his novels and short stories from this genre,
which explore different places, creatures, and fears. King's reign in

(14:37):
the world of horror began in nineteen seventy four with
the publishing of Carrie, which was actually his fourth novel,
but the first to be published, and which has been
adapted into different media, including movies and even a Broadway musical.
Carrie introduced readers to Carrie White, a high school girl
who is constantly bullied at school and abused at home

(14:58):
by her extremely religious mother, Margaret White. After a traumatic
situation at school that went too far, and tired of
abusive mother, Carrie used her telekinetic powers to unleash revenge
against those who did her wrong, but she caused mass
destruction in the process. Carrie White is one of Stephen
King's most popular characters, but also one of the most

(15:21):
mysterious ones, and her backstory, family, and powers have made
way for a variety of theories, but have also raised
a lot of questions. Carrie had telekinetic powers that were
strong and chaotic enough to unleash a rain of stones
without much effort and even destroy a whole town, as
happens at the end of the novel. However, the origin

(15:44):
of these powers isn't entirely clear, making way for different theories,
such as Carrie having the Shine, which is further explored
in The Shining basically some kind of psychic knowing something extra,
and for each adaptation of the story to give Carrie

(16:05):
a different backstory. So how and why did Carrie White
get her powers in Stephen King's novel. Although Carrie didn't
consciously use her powers until prom Night, these had been
in her since she was little, and the novel a
past incident described in which an almost three year old
Carrie approached her young neighbor Estelle Horn, who was son

(16:28):
bathing topless, and asked her about her dirty pillows, after
which she was caught by Margaret. Carrie's mother grabbed, dragged,
and violently shoved the young Carrie and locked her in
the house. But then a shower of hale hit their home,
followed by a rain of stones that caused severe damage
to their house. However, these powers were brought to full

(16:49):
force when she had her first period, which, to her
bad luck, happened while she was in school, and she
was laughed at and bullied for it. The novel doesn't
offer much explanation on how and why Carrie White has
these powers, but it's mentioned that they are genetically transmitted,
though they only manifest in women, and that both her

(17:11):
parents were carriers. There are hints throughout the novel that
Margaret White had some level of powers too, as she
had visions that she attributed to God. In the twenty
two twenty thirteen remake starring Chloe Grace Moretz as Carrie,
she mentions she inherited her telekinetic powers from either her

(17:31):
father or her great grandmother, Sadie Cochrane, who died of
heart failure, possibly as a consequence of straining herself with
her own power. The mystery around the origin of Carrie
White's power has made way for different theories, most of
them based on other King's work, with the most notable
one suggesting that Carrie's father is actually Randal Flag, thus

(17:54):
why she got such destructive powers. Okay me interjecting here.
Randall Flagg is the antagonist of the stand and is
basically like the Antichrist but worse. He's also like the
same character that's Evil in the Dark Tower series. But
I can't elaborate too much more on that because I

(18:15):
haven't read those. But I think this is a stretch
because He's like a shape shifting literal demon. I would
be more inclined to believe that Randall Flagg and Pennywise
the Dancing Clown are the same person. But I don't know.
I don't think that. I'm not for this. I'm not

(18:37):
for the Randall Flagg as the biological father theory. But
let me know what you think. If you've also read
the Stand or watched the various mini series that have
been made the nineties, one is better. Okay, back to
the article what powers Carrie has? Carrie White is best

(18:59):
known for elekinetic powers, which allow her to control, rearrange, assemble, manipulate, throw,
and move multiple objects in people at once. In some adaptations,
her telekinesis also granted her the ability to levitate. Carrie
also had telepathy, meaning she could read minds very much

(19:19):
the shine from the Shining Project thoughts, and manipulate mines.
She had geokinesis due to the rain of stones and electrokinesis,
as she could roll a car down the street without
the wheels turning. The movie adaptations of Carrie have added
to these already interesting but dangerous powers, as she also

(19:39):
has pyrokinesis. In the twenty thirteen version, she could ignite
objects hydrokinesis in the two thousand and two movie, where
she could push water away from herself before electrocuting others,
and she might have had the ability of dream projection
as well as Sue experienced nightmares embalmbing Carrie, though these

(20:00):
could have been the result of her traumatic experience. How
powerful is Carrie really? As mentioned above, Carrie has had
her power since she was born, as the novel mentions
that Margaret became aware of them when she saw Carrie's
baby bottle floating over her. I mean seeing a baby
bottle floating to your kid. I think that could do

(20:22):
a lot for religious psychosis to give one to Margaret.
And then there was the incident of the Rain of Stones.
Carrie's powers were fully awakened after her first period, as
she was driven by pain, anger and revenge, she was
able to unleash their full potential. Following the incident with
the pig blood at prom Carrie left the building, but

(20:44):
returned after remembering her powers and choosing to use them
for revenge, so she hermetically sealed the gym activated this
sprinkler system, thus electrocuting many people and started a fire
that ignited the school's fuel tanks, causing massive destruction, and
this all without moving a finger. One of Carrie's strongest powers,

(21:07):
and one that is over often overlooked, is her telepathy,
through which she was able to get into Tommy's mind,
blanking his other thoughts out to the point where he
was freaked out by her. Carrie later broadcasted her name
to anyone within a certain radius in order in Tin
Still Fear all Over Town, and at the end of
the novel she had a telepathic conversation with Sue, which

(21:30):
also implies Sue might have had some level of telepathy.
The way she used these powers changes in each adaptation.
For example, in the novel and the Prime to Palma
nineteen seventy sixth movie, Carrie had to see what she manipulated,
while in the twenty thirteen version she used her hands
to manipulate her telekinetic strength. Also in the twenty thirteen movie,

(21:53):
Carrie was able to manipulate electronic appliances as she did
what she animated a line electrical chords to attack Tina.
Carrie in the novel was extremely powerful, and what made
her so dangerous was that she was driven by anger,
and Edith's adaptation of the character made her even more
powerful with those small additions. Carrie is mostly a story

(22:17):
of trauma, as Carrie White was incessantly abused by her
mother since she was very little, and this only continued
during her school years and more. Carrie's powers can be
interpreted as the result of all that bottled up trauma
and emotions that she could never let out, as well
as the disappointment of learning that nobody genuinely cared about her.

(22:38):
But they did. They did, people did care about her.
Carrie's powers being unleashed when she got her first period
is a twist of way of symboling Carrie's transformation from
girl to woman, and King even explained in his book

(22:58):
Daunce Macabre that Carrie is about how women find their
own channels of power, though in this case it took
a dark and tragic turn. Carrie White is one of
the most tragic characters in Stephen King's universe, and while
she got her revenge, she never got what she truly
wanted and needed, which was love and acceptance. Back to

(23:19):
me talking again, I think the love part is really accurate,
but I do think that people care deeply for Carrie.
I think her classmates started to feel shame as they
got older and started to feel empathy, and that that's
why she was asked to prom. It's just the mean
kids always stick out more. They always do, and in

(23:42):
Carrie's case, her power is bound up with that shame
and repression. She doesn't choose it on purpose. Very similar
to another Stephen King's story, fire Starter, But car sixteen, friendless, timid,

(24:02):
and very afraid. Her mother sees sin under every eyelash.
At school, She's bullied, teased, videotaped, humiliated. Then in gym
class her period starts. She doesn't understand what's happening. The
girls throw tampons and pads at her. They triple punch
or shame, and at that moment she panics. The showers

(24:25):
are curtainless, the humiliation is totally complete, and then her
power leaks out. Chairs crash lights, ficker, blood sprays. In
King's original version, that shower scene was the seed. The
tampon throwing was literal and symbolic female shame weaponized later

(24:47):
a prom. The joke is sadistically cruel. Pig's blood the
ball of DNA explodes and Carrie implodes before absolutely losing
her fucking mind. The gym comes an inferno. She doesn't
just kill them, she annihilates them. She takes the floor,
she takes the bleachers, she takes the ceiling, and she

(25:10):
folds them into her pain. Author Jeff Vandermere said of
Carrie's influence, Carrie changed the paradigm by announcing a very
American form of horror that broke with the past the
process that might have been ongoing anyway, But a lot
of horror in fiction was still in a kind of
post m R. James Lovecraft made of parchment and shadowy

(25:33):
alleys and half seen horrors. And here was King dropping
buckets of blood over everything and making characterization both more
relaxed and more contemporary, but just as sophisticated, if more
naturalistic than stylized. And then we have Carrie's mother, Margaret White.

(26:00):
Whyn't you tell me? Mom?

Speaker 4 (26:08):
And God made Eve from the river of Adam, and
it was weak and loose the.

Speaker 7 (26:12):
Raven on the world, and the raven was called.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
Sin, said the raven.

Speaker 4 (26:19):
Mom said no, the raven was called Sin.

Speaker 5 (26:24):
And the raven was called Sin.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
And first, and was in of course first, and was in.

Speaker 7 (26:30):
Of course, say I didn't. Person was in the course.

Speaker 4 (26:36):
The first was, of course, the first, same was at
a course.

Speaker 7 (26:39):
First was intercourse. Mama, I was so scared, but I
was dead and the.

Speaker 5 (26:43):
Girls they all left him.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
And he was weak. No mam, he was weak. He
was weak.

Speaker 5 (26:51):
He was weak, saying no, Mama, say it, he was weak,
he was weak.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
My lord curse.

Speaker 5 (27:01):
Curs, poor freaking Carrie. I mean, getting your period is
traumatizing enough. I got my period when I was eleven,
a few weeks before my twelfth birthday, and a couple
months later my mom I was supposed to go to
like some swim class, and she was trying to get
telling me to use the tampon, and I was so

(27:22):
terrified of it, and she was like, just put it
inside of yourself. And I remember just being so horrified
and being like, is this how women live? Is this
what we're just supposed to do? Like just the whole thing.
Just I knew what periods were, I knew what was
gonna happen, and still I was just like, are you
fucking kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me that this

(27:42):
is what I'm supposed to do? I have cramps I'm
supposed to put this thing inside of myself and then
go swim with a bunch of other twelve year olds, Like,
are you kidding me? This is not the life that
I signed up for.

Speaker 1 (27:58):
You should tell me, oh do.

Speaker 4 (28:03):
Oh Lord Hell the sinning woman see the sin of
her days, and whis sure her that if she had
remained sin, the curse of blood would never have come
on her. She may have been tempted by the andy
christ your may have you know, the son of lest thoughts.

Speaker 5 (28:20):
You're the one who might have slept with Randall Flag lady.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
Yeah, don't you know why?

Speaker 7 (28:25):
Now I can see inside you.

Speaker 5 (28:26):
I can see this in as surely as Goda.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
We all pray, well, pray lots of.

Speaker 4 (28:36):
Visiting persons like.

Speaker 7 (28:42):
Person, and this is.

Speaker 4 (28:44):
Asweat, and blood tell us a state.

Speaker 5 (28:52):
Margaret White, you ho, Margaret White is no ordinary religious fanatic.
She prophetic, apocalyptic, a thermustad giant in the house of sin.
She's the reason Carrie hides. She's the reason she's silent.
She's the reason her daughter has no idea. What the
hell aperiod is the reason she fears not just what's outside,

(29:16):
but what's inside. Margaret's sermons her guilt, her physical abuse,
everything cage, just Carrie, and when Carrie finally rebels, when
she speaks a few words on the contrary, Margaret can't
stand it. She sees the blood, the girl, witch, the horror.
She created her final act bringing a rifle to their

(29:38):
final showdown, or in the film some Knives, Hell fucking
always comes home. In some versions Margaret becomes the victim,
and others her fanaticism is punished. In all she's the crucible,
She's the catalyst. This is a clip from The Vile

(29:59):
Eye on YouTube. I will link to it in the
show notes, We're just going to hear part of it,
but it's analyzing evil. Margaret White from Carrie was.

Speaker 8 (30:09):
Given to us on Margaret's background in the film, but
in the book we're given just enough about Margaret's life
as a child and as a younger adult to make
some inferences about just how she grew into such a
righteously overzealous woman as she grew older. According to the book,
Margaret White was born and raised in Martin, a small
town which ports Chamberlain and sends its tuition studentage a
Chamberlain's Junior and Senior high schools.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
Her parents were fairly well to do.

Speaker 8 (30:28):
They owned a prosperous night spot just outside the moutin
town limits called the Jolly Roadhouse. Margaret's father, John Brigham,
was killed in a bar room shooting incident in the
summer of nineteen fifty nine. Aside from this excerpt, we
get a description of Margaret as a young girl from
mister Morton earlier in the novel, who tells us that
Margaret once told a teacher that the Lord was reserving
a special burning seaed in hell for her because she
gave the kids an outline of mister Darwin's beliefs on evolution.

(30:49):
Margaret was also suspended twice as a student, and one
of those times was for beating a fellow classmate with
a purse for smoking a cigarette. Now, the thing about
a child like Margaret is that most people would assume
she was raised to act the way she does. But
I think it's fair clear that Margaret formed her views
in her own way outside of her family's influence. There's
no doubt she was raised a Christian, but what points
to her developing these views on her own is the
testimony of her stepfather, Harold Allison and her mother Judith Allison.

(31:11):
Whenever Margaret would speak to them, she would hound them
for living in sin and tell them they were going
to hell, that God had put an invisible mark on
their foreheads, but she could see it, and.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
They were damned.

Speaker 8 (31:20):
Her mother tried to be nice and help her daughter,
but to no avail, and earlier on in this section,
her mother had even expected her daughter to remain a
spinster for the rest of her life. A few things
point to how Margaret could have developed the way she
did without the influence of like minded parents. The first
is her own personality and innate prudishness. Margaret, as I said,
was likely raised a Christian, but at the same time
lived in a home where her family operated a roadhouse,
a popular night spot at the edge of town. It

(31:42):
was through these conflicting paradigms that Margaret saw the contradiction
between the Gospels she was receiving at church and the
reality of her family's sinful profession. Perhaps she was influenced
by a pastor or other members of her church who
spoke ill of her family's establishment, only fueling her already
distasteful views of her family's lifestyle, whether from doctrine alone
or the help of a member of the clergy. This
influence is what caused her to lash out at others
in her school, perhaps taking out her frustrations at her

(32:03):
own family on her classmates and doling out punishment to
those who chesnized her as well, as she likely suffered
some of the same bullying akin to her own daughter.
The kids at Carrie' school made fun of carry as
Pray and Cary, and I imagine Margaret was an even
more extreme version of what she shaped her daughter to
be when she was a child. This is, of course speculation,
but it seems.

Speaker 5 (32:18):
I agree with this speculation so.

Speaker 8 (32:20):
Far highly probable that this or something similar was the
case for Margaret. The second component to Margaret's development was
her father. From what little information about Margaret's mother that
we receive, we can say that she was definitely not
as fanatically religious as her daughter was. Well, what if
her father. I don't think he was either, But I
think it's likely that John Brigham was the one responsible
for upholding the Gospel and the Brigham household, and thus
had a bond with Margaret that the rest of the

(32:40):
family didn't share. This is another bout of speculation on
my part. But this could explain why Margaret's religious views
boiled over into the extreme after the death of her
father in nineteen fifty nine when she was thirty years old,
as she started attending fundamentalist prayer meetings shortly.

Speaker 5 (32:52):
I think it could happen independently. Some people just lose
their shit.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
After her father's death.

Speaker 8 (32:57):
We learn here as well that Margaret had been sheltering
herself from the outside world well into her adulthood, as
she still lived with her parents at the time of
her father's death. This sheltering, which may have come in
some small part from her parents, but more likely had
been self imposed her entire life, would vastly contribute to
her development into a righteous fundamental Christian, as she raised
blinders over her own eyes to keep out anything but
the truth of the Lord. Our third component to Margaret's
development that, according to her mother, must have spiraled her

(33:20):
into further's ellotry, was a suspected miscarriage of a child.
Margaret's mother speculated on this after a brief stint to
the hospital a month the following Margaret's.

Speaker 5 (33:26):
Mayor Madd'll do a lot too to any of us.

Speaker 8 (33:30):
Urged to Ralph White and it was later confirmed by
Margaret herself when speaking with Kerry towards the end of
the novel. It was here that her mother noticed Margaret
had grown even more unhinged, and she raved about how
an angel with the sword would walk through the parking
lots of roadhouses and.

Speaker 5 (33:41):
Cut down the wicked Michael.

Speaker 8 (33:43):
Overwrought with grief at the loss of a child, the
grief she still held over her father's death at the
family's roadhouse, and the line of thought that she confessed
to having that her miscarriage was caused by her sinning
in fornicating with Ralph before marriage let Margaret further over
the edge than she already had been. Our fourth component
to her development was this marriage to Ralph and her
possible intertwined bus use and reverence for a husband who
met an untimely end, and the further grief that event

(34:03):
cost her. Margaret undoubtedly married Ralph due to a shared
view of religion, and through this, I imagine she developed
a bond with him unlike any other she had experienced before.
They had first become lovers, then a husband and wife
who chose to live a chased life, which Margaret must
have found the utmost comfort in.

Speaker 5 (34:17):
Not very randolp Flag, but that would only.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
Last for so long as the night carry was conceived.

Speaker 8 (34:23):
Ralph came home drunk and forced himself upon his wife,
who resisted his advances, but fell into a state of
ecstasy once the.

Speaker 5 (34:29):
Act had commenced, Very Randall Flag, further damaging her mind
as she succumbed once again to something she had dedicated
her life to combating sin.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Though this fractured their relationship.

Speaker 8 (34:39):
Margaret is a woman who holds the institution of marriage
in high regard, and through a combination of prayer and forgiveness,
she went on with her married life until her husband's death.
Her husband, as explained by a neighbor and a testimonial,
was an intimidating and frightening man who nobody looked in
the eyes or attempted to converse with in any way.
And according to this neighbor, his eyes seemed to glow
in their intensity, and he carried a thirty eight revolver

(34:59):
to work with him alongside his Bible every day. I
can only imagine that Margaret felt safe, and not only
the world views her and her husband shared, but his
strong presence as a righteous force for good in the world.
His eventual death may have taken Margaret's mind back to
the death of her father and the loss of another
stable male force in her life. Again to her father,
accompanied by lack of friends or family to comfort her
during her time of bereavement, drove her further into grief
and madness. The fifth and final component of Margaret's transformation

(35:22):
into the woman we see in the film is her
pregnancy and her daughter carry In the book, Margaret wrote
a letter to a friend five months into her pregnancy,
where she explained that she feared she had cancer of
the womanly parts and that she'd soon be joining her
husband in heaven. In this same passage, it said that
scholars had put forth that the reason Margaret may have
been ignorant of her own pregnancy was that she had
linked the concept with the sin of intercourse in her
mind and had blocked it out entirely, refusing to believe

(35:44):
that such a thing could happen to her, seeing as
she believed herself to have cancer and couldn't link the
intercourse she had with Ralph months prior to her current pain.
I think this is a suitable way to frame her
misunderstanding of her pregnancy more traumatic than the pain she
experienced during this pregnancy was the way she delivered Carry.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
Alone in her home in her own bay.

Speaker 8 (36:00):
She went through hours of screaming agony as she labored
to bring Carry into the world. When someone had finally
called the police and they arrived on the scene, they
found Margaret covered in blood with a butcher knife laying
on the floor beside her, with Carry nursing at her breast,
assuming she had cut the umbilical cord herself with the knife.
It's only later in the novel that we find out
that Margaret had intended to kill Carry when she was
born using the knife. This was the first time Margaret
intended to murder her daughter, but not the last. Already

(36:22):
having the thought of sin attached to her daughter in
her mind, Margaret would find another affirmation that her daughter
needed to be given back to God when she found
her levitating her bottle above her head in her crib
when she was only a year old. Here we learned
that Margaret's grandmother had the same talent Carrie does, which
terrified Margaret as she had believed a grandmother to be
a witch, and earlier in the novel we learned that
researchers had come to conclude that females were carriers for
the telekinetic.

Speaker 5 (36:43):
Trait whiches always get such a bad rap come on
and held.

Speaker 8 (36:48):
A recessive gene for the talent, which could only be
awakened by the same dominant gene in a male producing
a female child, and only a female child. These researchers
explained that it typically manifests in incestual relationships, and it's
highly unlikely that too people who carry one of these
genes will meet one another and produce offspring that have
the talent. This might be a hint from King that
perhaps Margaret suffers some sort of genetic malfunction that causes
her to behave the way she does due to incest

(37:09):
in her family tree, as not only does Margaret explain
that her grandmother would whirl the sugar bowl like a
dervish with a witch like glow in her eyes, but
that she would drool and make the sign of the
evil eye all about when she did.

Speaker 5 (37:19):
I personally don't think that bipolar disorder is caused by incest,
but we are living in a tighl and all autism
era so.

Speaker 8 (37:28):
So and sometimes panted like a dog on a hot day,
indicating that perhaps the grandmother was the result of an
incestuous relationship and suffered a mental malady structe relationships. This
is speculation on my part, but I could partially explain
why Margaret is predisposed to the type of personality that
she has. Let me know what you think of this
notion down in the comment section. Now back to this
second attempted murder, we learned that Margaret would have gone
through with it had it not been for Ralph staying

(37:49):
her hand. Now, this could be an heiraor Stephen King
made with his timeline, as it stated by both the
testimonial and Margaret herself that Ralph had died before Carrie
was born. Or perhaps he was meaning for Margaret to
be under the impression that her own innability to kill
her child was the heavenly influence or memory of her
late husband. Nevertheless, this murderous intent would bring itself to
the surface.

Speaker 5 (38:07):
Once again when Stephen King does not make mistakes, My guy.

Speaker 8 (38:10):
Carrie was exposed at the partial nudity of a son
bathing neighbor. According to this neighbor, Margaret went into a mad,
animal like frenzy when she saw Carrie standing next to her,
paying at the sky and clawing at her face in dress,
leaving both torn and squatting down like a frog, with
a crazed look on her face, drool running down her chin,
and her arms opened wide as if to crush rather
than embrace her daughter as she ran towards her. I'd
like to note here that Margaret's inclination towards self harm

(38:32):
had manifested itself before, and a desire to kill herself
when she had miscarried her first child and after her
husband had raped her. And I think it would be
fair to say that in these moments of great distress,
her mind drifts back to these thoughts as she mutilizes herself.
Once Margaret is taking carry into her house, it was
then that she, in her crazed state, much akin to
the way she had described her own grandmother, advanced towards
a three year old Carrey with her husband's bible and

(38:52):
butcher knife in hand, to cut the sin out of
her daughter once again. Here, though, she was stopped by
what you might call another instance of the divine, or
rather the demonic and Margaret's mind, the telekinetic assault on
her home by her young and dis draughted daughter. Once
the clamor had ceased, Margaret fainted, and when she awoke
she likely found within her a new fear alongside her
fear of the almighty, a fear of her young daughter. Now,
this is everything we have to go off of to

(39:13):
give us an idea of how Margaret has formed to
the woman we see on screen in the film.

Speaker 5 (39:18):
That's a lot to go off of, and there are
so many different versions of the story, but I think
that it's fair to say that Stephen Kings as Cannon.
After the release of the novel, Carrie became a film
in nineteen seventy six. That's the DiPalma version. Sissy Spasic
gave the girl a trembling dignity, between the prom scene,

(39:41):
the split screen, the mirroring. It's completely iconic. Then remakes, sequels, musicals,
Carrie Never Stays Dead. In twenty thirteen, they doubled down technology,
viral video, Cruel beyond Measure. There's misery, Firestarter, the our
calf It, and there's a recurring King motif. Power suppressed

(40:05):
becomes power unleashed. Every teenage horror flick with mind powers,
invisible girls, ghosts in the hallways, they owe something to
carry White for that, So why do we like Carrie
White even if she scares us. I think a big
part is empathy, And I think a big part is

(40:26):
anyone who's ever been othered or bullied or afraid can
see Carrie and themselves because she's bullied, because she's invisible,
because she's repressed, because our shame is ready, because we
believe somewhere underneath that one moment, we too could erupt.
Horror often asks what if the powerless got power? And

(40:49):
Carrie answers that. Carrie says, she'll burn the whole place down,
But that's not what she wanted. She wanted love and
friendships and just to be prom queen without having blood
splattered all over herself. She wanted a mom who bought
her a box of tampacs and was like, honey, all

(41:10):
women go through this change. She wanted really, really simple things,
and she didn't get them. There's always a part of
me at the end of the book, at the end
of the movie that wishes Carrie was more selective with
her punishment, that she only hurt the people that hurt her.
But I think that's very naive and hopeful of me,

(41:34):
because we often hurt the people that are closest to us,
and after you're traumatized to that degree, it's really difficult
to make those distinctions. You may be able to tell
from these stories that I'm a believer in lots of things,
in telekinesis and psychic teenagers and Poltergeiss's teenage girls. I

(41:58):
don't know if that's my own insaneity or naivete or hopefulness,
but it's comforting to me. The big mob teeth that
I think is being left out here is the good
versus evil thing and the gray in between. That's always

(42:18):
a big Stephen King thing, the underdogs getting powers. If
enough people have read The Stand or seen the I
think it was Paramount that did the recent mini series,
and then before that there was the made for TV one,
which I just absolutely love. I would love to do

(42:41):
an episode on the Stand because I think even more
so than it, it is just such a gray breakdown
of the battle between good and evil. So if that's
something you want to hear, let me know. With its
Verry Randall Flagg, who might be Carrie's father, sent when

(43:02):
I did that episode with my mom, she was saying,
how Stephen King's stories don't scare her because they're all
about good and evil. And Stephen king Rules don't scare
me because in Stephen king Rules, if there's evil, there's
something good that has to be stronger than that evil,
someone with the shine, someone with the power, someone who

(43:24):
can light the room on fire. But for me, that's
still the scariest thing because in his first novel, in
this one, in Carrie, when she gets the power, she
takes it too far. She could have used the telekinesis
to rob a wink and start over and leave her

(43:45):
small town in Maine, go to the Manhattan and you know,
just make it in a different way. And that's the
ending I always want for her. And that's also what
scares me about revenge and taking power too far. So
that comes back to that question, that horror question, what

(44:09):
if the powerless get power? I don't want the answer
to be they'll burn the whole place down. That's my
only problem with this story, and I don't even know
if it's a problem. It's what makes me sad. I
don't think that the ending is a happy ending, even
if it's a justified one. I wanted more for Carrie,

(44:35):
for the whole thing you know, for every teenage girl
who gets bullied like that, for every adult who feels
lonely like that. So the next time you feel small, unheard,
shoved inside, don't whisper, because maybe, just maybe there's something

(44:55):
more waiting behind your hands. Maybe there's some you can
do with that other than burning down the entire gym.
This is a quick clip from the take Carrie the
Teenage Nightmare.

Speaker 9 (45:12):
Carrie's telekinesas expresses the intense moodswings that teenagers and their
parents know all too well. Her first telekinetic moment comes
when she's overwhelmed and her feelings are stronger than she is.
Throughout the film, her powers get the best of her
when she's angry or upset. It's so the horror that
results comes from her not learning how to properly express
and deal with her emotions. We also see other teens

(45:32):
not knowing how to deal with oversized emotions.

Speaker 7 (45:34):
Chris is Carrie's tormentor.

Speaker 9 (45:36):
But she's also unsure of how to express herself and
ends up taking out her feelings on others. Chris's constant
rage seems confusing at first.

Speaker 2 (45:43):
Billy, I hate Carrie White.

Speaker 9 (45:47):
We can't figure out why she hates Carrie so much,
But it may be that she sees Carrie as a
representation of the vulnerable or feminine parts of herself, and
by abusing Carrie, she's really trying to self punish or
to distance herself from the.

Speaker 7 (45:59):
Traits she sees in carry. And it's not just the girls.

Speaker 9 (46:02):
Any teen's emotions can change suddenly and intensely. For a
horror movie, Monster Carrie looks pretty frightened.

Speaker 7 (46:08):
She's deeply afraid of herself.

Speaker 9 (46:09):
Much of the power of the film comes from the
fact that she's both the villain and the victim in
this horror movie. We feel bad for her even as
she's becoming a mass murderer. She finally starts to get revenge,
but she still can't control her body or her emotions,
as we see when.

Speaker 7 (46:24):
Her telekinetic powers go completely haywire. Even if we're.

Speaker 9 (46:30):
Well past Carrie's age, the film resonates with us because
the traumas of high school embarrassments and rejections never really
leave us.

Speaker 7 (46:36):
It may be.

Speaker 9 (46:37):
Disturbing to realize as we're watching that we identify more
with Carrie in the gym scene than we do with
her peers, her revenge may be scary, but we also
know that these bullies had it coming, and we feel
a Catharsis of sorts. Our ambivalent reaction to Carrie's transformation
from victim to villain shows us that getting even sometimes
feels even.

Speaker 7 (46:55):
More empowering than being crowned prom queen.

Speaker 5 (47:00):
And every little How does the ending make you feel?
Am I a sellout for just wanting Carrie to become
prom queen? For wanting some Hollywood ending here, some happy ending?
Or is that a human reaction? I think it's easier
for me to say now as an adult, to have
those feelings, because when I was a teenager and I

(47:23):
was introduced to this story, I just wanted pure, absolute revenge.
I thought being prom queen was stupid. Now I think
it would have been good for her. How does the
ending make you feel? How did these stories make you feel?
Did you try and practice your telekinesis after seeing or

(47:44):
reading Matilda for the first time? Are you team Matilda
for the telekinesis or team Carrie White Maybe a little
bit of both. I think that's a fair place to land,
But let me know your thoughts. There's so much here,

(48:06):
and it's still just a story I really love, even
though it's a story like many stories, that I wish
had a different ending. Thank you so much for listening
to another episode of Abroad the Next Door. I'm currently
running one episode behind for our thirty one episodes in

(48:28):
thirty one days because I have been so sick for
the last twenty four hours. So I'm scrambling a little bit,
debating whether I should release this episode right now, which
is like Tuesday night, even though it's already like eight
pm on the East Coast, or if i should save
it for tomorrow morning. But I'll probably put it out

(48:50):
tonight and then scramble more tomorrow. So thank you for
sticking with me. Thank you for sending me in your
scary stories, and please keep doing that. I'll be reading
them at the end of the month, doing a little
scary story compilation with the listeners stories and some of
my own. Some horrifying stuff coming in. Once again, I

(49:12):
don't know if you're all making stuff up. If you
are incredible, incredible writing. I'm doing an episode this week
with my friend Tessa fire Walk with Me nine one
three I think that's her number combo on Instagram. She
helped with our log Lady episode. She was great with that,

(49:33):
and we're gonna be talking about Camp Harrow and the
mon Talk Project and Stranger Things, So that should be
a really good episode on mind control and all of
the government testing insanity and psychic spies and post World

(49:54):
War two, Cold War, never ending Long Island stuff. I
can't believe Stranger Things isn't coming out until next month, November.
I really wish they were doing it for Halloween, but
they did just announce that every episode is going to
be like movie length, that they're all like ninety to

(50:15):
one hundred and something minutes, so that is kind of exciting.
I feel like I need to rewatch it because I
feel like it's been years since the last season, which
it has, right. I also when did that show freaking
start twenty sixteen? Feel like it's been a decade, right,
But what are you watching? What spooky stuff? I rewatched

(50:38):
mind Hunt Her and read that book. I wanted to
watch Mind Hunt un Obomber, but it's not streaming anywhere.
But that was another one I really liked. Also, just
been reading like a lot of thriller books. It's like quick,
easy reads. I reread Dark Places by Jillian Flynn gil Flynn,

(51:01):
the Gone Girl author, which takes place in Kansas City,
which I'm going to a week from today, so I
really need to get a jump start in some episodes.
If you want to come to a guest episode, or
you have suggestions for me, send those in two. You
can find me online everywhere, at Broad's next Door or

(51:21):
at Daniella Scream. I read all of my messages. If
you can email me at broadsnextdoor dot com or broad'snext
Door at gmail dot com. You can shop our merch
at Broad's next Door. There'll be video episodes back up
on Patreon eventually, but not yet. I will let you know.

(51:42):
I was really hoping to have them already, but they're
such a whole other animal. That's what I would use
my telekinetic power for. No, hopefully I would use it
for something better, like mass destruction. Just kidding, just kidding.
I would use it to be prom queen. What would
you use it for? Send me your thoughts. I will

(52:04):
talk to you tomorrow. I love you very much.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
Me Bye,